B2 Chapter 42
Daoist Guarding Thunder opened with lightning. Not that Han Jian had ever thought he would do otherwise.
It was his great pride, his command over heaven's fire. Cao Renshu had been born higher than Li Xun and Han Jian. But not by much. His relation to the true Cao Clan was so distant only the most grasping of pedigree mongers among his uncles had ever spoken of it.
No, like his brothers, Daoist Guarding Thunder had emerged a lotus from the mire. Yet, lightning was the domain of the highest nobility. The bloodline gift of the Kaiyuan Emperor, who had wrested the land away from Heavenly order and mortal disorder alike.
There was a quiet heresy in a commoner cultivating lightning. But it was the sort of heresy every cultivator could not help but respect. The legendary ancestor of the Xiao Clan had stolen Heaven's lightning, trespassed in the domain of gods. Even his descendants were not so proud that they did not respect those mad enough to emulate his example.
Cao Renshu's fingers flashed through two-handed signs, fingers interlocking like tongues of lightning. Thunder rumbled in the clear skies above.
Han Jian bent down, driving his own fingers into the earth; the stony soil soft as loam to his callused hands. His qi poured out, grounding his body. He retracted his chains with a pulse of his qi, coiling them tight around his wrists. It wasn't yet time for them.
Cao Renshu's right hand rose up, his fingers extended like swords. He swiped down like a saber, and a great torrent of lightning followed. A waterfall of light, burning like a star.
Han Jian bore it stoically. He was as suited as any of the sect's elders to take such a blow. His fingers moved without his will, clenching beneath the earth. The soil condensed beneath them, hardening into stone. His muscles spasmed wildly, his slowly ossifying body doing more damage to itself in its throes than the bolt inflicted.
But then it was over, after a moment that had felt like an eternity, and Han Jian threw a rock at Daoist Guarding Thunder's chest.
The stone he'd forged flew faster than sight, a projectile the size of a large man's fist released with a whip-crack any sling would envy.
Daoist Guarding Thunder might be able to leap as lightning, but Han Jian knew for a fact he could neither make his flesh insubstantial, nor activate that technique without a moment's focus. Stranded in mid-air, Cao Renshu had only one option. He leapt, kicking his flying sword to the side to gain distance in an instant.
The rib-shattering rock flew harmlessly past him. Elder Lu's sword was already soaring in the direction of his disciple's feet.
But a moment was all Han Jian needed. He charged forward, speed building with every step. He dipped low as he ran, running his fingers through the earth. Under the influence of his qi, the crumbling soil coalesced into blades of stony shrapnel. Han Jian flung them heedlessly, yet they flew like knives, saturating the air.
Cao Renshu cried out as blood stained his robes. He was too slow to dodge, still struggling to regain his footing.
Han Jian allowed himself to feel nothing except hollow satisfaction. His brother wasn't yet used to fighting on a flying sword and it showed. He kept moving, building up speed.
"No!" Cao Renshu shouted, seeing what was coming. Just as he knew the limits of his brother's lightning-riding, Cao Renshu knew how he could use the Bank-Breaking Step to redirect his gathered momentum to close the gap between them.
The borrowed flying sword dove, dragging its wielder along with it.
The sword struck first. Cao Renshu was holding onto the handle of the blade with white knuckles, dragged along in the Core Formation magical treasure's wake.
Han Jian swung his forearm out, deflecting the blade to the side with his chain-clad arm. The spray of sparks was as bright as any of his brother's lightning bolts. And then Cao Renshu struck, throwing his whole body into a great flying kick wreathed in lightning.
Han Jian grunted, stiffening as every muscle in his body locked tight. The blow did little damage. His Core Formation cultivation base might be flawed in many ways, but his defenses were formidable.
Unfortunately, he could not counterattack while his muscles were spasming. He cast his chains out, hoping to bind his brother, but he was too slow, Cao Renshu already soaring out of his reach.
