He Yu held his guandao at the ready. His only response was to nod in return. Words failed him. How was he supposed to beat someone like this? Not even when he’d been training with Old Guo had he encountered such overwhelming strength. The old cultivator had limited his advancement to the late Third Realm, so He Yu had never come close to matching him, but even that hadn’t felt as horrifically one-sided as this.

When she came at him again, she did so with a certainty that went beyond mere confidence. The twinned dao sabers sent fiery sparks into the air as they clashed against his guandao. With each exchange, she pushed him further back. Closer to the edge of the arena, and closer to the edge of defeat. But He Yu couldn’t allow himself to become occupied with that—there was something else that had become more pressing. It was there, contained somewhere in the way she fought. Not her movements. Not her techniques. Something deeper. Something beyond.

As her sabers flashed against He Yu’s increasingly shaky defense, his desperation only increased. The more desperate he became, the harder he tried to keep himself from making a mistake, the less it seemed to matter. Like all his efforts meant nothing.

Tan Xiaoling launched another flurry of strikes at him. As they battered his rapidly failing defenses, some small distant part of He Yu’s mind could only marvel at just how casual she was. How effortlessly she was beating him into the ground. Sure, she may have a stage advancement on him, but they were in the same realm still. She should at least have to try.

That’s when it finally hit him. She wasn’t trying. The Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment shuddered once again, and for an instant he found himself standing at the base of a stair reaching to heaven. Dozens of tiny moments from the past year flooded into him. He recalled the way Zhang Lifen moved as though she flowed, and the world flowed with her. The way Fang Yingjie had moved like the wind during their lessons together. The way Old Guo stood against any and all attacks from the three disciples like a tree that had stood in that very same way for a thousand years or more.

Each of them had their feet planted firmly on the Way. He Yu let go—stopped trying. If Tan Xiaoling was so overpowering because rather than trying, she simply fought—then he would do the same.

Her paired dao flashed out yet again, this time with a slight delay between them. The first knocked the guandao out of He Yu’s hands, and the second scored a searing red line across his ribs.

Some distance away, the guandao clattered to the flagstones. He Yu did everything he could to push aside the pain, and the utter embarrassment. That had been stupid. Who fought without trying? At least his techniques gave him the necessary speed to recover his weapon before she punished him too much. He did take a couple of nicks on the way, and his robes gained a few scorch marks, but he managed to rearm himself all the same.

He hadn’t been entirely wrong though. The Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace had reacted to his insight. There had to be something there. If only he could grasp what, it could be the key to matching her. She had come to him the night before, and spoken something of herself—she was a princess of the Jade Kingdom, and the daughter of Tan Zihao. She didn’t hold back. Was that the key?

If it was, then who was he?

Again, Tan Xiaoling crashed into him, sabers sparking and glinting with knife-edge danger. He Yu tried to push the panic and desperation from his mind.

He Yu was a small boy, a weak boy. The son of a blacksmith whose head was filled with stories of old, of legends of heroes and villains alike. He imagined himself the former. He had taken it upon himself to begin cultivating, but it was only after his father, He Gang, had helped him awaken that his cultivation had amounted to anything. Despite that, Shulin’s resident expert had refused to teach him.

Still, he tried.

Then, Zhang Lifen had come. She had put him before an impossible challenge—a tournament where he was the weakest of all. Yet he still fought. He endured a humiliating beating at Sha Xiang’s hands, but Zhang Lifen had known he would lose. That had been the point, after all.

He had passed her test the moment he stepped onto the stage.

Over the past year, he’d risen to face odds that ought to have broken him. Coming to Tan Xiaoling’s aid against four cultivators who were all individually a match for him. Going after a bandit king despite being a realm below. Training his presence before any other sane cultivator would try such a thing. And all for what?

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Because he wanted to be a hero of legend. What, then, was the measure of a hero?

He Yu thought back to the stories. To the legends. To all the times the heroes faced down impossible odds and certain death. Not infrequently the legends ended with a last stand, where the heroes sacrificed themselves to save those they protected.

Against a foe beyond their means, they stood regardless.

That was the measure of a hero.

The gates of the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace opened. He Yu’s dantian pulsed, as a tiny ephemeral spark took root within his spirit. He Yu wished he could examine this change—the insights would likely propel him well into the late Body Refining stage, he was sure. Instead, he turned his attention outward. Tan Xiaoling had stopped her assault and stood just out of his weapon’s reach.

