The Door To All Marvels

The world outside was cold and bitter-swept, snow-lashed, howling wind battered as a storm swept down over the city of East Saffron and brought with it the specter of winter’s fury. The library, however, was feeling quite cozy actually. The lights were just as harsh as ever, and the bookshelves just as metal-sharp, and the walls painted just as inoffensively as always… but, in the soul of it, in the aura and the care and the life of the place, there was a touch of gentle warmth that was unmistakable. It was so subtle— a subtlety of the weak kind, not the profound— and yet… he could bask in it for forever. For however long the storm blustered, the library would remain a sanctuary.

That, and they were putting up solstice decorations. The festive mood might have played a small roll in that, all things given.

“Hand me that roll of tape, please?” Janus leant over— dangerously, hand outstretched from where he was balanced precariously atop a particularly unsteady-looking ladder. It was definitely not the sort of thing they should be doing. For multiple reasons, even— Janus because he was being stupid, and Mingtian because he really should’ve been doing paperwork. He’d have to stay later to get some of that done, if this kept on.

But, despite that, he just wordlessly tossed up the roll of heavy-duty adhesive, watching it catch the light as it sailed through the air arced perfectly— straight with a rubber-on-flesh slap into Janus’s waiting hands. There was a reason he’d kept himself out of his office, for now…

The librarian gave him a thumbs up and set back to fiddling with the streamer of glitter laced ribbons that he was putting up all around the back reading area. Even that was probably excessive. They’d already hung banners along the walls and brought out a special cart of festive books, and made a little mural out of colored sticky notes— some, Mingtian was sure, would say that adding ribbons on top of that was excessive. To those, Mingtian would say that they failed to grasp the soul of the matter, the heartfelt, heart-wrenched core of emotion, of the those who tried so hard to make even this impoverished little corner of East Saffron a sanctuary of warmth and happiness to the children who came here to find themselves in worlds of fantasy.

Though, if Janus insisted on stringing up the good luck charms after, Mingtian would have words with the man. Enough was enough.

She found him like that, lip quirked up ever so slightly in the ghost of a smile, Janus struggling to make sure the ribbon was applied over the entire room without sagging too much in one place or getting drawn tight in another. For a long moment she just… stared, standing between two bookshelves, not quite daring to emerge— thinking that she hadn’t yet been noticed. Her perception was good, now, but she had a long way to go before she’d be able to notice his subtle observation.

He didn’t rush her, even though some part of him deep within was gripped with a sudden and giddy, almost euphoric excitement. Logically, he’d spoken with her only a day prior, and he’d read her letters, and… despite that. He was excited.

So, for a long moment, he waited, until Lily finally built up the nerve to step forward. “Master Mingtian.” Hesitant, and yet— in a strange way still confident. Determined. “I’m—”

“Lily?” Janus snapped his head over to her, actually surprised. In fact, he was so surprised that the ladder he was standing on tilted out from beneath him and would’ve have probably brought them both crashing down to the floor—

Lily leapt into action the same time as he did, all but leaping forward with a sudden burst of speed even as Mingtian threw out his hand, shearing off a slip of paper from inside his spatial ring and inscribing a litany of runes on it in the same moment. A concave shield burst open beneath him, cushioning his fall even as Lily grabbed onto him. Then the ladder dropped on her head, but it pretty much bounced off. Weak as her cultivation was, it was still enough to shrug off at least that.

Janus glanced up at her with wide eyes as she set him down on the floor beside her. “Ah… thanks, Lily. That was almost bad.”

Lily grinned back. “No problem. It’s always a pleasure to be helpful.” Then she pretty much turned around, completely ignoring her as she looked up at Mingtian with a look of such naked, childlike hope. “Sooo… not to impose— I really hope that I’m not imposing or anything— but I was, uh, do you have a worksheet for me?”

Mingtian snorted. He’d half expected that, but still, he could appreciate the situation enough to see the irony in it. In all ways that mattered, Lily Ward was his social superior in East Saffron. A student in the elite cohort of the University of East Saffron, a Shedding cultivator and the nominal disciple of a core formation cultivator— she was so far beyond him, and yet she still came to him for lessons.

