224. The Pits of the Discipline Hall

Red sits cross-legged deep within the bowels of the Discipline Hall.

The subterranean section of the Discipline Hall contains dozens of unused cells. For the most part, the sect is free of criminals. There is only one fellow prisoner at the moment, and she has been there a long time. Red even said hi, but she didn’t respond.

His confinement takes place at the bottom of a seemingly endless pit. His cuffs remain on, attached to the walls of the pit with chains made of Abyssal Titan bone. He is forced to kneel, his head hanging low and his arms stretched up high.

Everything is covered in a viscous oil that poisons the Dao. Even if he were to escape his constraints, in subjective space it is thousands of miles to reach to the top, the black oil preventing any foothold both physically and spiritually.

Red is not Alistair. He cannot keep track of time down to the second. Still, he feels the ravages of time like any other man. It is perhaps a week before his first visitor arrives.

“Elder Aylesfort,” Red says. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance. You have taught my friend much.”

Elder Aylesfort at first says nothing, floating down to the bottom of the pit and staring into Red’s dull gray eyes. Then, he stirs like a venerable oak tree spreading its acorns.

“You are an enigma,” the elder says. “Your aura signature was left at the scene of both crimes, yet you do not seem like you would make such a mistake.”

“It is what it is,” Red says. “Are you here to pronounce my judgment?”

“I’m here to tell you that I was able to stop Elder Yan and Elder Kvasha from torturing you to ascertain the truth of the matter. They will push harder the longer this takes. Tell me the truth. What happened? Who do you serve? I can promise you a clean death.”

“I’m not who you think I am,” Red replies. “I’m truly an Early Adept.”

“The signature we found indicates otherwise. It contains the same spiritual DNA that we have on record, yet with the clear signs of a Profound realm cultivator.”

Red sighs. “Deeper truths can mask a lower cultivation.”

“If I were to believe you were capable of such a feat,” Elder Aylesfort says, “the Emperor would come and grab you for himself. Who knows what taboo magicks he would employ?”

“Which is why I won’t say a word.”

“And if I were to test this theory? I could strike you with a Profound level attack right now.”

“And then I would die,” Red says. “I am exactly who I say I am. However, I agree with your previous point, so I won’t speak out to defend myself either. I don’t care to be the Emperor’s plaything.”

“These bold claims almost seem like a dead man’s last throes. A bluff to buy a little more time.”

“Do you think I’m bluffing?”

“For the first time in many centuries, I do not know what to think. I will redouble my efforts to prove your innocence, but I only have so much time. The other elders are out for blood. Disciple Mayguard and Estrelli were well-liked and talented young men, considered to be important pieces in the future of our sect. The evidence is stacked against you.”

“How much time?”

Elder Aylesfort looks up and down, analyzing Red to his core. What can this venerable Visionary’s eyes see? This old man shines brighter than many others he has seen. For a moment, he looks as if he is annoyed at Red’s boldness in address, but that expression soon vanishes.

“Three weeks, maximum.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” Red says. “Let’s wait and see.”

After the elder leaves, Red closes his eyes and focuses on the footprint that the Discipline Hall makes in the Dao. While his body is trapped, his soul cannot be fully contained by the handcuffs of a silly frontier polity. There are always tricks, always gaps to be exploited.

While he is not omniscient and failed to see this framing attempt, there has not been a single event in his life that has not benefited him in some way. Even as he sits utterly inert and powerless, a new path forward has been unlocked.

Gideon’s puzzle has been genuinely difficult. Never before has he encountered such a tantalizing mystery. Now, he sees the first major clue.

I’m just the luckiest man in the multiverse.

“Hey,” Red calls out into the nothingness. “I know you can hear me. What were you put in here for?”

No one responds.

Red tries again. “I’ll help you escape.”

A feminine voice drifts into his ears. “Will you now?”

“It should be easy for the two of us, assuming that the reason you’re down here has to do with how powerful you are.”

She laughs like a sailor. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. But you don’t know the half of this accursed prison. Even if you broke me out of the handcuffs, it’d take hours to break down the walls. Even an Exalted would need a few good swings. Let’s say I believe you, which I don’t, what do you get out of it?”

“Have you heard of the founder Gideon leaving behind a hidden legacy?”