“Congratulations, Sect Brother He.” Although her lips had quirked upwards in that half smirk of hers, her words were sincere.

“What, happened?” he asked. He couldn’t help himself—she obviously knew.

“Ask your mentor when this is over,” was all she said.

With a blast of dry heat and sharp death, Tan Xiaoling was upon him again. This time, he met her blow-for-blow. He wasn’t any stronger. Nor was he any faster. He was just more himself.

It was hard to understand. His movements were almost automatic, but somehow not. He was still in control, but it was like he no longer needed to think about what he needed or wanted to do. Like he moved with some deeper aspect of his own nature.

Tan Xiaoling came at him in a cyclone of deadly flashing steel. He Yu deflected her first strike and spun away from the second. With a brief activation of his movement technique, he was behind her. Tiny sparks crackled in the wind of his techniques. Wind howled, and He Yu struck.

Just as she twisted away and spun to face him once more, he could see the red stain spreading along the back of her robe. It was almost as satisfying as the brief moment that he caught her expression. Shock flickered across her features. It was gone in an instant, but he’d seen it.

True to her nature, Tan Xiaoling said nothing. She did not taunt him. Did not admonish. She made no display of anger, or fear, or anything else. She simply attacked.

The fight had taken on a different character now. She summoned her sandstorm once again, but this time she did not use it to stalk him. The pocket of clear space around her was all but gone. They fought within the howling mass of wind and sand and razor metal. Their blades clashed, sending cracking explosions of heaven and fire rolling over the arena. Each time they struck, their qi would blast the storm away, only for it to collapse back in—just in time for another exchange to disrupt it again.

They both wrestled the winds, vying for control. He Yu tried to maintain a space around them, while Tan Xiaoling sought to collapse it. He would dash away or around her, only for her to pull him back in. As they fought, each of them accrued more and more tiny injuries. He Yu couldn’t think of any other time—except when she’d faced down three cultivators of her own realm, and one with a full realm advantage, all at once—when he’d even seen Tan Xiaoling endure so much as a scratch.

Now? She was bloody, and breathing heavily. The only problem was that he was in much worse shape. The boost he’d gotten from the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace was all but gone now, and his qi reserves were almost fully depleted.

While He Yu flagged, each of Tan Xiaoling’s blows carried more of her killing intent than the last. He had tried to imbue his attacks with the same, but that had been a disaster. Whatever strange state of calm flow he’d entered had faltered, and he found himself on the back foot almost instantly. He’d taken a deep wound from that one, and it had been slowing him down ever since.

Tan Xiaoling leveled one of her sabers at him. Above her, a spear formed of black qi. It blazed with a fiery corona and gleamed with killing intent. It was the same technique that she’d used against Xiao Jun, but it wasn’t as stable as it had been then. Still, the amount of power that it exuded was far more than He Yu knew he could handle.

She released her technique. It streaked towards him, and he raised his guandao to meet it. He poured every drop of qi he had left into his weapon. Into his body art. Into every single technique he could think of, all in a desperate attempt to stop Tan Xiaoling’s spear of unerring death aimed at his heart.

He Yu thrust his guandao forward. Metal, heaven, and fire all blasted away in an explosion of wind. Flagstones cracked. Metal screamed. He Yu’s guandao shattered.

Tan Xiaoling simply stared, her expression asking a single silent question.

“A hero doesn’t give up,” was all He Yu said. It was all he could manage to say.

He stooped and picked up the largest piece of his weapon he could find. It was little more than a jagged spike of shattered metal. He settled into the best approximation of Li Heng’s sword stance he could manage. His dantian ached—it was nearly empty and he was on the verge of collapse. His meridians screamed in protest as he sent the bare trickle of qi he could manage through them, activating the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering once again. With his make-shift weapon in hand, he rushed the Jade Princess.

Her first strike opened He Yu’s arm from elbow to wrist. He dropped his spike. Tan Xiaoling’s second strike nearly took off his arm. She kicked him in the leg, sending him staggering. As her saber slid into his gut, and pain exploded in every part of his being, she looked him in the eyes. As He Yu’s vision faded to a brilliant white, he saw that her expression was simply one of relief.