The ground flows beneath me during this bright night.

Hundreds of feet of empty air separate me from compact soil. But, there's no fear in me.

It might be a rough landing, to fall from my flying sword. But, I am an immortal. My body is reinforced with the chi of creation, empowered and enriched.

Once, a long time ago, I had been a mortal. And could not envision a world where I would play in the sky.

A long time in memory, I suppose. But, the time it's been for my body and soul is short.

The joys of youth are upon me once more. And yet, I find myself filled with melancholy. The path of a rogue cultivator, an immortal without a sect, is one that few choose.

Jack, an immortal I had met in the early days of my immortal journey, had not chosen the path of the rogue. His sect had been demolished by its rivals and he'd fled.

Meeting him on the road as I went into the desert was a fateful encounter. And, I think, I could find him again.

I could travel to that road where he acted as a highwayman with his mortal employers.

The thought stirs in me a longing for companionship and a fulfillment of my nostalgic desires.

But, I won't.

It's a difficult decision for me to make. I think about how I could help him. How I could, with my experience of many decades as an immortal, be the master he took me to be in my youth. And, bring him to higher heights. That he may enter the Violet Horizon sect once more. This time, perhaps, even challenging her for the grandmaster position.

To do all this seems right, seems a matter of finishing what I've started. But, I am on a different path now.

I will not go back to Fire Island to play prisoner. The woman I'd taken for an ascended immortal had viewed me as novel and young. I fear what an ancient immortal such as her would do upon reading my nature. The lengths she would go to to know of the future.

Perhaps my suspicions and fears are unmerited and offensive to my memory of the woman who'd been quite considerate of me. But, the path to immortality is not one for the naive.

I can only hope that Jack finds his way. That, perhaps, he will achieve his dream of entering the Violet Horizon sect without me.

There is too much on my mind.

Too many things are left undone.

"Haha," I chuckle. I find myself on the wanderer's path for the first time in a long time. And, I don't know where I'm going.

No, I realize. I know where I'm going. I just don't know what awaits me when I get there.

The wanderer in the sky is liberated by the absence of the abomination. But, I know that I do not share in that liberation. None of us do.

The night passes serenely. And day takes its place.

The fields and forests are majestic, even from the sky. Little of the land has been cultivated for farming and cities.

As I think of the lessons taught by the Violet Sword academics, I remember the stories of the wars of old. The Age of Desolation.

Humanity had grown beyond counting. Civilizations flourished under the dynastic rule of kings and other feudal lords. But, when ego grows to match numbers. When borders grow beyond constraint. Then it becomes a time for war.

Divine right justified the massing of armies of mortals. The mobilization of great war machines. And, the recruitment of those with supreme power, immortals.

The Age of Giants, where the great sects rose to honor, ended. The immortals' sects turned from screening recruits. They began to steal mortals, forcing them to cultivate or die. All so that they would have more soldiers to sell to the wars of Desolation.

The irony is that the kings who started their greedy wars were not the ones who survived them.

Kingdoms fell, dynasties crumbled, and the immortals rose to be the rulers of this world.

Still, the honor of the giants who'd founded the great sects was gone. Immortals continue to sell their swords, wage petty war on rivals, and conscript the masses to feed the avarice and greed that consumes immortals in our ascendance.

While days on my flying sword pass, I watch the forest fade to plain and plain fade to sandy desert.

Much of the world was not drowned in the blood of countless armies during the Age of Desolation. Much of the world was not ripped and sundered under the blast of millions of chi bombs. But, one such place retains the scars of ancient battles.

The desert by the Saur Sea that I once crossed with Jack is a great wound in the spirit world.

My vision was weak as I passed through this land before, my eyes turned to the heavens.

I could not see the vortices of ripped space as I see them now.

It baffles me how oblivious I was in my youth.

The desert itself is much as I remember it. Hot, dry, and covered in quartz crystal.

A smile touches my lips as I think of the plan that's been forming in my mind since I left my village.

It will take time. It always does. But I can envision a great array, beyond what I achieved in the Violet Sword sect.

I continue deeper into the Desert of Desolation. My consciousness expands out to the horizon as I watch for any signs of life.

On the first day, I find no mortals walking this desert land. In the second, I find none. But, on the third day, I feel them.

Curiosity gets the better of me and I fly in close. There is no concern for being spotted as I can see from a great distance. And, few look to the skies without cause.

