Half a Step to Immortality: When They Broke the Betrothal, the Sect Knelt

Synopsis

Seven years in seclusion. On the day I came out, I bore the Heavenly Lightning of the Half-Step Immortal Realm.

I kept my breathing gathered in, held myself at Foundation Establishment on purpose, and pushed open the stone door. What waited for me was not flowers and applause.

It was my betrothed, Liu Wan’er, arm linked through my Junior Brother Zhao Ling’s, standing at the heart of the sect square.

True Lord Xuanqing, my Master, tore the betrothal contract in two in front of three thousand disciples.

“Su Chen. A Foundation Establishment waste. Not fit to be the chief disciple of my Tianxuan Sect.”

Zhao Ling did not bother to veil his Golden Core pressure. His arm was around Liu Wan’er’s waist, and he smiled at me.

“Senior Brother. Seven years, and still Foundation Establishment?”

The whole square laughed.

No one knew that half a shichen earlier, the purple bolt that had split the sky open was the tribulation I crossed.

No one knew either that this waste they spoke of could crush every person present beneath one finger.

You want to break the betrothal?

Fine.

But first I want you to see clearly what it is you threw away.

Chapter One

“Su Chen, why are you still standing there gaping? Come receive the order.”

True Lord Xuanqing’s voice came down from the high platform. Cold.

I stood at the mouth of the sect square. The sun was so bright I could not keep my eyes open.

Seven years since I had seen daylight.

In the Cave Residence there had been only the light of the Lightning Tribulation. Purple. Scorching. Splitting down onto the crown of my head.

Eighty-one bolts of Heavenly Lightning. I did not dodge one of them. I swallowed every bolt.

My bones broke three times. My Meridians snapped twice. My Dantian burst open and was remade.

Half-Step Immortal Realm.

In eight hundred years of Tianxuan Sect, no one had reached this Realm.

Yet in the three thousand pairs of eyes in front of me, all I found was mockery.

“Seven years shut away, and still Foundation Establishment. Tsk, tsk.”

“The genius Senior Brother of those years. Finished.”

“I said long ago he was all show and no substance.”

The talk bored into my ears. I paid it no mind.

Everything I attended to sat at the centre of the square, and it was the two people standing there.

Liu Wan’er had on a new dress, water-blue, cut from the bolt of Heavenly Silkworm Silk I gave her before I entered seclusion.

Her arm was hooked through Zhao Ling’s. She was smiling radiantly.

Zhao Ling stood half a head taller than seven years ago. His Golden Core pressure spread out around him, and the disciples nearby gave ground one after another.

He saw me. One corner of his mouth twisted.

“Oh? Senior Brother has left seclusion? Congratulations, congratulations. Reached the Peak Stage of Foundation Establishment yet?”

Liu Wan’er tugged his sleeve and murmured something. The two of them laughed together.

I walked forward.

True Lord Xuanqing stood on the high platform. Behind him was the sect’s ring of Elders, and lining both sides, the Inner Disciples.

In his hand he held a sheet of paper stamped with the sect’s great seal.

The betrothal contract.

My father had set it with the Liu family on his deathbed.

He raised his hand and, in front of everyone, tore the sheet in two.

The scraps drifted down.

“Su Chen. Seven years in seclusion, and your Cultivation Base has not advanced an inch. Tianxuan Sect does not feed waste.”

True Lord Xuanqing looked at me. There was no warmth in his eyes.

“From this day your betrothal is void. The seat of chief disciple passes to Zhao Ling.”

“Master—”

“What is this calling?” He frowned. “What claim have you to call me Master? At Foundation Establishment, you are below even an Outer Disciple.”

Zhao Ling walked out of the crowd and cupped his hands in salute. “Thank you, Master.”

Then he turned his head to look at me, one brow lifted.

“Senior Brother. No, Su Chen. From now on the name should be Junior Brother Su. Take my advice and be sensible. Stop hanging on in the Inner Sect. Go to the Outer Sect and draw a menial laborer’s room. You can still scrape a living out of that.”

The whole place roared with laughter.

Liu Wan’er stood behind him, head bowed, shoulders shaking.

I could not tell if she was laughing or holding it in.

I no longer cared.

I glanced down at the two scraps of paper at my feet. The ink on them had not dried—no, it had dried seven years ago.

“Fine.”

One word was all I said.

True Lord Xuanqing froze. He had not expected me to agree so readily.

Zhao Ling froze as well.

“That’s it… fine?”

“You want to break the betrothal. I agree. If you want the chief disciple’s seat, take it.”

I lifted my head and swept my eyes across every face there.

“But there is one thing I want made clear.”

True Lord Xuanqing’s brows drew together. “Ask.”

“Seven years ago, the day I entered seclusion, you said one thing to me.”

I held his eyes.

“You said that when I came out, Tianxuan Sect would be proud of me.”

The square went quiet for a breath.

Something crossed True Lord Xuanqing’s face, and then it was smooth again.

“That was seven years ago. Seven years ago you were at the peak of Foundation Establishment, and I thought you would make your breakthrough into Golden Core. And now? Seven years gone, and you have not laid a finger on the edge of Golden Core.”

“Is that so?”

I smiled a little.

And turned to walk toward the Mountain Gate.

Behind me the place boiled over. Someone shouted, someone laughed, someone argued.

“He is really walking away?”

“Waste like that should roll out.”

“Seven years shut away, eating and drinking for nothing, and he still has the face to stay?”

I went forward step by step. Past the square. Past the corridor. Past the long flight of steps I had crawled up on my knees at twelve, the day I came to take a Master.

The stone beneath me had a crack in it, split by my own hand when I trained the sword.

Seven years. Nobody repaired it.

Nobody remembered it either.

Chapter Two

I did not go to the Outer Sect’s menial laborer’s room.

I went back to my own Cave Residence.

A sealing strip was pasted across the door. On it: the required Realm not met, vacate within three days.

The signature was Zhao Ling’s.

The date was two years ago.

He had put that strip up two years ago. Which is to say that two years ago he was already waiting for me to come out, waiting for me to crawl away.

I tore the strip down and pushed the door open.

The residence was empty.

My Pill Cauldron was gone. My shelves had been stripped bare. Even the rubbing of my father’s Sword Manual, the one that hung on the wall, was gone.

The only thing left was a worn meditation cushion in a corner with a note weighed down on it.

Su Chen, I have taken your things into safekeeping. Want them back? Come and kneel at Zhao Ling’s Cave Residence and beg me.