There was something amusing in that. He shook his head. “I didn’t make one for you, sorry. I don’t really keep up with those anymore.” The look of devastation on Lily’s face was almost comical— but, luckily for her, he wasn’t going to lead her on for too long. He’d used to lead Baixue on for eons sometimes, and it’d been amazing… “you’re a proper cultivator now, Lily.” he pushed away the melancholic thoughts of everything that’d long since come to pass. “You don’t need a worksheet. You can just discuss formations normally.”

“Really?” Then she realized what she’d just said, and blushed. “I mean, of course. I, just…” she glanced at Janus, who was still picking himself up off the ground. “You don’t mind if I take Mingtian for a moment, do you?”

Janus glanced at her sword, then at the almost inhumanly graceful look of cultivation that adorned her, and gulped. “Y-yeah. That’s fine. As long as Mingtian agrees, though.” Lily looked back to Mingtian, and this time, he just nodded.

She squealed with excitement. “Alright! Come on, let’s go to…” she glanced outside the window at the storm raging beyond them, wincing. “Right, you probably wouldn’t deal well with that…”

“He’s very resistant to cold,” Janus interjected, and Mingtian just nodded, taking the initiative to lead her over to the door. After only a second’s hesitation, she followed, and— without so much as shrugging on a jacket, Mingtian opened the door and stepped out into the swirling snow.

The wind swept at him with a furious force, catching onto his hair and clothes and whipping them both along with the storm’s whims. Lily didn’t seem all too bothered by the temperature, though the wind clearly bit at her, too; she hadn’t quite reached the level of cultivation where weather was simply background noise, and she was a long ways off from the level where when she spoke, heaven would hold its breath.

Perhaps not quite as far as she might think, though. Her formations were good, and with only a bit of actual cultivation behind them…

Mingtian smiled as snowflakes settled on his hair, little bits of white against gold. “Well, it’s been a long time since I really got to speak with you. How are things going for you? I assume you’ve been keeping up with the art of Formations?”

“Yeah! I’ve been working on and off on most of my projects… it’s been hard, but I’ve been keeping up with all the various different bits and bobs. I did that perception thing you taught me, which— by the way, I’m infinitely grateful for— and I’ve been making some interesting new formations now that I’m able to better understand the nature of three-dimensional runes.”

They turned away from the library, heading down a deserted street amidst the bluster. The whole world had been painted a steady white— the whole of everything that existed in that moment reduced to the spaces between streetlamps. “That’s good. I’m glad that even though you’ve taken up the sword, you’ve kept to what brought you onto the path in the first place.”

“I wouldn’t betray you like that. You’re the whole reason that I’ve been able to live this… this dream. You were the one who laid out the road for me.”

“You shouldn’t ever cultivate for someone else.” The snow crunched underfoot as they walked— inaudible, more or less, but still apparent in the sensation of it. “Not even altruistically. Cultivation is an individual pursuit. It is the road to sovereign mastery. It is something that, ultimately, you must walk alone.”

“I’m not sure,” she spoke, quietly, as though she wasn’t talking to someone who’d followed that path all the way to completion— who had seen the highest heavens and the most terrible hells, and knew without a shadow of a doubt the true nature of the world. “I don’t cultivate just for me. I told you about Ruqian, didn’t I? Xinshi brought up the question just yesterday, and he reminded me that… I cultivate with Avyr. What’s the point to seek a lonely forever?”

“At some point, the journey itself becomes the goal.” The Sword Saint still threw themselves into the furthest depths of the Celestial Realm, fighting monstrosities so infinitely beyond even him, all in search of the next ascension. “It’s always warped by that sole desire, caught up in its enormous gravity and bound together.”

Lily frowned. “That sounds like no way to live.”

“It is the path into true power.”

“Power for the sake of power sounds… flat. Power is an expression of what we do with it, you know?” She sighed. “It’s something that I’ve been thinking of still. Especially when I use the sword a bunch… it’s a more violent tool than formations. It’s a fighter's tool. Formations can be used for pretty much anything, and that doesn't have to be combat, but a sword?”

