the multi

Chapter 52 Madam Rose Part 2

Li Fang walked through the town with the two children at either arm, laughing and pulling her every which way.

They were tiresome, dragging, and made Li Fang's arms hurt a little, but she couldn't help smiling through it all. She'd been like a mother to them for most of her life, raising them from the slums by herself. And while she hated those hard times and mourned the childhood she lost, she couldn't stop feeling sheer, unimaginable joy when she saw them happy.

They had aided her as much as she had aided them. Without them, without a reason to push onto the light, Li Fang would have starved in some back alley long ago.

"Li Fang! Li Fang! Can we have braised ribs for the night?" Gai Fang asked.

"That would take too long, Gai. How about beef stew tonight?"

"And dumplings?" Gai asked.

"Only if you remind me to buy some on our way back," Li Fang replied.

Gai Fang nodded vigorously and smirked at Liu Yong.

Li Fang smiled, acting oblivious to the plan she had overheard them make right in front of her.

They eventually made it to the stone cutter. He had a small shack-like building just a mile from the city square. The area itself seemed innocent and had a decent amount of fair trade going on, but that was just a farce. The main lifeline of this market was black money, largely prostitution and alcohol.

Strong Fist City was under the direct rule of the Bloody Fist Sect, a Buddhist cultivator group. And even though they were the law and the highest authority within the area, they had the same flaws as other large sects. They didn't care to govern. In fact, to the Blodoy Fist Sect governing seemed to be a burden instead of a privilege.

They had refused a city for centuries, choosing instead to have a small supply town at the edge of the mountain. But it had recently exploded in population and commerce and the Bloody Fist Sect hadn't intervened in the infrastructure or trade.

They only policed in the dumbest ways possible. You couldn't get away with 'immoral actions' as they called it, but they were monks. They went about clearing away any petty theft they could find, but that was the most immortality they knew. As long as you refrained from open violence, you would be unlikely to catch the monks' eyes.

Li Fang suspected that someone higher up on the Sect ladder knew what was going on. The Bloody Fist Sect was unconcerned with mortals, not stupid. They had to have noticed the sudden increase in their sect members seeking out mortal pleasure.

Sex, gambling, drinking, all of that had been subtly growing beneath the clean skin of the city, and a lot of the younger monks were taking part in it. That was also another thing she had noticed. There seemed to be a lot more monks spending spirit stones lately.

It put her on edge.

"Hold onto me now," Li Fang said to the children. "Don't let go!"

Both Gai Fang and Liu Yong looked up at her in curious confusion.

"We won't," Gai Fang replied.

"Mhm, we won't let go!" Liu Yong added.

"I might forget about the dumplings if you do," Li Fang added.

She felt both of their hands tighten around hers. And with a good grip, she walked into the stone cutter's place. The half-dwarf sat at his desk, his hands inspecting a spirit stone with an extended glowing monicale. In front of him stood a group of mortals, a family, holding their hands together in anxious anticipation.

"Looks full," the dwarf spoke.

"I knew it!" The father spoke.

Stone cutters, aside from cutting up spirit stones, also traded in spirit stones as well. A spirit stone full of qi was useless to a mortal, but to a cultivator, the qi within a spirit stone was what made it valuable. Without qi, a spirit stone was a useless piece of shiny rock.

So if a mortal managed to find a spirit stone that had yet to be drained of its qi, the best thing they could do was trade it in for dull stones.

It was a strange system. Dull spirit stones rotted, eventually turning into dust over a century. Fresh spirit stones could only be made by cultivators or mined from the deep layers of the earth, hundreds of miles below the ground, which was also a thing only cultivators could do.

This ultimately meant that all economic resource was passed down from a cultivator's hands. Whether mined or made, spirit stones could only come from cultivators and the full ones were only useful to cultivators or certain high-up mortals.

"Ten dull stones and a handful of silvers, that's the best you'll get for this," the dwarf stated. "I'll give you fifteen."

"I thought a full spirit stone was worth thirty dull stones?" The woman asked.

"Thirty dull stones two years ago. Nowadays you'd be lucky to get ten for a full one."

"Twenty, and nothing less," The man replied.

Li Fang saw the dwarf's eyes shine in satisfaction. She felt pity for the family. A full spirit stone, while being worth a little less nowadays, would have caught them nothing less than twenty-three dull stones at any other stone cutter.

They must have been new here, not knowing the prices of stones or goods. The old dwarf would rip them off a little before they caught on and inevitably switched to a different cutter.

The large dwarf, sighed, after having paused long enough for consideration.

"Fine then, twenty dull stones for this full one-"

"With them, all cut to tenth silvers and the butts attached," the father interrupted.

The dwarf scowled.

"Now that's a bit much for"

"The man down the street said this could go for twenty-three uncut dullards. With the cut, he said it'd be twenty-one dullards. All tenth cuts too. The problem is he won't have them till next week, business is booming he said. "

The dwarf stared at him for a moment.

"Oh, alright. Twenty dull stones, all cut into tenths."

The father nodded happily in agreement and the dwarf stumbled back behind and into the backroom with a frown.

