We weren't equals.
Not yet.
But this was a start. I didn't know how strong Wan Cheng was, but the scroll had said he would be at least as powerful as a mortal realm cultivator. Beats of fear and anxiety played through my veins like strings on a larp.
I couldn't beat him. Even with all my newfound strength, I was like a dog barking at a wolf—
Then it hit me: I didn't know what a Mortal Realm cultivator was!
All I knew was that they were a cultivator. I furled the scroll back together on the table. All around me was a whole field of knowledge. I wasn't going to let the opportunity to track something down pass me by.
I moved to find a book, but not even one step after making that decision, I turned back around and picked up the scroll. Like I was shackled to the letter.
The scroll still had more parts I hadn't read. 'If it gets lost, or I run out of time before I can finish reading everything—' I pinched myself, trying to get the searing thought out of my mind. I would much rather pull out my nails from my flesh than leave it there.
After all the searching and negotiating, I had finally found something that gave me what so many other books and opportunities hadn't.
A grip on Wan Cheng.
It was a loose grip, and I wouldn't be able to expose his status without accidentally revealing mine, but it was something. After I hid the letter in my robes, I set off to find a book on cultivation in the library. The floorboards creaked as I shifted my weight around, but my curious thoughts rang louder. I wanted to know how powerful Wan Cheng was.
The book wasn't hard to find, as it was a small, thin tome smushed between two thicker ones, and on it, the title, "With regards to realms of cultivation." I picked it up quickly and sped through, coughing as I forced up more dust in the air. It took a minute or two, and I was done.
The words were more scholarly than I was used to, but it got straight to the heart of the matter. There was only one cultivation realm that the book was sure existed. The Mortal Refinement realm.
It sounded…plain. Like something a smith or a coal miner would say. But the power it contained left me feeling smaller than I already was.
The Mortal Refinement realm was split into three rungs. The first being the lowest and the third being the highest, and within each rung were another three in ascending order. Footing, Climbing, and Peak tier.
The book had hinted at another rumor: that there was a higher realm. The Foundation Establishment realm.
I couldn't fathom it. So much power, and there might even be higher levels above it?
I didn't know whether what I was feeling was madness or excitement.
But I couldn't wait. I couldn't wait to figure out the secret to cultivation for a damaged man like myself.
– 玄 –
That hunger I had then would bring me to higher heights than I could have ever imagined.
Pushed me through times that a greater man would have faltered in.
Lesson number Four: It is hunger that causes the lion to hunt down the elephant. Not bravery.
It is those who have never experienced this who cannot fathom the kinds of things a man of this caliber is willing to do.
– 玄 –
The only other thing it said was that Rung One, the Footing tier of the Mortal Refinement Realm, was, in general, three times more powerful than an average man. I paused at that.
That meant, Wan Cheng, if I was right about what he was, some kind of slave to a bloodsplitter, as the letter had said, was still far more powerful than I was. I shivered at that kind of strength, especially on a man like him.
I could imagine Wan Cheng wringing off the neck of a man who refused to obey his orders.
A difference like that…I'd seen what a small gap in strength could do between two animals fighting over territory.
I pulled the letter tighter into my robe. A brief smile on my face, and I was glad I hadn't gone out immediately to expose Wan Cheng.
But the book said more, the climbing tier was four times more powerful, and the peak was seven times more powerful than an average man.
My teeth chattered, so this was cultivation? Actual power? It made monsters of men. I was starting to understand why they treated us like filth.
Thoughts of all the people who had wronged me, the overseer, that rat-like man who'd forced more for my house when I was running from the overseer, the villagers that abandoned my father and me, started to seep in from the recesses of my mind.
What would they do with power?
I realised, it didn't make monsters of men. It turned the others into prey.
But the book hadn't stopped there. The trend continued across rungs. I clenched my fists until my nails dug into my palms. The frailest cultivator could still crush me.
*Fffoooh* I sighed, after all that I'd gone through, all that work, all that struggle, strength and coin were starting to become my new motto, and yet, every time I climbed up an inch, I felt like someone came and pulled me back down a whole foot, but I had no time to wallow. Because I was running out of time.
Eight days left.
I only had eight days till I would be forced to hunt a spirit beast, and every little bit of knowledge only seemed to dance around the main subject. The Celestial Mirror Leopard.
All the information I found pushed me further on my path, but they ignored the barricade in front of me.
I would have to start scouring the whole of the library for what I wanted.
Over the next few days I had left, I scoured over every book I could find. On the second day, I took the last of Healer Yao Po's potion. The pain that used to burn me alive now felt like hot iron branding my skin as I forced myself to ignore it.
It was a saying my father had once told me on a hunt: 'Pain comes once, and then it is time to feast.'
Yet even with that, if I found one useful book or tome, or scroll, then I would find at least four that meant nothing.
It amazed me that I had found the books that I did originally.
I would wake up to bloody indents on my lips. While I slept, I would bite them, the terrors of my waking mind following me even into sleep.
