Twin suns danced across a purple expanse, illuminating the majestic sprawl of Lingyang’s lucky layers; hues of pale bright stained bricked streets, clinging to dress of silk and hemp, highlighting disparities and cookfires - as capital of the Lingyi Empire, the riverside city was suitably grandiose, housing tens of millions within walls and towers of mountainous height. Faintly reflective, each of the outward faces descended from yellow to red. Ancient were the sanguine stains of the latter, whereupon engraved dragons and demons warred beside men of stone. Untouched by wind or assault, they were marvels of the First Firmament; and the eyes held within the emotion of their final moments, such was the faithful recreation’s detail.
In the southeastern quarter of the city, warriors dressed in armour of Cloud-Snake scale stood in whitened solidarity, occupation stretched across the width of an otherwise empty road. Their faces were masked by heroic visages, fiercely coloured and triple-eyed (and otherwise decorated by childish etchings). One and all, they were servants and guards to the youth but three steps behind their mass of twenty. Seated atop a floating palanquin, their charge was silhouetted by purple silks, personage unmarked save for the wealth of their traversal. Food aplenty trailed at their back, carted by yet more guards.
All knew them to be untouchable. For the Tiger Lord of Ten-Thousand Peaks, whose influence was equalled by a mere six across the First Firmament, was their father. Few in the city of Lingyang were so daring as to breathe in their direction, no matter the child’s generosity. Fewer still were those capable of surviving such, if done improperly.
In the eighth and lowest of the city’s layers, the small collective was made more remarkable for the strength of their refinement: with consolidated cores, the guards were in the sixth stage of the Mortal Realm, while their charge skipped merrily through the fourth; the thousands who had strayed from their path were invariably rooted in the first of the realm’s nine, tempering their bodies to unknown endings. Thusly, they were gems and swords of surpassing steel amongst forgotten refuse. Stood opposite them was a woman in horribly disrepaired armor of plate and hide, hair curtaining down her back like a sea of bloodied cinnamon. She was fair and proud, with amber eyes dulled by exasperation - severe was the cast of her features, accentuated by a trio of simple cuts, thin and pale, drawn between her chin and the bottom of her left cheek.
“Young Master,” she greeted, voice echoing plainly.
“Big Sister Yufei,” chimed the veiled child, silhouette shuffling in place. “Did you find what you’ve been looking for, down in the Lowlands?” Qi snaked past their palanquin’s coverings to poke the woman’s sternum, unseen but felt in featherlight fashion.
Yufei pressed her lips tight at the inexorable inspection, then grimaced as disappointment whined past the child’s throat.
“You did it again! You broke your cores!” The accusation was emphatic, and several were the present guards who winced, masks and shoulders twitching - though, not for the youth’s volume. Propriety was outside their purview. Instead, the fault lay with the subject matter.
Across the First Firmament, cultivation was upheld as the ultimate ideal. It was the axis upon which social mobility was actualized, the vessel through which material and mystical strength were attained, the means by which righteous immortality and enlightenment were begat. No process was so ubiquitously practiced or highly held as the refinement of self - and Yufei had shattered herself, straying from Heaven: she had rendered her person mortal in every sense of the word. For a sixth time.
Reversing the consolidation, concentration, and formation of her cores, inviting impurities into her body, flushing her meridians of their amassed qi and so blinding herself to the world’s rhythms - it was antithetical heresy of the most insane order, and in all the Lingyi Empire’s history, she was alone in doing so. Mortals toiled for decades and centuries in the hopes they might reach the heights she continuously discarded. They fought through hunger, thirst, fatigue, and the knowledge they were impotent.
To say the guards were repulsed by Lingyang’s most wretched pariah was a grave understatement. Many of them compared her existence to that of a revenant; a hungry echo of atrocity doomed to know neither mortal sense nor mercy. How else could she continually mutilate herself so?