Mingtian, nodded, understanding entirely. He’d spent long enough hearing Baixue yammer on about those concepts to not get something at least that basic. “What is a sword?” He held out his hand, vertically, snow slipping past either side of it as it— “cut, to cut— that is the basic nature of the blade. But the sword is not the butcher’s blade, nor it is a butter-knife; the sword carries with it the weight of all its past sins, and all its past glories. A sword is an implement of blood.”

“I know.” Lily nodded solemnly. “Qinfu has been very explicit about the dangers of swordplay done improperly.”

“He’s probably more right than he knows. A mortal uses the sword. To them, flaws are an excusable inevitability. A cultivator cultivates the sword, and a flaw left to fester too long is an infected, rotting wound in their cultivation.”

Lily cocked her head, a few flakes of snow falling off her hair and drifting, caught up in the wind and cast down to the ground so far below. “Sword qi? What’s that?”

Mingtian blinked. Was their realm really so utterly bereft of even the most basic information about cultivation? Every time that he thought he thought the realm was done surprising him with just how absolutely impoverished it was, it seemed like it had another thing just waiting in reserve to remind him of how low it truly was.

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“Well…” slowly, because it was certainly not an area he had much knowledge in, not by any stretch of the imagination— “I am no expert, mind you, so take my words with a grain of salt.” That, he meant, truly. Yes, he’d touched on the very basics of the intent-based qi for most weapons, but only in the way a smith knew the souls of the weapons they helped create. Even his needles, the weapons he’d used more than any other, he did not particularly grasp the deep intents of; they were more implements for the enactment of his greater workings. The technique that drove them, the formations they wove together… those were the things that were worthy of an Immortal Sovereign. Needle intent— which was a bit of a ridiculous thing to begin with— had been left far behind.

Slowly, Lily nodded. “Alright. That’s fine… I understand. A mortal probably wouldn’t know most of these sorts of things anyways—”

Mingtian snorted. “I didn’t say I know nothing of what you ask for. I just said that I’m not an expert on it like I am with formations.” When Lily didn’t speak again, but for what went unsaid beneath the howling winds, he continued. “Sword qi is the qi of the sword. This should, at least, be self explanatory. What does it mean, however, by qi of the sword? Think of what qi is, at its most fundamental aspects. Beneath its essence, it is the deep essence of the world, the great making of it all. So, thus, sword qi is the essence of the swordsman. A sword bound by its qi will cut sharper, fly further, and strike fiercer. Yet, on that same measure, a sloppy swordsman will give life to a sloppy qi.” If they were even able to cultivate sword qi in the first place, and not some other grotesque aspect. “A vengeful swordsman will give rise to a vengeful qi. A bloodthirsty swordsman to a bloodthirsty qi. Such is part and parcel to the essence of the demonic.”

Lily’s eyes widened dramatically. “Demonic cultivators are real? I thought those were myths!”

He couldn’t help but chuckle and shake his head. “People thinking that demonic cultivators are fake will never stop being a marvel. That’s like a man who, looking out at the ocean, sees no fish and decides thusly that fish don’t exist.”

“But fish don’t exist.” Lily only managed to last a second before she burst into giggles. “Sorry. I just couldn’t resist. Still… kinda weird. I’ve never heard of demonic cultivators actually existing. They’re… you know, like immortals descending from the heavens, or omnipotent gods— you know. Myths and legends.”

“Perhaps they have been repressed over the years. The realm has certainly become a smaller place from what it was before the Empire of Twelve Constellations…” which was his leading theory, at the moment. With how much more the sects seemed to involve themselves in the affairs of mortals… “I would never believe that they don’t exist, though. There will always be someone who looks at their peers and sees nothing more than cultivation materials to enhance the speed of their progress.”

Lily shivered. “That’s… horrible. How could anyone do that?”

“There is nothing but power.”

“No.” She shook her head, resolute. “Not if it leads to that.”

