Zhang Lifen’s training lasted until nightfall. Just as the sun dipped behind the mountains to the west, she produced her bow of qilin horn and black wood from her storage treasure. The weapon’s spiritual weight imposed itself upon the area, followed a moment later by Zhang Lifen’s own spiritual presence.

The stone spirits’ attacks ceased, as the dozen or so that He Yu was contending with all turned towards the Fifth Realm cultivator. As Zhang Lifen’s crushing ocean of power washed over the hollow, she drew back her bowstring. An arrow formed of qi coalesced as she drew her bow, and the instant she reached full draw, the technique finished forming. She released, and the arrow leaped forward.

It split, then split again, and again. In the space of less than a single breath, a hundred arrows rained upon the hollow where He Yu had spent his day locked in combat. The spirits were obliterated to the last. Of those that hadn’t advanced past the low Third Realm, not even their cores remained. Earth qi dispersed into the world, and Zhang Lifen landed next to He Yu with hardly a sound.

“That should keep things relatively calm for the rest of tonight,” she said. “Come. There’s a good place for us to make a camp for the evening. You’ll be able to cultivate and restore yourself."

Wordlessly, He Yu did as he’d been bid. After two full days of travel, followed by another of fighting, he was exhausted. His meridians ached. His dantian felt like a black, empty pit of nothing. He wanted to lay down and sleep for a week—which was an odd sensation, all things considered. Physical fatigue was something that he hadn’t truly felt in almost a year. It has almost become unfamiliar.

Zhang Lifen led them to a clustering of boulders near the base of another one of this area’s low, rolling hills. The boulders formed almost an alcove on the hill’s lee, making them a perfect spot to comfortably rest. It seemed that they weren’t the first to have this idea, as there was evidence that this spot had been used as a camp previously. A ring of stones from earlier camp fires sat in the center of the sheltered area, and loose pebbles and stones had been cleared out.

With his back to the largest of the three stones that served as their shelter for the night, He Yu closed his eyes intending to cultivate. He opened them an instant later when he felt a mix of water, wind, and heaven qi with his spiritual perception. Three pill boxes sat before him, each of them open to display their contents.

“These will help you restore your qi. They’re fairly low-grade, so you don’t need to worry about backlashes. Take them, restore yourself, and we’ll begin again in the morning.” As she spoke, Zhang Lifen produced her tea set from her storage treasure and lit a fire.

Still too tired to feel like speaking, He Yu did as he’d been told. The pills were exactly what Zhang Lifen had said they were. They would have been a tremendous boon if he’d still been Foundation, but now they merely served as restoratives. Effective restoratives, to be sure, but they wouldn’t be giving him any real boost. Still, they were welcome.

His eyes closed and the medicines cycling through his meridians, He Yu allowed himself to take a moment, and simply relish in the fact that he wasn’t exerting himself. The emptiness in his dantian filled, and the ache in his meridians faded. His spirit now restored, his body started to follow. As he fell into the comfortable and familiar breathing pattern of the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment, his fatigue melted away and he lost himself in cultivation.

He Yu found himself upon a mountain once again. Higher up than he’d yet been, there was still a long way to the peak. Although he was alone this time, it wasn’t the same as that past vision. There was no sense of existential loneliness, loss, and longing as he’d felt back then. This wasn’t the same—he wasn’t being asked to choose as he had then. Rather, he was seeing the path he’d already chosen.

The mountain stretched above, its peak shrouded by dark and violent clouds. Black and heavy with rain, they flashed with the fury of heaven deep within. Thunder rolled over the mountain, and the earth trembled beneath him. What truly lay before and above him was the storm.

Wind whipped at his robes and tore his hair loose from the warrior’s bun he typically wore it in. Rain lashed against his skin, soaking him to the bone. His robes and hair hung off him. The roar of heaven rumbled and cracked and the world turned black, punctuated by brilliant flashes from deeper within.

A refuge. What he needed was some form of shelter. Like the cluster of rocks in the lee of a hill where his physical body was. But there was none to be had. He was exposed on the face of the mountain, with no shelter in reach. The storm raged around him and threatened to tear him from the peak, to cast him onto the jagged rocks that lined the valley below.

The storm was beyond him, and it would ever remain so—uncontained, unconquered. It cared not for the world below, nor for one insignificant cultivator on the slopes of a mountain, striving to reach the peak. It would lift him as it lifted trees, and dash him against the earth. It was a force he could not stand against, and he doubted that he would ever truly be able to.

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It was morning when he opened his eyes. Zhang Lifen faced the east, seated upon a chair with ink and brush in hand. A painting, half completed, depicted the landscape in a way that was both accurate and beautiful despite the subject’s relatively desolate character. A fresh pot of tea sat nearby, next to the fire.

After some time, he asked, “How does one stand against a storm?”

Without turning, she asked, “Why must you stand against it?”

Because it felt right? He said as much. After further prompting, he recounted the insights of the night’s meditation.