"And that kids, is how you bargain! Never believe a stone cutter's first prices. Always wear them down, bit by bit you'll get them right in no time." The man said to his children.

Li Fang smiled and nudged her own fledglings, making sure they were listening. She gave them that common motherly nod, the one that said 'Now that's an important thing to know for the future.

Gai Fang nodded lazily and Liu Yong was already focused, listening in to the man's instructions.

The dwarf came back with a sack of spirit stones and handed them over to the father, who was not hiding his look of satisfaction.

"Happy then?" Gong Bao grumbled as the man counted out the silvers one by one on the counter in front of him.

"Incredibly," the man said, pushing out his hand for the dwarf to shake.

Gong Bao waved the man away, and the man turned around with a smile, gathered his children, and walked out of the door.

"You still profited, didn't you?" Li Fang asked as she walked over and put two spirit stones onto his desk.

"Yes. I did," Gong Bao grumbled. "But not enough for it to matter. The man got all of his silvers exhanged in one day and I got happy over nothing."

Li Fang laughed as she watched the wide man go into the back of his store and exchange the uncut stones for the silvers. Stone cutting was time-consuming labor from what she understood. Spirit stones were hard but brittle. Cutting them up into circular shapes required time and consistency.

Even the best stone cutters were open only two or three days a week, dedicating most of their week to the physical labor of cutting stones.

It was all very complicated money stuff.

He came back with sixteen-tenth silvers, which Li Fang counted and placed into her satchel.

"Are we gonna go get dumplings now?" Gai Fang asked, tugging lightly at her hand.

"Yes, we'll go get dumplings now," Li Fang replied to the children.

They left the stone cutter and made their way to the local food market, just a few blocks away. The children talked about their favorite flavors, arguing between pork and beef, Li Fang wouldn't have minded getting them both.

She did have the money after all.

"Why does a whore walk in my city?" A voice echoed.

The world stopped, the children froze and a cold grip seemed to have grabbed onto the air itself.

A monk strolled in front of her, calm and unabiding.

"Filth made flesh," the man whispered. "Die."

And then the world began to move again.

Li Fang collapsed, pain burned through her body and her soul ached in agony.

One of the children fell with her. Liu Yong, she guessed.

I hope she's not hurt, She thought.

Then, she was done.

********

Madam Rose finished telling us the story, speaking slowly at times and rushing through the ending with a stifled voice. Her aura blazed in grief and sadness.

"Li Fang died that day, and for a long time, I didn't know why or how. She was with us one moment, then she wasn't. The apothecaries told us it must have been some disease, something she picked up from work. I knew what she did, even though she thought I didn't but I knew, and I believed it."

Liu Yong clenched her hands for a minute and closed her eyes, hoping to hold back the tears.

"But then that monk came. He said his name was Gai Lu and that he'd come to our aid. That we were noble children hindered by a devious woman. He had the same first name as Gai Fang, and that seemed to bring them together for some reason."

Lui Yong chuckled.

"But I knew he was lying. I knew it from the moment I saw him. I never trusted him, but we had no choice but to accept his aid. Gai Fang went into monkhood, changing his name to Gai Jin eventually. I had no talent for nunhood and followed in Li Fang's footsteps, taking care to not let Gai Fang know."

Another small pause came, followed by a gulp and a clearing of her throat.

"I thought that would be the end of it. But then, one day, Gai Fang was declared Gai Lu's disciple and Gai Fang was revealed to have an immense talent for the Bloody Fist Arts, having a deep lower dantian as they say."

"I see…" I mumbled.

She nodded.

"I knew it too. Right away I knew it. I ran back to the apothecaries and the funeral men and this time they told me the truth. They said her heart had burst and that her lower dantian had been shattered by some kind of qi attack. They said she had died due to a cultivator's attack, and that the monkhood had collected her body before it could be buried, and burned it without any investigation. That had never made sense to me you know. Strong Fist City was a Buhhdist city, even dead beggars would be given some type of service at the temple. But no, they had just burned Li Fang. Burned her, as if they were trying to hide something."

Tears fell from her eyes, cascading in small droplets off her face.

"But I kept quiet. I kept quiet and tried my best to live on. I found a cultivation method that worked for me and became the head of a brothel nearby. And I tried to make peace with what had happened but… but Gai Fang didn't accept it. He told me to leave the brothel and to go with him back to the monastery, to find a good husband and settle down."

"He said 'I can't bear to see my sister disrespect herself like this. Li Fang wouldn't have wanted this for you.'"

Another cold silence filled the room.

"That was when I told him. He didn't believe me at first. He insulted me, called me a whore and a liar. But the more I spoke, the more he understood… and eventually he stormed off, heading for Gai Lu himself."

Lee Hang made his way around the desk and gave the woman a gentle hug, though the action seemed to bring little comfort.

"And Gai Lu is hunting you for this?" I asked.

"He is. I don't know what happened that night but Gai Fang- or I suppose I should say Gai Jin was locked up for some crime and I fled the city that very night."

"You can stay," I finally said to the poor girl.

"But the Immortal-"

"The immortal does not like Gai Lu. There is no open animosity but he does not like the man's presence, stay for as long as you like. But make sure to contact the mortals about the place and figure out the setup of where you'll stay."