The opinion of their charge was another matter entirely. Silhouette shaking from side to side, they shot to standing with a remonstrative shout, arms flaring out.
“Stop breaking your cores!” they demanded, to which Yufei shook her head.
“I refuse.”
“Well-well I desist!”
Windshorn and pink, Yufei’s lips curved into a smile. “Insist, Young Master. You ‘insist’ I stop breaking my cores. Which I won’t.” There was an audible pout from behind the veil as the addressed fell back into sitting.
“I knew that,” they muttered mulishly in reference to the correction, ignorant of the rising tension in their guards.
“Of course you did,” Yufei conceded, unbowed before the threat of expressed displeasure; for she was no danger, and her words were more kind than not.
Shuffling forward in their floating palanquin, the silhouetted child whispered, “Will you tell me why, at least?”
“Were I allowed, certainly. But your father’s edicts exist for a reason, Young Master. Moreover, even if I were the sort who reveled in base defiance, I would not risk raising his ire.” She grinned, flashing her teeth. “Not for nothing is considered Master of the West; there is not a whisper in all of Lingyang he is not privy to.” There was another, more blatant shift behind the veil before a softening silence swept across the street for short seconds.
“...Are you sure you can’t tell me?”
“Quite, ” Yufei replied. “I respect your father too much to inflict my learnings upon your journey; the path I walk is a narrow one unfit for others.”
“That’s silly, Big Sister.”
“So it is,” she agreed with a shrug. “But such is our lot in life. If you desire otherwise, your avenues are obvious.”
“Hmm?” The child’s hum was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
Yufei refocused, knowing this to be her chance at disengagement; unlike previous iterations of their conversations, she'd not be bogged down for hours. Thus, she spent several minutes forcefully relating what she thought were self-evident answers to the Young Master of the West. She spoke of strength and exploration, and the building of mutual respect. Gently, she told of their importance for one who yearned for change. In return, her junior grew tired, veiled frame lolling as minutes passed and the street remained empty. In the further reaches of Lingyang, work and leisure sounded in the background. Eventually, between one word and the next, the youth tilted face first into the downy bed of their resting place. Glimmering blue and silver, their richly wrought palanquin then stole away alongside the silent retinue.
Watching as much, Yufei wondered when next they would meet; with the Young Master’s mounting curiosity, she half-expected to find them floating beside her home one day. Between this third visit and the first, they had grown noticeably more invested in learning of her processes and goals. Since it simply would not do for careless words to earn an extended stay in the Prison Tower, Yufei remained oblique in her tellings. To do otherwise… not without assurances from the Tiger Lord of Ten-Thousand Peaks; a feat she knew to be improbable, and not only because of her standing. While her knowledge of the Heaven Realm was crude, she knew enough: the Master of the West was unmoving. More besides, he was not readily accessible to any but his progeny, discounting disasters and the deathly ill.
Stomach protesting her lack of sustenance with a dull rumble, Yufei clicked her tongue. Like the Young Master’s interest, her hunger was troubling, but only in the vaguest of terms, and not immediately so either.
Rounding into a nearby alleyway, she meandered towards the southernmost edge of Lingyang’s eighth layer, her greaves finally falling apart wholesale under the sudden stress. Wrapping her hair into a tight bun, she ignored the clattering loss and reflected that for one so privileged and strong, the Young Master’s innocence remained surprisingly sheltered. It was both endearing and worrying they were eleven and still so terribly kind. In all her years, she had never seen their like exceed a century; to die young was forever a shame, moreso when the victim of age or circumstance perpetuated good.
Yufei breathed a sigh, disgust scrunching her nose as she considered the latter cause. Circumstance, a much cleaner mode of address for betrayal.
The tragedy of allies fallen from righteousness was unfortunately common in the journey to immortality; there were only so many resources and talents. And greed… it was the motivating factor in far too many avoidable conflicts. She sniffed, gaze straying to the clouds gathering above the city’s walls. Grey threatening to blacken, frayed like pulled threads, they mirrored her feelings on the matter.
