87 – Put That Down as Maybe

“Must we meet at the rooftop?” I asked my father as I upward, still thoroughly enjoying my newly advanced power and more than a little proud of the progress. I landed at the edge of the slanted roof with deliberate grace, intending to look cool.

Crack…

A sudden, alarming lightness swept through me as the tiles gave way beneath my weight. Hands flailed, claws scraping across the remaining tiles and dragging several loose as I skidded downward in pure surprise.

“Wah…!”

My back met the ground with a heavy bang. Tiles and broken support beams followed in a noisy cascade. I scrambled to my feet at once and looked around twice, making certain no one had witnessed the spectacle. Only then did I float back up, this time settling carefully on the central beam. Reminding myself that I probably weigh half a ton in this body. What had been meant as a cool entrance had become a thoroughly shameful display.

“So… how’s everything back home?” I asked, as if nothing particular had just occurred.

“Quite boring, actually,” my father replied. His expression remained perfectly neutral.

“I like boring. Definitely preferable to attempted murder.” I sat down on the beam beside him.

“From what I hear, you handled those incidents rather impeccably.”

I gave a small shrug. It seemed he approved of what I had done so far. Still annoying, though.

“You received two new manuals?” he asked next.

“Yes.” I quickly retrieved the pair the City Lord had granted me. One was a calculation art, the other was a mind art. The former was Myriad Threads Calculation Art. The latter was Great Sun Mind Sutra. Another holy book that, once again, looked suspiciously thin.

“You have good eyes. One of these is an original copy,” my father said with an approving nod.

“Which one?”

He pointed at the calculation art. Aww. I had been hoping for the other, but oh well.

“What’s so special about having the original copy?”

He raised an eyebrow at the question. “If you haven’t realized it yet, you will once you actually read them.”

That was all the answer he gave before standing. Hands clasped behind his back, he began walking along the beam toward the opposite end. I rose and followed.

“What about the other book?” I asked.

“It’s good enough.”

“Come to think of it, the City Lord looked at me rather strangely when I asked whether he had any manuals on Soul Arts. He eventually said the most he could offer were Mind Arts.” I recalled the expression on his face. “Is there more to the division than just the name?”

“Soul Arts are generally rarer than Mind Arts. They become far more critical at the Golden Core and Nascent Soul stages, which is why they are uncommon in this world. As for the actual difference…” My father considered for a moment. “Think of Soul Art as strengthening the body itself, while Mind Art is more about training the hands, finesse, techniques, and such.” He then finished his words.

Hmm. From what I had read in the Fundamentals of Soul Arts, it seemed more focused on unlocking what the soul was capable of. It did detailed methods for strengthening one’s soul by feasting on desires, which was the only thing listed in the book that I haven’t done. Then again, I could already devour soul curses, something never mentioned in the book at all. Did this feat exist on the last missing page? From my father’s explanation, it appeared I had already done some of the preliminary work simply by studying the Fundamentals.

Moving on from Soul Arts, and considering both my father’s definition and the title of the Mind Art now in my hand…

“Does a Mind Art train the mind in relation to a specific element?”

“More or less. You will understand better once you begin learning.”

He stopped as we reached the end of the beam. The crescent moon hung high in the night sky, and a cool breeze moved around us.

Then he turned and looked at me with unusual seriousness.

“So… you want to reach the Heavens?”

“Oh. So you were already here before that happened?” I tried to piece together the sequence of events. Making sense of the vision was still difficult, to say the least.

“More or less. Something like that,” I answered.

“Speak firmly.”

The rebuke was sharp. Our eyes met, and the intensity in his gaze was unlike anything I had seen from him before.

“Yes,” I replied as firmly as I could.

He nodded once. “You understand your sect’s mission properly?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “I need to escort Ningguang and Wanxia to the Jiushuang sect, wait through her seclusion, which may last a year or two, and then escort her back home.”

“Have you already decided where you will stay during that time?”

“Apparently we will be going to Cilian Temple.”

Both of his eyebrows rose at the name.

“Good choice.”

“Is anyone ever going to tell me what is so special about that place?” I tried once more.

“It is… something better experienced firsthand.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course.”

“When you return home,” my father continued, his tone turning serious again, “I will properly teach you the sword.”

The wind stopped. The world seemed to darken as clouds drifted across the moon. There was no room left for delay, negotiation, or refusal in his words.

“Well, alright then.” Being properly armed and prepared was never a bad idea.

