Training my Blessing when sparring with others was mostly fun. I had made it clear to people that they could spar with me using weapons. It wasn’t fair otherwise. Getting cut up by Lin Leng and Yu Jie, almost crushed under my own weight by Wei Chow and nearly bisected by Bai Guo had given me more than enough practice in battle regeneration.

It was quick and ugly, regenerating using Chi. It took a tremendous amount, and regularly damaged, I would last probably ten minutes. In a single duel, that was ideal. After all, like the old saying went, you should see the other guy.

No matter how much they hurt me, as long as I could hurt them back, I could piece myself back together and remain with an advantage. Weakened, it didn’t matter how much Chi your opponent had.

But the climate made it difficult to spar for too long. Having to disrobe to single layers, ignoring the bitter chill, was something better done in warmer environs, but still, Kunlun would not be a warm place.

So we did our best whenever we could. The snow had eventually gone from a tiny drizzle to a full-on snow-fall, white covering the sky as it padded the ground beneath us near endlessly. Lightening proved to be king when traversing these plains. The stress had caused Yu Jie to become motivated enough to learn how to make Chi pads.

Meanwhile, the Monk strode over the snow like he had no weight whatsoever, smiling eagerly at us, no doubt providing himself as an example for what the others should be able to do. On our first night, I pulled out a hill of materials that Deng Ming had made me pack, and we were busy constructing ‘yurts’.

The big tents proved more than warm enough to keep us asleep, three different tents. I slept with Yu Jie alone, and the scholar and the Monk slept in one. The rest slept in the third one.

In dawn, we packed up and proceeded on ahead, traversing the endless plains, following the sun and the stars with Deng Ming hard at work plotting us a course. We held one sparring session a day, where everyone was supposed to fight everyone else at least once.

I never lost.

Still, my style was problematic. For one, if I ever met someone who was stronger than me, with vastly more Chi than I had, then even whittling them down slowly would be an exercise in futility. They would beat the Chi out of me, and I would be barely able to make a dent in them. For that, technique was king. I never forgot Mentor’s lessons, still wondering where she was. Movement was still a thing I was mindful about, still sometimes feeling the phantom agony of movement whenever I made an inefficient motion.

I had a good reason to thank her. After all, I was strong now. Very strong. It probably had to do with my Complete Yang Body. Mentor said I was natural at healing myself, having done so after I had broken my bones in prison. She said that she had only set my bones, and that I had done the rest, but I never really believed it until the Dragon of the East had gone to town on me.

I had woken up stronger. Fighting Monkey, I had come back stronger. As long as I still had life left in me, I would come back stronger. It was just the way of things. Break a bone, and it would heal stronger. Put me down, and I would stand up.

We hit the main road eventually, finally exiting constant wilderness. It was there that we saw a carriage in the distance, travelling the exact way we were supposed to. I had us wait by the road, waiting for the carriage to cross. Some indistinct shapes were surrounding the carriage… no, just a mirage.

…no, that didn’t make any sense. Mirages happened in a desert, or in a hot environment, and it usually was an image of water.

I locked into those wavering forms, slowly waiting until I saw it. People. Martial Warriors. They were hanging by the side of the horse-driven carriage, and one at the top, pretending like they couldn’t be seen at all.

“Kang Yilan?” The Monk said with some apprehension.

“Yeah, I see them,” I responded. The carriage eventually stopped beside us. The one who opened the door was a young looking boy. There was no one else around him, and the only other person that had made themselves visible was the carriage driver.

“Why, hello there, travelers! My name is Ren Lin!” He smiled. “Need a ride?”

He was dressed like an aristocrat, but he behaved nothing like them, without that trademark level of annoying confidence and arrogance, the type that could get you killed. Instead, he reminded me more of the Monk, but at least this kid had an excuse to be childish as he probably was one, albeit a taller one.

“Sure,” I said. “If you’d allow us.”

