With every breath he could spare, He Yu cursed Zhang Lifen’s name. She vanished before the stone spirit covered half the distance to the edge of the caldera, leaving him to face the thing alone. Unlike the spirits from the previous day, this one carried a fire aspect to it, making its presence suspiciously similar to Sha Xiang’s, if significantly less defined.
He Yu stared up at the approaching mass of stone. The spirit towered over him, rising to a height of nearly fifteen feet. Its shape was more defined and human-like than the Third Realm spirits from the day before. The patterns of weathering etched into the lump of stone serving as its head almost resembled a face. Lines like wrinkles, and divots like eyes. It had an appearance akin to that of an old man. On either side of the spirit’s body, the collection of stones and boulders served as its arms, with contours that brought to mind muscles. The cracks and grooves along its “hands” resembled closed fists.
The spirit moved swiftly. Stone scraped against stone with a rumbling grinding as it loped towards him with deceptively smooth movements. It drew back an arm and brought its fist down. The earth cracked and split where He Yu had stood only a breath ago, gouts of flame erupting from the new cracks in the floor of the caldera.
“You might want to watch out for that one,” Zhang Lifen called from the rim of the crater. “That wasn’t a technique, by the way. Just so you know.”
He Yu cursed again, even as he poured heaven qi into his meridians. The Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering surged through his body, hardening him, and granting strength and agility. Lightning coursed over his skin and danced along the length of his guandao. Golden and blue and white light flashed from nascent sparks of heaven’s wrath. It was hard to believe that this was still only the art’s first stage.
Even without the art, he was far stronger than even the mightiest of mortals. With it? He might even survive a hit or two from the Fourth Realm spirit currently trying to kill him. Not that he was going to test that. He also had the benefit of speed, granted by not only his body enforcement but also his wind aspected movement technique. Then, there was the boost to both that he received from the robe he’d been gifted by Yongnian.
Activating the Sky Dragon’s Flight, he darted around behind the spirit. It turned, but it was too slow. He Yu aimed a piercing strike at the joints serving as the spirit’s knee. Heaven and wind swirled around his guandao in a miniature tempest; a cyclone of aspects forged into his spirit.
Stone and thunder cracked, and the spirit stumbled. A club-like fist of solid rock swung at He Yu with blinding speed. He darted back. The attack passed a hair’s breadth from his face. Anything this large had no right to be this fast.
He Yu fell back, creating distance so he could figure out his next angle of attack. As brief as that exchange had been, he’d taken something of the spirit’s measure. It was fast, yes, but it was also large. That size was the key. There was only so much of itself that it could cover at once, and if He Yu could be quick enough, he could slip in and out of those openings. He might whittle it down, given enough time. Provided he didn’t get hit.
The spirit reached out its fist. He Yu readied himself for the spray of jagged earthen shards—it was the same way the spirits yesterday had readied their techniques.
The boulder that served as the spirit’s fist detached from its arm, and hurtled towards He Yu. He poured everything he had into the Sky Dragon’s Flight, and darted to the side. The attack had caught him off guard, and he’d very nearly paid for it.
“I know you don’t have all that much experience with spirits, but you should have seen something like that coming,” Zhang Lifen called from her perch. She’d produced one of the cushioned chairs from her storage treasure and had resumed working on her painting. “A spirit’s techniques evolve with its advancement.”
For just a moment he wished the stone spirit would notice her, direct an attack her way. He knew that would never happen, though. Zhang Lifen’s water-aspected cultivation meant that she could fairly easily keep her spirit quiet enough that she’d be difficult to notice under normal circumstances. With He Yu needing to release his own presence in order to use every technique at his disposal, there was no way that it could detect her so long as she kept her spirit restrained.
As he darted around, looking for an opening, He Yu wished he had access to some sort of ranged technique. Of his friends, he was the only one besides Chen Fei that didn’t have some sort of attack he could use from a distance, and even she had her formation barriers to cover her while she closed the gap.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The boulder that the spirit had launched at him trembled for a moment, then dislodged itself from the ground and flew back to the spirit. Then, the mass of ambulatory rocks took aim at him again.
After dodging another flying mass of stone, He Yu called out to Zhang Lifen. “What is the point of this?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “What’s the point of anything I have you do?”
It was a momentary distraction, but one that cost him dearly. Or, at least, it should have.