I extended my open palm toward him.

“What’s this?” He looked at my hand with mild confusion.

“I demand an allowance.”

—

Unbeknown to Danxing, there’s… plenty of eyewitnesses of his earlier shameful display.

After the overwhelming light had faded and the hall finally emptied, Huiran, Wendao, Ningguang, and Wanxia found themselves walking together through one of the quieter courtyards of the City Lord’s mansion. For a long while none of them spoke. The shared vision still sat heavily on their minds. The singing, the distant golden city, the brief and impossible sense of standing before what unmistakably a heavenly realm of sort. Each of them have gained something in some way as the vision of course of what they see demanded some form of introspection within themselves.

Huiran was the first to break the silence, voice lower than usual.

“I have seen many strange things since meeting Brother Danxing,” he said, “but that… that was not just an illusion. Every soul in the city felt it.”

Wèndào nodded once, expression serious. “The ones who already hated him will not sleep easily after this.” 

Ningguang remained quiet for a moment longer before speaking softly. “It felt… warm. And vast. Like standing at the edge of something that does not belong to this world.” And for a glance, a sliver of jealousy rose. After all, she has never experienced such warmth in her entire life.

Wanxia glanced at her, then at the two men. “Whatever it was, the elders of the other sects looked ready to either kneel or draw their swords. There is no middle ground left regarding him now.”

They eventually decided it would be best to locate Danxing and confirm he was unharmed after such a violent spiritual event. Following the faint residual fluctuations of his presence, the four of them rounded a corner of the outer buildings, just in time to witness a large, dark figure drop through a collapsing section of rooftop in a noisy cascade of tiles and broken beams. A familiar “Wah!” echoed across the courtyard, followed by a heavy impact and the frantic scrambling of someone trying to stand up while checking whether anyone had seen. All four of them froze. Then, almost as one, they noticed the second figure still sitting calmly on the remaining roof beams. Elder Luochen, expression perfectly neutral. Without a word the group immediately ducked behind the nearest wall and pillar, pressing themselves out of sight and fighting desperately to keep their faces straight.

Of all the things in the world they could witness. After Danxing’s earlier powerful display at the end of the tournament, the enlightenment and the vision of heaven, the first thing they saw after was him falling from the roof.

They were not the only ones watching.

After such an unmistakable demonstration of power and the region-wide vision that followed, many factions had quietly dispatched eyes to observe the young Xuan. All of them kept a carefully polite distance. The presence of Elder Xuan himself was unmistakable, and none among them possessed any method of concealing their surveillance from a Nascent Soul cultivator.

In their respective quarters, both Tiezhi and Gu Linghua watched the ridiculous scene unfold.

Tiezhi observed alongside the rest of the Tiānjiàn Sect’s representatives through a long-range looking glass. frowned the moment the dark figure crashed through the tiles, then the sect leader rubbed her temples and simply stopped watching. More than second-hand embarrassment weighed on her. One of her sect’s more renowned disciples had been killed by the very same person now tumbling from a rooftop, and the sheer contrast left her and everyone else present with a deep sense of shared shame.

For Tiezhi the feeling ran deeper. He had already reviewed the recordings of the Great Mortal Game. That ingeniously structured trial that felt as though it could only have been designed by the Grand Strategist himself. Then his own life, in the future he remembered, had been filled with relentless battles where there’s no place for mistake or slip up, the sight of a figure that was like a big rock thrown to the river of fate falling from the roof was something unfathomable. The sight forced a quiet realization upon him: his earlier plan of first rising to prominence within the sect before turning to larger matters had been shortsighted. He would need to locate his previous allies far sooner than intended… and, more importantly, he would need to find the young Grand Strategist.

Gu Linghua, for her part, once again raised her fan to cover her face. She fought so hard to contain her laughter that her cheeks flushed red beneath the silk. Zhaoge remained absorbed in his studies, leaving only her guardian elder to witness the young lady’s reaction. A quiet unease settled in the older man’s stomach. Had the young lady… become infatuated with the Xuan? He could not recall her ever being this thoroughly amused in such a short span of time. The thought twisted uncomfortably inside him. Not because he disapproved of Young Master Xuan. He had yet to hear anything truly unsavory about the youth, and in his own unconventional way the boy was clearly resourceful and competent. Coupled with the prestige of the Xuan name, the patriarch and the elders were unlikely to object even to an adopted son and the Xuan’s quite unique body. The hostility of the surrounding noble clans and sects did not particularly concern him either. The Gu family possessed more than enough wealth and strength to weather such storms. The problem however was what awaited those that married into the Xuan family. Fortunately, the young lady had already declared her intention to enter closed-door seclusion in order to cultivate properly after everything the Xuan had revealed. In the meantime, the guardian decided he would need to quietly warn the patriarch and the elders of this developing possibility.