Occasionally dangerous inquiries aside, Yufei hoped for true the Young Master’s outlook on life suffered not an ignoble death.
Her lips pulled into a wry smile, flashing pearly whites for the scarcest of seconds. Exiting the alley, she sighted comers and goers. As per usual, the black-haired masses avoided her - some went so far as to run away, screams contained by clasped hands. Shutters fell and doors closed as Yufei walked by, and still the air was thick with busied noise.
She wondered what their multitudes would say, if they knew of her capacity for compassion. They and their fathers, and their father’s fathers thought her a crazed witch, doomed to become a Revenant of untold avarice and starvation. Would it shatter their worldview, to know her self-destruction served to enhance her understanding of cultivation and its mechanisms? Yufei thought it unlikely and altogether unimportant, but the question still occurred as the day grew dark with shadow, thunder beckoning mutedly.
In her full years, she had not been deaf to their whispers. Her small legend had grown cruel. If not for her patrons amongst the various sects occupying the Lingyi Empire, she would have been excised from the city several times over by the uninformed and superstitious.
Yufei frowned, remembering the lessons she was due to give on the morrow.
‘...the Blazing Heart Sect’s prodigy,’ she recalled, the downturn of her lips flattening unhappily at her potential gaffe. Of all the downsides - and there were many - that came with unraveling one’s cultivation, she most hated the loss of acuity and how unruly her hair grew; the latter’s thick shine and sleek richness were gone, while the rivers of her mind were reduced to trickling streams.
A strand of bloodied cinnamon fell across Yufei’s face.
“How irritating,” she muttered to herself.
~ X ~
The city of Lingyang was fashioned with wealth and luck in mind; eight encircling layers, eight canals, eight sects, eight entrances, eight towers, eight barriers, eight theatres, eight farms. Prosperity was the foundation upon which seated emperors combatted the threat of revenants and worse besides. With such thinking a driving force, rations and water were readily available for all and sundry at heavily fortified storehouses and courtyards. So too was good living the impetus behind a competitive peace between sects; a rarity most treasured by the city’s inhabitants; outside the capital, schools seeking immortality oft fought to the detriment of their decided lessers.
Yufei satiated her hunger at one of the courtyards on her way home. Helmed by members of the Silent River, she was greeted cordially, contrasting before and since; the benefits of long exposure and prodigal daughters improved.
Waterskin in hand, mouth filled with vegetables and millet, Yufei walked beside the babbling canal which wove through the city’s south in winding fashion. She was idly aware of the continued avoidance her presence wrought, while focused on following the luminescence of her bricked path. The sky had grown thick with clouds, slaying the twinlight of day – too soon, the sound of fighting drew her from the water.
“Bow before your daddy, Cheng Chi!”
“You dare, Dai Shi!”
Flesh smacked against flesh. Stone cracked.
Yufei huffed an exasperated sigh, for the shouting’s location meant she had overshot her destination - and so she jogged back from whence she came, east beneath trees and vines, stepping around homely houses and smoking fires. Pork teased her as she went, and music quieted with her passing. Then came a smattering of empty lots all but laid against a blank and perfectly smooth stretch of Lingyang’s mountainous wall. Alone in their center were three homes of wide breadth, sidled by gardens, fronted by a well. They were sturdy constructions, wood and stone meant to house generations.
Clashing with rocks in one hand and fists made of the other were Yufei’s neighbours. They danced between the well and their abodes, moving with the swiftness of horses, striking with the strength of bulls. Their ragged clothing was scuffed by dirt and their shouts unceasing. Lit by the light of a single torch, they looked like demons birthed from shadow
Dai Shi and Cheng Chi - fourteen and gangly, brown of hair and possessed of bold features, they might have been twins in another life. At the third stage of the Mortal Realm - otherwise known as Body Purification - they had reached physical excellency and so opened their meridians in the process of accessing the dantians three: head, heart, and stomach. All but the most pigheaded of sects would consider them prized disciples. Yufei knew more than a few elders who would sacrifice a hand and foot for the honour of raising them to the limits of their potential.