The hand was scrawled and insolent.

I crushed the note in my fist.

Footsteps came from outside.

“Senior Brother Su? Are you there?”

A woman’s voice, timid.

My Junior Sister Shen Youwei pushed the door open with a food box in her hands.

She was an Outer Disciple, and her Cultivation Base was only Qi Refining. Nobody in the sect looked at her straight on.

Seven years ago I had taught her a few basic sword forms.

“Senior Brother, you have come out of seclusion? I brought you something to eat.”

She set the box on the stone table and opened it. Inside were two steamed buns and a dish of pickled greens.

“The Inner Sect disciples took every good dish in the sect kitchen. This was all I could get…”

“Enough.”

I picked up a bun and bit into it.

Seven years without food. My stomach did not take it well.

Shen Youwei stood off to one side, on the edge of saying something.

“Say it.”

“Senior Brother, are you really still Foundation Establishment?”

I gave her a look.

“What do you think?”

“Half a shichen ago a bolt of purple Heavenly Lightning fell out of the sky and shook all of Tianxuan Sect. Many of the Elders said it was an omen from heaven. They could not tell if it was good or ill.”

“And then?”

“Zhao Ling says it was his breakthrough to the Peak Stage of Golden Core that stirred the heavens. Master praised him on the spot.”

My chewing stopped.

That bolt of purple lightning was the Lightning Tribulation I had drawn down in crossing to the Half-Step Immortal Realm.

Zhao Ling had claimed it as his own.

And True Lord Xuanqing had believed it.

“Senior Brother, I do not believe it was him.” Shen Youwei kept her voice very low. “A Golden Core breakthrough cannot stir Heavenly Lightning on that scale. It would take Nascent Soul or above.”

“How do you know that?”

“My Cultivation Base is low, but I have read the old books. Purple Heavenly Lightning only appears when someone crosses an Immortal Tribulation.”

This girl was sharper than every Elder in the sect.

“Senior Brother, are you perhaps—”

“Do not ask.”

I swallowed the last of the bun and knocked the crumbs off my hands.

“Go back first. Stay away from me, or you will be made to pay for it.”

Shen Youwei opened her mouth, said nothing in the end, and backed out.

The residence went quiet again.

I sat cross-legged on the torn cushion and closed my eyes.

The Spiritual Energy in me churned, vast as a sea. Through every Meridian ran strength tempered by immortal lightning.

Half-Step Immortal Realm.

One step from being a true immortal.

And that Golden Core brat Zhao Ling was less than an ant beside me.

I was not in a hurry, though.

I wanted to see how far these people would strut.

Footsteps came again outside. This time there were many of them.

“Su Chen! You have half a stick of incense to get out of that Cave Residence, or you will be dealt with for breaking sect law!”

It was Zhao Ling’s voice, with Inner Disciples at his back.

Here they come.

Chapter Three

I opened the door.

Zhao Ling stood at the front with seven or eight Inner Disciples behind him, all of them below Golden Core, their pressure pushed outward and aimed at me on purpose.

In their minds, that much pressure was enough to put a Foundation Establishment cultivator on his knees.

I stood still.

Zhao Ling frowned.

“Su Chen, are you deaf? Master has given the order. Your Inner Sect standing is revoked, and this Cave Residence belongs to me.”

“Where are my things?” I asked.

“What?”

“My Pill Cauldron, my books, my Sword Manual. You took them out of my residence.”

Zhao Ling tipped his head to one side and laughed.

“Oh, that junk. I ruined the Pill Cauldron refining with it. The books went under a table leg. As for that Sword Manual of your father’s—”

He paused, drawing the sound out deliberately.

“I wiped my shoes with it once. It was filthy, so I threw it away.”

The disciples behind him roared with laughter.

My fingers moved.

The Half-Step Immortal Realm Spiritual Energy in me surged once through my Meridians. Something pulled at the spiritual qi between heaven and earth, and grass and trees stirred though there was no wind.

One disciple behind Zhao Ling shivered. “Why did it suddenly turn so cold?”

Nobody paid it any mind.

“Are you moving out or not?” Zhao Ling held out his hand and jabbed a forefinger at my chest. “I will count to three. If you are not out by then, I will move you myself.”

I looked down at his finger.

“Zhao Ling.”

“What?”

“Take your hand off me.”

He paused, then laughed loudly. “You are threatening me? A Foundation Establishment waste threatening the Golden Core Senior Brother?”

He pushed harder, gathering qi at his fingertip, and stabbed it against my chest.

Golden Core Spiritual Energy poured in. Enough to shatter the Meridians of a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

Nothing happened.

His Spiritual Energy struck me and dispersed. It did not even put a crease in my robes.

Zhao Ling’s smile froze.

“You—”

I raised a hand and brushed his finger aside, lightly.

At nothing more than that, Zhao Ling’s body slid three zhang backward, his boots dragging two white lines across the stone.

The whole place went silent.

Zhao Ling looked down at his own hand. The fingers were shaking.

Not from fear. From the shock his Meridians had taken.

His head snapped up. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. I brushed your hand away.”

“Impossible! At Foundation Establishment—”

“I said, take your hand off me.”

I looked at him, my tone level.

Zhao Ling ground his teeth. The disciples behind him looked at one another.

“Come on. We go to Master!” Zhao Ling flung his sleeve and turned.

Two steps out he stopped again and threw one sentence back over his shoulder.

“Su Chen. Whatever trick you have hidden up your sleeve, it does not change the fact that you are a waste. I will pay you back a hundred times over for today.”

The whole group left.

I went back into the residence and sat down.

For that one brush I had used less than one part in ten thousand of my strength.

Even so, Zhao Ling’s Meridians would need three days to mend.

That did not matter.

He had said he wiped his shoes with my father’s Sword Manual.

That, I wrote down.

Chapter Four

Zhao Ling worked fast.

Less than one shichen later, True Lord Xuanqing’s messenger disciple arrived.

“Su Chen. Master summons you to the Assembly Hall. At once.”

I followed him there.

Five Elders sat in the hall, True Lord Xuanqing at the centre, and flanking him on either side, Elder Sun of the Alchemy Hall, Elder Chen of the Sword Hall, Elder Qian of the Discipline Hall, and Elder Zhou of the Library Pavilion.

Zhao Ling stood below the dais with Liu Wan’er at his side.

The moment I walked in, Zhao Ling started speaking.

“Master, Su Chen struck me! I only meant to remind him kindly to move out of the Cave Residence. He attacked me from behind and injured my Meridians!”