In the City Lord’s office, Baosheng stood beside the window while Xuehai finished writing a report. The rest of the examiners waited in a neat row. There was no longer any distinction between them in clothing or manner, no northern or southern merchants. Everything had been a performance.

They listed every bribe and concession the surrounding noble families had offered the merchant guild during the tournament. A treasure pill here, a rare material there. Each bribe had been accepted by the guild, and Baosheng had returned twice the value to the agents involved. Last of all, Examiner Mingde, the largest and fattest of the merchants, stepped forward. His eyes were nearly buried between fat cheeks and heavy brows as he smiled.

“A property belonging to the Gongsun family, directly south of the capital. Complete with a spiritually rich cultivation abode.”

The other agents wore the expressions of men who had just struck gold as Mingde placed the property documents on the table. Baosheng simply handed him a large chest, neatly filled with medium-grade spirit stones and a score of high-grade spirit crystals. Each high-grade crystal was worth ten thousand ordinary spirit stones. Mingde accepted the chest with open gratitude. This was only a portion of what he had originally surrendered. A small fraction of his true reward, since the bulk of his assets and savings already existed off-world.

With a nod, Baosheng dismissed them all.

“Everything is on me for the week!” Mingde announced gleefully as he skipped out of the room.

“Yooo!” the rest of the agents streamed after him in high spirits.

Only the City Lord and Xuehai remained.

“Quite a lively bunch,” Xuehai remarked.

“Indeed.”

“A pity we will not be working together again anytime soon.” Xuehai sounded genuinely regretful. “Is there anything else you wish to convey to the Emperor?”

Most of the report was already complete. The bribes, the recovery of Liuli, and hidden movement of assets was completed as planned and fully under wrap. Then a separate section detailed the Xuan’s performance. How he had handled the agents posing as two separate merchant cultures, his conduct as Master of Ceremonies, and the way he resolved unexpected situations. That final portion noted, carefully, that the Xuan remained susceptible to certain “prescriptions.”

That’s right, the Xuan falling asleep near the end of the tournament had been arranged by the Wànlì Merchant Guild. The dosage had proven difficult to calibrate. It had taken roughly a dozen times the normal amount to keep him unconscious for only a few hours. The entire exercise had been conducted to assess how the young Xuan would react under pressure. Which was also why Baosheng had later quickly allowed him free rein in answering the Gongsun challenge. It might be unsavory, but someone bearing the name Xuan must be very closely scrutinized.

“What about the Xuan?” Xuehai asked, knowing full well that Baosheng was still turning the matter over in his mind. “Can he be trusted?”

“I do not see why he needs to ask me,” Baosheng replied with clear irritation. “Has he not already met the Xuan himself?”

“He expressly requested your opinion on the matter,” Xuehai answered dryly. “Perhaps we should begin with why you suddenly lost patience and flared in anger that day.”

Baosheng drew a deep breath.

“He examined the formation inscribed on my express permit with great care.” He mimicked the Xuan’s earlier motion, holding an imaginary token between both hands. “Then he simply created a perfect duplicate.”

Baosheng stood at the eighth level of Golden Core, very near the peak, and took quiet pride in his mastery of formation arrays. Watching his work duplicated with so little effort was a strike on his ego and mastery.

“Hmmm. That is rather concerning.” Xuehai hummed thoughtfully before delivering one final question. “Has he ever mentioned anything about a ‘system,’ or spoken to himself in a similar manner?”

Baosheng took a moment to review everything he had observed of the Xuan and even of his companions.

“No. He seemed to be… too ignorant compared to our earlier experiences. Not the fake act of ignorance. But a real one.”

“I will take note of that.”

“Nothing changes regarding the standing order for meeting them?”

“Still kill on sight.”

“Noted.”

“One last matter.” Xuehai rolled the report, marking the next words as off the record. “Would you personally trust the Xuan?”

Baosheng considered the question carefully. He had almost formed the word yes when a certain Xuan fell through the roof outside the window in a noisy cascade of tiles and broken beams.

“…Put that down as ‘maybe.’”

~ Valarion