A/N
Sorry for the late chapter.
2 chapters combined into a 3.7k ish chap for better readability, enjoy!
Chapter 783: The Second Fastest
I woke up feeling more rested than I had in what seemed like years.
For a few moments, I just laid there, staring at the ceiling of my new pavilion while listening to the distant sound of disciples going through their morning drills somewhere outside the Legacy Disciple district.
"Master, you're finally awake," Azure said, surprise in his voice.
"Good morning to you too."
“You slept for over thirty-six hours,” he replied. "I was beginning to think you'd accidentally transformed into something that hibernates."
That made me pause. I had thought my sleep had been good, I didn’t think it had been that good.
"I guess that’s what happens when you go through a traumatic breakthrough," I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. "I'm going to count this as a reasonable response to circumstances."
"Hmm, and you appear to be in a better mood than usual."
“Do I?”
Now that he’d mentioned it, I could feel that he was right.
For the past few weeks, there had been some tension always present behind my sternum.
It had to do with Wei Lin's corruption, the Lithari, the tribulation, the Two Suns World, and while it was still there, it felt more manageable somehow. There was something clean about having slept properly that affected the mind more than any meditation ever could.
And that wasn’t all.
The Stellar Realm breakthrough had integrated properly overnight.
The child star in my inner world had stopped jostling for position against the other suns and found an orbit it seemed satisfied with. Even the Golden Sun energy felt less volatile than it had when I first channeled it, though I was under no illusions that volatile and manageable were the same thing.
I pulled on clean robes, the outer disciples' days of carefully mending the same couple of sets had been replaced by a closet that a servant restocked every few days without being asked, and stood in front of the window for a moment to look at the morning sun.
Despite the early hour, I knew that the Sect Master would be awake. Yuan probably hadn’t slept for several hundred years, this was convenient for me because it meant any hour was an acceptable hour to visit as long as I had a good reason to, and I had several.
"Let's go," I said.
As I started walking toward Azure Peak's eastern face, the disciples I passed gave me a wide berth with bowed heads. And when they thought I was out of earshot, they whispered behind their hands.
Before I would have found the behaviour strange but now it just makes me a little sad, because I understood that to them I was no longer a person, I was only something powerful that they didn't want to anger.
***
Sect Master Yuan's quarters looked exactly as they had the last time I'd stood in them.
It was the bare simplicity that was a reflection of the man himself.
There was the single scroll of unreadable calligraphy on the wall woven through with spiritual energy that only revealed itself to those at a high enough level, the small table etched with markings so delicate they were almost invisible, the cushions arranged for sitting, and the windows looking out over the clouds that the morning sun was painting in shades of orange and gold.
Yuan was seated in his usual meditative pose when I entered, his hands resting on his knees, and he was staring at me with an expression that I couldn't quite read. The silence stretched long enough that I began to wonder whether I'd done something wrong, whether I was about to be told off for some transgression I hadn't realized I'd committed.
"It seems," he said finally, "that you have been keeping yourself busy since I last saw you."
I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach, because I had a good idea of what he was referring to.
"I have heard," Yuan continued, "that a certain Legacy Disciple managed to demolish his own pavilion through experimentation, and then, not content with that achievement, proceeded to flatten seven disciples in a corridor with an uncontrolled outburst of Stellar Realm pressure. The reports have been quite detailed, and quite colorful, in fact."
I felt heat creeping up the back of my neck and I bowed my head.
"I'm sorry about all of that," I said. "The pavilion was an accident, I reached for the Golden Sun before I understood it properly, and the corridor incident was just my aura getting away from me when I returned to my body after the breakthrough. I pulled it back as fast as I could, but the damage was already done by then, and I really didn't mean to frighten anyone."
Yuan raised a hand and waved my apology away.
"There's no need to apologize," he said. "Rapid advancement always comes with growing pains, and a few cracked floors and shaken disciples are a small price for what you've accomplished. Congratulations on reaching the Stellar Realm. It is no small thing."
"Thank you, Master," I said, keeping my head slightly bowed. "Though I feel like I stumbled into it more than I earned it. The tribulation arrived before I was ready, and I just did what I had to do to survive it."
