He Yu’s guandao passed through emptiness. Again. Winds curled, and heaven flashed. He launched another series of attacks but to no avail. His teacher simply slipped out of the way, avoiding his strikes as if they weren’t even enough to qualify as an inconvenience. As Zhang Lifen effortlessly shifted from his attacks, she lectured.

Whether it was more frustrating that he wasn’t any closer to landing a blow, or that he had to also pay attention to Zhang Lifen’s lessons, He Yu couldn’t quite make up his mind. Eventually, he settled on deciding they were both equally infuriating.

“You’ve been taking all the wrong lessons,” Zhang Lifen said, cutting into an explanation about how to further develop his presence. “Again.”

“What now?” he asked. It made him sound petulant. He was so frustrated, that at this point he was beyond caring.

“Do you not have a movement technique? Do you not have a body enforcement art? Why are you only using the Five Crescent Winds?” Zhang Lifen asked, stepping away from another one of his blows. “If you only train at half-strength, what is it that you’re actually training?”

“I don’t follow,” he admitted. Relaxing his stance, he let his weapon fall to his side, held one-handed in a loose grip.

He realized his mistake when he was about halfway across the training area, tumbling across the stones with his guandao clattering a few dozen feet away. Zhang Lifen took a single step and was standing above him. Her presence was released, but she kept her qi restrained to that of a peak Third Realm. Despite that, she crashed over him, the black currents of her spirit pulling him ever down. He had to release his own spirit before he was able to stand.

“You learn to fight at half-strength,” she said.

He Yu picked up his weapon and turned to face Zhang Lifen. His frustration had turned to anger. The more rational voice that sat in the back of his mind, often telling him when he was making a mistake, did so now. He was far beyond listening to it.

The Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering sent heaven qi coursing through his meridians, hardening his skin as tiny flashes of lightning jumped across his skin. The Sky Dragon’s Flight carried him the dozen or so feet to where Zhang Lifen stood, and the Five Crescent Winds howled around his blade.

She flowed away from his attack, and then she was inside his guard. He twisted, using the speed and maneuverability granted by his body art and his movement technique to escape. He should have known it would be pointless.

Zhang Lifen grabbed him by the arm and redirected the momentum of his attempted escape. She pivoted and tossed him to the ground like a sack of rice.

“Better,” she said, “but you’re letting your temper get the better of you. At least you’re making use of your other techniques now.”

“What is the actual point of all this?” He Yu demanded. Again, he knew he was letting his frustration get the better of him. There was no way he could hit her. She was a full two realms above him, and even with her qi suppressed, she had decades’ worth of experience that he lacked. His time training with Fang Yingjie had taught him just how much experience mattered.

Zhang Lifen folded her hands within her sleeves as she pulled her spirit back. “Did I tell you to stop trying to hit me?”

Silently, He Yu cursed the day he met her, but he started swinging once again anyway.

“Why was it that you pushed yourself to reach Foundation in such a short amount of time? Why did you subject yourself to a winter of training under that old immortal in the forest? Why did you not take Tan Xiaoling’s offer of surrender?”

He knew roughly what she was getting at. Ever since the beginning, he’d been rushing to catch up, gathering strength so that he could overcome some enemy, an adversary that was beyond him. And he’d done it.

But now? He’d fought Sha Xiang to a standstill after the grace had ended and then beaten her in the tournament. Training with Old Guo had been to stand against King Hao and avenge those who had suffered at his hands. He held no enmity towards Tan Xiaoling, despite the fact that he truly wanted to become strong enough to stand against her.

It was all he could do to keep swinging as the realization broke over him.

“It’s a hollow thing, isn’t it?” Zhang Lifen asked. “Power for its own sake.”

“But my Way,” he said, allowing his guard to drop once again.

This time, Zhang Lifen didn’t punish him for it. Instead, she gestured to a fallen log at the edge of the training area, just outside the formation barrier. He Yu sent his weapon to his storage treasure and dropped his techniques as he followed her.

“You say you want to be a hero. But have you ever truly asked yourself why? You say that it is your path to develop the judgment of an emperor, but what will you then use that judgment for?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Over the past few days, they had taken to speaking often of these things. Zhang Lifen had asked about his meditations, his insights, and the various motivations that drove him. One thing he’d quickly learned was that she seemed to know far more about him than he would have guessed. The questioning had bothered him at first, but he quickly realized that she had a purpose to all of it.

To make him reflect, and to make him clarify his understanding of himself. It was, she said, critical for him to achieve this should he wish to reach the higher realms of cultivation.

They sat down on the fallen log together. Zhang Lifen folded her hands in her sleeves and watched him silently, giving him space to think before he answered. He Yu rubbed the tension out of the muscles in his legs while he thought about her questions for what seemed like the hundredth time in the past few days.

“Isn’t simply wanting to be something more, enough?” he asked. He knew the answer already—if it had been enough, that would have been the end of it. He asked regardless, though. Their talks that followed these sorts of questions helped. While Zhang Lifen never provided any direct answers, she did help him clarify his own thoughts.