Two things haunted me. The fear of hunting a spirit beast that I was learning more and more, was out of my reach.
That and the thought of Wan Cheng. Hallucinations of his hairless face and meaty palms nearly drove me insane.
The only thing that brought me back to my sanity was that, if I was going to die by the hands of that deceitful brute, I wouldn't do it while cowering in fear.
I'd put my spirit-grass-fed strength to good use.
The wind blew past my ear, and I almost tore a book open. Every shadow that passed me made me feel like I was being watched. My own eyes felt like enemy spies, but I was the king of my own body, fighting against such rebellion.
Huo Qianlei was the first to notice. He saw my nosebleeds and ever reddening eyes and tried to force me to visit Yao Po.
I remember, that was the first three days.
By the beginning of the fifth, every line I read was blurred. As if covered in some sort of oil, and I had to read it over again to grasp what it was saying. I whispered oaths to myself.
About my father, about the trade caravan, about not dying. Like little handles, I used to hold on to my sanity. My mind was not something I would let go of easily.
By the seventh day, I found two books on the celestial mirror leopard. The first was filled with nothing but praise for its pelt and for the hunter's skill in catching it. And the second had only one useful line.
My mind was like a knife used to shave iron. Sharp, but frayed at the edges. I needed rest.
With the way things were going, it might be my last.
*********
I was not the only one trying to rise from the ashes. In another corner of the world, so was another man, one whose destiny would soon collide with mine.
Huo Feng.
He sat there, cross-legged, below the base of the throne.
Cultivating.
The Nine-Fold Battle Servant Codex required two things. Blood and loneliness. Huo Feng had been promised blood already. The city lord's blood. Now, he was severing his emotional ties. He visualized their faces, the friends he'd made as a child. The guards he'd gotten close to, but whenever it came to his father or his sisters—
*Blurgh*
Huo Feng spat out blood. This was the ninth time he had done so. The codex provided a way to sever ties by forming a mental connection within your consciousness and your ethereal bridge, linking them to all your loved ones.
He could do it. He knew he could. But every time he tried, it was like he was cutting into his own heart and spilling his blood on the ground. But Huo Feng tried not to focus on it. Why would he want revenge if he no longer cared about his loved ones? Breaking bonds could always be handled later. For now, what mattered most was power.
His cultivation level was still the same, but he'd noticed his skill with the Jiang Ling sword had gotten better. It was starting to become an extension of his arm. Every time he used it, he could almost swear he felt a pulse from it.
At times, it was like a whisper, calling for blood and destruction, but Huo Feng thought it was madness; swords couldn't whisper. Not even the ones imbued with qi.
Hung Zhen, his master, stood up from his throne, "You failed again." Huo Feng did not know how to place the tone. It always sounded like a mix between a question and a statement, as if he laid a verbal trap and was waiting for you to say something wrong.
Huo Feng stopped meditating and looked up at Zhen, "Yes, my lord." On the inside, he gritted his teeth; the words tasted like bile. He hated that he had to bow his head to another man, but he knew better than to let it show. They were bonded now, by the Skies. And that came with power. Over Huo Feng.
*Hmmm*, "But your sword skills?"
"Improving by the day, my lord."
Zhen barely nodded his head in acknowledgement. Next to him, emerging out of nowhere, his shadow servant, Li Dong, knelt beside him. Huo Feng did not notice when he had arrived. Only that one moment he wasn't there, and the next he was.
Li Dong stood up and whispered something in Zhen's ear. The expressions on his face turned very grave. Huo Feng could tell. He hadn't spent much time here, but from the servants, he knew that Zhen had a certain personality.
It was best to know what he was thinking and feeling before he had to tell you. "Feng. Get ready, we'll go to the city in 5 days, to fulfill my promise."
Huo Feng bowed his head, taking care not to antagonize Zhen more than he already knew he was, "Forgive my impetuousness, but you said it would take longer." On the inside, Huo Feng was overjoyed, but Zhen did not give out gifts for nothing.
He remembered what the men who loaned out money in the Mudfoot district were like. As his father said, caution lets the ship sail for ten thousand years.
At the rebuttal, Zhen smoothed out the almost instant frown that appeared on his face. "Yes. I have decided to change my plans. Do you wish to correct them, Feng?"
He was doing it again. Phrases that sounded innocent but on the inside were jammed with traps.
To question his master? When they were bound by oath? When Zhen was an inner disciple, and he was only now beginning to climb the ranks? An outer disciple with an elder of the sect as his master in name alone?
Feng did not forget the lesson he had learned earlier on in his cultivation journey. There were only two things cultivators cared about: Power and hierarchy, bowing only to those who were more powerful than themselves.
Quickly, Huo Feng knelt on a knee, "No, my lord, this…servant was just asking questions."
"I've had some allies give us permission to leave the sect earlier than usual."
Huo Feng bowed his head, the emotions he had long buried frothing through him like water buried under the surface.
His chance would be coming soon.