Madam Rose nodded, relief awash on her face.

Word got around the brothel pretty quickly. Everyone in the brothel had some understanding of Madam Rose's situation, though I doubted they had the full picture.

A part of me was annoyed, the old solitary Dane part that hadn't quite rotted away yet. But another part of me was happy, which was something new.

It wasn't like Dane hadn't done good in his time. Dane- I had cleared out numerous evil foes, wiping out whole sects of human-eating psychos at times. But fighting evil was one thing and protecting good was another. Dane had fought evil when he could hurt it, not for the sake of being good but for the sake of killing evil.

It had always been more of a moral instinct, like stomping on a cockroach or slapping off mosquitoes, an act with no sacrifice. But protecting people, well protecting people was something new entirely.

"How certain are you?" Lee Heng asked me.

"What?"

"How certain are you that the immortal-"

"You felt that qi didn't you?" I asked in reference to Rin Wi's little trick.

"Yes," Lee Heng replied.

"He was listening that whole time," I whispered.

Lee Heng's eyes widened and he stood still in place.

"I- I-"

"Relax," I cut in. "He really doesn't care about honorifics and all that stuff."

Lee Heng loosened up, but only slightly.

"Oh. I almost forgot why I came looking for you," I said pulling out a thin piece of paper and handing it to Lee Heng.

"I need these as soon as you can get them. The villagers are expecting a sudden, possibly permanent, population increase and they could use a few qi beasts to help with the labor."

Lee Heng looked at the list carefully.

"This looks costly," he mumbled.

"Yeah, I'm sure the brothel will be happy to pay it off," I answered.

Lee Heng nodded lightly.

"If the Immortal of the Great Desert Strip truly cares about the mortals in this valley, then gifting them should please him."

I figured he'd see it that way. Paying him wouldn't have been a problem, but sometimes you needed to let people think they offered something in the transaction for them to accept.

Selfishness was assumed, and kindness was questioned.

Chin generally left the cultivator dealings up to me so I doubted he would oppose the bargain. I could tell he'd been waiting on my opinion about the whole thing and now that I had vetted out the situation.

I slipped out of the camp, this time fully hiding my presence from everyone else, and walked till I was near the edge of the forest.

I went up to a hill that oversaw the village and all its people and sat down.

Then, I looked. I let my senses cover the whole region and searched for every monk I could pinpoint. I saw their little mountain and I saw their city at its base. Then I saw Gai Lu, his aura in complete disarray.

He sat cross-legged in a meditative pose trying to calm himself down but to no avail. Fear boiled through his mind mixed with anger and shame.

Then I looked again, somewhere on the outskirts of the region, a few thousand miles away from Strong Fist City sat a man. He stood there washing his hair over a small pond. His skin was a dark brown and his hair was bound into dreadlocks.

But the most interesting feature was his fists. His fists were darker than the rest of his skin, scarred in a way but also different. The Bloody Fist Sect was a group of fighting monks, and their cultivation techniques revolved around breaking their hands through trauma and healing them in an improved fashion. The strange scar tissue that was left behind was different, more durable, and thick.

It was as if their skin had been replaced with that of a spirit beast.

And this man had those traits.

Gai Jin, I assumed.

I blinked and stopped looking.

I guess that was why the monk had tried to get me to kill him. He'd rather die a virtuous monk who stood up to an arrogant immortal than a corrupted bastard who was slain by his own pupil.

Oh well, that's got nothing to do with me.

The boy was out for vengeance and in the state he was in, he could take Gai Lu ten times over.

I just hoped he chose his actions wisely.

Chapter 53 To Cultivate Part Five

Chin sat at the clearing, legs crossed in a meditative pose. He was trying to cultivate.

I had already explained the concept of cultivation to him, and he seemed to have a good grasp of it in theory, but execution was a different thing.

All humanoids had twelve main meridians, long and overlapping pathways of qi that were responsible for distributing the qi throughout your body. They overlapped one another over and over again and occasionally intersected. These intersections were called meridian points.

Intersections of all twelve meridian pathways were called dantians, and that was what Chin was currently trying to get a feel for.

"I don't feel anything," Chin said.

"Then keep trying," I replied while sipping my tea.

"I am trying."

"Then you're on the right track."

Chin frowned a little deeper than usual.

"How do I know when I've reached the dantian?" He asked.

"You'll know. Now stop distracting yourself and cultivate."

Chin grumbled but kept quiet as he went back to work. I couldn't really blame Chin for his annoyance. There were tens of thousands of meridians within the human body, and remembering the meridian pathways to cycle your qi through was a tough thing for your average mortal.

Most cultivation cycles focused on efficiency, each cultivation method trying to create the least amount of distance between your entrance meridians, the meridians that absorbed the qi from the outside world, and your dantians. And that would get you to the first rank very fast, but only the first rank.

Effective cultivation would cycle the qi throughout the body first, not only feeding your dantians, but your meridians as a whole. They functioned as the support structure for your dantians, the scaffolding to your metaphysical self. And even if you gave immense reinforcement to the lower dantian, the dantian of the body, you'd still find yourself unable to go past the second rank.