They danced like that for several minutes, at an impasse. Han Jian couldn't land any throws heavy enough to be telling, and his shrapnel inflicted no wounds that a pill could not instantly heal. His brother struck like a mayfly, diving into melee just often enough to prevent Han Jian from gathering the speed he would need to leap and close the distance between them.
The Bank-Breaking Step allowed him to shift his momentum from one direction to another. But the technique did not let him create momentum where none existed. If he leapt and missed, the pull of the earth would eventually slow him down. He would gather speed as he fell, but for that moment at the apex of his leap, he would be vulnerable.
Lightning fell. Rocks flew. Neither daoist gained ground.
Lightning was marginally less lethal when one was airborne. But the difference was not substantial, if one did not have a technique to redirect the bolt. And Han Jian didn't, he was no sword cultivator to redirect lightning with a swing. Between his lightning and that sword, his brother would end the fight before he reached the ground again. No, if he leapt, he had to catch his brother. It was the damn sword that was the problem. They sparred rarely these days, but Cao Renshu was not a match for Han Jian without it.
Elder Lu's treasure bit into his side, cutting through his stony hide like a hot knife through snow. Daoist Guarding Thunder was dancing around him, borrowing the speed of his lightning, hunting for an angle. His form was a blur of fabric and sparks, fast enough on the ground he was difficult to track by eye. Han Jian threw his chains wide, whipping them through the air in long arcs, forcing his brother to fall back and leap skyward once more.
They said nothing. The earth grew scarred and pitted as they fought, hoping to outlast the other.
And then the sky began to darken. Han Jian's heart fell. It couldn't be. Not now.
Thunder, true thunder, not a cultivator's stolen imitation, began to rumble in the distance. Dark and wrathful clouds began to gather. An inevitable, unmistakable gravity pulled the clouds upwards. They swirled around each other like the sky had become an inverted wash-basin, pouring upward into the Heavens.
A Heavenly Tribulation.
"No."
"He didn't."
"This is why—"
Daoist Enduring Oath cut off his brother with a rock. He was already too late. He would not be later.
Han Jian cast his hands into the soil, extending his chains. He saw it now, now that he was too late. The sword was the problem. It had to be one of the most powerful such weapons Elder Lu owned. The sword was also his brother's weakness. It wasn't his, wasn't responsive enough to be fully refined.
Why was he always too late? Decades late against Bai Xiaotong. Minutes or years too late for Li Xun? He could never see the true way, save in hindsight.
Han Jian knelt. He split his qi, pouring it into three separate points. Three clumps of soil that shifted, hardening into newborn stone. Two fist-sized, one as large as he dared.
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Lightning crashed down upon his broad back like rain. With his qi pouring into the earth, there was nothing to stop the blow from melting away his robe, burning the colors of the Azure Mountain from his chest, leaving only the wet red of flesh scoured free of skin.
"Are you mad!" Cao Renshu cried, watching his brother bleed.
Han Jian rose to his feet like a primordial god, like the legendary Pangu who was said to have split the world. In his hands was a slab of rock large enough to build a small house upon. Dangling from his chains were smaller stones, merely the size of a man's head.
"I warned you."
It was all Han Jian had breath to say, struggling beneath his burden.
"Bear a mountain in your heart, for only the deepest of foundations can scrape the clouds. Though duty is heavier than a mountain, a cultivator shall not buckle under its weight. Dig deep, to rise higher. The peak only rises from the roots. Man follows nature as earth follows heaven. Only the most unyielding stone can dare to reach heavenward. Only by forging our own chains can we ever become free."
The words of the Azure Spirit Method. Han Jian had set the full technique aside long ago, in favor of a practice of his own devising, better suited to his constitution. But the patriarch's words were a part of his foundation.
He stepped forward. The massive stone was heavy. Far too heavy for even a cultivator like him to throw. But there were applications of the Bank-Breaking Step he rarely took advantage of. And Han Jian's knees would not buckle beneath any duty.