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…if only they had more than a single grain of sense between them, they might be presently so and far further along the path of refinement.
Yufei supposed their distinct lack had made them brave enough to approach her all those years ago - and what a welcome change to her schedule that had been; then, of course. Now?
Now, their stubborn refusal to join one of Lingyang’s most potent powers posed a problem to both she and they. Indeed, Chi and Shi were swiftly approaching the point where their proximity was going to cause issues for her cultivation, to say nothing of the inefficiencies they were inflicting upon themselves. While Yufei could cavort about the first stage wheresoever she wished, her needed variant of the second required neutral environs. She was not looking to elementally align herself - an impossibility whilst her bumbling students lived so near, slinging mud and fire. Unless she herself moved away, they would have to leave.
…regarding their wasted days, the pair of youths would flourish with consistent guidance she was simply incapable of providing. It was a great shame they were so thick in the skull; a little sense went a long ways, and their journeys would be lengthy indeed if she had any say in the matter.
“Boys!” she shouted, and the pair paused. Silence reigned for one, two, three-
“Teacher!” they returned, dropping their rocks and leaping past the well to land before her.
“Chi, Shi,” she greeted, tone edging towards remonstration.
“Are you alright?” they asked, neither paying her reproving self much mind.
Smiling at the freely conveyed exuberance, Yufei shared she was and ruffled their hair. The former leaned into her touch, the latter away. Both scowled boyishly as if she hadn’t raised them up from uneducated five-year-olds into respectable citizens.
“Come,” she said, striding towards her home of several decades; there were lessons to be learnt, and stubborn mindsets to embattle. “I wish to wash.”
Wiping her hands ‘clean’ on a pair of proffered rags, leaving her fingers and palms dirtier than they would have otherwise been, Yufei listened intently as the boys took her ensuing silence as an opportunity to speak of recent misadventures. Her smile was suppressed, lest they mistake good humour for encouragement as she opened her door, past which breezed a draft she’d tripped into existence some months prior, back when she was resistant to temperature extremes.
Crystal lights decorated the ceiling, and floral scents tickled the nose most deeply within moments of entry. Yufei stared blankly at her domicile. Discounting the oppressive number of notes and diagrams littering the corners, tables, and walls, the inside of her home was clean. Yes, there was a family of particularly tiny mice in the west, scurrying about the innards of the structure - and they regularly feuded with the family in the east, but only ever with squeaks and rude gestures. Collectively, they’d learned to keep the space tidied. There were no rooms, leaving the space exceedingly large while killing the concept of privacy. Her food stores were located past a latch covered in sheaves, while her bathing area was similarly situated.
‘Damn…’ Yufei sighed, having forgotten the state of her accommodations. It had been years since she’d last needed more than the occasional bite of street food, let alone a bath.
…she wouldn’t be able to reorganize her home anytime soon, and asking the boys to participate in cleansing was a disaster waiting to happen.
“Chi, Shi, whose house is dirtiest?”
“His,” claimed Chi, leaving his friend to shrug shamelessly beneath Yufei’s exasperated stare.
“He’s not wrong.” Shi scratched at his ear, flaking bits of mud into the air. Chi slapped his shoulder and wordlessly pointed at the ground. Yufei shook her head at the former’s sudden regret, vaguely amused.
Some minutes later, the three of them were laughing, full and gathered about a tub.
“Now, boys,” Yufei started, settling against the water’s edge with crossed arms. She took stock of their attentive expressions and nodded to herself, carefully meeting their gazes. “Before we begin, what can you tell me of the nearby grasslands?”
“They’re rich in wild grains and nomads… and the Strong River filters through them.” Chi drew circles in the bathwater, gathering detritus into a dense ball. “I think there’s mogwai there, too?”