Good cultivation techniques focused on a balanced distribution of qi being cycled throughout your meridian pathways and eventually into your dantians. It was effectively feeding both the ground and the garden. A plant grown in subpar soil might, with enough attention, produce fruit for one year, but you wouldn't be getting fruit from it the next season.

Foundations and all that stuff.

Chin was having a hard time cycling his qi from one meridian to another.

"I thought it was the dantains that determined my rank," he questioned.

"It is. But it's your meridian pathways that feed it and while the dantians hold your qi, your meridians distribute it."

"Can't I reinforce them during the next rank?"

"You can try, but you'd find the amount of qi produced by your dantians would overwhelm them pretty quickly. It would be like trying to build a store in the middle of the forest. No matter how many wares you have, you'd never be able be able to trade them."

"And why this pattern then? Why do I have to circulate the qi in this specific method?"

"Let's say you want to build a house on the outskirts of the village and you happen to be a shepherd, where would you build it."

Chin paused his cycling and thought for a moment.

"Probably by the east side," he answered.

I sipped my tea.

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, that's closest to the hills and has a lot of open grass over there."

"And what if a farmer wanted to do the same?"

"Northeast side probably. The road there is nice and leads out to the farmlands, and we have the wind mill down there. It'd be easier to bring in the harvest as well."

"And if a hunter wanted to do the same?"

"He'd be better off living near the forest."

"Why's that?"

"Less distance to haul your kill. Don't want to pull a dead dear through the main road."

I nodded.

"Cultivation methods work similarly. Certain meridian pathways lead to certain body parts and depending on the method you practice, you want the pathway between your dantians and body parts to be strong and refined."

Chin just stared at me, silently requesting an explanation.

"You know the five sects?" I asked.

Chin nodded.

"Well let's take the Bloody Fist Sect for example. Their cultivation technique revolves around their fists and physical improvements, using and strengthening their hands till they become comparable to weapons.

But all of that requires a robust meridian pathway between their hands and their dantians. Meaning their cycle would heavily focus on strengthening and reinforcing certain meridian pathways in their hands, possibly using meridian points within the hand itself as a minor dantian."

"Minor dantian?"

"Don't worry about that. The point is to establish and reinforce certain pathways for future use."

Chin snorted and closed his eyes and went back to meditating, then after a second opened them back up again.

"That… madam came to me today," he whispered.

"Madam Rose?" I asked.

"Yes. Her. She came with qi beasts and spirit stones, full ones. Fifty of them at the first rank."

"Nice chunk of change," I replied.

"I don't know what I'll do with it," he mumbled. "And they want to build here, set up a permanent residence. The beast tamer as well, he wants to bring all of his animals here and raise them."

"Sounds like the start of a blossoming city," I replied.

"What should I do?"

"Have you tried asking one of the girls? I know Lin Tai has a knack for city planning-"

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You do nothing but sit on your ass and sip tea all day. Why can't you help with all of this? You're the one who brought this upon us after all."

Now it was my turn to frown.

"I'm a bit of a hermit."

"So am I," Chin replied.

"Yeah well, I outrank you in hermitness Mister Village Chief. And besides, I hate cultivators."

Chin at me with raised eyebrows.

"What?" I asked.

"You hate cultivators?"

"Yep," I replied. "I always have. Even when I was still actively cultivating, I always pushed myself to the far reaches of the multiverse where no one would find me by accident and even that didn't keep me out of some people's reach."

"Seems stupid to become the thing you hate," Chin mumbled. "I think farmers are great."

I took a nice long sip of tea and then set my cup down.

"Cultivators, as powerful as we are, are just humans Chin. But we're humans without limits. And all of the bad things about people become limitless too. Their hatred and greed, pain and suffering. All of it grows endlessly in an eternal expansion. It's… terrifying."

"What about the good things?" Chin asked.

I smiled.

"You ever heard the myth of the twin stars, Chin? Or maybe something about two sisters of opposing natures?"

Chin took a moment to think.

"Maybe not sisters but two opposing concepts of good and evil, maybe animals of some sort?" I clarified.

"The two lions within the human heart?" Chin answered.

"That comes from one true story, most myths do in some ways. Some cultivators are so powerful that they mark the shape of humanity itself and appear in almost every society as myths or stories. Some sects even keep track of them, trying to record their footprints through infinity."

"Anyway," I continued. "The archetype of twin beings of opposing nature traced back to one true story, The Twin Stars of Light and Darkness. A long time ago, there were two women, mortals wronged by some evil sect. Somehow, through luck and diligence, both of these mortals found a way to cultivate and grow. Now the evil sect had three bases at the time, and the two women, having been aquatinted with one another, sought vengeance on the group. So with some planning, they each decided to take one base by themselves and strike down the central base together. One woman, the Light, chose to judge her base righteously. She saw they were evil and she struck them down where they stood. She let the young and innocent among them flee and she let their servants live."