The stage-coach was rather large, long and capable of holding upwards to eight or so people at once, just enough for all of us, though Wei Chow had to lighten a little, or he could use his Blessing and lighten that way.

He welcomed us in easily into the warm environment. Hot coals burned in the middle, a chimney leading the thin smoke out.

He nodded at me, smiling. “You are quite far away from the nearest city, and without any travel supplies, I wonder where you might have come from? Pray tell is there a village nearby?”

“Sure,” I said, nodding. It was thoughtful of him to provide the lie for me, so all I had to say was yes. “We’re heading to…” I pointed to Deng Ming, who picked up the slack.

“Ouyang terminal,” he continued. “From there, we take the highway until Gobi.”

“The Gobi desert?” The young aristocrat’s eyes twinkled. “My, you people sure are the adventurous kind, aren’t you? Pray tell, do you have any stories to regale me with?”

Wei Chow laughed heroically, smacking his chest. “You be looking for me, young man, for I have the most stories of them all!” He began talking about how he had met some nobles, and invited them to a drink after they tried to bully him. Then he talked about how, earlier that day, he had been singing beautifully, mistaken for a handsome man by two women, who upon seeing him, fled the scene. In the brewery with the nobles, he had seen a rather ‘evil’ noble who had the same two women in each arm, holding them in place.

He had, with but a few words, rescued them from their plights, effectively indebting them to him, but he let the debt go without much problem, seeing himself as a chivalrous knight.

The fucking asshole even launched into a song, which the young aristocrat somehow knew. Lin Leng had long-since fallen asleep while the Monk, too, was regaled by the tale. Yu Jie leaned into my shoulder, and I leaned my head on hers, making myself comfortable after the long walk.

“What has set you on the road, young aristocrat?”

His smile dimmed a little. “Jixing was beset by a band of fearsome warriors. My parents had sent me a missive to return to Beijing at once.”

Wei Chow nodded gravely. “Aye, we heard of that unfortunate turn of events. How is the city holding up?”

“All efforts are in place to rebuild the infrastructure,” he said. “But there are refugees leaving, scared of the city now that it had suffered an attack which had left it completely defenseless. Even though it’s not sensible, they are following their first instincts by leaving, and are much like my parents in that way.”

It was cowardly, he was right, but it wasn’t easy to change the way the masses thought about certain things. They could all be so stupid in their shared space of reassurances, an echo-chamber with positive feedback, repeating one idea again a little louder each time someone hears it until it becomes deafening.

I was the devil child for all of my life, and no one had stopped to think that maybe it was their fault that what happened had happened. If the men of my village had been just smart enough to understand that women weren’t their slaves, that they couldn’t just expect my grandmother to bail them out again and again, then I would still have a mother, and maybe just a moderately crappy father whom I could at the very least tolerate and maybe even love, and not the monster in human skin that I got.

People were stupid, and that wouldn’t change anytime soon.

While they talked, I nuzzled Yu Jie subtly. I didn’t want to get too explicit with her, seeing as how we were in front of a stranger, but the urge was there, with her everpresent beauty and radiant personality.

I dreaded the day where she would get tired of me. I knew it would one day come, but I couldn’t quite care since for now, as long as I got to spend a moment more near her, it was worth it.

She nuzzled back, and I knew that I was still accepted by her, for now at least. It was hard to admit to the truth.

Slowly, I fell asleep, dreaming of a giant tree much like the one I had seen in the Divine Garden. A whole different realm, with power that could make my own seem like a horrible trade-off… if I ever went back there to somehow learn from him if there was actually a way to change my soul, I would probably not ask. I was the way I was, and changing myself just to fit in was stupid.

Besides, the Complete Yang Body had its advantages. I would rely on them for now, useful as they were, until a time came where that wouldn’t help me.