More bolts of lightning rained down, and despite its size the massive stone was no shield against them, Han Jian's legs still spasmed with every strike. But the end was coming, and he was strong enough to hold on a little longer. His slow plodding pace became a fast march, then a headlong sprint.
His eyes swept wildly, waiting to see if his brother would take the bait. If he did, there was no chance he could dodge such a massive projectile.
Cao Renshu did not descend. Han Jian couldn't see him, so he would be rising. The bolts were still coming. His brother's range was not substantial. He could direct strikes accurately only within a few hundred chi. Most of that distance would now be elevation.
The Bank-Breaking Step was part of Han Jian's foundation. He had long since advanced beyond the simpler forms of the technique, which allowed a heavy man to move with the agility of a smaller one. Now, he more often leveraged it in subtler ways. It was how he'd thrown Li Hou across the mountainside a year ago, treating himself and the monkey as one object, until it came time for them to part. He was carrying the stone. So it was part of him, until he decided it was more convenient that it wasn't.
The next bolt landed, and Han Jian activated his technique and leapt. It was like running up a wall that wasn't there, or being swept up by an invisible wind. One moment he was struggling beneath the weight of two dozen men, the next he was soaring upward, his fingers the only thing keeping him attached to the soaring boulder.
Han Jian flexed his abdomen, twisting to get his feet beneath him. He caught sight of his brother. He was far above him still, easily two hundred chi. Cao Renshu's hand was upraised. Once he completed the first sequence of hand signs, each further bolt took just a swipe of his sword-fingers.
Their eyes met. His brother didn't hesitate.
Han Jian leapt as the bolt descended.
Even after only a moment, the great boulder had lost some of its momentum to gravity. They had not risen far, only a couple dozen chi from the ground. But the stone outweighed Han Jian by a factor of a dozen. When he activated the Bank-Breaking Step a second time, kicking it back down toward the earth, that crushing weight became impossible speed.
Lightning crashed down. But it was drawn to the larger target, the now stationary boulder, not the cultivator rapidly leaving behind the space Cao Renshu had aimed for.
Han Jian crossed the void separating him from his martial brother in the space of two breaths, rising faster than any mortal bird could dive. Cao Renshu was already dodging, pulling his sword up and to the side, but Han Jian extended his chains, letting them spool out behind him, heavy stones trailing from either end.
Han Jian's chains split the sky, the twin swings of his blunt weapons as domineering as the descent of any saber. With the heavy stones at the end of the chain, the weight behind the blows was too much for his brother to have any hope of blocking. Even if he endured the blow, the impact would throw him far clear of the sword he stood upon.
Daoist Guarding Thunder leapt the first strike that would have taken him across the waist. And so he was helpless, immobile, when the second blow lashed down across his shoulder.
Daoist Enduring Oath released the stone at the end of the chain the moment he felt it connect with his brother's body, and the iron links whipped with dizzy speed, wrapping around him tightly. Both daoists poured qi through the metallic linkage between them. Han Jian grit his teeth as yet more lightning sent his muscles spasming, but his cultivation base was a great realm above his brother's.
It was no contest at all. Cao Renshu could no more resist Han Jian's suppression than he could overcome him in a contest of physical strength.
The boulder landed first, shaking the earth. The two men fell second, with quiet thumps. Elder Lu's flying sword landed last, burying itself in the fertile soil without a sound.
The pair lay silently. Yet thunder still raged in the heavens. Lightning poured downward like a waterfall, as Heaven sought to extinguish the fool who had dared to take their first step toward immortality in earnest.
"Damn it all, Li Xun." Han Jian muttered, dragging his broken body onward. He hauled Cao Renshu along behind him, wrapped up in chains like an infant in swaddling clothes. It was too late to stop it now. Not even the Sect Master could disperse a tribulation once it had begun.
But he would not miss it. Not for the world.
One way or another, the three of them would be together when Li Xun formed his core, or died in the attempt.
Orange-crest was too slow.