"But the other woman, the Darkness, failed to kill one single man, instead choosing to use her dark techniques to freeze them in eternal torment. It's said that every person in that base, from the unborn children to the sect's prisoners, suffered unknown pain at her hands. Eventually, the two women met at the central base, fighting side by side to take down the sect Patriarch and they emerged victorious. But at the very end, the Darkness chose to torment, making him watch as his children, merely a month old were cut and eaten right in front of him."

"The Light didn't accept this. The two battled to a standstill and eventually parted ways before one could defeat the other." I finished.

"What's that got to do with anything?" Chin questioned.

"Who do you think was the bad guy in that story Chin?"

"The sect?"

"And who was the bad guy at the end of the story?"

"The Darkness Lady?" He replied.

"Yup. An Lie Kei, The Mother of Pain, Her Eternal Vengece, one of the most terrifying God Imperiums to ever exist."

Chin shivered at her name.

"A forgotten sect of evil bastards created one of the most hateful existences in all of reality. Good is rare Chin. Bittersweet morality is everywhere, but good, true untouched kindness is one of the rarest things in the world. And even if you find it, it rarely stands the test of eternity. It only takes a drop of poison to ruin a cup of water. And when you live this long, you're bound to see that poison many times over."

There was a moment of shared silence between us. Chin adjusted himself, leaning back onto his arms and abandoning the meditative pose.

"What happened to the other girl?" Chin asked. "The Light One."

"She grew with her opponent. Nei Lo, Justice Herself, The Great Judicar, leader of the largest righteous sect in all of existence."

Chin frowned and stared up into the stars. I could see his brain churning away at the story. His mind focused on something that didn't include farming for once.

"I still don't understand why you hate cultivators."

"It's the eternal aspect of it all Chin. For mortals, everything, even suffering is limited. Sure the good parts are cut short but the bad parts are finished too. But because of cultivators, somewhere out there we've made hell in its truest form. Suffering unending for all of time because of some mortal grievance. That's what disgusts me. Every time I see a cultivator, I wonder what they'll be in a few millennia. I wonder how long they'll last, how many they'll hurt. I wonder how their dao will twist and corrupt them or how they'll twist and corrupt it."

Chin got up, wiping bits of wet grass off of his shirt and pants.

"I just think they're annoying," he mumbled, reaching downward for his hat. '

"And that too," I added. "I can't stand all the grandiosity."

We both started down the hill and towards the village.

"I'm late again. Medin's gonna have my ears sore till bed."

"Did you remember to eat your lunch?" I asked the man.

Chin shook his head with a worried look and stared off into the distance.

"She's going to stuff me like a pillow," he mumbled.

"Yes. Yes, she is. But you'd be dead and overworked in some field without her," I replied.

Chin nodded and started jogging off into the distance without saying another word as I looked on with amusement.

Chapter 54 Wu Kong

Sun Wukong wandered through reality leisurely. That was the way it should be said.

He strolled through multiverses, taking care not to rupture the delicate balls of reality he passed by. It required delicacy at times, like walking through a patch of grass while taking care not to damage a single blade.

Though it took no effort, merely intention.

That was how it was for a God-Imperium. Omnipotent in the truest sense. Powerful beyond reason.

Wukong hated it.

He remembered his old days, waking in the void of space and nearly dying there, abandoned by his mother. Struggling against the Buddha before submitting to him and crossing the multiverse with the monk and his company. He remembered those days, the fights and deliberations, and the valiant struggle.

Yes, the struggle. At first, he had loathed the Buddha. The man had forced him to submit and after reaching Nirvana and stepping into the realm of God-Imperium, he had rebelled. He had fought and attacked, only to lose again.

Wukong smiled.

It was the Second Age, or as the common man knew it, the Age of Death. That was when several Dao Angels of Death had risen to become God-Imperium and that was when most of existence had been slain.

The monk had known that war, no matter how righteous, breeds death. And an eternal war even more so. Wukong still remembered the countless multiverses slain in the infinite conflict. In those days, God-Imperiums clashed without any regard for the rest of existence, like men waging war in a field full of ants.

Yes, those were the days. Wrath and fury, rebellion and hatred, those things fueled his passion and Wukong used them dearly. But then, he had fought, not just for the sake of rebellion itself, but for the world, for a purpose.

The Heavens and the Hells needed to be shattered and the eternal war needed to be quenched. So Wukong had stood as the division between good and evil.

He had forced the Righteous and Demonic to acknowledge a third party, the Orthodox. Those who sought peace, but didn't see a need to spread it. The war between the Heavens and the Hells was costly, forcing cultivators and even mortals to pick a side and die for it.

With Wukong's opposition had come peace. Most of the demonic rose and most of the righteous fell, creating a new group of powerful cultivators, the Orthodox. And as the group grew larger than any else so had peace spread through existence. Reality settled and the war calmed down, raging only in the quiet corners designated for war and blood.

But now everyone knew. The Sea of Death had been made by the Dead Daos, a place of infinite death, lacking life in every way. That was the designated place for conflict nowadays between God-Imperiums.

Order was restored, conflict was contained and things had a place.

There had to be a middle place, a middle ground for the Monkey King to guard and maintain. Without that all of existence would crumble and only God-Imperiums would be left, crushing everything else around them in their absolute fury.