000

Shen Zhimei waited patiently, losing herself in the Dharma Protector’s mindless droning. She knew it wasn’t really mindless, but the way he went on and on made it suddenly morph from profound to beautiful gibberish. If Shen Zhimei had been that man, then she would have given up a long time ago. On and on he went, and he had been going on and on for much longer than she had even been alive.

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For over two weeks in the mountain-top manor they had been staying in, he still hadn’t given up on the veritable pipe-dream that was Transcendence.

Eventually, she had gotten enough. “Dharma Protector,” she approached him. He looked up at her from his cross-legged position, waiting patiently for her to speak. “Can you even see the finish line?”

He seemed pensive. “In truth, I see many.” Well, then.

“Okay, so pick one,” she said.

“They’re not right,” he said. “All but one path will lead to instant death, and then rebirth. All my wisdom will have been lost if I rebirth now, and there is no guarantee that I may keep my memories.” That wasn’t true. Powerful beings always kept their memories upon a reincarnation, and the Dharma Protector was nothing if not a powerful being.

Then again, if he thought the paths would lead to death, then that wasn’t really worth it. They needed him yet. He could die later, when Tian Mo had finally been vanquished.

“A hundred and eight paths,” he said. “Seventy-two of which are viable, thirty-six of which are tempting, eight of which are undoubtedly the best candidates for the true path to Transcendence. A one in eight chance.” That… wasn’t very bad, actually.

“Okay, so now you will meditate for another hundred years to narrow it down?” Zhimei proposed.

“In the first one hundred years of my meditation, I had already discovered this,” he explained. “That was four hundred years ago. Nothing new has come of it, the uncertainty still there, never leaving.”

That was harsh. Shen Zhimei had never really cared to pursue Immortality, but it had worked out for her for long enough, seeing the exquisite secrets that the Wulin and the Jianghu held, adventuring for decades upon decades, a life of freedom. Death was just something that the weak shivered in front of, desperately trying to run away from it. Although the Dharma Protector wasn’t running away from death, there was no difference to what he was doing.

He was trying to transcend death and life, to Transcend and achieve Nirvana.

Spurred on by what, exactly? That was for him to say, not that he would ever divulge that. The simple truth was that desire was the one poison he would never purge. Not for as long as he held Nirvana in such a high pedestal.

To be so cruel as to be punished for one’s desire to be righteous, the dharma was a cruel mistress, not that Zhimei would ever say it to him. Out of all the Shaolin monks, the Dharma Protector had killed the most, his hands bloody as can be. He didn’t feel guilty, however. Pious men never felt guilty over something that they deemed was a necessary evil, and the Dharma Protector was still but a man.

The funniest part of this? Even if Zhimei were to tell him of this, he would either fall into despair and give up completely, becoming uglier for it, or he would simply rebuff her and refuse to ruminate upon her words.

A most vexing situation, but at least she could take solace in the fact that she would never put herself through such mental anguish . It wasn’t worth it.

“Whatever you mean to say,” the Wu Lord began from the other side of the lookout. “He has heard it, and indeed, he refuses to listen.”

“Listening to the uninitiated is like drinking water from a puddle on the road,” the Dharma Protector said, his scathing words delivered with such serenity. That practically said everything about how indoctrinated he had become.

“You can’t argue with him,” the Wu Lord continued, chuckling to himself. “You can’t use his own faith against him, and you most certainly cannot give him suggestions. It’s his life, and he shall live it the way he wants to,” the Wu Lord looked up and flashed an arrogant smile at the monk. “How many monks under you achieved Transcendence again?”

Zhimei turned to the Monk, slightly curiously. Immortal Transcendence was not impossible. She had even seen her own mentor go through with it, but it was exceedingly rare. One in a million Martial Warriors could be said to have the potential, and even then, one in a hundred of those would ever actually go on to Transcend. All in all, one in one-hundred million.

“Four,” the monk spoke, his tone serene, but the aura surrounding him murderous. He slowly calmed himself down. “Two brothers and sisters have ascended underneath my purview, all highly pious and obviously more qualified than I am.” The bitterness was loud and clear.