What I see when I arrive is little more than a campsite.

Dozens of people tend to their daily needs. And, camels chew dry weeds that've been gathered for them.

There are tents, both large and small, that seem easy to pick up and move.

It's simply a desert tribe.

I smile, just people.

With little concern left, I turn to the direction I'd been headed.

Days pass as I search for a suitable location. One where I won't be intruded upon.

Eventually, I settle down on the sandy ground.

For the first time in two weeks, I sit and cultivate.

With the sun still high in the sky, I sit in the lotus position and absorb the Yang energies of the sun.

A lesson I learned so long ago stirs in my mind. To balance the Yin energies of night, which I cultivate through the stars, with the Yang energies of the day and the sun.

Too often, I forget that even the constellations of the heavens cannot compare with that great star that reigns supreme during the day.

I feel my body warm as the Yang energy flows into my dantian, my energetic core. And from my dantian, the energy flows to the shen of my consciousness.

I begin to interpret the will of the sun.

For as unchanging as the sun seems to the eye of mortal and immortal alike, it is not so to me.

The great star is temperamental and raging. It is through the sun's rage that we find warmth. It is a flame of such profundity that, I realize, I will never come close to understanding.

But, the Yang of the giant speaks to its will for dominance. For mastery.

I realize that the sun does not care for mastery over me or the humans that populate this world. It seeks to conquer itself. And to draw in the celestial body of Gaia, my world.

There is a sort of courtship between the sun and the world. A longing. And, jealousy.

The moon is softer than the sun. Feminine and gentle whereas the great star is masculine and demanding. It's not hard for me to see why Gaia favors the moon.

But, nothing can live without the sun. Its power brings life and the spirit world swims with echoes of its power.

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As I meditate, I absorb ever more energy. And as the essence of Yang meets my shen, my consciousness, I feel my dao grow. A longing grows in me. A desire for control.

Before I realize it, the scant few hours of the day fall away. The constellations spawn into the heavens. And the Yin replaces the Yang.

I feel my desire for control abate.

As I look to the heavens, I remember that I am not alone. That many stories had been told before I began to read. And that many of those stories have yet to find their ending.

The knight dances in confusion and brings joy back to the crone. It has been so long since she was spurned by the noble knight. And, now she finds amusement in watching him fight an enemy that is no longer there.

The student is unrestrained in her expanding importance to the story of the heavens, her appetite for learning replacing that of the abomination.

The merchant grows fearful of and violent with the slave, who begins to plan his revenge.

The immortal and the sage have long known their path and place in the heavens. While the immortal hoards up his knowledge, the sage shares it with the eager student.

And the wanderer…. The wanderer is unsure. For so long, the abomination waited down every path the wanderer took. But now, only the void remains where that beast once dwelled.

Something, I think as I look into the void, is odd.

At first, I believed that the only change was that the abomination had fallen from its place. But, the emptiness that remains is not the same as nothingness.

When one stares into the abyss, the abyss stares back into them. I feel as if I'm looking into the eyes of another. But, more than another…. Many.

A shiver courses through me and I look away.

The night continues in quiet contemplation, the Yin balancing the Yang.

As dawn breaks upon the sandy dunes, I begin my task.

Were I a mortal, the task would be impossible. The moving of tons of quartz crystal sand from one place to another. But, even as an immortal the task is challenging.

I have control of my soul body, an extension of my form through the aether. With it, I can pick up and move things at a distance.

Were I an ascended immortal, my soul body would manifest far larger than it presently is.

As I grow as a lower immortal, sealing the cracks in my soul stone, I will expand my soul body tremendously. But, as yet, I've only spent a few months gathering the chi needed to mend my energetic core.

Thus, I'm only able to pick up the loose sand a few hundred pounds at a time.

The work will consume me for many days. But, I'm an immortal. Time is something I have on my side.

The beginning of the flower of life array starts as a simple circle. This will be the focal point of the energy harvested by the grid.

Soon, I realize the difficulty of working with sand in a desert. The shifting winds scatter my circles as I form them.

What I need to do is create a bulwark against the wind.

It will reduce the space I can work in. But, I need to do it.

As I labor to clear a space, I find that it's much easier to push sand than to pick it up. Allowing me to make great progress in building walls around my array.

Time and again, the wind scatters my work. But, I'm unconcerned.

The day ends and so do my labors.