She was right, technically, even if she didn’t realize the truth of the matter. The demonic transgressed against the way of heaven; it was a self-consuming path, ultimately, a road that wrapped unto itself and tore itself apart in its bloody grasp. Either the demonic cultivator consumed the entire world and was left with nothing left to consume, forever stagnant in a frozen hell, or the world evolved with them, devolving into bloody harshness and immeasurable violence, and cruelty, such vast cruelty. Mingtian had seen subrealms and sealed universes where that’d been allowed to come to fruition and…

Well, they were not called hells for no reason.

She would learn, one day. For now, though, they simply walked in silence, passing through the snow and leaving behind only the faintest trail of their passing— a quiet recrimination, a joyous upwelling, becoming, patterns fading in the snow. Until, after a short while only, they reached a familiar park, its open expanse carpeted in pristine snow, its trees frozen white and spindly, and dense evergreen clad, all reduced to gray nothing beneath the aegis of the storm. They went off the beaten path, after only a short while, coming to rest in the center of an isolated grove, that small clearing, that— sanctuary, familiar enough to them both, and yet changed by the whirling storm into a secluded world. A whole hidden realm, only to themselves…

Hm. That gave him ideas. Impractical ideas, but maybe if he had time some day… “so,” he finally spoke, a soft smile playing at his lips as he looked up at the vast, ashen heavens above— “what did you want to show me?”

“How’d you know I wanted to show you something?”

“You just confirmed for me.” Lily scowled, and he just laughed. “Come on. I promise that I will be entirely fair in my judgement. I await whatever treasure you make.” He wasn’t sure if he would be able to, actually— not just because he was going to be judging the work of a novice, but because he was to be judging Lily’s work. He could admit to himself a certain… fondness for the young formations student.

“Alright…” it was a simple thing she pulled out, but in that simplicity, Mingtian couldn’t help but be interested. It was wrapped up, all, transformed in a way into something far more interesting that the base materials that’d made it— and in a way even those had been transformed.

Gently, he picked up the little spiritual implement out of her hands, running a finger along the cool smoothness of its side. In the winter’s biting chill, it was almost harsh— ceramic dull, but not quite as solid, an insulating filling built to protect its delicate interior. Or perhaps, to protect the wearer from the excess energy vented by the formation.

“This is refined, isn’t it?” Lily blinked up at him in curiosity, but he didn’t need her response to know— it was obvious. The texture was all but unmistakable. The metal had been transformed from what’d been, once, and made into something new. Perhaps not intentionally… but, still, it was a powerful enough refinement. She’d find it much easier to use than she might have otherwise, which… well, that was a good thing. The formation itself was a bit of a mess. A genius mess, but a mess nonetheless. “Tell me. Why did you design it this way?”

His once student cocked her head. “What do you mean? To get the formation to work? It draws upon the ambient qi of the world to supplement my limited reserves, while using the purer qi from within me to guide and structure the main formation…” and so on. The design itself was clever, in the way of children— it addressed the main problems a fledgling formations master would be dealing with at least. Three-dimensional runes and a shielded core to prevent their enemies from simply reaching out and disrupting whatever formation they made, and a method to supplement their natural qi with the ambient energy around them.

Still, it had flaws, and Mingtian took it upon himself to slowly prompt her towards realization. One by one, he carefully guided her to consider— by herself, because she was now advanced enough in the art that it would do her no help for him to just wave his hand and fix everything by himself— all the major problems.

Why does this look like this?

Where do these connections go?

What’s the point of having this truncated rune between these two linking elements… and, so on. None of them were very complicated things— barring the one part where he’d had to push her a little to think of the formation in terms of a four-dimensional mapping expressed in three-dimensional space, but that was formation theory she probably wouldn’t have to worry about for a long time. It’d been a long time, but he was pretty sure that back when he’d first been learning the art of formations he hadn’t cared about any of that sort of thing until he’d reached the higher eschalons of power in his world.

