Myriad Rivers to the Sea

The morning after the grand wedding the massive ironstone gates of The Eternal Crucible were thrown wide open. The localized aurora of steam had dissipated leaving behind a clear vibrant sky.

A line of heavy merchant wagons pulled by rested Ash Rhinos stood ready on the main road. Lana stood near the lead carriage. Her disguise was still perfectly in place. She spoke rapidly to a group of guild liaisons to ensure the newly acquired trade routes were properly logged. Tuwark stood nearby looking eager to return to the heat of his forge. Malos watched his children with a look of quiet contentment.

Li Yu walked up beside the Demon Lord. "You are not going with them?"

"I considered it." Malos admitted with a soft smile. "But Lana has an empire of commerce to build and Tuwark has a supreme tier hammer he wants to strike against an anvil. They have their own lives, Li Yu. It is time I step back and give them space once again."

Malos turned to Li Yu with a broad grin. "Besides, I hear a certain human is planning to hit the road soon. Traveling alone is dangerous and you clearly need a seasoned guard."

"I am fairly certain having the Lord of Foresight as a traveling companion is exactly what draws trouble in the first place" Li Yu chuckled back.

After heartfelt farewells the caravan rolled out of the city. Li Yu was not one to waste a golden opportunity. He had the backing of the Aegis of Flame and the Violet Deep. He had access to the greatest martial minds and veterans on the continent. Later that afternoon Li Yu found Sovereign Morven and Sovereign Ignis in the grand courtyard.

"Sparring?" Morven repeated with a massive fanged smile. "You wish to test your foundation against my commanders?"

"Not just test it." Li Yu corrected respectfully. "I wish to study their laws and the fighting style here. My own path is of course my own and my application of the laws could benefit from observing the veterans of this realm. I want to see how the elites of Fire and Tide interpret the world."

Ignis nodded in approval. "A wise pursuit. A cultivator who only looks inward eventually goes blind. We will arrange it. Three of our finest generals and two elite commanders. They will fight using their true cultivation levels. They will not hold back their understanding so you can observe but they will hold back just enough to not kill you."

The training grounds were a massive sunken arena of reinforced black ironstone shielded by defensive arrays. Malos sat in the spectator stands with a fresh pot of tea and a plate of pastries. Li Yu stood in the center of the arena with his staff resting easily in his right hand.

His first opponent stepped into the ring. It was Commander Rael of the Aegis of Flame. She was a fiercely fast demon whose armor was adorned with the shifting scales of a fire drake. She wielded twin hooked blades that glowed with ambient heat.

Rael didn't wait for a signal. She exploded forward. She used the heat of her own Qi to propel her forward at staggering speeds. She crossed the arena in a fraction of a second. The sheer difference in cultivation was immediately apparent. Li Yu was barely able to bring his staff up in time to intercept the blades.

The physical impact was overwhelming. Rael’s fire Qi aggressively traveled and consumed the oxygen in his lungs. Li Yu expanded his own Qi to fight back her own. To eat the invasive heat but Rael was simply too strong. She twisted her blades and kicked Li Yu squarely in the chest. The blow sent him skidding backward dozens of yards until he crashed into the arena wall.

"Fire is not just heat" Rael said calmly as Li Yu picked himself up. "It can be explosive expansion. You react well but your foundation cannot match the pure speed of higher realms. The fact that your weapon wasn’t just destroyed now shows that it is quite a unique thing as well."

Li Yu coughed and wiped a bit of blood from his mouth. He nodded in appreciation. This was what he had wanted. He wanted to see the difference and feel the difference between realms but without risk of dying. He didn't win but he saw how she timed the expansion of her fire Qi to maximize her kinetic output. How she used her Qi to suffocate her opponents as well as beat them physically.

The second opponent was Commander Vaneer of the Violet Deep. He was a hulking scaled demon who wielded a massive two handed flail.

"The tide does not retreat, human." Vaneer rumbled while swinging the heavy flail in a slow rhythmic circle. "It erodes and it is ever present."

Vaneer advanced slowly and his heavy steps carried the inescapable gravity of the deep sea. He unleashed wave after wave of continuous crushing pressure. Li Yu met the assault head on and parried the spiked ball of the flail.

His arms vibrated painfully from the kinetic force. Vaneer linked his attacks flawlessly and used the momentum of his previous swing to fuel the next. The gap in their raw power was immense and each blow was only getting stronger.

Li Yu summoned his Sentry Art. The featureless clone stepped out to help him. Vaneer simply laughed and brought his flail down in a crushing overhead strike. The weapon shattered the clone instantly and the residual shockwave slammed into Li Yu. He was forced to his knees under the oppressive weight of the water laws. Vaneer stopped his flail inches from Li Yu's head.

"The rhythm of the ocean is flawless," Vaneer smiled. "You cannot break it with a weaker force. An overwhelming and relentless force will always win out against many tiny forces."

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Li Yu thanked him for the lesson. The commanders stepped away and the true tests began. The generals entered the arena. General Karr of the Ash Guards walked onto the black ironstone.

"You survived the soul attack, Li Yu" Karr grunted. "But surviving the initial blast is only half the battle. Ash chokes life from the world long after the flame is gone."

Karr slammed the butt of his halberd into the ground. The air in the arena instantly turned a suffocating blinding gray. It was highly condensed abrasive Ash Qi. It actively devoured the ambient spiritual energy and created a zone of dead space. Li Yu felt his own Qi circulation sluggishly resist the environment. Every breath felt like inhaling crushed glass.