“Of course. Every disciple’s heard of that.”

“There’s something hidden within here relating to that. I’ll need your help retrieving it.”

The voice laughs. “There’s no way that’s real, but if you can help me escape, then a deal’s a deal.”

Red opens his eyes. The cuffs around his wrists are meant for a Peak Profound realm, returning them to the strength of a level 1 cultivator. Yet, there is one design flaw.

His aura control is already perfection. These frontier whelps cannot hope to match him in this regard. It is not precisely that he tricks the handcuffs—they still properly function at blocking all quintessences and even trickier things like life force or Karma. However, there is one option available to him that others lack.

Red simply contorts out of the handcuffs.

It takes him two hours of excruciating pain. Those cuffs are on tight, as is the standard protocol. But with great effort, Red eventually squeezes his wrists through the hole and frees himself.

With his powers unlocked, ascending the oily pit is trivial. The trap might have been for Profound realms, but his stride is perfection. The path to the top willingly unveils itself as if it were waiting for its returned master.

Another hour passes with Red jumping and twisting through invisible footholds. He reaches the summit, climbing out and into a dark hallway.

Red creeps through the winding corridors of the Discipline Hall.

The architecture here is cleverly designed—anyone without an elder’s authorization would find themselves lost in seconds, trapped in a maze-like structure that shifts and distorts perception. There is no light, physically or spiritually, except pale soulfire that floats in the air like a lonely ghost.

Red finds his way with ease.

He follows the walls with silent steps, his body moving like water through the darkness. The guards stationed at intervals throughout the hall never sense him as he expertly hides in their blind spots.

After several minutes of navigation, he reaches a certain section of the prison, a deeper section that feels several thousand feet underground, or should he say, underwater. The air here feels thick with ancient power, laden with the weight of old enchantments and forgotten bindings.

“And they didn’t think I was worthy of such a place?” Red shakes his head. This is the first time he has been properly underestimated.

At the end of the corridor stands a massive door made of pure stillwater crystal, etched with restraining formations so complex that even he pauses to admire their craftsmanship. Unlike the pit where he was held, this is meant to contain something truly dangerous.

Red places his palm against the door, sending a thread of his aura through the crystalline structure. The formations recognize the signature instantly—Elder Aylesfort’s distinct aura, gold and silver and leather, full of mathematical complexity and tight precision, yet finished off with a gentle kindness.

He has perfectly reconstructed the elder’s aura based on their brief interaction.

The door shimmers and parts silently.

Inside, suspended in a web of translucent chains, hangs a woman.

Her long blue hair drapes to the floor, her face bearing the aristocratic beauty of one of the sect’s founding clans. Her eyes snap open as Red enters—eyes that swirl with unfathomable depths, shifting like oil on water.

“Wozhan Meizhu,” Red says, addressing the daughter of the previous Sect Leader. “That’s your name, right?”

“They know of me in the next generation,” Meizhu says with a grin. “I’m glad to see it.”

“Well, actually not.” Red gives Meizhu a sheepish smile, copying his best friend’s facial expression down to the nerve. “I asked them about what that foreboding presence was when they dropped me here, and they told me it was the daughter of Sect Leader Wozhan.”

“Oh.” For a moment, the unimaginably powerful cultivator feels like a celebrity disappointed that someone doesn’t recognize them. “You really know nothing of me?”

“Yep.”

“I was imprisoned here 700 thousand years ago by my father. This whole cell is under a special kind of time dilation so that I will experience a dozen normal lifetimes before I perish. I’m a Peak Visionary who won the Mira Laketor Memorial Tournament and was named a Hero of the Empire for my accomplishments in the Fourth Zarbax War. Anything else you want to know?”

“Your abilities would be nice.”

“You would dare? Do you really—” Meizhu begins to say, but quickly changed her tune as she realizes who holds the cards in this situation. “Fine. I’m a mental cultivator. From the standard perspective, my methods are unorthodox. I was foolish enough to get caught.”

“Unorthodox?”

“Will you make me spell it out? Meizhu snarls. “I can consume the minds of my enemies. Absorbing their psyche into my own. Now, can you free me?”

Red walks over to the chains locking her feet and legs in place and copies Elder Aylesfort’s aura once more. Then he does the same for the top half, except he leaves on the handcuffs themselves.