Lily would be better than him, though. Not just because he was an Immortal Sovereign— and Mingtian would have been sorely disappointed if anyone who got personal tutelage from an immortal sovereign ended up worse than someone who’d more or less figured out the entire art of formations on their own— but because he could see the potential within her. The desire, that was, to surpass herself.

The desire to maybe, one day, surpass heaven.

And so— while they walked, while he picked apart her formation and spoke of a hundred different, others, all the magnificent possibilities of the great art, all her desires for the great art… he could not but hope, in the way that any good friend would for their fellow, that they might reach immortality and all the wonders of the vast heavens above.

In the way that any good master would, for their disciple.

The snow continued to fall over East Saffron.

………

At night, after the snow had stopped, when everyone with any sense had tucked themselves away in their homes and those who hadn’t were muffled by the stillness of the world, East Saffron was eerily, almost unnaturally silent. The library was dark. Floors beneath him, all their new decorations lay in shadow, limp things, indistinguishable in the dark that draped itself over every corner, every bookshelf— the gloam that pooled, that stuck and slunk and dripped off every, even the slightest of corners.

It was a liminal space. Stuck, between that memory of light— that memory of liveliness, the memory of a day passed alive, still living in the core of near-nostalgic emotion simmering in the pit of his chest… he leaned against the windowsill, the energy of his wuxing formation sweeping over him. Calming, as though the library was not already the very epicenter of calm.

Silent, as was the whole of the universe around him— from earth, bridging to heaven, and the glittering stars that flecked that empyrean vault above. Serenity, all in the palm of his hands.

Even a light knock on his door didn’t manage to knock him out of his reverie, so caught up was he in the thoughts of the day he’d spent with Lily. They’d spent so long discussing formations, before she’d been forced to head back to Guxi’s for dinner… walking, to wherever the wind’s whim led them, meandering along conversations and leaping between threads with the grace of a perfectly played lute…

The door creaked open, and— surprisingly, a little, it wasn’t Zhihu come to bother him at that late hour. He wouldn’t have put it past her… “Lexi.” He tipped his head toward her in lazy acknowledgement. “I didn’t expect to see you so late.”

“Well, someone ran off and left me with all the paperwork.”

“Apologies.” Sincerely, even. He’d just been so caught up in the moment of it, the timeless wandering… “I lost track of time, didn’t I? It’s merely been a while since I had the opportunity to see Lily. I’ll be more on top of my work, henceforth.” It was a thoughtless platitude, his mind still far too distracted by the— city lights, heaven’s lights, snow silence and memories. So much more than anything, the memories.

For a long moment, Lexi was silent, before she simply stepped through his office and joined him at the window, leaning to look, out over the mystical and mysterious mundane expanse of a city on a planet, in a tiny realm. Perhaps even she could sense it, lacking whatever context… for a long moment, she was silent.

That was fine with Mingtian. There was something beautiful in silence that wasn’t really silent.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you this happy.”

“Happy?”

Far in the distance, the moon rose on its ponderous arc, its silver light sharp in the snow-brightness; reflecting, shining, luminescent bright glittering off a world of diamonds and ice, and all the pale purity that came in the lee edge of the storm. Lexi just nodded. “It’s hard to tell, sometimes, with you, but these past few months… all the tension with the Empire of Nine Sunlights must be getting to you. I’d tell you not to worry about things, but that would be disingenuous.” She sighed, leaning forward just a little more, resting heavily. Ponderously. “The library’s always going to be here. Even if somehow Guxi or Yuxan magically got the ability to dismiss me and replace me, they can’t get rid of the library. You can take some solace in that, at least.”

He… hadn’t, actually, been worried about any of that. A light chuckle escaped him at the absurdity of the situation. Here Lexi was— so close to grasping a facet of an existence unfathomable, only to stumble at the last moment through misattribution.

Then again, she’d never be able to realize what truly had bothered him. She’d never understand why he was so relieved. Why he stood there, enraptured by the moon and snow and buildings, towering, high into the atmosphere so quaintly and yet so awe-inspiringly…

After all, if an Immortal Sovereign couldn’t figure it out, then who could?