6.37 - Uncertain Journey

Light suffused everything around He Yu, and through his Daoist Mind and the perception granted by the Peerless Judgment, he could feel the world itself warping around them. Aside from the blinding white light, all his other senses were blocked. When he was certain he stood once again on solid ground, the next thing he noticed was the scent of earth and flowers. Then, the feeling of a breeze upon his skin, followed by the soft nearby rustle of cloth.

Vision returned, and He Yu found himself on a clouded mountaintop. Zhang Lifen, Ren Huang, and Yi Xiurong were with him, and all three looked just as confused as he felt. The mountaintop itself burst with life. Peach trees in full bloom lined the small clearing they stood in. To the north was a sheer cliff, plunging down hundreds of feet before finally disappearing into the clouds below and all around. A small brook ran across the clearing before tumbling down the cliff into the clouds below.

“Are we still in one of the trials?” Yi Xiurong asked.

He Yu cast his perception out, using the Peerless Judgment to grasp for some clue as to what had happened, or where they were. Immediately, he met a strange sort of resistance. Something he’d never felt before when using the Peerless Judgment. Like four great weights pressed down upon his spiritual sight, shuttering it with the sheer enormity of their significance. So he turned the Peerless Judgment to those weights instead.

Swirling in that empty-not space of pure concept were the Four Symbols; the Vermilion Bird, the White Tiger, the Black Tortoise, and the Azure Dragon. Each large enough to encompass the world. Yet also somehow small enough for his mind to grasp. Or perhaps it was his mind that had expanded. The answer wasn’t entirely clear, but an instant later he realized the difference was meaningless. He Yu shook his head and blinked, pulling himself back from something greater than anything he could grapple with right at that moment.

“I don’t think we are,” he said as he struggled to pull himself back to the present moment. Back away from the four profound avatars of concept lurking within his Daoist Mind.

“Are you alright?” Yi Xiurong asked. Her brows had a slight crease in between them, the only evidence of genuine concern on her otherwise severe features. “You looked as though you were about to pass out for a moment. Or something, I’m not quite sure. Cultivators at our advancement shouldn’t suffer from such trivialities as altitude sickness, or the like.”

“No, it’s fine,” he said. It took him a moment to completely gather his thoughts. To find the words that would suffice to explain what he’d just glimpsed. “The Four Symbols, they’re in my head.” It wasn’t a very good explanation, he realized as he said it aloud.

“Care to explain what exactly you mean by that?” Zhang Lifen asked. Although she had the same light tone as always, she couldn’t keep her concern from him completely. Not any more.

“Insights. Knowledge. It’s—” He Yu shook his head again. “I don’t know exactly. We aren’t in any sort of trial, I can tell you that much. There’s a weight, four of them, actually. They’re pressing against my Daoist Mind. It’s like they want to add something to it. Concepts, or lessons maybe. I couldn’t say for sure. I’d have to cultivate and meditate on them first.”

The three former core disciples all shared a look with one another. One of mixed skepticism, astonishment, and awe. After a few moments, it was Yi Xiurong who spoke up.

“I think it’s safe to say, then, that we’re not in another trial. The Four Guardians seem to have blessed you with wisdom. Unsurprising, given what we experienced inside Yunchang’s tomb. I can only hope there’s still a chance for us, now that we’re free of it.”

He Yu didn’t need to be told the true meaning of her words. Instead, he asked, “Is your cultivation preserved as well?”

She nodded in the affirmative, and so too did the others. He Yu couldn’t help but grimace. Time had continued to flow while they were inside the trials. While the White Tiger’s test only took a few days, the Vermilion Bird had been over a year. The Black Tortoise had taken ten. During the final trial, over thirty years had passed. In that time, he had continued with his cultivation and his training, just as the others had. While he was acting as the Grand Chancellor of the empire, he had advanced through the Divine Body Attainment to the peak. Now that they’d left the trials and the tomb, he still stood half a step into the Eighth Realm.

He dared to hope the passage of time had been an illusion. Some trick of the Four Symbols, or perhaps Yunchang himself. If not an illusion, that would mean they’d been absent from Iron Gate City for just over forty years. With He Yu and Zhang Lifen both being fully in the Divine Body Attainment stage, they would have stopped aging completely. Even Ren Huang and Yi Xiurong—both now half a step into the Eighth Realm themselves and ready to break through at any moment—would be nearly impervious to the passage of a mere forty years. Such a span of time to them would be like the passage of a day to a mortal.

So if the time had passed in truth, what would that mean for those they’d left outside? What would that mean for Yan Shirong, keeping watch over the west from Plum Blossom City? Or for Li Heng and Tan Xiaoling, leading the armies of the Western Passage and the Jade Kingdom? Or for Iron Gate City? Or Chen Fei?

“We need to return north,” he said. Again, the others shared a look. This one was of pity, and of sympathy.

“Prepare yourself for disappointment,” Ren Huang said. He spoke with the same low rumble he always did, but much of the hardness that typically edged his words was gone. “If our conception of time is correct, there may not be much left to return to.”

He Yu didn’t need to be told. His Daoist Mind raced through the implications. The possibilities of what their absence for an entire four decades would mean for the others. If there was one bright spot in all this, it was that Long Tingguang was unlikely to have remained anywhere nearby for all this time. Except that would have freed him to head north. Freed him to turn his attention to the rebellion. To snuff it out before it could even get started.

“We need to go north,” He Yu said again.

Zhang Lifen’s eyes momentarily got the sort of blank, faraway look common to the use of perception techniques. “We’re not far from the valley where we found the tomb entrance,” she said once she’d returned to the present. “I don’t sense anyone else nearby. We should be clear to move quickly.” She turned her attention to Yi Xiurong, and added, “Unless there’s a greater need for caution.”

