CHAPTER 2
“Hello, outlander.”
The journey to this point had been wrought with the most unreasonably painful sensations that Gao Xing had ever felt.
That long, expansive moment, where he felt his entire being squeeze and undulate, twist, shrink and then expand, would forever paint a stark image in his recollection. His body, or perhaps his soul – he wasn’t completely sure – certainly wasn’t meant to be manipulated so.
“Hello, spirit.”
Gao Xing's eyes wandered over the space he found himself in. However, there was nothing but pitch black. The only exception was a small source of light far, far above. A source he expected by its shape to be identical to the formation carving he had previously touched to get here.
“I’ve never seen a soul so complete...”
Gao Xing arched his brow and finally laid eyes on the figure opposite him.
“Thank you?”
The face of the luminescent figure of the spirit was relatively featureless and undefined. Its body, however, was of intricate carvings that flowed with its own light. Following the lines strained Gao Xing’s eyes, to the point he shortly looked away.
Calling it a spirit was only a guess, but it came naturally.
“It’s terrible.”
“Oh, okay.”
Gao Xing then picked and prodded at his own figure.
He was suspiciously bright himself, and of a nice darker blue that was pleasant to the eyes. He didn’t, however, have any marking. No lines. No holes. He was whole, clean, and fully comfortable about it.
He forgot for a moment that he was dying and simply basked in his own glow. It was quite pleasant.
“There is no imperfection for a martial spirit to attach itself, no compatibilities with which to match an affinity, and no space for a core...”
There might not be anything in this space beside Gao Xing and the spirit, but it didn’t feel like he was being spoken to.
The Spirit closed the already-short distance between them and touched his forehead. It did so silently, quickly, and without saying a thing.
“Fully developed but perfectly unattuned. Your soul wants for naught but to be... whole and unbothered. If you died, you’d just appear again, and intact, perhaps? Is that why you have memories of a previous life, despite your lacking cultivation?”
“Hey, wait, about possessing me-”
“Are the laws of reincarnation so damaged? A complete soul... how did it come about? Is the Heavenly Court really fumbling the ball this badly?”
“I don’t really-”
“Little boy.”
Gao Xing flinched and instinctively inched backward.
“I was going to make you an offer none would refuse. None, perhaps, except you.”
“...I’m listening, spirit.”
“I could save your life,” the spirit offered, “if you swear to save mine.”
Despite the gravity of the words, Gao Xing felt them light. The spirit’s tone was more contemplative than hurried. It was less said to convince and more to state the obvious.
“Alternatively, you could continue as you were, and perish. Live again, as powerless as you are now, with no hope of trouncing mortality.”
The offer would have been more tempting if the spirit hadn’t confirmed that he would reincarnate again.
Right now, rather than contemplate anything the spirit offered, Gao Xing was experiencing a state of calm he’d never expected to experience. At least not to this degree. The light of his own soul, a colour he’d never thought deeply about – but was suddenly his favourite – became very comforting. Memory of the pain his body was experiencing had become muted. He couldn’t feel much of anything right now.
The perfect state to think. To consider. To wonder.
“Are you some kind of god?”
The words sounded irrelevant. Maybe they were, but Gao Xing didn’t mind. Answering the spirit’s offer wasn’t a priority. He yearned for little more than this soul-bound tranquillity of bathing in nothing.
Especially after the day he’d had. The life, even.
It was sudden. A spite that felt personal, an intrinsic disregard that flowed from the spirit’s form. It slowly drifted away from Gao Xing and turned to face the carvings far above their heads.
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“A mere god…”
The spirit’s words were spoken in the kind of dejected, self-debauching tone that reminded Gao Xing of his own recent ponderings. It didn’t even seem that the spirit was talking to him at all.
“A god shouldn’t have been… but the power of numbers… and sacrifice draws the most out of anyone…”
The spirit’s utterances slowly grew louder, from whispered words of disbelief to stern statements.
“A god or a mortal… it’s the same thing to me. How did I get confused for a mortal?”
Gao Xing had a feeling that the spirit would continue talking itself in circles if he didn’t do something.
Gao Xing tentatively raised a glowing hand and waved vaguely in the spirits direction. It had turned to him during its rumblings, though it continued slowly drifting away. Or was that Gao Xing drifting away? It was hard to tell.
“Spirit?”
“Outlander.”
“It’s Gao Xing.”
“Then, Gao Xing. What is it? Can’t you see that I’m busy?”
He couldn’t, actually.
“How were you going to save my life? How am I supposed to save yours?”
A cocked head, an imagined raised brow. The spirit brought its hands together, like it was checking its nails.
“When a cultivator reaches a certain level,” the spirit said, its tone light and inattentive, “their martial spirit becomes no less a part of them than their own flesh.”
The spirit flexed his hand – for Gao Xing simply knew it was a he – and admired the glowing, carved digits.
“Man and spirit. Blood and qi. It all flows together. The spirit cultivates the qi, until they become one. Then, the man cultivates the blood, until it transcends mere qi. A crash course on godhood, you might say.”