He held up his right hand. The fingers were slightly swollen.

True Lord Xuanqing looked at me.

“Su Chen, is this true?”

“He jabbed my chest. I brushed his hand away.”

“Lies!” Zhao Ling shouted. “You are at Foundation Establishment. How could you injure a Golden Core cultivator? You must have used an Evil Art!”

Elder Qian frowned. “Su Chen. Seven years in seclusion, and what exactly have you been cultivating? What Cultivation Technique?”

“A technique of the Righteous Path.”

“Then how do you explain Zhao Ling’s injuries?”

“He is too weak.”

The hall was silent for two seconds, and then Zhao Ling’s face went red.

“Who are you calling weak?!”

“You.”

True Lord Xuanqing slapped the table. “Enough! Su Chen, you are still at Foundation Establishment, and laying hands on a Junior Brother already breaks sect law. In consideration of your years of service to the sect, I will not punish you hard. Be out of the Inner Sect before sunset today and move to the Outer Sect’s menial quarters.”

Liu Wan’er never looked at me.

She leaned against Zhao Ling’s side, head down, picking at her nails.

I thought suddenly of seven years ago, when she used to stand beside me like that. Only then it was the Unity Jade Pendant I gave her that she looked down at and fidgeted with.

That pendant hangs at Zhao Ling’s waist now.

I had seen it.

“Su Chen, are you still here?” True Lord Xuanqing’s tone had turned impatient.

“Before I go, one question for Master.”

“Ask.”

“Today’s bolt of purple Heavenly Lightning. Who does Master think drew it down?”

The air in the hall changed.

Several Elders exchanged a glance.

Zhao Ling’s face stiffened, and then he said loudly, “Me, of course! My breakthrough to the Peak Stage of Golden Core stirred the heavens. Master saw it with his own eyes!”

“The Peak Stage of Golden Core cannot stir purple Heavenly Lightning.”

My voice was not loud, but everyone heard it.

Elder Zhou, the one from the Library Pavilion, moved a finger.

He was the only person there who could have known what purple Heavenly Lightning meant.

He did not open his mouth.

True Lord Xuanqing snorted coldly. “Ridiculous. You are at Foundation Establishment. What standing do you have to question the breakthrough signs of a Golden Core disciple?”

“No. I have no standing.”

I turned and walked out.

At the door, Zhao Ling’s voice came from behind me.

“Master, leaving a man like this in the sect is asking for trouble. Better to cast him out altogether!”

True Lord Xuanqing did not answer.

I knew he was considering it, though.

Chapter Five

I did not go to the Outer Sect’s menial quarters.

I went up the back mountain.

The back mountain is Forbidden Ground, sealed year-round by a Formation. They say an ancient Fierce Beast’s remnant soul is locked inside it, and Nascent Soul cultivators do not dare go near.

To me the Formation might as well not have been there.

I stepped in. The lines of the Formation lit up once under my feet and went dark.

The spiritual qi back here was so thick it had almost turned liquid. Every breath carried Spiritual Energy flooding into the body.

I sat down on a boulder at the summit.

The sky darkened.

The sect was bright with lanterns in the distance, and now and then I could hear the noise of it. Zhao Ling would be celebrating his installation as chief disciple.

I closed my eyes and began to work through the set of Sword Art my father had left me.

Zhao Ling had ruined the Sword Manual, but I had long since cut its contents into my memory.

Entered the sect at twelve. Foundation Establishment at fifteen. At eighteen, the peak of Foundation Establishment, called a genius the likes of which Tianxuan Sect had not seen in a hundred years.

My Master took me as chief disciple himself and promised Liu Wan’er to me.

Zhao Ling had only just joined the sect back then, still at Qi Refining, without even a decent sword of his own. It was I who gave him my old blade.

At twenty I touched a thread of immortal Qi and decided to enter seclusion and make the attempt.

My Master said, “Go. When you come out, Tianxuan Sect will be proud of you.”

Seven years.

What I went through inside that Cave Residence, nobody knows.

Crossing an Immortal Tribulation is not a matter of one bolt or two. The Lightning Tribulation of the Half-Step Immortal Realm ran three years straight.

Three years of being struck by lightning.

Every bolt rebuilt my body. Broken bone, snapped Meridians, a Dantian blown open, regrown, broken again, regrown again.

The four years left went to rebuilding the whole system of my Cultivation Base.

From Foundation Establishment straight over Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Spirit Severing, Body Integration, and Great Ascension, one step into the Half-Step Immortal Realm.

Nobody had ever heard of a Breakthrough made that way.

So there is no Golden Core pressure about me, no Nascent Soul Divine Sense reaching outward. None of it.

Because I skipped those stages.

Under anyone’s probing, my Cultivation Base reads as Foundation Establishment.

Unless I let the pressure out myself.

And when that happens, they will learn what it means for the sky to fall and the earth to split.

A beast roar came from deep in the back mountain, and the ground shook.

The ancient Fierce Beast’s remnant soul had felt my presence and turned restless.

I opened my eyes and let out one thread of pressure.

One thread. Nothing more.

The roar stopped short.

The whole back mountain went so quiet you could hear a leaf drop.

I closed my eyes again.

What is coming will come.

Chapter Six

The next day before dawn, the sect’s alarm bell began to ring.

It was the emergency bell, the kind that had not been rung in a hundred years.

By the time I came down off the back mountain, the whole sect had been tipped into chaos.

Disciples ran for the square with their robes thrown on. The Elders rode Flying Swords toward the front mountain.

A huge black Flood Dragon was coiled in front of the sect gates. Black all over, dark red markings running along its scales, its two slit pupils fixed on the Mountain Gate of Tianxuan Sect.

A Spirit Severing Demonic Beast.

In the cultivation world, a beast at that level is enough to erase a second-rate sect.

The strongest Cultivation Base in Tianxuan Sect belongs to True Lord Taixuan, the Sect Lord, who is at Body Integration.

But True Lord Taixuan left three years ago to wander, and has not come back.

What is left at the top is several Nascent Soul Elders.

Against a Spirit Severing Demonic Beast, that is barely something.

“All Golden Core disciples, set up a formation!” True Lord Xuanqing stood on high directing them, his face iron-grey.

Zhao Ling rushed in at the front with his sword out, his Golden Core Spiritual Energy wide open, leading more than ten Golden Core disciples into the Tianxuan Sword Formation.

The Flood Dragon looked at them. Its tail swept once.