But what Wukong wouldn't give for a good fight at times, for a good rageful opposition.

Then the God-Imperium sighed. He wouldn't get that, not anymore. He was too strong, too much of a force to be bullied and now he had allies who would come to his aid, demolishing any that attacked him.

Instead, he watched. He watched those privileged struggle, walking and fighting their way through life. He'd aid them occasionally, like that boy, Bill was his name.

He had aided him, if only for making him laugh and showing him that technique, Seeing Through the Void, what a beautiful thing.

It was an ancient technique, derived by one of the artistic sects of the third age, and one that Wukong had not seen before. That and the plots of the little tamer were worth far more than what Wukong had given him, but he wouldn't go overboard with his aid, that would take from the boy's struggle, from his rebellion.

Yes, Wukong was intrigued by the little tamer, he was one of the oldest new Gods. Rising to the seventeenth rank within the Third Age, having tamed a dragon, the grandson of Beast, and then later suppressing one of the eldritch things.

It was quite an accomplishment.

But all God-Imperiums were impressive in their own right. And in the grander scheme of things, even Tai Jey was but a small thing, at least in comparison to his betters.

But what intrigued Wukong the most was the little array the boy had made. That was something magnificent. Something new.

Even the library had sensed it and given him a tome to take home and that was strange. The library rarely bothered with such things, especially not with a mere thirteenth-ranked child, but even it had been curious about its discovery.

A living array. Yes, it was quite strange. Arraymasters were an important group of people within the multiverse. Arrays were necessary for the weaker ranks to traverse through gaps of infinite. They created small rivers of qi that lapsed and changed in nature and managed to tie all of reality into a bow.

Array roads, mere cobbling of qi and power, flowed throughout most of the known universe, tying the realms together. Of course, no one at the fifteenth rank or higher needed them, they were only necessary for those who couldn't traverse infinite nonexistence, and they were only there for the central parts of reality, stretching through and around Lynoria.

But they were never that strong. That was the curse of arraymasters, no matter how much they knew of every dao or every law, they could never invest themselves deep enough into one concept to cultivate growth.

It would defeat the very purpose of being an arraymaster. They sought connections and complexities beyond their rank, laws, and daos only truly available to those of the fifteenth rank and beyond. The Law of Creation, or the Dao of Connections, ideas so close to the nature of reality itself that even God-Imperiums would take time to understand them.

Children attempting to know the doings of Gods, that's what they were.

And until very recently, that was what they had been. They duplicated ideas or concepts, nothing groundbreaking and nothing new, not until this one at least.

Bill had created a soul, a thinking growing being not of the four Primordials and not made by a fifteenth-rank individual. This wasn't just a construct or an amalgamation of species, nor was it an eldritch thing.

It was something living, something free. It resembled a realm in its nature, one like Lynoria or The Sea of Death. But it was different, somehow.

The boy believed the most valuable thing he had was the child of the Beast, but that array was far more spectacular. Only those above the fifteenth rank had created something like it, and even then it was rare.

It was a living will, exuding its identity like a dao angel but still different, able to grow.

A dao angel without bindings, yes, that was what it was.

"Wukong," A voice spoke through the void. "What have you done this time?"

Wukong smiled. It was the voice of a friend, the Bodhisattva who had tormented him ages ago, Guanyin was her name, but now most knew her as Nei Lo.

"What stirs the Judicar to leave her court?" The Monkey King said turning to her with a smile.

Well, turning wasn't quite the term for it. There was no direction here, no place, but there was nonexistence. The nothingness between her court in the lower heavens and his presence disappeared as he instantly stood outside of her domain.

He would have entered, but her multiverse was annoyingly strict. It weighed down on him like humid air in the summer.

"Tai Jey," She stated simply.

"What about him?"

Her eyes narrowed with impatience.

Wukong smiled again. Truth was one of the most dangerouse things in this place, but she had it. More specifically she protected one of the oldest truth sects in all of existence. The Enki Maluth was what they were called.

Truth sects didn't last long. They were sources of eternal conflict, unrooting the truth behind forgotten debts and being able to divine the truth of certain techniques. It was one of the most capable daos, but it was also the one that caused the most conflict. Few truth sects survived this long, even the library needed Wukong's protection.

More than half of the most costly conflicts in all of existence had been brought by truth. With truth, justice could be served, but it also meant that nothing could be forgotten.

So in most places, there was no truth. It was collected by different sects and locked away for eternity, preventing ancient feuds and dead karmas from rising once more.

"I know you had something to do with it."

"Oh?"

"Do not play games with me WuKong."

Wukong smiled. There had been a time when she had led him, taught him even. But that was in a different time. Now he could stand here and claim himself her equal if not even her better.

He hated that.

"Do you know then? The nature of the thing?"

"I have my suspicions," she replied.

"Only that?"

"A new bloodline of sorts. He was hoping to reinforce his sect's power. What of it?"

Wukong shook his head lightly, like an elder brother admonishing a sibling.

"What?" Nei Lo asked in surprise.

Wukong just kept smiling. It was rare that he knew more than her about anything, much less something she herself had started investigating. Truth was central to justice after all. You couldn't pass judgment without knowing the whole truth.