“True. We get much of our meat and grain from the nomads, and the Strong River does indeed have connected tributaries. Shi?”
“Mm… They’re where a pair of Qi Infusing cultivators died, right? That’s why the soil there is so rich - because their uncontrolled qi flooded the area? I think they were aligned with water.”
“Also true. They were elders of Silver Lake City and the Silent River.” Yufei flashed him a thankful smile as he reheated the tub. Groaning, she rubbed at her eyes while stifling an unwanted yawn pulsing against her jaw and ribs. Not for the first time, she was reminded being wholly mortal was an irritating shock to the senses.
Rubbing her collarbone, the eldest of the assembled trio posited a question. “Knowing this, why do you think I reversed my cultivation there, specifically?”
“Well, Teacher,” Shi hummed, gaze distractedly affixed to the spear which lay inert against the washroom’s wall; a gift from years past, the weapon was meant for warriors grown.
Imagining his brother in all but blood wielding such on battlefields belonging to the future, he went on: “I know you’ve regressed at the Mountain of Mourning, Drumbeat Forest, Sunstruck Canyon, the Undercity, and the Floating Sword Palace…” he trailed off, waggling raised fingers, looking at his friend bemusedly.
“You cycled through the elements; water, wood, fire, earth, metal,” Chi finished the thought with dawning comprehension. His brow crinkled and his teeth found the flesh of his lower lip. “But why? You don’t gain anything from undoing your cultivation in a specific environment… do you?” His face pinched - at his side, Shi frowned and frictiously flicked a lick of flame into the air with his thumb. Dour eyes followed the arcing element and widened.
“Wait, is that why you keep regressing - to see what happens in the moment of breakage?” he hurried, voice crackling.
Yufei smiled proudly at the pair before speaking in confirmation of their thoughts. Silence settled in the wake of her words.
“You are dissatisfied with the reveal,” she observed of her students. Receiving muted nods from both Chi and Shi, her mouth settled into a thoughtful moue.
Water sloshed as she stood with sudden strength, hair pattering sloughed water. Her students dutifully dried and dressed her. Exiting the washroom and seating herself on a comfortable cushion, Yufei combed cinnamon strands and asked, “What do you think the most dangerous stage is for a cultivator of the Mortal Realm?”
“The seventh: Core Destroying,” her students chorused as they joined her on the floor, the both of them unbothered by the unforeseen asking.
“Just so,” Yufei confirmed, exhaling staled distaste, clicking her tongue.
“To allay your concerns regarding my expended efforts, know I have been studying how offloaded qi affects the world around it. The first cycle, I did so with aligned energies. Now I aim to repeat my feat with neutrally faceted accumulations.” Through a yawn, she affirmed, “My goal in all this has been to see if I can reduce the dangers inherent to Core Destroyers. Life is lethal enough without the pernicious menace of self-wrought devastation. Admittedly, my work is a small echo of the later stage’s full effects, but such are the available tools.”
Chi’s mien grew contemplative. “That’s why you’ve been reversing your cultivation? Not because you possess some Heaven-defying technique? I always thought…”
“It sounds like there’s more to it,” Shi added, frowning.
“Because there is; the speed at which I refine myself has grown by leaps and bounds, as I work in accordance with Heaven.” Yufei’s lips curved languidly, her focus settling on Chi. “And I have never encountered a technique as you describe. If I had, I cannot imagine it would be worthwhile; what are we if not souls seeking the sublime?” The question needed no answer, and so the boys impatiently awaited her continuance.
Sightlessly stealing the knife Shi was in the midst of producing from the folds of his robe, Yufei waved it reprovingly and said, “As for why I have dedicated nigh on a century to the aforementioned goal, it is quite simple: my mother, father, brother, and husband all fell to Core Destroying’s most grievous danger: their surroundings.” The interaction between their released qi and the world’s had birthed lethal consequences in every instance.