The formation broke.

More than ten Golden Core disciples were flung away, blood at their lips, three of them out cold on the spot.

Zhao Ling crashed to the ground and rolled several times, his face all blood.

“Nascent Soul Elders, strike!” True Lord Xuanqing shouted.

Three Nascent Soul Elders joined hands and loosed every art they had.

The Flood Dragon raised its head and roared. The sound wave shattered every one of the arts, and the three Elders reeled back dozens of zhang, their faces bloodless.

“We cannot hold it!” Elder Sun cried out. “A Spirit Severing beast. We are no match at Nascent Soul!”

The Flood Dragon’s slit pupils swept the crowd and locked onto the disciples in the square.

It opened its mouth, and a knot of dark red energy gathered inside.

If that blow landed, half the people in the square would die.

“Protect the disciples!” True Lord Xuanqing burned his Spiritual Energy and planted himself in front.

He was at the Late Stage of Nascent Soul. He could take one blow, and after taking it he would be finished himself.

I stood at the very back of the crowd and watched all of it.

Liu Wan’er crouched beside Zhao Ling, shaking all over.

Zhao Ling could not get up. Several ribs were broken, his Golden Core Spiritual Energy in chaos.

The Senior Brother who had been so imposing a moment ago could not even stand steady now.

Shen Youwei had run to my side at some point and was clutching my sleeve.

“Senior Brother, what do we do?”

“Get behind me.”

The Flood Dragon’s dark red ball of energy took shape and came hammering down at the square.

True Lord Xuanqing set his teeth and took it head on.

Boom.

In the crash, True Lord Xuanqing spat a mouthful of blood, and his whole body was thrown backward on the shockwave.

His protective light shattered. His robes were stripped off him.

The leavings of the blast pressed on into the square.

Three thousand disciples, and nobody could stop it.

I raised a hand.

One finger.

I flicked my forefinger.

A thread of clear sword qi shot from my fingertip, silent, and cut into the middle of the dark red mass.

The ball split down the centre into two halves that shot off past either side of the square, struck the mountain wall in the distance, and blew out two craters a hundred zhang wide.

Dead silence across the whole square.

Nobody had seen me move.

It had been too fast.

Chapter Seven

The Flood Dragon had clearly felt the threat.

Its slit pupils swept back and forth across the crowd, hunting for where that sword qi had come from.

It found nothing.

Because I had drawn every scrap of my presence in.

As far as it could feel, there was nothing in the square but a swarm of ants.

The Flood Dragon flew into a rage, opened its mouth again, and a second ball of energy gathered.

Twice the size of the first.

The Elders were all wounded, the Golden Core disciples were down in heaps, and nobody left could block another blow.

“It is over…” Elder Sun sat down in the dirt.

True Lord Xuanqing was braced on one knee, blood at the corners of his mouth, despair in his eyes.

The Flood Dragon’s ball swelled full and was about to come loose.

“That is enough.”

I walked out of the crowd.

The voice was not loud, but every person there heard it.

Every eye turned on me.

Zhao Ling lay on the ground and shouted through a broken voice. “Su Chen, have you gone mad! Get back! You are at Foundation Establishment. Going out there is throwing your life away!”

Liu Wan’er clapped a hand over her mouth.

A few disciples started to pull me back, then drew their hands halfway back again. They were afraid I would drag them down with me.

I walked to the middle of the square and faced the Flood Dragon.

Its slit pupils fixed on me, and the ball of energy turned my way.

I raised my right hand.

Spiritual Energy poured out of my Dantian and ran the length of every Meridian, and the Meridians tempered by immortal lightning gave off a thin hum.

I did not release my pressure.

I only closed my hand once.

The Flood Dragon stopped short.

Its slit pupils contracted hard, and the ball in its mouth began to waver, the dark red light fluttering bright and dim.

It was afraid.

A Spirit Severing Demonic Beast, afraid of a Foundation Establishment human.

Because the animal instinct in it had told it plainly that the thing standing in front of it was not prey.

It was the natural enemy.

“Go.”

I let out one word.

There was pressure wrapped in the word. One thread of it. One thread of the Half-Step Immortal Realm.

The Flood Dragon’s ball burst and scattered. Its great body heaved backward, scales cracking like fire, its slit pupils full of fear.

“Did you not understand?”

I took one step forward.

The Flood Dragon turned and ran.

A Spirit Severing Demonic Beast turned and ran.

Its huge body snapped off two mountain peaks getting away, moving ten times faster going than it had coming, and vanished into the sky in the space of a breath.

The square was utterly silent.

Three thousand disciples, five Elders, every one of them frozen where they stood.

What had they just watched?

A Foundation Establishment disciple standing in front of a Spirit Severing beast and saying one word, go, and the beast ran?

Nobody could make sense of it.

Shen Youwei had her hand over her mouth and was shaking, but what was in her eyes was not fear. It was excitement.

Zhao Ling’s mouth hung open. He could not get a word out.

Liu Wan’er stared straight at my back, her fingers knotted in the skirt of her dress.

True Lord Xuanqing got slowly to his feet and wiped the blood from his mouth with his sleeve.

“Su Chen… what exactly…”

“I told you. The Peak Stage of Golden Core cannot stir purple Heavenly Lightning.”

I did not turn around.

“Yesterday’s bolt was not Zhao Ling’s. It was mine.”

Chapter Eight

I had thought this would sober them up a little.

I was wrong.

Less than half a shichen after the Flood Dragon withdrew, Zhao Ling began to patch his story over.

“That Flood Dragon was already in decline. The Spiritual Energy in it was unstable and about to collapse on its own. Su Chen simply got lucky and happened to be standing there when it frightened itself off.”

He lay in the Alchemy Hall healing, a ring of disciples around him, and he told it well.

“Think about it. How could one man at Foundation Establishment scare off a Spirit Severing Demonic Beast? It is absurd.”

“Right, right, Senior Brother Zhao has the truth of it.”

“It must have been the Elders’ attacks before that did the work. They wounded its foundations.”

“Su Chen just picked up what was lying there.”

A human mouth can twist any fact it likes.

I stood outside the Alchemy Hall and heard the whole conversation.

Liu Wan’er was in there too, feeding Zhao Ling medicinal pills.

“Ling, stop talking. Just rest and heal.”

“Wan’er, did you see it? That waste actually tried to show off. Do not worry. Once I am well, at the sect’s Grand Tournament I will crush him in front of everyone and show them all who the first man of Tianxuan Sect is.”

