The Door To All Marvels

Standing beside Lily as they looked down at the fitful workings of the formations buried beneath the 32nd Precinct’s orphanage, he couldn’t help but think that it was a remarkably sophisticated working for something so utterly mundane.

It reminded him somewhat strongly of the core formation node for a wide-range formation. It just gave off that sort of impression, in the way it sprawled out and clung fiercely to the qi it claimed as its own, and set it off along so many tiny lines of what might have been the most spiritually-dull spiritual material he’d seen in a long time. That, at least, was understandable— the whole thing had been built to cycle qi through a larger system of workings, without disrupting the overall qi balance of the area… and, economically, too, which would require a material like that.

“So…” Lily glanced down at the block of inscribed jade— an artificial jade, unsurprisingly— “can you fix it? I did my best on the rest of it, but I think the problem’s somewhere in there and I…” she shrugged, clearly a little self conscious. “I don’t know enough about how they make these to really do much, and I didn’t want to risk pulling it apart to find out.”

“A good decision. Pulling it apart would have almost certainly destroyed it without hope of repair.” That was where the complexity of its creation had come in. Mingtian couldn’t help but be impressed— for something designed for mortals, it was clearly built with the precision of a rather high-level cultivator. Or, as he surmised, very specialized machinery.

It reminded him somewhat of certain common utilities on the more wealthy planets of the Heavenly Realm. They’d had similar— if somewhat more capable— machines that controlled the productions of most everything a mortal could need, and a great profundity of things for immortals, too. He’d thought the concept rather silly when he’d first run across it, but seeing it on this lesser scale, lesser perspective— he supposed he could see the economy of it.

He hummed to himself, kneeling beside it. “I should be able to do something about it.”

Lily sighed in relief. “Thank the heavens, that’s a relief. With the winter festival tomorrow…” time really flew, didn’t it?

“I doubt the issue is exceedingly difficult to fix. If it were, then the wardstone would have already failed.” Merely… annoyingly hard.

When it came to interfering with active formations of such scale, set up at the microscopic level… well, he could do it. He wasn’t the Immortal Sovereign of Boundless Radiance for nothing— the question, rather, was how to make it look like he wasn’t a peerless immortal cultivator in the process.

So, no waving his hands and just solving the problem in the space of a second. Shame. “Why don’t you go and help out somewhere else.” Lily hesitated, and Mingtian just rolled his eyes, waving her off. “It’s nothing that you’ve not seen before—” a lie, probably— “and I’m certain there’s plenty left to do helping him prepare the place for the festival.” They’d put up all their decorations, yes, but there was still a feast to cook and prayer-slips to write, and activities to set up…

Mortal things, one and all, but important in the way only tradition could be. Lily clearly wanted to go help set that stuff up, too. “I suppose. I’m still going to have to spend the night with Guxi, but…”

“You can stay here if you want.”

Lily shrugged. “It’s the better of two evils. I’d much rather spend the festival’s eve with her than the festival itself. Besides, she’d been upset all of today and I’d much rather not risk her wrath. Again.”

“Oh?”

“Principal Yuxan was being insufferably smug about something, I think? I’m not entirely sure, but it’s put her in a mood.”

“Then why don’t you spend as much time with them as you can, before you have to head back?” Lily nodded, and— it only took a light push from him before she nodded and slipped out of the cramped basement room, leaving him to work alone.

Just what he’d wanted.

Sighing— whether in soft disappointment or curled, unnamed emotion, or relief, he could not discern, Mingtian leaned back slightly as he stared at the wardstone in front of him. It really was a rather quite beautiful thing, for a mortal work. A quaint thing, compared to other, high-level formation nodes which— admittedly— could be anything from rock stele to balls of pulsing mist to shafts of sunlight frozen in time or any other of a thousand different esoteric things… not so, for this. Rather, it clad tightly to the laws of the mortal, the simple, the eminently real, before divinities and sovereigns and their domains could come in to muck everything up.

That was its beauty. It was more similar to a computer than a truly inspired ward… but, then again, it was a mass-produced appliance for mortal use.

How delightfully primitive.

