Heaven's Laws - Lifestone - Chapter 50

Sleep came easy enough, but the little peace Chao had found while awake was quickly banished. He envisioned a monster led by nothing but rage. The Ice Phoenix Palace was engulfed in an inferno while the joint campus was split in two down the middle. Using the same irony, he’d flooded the Fire Phoenix Palace and frozen it in a giant cube of ice. As if froze, the walls cracked and in some places collapsed. That was only the beginning.

He'd tested his space vortex technique above the Golden Palace. Both people and structures were devoured. As the vortex was deconstructed, what had been sucked upward now fell to the earth. He later found the bodies of Prince Koshing and Empress Yan Ya. Somehow, she’d kept ahold of her son even in death.

For his last act of destruction, he returned to his family’s cabin. He couldn’t decide how to destroy it, so he awakened multiple elements and had them race to see who could destroy the most. Even as they did as he desired, they wailed in protest. They didn’t want to do his will but had no choice to obey. The last thing he came to was his mother’s garden. The stumps he burned. The herbs he stomped into the dirt.

The images of his destructive rampage arrayed themselves before him so that it didn’t matter where he looked. They screamed out for justice—vengeance—but his heart had already been thoroughly hardened. When they couldn’t break him, they dissolved in the wind. All that was left was a glass coffin. Huifen laid there resting. Never to awaken again.

He sat up from his nightmare. Huifen was before him in the next instant. Her hands were on the back of neck and forehead, cooling him with ice qi.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Mmm.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“The first hour seemed peaceful, but the second…”

“I see. If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to spend some time on the laws.” He stopped her when she was about to object. “I intend to use this time to forget how I feel. Last time, I did just the opposite.”

“Okay. I’ll be right here if you need me. And nothing dangerous.”

“I promise.”

He decided to focus on something he’d put little effort into recently. Technically, he could awaken his nature laws, but he’d stayed away from them mostly to give Huifen room to explore them on her own. He mostly did this so that she wasn’t constantly comparing herself to him. Especially since he cultivated heaven and earth qi while she cultivated ice.

Her heavy yin elemental focus gave her some advantages. Her ice, water, and yin plants would require less qi from her than it would from him for the same level of output. On the other hand, there were also disadvantages. It greatly limited what she could do with neutral or yang heavy plants.

He didn’t just want to keep her from discouragement. If he tinkered with nature too much, she’d start to pick up on how he was doing things, which could actually lead her in the wrong direction. They reason he decided to return to tinkering with them was because she was already becoming proficient with enhancing her own version of yang heavy plants. He knew she’d be watching him carefully anyway, and the comparison between their two techniques might be of help to her now.

His favorite vegetation to create were trees. To his younger self, they’d seemed the strongest variety there was. Who could blame him? He’d grown up in the Redwood Aurora. They were what he was the most familiar with. He’d also experimented with mushrooms, flowers, and countless herbs commonly in his mother’s garden. He wished he’d spent more time with vines. He didn’t like things with thorns, so he rarely messed with them when he was younger. They would’ve made creating martial techniques much easier. They were what Sage Ping had used and most of the nature cultivators he’d faced in the Training Construct.

Instead, he turned his attention to his favorite yin heavy plant. The water lily. Lotus’s more closely reminded him of his wife, but it could technically be a yin or yang flower depending on the environment from which it was grown. The water lily had stricter limitations. It was also the flower he’d introduced his wife to when she’d begun cultivating the nature laws. It had a heavy yin nature which gave her a closer connection to it.

His technique to create one was almost identical to Huifen’s. The only difference was the type of qi he used. It grew rapidly above his palm. He decided to create a fuller root system even though it wasn’t necessary. He held it delicately with his qi since it wasn’t growing in water, and it started to bud. Its flower opened a moment later. This one was blue even though he could’ve have made it one of a variety of colors. There was a reason for that.

In his other hand, he created a red azalea similar to the one she’d been practicing with. He thought to awaken both of them, but neither was he familiar enough with. He held them in place so she could observe his qi.

With both of them reaching full maturity, he created something between them above his lap that he had far more practice with. A miniature redwood appeared without having to go through the growing process. It was half the size of both flowers. It was also the same thing he’d made his original nature figurine out of. He only gave it two branches beside the main trunk from which several small branches grew and budded to give it a leafy head of hair. Then he shaped its face and awakened it.

It looked from lily to azalea before crossing its arm branches. Spinning so that Huifen could see it, it threw its arms out as if it should’ve expected as much. It then faced the lily first and started to move one arm like it was lecturing it. Instead of a little voice, the only sound was a wrestling of leaves.

***

In those early morning hours, Huifen wasn’t surprised to see her husband trying to reassure her with humor that he was alright. She hadn’t forgotten the sounds he’d been making during his sleep. It wasn’t anger or sorrow he was expressing, but malevolence and cruelty. In the next moment, he’d groan in disgust. She’d been surprised by how animated he’d been. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen from him.