Liu Wan’er pressed her lips together and smiled.

I turned and left.

A dozen steps on, hurried footsteps came from behind me.

“Su Chen.”

It was Elder Zhou, the one from the Library Pavilion.

He was the oldest of the five Elders, and the quietest.

“Come with me.”

He took me to the courtyard behind the Library Pavilion, and only after he had checked that no one was about did he speak.

“Your Cultivation Base is not Foundation Establishment.”

It was not a question.

“Good eyes, Elder Zhou.”

“I have read it in the old books. Purple Heavenly Lightning only appears when someone crosses an Immortal Tribulation. You spent seven years in seclusion. What you crossed was an Immortal Tribulation.”

I said nothing.

“What Realm are you at now?”

“Half-Step Immortal.”

Elder Zhou’s hand shook.

He has lived more than four hundred years, a Nascent Soul cultivator, and he has seen geniuses beyond counting.

But the Half-Step Immortal Realm existed for him only as four characters in an old book.

“A half-step immortal at twenty-seven… in eight hundred years… no, in ten thousand years of the cultivation world…”

He drew a deep breath and pushed the feeling down.

“Why did you not say it?”

“And they would have believed me?”

Elder Zhou was quiet.

“Xuanqing cannot see your Cultivation Base?”

“Cultivation Base at the Half-Step Immortal Realm reads as Foundation Establishment to a low-level cultivator’s probing. It is what happens to the Meridians after an Immortal Tribulation remakes them. The books record it.”

“I know. That is why I have suspected all along.” Elder Zhou nodded. “But the others…”

“The others only see what they want to see.”

“What do you mean to do?”

“The sect’s Grand Tournament is in three days, is it not?”

Elder Zhou blinked.

I smiled.

“Zhao Ling says he will crush me at the Grand Tournament. I intend to let him.”

Chapter Nine

The sect’s Grand Tournament comes once every three years. Every disciple enters, grouped by Cultivation Base.

Foundation Establishment group, Golden Core group, Nascent Soul group.

By Cultivation Base, I was placed in the Foundation Establishment group.

When the news got out, the whole sect exploded.

“Su Chen still has the face to enter the Grand Tournament?”

“Foundation Establishment group? Hahahaha, a twenty-seven-year-old relic still at Foundation Establishment, fighting a pack of kids in their early teens?”

“Does he have no shame at all?”

The disciple at the sign-up table looked at my name and laughed until he could not straighten up.

On the day of the tournament, three arenas went up in the square.

The Foundation Establishment arena was the smallest and drew the least attention.

Everyone was watching the Golden Core group, where Zhao Ling was the favourite.

I stood in the Foundation Establishment staging area ringed by little disciples of fourteen and fifteen, all of them looking at me with open curiosity.

“So you are Senior Brother Su Chen? The one who spent seven years in seclusion?”

“Yes.”

“You… you really are still Foundation Establishment?”

“What do you think?”

The little disciple scratched his head and ran off.

Thirty-two in the Foundation Establishment group, five rounds of elimination.

In the first round, my opponent was a thirteen-year-old girl at the Early Stage of Foundation Establishment.

She was so nervous the hand on her sword was shaking.

“Senior Brother Su… can I concede?”

“Why?”

“I cannot beat you. You are at the peak of Foundation Establishment and I am barely at the Early Stage…”

“Then come up and try, Miss.”

She screwed up her courage and thrust at me with her sword.

I stepped aside, and set a hand lightly on her shoulder.

“There is a gap in your form. Your left shoulder drops too low when you strike. Fix that and you will be better for it.”

The girl froze.

“So did I win or lose?”

“You won.”

I walked down off the arena.

The whole square went wild.

“Su Chen gave up! He cannot even beat a little girl at the Early Stage of Foundation Establishment!”

“Hahahahaha! A waste among wastes!”

The laughter shook the sky.

Over in the Golden Core group, Zhao Ling had just finished a bout. He was wiping blood off his sword and looking this way.

“Su Chen, how does it feel? Do you want me to give you a few pointers?”

His voice carried across the whole square and drew even louder laughter.

Liu Wan’er stood in the stands, shook her head, and turned her face away from me.

Shen Youwei was stamping her foot in a corner.

“Senior Brother, why would you not fight? You clearly—”

“Wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For the Golden Core matches to end.”

Shen Youwei did not understand.

She understood soon enough.

In the Golden Core final, Zhao Ling faced a disciple named Fang Jin, Late Stage Golden Core.

Zhao Ling won, but it was a hard win, and he came away with several open cuts.

He stood in the middle of the arena with his sword raised, taking the cheers of the whole square.

“Zhao Ling! Zhao Ling! Zhao Ling!”

True Lord Xuanqing stood on the high platform, his face full of pride.

“Zhao Ling, first place in the Golden Core group. Rewarded three Rank-Six Medicinal Pills and one thousand Spirit Stones!”

Zhao Ling went down on one knee and saluted with his fists.

Then he got up and looked at me.

“Su Chen, did you not come to take part in the Grand Tournament? Come on then. Up here. You dare not fight your own group, so fight me.”

The square went quiet for one second, and then boiled over.

“Senior Brother Zhao is going to fight Su Chen? Golden Core against Foundation Establishment?”

“Is that not just bullying?”

“Who asked him to go looking for death?”

Zhao Ling’s intent was plain. He wanted to crush me in front of everyone and grind me into the ground for good.

I smiled.

And walked up onto the arena.

Chapter Ten

On the arena, Zhao Ling stood facing me with his sword in hand, his Golden Core Spiritual Energy wide open and his pressure covering the sky.

“Su Chen, I will give you one chance. Kneel, call me Senior Brother once in front of the whole sect, and I will let you walk away unhurt.”

The square went still.

Three thousand pairs of eyes on me.

I stood opposite him, both hands empty, no sword.

“You will not kneel?” Zhao Ling sneered. “Then do not blame me.”

He moved.

Golden Core at full force. His long sword wrapped in Spiritual Energy, the blade light blinding, aimed straight at my chest.

Very fast.

For Foundation Establishment.

In my eyes the thrust was slow.

The point came to within three inches of my chest.

I put out two fingers and caught the blade between them.

Every sound in the square died.

Zhao Ling’s eyes nearly fell out of his head.

He drove his Golden Core Spiritual Energy as hard as he could, trying to wrench the sword free.

It did not move a hair.

“You—”

I let go.

He staggered two steps back, caught his balance, and his face went dark red.