This time, she said something unexpected.

“I asked the same question of Master Cai once,” she said. “I had told him that I wanted to be free. He asked me why.”

He Yu perked up. This was the first time she had ever said anything about herself, or her past.

“I was a few years older than you were. My Way had become uncertain, and I was struggling to learn what insights I needed to break into the Fourth Realm. I spent all my contribution points on a series of lessons with Master Cai. This was before he’d taken me on as his disciple. It was the first time I’d ever met him, really. I had thought that the sect’s First Elder would have some grand wisdom to share. Some auspicious utterance that would send me into a breakthrough trance simply upon hearing it. All he did was ask me questions.”

Zhang Lifen gave a soft laugh. “I was such a foolish girl back then,” she said. “I was angry. I thought he’d wasted my time. Tricked me, as I’d heard some elders do occasionally.”

“But you were wrong,” He Yu said. He wasn’t sure which was more surprising, that Zhang Lifen had once been a “foolish girl,” or that she’d ever had any trouble with her cultivation at all. She was, by all accounts, a once-in-a-generation talent.

“I was brought to the sect at fifteen. As a mortal I was the youngest of three children, and the only daughter. My family was wealthy, at least by mortal standards, so it was all but a guarantee that I would have been married to a rich husband. My life would have been comfortable, at least. Had I not joined the sect. I hated it, though. I always thought it unfair that I would be nothing more than my husband’s subordinate.

“Once admitted to the sect, I thought it was all I had ever wanted—the freedom to follow my own course, define my own Way. Master Cai showed me that was—not wrong. Incomplete.” Zhang Lifen fell silent then, staring off into the mists of the inner sect mountain in reminiscence.

After a few moments, He Yu asked, “Incomplete how?”

“Eventually, Master Cai taught me that my desire to be free was rooted in a deeper question. What did I believe about myself—and what question formed from that belief—whose answer was ‘I want to be free’?”

“What was it?” he asked.

Zhang Lifen’s demeanor shifted back to the one he’d grown used to since meeting her. “Oh, if I told you that, I worry that it might impact your own path toward insight. I wouldn’t want to harm your advancement, after all.”

He scowled at her, but he didn’t truly mean it. She had given him a valuable lead to follow, even if he wasn’t entirely sure where it would lead him. What did he believe about himself? Given the way Zhang Lifen had spoken about her experience with Elder Cai, He Yu didn’t think it would be an easy thing to answer.

“Before you get too caught up in chasing self-realization,” Zhang Lifen said, her tone once more turning serious in a way it seldom did, “there’s one last thing we need to speak of.”

“Are you done training me?” He Yu asked. It had been a week since he’d begun training again. He couldn’t say as though he felt like he’d improved all that much, or that he was much closer to reaching late Body Refining. The idea that she would vanish once again and leave him on his own bothered him. He’d thought they would be done with that once he entered the inner sect.

“I must attend to both my own cultivation and my duties to the sect,” she said. “Besides, I’m sure your friends miss you. Then there’s still the matter of Sha Xiang.”

He Yu frowned. “I beat her in the tournament. Do you think she still holds a grudge after that?”

“Most certainly,” Zhang Lifen said. “But any enmity she holds for you is secondary at this point.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” he admitted.

“You recall when you learned of your art, the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace? You asked then about the Dawn Palace.”

He Yu nodded but said nothing. Zhang Lifen had shut him down every time he’d brought it up. He wasn’t about to risk speaking and ruining the chance to get some answers from her.

“I will not speak overmuch of the Dawn Palace itself. The less you know of it, the better.”

“Alright, what does this have to do with Sha Xiang, though?”

“She was recruited by an organization called the Sunset Court, a group of cultivators loyal to the Sunset Empress. Xiao Jun was their leader within the sect, until recently. He has disappeared since the tournament, and Sha Xiang has been making overtures with other low-ranked members of the inner sect.”

“Wait, you mean this Sunset Court is here, within the sect?” he asked. “And who is this Sunset Empress? What does this have to do with my art?” The torrent of other questions he had was difficult to hold back. This was the first time Zhang Lifen had brought this up on her own, and the first time she’d said anything beyond simply closing the line of questioning.

“They operate throughout the Dragon Empire. They are difficult to find, and for every one of them we eliminate, three more appear elsewhere. As to who the Sunset Empress was, just know that she was powerful and dangerous. The Dawn Palace contains her.”

“What about the sect?”

“The elders know of the Court’s efforts to infiltrate the sect. It was allowed as a means to observe them and to hopefully discover more about their activities. The Court is dangerous,” Zhang Lifen said. “They are also powerful. Most importantly, they view the sort of behavior that Sha Xiang has displayed worthy of praise and reward. While she is gathering her strength, you must do the same.”

He Yu recalled the words Zhang Lifen had spoken all those months ago—that great powers were beginning to stir, and that Elder Cai was afraid “she” would wake up. He Yu didn’t need to ask who “she” was anymore.