In a way, Zhimei pitied him. The man tried to live a certain way for a certain goal, but at the end of the day, in the very fiber of his being, decided long before he was even born, he simply did not have what it took. Fundamentally, he was just more selfish, and less involved with trying to save others, lecturing from a book that someone wrote so many years ago, and failing to apply those teachings to himself. As cantankerous and annoying the man was, there was probably no one that loathed him as much as he, himself, did. Truly pitiful.

And there was no helping him, either. She walked away from the man to go speak to the Wu Lord. “You obviously don’t seem to like him,” she said after she erected a sound-barrier around them. The Monk could easily penetrate it if he wanted to, but she would notice.

“Self-assuredness is a trait I dislike,” he responded simply. “Pride comes right after.” That was vaguely interesting.

“You know, I’ve heard your stories,” Zhimei said. “The Wu faction was once in discord following the Third Great Martial War. Their leaders were slaughtered, the entire council, as well as the Wu Lord of that age, by a single woman.” Zhimei smiled. “The woman then went to the Rebirth Falls, not to die and reincarnate with her memories, but to recreate herself. A woman entered the falls, and a man exited, declaring himself proudly as the Wu Lord, and has reigned supreme ever since, a man.”

The Wu Lord’s expression was neutral. “If I just wanted to claim the title, I would have done so as a woman without any problem. I had a man’s soul, and now I have a man’s body, so no one can ever question me,” his expression darkened. “I killed every single person who ever knew me as a woman aside from those in this lookout, so that no one could ever bring it up again. You better have had a good reason to do so.”

“Shedding one identity for another, severing oneself,” Zhimei explained softly. “You were on to something, in a way. When you carry a bag for travel, you cut out the unnecessary, and take the rest with you.”

“And?” He asked, still unsatisfied.

“Spiritual Severing,” Zhimei explained. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“…No,” he admitted.

“It shouldn’t,” she replied. “Not anymore. The last person who ever did it and succeeded was my mentor when she Transcended. Do you know what she did right after, with the limited amount of time she still had in this lower realm?” She asked. The Wu Lord said nothing. “She killed every single Martial Warrior who had even heard of Spiritual Severing, and with her boundless power, she erased it from history. I was the only one left, along with my Martial Brother. That was the boundless level of trust she had in us.”

“I don’t get it,” the Wu Lord said. “Why did she kill them?”

“Because Spiritual Severing is volatile,” she responded. “Everything exists in duality, and to remove something from one’s spirit, even the smallest thing, can completely destroy a person.” She double-checked to make sure the sound-barrier was still working. “The Dharma Protector could sever the Three Poisons from his spirit on the spot, and he would be eligible for Nirvana. It is quick and dirty, however. You can’t predict what you will do after what you severed has been removed,” Zhimei turned neutral. “Even if you were to Sever your femininity…” He growled at that. “There is no predicting what could happen.”

He just scoffed. “Femininity is just a collection of traits. It needs no gender to describe it.” Then, he turned a little more pensive. “By severing… ‘femininity’, you would lose softness, vulnerability, and parental instinct, all traits commonly attributed to women, but not exclusive to them.”

“Yes,” Zhimei said. “In the past, experts Severed their Spirits recklessly. They severed ‘weakness’, and suddenly, they were callous enough to kill a child in front of their mothers all for the pursuit of strength. They severed ‘pain’, and suddenly, they became raging monsters with no sense of self-preservation. They severed ‘love’, and became passionless, cold devils. If the monk severed ‘Desire’, he would sit utterly still, possibly even turning into stone, simply because without desire, there is not a single point to life.”

“Why are you telling me this?” He asked.

“You’re smart,” Zhimei said. “And you know what it means to be human. If one were to Sever just the right thing that is holding them back, Transcendence could come easily.” She sighed. “We are no closer to finding out where the other Divine Relics are, and at this rate, if Tian Mo finds another one, no one but a bona-fide Transcendent could ever suppress him.”