“A hidden weapon? You used a hidden weapon!”

“I caught your sword between two fingers. You call that a hidden weapon?”

“Impossible! Nobody at Foundation Establishment can do that!”

He charged again, and this time it was everything he had, Golden Core Spiritual Energy poured into the blade, and out came Tianxuan Sect’s signature sword art, the Seven Styles of Tianxuan.

The first style, Breaking Wind.

I leaned aside.

The second style, Sundering Earth.

I gave half a step back.

The third style, Shattering Peak.

I raised a hand and flicked it away.

The fourth style, Burning Sky.

The fifth style, Drowning Sea.

The sixth style, Rending Void.

Six moves in, Zhao Ling was gasping hard, soaked in sweat, his Spiritual Energy more than half spent.

And I had not even ruffled the hem of my robe.

“What about the seventh style?” I asked.

Zhao Ling ground his teeth to powder.

He had never learned the seventh move of the Seven Styles of Tianxuan. That was his greatest secret.

And I had said it out loud, in front of everyone.

“You—”

“I had this set down pat at sixteen, all seven styles. Would you like to see what the seventh looks like?”

I raised my hand.

One finger drawn across empty air.

A thread of sword qi appeared out of nothing, ten times stronger than Zhao Ling’s six styles put together.

The seventh move of the Seven Styles of Tianxuan. Godslayer.

The qi swept the arena flat. Zhao Ling’s protective light shattered in an instant.

The blow carried his whole body off the arena and slammed him into the stone of the square, denting it into a man-shaped pit.

He tried to get up, pushed twice, his arm gave, and he fell back down.

His Golden Core had broken.

No. Not broken. I had held the force back. It was only cracked.

A year or so of rest would mend it, but for that year or so he would be below even Foundation Establishment.

The square was dead silent.

True Lord Xuanqing stood rigid on the high platform.

All five Elders had come to their feet.

Not one of the three thousand disciples spoke.

Liu Wan’er ran to Zhao Ling, lifted his blood-covered face, and then looked back at me with nothing but terror in it.

I stood on the arena and drew my fingers back.

“Zhao Ling, I did not use my full strength. That strike was perhaps one part in ten thousand of my Cultivation Base. Do you want to go on?”

Blood and foam came out of Zhao Ling’s mouth. He could not get a word out.

“Su Chen!” True Lord Xuanqing flew down onto the arena and put himself between us. “What Cultivation Base is yours? What is it?”

I looked at him. The man who had taught me to cultivate, promised me a future, and then trampled me into the mud with his own hand.

“Does Master want to see?”

“Say it!”

I stopped hiding.

I let the pressure out.

The pressure of the Half-Step Immortal Realm poured out of me, and the whole Mountain Gate of Tianxuan Sect trembled with it.

The sky changed colour. Black clouds boiled up. Purple lightning flashed through them, exactly like yesterday’s Heavenly Lightning.

The ground split open. Stone after stone in the square cracked apart, and every protective light there swayed on the edge of collapse.

The Nascent Soul Elders went weak in the legs.

The Golden Core disciples dropped to their knees outright.

The Foundation Establishment disciples lay flat and could not get up.

Only True Lord Xuanqing was still standing, and there was not a drop of colour in his face.

“This… this is…”

“Half-Step Immortal Realm.”

Elder Zhou’s voice came out of the crowd, aged and shaking, but every word distinct.

“Half-Step Immortal Realm! In eight hundred years of Tianxuan Sect, no one has ever reached that Realm! That bolt of purple Heavenly Lightning was not called down by Zhao Ling. It was drawn by Su Chen crossing an Immortal Tribulation!”

The square was struck dumb.

Chapter Eleven

I drew my pressure back in.

The sky went back to normal. The ground stopped shaking.

What had started to shake was something in people.

True Lord Xuanqing stood on the arena, his lips moving for a long moment before he forced a sentence out.

“Su Chen… you… seven years ago you were already…”

“Seven years ago I touched a thread of immortal Qi, went into seclusion, and crossed Tribulation Transcendence. Eighty-one bolts of Heavenly Lightning, and I stood under them three years.”

“Three years…”

“The four years left went to remaking my Meridians, and to the Breakthrough into the Half-Step Immortal Realm.”

His legs were shaking.

Not from pressure. From fear. Not fear of me. Fear of what he had done.

He had driven out a half-step immortal with his own hand.

He had pushed the only seed of an immortal Tianxuan Sect had produced in eight hundred years out of its own gates.

“Master… no, Su Chen,” he had actually changed how he named me, “there must be some mistake here, I did not know that you…”

“You did not know?”

I cut him off.

“Seven years ago I entered seclusion, and you said Tianxuan Sect would be proud of me when I came out. Seven years later I came out, and you tore up my betrothal, took my seat as chief disciple, and called me a waste in front of everyone.”

“I—”

“My Cave Residence was stripped empty. The Sword Manual my father left was used to wipe shoes and thrown away. My Pill Cauldron was ruined in refining. My books went under table legs. Did you know any of it?”

True Lord Xuanqing whirled on Zhao Ling.

Zhao Ling lay in the pit, face pressed into the broken stone, and did not dare look up.

“Zhao Ling!” True Lord Xuanqing roared. “The Sword Manual. Is it true?!”

Zhao Ling said nothing.

Liu Wan’er knelt beside him, shaking all over.

“Su Chen,” True Lord Xuanqing turned back and was about to bow, “the fault is your Master’s—”

“No.”

I stepped back and stepped around the courtesy.

“Master’s knees are too precious. You did not kneel seven years ago, and you need not kneel today.”

He stood frozen.

Below the platform, three thousand disciples were kneeling in rows.

I had not made them. A Cultivation Base at the Half-Step Immortal Realm simply deserves a knee.

In the cultivation world, Realm is the highest law there is.

Half-step immortal is already the extreme of the Mortal World.

“Su Chen, what do you want?” Elder Sun asked, his voice shaking. “The seat of Sect Lord? The chief disciple’s place? Name any condition and we will talk.”

“I want nothing.”

“Then what is it you want?”

“I only want my father’s Sword Manual back.”

The place went quiet.

A cultivator at the Half-Step Immortal Realm who did not want the seat of Sect Lord, did not want Spirit Stones or medicinal pills, only wanted a Sword Manual someone had wiped his shoes with and thrown out.

Zhao Ling raised his head at last, his face caked with blood and dirt.