After he awoke, things got better. There were no signs of the anger that had led him to nearly kill himself while cultivating. As they day went on, they became busy. They listened in on every report Mother Sya received from their side room. When there was any free time, they’d discuss things with her. It was a mostly uneventful day. Some of their fairies were being harassed by overly eager suiters, while a few of their own Fire Phoenix disciples bullied a fairy from the Night Pearl Sect by trying to force her to lift her veil. It was a matter of flirting taken too far by immature young men. Their punishment was to lose a few days of cultivation in the Divine Spire and relieve the fairy’s duties of greeting newcomers at the outside encampments gate. There was suspicion that the woman had led them on to cause the outcome. Regardless, as good for her as it might’ve been, it was even better lesson for them. They were simple mundane problems they were all happy to have.

The most trying thing about the day was worrying about her husband, and how well he seemed to be recovering. Perhaps it was because she’d isolated herself and thought of nothing else, but by the end of the day he seemed to have returned to normal. What had happened to her and what he had done certainly weren’t the same thing. He also had the tendency to suffer alone in silence. She didn’t think he was hiding it from her. She’d expected it to take longer for him. So had Pangfua. Maybe it was because of his music, or just that he’d never had Heart of Ice so he’d always had to deal with his emotions as they came, but she found herself feeling jealous. It had only been a few days.

As soon as she realized some part of her was wishing his suffering would last longer, she rebuked herself. How selfish could she be? To help cultivate the right mindset, she request a special meal to be made and rewarded him that evening as if he’d won one of their bets. Most of the reports would be left to the morning unless there was some kind of emergency. Even though there were a good number of cultivators in the Divine Spire at night, it was far more laid back of an environment than during the day.

It was nearing midnight when Huifen asked, “Did you want to try to sleep again tonight?”

“I—”

They were cut off by voices from outside their room.

“This one requests to speak with Big Brother Tao. If he is available,” Li Qiang said.

They looked at one another, and she watched as he didn’t hesitate to rise to his feet. Their discipleship group had met with them there instead of the usual place easier that day.

Mother Sya wasn’t on duty, but spending time with Father Tu. Another elder was sitting in in her place. She left the room as Chao entered the room to speak with Li Qiang.

Huifen didn’t need her husband’s sound laws to listen in. The young man was also her disciple, so she did just that. If things got personal or went in an inappropriate direction, Chao would put up a barrier. Until then, she observed them with her perceptions.

As soon as they were alone, Li Qiang fell to his hands and knees. Her husband moved to stand him up. What the young man said stopped him in his tracks. “Brother Tao, teach me to fight.”

“I’m already teaching you. Now get up.”

“No,” he cried. “Not like that. Train me so that what happened to Daiyu will never happen again. If I was there, I would’ve been worthless. The most I could’ve done is used my body to block a single attack. I’ve sworn that I’ll protect Fairy Zhu, my dead cousin’s dearest friend, in the way I should’ve protected her.”

Chao was silent for nearly a minute before he replied. “Does Fairy Zhu even know this?”

“She hasn’t rejected my presence.”

“I’ll train you, but you must reconsider exactly what your goal is otherwise you might end up having to protect Fairy Zhu from yourself.”

“That will not happen.”

At first, Huifen was befuddled by what she was hearing, but soon she started to laugh under her breath. She couldn’t deny the change in her husband’s friend. He’d never possessed the urgent desire to cultivate as the martial path required, but that had obviously changed. She also knew how Fairy Zhu would react. Or did she?

Her laughter fell off. Much in her friend had changed as well. Before, the only thing Zhu and Li Qiang had in common was Fairy Daiyu. Now they were more like minded then Huifen dared to believe. She was surprised that Zhu hadn’t come to her requesting something similar. Maybe Li Qiang had just beat her to it.

“How often do you visit the Trial of Might?” Chao asked.

“I’ve tried my luck three times,” Li Qiang replied. “So every week or two.”

“As painful as it might be, from now on you will challenge it twice a day. Your goal isn’t to break your old record, but to become so used to battle that it’s second nature. We will discuss your losses and your victories. You will also spend twice as long with the laws as before. Do you agree.”

“I do.” The young man kowtowed to her husband. Why was he letting him do it?

Huifen’s eyes started to water but she held back her tears. Her Chao hadn’t recovered. He had changed. He’d stepped further down the martial path. So why did it grieve her? The answer was clear. She was witnessing the death of the innocence of the boy she had found deep in his cabin in the Redwood Aurora. The very last of it. As much as Li Qiang was her disciple in name, the steps Chao was taking secured the young man as his own. He would train him, and he would do it well.

She stopped listening to their conversation. If Chao wanted her to know more, he would tell her. She’d already decided to approach Sister Zhu. The girl was stubborn and wore her emotions on her shoulder more than any ice fairy should. She didn’t want a choice, but direction. Huifen would provide it.

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I've been cutting and working on pacing. I don't want to drop to much so as not to leave you guys in suspense.

Cheers!