Compassion writ itself across her student’s faces, and Yufei felt a comforting wellness cloak itself across her shoulders. It smelled of petrichor and woodsmoke.
“It is a sad tale,” she acknowledged, smile small on her face. “However, it is an old one, and the two of you are aged enough to know.” Setting Shi’s knife aside, she took hold of her students’ hands and spoke; and as words trailed from her lips, as her fingers plied their callouses, she felt the weight of her years. Chi and Shi… so young and strong. Invincible in their seeming. They were not as she.
Gently, Yufei whispered, “I would not have you or any others suffer the same. Not if I can help it,” once her tale was ended. Comforting seconds then turned into companionable minutes, before whispering into a curt question.
“Can we help you?” Chi inquired.
Yufei smiled enigmatically, teeth bared in the way of blades.
~ X ~
The body was made stronger by dint of cultivation. Skin grew supple, the organs efficient, the bones resistant. It was a gradual and undeniable process furthered by qi, and as she attempted to cut through the hair of her students with a mundane knife, Yufei wondered if the various Matriarchs and Patriarchs of Lingyang left their hair so long because of each strands steely strength.
“Teacher, this isn’t working.”
Shi concurred with his friend, grunting unhappily as his partially trimmed locks were pulled and sawed at in agonizingly slow fashion by the dulled edge of his knife.
Yufei sighed, blade embedded into the floor with a flick of her wrist. Looking at the mess she’d made of Shi’s head, she felt amused guilt twitch the edges of her lips; it was a lopsided, jagged style. Not at all respectable amongst scholars, soldiers, or warriors keen.
“Alright, new plan,” because in the wake of her ringing answer of some minutes prior, her boneheaded students decided they would race their way to the fifth stage of the Mortal Realm before providing ‘aid’ Yufei knew would never come.
The pair would use the resources of a sect to accomplish as much, or so they claimed. As such, she preferred they look presentable for the introduction she would be making. However…
Hair. Cutting edges. Wholly mortal body. “Chi, fetch me Shi’s sword.”
“Yes, Teacher,” and as the boy sprang away to follow her order, his seated sibling-student yawned lethargically. Twirling his knife in hand, Shi cast a questioning look at Yufei, dark eyes alert.
“You don’t think we’ll go through with it,” he stated, sounding peeved. Yufei ran her fingers through his uneven hair, gently scratching at his scalp.
“No, I don’t,” she admitted. “Reversing your cultivation is perilous. Foolhardy without inexplicable luck to start with. You will have reasons aplenty to keep growing stronger by the time you reach the fifth stage.”
“You can’t know that for sure. Chi and I could ignore-” Yufei brought an end to his thinking with a thunking flick. Her student huffed his displeasure at being interrupted while she resumed her ministrations, his freshly washed hair silken against her fingers.
“But I do: I know for certain that you and Chi will forge new friendships, find love, and learn there is more to life than this sleepy stretch of Lingyang. And do not swear you will protect me henceforth instead of fulfilling your potential! I have told you time and time again, my patrons have kept me well protected for decades now.” More besides, she had only just gotten them to agree their leaving was mutually beneficial, however slyly.
The clap of distant thunder preempted Shi’s response: Boom! Boom! Boom!
Amber eyes blinked in surprise.
“It seems the skies are in agreement with me, Shi – Shi?” Yufei repeated, her student having failed to reply. Two steps carried her to the boy’s front, where she saw for herself a dreadful catatonia. Dark eyes blown wide, the pupils therein were unseeing. His shoulders were slouched forwards, breath shallow. Rushing to a nearby window, Yufei saw shades of dull gold and perfect white scrawl across a swirling canvas of clouds. Such was their might that day ruptured night.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
‘There’s no rain,’ Yufei noted, an angry chill whispering along her spine. She felt swirling static in the air, and tasted frenzied anticipation on her tongue. Quickly and desperately, she worked towards waking Shi.