“The Sword Manual… I threw it on the rubbish heap on the back mountain…”

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, a white light came flying from the direction of the back mountain and settled into my hand.

It was the rubbing of my father’s Sword Manual, creased all over, one corner torn away, the print of a shoe sole still on it.

I folded it and put it inside my robe.

“There is one more thing.”

I turned my eyes to Liu Wan’er.

Chapter Twelve

Liu Wan’er knelt beside Zhao Ling, shaking all over.

She felt my eyes on her and jerked her head up.

“Su Chen, I—”

“The Unity Jade Pendant.”

“What?”

“The one you wore at your throat. It was my gift before I entered seclusion. Give it back.”

Her hand went to her throat without thinking.

The pendant was no longer there. She had taken it off seven years ago and given it to Zhao Ling, who wore it at his waist as an ornament.

“Su Chen, let me explain.” She crawled two steps forward on her knees. “I thought something had gone wrong in your seclusion. Seven years without a word. I thought you were dead—”

“You thought I was dead, so you turned around and took up with my Junior Brother?”

“I…”

“Zhao Ling put a sealing strip on my Cave Residence door two years ago. You two were already together then, were you not?”

Liu Wan’er’s face went white.

“By the third year of your seclusion, Zhao Ling had made his Breakthrough into Golden Core and Master had begun to favour him. Everyone said you would not come back. They said you had fallen to Qi Deviation in your Cave Residence and died there.”

“And so?”

“I was alone in the sect with no one to lean on… Zhao Ling was good to me, he looked after me—”

“Looking after me meant stripping every one of my things out of my rooms, wiping his shoes on my father’s Sword Manual, and then parading around wearing the pendant I gave you.”

“I did not know about the Sword Manual!”

“You did not know? My Pill Cauldron sat in Zhao Ling’s residence, my books, everything I had. You did not know?”

Liu Wan’er opened her mouth and could not get anything out.

She did know.

She knew about every piece of it.

She did not care.

As she saw it, a Foundation Establishment betrothed who had vanished into seven years of seclusion, alive or dead, was worth less than a live Golden Core lover in front of her.

“Su Chen.” She grabbed the hem of my robe suddenly. “I was wrong. I know how wrong I was. You are Half-Step Immortal Realm now, you are the strongest man in Tianxuan Sect, I—”

“You want to come back?”

She raised her head, her eyes blurred with tears.

“You think I would still want you?”

Her hand froze.

“Seven years ago you said we would marry the moment I came out. Seven years later you were hanging on another man’s arm and smiling radiantly. Liu Wan’er, it is not that I do not want you. From the moment you took that pendant off, you stopped deserving it.”

I bent and pulled the Unity Jade Pendant off Zhao Ling’s waist.

There was a crack in it.

A fresh one.

I closed my hand around the pendant, drew in Spiritual Energy, and the jade turned to powder that ran out between my fingers.

Liu Wan’er sat down in the dirt and wept aloud.

Zhao Ling dragged himself up, got a shoulder under hers, and spoke through a ruined voice.

“Su Chen, she was with you for three years at least—”

“Shut your mouth.”

I did not look at him.

“You cannot even protect yourself, and you still have the face to speak for someone else? Go and nurse your Golden Core. A cracked Golden Core hurts badly when it mends.”

The words stopped Zhao Ling cold and turned his face grey.

I turned and walked down off the arena.

Three thousand disciples opened a path without being told.

The same look was written on every face there. Regret.

But regret, in my experience, has never been worth much.

Chapter Thirteen

The Grand Tournament ended without an ending.

Early the next morning, True Lord Xuanqing came to my Cave Residence door with all five Elders behind him.

Not a summons. A visit.

The five Nascent Soul Elders stood at the back, True Lord Xuanqing at the front with a brocade box in both hands.

“Su Chen. Open the door.”

I opened it.

True Lord Xuanqing held the box out to me.

“This is the Sect Lord Token of Tianxuan Sect. Before True Lord Taixuan left the sect three years ago he left written instructions: if a cultivator above Spirit Severing appears within the sect, he may take the seat of Sect Lord directly. You are at the Half-Step Immortal Realm, far past Spirit Severing. The seat is yours.”

I did not take it.

“Su Chen.” Elder Sun came forward a step. “The sect needs you. With no Sect Lord on the seat, Tianxuan Sect’s standing in the cultivation world has fallen through the floor. That Flood Dragon two days ago proved it. If you had not acted, the entire sect would have been finished.”

“Whether the sect finishes or not is nothing to me.”

Several Elders changed colour.

“You are a disciple of Tianxuan Sect—”

“Yesterday you were sending me to the Outer Sect’s menial quarters.”

Silence.

Elder Qian coughed. “Su Chen. We were blind before—”

“Elder Qian, you sit in the Discipline Hall. Zhao Ling took my Cave Residence, destroyed my property, claimed credit for my Heavenly Lightning. Did you ever look into any of it?”

Elder Qian lowered his head.

“Elder Chen, you sit in the Sword Hall. Zhao Ling learned the Seven Styles of Tianxuan by stealing from my books. Did you know that?”

Elder Chen’s face darkened to the colour of liver.

“Elder Sun, you sit in the Alchemy Hall. Zhao Ling refined his own pills in my Pill Cauldron and kept them. How many medicinal pills? Did you ever ask?”

Elder Sun opened his mouth and could not bring out one word.

I looked at them one by one.

“Five of you, and with my Master, six Nascent Soul cultivators, all of you turned in circles by one Golden Core brat. He said the Heavenly Lightning was his and you believed it. He said I was a waste and you believed it. He said he was a genius and you believed that too.”

“This is not blindness.”

“This is stupid and rotten.”

Six men stood at my Cave Residence door and not one of them dared answer me.

Because every word I had said was fact.

True Lord Xuanqing drew a slow breath and suddenly went down on one knee.

“Su Chen. Your Master has wronged you.”

I looked down at his greying hair and thought of the day I came to Take a Master, at twelve.

He had stood before the Mountain Gate that day, smiling, and put a hand on my head, and said, “From this day forward you are my chief disciple.”

Fifteen years had gone by.

“Get up, Master.”

“Not until you forgive me.”

“Whether I forgive you has nothing to do with whether you kneel.”

I stepped around him and walked out of the residence.

“I do not want the Sect Lord’s seat. Whoever wants it can have it. But Zhao Ling does not deserve it.”

“Then what do you—”

“I am leaving Tianxuan Sect.”

Chapter Fourteen

When word got out, the whole of Tianxuan Sect blew up.