When Meizhu gives him a questioning look, he merely smiles. “I’m not that stupid. Come with me.”

----------------

Meizhu follows Red closely, her movements eerily fluid despite her still-bound hands. She glides through the corridors with the unbounded grace of someone who has spent centuries contemplating every possible motion in captivity.

Yet in no way do her movements surpass the young cultivator’s. In some ways, Meizhu thinks to herself, he feels deeper.

Not to mention, he is the most handsome man that she has ever seen. It is an almost pathbreaking feature. As a woman who has not seen a man in nearly a million years, she cannot deny certain baser feelings.

“This way,” Red says, navigating with complete confidence through the labyrinthine passages. Seeing her confusion at his skill, he adds, “All mazes are the same at the end of the day. You just have to know where to look. We’re coming up on the section now.”

A realization dawns on Meizhu. “You’re talking about Tartarus.”

“Not good with names.”

“The deepest part of the Discipline Hall. As far as I know, I’m the strongest prisoner of the last ten million years, and even I wasn’t thrown in there. I thought it was fake, to be honest. The rumor is that it could hold even an Exalted realm.”

“That was actually quite informative, thank you.”

They descend deeper, the architecture changing subtly. Elegant crystalline structures that shift and morph fade into something more primal, with walls of bare stone carved with faded formations from a different era.

“Do you think that there’s something down there?” Red asks inquisitively.

Meizhu stops and stares. “Aren’t you the expert? Are you an elder or merely a core disciple? I thought you were jesting about me being informative. Are we just shooting in the dark?”

“Too many questions,” Red says. “If we have to fight whatever’s down there, so be it. I’ll undo your restraints. I doubt it would be a true test of combat. If I know Gideon properly, he doesn’t care so much about raw strength. A spark of ingenuity is what matters most.”

“Even my father didn’t obsess over the founder like you,” Meizhu says. “That Boswann bastard, though. She doesn’t have an ounce of respect for tradition. You know she removed the Founder’s Celebration Day from the schedule?”

The man chuckles, though Meizhu finds nothing funny. All that she has said is true. Loroa was the bane of her existence. Despite her solitary confinement, news occasionally reaches her ears. She knows of the precipitous decline of the Clear Water Sect over the last million years.

They reach what appears to be a dead end, a wall that seems unremarkable compared to everything else they’ve passed. Yet Red stops, studying it intently.

“What do you know of Gideon the Golemmaker?” he asks. “He is most famous for his golems, but his mastery over space itself might be more impressive. What I see before us is the anchor of a physical demiplane.”

Meizhu’s eyes widen. She grows ever so slightly more wary, considering her physical position in relation to this man.

Only a select few elders have ever heard of Gideon’s spatial abilities. It is a secret kept for generations by the sect. Their prize jewel, the protector golem Vostra, utilizes truths of space that have the potential to fell even an Exalted realm if taken off guard.

If he knows about that… Why was he imprisoned in the first place?

For all Meizhu’s innumerable faults, she is still loyal to her father, to her sect. Even after they locked her up and threw away the key.

Red traces patterns on the wall, following invisible lines. “We’ve made it to Tartarus,” he murmurs. “Look at the boundary between dimensions. This is where we need to go.”

“Are you insane?” Meizhu hisses. “Even if we could open Tartarus, why would we want to? I didn’t think it was real, but clearly, I was wrong. If there’s something in there that requires such security...”

“Because what I seek is in there,” Red says simply. “Maybe you die, and maybe you don’t. Either way, your life is worthless. If you don’t help me, I’ll simply go back to my cell, and you can die of old age in a few million years as your time-dilated sentence finishes.”

Meizhu laughs bitterly. “You drive a hard bargain. Very well. Can you remove the cuffs?”

“It’s not necessary,” Red says. “Not yet. Let me draw out your nue and we’ll guide it through the points.”

Meizhu is instantly suspicious. She wants to say know, but there is something about him that is so intriguing, so she acquiesces.

Under Red’s precise guidance, she channels her mental energy toward the specific points he indicates. The air begins to shimmer as they trace complex formations that interact with her nue in unexpected ways.

“The boundary is weakening,” Meizhu whispers, her consciousness probing the dimensional wall with his assistance. “But the other side... It’s like a void.”

