“And that’s it?” Li Heng asked. “They just told you it was all for nothing?”

“That’s about it,” He Yu said, swatting away a thrust from Li Heng’s jian. “Even told me that if they got word it wasn’t actually done, they’d take contribution points.”

The two of them fell silent as they exchanged thrusts, sweeps, and counters. Li Heng’s jian shone with a silver light as he deflected a series of looping strikes. He’d gotten better in the past few months with absorbing multiple attacks, and could now unleash truly devastating counters with his family art. Leveling his blade at He Yu, a river of silver lunar qi poured forth.

He Yu held his guandao before him, arms outstretched and the shaft crossing the line of his body. He formed the Bracing Wind, and Li Heng’s release of the Winter Moon Reflection broke against a burst of wind and heaven.

Although he’d gotten much better at using the Spring Rain Mirror over the winter and the course of his training with Zhang Lifen, it was a poor technique for dealing with this attack. The Winter Moon Reflection was a stream, rather than the single precise impact the Spring Rain Mirror excelled at dealing with.

Sure, the initial burst of qi it could handle. But Li Heng had quickly figured out that the technique would crumble under a sustained assault and adjusted his strategy accordingly. It was valuable information as far as He Yu was concerned, and had forced him to adapt his other techniques to shore up his defensive arsenal.

The Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment sent him a flash of insight. He felt, as much as he saw, the glint of moonlight reflecting off a snow-covered field. By the time Li Heng had fully manifested behind him with the White Hare Dance, He Yu already had his guandao ready. He smashed the metal cap on the blunt end straight back behind him.

Wind and heaven sparked and roared as he formed the Rushing Wind. The impact of the weapon’s cap cracking against Li Heng’s chest reverberated up through his arm. An involuntary exhale and a heavy thud, followed by a groan.

“Not fair,” Li Heng croaked.

He Yu banished his guandao back to his storage treasure as he turned. He extended a hand to where his friend lay on the ground.

“You’re getting predictable with that,” he said. “Even without my perception technique, I would have expected you to try and get behind me after you released the Winter Moon Reflection.”

“Good to know, I suppose,” Li Heng said as He Yu helped haul him to his feet. “I’m about spent,” he added, jerking his chin toward a bench that sat just outside the training area’s formation barrier.

The training arena itself was an absolute wreck. The flagstones were cracked, and in some places completely torn up. Their remains had been scattered across the training area by summoned wind, and the bare earth underneath was blackened or frozen in turn. Although He Yu had to keep his cultivation base restrained to the peak Third Realm if he wanted to be a worthwhile sparring partner with Li Heng, the both of them still had incredibly advanced presences.

He Yu brought the storm, wind whipping at the training yard, and sparks of lightning cracking and scorching the stones beneath. Li Heng’s achievement of peak Body Refining had likewise made the frozen expanse of his spirit far more potent than it had been at the tournament, or in the months after. Hoarfrost crept along the ground, radiating outward from him. Each time he used the White Hare Dance, he left a dusting of snow behind.

Then there was the simpler destruction caused by two immortals and their weapons. Even with his cultivation suppressed, He Yu had still forged his body throughout the Third Realm. Even a casual blow from him could shatter stone and gouge great rents into the earth. A full-powered overhead strike—even when limited as he was, and without the additional power of a technique—would leave a crater more than six feet across when Li Heng inevitably flashed away from the attack. It was a good thing the contribution points they spent to reserve the training area covered the cost of any needed repairs when they were done.

The pair sat down on the bench, situated just beyond the protection of the training area’s formation. The cold mists of the Shrouded Peaks wended their way through the red pine so common here in the southwest mountains. It was late in the season, but the sect’s ever-present mist meant that the chill still stubbornly clung to the slopes, despite the promise of spring.

Li Heng produced a fairly high quality pill from his storage treasure and popped it into his mouth. For the first time in well over a year, He Yu felt a twinge of envy. Although the son of a marquis still had to perform sect jobs for points to fund his cultivation, he also had his family to rely on.

On the other hand, He Yu was increasingly feeling the pinch as he climbed the realms. Even in the early Fourth Realm, he spent an amount of resources that would have taken him from early Qi Gathering straight to Foundation each week. Between that, and the ebb and flow of resources from his duels, an allowance from a noble family would have gone a long way.

“Shouldn’t take you too much longer,” He Yu remarked, as they sat and recovered from their spar.

Li Heng cracked an eye open from where he cycled his medicine. “Easy for you to say. I feel like I’ve been half a step into the Fourth Realm for longer than the entire time you spent at Body Refining.”

“You haven’t been there that long, surely.” Although now that he thought about it, He Yu couldn’t be certain. He’d never had a particularly good sense for the passage of time, and he’d found that as he advanced the days seemed at once longer, and to pass by more quickly. Time had become even more of a fuzzy concept as a result, and he could hardly be bothered to pay much attention to it anymore. He could hardly believe that the approach of spring, then summer, brought his twenty-first year with it.

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“Feels like it,” Li Heng grumbled.

He Yu fixed him with an intent look. It had been getting increasingly difficult to tell when Li Heng was making jokes at his own expense, or when he was expressing genuine frustration and leaving a door open for further discussion. Deep down, He Yu knew that the talk they’d had before he endured his tribulation was only the first step to mending the rift that had somehow grown between them.

But a first step was better than standing still.

“Do you have any insight?” He Yu asked.

“Just the taiji. It came to me when I formed my own Wayborn Seed.”

He Yu practically jumped out of his skin. “When did you form a seed? Why didn’t you tell me? That’s great! It means your path to the Fourth Realm is easier than ever.” The words rushed out like a river breaching a dam. It was true, too. Forming a Wayborn Seed was practically a requirement for reaching the Nascent Soul stage—forming one while still at Body Refining meant that Golden Core was all but guaranteed.