He frowned, trying to figure out what the point of her question—not to mention her cavalier attitude—actually was. It was too late to move out of the way of the mass of stone blasting towards him by the time he noticed it, and he knew it. All he could do was pour everything he could muster into the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering and hope to endure.
But the blow never struck home. Zhang Lifen appeared in front of him. Her spirit surged out, and just like when she’d shattered King Hao’s massive bronze mace, she turned the boulder meant for He Yu to dust with a single punch followed by a pulse of qi.
“In all seriousness,” she said, “the point is most certainly not to get yourself killed. By not running away, you’re sort of already halfway there. Ask yourself—what would a hero do?” Then she vanished. Her spirit retreating like the tide as she returned to her painting and once more became functionally invisible to the stone spirit she’d set upon him.
It wasn’t hard to see that she was right. The answer was one he’d told himself time and again. A hero would stand and fight. A legend would stand and fight. That was the point of all this. He wasn’t meant to win. He was meant to stand against a foe when he knew he couldn’t. Just like when he’d faced down Sha Xiang in the arena back in Shulin. Then again, in those first days after the truce, when he’d come to Tan Xiaoling’s aid. And again when he’d faced down King Hao, standing shoulder to shoulder with Li Heng and Yan Shirong. And so on.
A legend wasn’t forged in a day. It was forged like a chain—one link at a time. Each coming together into a greater whole. One choice, one step, each following the one before it. It wasn’t about this battle. Or the next, or even the one before. It was about how they all linked together, how they created something more than any of them alone ever could.
He Yu’s concentration faded into something less forced but no less focused. The stone spirit launched another punch at him, and he darted away. He’d seen the shape of it, the angle of attack and the speed of the blow without even meaning to. The Peerless Judgment showed him the spirit’s movements and his own responses. His nascent connection to his Way formed through his Wayborn Seed helped guide him, too. It was that connection that had allowed him to activate his perception technique without hardly realizing it.
The day wore on and He Yu clashed with the spirit. With the pressure of needing to win removed, he found the struggle to be oddly enjoyable. What sort of person spent a day fighting a spirit a full realm above them? He may not be a legend yet, but this was just as much a step on that path as anything else he’d done.
As the fight itself settled into something of a meditation, He Yu reflected on his connection to his Way. It didn’t take him long to figure out that this had been the whole point of taking him out here. A part of why he’d failed in his breakthrough was that he hadn’t managed to form a strong enough connection to his Way yet. At least that was one insight he gathered.
Another was that his method had been wrong, but he couldn’t say exactly how. What Zhang Lifen had told him previously about arts like the Cloud Emperor’s Hidden Palace was another piece, but that remained occluded from him. He could live with that. For now, at least. The deepening connection to his Way told him that when the time was right, he would know.
Until then, he just needed to work on the practical training that Zhang Lifen had placed before him. Twice now, he had seen her reinforce a punch with nothing but a pulse of her own qi. Not a technique in the strictest of senses, but close enough. He’d known for a while that she was an archer, but he’d never given much thought to the fact that even someone like her would need to engage in close combat from time to time.
He practiced infusing heaven qi into a series of punches and kicks. The Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering was of particular help in this. The art itself gave him the necessary pattern for flooding his arm and leg meridians with heaven qi. This already made his hand-to-hand blows stronger than they would have been without such an art. From there, it was trivial to take things half a step further and push that qi into a proper attack. He felt as though there was something here, too. Something beyond what he could currently comprehend. Something that would reveal itself only after advancement.
Additionally, he had forgotten that the Five Crescent Winds was particularly suited for this sort of infusion. Rather than being embarrassed about it, he chose to take advantage of the opportunity by using more heaven qi along with the art’s techniques. As he spent more time locked in combat with the stone spirit, he came to more firmly understand that this was another step closer to Golden Core as well—the integration of his various arts into a more cohesive whole.
All of it together formed a path. As that path coalesced before him over the course of the day, his muttered curses died. The point of this—as he should have realized from the beginning—was to help him grasp what he needed to form his Golden Core. That alone should have made him giddy, and when he first arrived at the Shrouded Peaks Sect, it would have.
Now? It was just another step. He would reach the heights of cultivation. He would forge his legend. But first? He would put Sha Xiang’s pointless grudge to rest for good.