"Surviving what you weren't ready for is, in my experience, the most honest definition of earning something," Yuan replied, and then he tilted his head slightly. "Your cultivation speed is impressive. You are now the second fastest among your batch to reach the Stellar Realm."
I blinked, and for a moment I was certain I'd misheard him.
The second fastest.
I wasn't trying to be arrogant about it, and I really didn't think of myself as someone who needed to be the best at everything, but I had assumed that reaching the Stellar Realm within a single year of joining the sect was an achievement that nobody could possibly have matched. The timeline alone was absurd, it was a time that broke records and got carved into sect histories, and the idea that someone had done it faster than me caught me off guard.
"The second," I said, the surprise plain in my voice. "Who was the first?"
"Song Xiang," Yuan said. "He broke through one week before you did."
I remembered Song Xiang very clearly from when we'd both joined the sect a year ago, this tall young man with classical good looks and a presence that made other disciples turn to watch him without quite understanding why.
I remembered being impressed by him back then, the perfect picture of a cultivation prodigy.
Honestly, with all the progress that I had made, I thought I would have surpassed him by now, just like I had surpassed Wu Kangming.
"Master, it isn't that simple," Azure said. "The Sect Master chose him immediately. He didn't wait for a tournament. He didn't wait for Song Xiang to prove himself over months the way he waited with you. There's a reason for that."
He was right. Yuan was not someone who acted without calculation. If he had moved on Song Xiang that quickly, it meant he had seen something in him that required immediate investment. As for what made him different, I didn’t know.
"A healthy rivalry can be beneficial to one's cultivation," Yuan said, which was either a comment on my silence or a continuation of his own thoughts. "Competition pushes a cultivator to refine themselves, to find motivation in places they might otherwise overlook. But I will offer you a warning, the type I offer all my disciples eventually, because it matters more than most realize.”
I nodded, interested to see what advice a Civilisation Realm expert had for me.
“Do not fixate on surpassing others,” the Sect Master continued. “Those who measure their worth against the achievements of the person beside them are not seeking the dao. They are chasing temporary things, comparisons that will dissolve the moment a stronger person walks into the room, and a cultivator who builds their motivation on such foundations will find those foundations crumbling beneath them at the worst possible moment."
"Thank you for the advice, Master," I said, it was a good reminder. "I'll keep that in mind."
Yuan was quiet for a moment, and then his gaze drifted slightly past me toward the window, toward the clouds painted gold by the morning, and when he spoke again there was something distant in his voice.
"When I was young, still a disciple myself, there was a girl in my sect named Bai Ling," he said. "She had a remarkable talent and an even more remarkable stubbornness, and from the moment we met she seemed determined to surpass me in everything. Every technique I learned, she learned faster. Every trial I passed, she insisted on passing with a higher score. If I cultivated through the night, she would cultivate through two nights to prove she could endure more. She followed my progress with an attention that I found puzzling, always appearing wherever I happened to be training, always finding reasons to challenge me to one contest or another."
I listened, and something about the description made a quiet alarm bell ring in the back of my mind, because the picture he was painting didn't sound entirely like simple rivalry to me, but Yuan continued, oblivious to the conclusion I was already drawing.
"The girl simply could not stand the thought of being second to me," he said. "She was endlessly competitive, and I was the most convenient measuring stick available."
I had to suppress a wince.
The Sect Master, a Civilization Realm cultivator who could read the karmic threads connecting millions of souls and judge the eternal destinies of the dead, even after all these years clearly had no idea that the girl had not been competing with him at all.
Wow, I thought, the Sect Master and Elder Chen Yong are the same.
Both of them were powerful beyond comprehension and both of them were completely, hopelessly blind to even the most explicit signals from the opposite sex.
I had a sudden mental image of Madame Butterfly, sitting somewhere right at this moment dreaming up yet another scheme to capture his attention, while the elder himself remained convinced she was just out to humiliate him.
"How did the story end?" I asked, though I had a feeling I wasn't going to enjoy the answer.
"On an expedition," Yuan said, and his voice grew heavier. "We were a group of young disciples sent to clear a region overrun by spiritual beasts, and we were overwhelmed. A retreat was the only option, but someone had to stay behind to hold the line long enough for the rest to escape, and I had already decided that it should be me, because I was the strongest and the most likely to survive it. Bai Ling refused to allow it. She insisted that she would stay instead, and when I argued, she said she would not let me have even that, that she would not be outdone in sacrifice any more than in cultivation. She stayed. We escaped. She did not."