It was known those of the Earth Realm and its seven-stepped trio of stages were subject to tribulation borne of Heaven. The vectors and manifestations were legion; nightmares, dragons, injuries - and of their multitudes, it was most famously lightning which came for the strong. Placid occurrences were relegated to misty myth and legend; destruction was the norm.
The swells of qi which accompanied that most violent movement of Heaven were thick and otherwise impossible to encounter, and they drowned those of the Mortal Realm who could sense them. The effects of such could not be understated. As with a lack (or excess) of oxygen for the brain, an influx of supernal qi to a cultivator could drive them to all manner of madness.
Yufei had read of men turning into beasts and women clawing at their lungs. If this was Tribulation Lightning on the verge of showing its face, she knew Lingyang would be lucky to survive unscathed. Of the Heaven Realm their greatest protector might have been, he was not of Heaven true. The city’s barriers would be ripped through like so much straw; an entire layer’s worth of land could well be scoured. Doubtless, hundreds of thousands were experiencing a hellish nirvana. Millions, if she was being realistic.
‘This is why those of the Earth Realm are banned from population centers,’ she snarled, shaking, slapping, stabbing, and screaming at her student to no effect – a familiar impotence dragged at the spirit as much as it did the limbs. Yufei discarded the unneeded feeling between breaths. Resting Shi on his side, the teacher of two sprinted out the doorway. She found Chi collapsed in front of her home, a pale sword in his grip. His state was an unwelcome echoing, down to the dilation of his pupils and unfeeling self. Yufei laid the boys beside one another, dreading the toll this was no doubt taking on the city.
The sheer breadth of services which relied on those of the Mortal Realm - the damage being done was almost inconceivable. Seated between her students, Yufei began combing her hair. In and out, she breathed. Cinnamon knots caught as a thought occurred. From the skies, yet more distant rumbling sounded.
No one - assassin, thief, merchant, or divinely descended shadow - of the Earth Realm could have possibly entered Lingyang without the Master of the West’s knowledge. Not unless they were being provided assistance from another cultivator of the Heaven Realm; an exceedingly unlikely circumstance, for such individuals were invariably severing themselves from the world in parts afar. Yufei’s jaw clenched, unhappy thoughts percolating.
Such meant one of two likelihoods, neither of which appealed. Either the Master of the West did not care, or was inflicted with straits similar to her own. Impotence - Yufei laughed, finding her circumstances the furthest thing from funny as she continued combing.
Behind, outside a window of her own creation, the swirl of clouds concentrated with frightful speed. Whorling over the Central Palace, it buckled with every flashed thunderbolt, of which there were dozens and then hundreds: armour and mace, the former had to give beneath the incessant coming. So it did.
Illuminating the whole of Lingyang for the briefest of instants, a bolt of white-striated power blazed a golden path! The sky cleared of cloudstuff from the thunderbolt’s point of entry for a star-filled league as if evaporated.
Cleaving through shimmering barrier after barrier, the fury of Heaven crashed not a hundred hands from Yufei and her small slice of Lingyang, directly against the city’s mountainous wall; an edifice of unknown age and make, whose mystical enchantments had borne assaults of every kind without once failing. The ancient creation shuddered as it was gored through, groaning like a wounded beast for all of its protectees to hear.
Low and without the crackling of rubble, the sound rumbled a coarse heat across Yufei’s skin, bringing an end to her rote retreat.
‘There’s no thunder,’ was her lamely made observation, comb stilled at the hip, hair left to tumble against her back.
“Teacher?” murmured Chi, his wakeful yawn dragging the word out against his sibling-student’s snores.
Fatigue seeped into the marrow of Yufei’s bones, and was trailed by relief. The gift of her dearest love clattered against the ground. Running a hand through Chi’s neatly dressed hair, she laughed.
When Shi woke, it was to the sound of arguing.
~