"It seems like you've gone blind with your old age," the monkey man muttered.

He stroked his hairy face and the patch of fur that would have been a beard had he been human.

"Out with it, you ape!" Nei Lo yelled.

In the distance, reality was shaped by her irate thoughts. Realms were made and crumbled. Daos churned and laws never known before came to be and, just as quickly, vanished.

But that was normal, the God-Imperium's equivalent of blushing really.

"You do not know Tai Jey," Wukong stated. "He is a man, not a beast. He stole from the Wolf, one of Beast's first children, and raised its children into servanthood. He has attempted to tame Beast before, nearly dying at every encounter and only left alive by her will alone. He has even tried to tame me."

"He is a lucky fool. But we've all clashed with the Primordials more than once and they generally don't kill their challengers. He is not so different."

Wukong shook his head lightly.

"Beast was not the first Primordial he tried to mate with," Wukong explained. "He first tried to mate with man. And when he failed there, then he went to Beast."

God-Imperiums could create a new species just like that if they wished to, sex was a secondary thing for them.

"How do you know this?" Nei Lo asked.

"The child was unnaturally human."

"That could be due to an infinite set of reasons. Bloodline phenomena-"

"I am Wukong, Nei Lo. A half-being of Man and Beast. I know my mother. She only reproduces in lust, never in creation. And she has more children than she cares to remember. If all he wished for was children, he could have made them a thousand times over by now. But no, he made only one and he made only a female. Why?"

Wukong could see the gears start to turn in her head, metaphorically that was.

"He was injured when I saw him, a few minor ranks of where he should be."

Wukong nodded.

"War," Nei Lo muttered. "He is not merely trying to strengthen his clan but to create other God-Imperiums. He's… collecting Primordial bloodlines. His wounds… must have been from Insect, not Beast. And… that child… was she-"

"She was one of many. One of thousands no doubt. That was why they managed to get away. He's mixing his bloodline with the primordials in order to strengthen his sect."

"THAT FOOL! Doesn't he know the risk of such a thing?"

Wukong nodded. The idea itself wasn't new, have children with the strongest things in existence and then use said children to increase your own power. It had been tried before, and each time it had failed. The children would simply end up being too powerful. They'd break away from their parents and wreak havoc among reality.

Wukong was considered by most to be one of the strongest things in existence and it was mostly due to his bloodline. The bloodline of a primordial was exceptionally hard to conquer.

Unless.

"Could he do it?" Nei Lo asked. "Could he tame the children of Primordials?"

Wukong frowned. He had been thinking the same thing all this time. Well, a part of him had been.

"Probably," the monkey man said with an honest shrug.

Then he smiled.

"Hopefully. Things have been calm for far too long, don't you think?"

Chapter 55 The Baby

Her name was Gmphf, at least for today. The baby looked up at her captor and communicated her decision.

"Ha!" the man yelled. "No, way kid. Think of something better."

"Agou wag aoo!"

"I don't care if that's the longest word you can say! Gmphf isn't a proper name. Think of something better."

The baby frowned and crossed her arms. The capitor truly was ruthless. Why did she need a name anyway? She had her qi, didn't she? And anyone worth talking to would be able to identify her aura. She had no use for mortal grunts!

"Gifftholog," she mumbled with an abhorrent amount of effort.

"Maybe if you were an eldritch being," the captor replied.

Again, the baby frowned.

The captor reached down and picked her up, hand gently cradling her belly and raising her to his shoulders. She grabbed onto his head, still frowning firmly at the situation.

She was tired of not walking. She had been alive for a month, a whole month, and still, she had to crawl to get around. She was fast of course, lightning fast. She could crawl faster than the wind and outpace the sound of her thumping limbs.

But still, she crawled. She yearned to run, but that seemed to be a harder thing to figure out. She couldn't understand why. Her instincts let her understand certain laws and dao immediately. She could channel qi into natural techniques that would allow her to top any fourth-rank cultivator and she was even born with an innate knowledge of reality itself.

Yet she still could not walk. Oh, she would try. She would rebel against the ground and reach for the heavens, only to fall back and tumble down a hill and then she'd hear a howling laughter from her captor, somehow seeming to always be there when she fell.

The man laughed at her! Her of all people!

And then there were the mortals, oh they would come rushing around, huddling and helping her up and inspecting for wounds. The old farmer man had thrown a fuss the first time she had fallen.

That was until she crawled away from fast than he could blink, letting out her bowls in the process. That had made her captor laugh even more.

"Awoo ugh," the baby spoke to her annoying hide.

She didn't really need to speak. She communicated through her aura and he did the same with her. But she wanted to practice the words. The sooner she could use them the sooner she could insult him.

"Yeah, we're going out."

"Awoo ow?"

"No, not the village."

"Awoo?"

"You'll see," he replied.

The baby smiled. Finally something new, she thought. This place was small, egregiously so. She was meant to roam the cosmos and see the stars, not be tied to some backcountry realm. Would she finally be able to leave this small place? Would she meet her father? Would she meet her mother?

She was practically vibrating with excitement.

Then he started walking. The baby frowned once more.