A cultivator at the Half-Step Immortal Realm was leaving?

That was a sect pulling out the needle that stills its own sea.

The disciples petitioned me by joint letter, Inner Sect and Outer Sect together, three thousand signatures.

The Elders came in turn to argue with me.

Even Zhao Ling sent word through someone: as long as Su Chen stays, he can have my place as chief disciple.

I ignored all of it.

On the third day, something nobody had foreseen happened.

A golden seam split open in the sky, and out of it walked an old man in white robes. He trod the void and came down in one step into the square of Tianxuan Sect.

Everyone froze.

The pressure on that old man was denser than anything I had ever let out at full force. Here was a true Immortal Realm cultivator.

“Taishang Immortal Sect. Elder Xuanyuan. By order of our Sect Lord, I have come seeking the one who crossed Tribulation Transcendence under purple lightning.”

The old man in white looked around the square, passed his eyes over every face there, and let them come to rest on me.

He walked up to me and looked me over from head to foot.

And then he smiled.

“A Half-Step Immortal Realm at twenty-seven. Good. Very good indeed.”

“Does the Senior know me?”

“Three days ago, every corner of the cultivation world felt that bolt of purple Heavenly Lightning. The light of a half-step Immortal Tribulation comes once in ten thousand years. The Sect Lord of Taishang Immortal Sect calculated it himself and fixed its location on Tianxuan Sect.”

He drew a golden jade token out of his sleeve.

“Taishang Immortal Sect wishes to take you as a core disciple, straight into the Sect Lord’s own line. This token is an Entry Token refined by the Sect Lord’s own hand. In the whole cultivation world, three have been issued.”

The entire square drew a sharp breath.

Taishang Immortal Sect.

That is the foremost sect of the cultivation world, said to hold more than one true Immortal Realm power.

Tianxuan Sect beside it is not fit to clean its shoes.

And for the Sect Lord of Taishang Immortal Sect to issue an Entry Token himself, what did that mean?

It meant that I, Su Chen, stood in the cultivation world far above the Sect Lord of Tianxuan Sect.

Far above everyone standing here.

Far above any height they could touch in this life.

There was not a trace of colour left in True Lord Xuanqing’s face.

The five Elders looked at one another, and what lay in their eyes was belated terror.

Zhao Ling came running out of the Alchemy Hall, saw this, went weak in the legs, and sat down on the ground.

Liu Wan’er stood in the crowd, her lips trembling, unable to say a word.

“Senior Xuanyuan,” I said, taking the golden token. “I will go.”

“Good! Then come with me.”

“Wait.”

I turned around and looked one last time at the Mountain Gate of Tianxuan Sect.

Fifteen years ago, a twelve-year-old boy knelt before that Mountain Gate, knocked his head three times, and came to Join the Sect.

He was full of expectation. He thought this was where he belonged.

Seven years in seclusion, across an Immortal Tribulation, and on coming out he was taken for a waste.

His betrothal broken, his seat stripped, mocked, driven out.

That was Tianxuan Sect’s answer to him.

“Su Chen.” True Lord Xuanqing’s voice came from behind me, hoarse and thin. “Will you ever come back?”

I did not turn my head.

Chapter Fifteen

I followed Elder Xuanyuan up onto the void, and my body rose slowly with him.

Tianxuan Sect shrank away beneath my feet, and the faces of the three thousand disciples in the square blurred into nothing.

Shen Youwei ran out to the middle of the square and waved up at me.

“Senior Brother! You promised to teach me swordplay!”

I looked down at her.

This little girl in the Qi Refining stage, and out of three thousand people in all of Tianxuan Sect, she was the only one who brought me two steamed buns and a dish of pickles the day I came out of seclusion.

The only one who believed that purple Heavenly Lightning was not Zhao Ling’s.

The only one who never once looked down on me, from beginning to end.

I reached out and pointed a finger downward.

A gentle thread of Spiritual Energy shot from my fingertip and landed between Shen Youwei’s brows.

Golden light wrapped around her entire body, and the Spiritual Energy inside her began to race, wild and uncontrollable: Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core…

Three realms broken through in a single instant.

Golden Core.

Golden Core at fifteen.

In Tianxuan Sect, that would already make her a genius of the highest order.

The whole square erupted.

Shen Youwei felt her own Dantian and stood there stunned.

My voice came down from high above, clear and direct into her ears.

“Cultivate well. In three years, come find me at Taishang Immortal Sect.”

Then I looked at True Lord Xuanqing.

He stood on the high platform, hair blown into disarray by the wind, his face weathered and old.

I hesitated for a moment.

In the end, I spoke.

“Master.”

His whole body shook.

“You had eyes and could not see, you listened to one side and believed it, and you wronged me for seven years. But in the year I was twelve you took me in and taught me to cultivate, you let me Join the Sect, and gave me a meal to eat. That debt I acknowledge.”

“If Tianxuan Sect ever meets trouble, send word to Taishang Immortal Sect. For the sake of fifteen years as Master and disciple, I will come.”

True Lord Xuanqing’s lips trembled for a long time.

In the end he said nothing at all. He only lifted his sleeve and wiped his face.

I drew my gaze back and gave Zhao Ling and Liu Wan’er one last look.

Zhao Ling sat on the ground, a wreck from head to foot, and on the face that had once been so pleased with itself there was nothing left but ash.

The chief disciple’s seat he had schemed for, the betrothed he had schemed for, the Cave Residence and the Pill Cauldron and the books he had schemed for, all of it had become a joke.

Because the man he had robbed was something he would spend the rest of his life looking up at and never reach.

Liu Wan’er stood beside him, her face wet with tears.

Perhaps she was regretting it.

But regret, as I said, is worth nothing.

“Let’s go.”

Elder Xuanyuan stroked his beard and smiled, then waved his sleeve and tore the void open.

A golden rift unfolded across the sky, and at its far end stood an immortal mountain floating above a sea of clouds, its spiritual Qi so thick it had condensed into mist and was flowing.

Taishang Immortal Sect.

I stepped through the rift.

Behind me, the three thousand disciples of Tianxuan Sect all knelt at once.

They did not kneel because they were afraid.

They knelt because they finally understood what they had thrown away.

In the last moment before the void closed, I heard a sigh come riding on the wind.

I do not know whose it was.

But I no longer needed to look back.

The Heavenly Lightning woke me.

And it cut away every road behind me.

Ahead lies the immortal path.

Behind lies only dust.

(The End)