I stayed quiet, because there was nothing I could say that wouldn't sound hollow.
"Azure," I said internally.
"Yes, I noticed."
"He has no idea that she sacrificed herself because of her love for him..."
"The Sect Master is very perceptive about karma, cultivation potential, and the movement of cosmic forces across thousands of years," Azure said. "He is less perceptive about people standing directly in front of him making obvious decisions. But Master, you’re not much better either."
“Wait, what do you mean?”
“Do I need to remind you that it took months of arguing before you would even admit to yourself that you had feelings for Lady Laelyn. The Sect Master misreading one woman over the course of his life is hardly worse than you misreading your own heart."
"That was a complicated situation involving time loops and the ethics of remembering someone who doesn't remember you."
"You had monologued for hours about why you weren't developing feelings before you admitted it."
"That was analysis."
"Sure, if that makes you feel better."
I let that one go, because I wasn't going to win that argument and I knew it.
Instead, I found my thoughts drifting toward the question of motivation, the thing the Sect Master had warned me about.
The truth was that I didn't care about being the fastest cultivator or the best or the most celebrated, and the news that Song Xiang had beaten me by a week stirred no real envy in me at all once the initial surprise wore off.
All I had ever really wanted was enough power that nobody could bully me, that nobody could take advantage of me, that I could walk through this dangerous world and protect the people I cared about without being at the mercy of every cruel cultivator who decided I looked like an easy target.
Beyond that threshold, I had very little interest in rankings or records or the endless status games that consumed so many of the people around me.
The reason Song Xiang made me wary wasn't his cultivation speed at all, it was the deeper concern that had been nagging at me since the Sect Master confirmed who he was, which was that someone who looked that much like a textbook cultivation prodigy, who had been plucked from obscurity for reasons the Sect Master hadn't explained, was exactly the type of person the Heavens loved to weave into some grand narrative thread.
I had already learned firsthand what happened when you got tangled up with people the Heavens had marked, because Wu Kangming was living proof of how those threads pulled and tightened until everyone connected to them got dragged into conflicts they never asked for.
If it was up to me, I would avoid protagonists the same as I would avoid a plague, giving them a wide berth and letting them go off and have their destined adventures somewhere far away from me.
But I'd learned that this wasn't always possible, and when it wasn't, my fallback strategy was the one that had worked with Wu Kangming, which was to befriend them instead, because as long as a protagonist didn't want to kill me, I was perfectly content to share a meal and exchange pleasantries and stay out of whatever cosmic drama they were destined for.
"You've gone quiet, but I think you understand my point," Yuan said, and his words pulled me out of the spiral my thoughts had wandered into. "Now, as for why you've come here, is it because you are ready to return to the Two Suns World?"
I nodded, refocusing on the matter at hand.
"Kal told me once that the loops aren't infinite," I said. "They're a limited resource, something he's been spending across countless resets, and they're running out. He doesn't have an endless number of attempts left. But this time is different, because I know about Hiron's plan now, the formation he's been building across the loops, the sacrifices, the being that hides inside the Red Sun. I know more going in than I ever have before. If Kal and I work together with everything I've learned, we might be able to end this once and for all, instead of just delaying it for another loop."
Yuan nodded slowly. "Remember the Ethereal Anchor. If you find your soul threatened, if someone attempts to bind or destroy it while you are out there, use it without hesitation. The karmic power within it is something even I cannot estimate."
I nodded again, because I understood the value of what he'd given me, but I also remembered why I hadn't used it last time. The lich-like being had killed Kal and triggered the loop reset, and there had been no point burning a single-use treasure when everything was about to rewind anyway, so I had saved it.
This time, though, I was going to do everything in my power to make sure Kal didn't die, because Kal staying alive was the difference between progress and starting over.
"How is the search for a Realm Stabilizing Tree going?" I asked, because Wei Lin was never far from my thoughts. "Have your contacts turned up anything?"
"Nothing yet," Yuan said.
