Standing across from the little old man, whose spine was bowed and whose robes were nearly worn-through in places, Song got the feeling that she was slightly in over her head. It’s fine, you’ll get through this. Deep breaths; Heaven wouldn’t have sent you on a mission you couldn’t accomplish!
“I’ve been given a commandment by the heavens, honoured elder.”
He inclined his head slightly, urging her to continue. Around her, the other old men and women were stone-faced; a part of her, the part that had been taught to respect the wisdom of her elders, wanted her to meekly apologise and bow. But the rest of her knew that she was representing Heaven here, that she couldn’t show weakness, so she kept her chin high and her voice firm.
“I have been tasked with the holy mission of destroying an artifact of great evil, something that will destroy the world if it continues to exist. A small amount of black dusty soil – the young cultivator told me he knew what it was, so please, do the right thing and just let me destroy it.”
The old man – the patriarch of the mountain and sect, she had to assume – held her with a steady gaze. His eyes were as aged as the rest of his body, the whites gone yellow and the pupils cloudy, but she somehow knew that he saw her with a clarity beyond explanation. “My Steadfast Heart Sect has always attempted to keep good relations with the clergy, though the quick pace of the mortal world makes it difficult at times. And so, it pains me to say that you will not be fulfilling you mission today, young lady.”
She scowled. “But- but the world is in danger! How could you even consider..?” Somewhere in the core of her being, a golden radiance was pouring in. She really, really didn’t want to fight these people – but weighed against the fate of the world, how could she do anything else? I wasn’t subtle enough. I should have figured out a way to get into that weird bubble, instead of getting frustrated and following the trail back here, instead of revealing myself. “Why?”
“The Heavens are not omniscient. They have been wrong before, and they are wrong now.”
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Lu pulled himself over the lip of the tunnel, his cheeks burning at the indignity of it. He straightened up, brushed himself off, and stood stoically as though nothing had happened – but not before glancing at Elder Persimmon, who had the good grace to look embarrassed for a moment. As you should be! Seriously, teleporting me above the hole… As an Elder, he really needed to cultivate a better spacial awareness.
Ah, perhaps I should have told him there was a hole in the first place… Anyway, I’ll be magnanimous and let this go. It’s in the past, in the past. Yes, there were more important things for him to be doing than chastising an Elder in his head. All of the sect’s Elders were in the room – minus While Knuckle – as well as the Patriarch; he manoeuvred around the back of the crowd, so as to get a better view of the action. I don’t want to miss anything important. The young priestess was standing across from Steadfast Heart, her posture wavering between aggressive and defensive. Ah, I skipped the beginning, but not the climax.
She spoke, her voice baffled. “Why?”
And the Patriarch replied, his words filled with the wisdom of countless centuries. “The Heavens are not omniscient. They have been wrong before, and they are wrong now.”
The room was completely silent. A second passed, then two, three, and then the priestess exploded. A golden light came off her staff, her clothing, the small strip of her face not obscured by the veil – and when she exclaimed, there was a queer echo to the words, like they were being spoken twice.
“Blasphemy! You- you can’t possibly believe that you know better than the Gods, the Heavenly Emperors who have guided us wisely since the beginning!”
“Not since the beginning, and not always wisely.” Steadfast Heart’s voice did not waver, even as a wave of golden light pulsed through the room.
Lu stumbled, and would have fallen over if not for Persimmon putting a hand on his shoulder. He felt weak, like a newborn baby, like – like I did after I dispersed my cultivation. His eyes widened.
The Elders seemed less affected, and the Patriarch not at all. Only the very youngest were moved by the wave, and those only slightly; Winding Wind stepped back before firming his stance, and a woman Lu was unfamiliar with gasped softly. But even that was astonishing.