He let his domain seep through formation, reverberating with the qi and tracing each and every line of the innumerable runes until he found the exact problem. It wasn’t even an entirely unanticipated problem, actually— and, luckily, it wasn’t a very difficult one to solve, either. If it had been in the microscopic controlling runes, then it would have been a hellishly difficult prospect to him-as-a-mortal, but luckily, it was in the larger channels that dealt with the main flow of energy.

Bits of the synthetic jade had… not really flaked off, that was a bad way of describing it, but close enough. Then, they’d mixed in the channel-space and transformed the high-conductance spiritual jade of the channels into something far more akin to mortal slag. Allowed to build up for much longer, it’d clog the whole channel and then the warstone would cease functioning.

If they were lucky. If they weren’t, it’d just explode.

He pulled a slip of paper out of his storage ring and set to work, carefully writing a formation that would fix the problem. Lily wouldn’t have been able to do it— not least because she’d failed to identify the problem, but also because she did not understand the delicate science, the art of refinement— the way that qi energies and matter so subtly interacted to become something new and greater.

Or rather, in this case, debased. It was a minor oversight from whoever was responsible for manufacturing the wardstones, but given that the solution was to use better materials, maybe a purposeful one. To sell them for less, to more, for the price of debasing their own work. He couldn’t agree with the practice, but he could see its benefits.

He could also fix it.

Slowly, the talisman he was sketching began to become something far greater that the usual talismans he’d seen his students make— or even the sort that Lily used. It was by no fault of their own— they simply didn’t have the same sort of basis in formations as he did.

It wrapped around itself, connected to itself, beyond the paper something more than its brute, squirming self—

The last connections snapped into place and it shimmered, even the faint, paltry and putrid and city-corrupted qi in that dim basement beneath the city of East Saffron altered by its mere presence, forcibly rectified into something almost divine. It felt… scouring. Like standing at the front of a storm that stretched to unseen horizons, and blotted out the whole sky in its enormous majesty, and threatened to crash down over everything before them.

Before the qi of the room could be corrupted into something dangerous, he called on his domain and—

Severed the main intake node of the wardstone, placed the talisman flush atop it, and reconnected the whole thing— all in one smooth moment. A high-pitched squeal pierced the room as the whole thing for just a small moment shuddered— and then the new qi flowed through its myriad pathways, scouring free the blockages and further transforming the synthetic jade into something far more resilient. From something that might have lasted a decade further, if they were lucky, the wardstone became something that’d last them a few centuries if they were unlucky.

A small miracle.

Another utterly unremarkable working.

He smiled, glancing over the formation one more time— remembering, in that single observation, the mortal hands that’d built it—

Mingtian stepped out of the basement and made his way home. There was still work to be done, before the festival.

………

For as the dark night grew long and deep, and the heavens revolved above them, coming to the completion of their great cycle— for as the temples observed their holy rites and cultivators their mystic rituals, and the saffron touch of gentle, purple-bruised, the very depth of the sky collapsed down above them, blinking awake with ten thousand eyes alight… One by one, little flecks of starlight, intermingling with the heady streetlights and the diffuse city lights, dusting in through the tall windows and illuminating, dust particles dancing in the quiet night air.

Mingtian turned the page on his books, the sound of it the only sound in the library, so late at night. There was a feeling, to being alone at that late hour, of that late day, cloistered away in the all-but-darkness at the back of the library— a solemn quietude, an upwelling, a flooding of, melancholy as deep as the gloam… the stillness of the shadow itself and the impression of a vast and solid and unknowable thing. It was a familiar feeling, twisted— made different by a mortal’s perspective, by the city’s perspective… a profound loneliness, crawled out from its confining chrysalis of community. It was because of the juxtaposition of himself, here, reading a book on the ancient history of Aurelia and the others, in all their little parties and uncomfortable dinners, that gave rise to that…

Feeling.

He flipped to the next page of his book, lightly cursing his mortal form’s penchance to slip away into so much distraction, whatever it may be. He had not in his ascension to immortality excised emotion, no— that, ironically, he knew would far more surely lead to the demonic than a decision to pursue that himself— but he had gained the ability to focus, at least. That was something any high level cultivator grew into, inevitably— not by any consequence of their own necessarily, but rather from the need. Spending any time in closed door cultivation practically required it.