I sighed, and the answer didn't surprise me in the slightest, because an untethered Realm Stabilizing Tree was an almost mythically rare treasure, and the few that existed were guarded jealously by whoever was fortunate enough to possess one, so the chances of one simply surfacing on the open market were vanishingly small.
"Perhaps," Yuan offered, "if you succeed in saving the Two Suns World, the good karma generated by such an act will draw a tree toward you, the same as it drew the Realm Stabilizing Tree to you during the tournament. Karma has a habit of arranging fortunate coincidences for those who accumulate enough of it."
I nodded, because that made sense, given how absurdly powerful karma was in this world. If saving an entire world didn't generate enough good karma to attract a single tree, then nothing would.
"Are you ready?" Yuan asked.
"I am," I said.
He rose and led me to the back of his quarters, placing his hand flat against the stone. The wall rippled and slid away to reveal the hidden room with its single meditation mat and the concealing formations so intricate that even now I could barely perceive them.
I stepped inside and lowered myself onto the mat, feeling the cool stone beneath me and the layered defensive arrays humming all around like a fortress built specifically to keep one fragile body safe while its soul wandered elsewhere.
Before I closed my eyes, a thought occurred to me.
"Master, how are the Lithari I sent to stay with you? Are they getting on alright?"
Yuan looked at the ceiling briefly. "They are," he said, with a pause, "present."
"That's not really an answer…"
"Three days ago," he said, "the jade philosophers requested a formal debate with me on the philosophical implications of Karma as it relates to geological time. It lasted four hours. The topic shifted, at some point I am still unable to identify precisely, into an argument about whether a mountain that has been worn to a hill by erosion is the same mountain. When I attempted to redirect the conversation, they voted on whether redirection was philosophically valid and concluded by majority that it was not."
I stared at him.
"They voted on it," I said.
"Unanimously, against my position."
I could feel the smile starting and did nothing to stop it.
Yuan's expression remained neutral throughout, which told me clearly that he found none of this amusing and that this was not something he had anticipated when he agreed to house sixty stone beings in his inner world.
"I'll take them back when I return," I said. "My inner world has the space now, and they'll be more comfortable there."
"I would appreciate that," Yuan said, and the relief in his voice was obvious.
With that dealt with, I closed my eyes.
I turned my attention inward, finding the Genesis Seed, feeling the threads extending outward from it into the space between realms. The last time I had followed the connection to the Two Suns World, there had been two threads, one red, one blue, both running from my inner world to that place where two suns hung in opposite halves of a shared sky.
Now there were three.
The first was the connection that I had gained after gaining a red sun in my inner world.
The second was the connection that formed after the blue sun had appeared.
The third was the Golden Sun energy, it was the newest and the strongest of the three.
I followed the threads inward and then outward, and the stone room dissolved, and then the sect dissolved, and then there was nothing but the dark between realms for a single suspended moment.
Then there was a sky filled with two suns.
One red, low at the eastern horizon. One blue, climbing toward midday.
Porvale.
I was already moving before I fully registered where I'd landed, stepping left by pure reflex as the arrow passed through exactly the space my head had occupied half a second earlier.
The projectile buried itself in the wooden post behind me with a sound I had heard in this exact spot more times than I could count.
Maya's hand was still extended from where she'd reached for me, her fingers closing on empty air where I'd just been standing.
"Has fear addled your wi—" The words stopped. Her eyes tracked from the post to my face and back again. "How did you move that fast?"
I looked at her, and I looked at the village square behind her, and I looked at the barricades that the villagers had thrown together.
The loop had begun but something was wrong.
It was the same as last time.
The body I was using had no resistance, no undercurrent of another consciousness, none of the slight friction that had characterized every other possession I'd ever done. Tomas wasn't in here with me. He wasn't asleep. He wasn't suppressed. Tomas was still dead.
This wasn't how it was supposed to be.
Kal had promised that in this loop he would save Tomas before I arrived.
Kal was a Rank 8, he wouldn’t forget something like this.
So if Tomas was dead, and the loop had started, and Kal had not intervened in time, then either something had gone terribly wrong, or there was a reason I couldn't see yet that had prevented the rescue.
I looked at Maya, who was still staring at me.
The battle sounds were getting closer.
I needed to find Kal.
A/N
Comment below what you think is going on