This priestess is a mortal, she shouldn’t be able to move a hair on any of our heads. He had heard stories of miracles, of war-priests battling the forces of Hell, but the nameless village of Lu’s birth had barely had a shrine, let alone an ordained priest – he was completely unprepared for the reality of such things. How could she suppress my cultivation like this? Ah, I probably shouldn’t have taunted her…
But then the Patriarch gestured, pushing down with his palms, and the golden light no longer had a hold on him; it was still there, but for the moment one could have mistaken it for some foreign spell.
The girl’s eyes narrowed. “You think you can oppose Heaven?”
She swung out with her staff, but the Patriarch blocked it with one hand. The impact failed to move him even a millimetre. “Heaven? No; no man can oppose Heaven who is beneath it.” Golden light poured from the girl, and Lu’s cultivation began to disappear again. The hand on his shoulder tightened, and he heard Elder Persimmon whisper.
“Lu, we need to go. Brace yourself.”
He turned his head, giving the Elder a wide-eyed look, but before he could decide whether to protest or agree space was already folding around them.
He heard a few more words from the Patriarch, “But you are not Heaven, merely a conduit,” and then he was elsewhere.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
They came out pressed against a cold and unyielding surface, and Lu bounced slightly, stumbling away from the heavy slab of a door that blocked passage to the heart of the research wing. “Ugh-!” His stomachs, both unsettled by the repeated sudden teleports, threatened to mutiny. “Elder, why did we retreat?” Surely, with the Patriarch present I wasn’t in any danger?
“You need to go through before she can stop you. Come.” Persimmons voice, which was usually soft and detached when it wasn’t warm and friendly, had a tinge of desperation to it. The huge door began grinding open, and Lu belatedly took note of the lack of guards.
“Go through..?” The gate, obviously. “But- sir, you don’t think the Patriarch will lose, do you?”
The Elder took hold of the door with his hands, and cast a spell that wrenched them open all the way. “No, of course not.” He hurried in, and Lu followed. “But he won’t win, either. With multiple Emperors empowering her – and there are almost certainly multiple, maybe even all twelve – she will be nearly unstoppable. If we were willing to kill her, maybe…”
The undulating membrane of the closed space was like ice water down his back, but only for a moment. Then the qi/ki mixture of the portal room hit him, along with a smell both familiar and horrible.
“…But no, even now it would be best not to abandon orthodoxy. We will give up the Sixth Reality if it comes to that – but the Patriarch believes we can keep hold of both, so we can only do our best to muddle through.”
Lu’s head spun. “Elder, I- you’re speaking over my head, a little. What exactly are we doing?” And also, why? Is the dirt so important, we’re willing to bring in the Patriarch and all the Elders..?
Persimmon looked at him, and his face was sympathetic for a moment. “Apologies, this must be very confusing for you. We thought we could block the divinations of Heaven, but-“ He sighed. “Suffice to say, that failed.” They came out to the open area in the centre to see researchers swarming like ants, crowding a group of people in gleaming ceramic armour. The rest of the diplomatic team.
“Go with White Knuckle and the rest, he will have more time to explain things properly.” He pushed Lu gently towards the team.
Lu’s head was bursting with questions, but he choked them down. If it’s as urgent as it seems to be… I’ll just quietly follow orders, for now. He stepped forward, and started to himself be swarmed by researchers, who pressed pieces of armour to his body.
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There were several names for the realm above elder. Some called it the emperor realm, others the heaven realm. Others still, the divine realm.
But regardless of the name, the truth was thus: it was beyond the lower realms, a transition into a truly separate form of life. The Heavenly Emperors stood on an entirely different level from any human, and it showed.
The young woman swung her staff, the head making contact with his palm. Golden divine qi attempted to burrow into him through his pores, but he deliberately clogged them with impurities drawn out of the air. The staff was blocked, and the young woman screamed.