He flipped to the next page. For a long moment he paused on an image, painstakingly rendered with impossible, photographic precision from what had clearly been a memory jade of some sort. He could tell; all the signs were there. The Peach Immortal Copper Mirror, which the author claimed nobody knew the true age of…

His finger traced the curve of the curling, twisting, entangling lines of bronze and burnished, brass intermingling in delicate swirls throughout the whole metal. Much of it was lost, even in photographic translation— the book, the artist, they both simply did not have the capacity to preserve those so-small minutiae. Still, he could see in those patterns a very familiar motif…

He’d always wondered why Aurelia had been called the Peach Blossom World, when only a small part of it had peaches to begin with… but, it made sense, if those myths had emerged sometime in the endless past of the world as well. A curious phenomena, and one that any Immortal Sovereign who’d worked with the Astrological Orrery would recognize…

A smile brushed across his lips, for a moment, warring with the darkness settled around him. Just for a moment, before it was gone again, but… it was always a joy, if small, to find some small bit of familiarity amongst their vast existence.

He flipped the page.

Again.

Again… hours, and he lost track, all slipping past as he read through the rest of the book and moved onto the next, delighting in all the idiosyncrasies of an utterly unique history. A short history, even their most ancient, timeless ages, but… still, it was a rich shortness, filled with the entire long rise of civilizations. A side he didn’t get to experience very often… perhaps, when he next went to the heavenly realm he’d look into the far-past history of a more long-lived polity or two—

He paused.

It brushed across his senses, barely noticeable, only brought to his attention by the slight twisting of his domain in response to the vibrancy of it— a vast and simmering, no, flourishing qi, so utterly profound that it sank like a hole in the world beyond the library’s front doors. It was curious, because no cultivator that strong should have been near.

Perhaps Zhihu had finally voiced her suspicions to the wrong person— or maybe the incongruity of Lily’s formations expertise, or Avyr’s cultivation, or some other oddity had finally come to the attention of a master cultivator. Maybe they’d managed to actually break through the memory-erasing formation he’d laid on that one assassin. Unlikely, but it wasn’t like he’d left no opportunity for it, and the heavens were vast. Maybe some unique talent was able to do it.

Whatever the reason was— at least one thing was clear. There was no other reason they would come here but for him.

He flipped one last page, making sure that there wasn’t anything interesting left in the rest of the book, then flipped it shut and tossed it lazily off to the side. The sharp thwack as it slapped against the faux-wood of the next table over was startlingly loud against the rest of the silence around him.

Then, he stood, breathing in deeply for a moment before turning away and crossing his arms behind his back. Not for any particular reason, other than that it looked cool, and tended to annoy cultivators when they saw it. Especially the ones that were arrogant enough to stride straight into a poor precinct for no better reason than to harass someone who was, ostensibly, a mortal.

He didn’t look behind him— but he didn’t need to, either. His domain told the story well enough, for it was of the world, of light, and as the cultivator walked up to the side of the building, the world split and warped around them. He could smell it— the scent of fresh rain, of earth, of growth, of flowers and forest deepness. They could hear it, the all but silent slithering creak and groan as an aperture of jungle opened in the wall and then closed behind them, utterly whole once more. Bookshelves and books, metal and wood both, burst into flower as they flowed apart, a whole world threaded through, as though nature itself made way for the being that strode towards him… and then closed again as they padded past. Not a single word on any of the books was left out of place.

Such was the power of a fifth step Sundering cultivator.

As a wave of grass rippled over the floor beneath them, and trees stretched up around them, and the whole of his world was altered into a wild place, dangerous, glade of serene, fragile peace within the heart of the jungle place, his only reaction was a slight blink. It wasn’t even because of the technique itself, though he guessed it was probably impressive amongst cultivators in such a small realm— no, it was for an entirely different, rather more fundamental reason.

“I am told,” the cultivator growled, a soft, smooth rumble half on the edge of a mewl, a particular accent belonging to only one sort of person— “that you are the human whom Ai’er Avyr calls master? The one for which he forsook the sacrifice of his parents?”

“Hmm. Maybe—” he didn’t even get a chance to finish his sentence before a force crashed down above him, so utterly powerful as it dashed him onto the ground and drove all his breath from his lungs. Mingtian imagined that the only reason that he was able to even perceive the action, limited to his mortal body, was because the big cat had taken the opportunity to be dramatic.