“Sit down,” Li Heng said with a soft laugh. “The insight was one of flexibility and balance. That’s all I’ve really gotten from it. Which is why I’m stuck, I think. I had thought for so long that I was defined by being a noble. Now? I’m not so sure anymore.”

“Okay,” He Yu began. “What does it mean to be flexible? Or balanced?”

“I should think it would be fairly self-evident.”

“Yeah, but that’s not the point,” he said, dredging up the memories of those nights in the eastern badlands talking with Zhang Lifen. “You have to figure out what things mean to you.”

“That sounds an awful lot like what Elder Cai said about finding what you believe.”

“Yeah, it’s related.” He recounted what Zhang Lifen had told him—far less eloquently than she had, of course. About how one’s choices and one’s nature and one’s Way shaped each other. How the influence of the one influenced all, each in turn.

Most importantly, he spoke about how one needed to define one’s way. For him, what it meant to be a hero was a question that he would have to answer again and again. How once he’d said that a hero was someone who fought villains, all he’d needed to do was acknowledge that Sha Xiang was a villain, and that was enough to make her one. To fight her, then, was to be a hero.

Li Heng hummed thoughtfully, tapping his chin with a finger. “So if my Way is of flexibility and balance, and I believe that it’s my duty to be noble, the insight I need is in the intersection of those things?”

“I mean, that sounds right?” He Yu shrugged. “Look, I’m not saying I fully understand it either. When I started putting things together, it just sort of felt right. So I followed that feeling.”

“That last part sounds accurate,” Li Heng said. “Don’t look at me like that. You know what I mean.”

He did. Everything he’d come to understand about the Dao, and by extension his Way, was that it wasn’t really something you could grab onto. Not literally, not figuratively. Those very first moments after forming his Wayborn Seed during the tournament had been sublime. He moved with the world, with fate, and in harmony with something greater. It had made things easy in a way that describing it as such didn’t really capture. The Dao that can be named is not the true Dao, indeed.

“Or,” He Yu said, “you could always seek tribulation.”

“Stand in a thunderstorm and let heaven rain its fury down upon me? I’d rather not, if it’s just the same.”

He Yu had done some reading after forming his Golden Core. Tribulation was something that, according to the histories in the sect archives, was far more common in the older days than it was now. It aligned with what Zhang Lifen had told him about primordial arts like the Cloud Emperor’s Hidden Palace. Ancient arts of its ilk would frequently subject those who cultivated them to tribulation at key stages of their development. It was something about how seeking immortality went against the will of heaven, and the tribulation was at once a test of one’s capability and resolve, while also serving as a punishment for one’s hubris.

The details on these tribulations were sparse. The most He Yu could piece together was that such trials frequently aligned with their tribulant’s cultivation. That would explain why He Yu had to endure the unleashed power of the storm. What would Li Heng’s tribulation be like then? A mad flight through a blizzard atop an eternally enwintered peak? He supposed it was as likely as anything else.

“I can see you thinking,” Li Heng said, “and I don’t like it.”

“I was just wondering what kind of tribulation the Lunar Mirror Sword Art would demand,” he said.

“I don’t really think that’s what I’ll have to do,” Li Heng said, standing up and stretching. “Remember, I don’t practice some ancient art from time immemorial. My grandfather created my family art. It’s a relatively new style, all things considered.”

“Yeah, but lunar? And winter? Those are fundamental concepts. Both are incredibly closely tied with Yin.”

Li Heng stopped. He almost looked as though He Yu had slapped him. “It can’t be that simple,” he muttered.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about exactly, but it was for me,” He Yu said. “Remember, all I had to do was just declare that Sha Xiang was a villain. Things sort of took over from there.”

“One thing that’s kept showing up as I cultivate is the taiji. I took it to mean that I needed balance. Flexibility, of course, it was one of the most obvious lesson that I’d learned training with Old Guo. I thought that meant relying less on my defensive techniques, however. Mix in more of my offensive arts.”

“I think it was meant to go further,” He Yu said.

“Clearly. But how? My arts are all so heavily Yin aligned.”

“Can’t you provide the Yang? Maybe through your actions and intent, if you need something extra?”

“That just sort of brings me back to what Old Guo said.” Li Heng seemed a bit distant as he spoke, however. As though he were turning over precisely how he would do that in his head.

“Right. Like how I said with my own insights. It was more about figuring out how to fit together all the pieces I already had, rather than looking for something that I was missing.”

“I’ll have to meditate on this,” he said.

“Well, let me know how it goes,” He Yu said, standing to join Li Heng.

“For the time being, at least, care to go another round? I think I’ve still got some fight left in me. At the very least, it’ll help with the whole balance thing in one sense.”

As they took their places across from one another and settled into their ready stances, He Yu took a moment to regard his friend. Li Heng was relaxed and confident, his jian held before him in the picture of a noble swordsman. The twin streaks of moonlight silver that ran back from his temples only seemed to enhance that nobility. His clothes, his bearing, even the feeling of his presence as the dark, snowy field blanketed the training area radiated a tangible sense of refinement.

Li Heng was, for all intents and purposes, noble. Of that much, He Yu was certain. He could talk all he wanted about how he needed to seek balance in favor of his ideas about what nobility meant. He was simply missing how he needed to connect all of that together. Of course, telling him as much wouldn’t do any good. He’d have to figure it out on his own, just as He Yu had.

As the two of them broke off the initial clash of their renewed training, He Yu thought that Zhang Lifen’s methods were starting to make a lot more sense.