Karr attacked from the fog with devastating sweeping arcs. Li Yu couldn't see him but he could sense him. He tapped into his Devouring Abyssal Leviathan Physique and began to devour the ash. He managed to clear a small pocket of air but Karr's cultivation level was simply too high.

The general generated it faster than Li Yu could ever hope to consume it. Karr stepped right through Li Yu's defense and struck him with the flat of his halberd. The blow sent Li Yu flying across the arena once again.

"A terrifying physique you have there," Karr said as the ash cleared. "But a bottomless pit can still be buried if the mountain falling into it is big enough. You have to come up with different ways to fight against those stronger than you. Judging from the exchanges you’ve had with the two others and myself, within the same realm we would be in trouble. You truly are a demon in disguise."

Li Yu groaned and painfully got back to his feet to bow to the general. Like the other two they continued fighting for a while more but it was more or less Li Yu getting beaten up. However, even while getting beaten up, the general and commanders took their time to show him how they fought. A rare thing that Li Yu only got to enjoy thanks to Morven and Ignis ordering it.

Next was Admiral Vark. The massive commander of the Violet Deep tossed his heavy trident aside and raised his blubber lined hands. "No weapons for this one, Li Yu. The deep sea does not need steel to crush a man."

Vark clapped his hands together. Li Yu immediately felt the space around him solidify. A perfect sphere of water materialized out of thin air and completely trapped him inside. He tried to manipulate it but found that he couldn’t. It would seem when someone’s understanding of the law is higher than yours, you were powerless within the same element.

Inside the sphere Li Yu felt his bones groaning. The water was actively compressing and trying to force his body into a singularity. Li Yu harmonized his own water Qi with Vark's and applied the Laws of Destruction to rot the structural integrity of the sphere. Only when using a different law did he manage to weaken the water slightly but Vark simply poured more of his Qi into the technique. The pressure overpowered Li Yu's destructive laws and squeezed him until his vision started to go dark.

Vark dropped the technique before any real damage was done. The heavy water splashed harmlessly onto the arena floor. Li Yu collapsed to his hands and knees and was gasping for air. It was like he was just coiled by a snake and let out just moments before his death.

"You unraveled a portion of the law itself." Vark murmured in genuine surprise. "If we were at the same cultivation level you would have broken out. Impressive." A similar compliment to Karr. Just as before they continued to fight unless Vark was done showing Li Yu what he could do.

So far no one had tried to fight Li Yu using soul attacks. They had all seen how he survived the attack that would have killed them so they didn’t bother to test him there. They were also told to fight using physical strength and Qi so there was no reason for them to do so.

Finally General Tankard stepped into the arena. He radiated an aura of raw and unstable kinetic energy.

"I take something very heavy, I light it on fire and I drop it on my enemies" Tankard laughed. He thrust his hands toward the sky. The air above the arena glowed a blinding violent orange. Dozens of massive jagged boulders of molten earth materialized. They homed in directly on Li Yu's dense aura.

Li Yu utilized his Void Step and vanished from the center of the arena to reappear near the edge. But the meteors violently shifted their trajectory in mid air and tracked his exit point. Li Yu summoned his Sentry clone and flooded it with his own life force signature while masking his true body with the Laws of Life.

It was a tactical misdirection but Tankard was a general for a reason. His spiritual sense swept the arena and easily pierced through Li Yu's disguise because they were in such a small space. Li Yu didn’t have that many places to hide and since Tankard knew Li Yu was somewhere there, it was much easier for him to track.

If Li Yu were to have snuck up on Tankward without him knowing that he was in a fight, then it would have been much harder for Tankard to find him if he even could. Tankard casually flicked his wrist. Half the meteors obliterated the clone while the other half crashed down exactly where Li Yu was hiding.

Li Yu had to summon every ounce of his defensive Qi to survive the bombardment. He was battered, bruised and completely exhausted by the time the smoke cleared. Tankard stood over him with a hearty laugh.

"A falling mountain is terrifying." Tankard smiled while offering Li Yu a hand up. "And it is even more terrifying when it knows exactly where you are hiding."

The sparring sessions concluded with deep mutual bows of respect. Li Yu stood in the center of the scorched arena. He was exhausted and covered in bruises but he was satisfied.

He had not won a single match. The sheer disparity in cultivation levels made victory impossible without him tapping into his soul power. But he had dissected their understanding of the world.

He experienced Rael’s explosive expansion, Vaneer’s relentless rhythm, Karr’s suffocating denial, Vark’s inescapable pressure and Tankard’s tracking. He mentally synthesized all of these concepts into his own foundation. Thinking of ways to deal with such things in the future. These were all battle experiences he could rely on.

All paths truly led to the same source. His comprehension of the universe had just taken an undeniable step forward.

"Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!" Malos cheered from the stands and handed Li Yu a fresh towel. "You took a magnificent beating my friend! A masterful display in the Dao of the training dummy!"

"I had excellent teachers," Li Yu replied while wiping the sweat and dirt from his face. He offered a respectful nod to the departing commanders and generals.

That night Li Yu returned to his pavilion. His muscles were aching and his bones felt bruised but his mind was incredibly sharp. He meditated for hours to slowly digest the immense martial insights he had gained from the elites of the Empire.

As exhaustion finally overtook him Li Yu lay down on his bed. He let the heavy rhythmic breathing of the sleeping capital lull him into unconsciousness.

He did not know it yet but his physical rest would offer no peace. His second mind was already drifting to access the River of Laws.