He lifted his paw, and the pressure lifted in turn. Dazed, Mingtian stared up as the face of a supremely powerful cultivator, the burning eyes of a cultivator that had surpassed the great divide of core formation, stared down at him. “You will respect me, human, when we talk. Or else…” he raised his paw, as if to smash him into the ground again, then gave it an almost dainty lick and gently set it back down on the springy moss surrounding him. “I will make your suffering longer than it has to be.”

“What…” he rasped out, as he struggled to his knees— “do you want?” A pressure, again, threatening, clouding above him with a palpable force— “Great One?” Gone, as fast as it’d come. How very… egotistical.

That was fine. That was good even. In the filtered moonlight of a place that did not truly exist… yes, arrogance would help him greatly. All he had to do was keep him talking for a little bit longer.

The cat sat back, languidly flicking their tail. “Your chief educator told me that you were a man of peerless talent amongst humans, with whom even the so-vaunted disciples of the Bloody Saffron Sect come to receive guidance. He told me you were a genius. A genius would be worthy… but of all the things he told me, I see none of it.” He cocked his head to the side, inspecting him, the gaze of such a powerful cultivator scathing as it pierced him. “Other than the arrogance, I suppose.”

“Who?” He barely managed to speak beneath the all-encompassing presence of the higher-realm cultivator. It was a thoroughly novel, and strangely distressing feeling, to be made so vulnerable. He’d die before he could even settle into his cultivation if he undid the seals, and while he’d come back, eventually… how long would it take? Centuries? Millenia? Almost certainly long enough that Lily and Avyr would be little more than bones in the dust.

There was one part of him, though, that remained undiminished despite it all— and that was the most important part, perhaps. The one part of him that did not conform to the normal rules of cultivation— deeper than the spirit, the next closest thing to soul…

He was the Immortal Sovereign of Boundless Radiance, and his domain, even in so small a realm, still spanned… everything.

He smiled, pushing himself to his feet. “Well… I delight to surprise. What’s your connection to Avyr, if I—”

“You may not.” Pressure, again, pressing him so hard against the ground that the veins on his face stood out in stark relief. His heart thundered in his chest, painfully beating against the pressure for a short moment before it returned once more to normality. A moment later, a moment stronger, and his heart would have burst inside his chest. “You seem to misunderstand the true nature of our… relationship. You seem to misunderstand what I mean. Do you think that I lost my home, lost everything, lost them—” the last word, all but hissed— “just to have it all spat on by a random human? Do you think that—”

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Beneath him, his domain put the last, finishing touches on its great creation, a formation— “no. I don’t.” The big cat stilled, but before he could punish him for his insolence once again, Mingtian smiled, and spoke— “look down.”

Despite himself, the cat looked down.

Oldest trick in the book. “Seal!” A flash of light erupted around them the moment he shouted, before he shouted, to the very pulse of his domain on the far edge of intent— and when the glow faded, the cat was enclosed in a shining eightfold array, the lines of the bagua burned into the ground around him. “Good.” He sighed in relief, pushing himself to his feet, all but ignoring the Sundering cultivator in front of him as they tried and failed and increasingly frantically struggled to escape a formation that even an Immortal Ascension cultivator would have been bound by. “Good. That was… ow. Did you really need to be so rough?” Finally, the cat had wizened up to the fact that his struggling was just making things worse, and had just settled down to glare at him with an utterly vitriolic look.

He meandered over to the side of the formation, not daring to step into its radiant embrace— yet, beyond it, entirely safe. Really, the biggest challenge was how to phrase things so that they made sense. Pre-prepared formation? Definitely not something he made on the fly, that would be far too absurd for a mortal…

Something another cultivator pre-made? Maybe… ah, of course. “I’m a little annoyed that you made me use it. That life-saving treasure has been in my family for generations.” Specifically, one generation, since about thirty seconds prior. “Now that you’re not constantly flexing your might over me, I think it’s time for us to have a real conversation.”

“What did you do?”

“It’s a simple formation. The more you fight back against it, the more that it strengthens. So long as you stand within it, there is no chance you’ll ever escape.”