He didn't like math, but this figure required no brushes or calculations. He had hours yet to run to reach the hinterlands of Mount Yuelu. But the skies had become so black one could mistake day for night, and lightning poured down from the heavens as if one of man's gods had overturned a jug of it.
He simply knew that his master would be involved, and on the wrong end of it. Just like orange-crest, lightning would never be on Daoist Scouring Medicine's side.
Orange-crest screamed. Raw and wild and agonized. A primal plea too honest for even the true tongue, the sort of noise that had twice brought his king, brought salvation, to a monkey about to die.
His king did not answer him. Once, orange-crest had thought the Monkey King's ears spanned the whole world.
Now he knew better, and he hated it.
He ran on, faster and faster. He ran on, knowing he could not keep this pace. Knowing that he would collapse before he arrived, doom his master to fight and die alone.
But he would not slow down, and he could not turn back.
His master was dying, and he could do nothing. His master was dying, and a small part of him knew it might be his fault. He could not remember the details of what he'd written. The truths hidden within the curves and lines of those six characters. But he knew as surely as formless-gleam's hands were stained with blood, his were stained with ink, for all that his eyes disagreed.
Was his master's life the price for formless-gleam and Xiao Yongzheng to both survive? The price of knowing Yang Wei and Wu Yingjie and formless-gleam? The price of orange-crest's cultivation, and his master's pride?
The price of the things he'd come to understand, and the things he still didn't?
His legs felt weightless. But his throat was closing. His staff, the treasure his first human friend had given him, was heavy. He dropped it. What did it matter, compared to his master?
He ran until he stopped. Until he found himself on the ground, uncertain whether it was his legs that had failed or his lungs.
He needed the Monkey King, but he was too far. That was the truth of it. The only truth he knew, the only one that mattered.
Orange-crest crushed everything else. Every all-too-human thought his busy mind thrust to the forefront.
He would save his master. Any thought that did not help was worthless.
He couldn't move faster. He did not have time for alchemy. His magics protected him and bound others. No, all of that was worthless.
The only objects he had were a jade band, an empty copper gourd, and a pouch bereft of pills.
There was only one possibility. Illusions. Formless-gleam's art, that he had taken to like a fish to water. It had two forms. The kind where he lied to himself, about who he was. And the kind where he lied to the world, about how many of him there were, and what they were doing.
Could he become someone else, someone faster? Yang Wei was not much faster than him. Not fast enough to matter.
Huo'er? He hardly knew her. He tried to imagine becoming the little bird, but he couldn't. He didn't even know who her master was, or why she liked him so much.
The only person fast enough was the Monkey King.
It was heresy. Orange-crest did it anyway. He failed. He couldn't imagine himself as the king. Any king small enough for orange-crest to embody was not big enough to be true.
He wished he had his centipede wine. Three swallows to bend the limits of the possible, to wash away the rules he knew should restrain his techniques. But it was in his master's bag. He'd never refilled his gourd with the last dregs from the jar.
Stupid. Foolish. Weak. Too dumb to be a human. Too cowardly to remain a monkey.
What was the point of a tool that failed him when it counted? What was the point of a power he could only use when drunk?
What was the point of a disciple whose greed killed his master?
No. No. No no no no no. Bad thoughts. Human thoughts. Worthless thoughts.
All that mattered was saving Li Xun.
He didn't need to be someone else. He was weak. He just needed to be somewhere else.
His illusions were as slow as him because he thought they should be. He created them near him because he imagined them near him. They were fragile, because he held two things in mind at once.
It seemed like a bad idea, to forget the truth. But there were no bad ideas, except those that didn't save his master.
Orange-crest Grasped all his qi. His cultivation was him. It would obey.
He wove the greatest lie he'd yet managed. It was easy, because he believed in the telling of it. His body was weak and slow and hurting. He told the world it wasn't. He was far from Mount Yuelu. That was not true. He was a powerful and ponderous Stone Monkey. But right now, his fur was soft as down, light as feathers.
The monkey that emerged was not of two minds. He did not turn back, to witness orange-crest collapsed behind him, unmoving.