“And who would you want to Transcend?” The Wu Lord asked, much more curious and invested, now. “The Dharma Protector?”

It was a sound strategy. He was already half a step away, only requiring one more insight before he could make the leap. Still, he didn’t feel like the right candidate.

Zhimei sighed. “You.”

He considered that for a moment, but shook his head. “I’m not interested.”

Truly a man after her own heart. To not be tempted by Immortality was one of the most interesting traits a powerful Martial Warrior of his renown could possess. Truly, among them are only him, her and Thunder Mountain.

“I know what it is that one has to sever,” she said with a sly smile. “My mentor told me, but not my Martial Brother.”

“And your Martial Brother now runs roughshod all over China,” the Wu Lord scoffed. “While you refuse to simply Transcend and leave this mortal coil. Now, why exactly is that?”

“Because unwillingness is one of the key traits,” Zhimei said. “Well, not unwillingness per se. It is contentedness that is important. You are fine where you are. What separates an Immortal from a mortal is that an Immortal is static. They cannot move from one place to another, still as statues. How do you propose they travel?” She asked.

The Wu Lord nodded, realization dawning. “By moving the destination towards themselves. Truly empyrean to have such power, but I see, now, where they all go wrong. They move towards a finish line with an infinite distance between them. The trick is to have the power to command the finish line closer.” His eyes lightened until he was smiling. “Truly a joke of epic proportions, then. Desparation regresses you. Willingness cripples you. To truly reach Transcendence, one must sit still and will it, becoming an Immortal completely unassisted.”

“Yes,” Zhimei said. “And when you have crossed that final threshold, you have very little time before you are forced to ascend to another realm.”

He nodded with a smile. “And these fools will never reach what it is that they desire. Conned by the very Heavens, life is an endless series of tribulations. It would crush them.”

“So you see where it is I come from,” Zhimei said. “It has to be you.”

“Why not you?” The Wu Lord asked. “After all, you are just as unwilling to ascend as I am.”

He wouldn’t budge on this. She could see that as clearly as day. He didn’t fight so he could be the best. He fought for sport, because it was fun, though a small part of him also wanted to be the strongest. To suddenly become the strongest in this tiny realm, with an uncertain future ahead, without having first conquered every real fight there was to be had in this world must have felt like he was betraying his ideals.

“I have a disciple,” she said, opting for honesty. “So unless I’m forced to, cutting myself off from this realm is something I would prefer to not do. You don’t want to leave either, and Thunder Mountain has his own disciple.”

The Wu Lord didn’t seem convinced. “Why don’t we use the Dharma Protector? Tell him what it is he needs to sever.”

“He won’t sever it,” Zhimei said gravely. “It is everything he has worked to attain, everything everyone in this lookout has worked to attain. They won’t believe us, nor will they agree.”

“Then it’s up to us,” he said. “Or… you could maybe keep that wildly extreme idea on the backburner for now until true desperation hits? ZhiLong is still hard at work ascertaining the whereabouts of the other Divine Relics. If he finds even the Ruyi Jingu Bang or even the Mala Beads of Buddha that the Dharma Protector could use, no one will have to leave this realm.”

“So… hope,” she said flatly. “We bank on hope.”

“I refuse to Transcend, and you do so as well. There is no other option.”

“Your hesitation could cost you something,” Zhimei warned.

“And your desperation could cost you everything,” the Wu Lord rebutted. “We’re at an impasse now.”

“So it would seem,” she admitted. “I’ve presented a solution. Can I count on you to Transcend when push comes to shove?”

“No,” he responded, the cantankerous bastard. “You know what to do, Shen Zhimei, so don’t involve me overmuch just to have your cake and eat it, too.”

It was an expected response, truth be told. She only hoped that she wouldn’t have to do this. She could only count on Kang Yilan to realize her full potential.