“Impossible. You’re a mortal.”

“I’ve found that so long as I appear perfectly ordinary, most people seem to be utterly unable to accept the unordinary, even when I shove it right in their face.” It was a bit annoying what the cat had done to the place, getting rid of all his chairs… but, ultimately, that was no matter. He laced his fingers together into a neat seal, letting the qi of that strange realm twist around him as he scuffed a symbol into the ground with his shoe. “You know of me, but I don’t know of you. Why don’t we start with that.” He stomped a foot down, and its mere nature, funneled— the qi twisted through a brief natural formation, and around them the cat’s great technique began to unravel.

It was a far more impressive little thing than it looked, and by the cat’s wide-eyed look, he knew that. At first, it seemed to shift, and waver, so-verdant growth sliding backwards— as though caught up in a strong wind fiercely sloughing down, trees cracking and splintering and moonlight overhead disappearing, leaving them in a faint darkness of a wholly different kind. What was made of qi and imagination dispersed, dissolving into the East Saffron night, and what was real remained, shattered, a pile of detritus amidst a gaping hole in the building.

Still penned in by the lines of that golden formation, supreme array, the cat watched it all in mute awe. “How?” It was barely a breathy whisper, this time— no longer quite so self-assured as it had been only a few moments prior. “How? How is that even possible? To tear apart a domain so easily…” Mingtian resisted the urge to snort. That, a domain? Maybe, in the same way a child might make a tiny house out of sticks and call it a heavenly pagoda.

“It was simple. If one understands the way the world works, then one understands the way the world breaks. And if I can break the world, then how much easier would it be for me to break a falsehood?” Most of that was made up on the spot— true enough, he supposed, but more meant to distract than anything…

Still, the cat shivered as he said it, staring at him with something that might have been respect. Something that might have been fear. “I see.” His voice, softly, a breath deep rumbling… “I see. But you can’t hold me forever. Eventually, even this life-saving treasure of yours will fail, and you’ll be left with nothing between us but my goodwill. A goodwill you’ve already trampled quite thoroughly.”

“Threats, still?” Mingtian snorted, adopting a look of lazy amusement. It helped, at least, that the amusement was real. “You’ll find that this formation is quite a bit more robust than you understand. Surely you should consider yourself lucky that I didn’t have a life-saving treasure whose response to threats was incinerate them to dust?” The cat did not respond. “Fine. I’ll say it clearly then. You don’t know enough about formations to escape my trap. You’re going to be stuck here for however long I want you to be stuck. Maybe even when the Bloody Saffron Sect shows up… wouldn’t they like that? A caged cat, a caged Sundering cultivator, all to themselves. I can only imagine the amount of natural resources a blood-aligned sect would be able to extract from you over the course of a few days.”

That managed to provoke a reaction, the cat’s lips curling back into a snarl. “You disgust me. Someone like you managed to become Avyr’s master? Just like all the other humans, concerned only with your savage interest; a vile creature that I should have killed when I had the chance.”

Mingtian’s eyes flashed darkly. Alright then… two could play at that game— he held out his hand, a long tassel of paper materializing it, fluttering weakly— a shadow under the shadow of further night fluttered over the detritus strewn-floor. “You mistake me, cat. I do not care about you. You came for me— and that demands recompense.” Golden liquid ran down the paper, radiant, godsblood twisting and writhing into runes that seemed to defy easy reading, imbued within their bounds, the power of the method of sidestepping reality. “You exist at my sufferance. You breathe at my sufferance. As easily as I picked apart your ‘domain—’” he could not resist the mocking lilt to his words, there— “I can pick apart you.”

The talisman blazed with an invisible light, burning bright enough to— for the span of a moment— sear light and shadow across every tiny speck of dust and half-adjar shard of metal, and paster, and transform a drop of water mid-fall into a prism of infinite rainbows—

For a moment, all that existed in the space between them was light and the shadow it left behind. Then, nothing. For a long moment, there was an almost preternatural silence between them, broken only by the faint city’s sound and the drip, dripping of water from a damaged pipe above. Then, a second, slick sound joined them— the splash of crimson blood trailing down the big cat’s cheek and landing on the upturned stonework beneath him.