Tapping one finger to her lips, Yi Xiurong took a moment to consider. “Caution is likely the better course, at least until we can gather information about the broader state of things.”

Although He Yu’s impulse was fully release his spirit and soar, the wisdom he’d cultivated over the years proved enough to temper that. Yi Xiurong was right. In no scenario was there any benefit in revealing themselves prematurely. If Long Tingguang lurked somewhere nearby still, he would attack and obliterate them as soon as they revealed themselves. If Jin Xifeng had regained control of the empire and solidified her reign—the outcome he had to admit was the most likely—she would send forces to hunt them down as soon as she learned of their presence. And if, by some stroke of fortune, the Li rebellion persisted and endured after all this time, there was no world in which Jin Xifeng would allow the four of them to return uncontested. They would be picked off before they rejoined, and it would be as if they’d never returned from Yunchang’s tomb in the first place.

“Alright, we should head out, then. It’s a long trip to the Western Passage from here,” He Yu said.

Ren Huang pointed to a peak several dozen li away. “That’s our landmark. Keep it to our right, and we’ll be heading more or less due west. Once we’re out of the mountains, we can cut across the old sect lands before following the Shrouded Peaks north. That should be our best route, should we want to avoid notice.”

He Yu walked to the cliff’s edge and jumped off. He felt a slight twinge of regret as he did so—there were few better places he could think of than this mountaintop for a potential breakthrough to the Divine Soul Apotheosis stage. The qi from the sky and the clouds gave him more than enough wind and water, and he could always call his own storm if he needed to. But a breakthrough of such a profound and auspicious nature would call far too much attention. If the release of such primal forces at Sky’s Throne had been but a taste, his ascent to Divine Soul Apotheosis would surely draw Jin Xifeng’s notice.

As he plunged through the clouds, he activated the Peerless Judgment. Thankfully, he was prepared for the spiritual weight of those four profound insights, and could at least use the technique to judge his landing. A brief flex of his spirit, and he caught himself with the Sky Dragon’s Flight just before he hit the rocky ground at the base of the cliff. He released the technique an instant later and dropped the last few dozen feet to land gently.

Zhang Lifen appeared next to him in a puff of mist a moment later, followed by Yi Xiurong on her peacock feather. Ren Huang arrived last, bounding down the sheer cliff-side as though he were running across rugged, but mostly horizontal, ground. Assembled once again, they headed west, using Ren Huang’s landmark to guide them.

They moved slowly, but for immortals such as them, “slow” was a matter of context. All four of them were still far beyond what even the strongest of mortals could manage. Their relatively sedate pace still saw them running over hill and mountain, through valley and ravine, at a pace unfathomable to even Fourth Realm experts. They kept their pace for weeks on end, only briefly stopping to cultivate and top off their qi before continuing.

It took them a matter of weeks to pass out of the lush mountains of the southeastern empire, and into the rugged badlands that once made up the easternmost edge of the Shrouded Peaks Sect territory. They crossed those badlands in a matter of days and found themselves once more in the broad flat plains of the interior river valleys. Farms and rice paddies lined the roads, and the Shrouded Peaks themselves rose to the west, their eternal mists causing He Yu a twinge of nostalgia for simpler times as they turned their journey northward at last.

While they avoided villages and towns—they all agreed revealing themselves to anyone they didn’t know would be far too risky—they made a slight detour on the way to the Western Passage. Plum Blossom City was on their way, and if Yan Shirong was still there, he could fill them in on what had passed during their time in Yunchang’s tomb. And give them an idea of exactly how long it had been. Should he be absent from the Ministry of Information’s headquarters in the west, well, that would tell them quite a lot about their situation, too.

What He Yu hadn’t anticipated was to arrive and be met with only ruin.

As they approached what should have been a small, if prosperous and fairly important city, they all saw the same sight cresting the horizon. Crumbled walls. The burnt-out remains of once-proud buildings. He Yu cast forth his perception technique and confirmed that neither the Yan estates nor the Ministry building remained standing.

Upon entering the city, they were met with a grisly sight. Rotting heads on the ends of stakes lined what had once been the main boulevard. He Yu noted dully that the noodle shop he’d once stopped in with Chen Fei was gone—a charred pile of ash and scorched timber. In the city’s central square, a massive complex of gallows had been erected. Over a hundred half-decayed corpses hung from frayed nooses. Unburied dead were piled unceremoniously at the edges of the square, left to wither and rot like all the others.

“This happened recently,” Ren Huang said as they picked their way through the city. “The corpses haven’t fully decayed. A few weeks ago, at most.”

“Who would do this?” He Yu asked. “Jin Xifeng wants to rule. To possess. That is her Dao. Not to destroy.”

“Perhaps it was that Eighth Realm who serves her,” Zhang Lifen said, trying to sound airy but failing. “He seems like the type to do something like this.”

“If so, then perhaps the Li still hold the Western Passage?” Yi Xiurong ventured.

They could only hope. But if this level of destruction had been visited upon Plum Blossom City—and recently, too—then it meant their earlier assumptions about the situation in the west were wrong. There was too much they didn’t know, and they’d just lost their best lead before making it to Iron Gate City. At least there was one upside to this development.

He Yu released his spirit and rose into the air on wings of churning wind. “There’s no point in delaying anymore,” he said. “We make for the Western Passage. Whatever’s befallen them, my goal remains.”

A storm, a flood, a star, and a wolf headed north. A hundred li passed beneath them with each breath, and with each breath, He Yu fought down his mounting worry.