Gao Xing shivered, a vague idea occurring to him. He’d only said it as a joke, originally. “I don’t really know what you’re trying to say…”
Except he did. He’d already connected the dots. The spirit wasn’t being subtle. Possession, it seemed, was on the menu.
“Gao Xing.”
He felt it now. The power behind the light. Gao Xing felt the calm of his soul’s light melting away. He felt the glow of the spirit surround his own, and he felt its restriction. His name reverberated in his mind.
“I can carve your soul into the most efficient cultivator imaginable. I could carve a premiere dantian. I could probably carve the right imperfections to match with the highest-level martial spirits.”
“But you won’t.”
A crack in the façade. A barely discernible smile. It chilled his heart and froze his mind. It was a snide, ghastly thing.
“No, Gao Xing, I will. After all, I am the highest-level spirit around, aren’t I?”
The light of his soul dimmed to nothing. A blade of light materialized in the spirit’s grasp, and then Gao Xing knew no more.
…
A special feeling overcame Gao Xing when he woke up beside the pile of rocks.
One of dizziness. Confusion. Hurt.
His body was finally severing its last tether.
‘Cultivate.’
There was also the barest feeling of something different in the air.
“I never cultivated... I don’t have a technique.”
It was a fatal flaw, he realized.
A strange sound, similar to a snort, resounded through his head.
‘I’ll do it once.’
It felt like every pore on Gao Xing’s body burst open. As if a curtain veiling the world had suddenly been lifted.
No. It was more like he’d been let out of the thick leaden walls of the soundproof cube he’d been sat in all his life.
The world opened up to him in that moment. Gao Xing spied light that spoke to him, that tickled his skin, that whispered in his ears. He heard brisk and flowery tales from the bright flowing wind, and for a moment, the world shifted to notice him. To admire him. To improve him.
Silver mist gathered from beneath Gao Xing’s skin and clothes, and slowly lifted to congeal into a nondescript figure. Even its carvings were obscured by the silver mist that rose from his body.
Breathless, weary and not entirely cognizant, Gao Xing watched the figure cross its legs amidst the air.
“You are very lucky. Luckier than me, at any rate.”
Gao Xing felt that he was hallucinating. He wet his dry tongue, but couldn’t. He blinked and rubbed his eyes with protesting arms, but the scene before him hadn’t changed.
Swirls of beautiful luminescent energies, originally clear but a pretty teal in such high concentrations, reached all the way to the clouds.
It was thick, miasmic, and slow. It was powerful. A magnificent sparkling whirlpool amongst an otherwise dreary ravine, a bland forest and cloudless sky. It made the world around it insignificant.
It triggered the dregs of his adrenaline and woke him up much quicker than anything else could.
“That’s... qi?”
His voice was weak and his tone mocking.
“How am I supposed to do anything with that?”
“Be quiet and shut your eyes. Calm yourself and focus inward. I’m doing this once.”
“Doing what?”
“Do it or die!”
Suitably chastised, Gao Xing shut his eyes and spared the little focus he had left inward. Basic meditation was something he’d been trying and failing to do for over a decade now, but if the spirit thought it would help, he’d give it a shot.
For a long, drawn-out moment, nothing happened at all.
Popping one eye open, Gao Xing saw that the unbelievably large whirlpool had settled around his prone position. The gaps between swirls had closed and the shape had shifted, the energies forming a dome that separated him entirely from the outside world.
“Shut.”
At least, the spirit sounded amused this time.
“This energy is special. I infused it with the sub-law of memory. If you just pay attention, you’ll learn my cultivation technique.”
Gao Xing couldn’t think too hard about the spirit’s words and closed his eyes.
He had thought to say something, but before he could, he was lashed by a tentacle of qi. He couldn’t see it, and he found himself unable to open his eyes, but he could explicitly feel the entire mass, pulsing and shifting, through a bizarre sixth sense. He felt the meticulous, expert movements of the entire mass of energy as if he himself were the one controlling it.
“If you again lay your mortal eyes on this power of law, your mind will implode.”
Gao Xing stopped trying to open his eyes.
Apparently satisfied, the spirit weaved through esoteric motions, and the energy slowly began infusing into Gao Xing’s body.
It was strange. It was euphoric. It was utterly mesmerizing.
The energy ran through his body like liquid satisfaction. He sighed, delightfully. Gao Xing smiled for the first time in weeks, and the weight upon his shoulders, the sense of reaching his final destination, was finally cast off.
All at once, he relaxed under the pleasure of the coursing energy. It soothed like a pleasant lemonade by the beach.
“Spirit…” he found himself saying, asking; “who are you?”
The energy continued methodically pushing into his body, into the streams cut into his soul, where it eventually settled into his core. It filled his dantian. A dantian he didn’t used to have. It pulsed with life, enriched the senses, and possessed Gao Xing with the utmost calm.
“I am Yanluo Wang.”
A beat passed. Then another. His calm trembled.
Gao Xing’s mouth opened and his lips twitched.
“The king of hell?”
He was about to panic, but his spirit – Yanluo – scoffed.
“Of course not.”
Gao Xing sighed, returning to his calm. Of course he wasn’t that Yanluo Wang. That was Earth mythology, after all.
“I am no mere king. I am the Emperor.”