Wide eyed, suddenly, for the first time truly fearful, the Sundering cultivator raised a paw to his cheek, feeling the sting of it, the dampness of it, the slice run through it. Scarlet dark liquid pooled between the digits of his paw, soaking into his fur and dripping down, pooling for a moment at the nadir before breaking free in the light of the bagua formation and, for a moment, shimmering before they struck the ground.

He turned his gaze to Mingtian, and breathed out— “how?”

Mingtian just crossed his arms behind his back, giving him a singularly disapproving look. “I told you I was able to break the world. Do you dare to claim that, beneath heaven, your skin is the supreme existence?”

“You…” slowly, then all too quickly, a defeated exhaustion pressed down on the trapped cultivator. “I see. No, I saw before, but now… I understand. I was never above you in the first place. From the very first moment, you knew that you could kill me. Could kill any cultivator. No wonder you act so arrogantly…”

Close enough. Really, it had been simple— in the same way he was able to blow up moons with only the meager strength of an Immortal Ascension cultivator, so too was it easy to cut a higher level cultivator’s skin. So long as his blade was sharp enough, at such low levels it didn’t matter whether it was mortal or divine— it would pass through nonetheless.

The cat sighed, laying down in the formation. “What a pitiful way to end, trapped and butchered like an ox, all by the same man who somehow managed to beguile Miao’s son. Truly, it is as they say; planning is the domain of the mortal, and success lies in the hands of heaven.” Mingtian frowned at the implication that his victory over him was by cause of luck rather than his skill, but… well, ultimately, as he looked at the cat laid out there…

He couldn’t help but feel bad. It was all too easy to imagine Avyr there instead, trapped by someone far more malicious than he was. Objectively, he understood the truth of their cruel worlds— there was little for them but the struggle, the constant fight, ever-further drive towards ascension… but, in turn, there was no great benefit, no honor in kicking the weak and killing mortals. It left a bad taste in his mouth. Now that the danger was passed…

That was how he’d put it, at least, the strange emotion that twisted within his chest. Sighing, he sat down just outside of the formation, folding his legs beneath him and adopting a meditative pose. “Now that the unpleasantries have been dispensed with… I am still curious, why you came here.” Maybe it was how much the cat mentioned Avyr. It’d been obvious that he had some sort of background in cultivation, but not Sundering-level ancestor background in cultivation. It was almost comical, now that he thought of it— the sheer humor of the situation defusing some of his ire. What was next, an immortal ancestor descending from the heavens to avenge the cat before him? A divinity after that? One of his scarce few Immortal Ascension peers? He shook his head, dismissing the thoughts as the flight of fancy they were. “My name is Leng Mingtian, of no particular title. And you?”

The big cat opened his mouth, no doubt to say something incendiary, before reconsidering, silent for a while. Then, he just sighed. “My name is Mrow Rr’an, titled, the Great One of the Ever-Bounteous Forest, First Daoist of the Open Claw.”

“An impressive list of titles.”

“An earned list of titles.” They puffed out their chest just a little. “I may appear to you a fool of a Sundering cultivator, caught by a mortal, but I once stood in the Guangnangu and held off the armies of the Empire of Nine Sunlights for three days and three nights. Once, I tended to the roots of the all-devouring tree, which claimed the lives of one hundred thousand foolish soldiers who dared to march on my home, the area around which I am told is still marked as an exclusion zone by the imperials. They still fear my name. I know they do.”

“Those who are defined by the bloody blade, live by its virtue and vice.”

The cat narrowed his eyes. “Are you mocking me?” Then, it snorted, shaking its head— wincing slightly as it aggravated the slice on its cheek. “Ah, what matters of it? I can’t do anything to you anyways. Insult me as much as you want.”

Mingtian snorted. “You have the ‘humble prisoner’ attitude down quite well for someone who claims to be amongst the preeminent powers of your people.”

“Now I know you’re mocking me. I was the youngest of the Great Ones, but I was still a Great One. Even the elders of the Bloody Saffron Sect need to be careful when they come to entreat with me, you know?” It sounded more plaintive than anything, really. Not a real complaint, a real threat like it had been, earlier.

Mingtian allowed himself a small smile. “I was merely commenting on your battle prowess.”