“Keep focused,” Red commands. “We’re almost there.”

The stone wall before them ripples like water, then simply ceases to be. In its place stands a massive archway of pale blue ice and ancient rock, inscribed with runic protection of the First Script.

“Ladies first,” Red says with satisfaction.

They step through the archway into a vast chamber that seems impossibly large, as if an entire world has been compressed into a space that should not exist within the physical confines of the Discipline Hall. The air is deathly cold, crystallizing with each breath they take.

The chamber appears empty at first, cast in an eerie blue light that seems to emanate from nowhere and everywhere. Then, as their eyes adjust, they see it.

It is a mountain at the center of this impossible space. As they approach, this mountain resolves into the colossal form of a humanoid figure.

The creature’s skin resembles cracked glacial ice, veined with what looks like magma that has long since cooled to stone. Though long dead, there is a presence to it, a weight that is almost suffocating.

“What is that?” Red says, shocked for the first time since Alistair’s improvement. “This shouldn’t belong here.”

Meizhu gasps. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a Jötunn. One of the foremost Immemorial Races.”

All of a sudden, the Jötunn stirs. With no warning, it reaches out its dead hand and grasps Red. The massive hand of ice and stone envelops him. Meizhu recoils in horror, expecting to see him crushed into paste, but instead, the Jötunn’s touch seems to create a strange bubble of stillness around him. Red’s form becomes perfectly immobile as if suspended in time.

“Fool,” Meizhu whispers, backing away toward the entrance. Even if she were at her full power, she wouldn’t want to challenge this corpse. Its presence radiates a primordial force that feels older than civilization itself.

The massive creature’s eyes—caverns of ice containing constellations of darkness—open slowly. It doesn’t move further, its attention seemingly fixed entirely on Red.

Meizhu counts her heartbeats, wondering if she should flee. One... two... three...

Without warning, the Jötunn’s hand opens, and Red stands there unharmed, seemingly unchanged except for a small parchment clutched in his left hand and an expression of profound satisfaction on his perfect face.

“What happened?” Meizhu demands, grabbing him by the arm and hoisting him outside the disturbing chamber, which closes behind them.

“Time moved differently while I was in its grasp,” Red explains, his voice unusually subdued. “I lived a thousand lifetimes in those few seconds.”

“What?” Despite herself, Meizhu can’t suppress her curiosity.

“It showed me... possibilities. Lives that could have been lived. Choices that could have been made.” Red carefully tucks the parchment into his robes. “I had to identify which were real and which were false. Once I was a farmer named Killian, tending my crops and raising my children. In another, I was a great warrior of the Eagle’s Fourth Brigade.”

Meizhu narrows her eyes suspiciously. “And that parchment?”

“I told you, didn’t I? It’s the first piece to Gideon’s puzzle.”

“Our deal is sealed, then,” Meizhu says. “I’ve helped you obtain what you wanted, and you’ll set me free.”

“Yes, I will,” Red says. “But not yet. It would be too suspicious.”

“What?” Meizhu assesses her companion with experienced eyes. He is most likely in the Profound realm. With her arms restricted, she still has some access to the Dao. But he is without handcuffs altogether. Victory seems impossible.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Red says, dismissing her concerns. “I’ll remove all the power dampeners. Just don’t try to escape until after I leave. I’ll leave a little foothold for you. Just give me at least a month of a buffer period.”

Red fiddles with her restraints, replicating Elder Aylesfort’s aura once more to remove everything. He gives her a wry smile, as if he knows that she was considering taking him on.

When they return to her cell, Red bids her farewell.

“We’ll be seeing each other again,” he tells her. “It seems like we make good partners.”

“I don’t know what you’re in here for, nor do I care, but if you know what’s good for you, you wouldn’t want to associate with me. You don’t want any Karmic ties to me.”

“I find that I don’t care about that. I’m not like my best friend.”

As he slips away, Meizhu cannot help but wonder who this man is. For the first time in nearly a million years, she stretches her arms and feels the power of a Peak Visionary run through her meridians.

To her surprise, she listens to Red’s demands. A part of her wants to try escaping now, but her instincts tell her otherwise. The man she has just met seems to know more than he should. If he has a proper time in mind, she will wait.

Until then, Wozhan Meizhu pretends to wrap herself in the translucent cuffs.