Even though it is alone, I have a spirit circle that I can lie down in.

I act as the thought around which spirit, represented by the circle, forms containment.

The improvement in my cultivation is marginal. The spirit circle creates a hole into which the chi of heaven and earth sinks. And, as the center of that hole, I can absorb the energy with ease.

The heavens tell their stories while I calmly absorb the mana of this world.

The day begins with frustration. None of the work from the day before amounted to anything. The walls sloped into my workspace with impunity.

I find myself growing angry. This inanimate dust doesn't obey me!

It takes me a moment, to realize that the anger is not entirely my own. The Yang of the sun is affecting my consciousness, my shen. It's shaping my behavior in ways I'm not used to.

I settle down to meditate as I wonder at this change that's come over me.

I dive into my memories of the time before.

In my youth, I cultivated the cosmic dao. But, I wasn't arrogant. At least I don't feel that I was.

By all rights, with a lifetime of experience, I should be better able to grow this time.

And yet, I find myself egoistic. It's embarrassing for an ascended immortal to act so childish.

Realization dawns on me. It is for the very reason of my experiences as an ascended immortal that I'm so arrogant now.

My mind is old, but my soul is young.

The impulses of youth combined with the expectations of age. It's a recipe for disaster.

"Hah," I sigh. I'd thought I'd have an easier time cultivating. But, now I realize how naive that assumption was.

I stand and resume my work, my body growing heated by the ever-present Yang energy. It grows to the point where I consider restricting my absorption of chi. Even immortals can feel hot.

But, as I consider this course of action, I sense the effect of the Yang on my soul body. My aetheric limbs are growing just as heated as my physical body.

It was never really a lesson, just a passing bit of trivia I learned in the Violet Sword sect. Glass is made by heating and melting sand.

I was told that not all sand can make proper glass. But, the thought inspires me.

It's not a skill that I've seen employed much in my time as an immortal, the creation of heat through chi. Most immortals are more concerned with refining sword ki or exploding air with chi bombs. But, the principle is there.

As I move tons of sand back into the wall I'd formed, I channel the sun's energy into my soul body and slowly, at first, the sand grows molten.

The red-hot sand slides down as a puddle and I reapply my soul body to force the glass into a shape of my choosing.

It takes longer than I like to solidify, so I manifest the cooling effect of the Yin energies I've absorbed. And the glass rapidly hardens.

What's left, when I release my soul body, is a pillar of translucent black glass. It catches the light, but can't be seen through.

I smile in satisfaction. I've succeeded. With this, I can start building the walls in earnest.

As I begin to work with glass, I wonder about the applications to my crystal grid.

The day carries on as I make a good chunk of the wall around the space I plan to work with.

Before I settle in for the night, I melt my sand circle into glass.

Excitement comes over me as I lie in it. But, that excitement cools readily. The spirit circle is inert. It neither helps nor hinders my cultivation.

With a sigh, I lift the glass and cast it over to the work pile.

"Hmm," I think as I mound up a circle of sand.

Perhaps I can apply the lessons I've taken from blacksmithing to this task.

In making a flying sword, I folded the metal while, simultaneously, imbuing chi into it. I trapped the energy and made it into a receptacle for greater amounts of chi. If I can imbue the glass I make with chi then, maybe, I'll be able to create a sort of spirit glass that can absorb the chi of heaven and earth.

It strikes me that I've never heard of such a concept in the cultivation world. But then, few even considered the use of arrays.

The night's meditation progresses and I see one more of the cracks in my soul stone mend. In all the months that I've been cultivating, I've only sealed a handful of the many fissures that populate my soul stone.

Somehow, I expect that number to grow soon.

The days become weeks as dust turns to hard walls. The task of building walls around my space grows to melting a, mostly, flat floor on which I will create my array.

The more I work, the more work I realize there is to do.

My progress with Spirit Glass is surprisingly good. But, I come to realize that not all spirit glass is made equal. The making of the glass is an art and science all its own.

I can't force the spirit glass to cool like I would the walls and floor. It takes coaxing the chi into staying. Too hot, it boils out. Too cold, the membrane shatters and the chi escapes.

In terms of quality, I'm making common spirit glass if I make any at all.

It took me many years to become capable of crafting a perfect cultivation pill. And I've yet to make a superior sword even with decades of practice.

The successes I do experience are precious.