“And digging at my intelligence, no doubt, for getting myself stuck in a trap this bone-dead simple.”

“Perhaps.” His smile grew, just ever so slightly. “Who told you about me, Rr’an? Who told you about Avyr?”

“I always knew about Avyr. I did not know that he was here, at last… and though I had always known he had potential, I didn’t know that he’d managed to achieve so much here in East Saffron without any appreciable backing.” Rr’an’s gaze settled on him for a brief moment, knowing. “You understand, if you’ve truly spent any time with Avyr, how difficult the human system makes it for cats in their territories. Allies or not, we have always been only barely tolerated for our usefulness.”

“Of course I understand. I was the one who made sure that he was able to get into the academy here in the first place.”

“I see.” For a moment, a dangerous look passed across his face— a malice. Just for a moment. “Your chief educator seems to be a man of ill humor, then, to think to mislead me.” Mingtian didn’t point out that he’d probably have never even figured that out, had events taken their original course. Still… Yuxan had grown bold indeed, to aim such a powerful enemy at him and think that he’d be able to get away without reprisal.

“He and I… are not on good terms. He wanted me to stay in my teaching role at the academy, but without my students there, I saw no meaning to the endeavor. Ever since I left, though, he’s tried his very best to make himself as annoying as he possibly can— presumably, with the message that he’ll welcome me back with open arms should I merely recant.”

“Soemthing tells me,” Rr’an churred softly, “that you are not the sort of person to recant about anything. You just have that… look to you. The confidence."

Mingtian shrugged. “I’m just a mortal.”

“Of course,” the cat agreed. Too easily, at that. Mingtian narrowed his eyes, but didn’t call him out on it. “Why did you help him, if I might ask? If it pleases the great mortal, of course.” Well, now he was definitely mocking him, but that was fine. A cultivator had to retain their pride in some way, and trapped spirits mocking their captors was all but traditional.

Still, it did not make him particularly inclined to answer the question. He tilted his head up, staring at Rr’an for a long moment, waiting— just long enough for the Sundering cultivator to start to get annoyed.

Or, better, nervous.

Finally, he simply glanced down and said— “why not?”

The big cat huffed in soft amusement. “If I were to list the number of reasons why, then we’d be here for the next day. Humans and my kind don’t get along. It’s always been that way— since the primordial age, or so the stories go. Humans take, and take, and unceasingly take; they make Aurelia into their playground and turn the seas red with their blood, and salt the earth with their ashes and blood and cruel wars. What reason do I have to think that you would ever help him willingly?”

“I certainly didn’t help him unwillingly,” he said, amused. “Or do you think that a Shedding cultivator was able to do what you, a Sundering cultivator, was not? Besides, you should know the falsehood of that statement— or, why else would you have come to me? You already knew about his connection to Lily, didn’t you?”

“She was who I’d—” the briefest hesitation, only barely noticeable because he’d been paying attention— “question next.”

“You are very lucky—” a whisper, softly, yet laden in turn with all the threat he could possibly fit into the words— “that you did not raise a paw against either of them. There wouldn’t have been enough left of you to piece together after.” The silence after that was deep, and full, and tense— before Mingtian just sighed out. “But, then again, you are lucky.” He wondered if he’d regret his next decision. He wondered why he’d do it anyway. “I’m going to let you go.”

“Truly?” The cat glanced up, surprised. “I didn’t think you’d dare. Right now, I am restrained. Yet when I’m released…”

“Who said that this life-saving treasure was the only life saving treasure I had? Or even the most potent?” It was more or less a non-threat, given that most people, nonetheless mortals, didn’t carry around life-saving treasures capable of suppressing a Sundering cultivator— but he’d done it once, and the mere threat of being able to do it again would make Rr’an think twice before trying anything. “I would hate to make you into a rug. I think the decor would not go over particularly well with Avyr, if you really do have a connection with him.”

“…right. Of course.” Rr’an was silent for a long moment, considering— judging. “You’re sparing me because of him, aren’t you? Were it not for that… you would have slashed me to pieces already with those strange, impossible talismans of yours, wouldn’t you?”

“It is said that a mark of intelligence is to be shown one corner of a box and from there, find the other three.”

