Fatherly Asura

Red persisted for the longest time, suspending Fu in its clutches. He knew it as the barrier between [Mystic Realms], though it transcended the oddity he had experienced a bare few minutes ago.

The Qi fluctuated about him, violently, as if angered. It pressed, ebbing to and fro with a suffocating warmth that had his skin feel dry and his lungs, brittle. It sustained for minutes, and more, holding him as some force moved in the colours ahead.

Great, silent silhouettes.

But for all this madness, a single term continued to surface.

[Demon Scar].

If he might shake his head, he would. By the Heavens, if he could urge his feet with any semblance of control, he would flee.

Demons.

The [Ink] had not lied before.

Fu drew a breath, which was the extent of his ability.

Hushi,are you well?

An impression returned above in the affirmative, and a parcel of his fears were squashed. He could not fathom what had come to pass, yet all that he did not know could fill a space as vast as the Clouded Archives were they parchment.

As such he named it merely as crisis, dissuading his mind from what Hua would say on such matters.

For now.

He descended some time after his heart had stilled. Entering a hell that his most vivid dreams could not paint.

The gullies of the [All Sky Wood] prevailed in distortion, for the land had… mirrored.

A split of two hilltops, many hundred li apart. In his short span in the first realm, he recalled no such sight.

Where the descent had begun previously, it persisted, yet now it met at a distant base that inclined towards an opposing hilltop. Dry, splintered earth spread underfoot where the violet grass had once pushed, and the trees beyond were withered and dull. Decrepit fingers reaching for a blood-red sky.

“Complications,” repeated Zhu.

Fu had his hook drawn as he finished the word, poised at the man’s throat. “Brother Zhu- I-”

“Zhu. Haven’t I said this? For where we stand, I’ll allow it this once.” He levelled his gaze with Fu, flicking the blade aside with two fingers. But secondary to this, he unearthed his own weapons. A set of two metallic lengths, handled batons that guarded much of each arm. “But there comes a more pressing fight than names.”

Now the scene was settling, outrage cut loud. Each cultivator present at the [Mystic Realm’s], and to Fu’s count, more, stood tall. Their transportation ended.

“They’ll soon see,” Zhu continued.

The cries sounded as Fu formed his own realisation. There was no-

“The [Paifang]!” erupted the salvo’s first. Which then descended into similar cries of vexation until the logical conclusion was reached.

“We are trapped,” said Fu, finding no trace of their entrance, nor a glimmer of any others across the distance he might scry. “A [Mystic Realm] within a [Mystic Realm]. The woman that slew the Silkworm, this was done by her hand.”

“Theories and connections can wait. If we’re stranded here, then a time will come for such discussions,” mused Zhu, an eye on the crowd. Hundreds, to bely the few they had entered with. “Those we see here must have already been within the [Mystic Realm]. As to their gathering, I’d wager it’s the [Trial] component of the realm’s [Law of Origin].”

Adding to the obfuscated purpose of this place, a great rumbling began. Warmth, then, in tandem. Fu ignored whatever resonance was rising in his [Ink] for the time being, and placed a wary step back as something split from the earth to their rear.

A pillar of mystic origin.

It broke from the cracked ground with ease, parsing mounds as it rose, and rose, proving an oddity - for all but the base was solid. Bronze plates wound around a cylindrical frame, stopping just above the height of Fu’s shoulder, yet easily five times that in diameter. Where these ended, however, an ethereal outline continued on.

“Cease your talk, comrades!” commanded a deeper, female voice. “The requirements for completion may soon be listed.”

“Who are you to demand-” cried another, soon cut off with a punch.

Indeed, the woman spoke true, as a leaf of parchment unfurled in the bronze to reveal a message inscribed there.

“If you would follow: struggle. Then, might their shrine return,” said Fu, not alone in his reading.

A consternate susurrus wormed through the crowd, with looks shared by cultivators in all directions. Each searching for the meaning of these words. Though the [Mystic Realm] provided another answer to their confusion, and the gullies ejected myriad more of the ethereal pillars, if whole where theirs was not.

Oddities.

On the cracked earth of the closest gully’s mouth, a figure rose to prominence. A man, whose [Spirit Beast]’s height allowed him to rise three lengths above the crowd when atop it. Fu saw it as a yellow swine, if not grotesquely disproportioned where its large sagging ears and serpentine snout hung loose between two tusks.

“Peace,” he yelled, gaining the notice of most. “Listen well, sisters and brothers. We are interred here by some villain, and I, Ling Wei, know by experience that we will remain until the [Trial] component is complete.”

Some murmurs followed.

“Know me as chief disciple beneath Lord [Forty-Ninth], and know my words- this [Demon Scar] is a shared worry, and must be put to our righteous blades!” he continued, grasping his chest with heart-quaking fervour.

But he addressed no members of his Sect, not juniors of such belonging. His cries were met with impassive looks, smirks or distaste, and many of the crowd pushed by his display to descend the ground behind.

“He means to coordinate a sea of tigers,” grimaced Zhu. “But this is one mountain.”

Fu took his meaning immediately. “The situation might call for it, lest there are opportunities in this imprisonment. What are your thoughts? I think we might see what the [Mystic Realm] has in store first, no?”

After an affirmative nod, the pair moved by as well. Zhu held his weapons in a slackened guard, which was ill-fitting for how vigilant his gaze became. He searched between the withered trees, by fallen, deadened trunks and beyond, lingering more on the distant cultivators that had begun to reach the first ethereal pillars.

This is a realm of unknowns. Our arrival, its purpose, where the Silkworm’s killer is now, it has my skin crawl.

If nothing else, Zhu granted a reassuring presence, though he said little on the things Fu’s inner mind wished to discuss. Nothing on their trouble at the Silver Loom, nor this phenomena, or latterly, the [Demon Scar] splayed in their arrival [Ink].

So, in silence they tread forth, and in a span of minutes reached a pillar of their own. A wholly ethereal construct of ruddy brown light, with a circular inscription spreading from its base.

“A subtle [Dao],” Zhu noted. “As if it’s a natural [Array]. Can you feel it?”

Fu could not, despite how it was clearly no mortal construct. “An [Array] to what effect? Does it have a bearing on the first?”

Before placing a step over the inscription’s boundary, Zhu stopped. “I’d not be the first to cross its threshold. That’s a fool’s game. There are plenty who would leap without looking,” he said, gesturing to a solitary cultivator one hundred strides distant. “A ghost would wait.”

The first cry came from elsewhere though, moments before their target’s. A pearlescent light burst into the skies behind, and surged amidst the sound of drawn metal. Fu’s sight was blocked by the desiccated trunks between, but the light, this he could trace.

Some chain had formed, a cord of oscillating white that persisted as it landed upon the first, distant tower of bronze. Conjuring a second heat on Fu’s [Ink].

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