“WHY?! Why are you defying a mandate of Heaven?” Already, their battle had spilled out of the young Lu’s room, forcing the Elders to rush to evacuate the outer disciples. Golden light wafted from her in waves, too quickly for him to still, and where it touched down reality began to wither. The walls, floor, ceiling, and even the air were dissolving into dust under the wrath of the heavens. “It’s not too late! Just let me destroy the dirt-“ Another swing, another block. “-And everything will be fine! Please, I promise, I’m not making it up! The world is really at stake!”
“I know you believe that, young lady, but you have been misinformed.”
She made a low sound of frustration. “That’s impossible! The Heavenly Emperors can’t be wrong, they know everything!”
The skin of his palms was starting to burn, so he scoured it off and grew it back. “They know what their divinations show them. They are great and powerful, yes, they are ancient and wise. But they remain capable of error.” His spiritual veins were clogging up, so he discarded them and made new ones. “Know that I speak not with arrogance, but simple truth: in a century’s time, there will be thirteen Heavenly Emperors.” At his proclamation the golden light became almost solid. The priestess’s eyes were like two orbs of gold that shone like the sun, and everything within twenty metres of her body disintegrated. “If the steps to reach Heaven numbered ten-thousand, then I have climbed nine-thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine. And yet, I remain a man. Wise, but not infallible.”
Her voice echoed like the songs of a thousand whales, all singing together. “It’s not the same. The last step is unlike any before, they cannot be compared.” The cadence of her voice greatly changed between one sentence and the next; she was speaking with their words, now. Is that all twelve? Flattering.
He bowed his head, just slightly. “Seniors. You speak the truth, but so do I; you are beyond me in all ways. But you are not perfect, you have erred.” He looked back up, into those glowing orbs, and past them. “You have erred twice, demonstrably.”
“It must be destroyed, like the others. We have erred, but only once; we did not destroy the third. We will not make that mistake again.”
Like an entire sea pouring through a thin straw, Heaven attempted to wash him away. Twelve divinities battled against one half-divinity, and found that the meagre thousandth-of-a-thousandth of their power they could bring forth was matched. Steadfast Heart’s skin was blown away, then his muscles, his organs, even his bones.
But his soul remained, inviolate. His flesh returned, new but still wizened, while the light in the priestess’s eyes flickered. “Steadfast Heart, be reasonable. You cannot tell Us that this is not a grave threat.”
He shook his head, minutely. “I cannot. But you equally cannot say that it always will be a threat, seniors.”
She blinked, and the golden aura dimmed. “You, uh, you can’t resist forever! We- the Emperors have ordained that something?” She faltered for a moment, before gathering herself. “That the thing be destroyed! So it will, and you can’t stop it!” She turned, surprise evident through her veil as she took in the devastation she had wrought on the sect. Nearly a full third of the mountain was gone. “Holy-! I mean, uh, that’s right!” She shook her staff at him, her mannerisms suddenly much more childish in her flustered state. “I’ll be back, so you'd better be ready to hand over the- it’s not about the dirt anymore? An entire..?” She trailed off, but Steadfast Heart could hear the faint “Please, send someone else next time” under her breath.
She left, and he allowed her to go. It was not the poorest outcome he had imagined; this way, both the Sect and the Heavens could pretend they had won. But in his heart, he knew that they could not survive a true reprisal; this had almost certainly been a desperation move, a single divinity managing to pierce their anti-divinations and send a single backwater priestess to shake things up. Now that that shield of ignorance had been pierced, now that all of the twelve had their eyes open, they could send ten, a hundred, a thousand priests. He would be forced to either capitulate, or be destroyed. And he was not willing to be destroyed, not for a reality that was not his own.
…But perhaps it would not come to that. While Heim and the unnamed Fifth Reality had fallen, Hell continued to resist. Perhaps this one would survive by its own merits as well.
The Patriarch looked in the direction of the research wing, and allowed a small flickering doubt, just for a moment. He examined it from all angles, listened to the wisdom it offered, then crushed it mercilessly.
Perhaps it will not come to that… But I must make preparations anyway.