“Hah. To think the day would come where I’m the one getting saved by Avyr again. What a ridiculous, strange turn or fate.”

“I have a few requirements.”

“Of course you do. A mortal, capturing a Sundering cultivator? Who wouldn’t? My cultivation is praised even amongst my human peers, for how many resources I’m able to make from, essentially, nothing. I am a wealthy cat; whatever you want, it’s yours. A peach of immortality? I have a few that can set you on the path into cultivation. A thousand-year lotus? You would be wealthy beyond your wildest imagination—”

Mingtian snorted, cutting Rr’an off before he could get too ahead of himself. “Nothing of that kind. I do not seek to further bind myself to you. After this, the ties of karma between us will have been dissolved; you and I will be once more as strangers in this vast world.”

“I did not take you for a monk.”

“One does not need to be a monk to understand the methods and modes of the moving of the world.”

“Fine, then.” Rr’an rested his head on his still-bloodied paw. “What are your requirements?” The last word was positively spat.

“You will harm neither Avyr nor Lily; not by your action, not by your words, not by errant brush of your aura or unintended consequence of your presence. You will treat them with the respect befitting of junior cultivators on the path, and the humility befitting of one who has seen the true height of the heavens. You will not mislead them or betray their trust, or endeavor to gain that trust, for reasons nefarious or not. They are beyond you and your politic games. Vow to these things, and I will release you. Break that vow, and I will kill you.”

Rr’an narrowed his eyes. “You would force me to divorce myself from them? To vow to be impartial and apart? Do you realize how difficult that will be? Beyond merely the connection between us— Avyr will be amongst the most preeminent cats of all East Saffron when he joins the Bloody Saffron Sect. Staying apart from him will—”

“Be good for both of you. I understand the game of cultivator politics— it is a den of vipers that Avyr doesn’t deserve to be thrown into so soon. Let him have at least this little while longer before he has to deal with that.”

Rr’an was quiet for a long moment before, softly, he chuckled. “You surprise me and surprise me, and then I am still surprised when you astound again. You truly care for them, don’t you?”

“They are my students. Of course I do.”

“You treat them like your direct disciples.”

“They are not my disciples.” He might have said that a bit harsher than he meant to, but— seriously! What was with everyone thinking that Lily and Avyr were his disciples? Just because he’d given them a little bit of secrets beyond mortal comprehension didn’t mean that they were anything of the sort!

Rr’an just smiled lightly in amusement, the bastard. It made Mingtian dearly want to go back on his word and smite him a little. Just a little! Surely the consequences of getting entangled that much wouldn’t be that bad…

Who was he kidding? He shook his head, refocusing. “So. Do you accept?”

“Of course. I would be a fool not to.” Mingtian for a long moment turned the whole of his perception to making sure that Rr’an wasn’t lying— but, despite how easy, ostensibly, it would have been to lie to a mortal, as far as he could tell the big cat was being entirely honest. “Very well. By my honor, I so vow to adhere to all the terms laid out by Leng Mingtian of East Saffron.”

“Acceptable enough. With this, I absolve you of all your bounds and dues, may the eyes of heaven and hell be forever blinded to your crimes.” He pushed his hands together into a complicated seal. “Bagua formation: release!” And with a burst of light— it was gone, leaving only harsh lines etched into the floorboards, and a cavernous gap in the center of the library.

Rr’an stretched, giving him a long, pointed look before turning his back on him with a flick of his tail as he walked out the way he’d come— though, this time with noticeably less flexing of his domain. It almost looked entirely unremarkable, if one could ever call anything a Sundering cultivator did unremarkable.

He paused at the far end of the room, though, just before he stepped out of sight— he paused. A breath, hesitant, poignant, of a wave held at the crest of its whelming form, of the world in the quiet at the center of the storm—

Those eyes felt, for just a moment, like they were peering into him. Not the him that was a librarian in East Saffron, but him, Leng Mingtian, Immortal Sovereign, Hidden Master. It seemed to stretch out forever, and for no time at all— before Rr’an just huffed and continued walking away. “Hah. You’re more than you appear.”

Then, before Mingtian could so much as respond to that— he was gone, vanished into the far darkness—

Leaving him—

Alone amongst the devastation, Mingtian frowned.