“I can’t tell you what you’re supposed to gain from your Way,” she began. “I think you realize that by now. Rather than asking for edification, you seek perhaps a gentler sort of guidance.”

“I suppose,” he answered. “I don’t know what I was supposed to take from it.”

“Remember what I said. There are cycles upon cycles. Truths that shape us and we shape in turn. As you walk your Way, you define it as it defines you. Your experiences and insights and memories have brought you to the point where you now find yourself. I think you were correct in your interpretation that you found yourself on a path of your making.”

“That’s not much help,” he muttered.

“Perhaps not,” she allowed. “Remember also what I said about the art you cultivate. A primordial art that will likely ask much of you. That said, I can assure you that you have all the necessary pieces. The next steps depend more on how you place them together, and what insights you draw from them.”

“What if I can’t?” he asked. “What if I can’t even figure out what the pieces are, let alone draw insights from their relationships.”

“There’s a reason most cultivators never advance past Body Refining.”

That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear. Not by any stretch.

The silence dragged on, and it began to truly weigh on him. Zhang Lifen turned from her painting and gave him a sympathetic smile over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry about it. You’re barely twenty years old yet. You’ve been at the peak of Body Refining for what, half a year? If that? Even those who do manage to form their Golden Core often spend decades at the peak of the Third Realm. Your rise has been swift, but there’s no harm in taking your time. Especially when you’ve taken so little so far.”

“I need to get stronger,” he said.

“Why?”

There was more to her question than it would have seemed. At least to a mortal, or even one who hadn’t spent time around Zhang Lifen. While she seemed at times capricious, the shifts in her demeanor were a consequence of her cultivation, He Yu had come to realize. Like the waters she cultivated, there was hidden depth to her. Depth she now revealed with the intensity of the look she gave him and the sharp thrust of that single word.

“To be a hero,” he said. It was an automatic response. One he’d said to himself time enough.

“Is that all?” she asked. There was a note of—not disappointment, but something close, in the question.

No. His stomach turned and his heart clenched. He thought about Li Heng, lying in the medicine hall. About Yan Shirong’s more-than-usual paranoia. About the still-healing wound on Tan Xiaoling’s neck. About the years of mundane bullying that had become so much more since arriving at the sect.

It was so petty, though. He said as much, the words sounding hollow to his ears as he forced them from his lips.

“A journey of ten thousand steps begins with one.”

He looked down at his hands, clenched in his lap where he sat. “But a hero—”

A paintbrush hit him in the forehead. He snapped up to where Zhang Lifen had now fully turned around. Her expression was odd, a mix of a smirk and a scowl.

“What use is a hero that doesn’t fight villains?” she asked.

“Sha Xiang isn’t a villain,” he said. He was about to say more, but he stopped.

Zhang Lifen arched an eyebrow at him. “Finally remembered, have you? About time.”

“It couldn’t be that simple,” he said.

“Why not?”

Could he truly simply say that Sha Xiang was a villain, that that was enough? Could his desire to avenge the attacks on his friends be enough to count as a first step on the ten thousand necessary to become a hero? The more he sought reasons why it couldn’t, the fewer he found, discarding each in turn. He defined his Way, and his Way in turn defined him. Hadn’t he already learned—back during the inner sect tournament—that a part of his Way was defining what it meant to be a hero? Defining what it meant for him to be just?

His shoulders slumped. He felt like an idiot. Just as she’d said, the pieces had been in front of him all along.

“Now, now,” Zhang Lifen said. She stood and sent all her comforts back to her storage treasure with a flick of her sleeve. “That’s no attitude to have. You have a big day ahead of you, and I need you to be on your toes for it. You can sort through everything you’ve just figured out and reach enlightenment on your own time.”

“What do you mean ‘a big day?’”

“You’ll see. Follow me.”

Despite his misgivings, he did as he’d been told. Zhang Lifen had helped him far more than he wanted to admit, after all. She certainly hadn’t led him astray. In all likelihood, she simply had another day of fighting hordes of stone spirits in store for him. So he fell in behind her, if reluctantly.

For the better part of an hour, they walked through the rocky hills. They kept a sedate pace, at least by the standards of immortals. She spoke of inconsequential things on the way, mostly about tea or the painting she’d been working on while he cultivated through the night. It wasn’t boring, just not anything he was particularly interested in. He Yu suspected that she was trying to distract him from his thoughts, so he welcomed it just the same.

When they arrived at their destination, they stood at the rim of a small hollow between the hills that looked suspiciously like a caldera. A collection of large boulders rested in the center, alone.

Zhang Lifen pointed at the boulders, and a bead of water qi formed at her fingertip. A thin beam lanced out and struck the ground inches away from the boulders—which immediately came to life.

The stone spirit was in the early Fourth Realm from what He Yu could tell. As Zhang Lifen had kept her spirit firmly restrained, it had no idea that its rest had been disturbed by an immortal a full realm above it. As it rushed towards them, the sound of rumbling and grinding stone rolling over the valley, Zhang Lifen shot him a wicked smile.

“Try not to die,” she said.