What spirit glass I make is formed into misshapen blobs. I find myself grateful for my solitude, lest anyone see my poor aesthetic.

When I have enough of the unique resource, I shape the spirit circle.

As I lie in the circle of spirit glass, I can feel the gravity well that activates when I manifest as thought into the spirit. It's quite profound. Incomparable to the jeweled arrays I made in Violet Sword. But, very profound for the current me.

I'm not a spider on its web. Just a man in a hole. The chi of heaven and earth seeks to fill that hole. But, so long as I stay in it, the hole will never be filled.

I breathe in and out. In with the light and out with the dark. I feel my karma escape me if only a little bit.

The heavens are largely joyful. I know the crone is happier than she's been in ages.

My eyes try to avoid the abyss lest it know I'm thinking of it.

As the, largely straight, walls rise round my platform, I clear off the dunes that surround it.

What's left glimmers in the desert sun.

It's more ominous than I would like, with translucent black standing in stark contrast to the tan of the dunes nearby.

It's not that large, a few hundred feet in length and width. Nothing compared to what I envisioned on the way from my village. But, I think, I will have time to expand it.

Now comes a more challenging task, the crafting of spirit glass. And lots of it.

Days and weeks are trifling things to an immortal. And, months are just the cost one pays for growth.

Even years and decades become irrelevant to older immortals.

I only knew the one ancient immortal and I've no idea what her age was. But, the oldest ascended immortal of Violet Sword, that I was aware of, was less than 500 years old.

It's not that there is such a thing as being too old in the immortal world. Rather, it is that the chances of being killed in conflict are high. Most lower immortals die before they reach a century in age.

If I don't want to end up like so many others, I must become more powerful.

I breathe in the chi of heaven and out my pollution. Time and again, I cycle between incorporation and expulsion.

My chi, my dao, my karma. Everything that makes me who I am becomes new. I am not who I was. I am something new with every moment that passes.

During the day I make spirit glass and at night I lie in my growing array.

The amount of chi I harvest grows with every circle I make. The flower is growing into a web.

I anticipate being the spider in that web. Growing fatter, figuratively speaking, on the chi of heaven and earth.

But, my thoughts turn to the past. Even as I perfect my array, I realize that there is one component I can never substitute for. My other half.

The irony of pining for a relationship that's never existed is not lost on me. But, I can't deny my memories.

A daoist partnership is an intimacy that transcends the physical. And, to truly complete the array, I need a daoist partner. The Yin to my Yang. Female to my male.

If cultivating by myself is like forging a sword, then cultivating with my pair would be like watching a garden blossom.

I know that I can have it again.

"Hah," I sigh. Such thoughts are irrelevant. What matters is what I can do now.

As the weeks pass, I become conscious of them. Mortals.

I'd thought I had come to a remote enough part of the desert. But, I was wrong.

They've set up camp just out of range of my altar.

I wonder what they think of the stranger in their lands with his dark altar.

Likely, they have similar thoughts as the people of Fire Island. That I'm a lunatic immortal.

But, if they think that, why would they set up camp so close to me?

Such questions might be answered soon. I sense one of them approaching.

I turn from my work and watch a figure cross the wide expanse of desert to come before my altar.

They stop in their tracks when they see my form observing them.

It's a woman. Not beautiful. But, not ugly. Rather, she looks hardened by a lifetime of trial.

Still, as strong as she looks, she appears shaken and fearful in her approach.

I continue to observe until she's close enough to speak without yelling.

Her eyes are on the structure I'm building. A look of confusion and wonder, with not a little bit of fear, is upon her face.

I wait, unhurried.

"Your Excellency," she manages not to stammer.

I nod my head, "Hello."

She swallows, "I have a message from my tribe."

I wait.

"Ahem," she clears her throat before continuing. "We offer tribute to the immortal."

I feel confused.

"Why?"

She swallows again. "We recognize you as lord of this region and wish to offer our allegiance."

I frown.

"I'm not lord of this area. You have no reason to offer me tribute."

A challenging look appears on her face.

"Your Excellency, we need your help."

A chuckle escapes me.

"Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to ask an immortal for help?"

Her face sours, "We will give you what you request of us. But, the situation is…. beyond us."

I sigh, I'm not in the habit of playing hero.

"What do you want?"

She looks relieved that I'll at least hear her out.

She meets my eyes and says, "We want you to kill the sorceress."