Walking? They were walking? Why? Shouldn't they be flying or piercing through the very cloth of space-time itself and seeing higher things? Where were they going?

Then she noticed something, a technique. With every step the man took, they both shrank in size. The sun seemed further away. The sky felt bigger. The trees and rocks grew into huge mountains. She knew it wasn't real. She knew that, and yet.

It was terrifying to be so small. The technique wasn't just shrinking her body but also her senses. Grass eventually overwhelmed them, blocking their site like trees in a forest. The shade of foliage seemed to shift into strange and unknown depths.

Suddenly, this small place that she had grown weary of seemed to swallow her whole in rebellion.

I am here, it seemed to say.

I am vast. It was not me who was small but your eyes that were too large, the forest whispered.

She shook.

A calm hand touched behind her back.

"It's okay. You're alright kid." A voice said to her.

"We're fine, okay."

The baby nodded. He was strong. They would be fine. She knew this to be true, but she didn't feel this to be true.

Then, they walked. The world was familiar but different. Small things had become big and big things had become even bigger.

She told herself that this was a lie, a mere illusion made by this technique. But she knew it wasn't true. What she was seeing was real. The small forest she had grown tired of was real, but so was this vast abyss of wood and greens. She could sense animals in the distance, the dull qi-less kind.

A deer wandered by, an animal with little mind. And yet it was magnificent.

Its hooves moved the wind and its walk cut the earth. The dull white spots on its chest seemed to become the very sun and the mouth that mowed on the grass turned into that of a dragon, feasting on the earth beneath.

She felt awe. It was simple. It was stupid, yet she felt in awe. The world was beyond her.

For the first time in her short unnoticeable existence, she felt small.

This deer, as small as it was, was beyond her. It had lived before her.

Something churned within her.

There was more to the world, more than she could possibly know. There were more deer than she would ever meet, more skys than she would ever see. The immortals were great but they too were a part of nature, merely a stop at the cycle.

The baby turned and looked at the ant in the distance. From here they appeared to be huge, the size of dogs. They thrumped lightly on the ground with more purpose than most beings she had ever seen. They gathered for their young and all walked to serve the colony and die for it.

And the trees, the trees breathed. They gave shelter to life, letting all the rodents and insects of the world hide beneath their shadow.

She wondered how many animals had fed on their leaves or hidden in their wood. How much had they done for the world? How little was she compared to the trees of the forest?

"Calm down kid, it's a little too early for enlightenment," the cultivator said, shifting her off of his shoulders and into his arms.

She said nothing and she nodded.

They walked for a while. They walked for a long time, staring at the animals and the plants and shuddering at the insects.

The thought was strange. In the mind of a cultivator, value was relative. Things only matter because they were rare or necessary. The greatness in a shiny gem wasn't because of its beauty, but rather its allure. Everyone wanted the gem, therefor the gem gained value.

And in that same way, she knew she was more valuable than this forest. She was rare, talented, and blessed with a powerful bloodline. A strand of her hair was worth more than a realm full of forests.

But for some reason, she could not understand, she felt a sense of insignificance here. She was a godling, a daughter of one of the fundamental beings, a child of Beast, far more powerful than this forest before her, and yet it didn't care.

The forest didn't care for her. The world didn't care for her. In the eyes of existence, the difference between her and a pebble was unnoticeable. Pride was a thing of thinking beings, a delusion of the soul.

The self was the cage and the mind was the door. No, she could not be so stupid. She could not be so arrogant. She was small.

She was insignificant.

It wasn't worth her time-

"Hey!" The cultivator snapped, pushing away all of her thoughts with his words.

"I said it's too early for enlightenment," he spoke sternly.

The child looked up at him with fear in her eyes.

She had almost died. She had almost perished and turned to dust. She sought too much and thought too much.

Then she cried. Not out of annoyance or irritation, but out of helplessness. A child who did not know the world screamed up into the skies. Arrogance crumbled and left only fear.

She cried and cried and the captor held her, comforting her in his arms.

The world was scary. The world was terrifying and as great as she was, it did not care. It existed before her and would continue to do so after. Existential dread had filled her very soul.

"You're alright," the captor muttered into her ear.

"I gotcha. You're fine kid, you're fine."

The words soothed her. This person was strong, but more importantly, he was old. He could keep her safe. He would keep her safe. She mattered to him, even though he hadn't sired her, she mattered to him.

The world didn't care, but he did.

She sniffled and hiccupped and sneezed out a glob of boogers.

He didn't care. He wiped them away with his hands and tossed them aside, as he held her up into the light.

"There there kid. You're okay."

She nodded and he cradled her into his arms, and they walked through the forest, this vast and uncaring world.

But she was fine. He cared and that was all that mattered. He cared and the world dimmed again. The deer became a deer and the night became a mere shadow. The world was uncaring and terrifying but he wasn't.

Then after a few minutes of sniffling and crying, she slept and dreamed of nothing.

Chapter 56 A Beast's Nature

She had tried to ascend. It was probably instinct, but the baby had tried to become immortal. She wasn't even at the right rank to ascend, but that's what happens when you're a child of a Primordial I supposed.

But she had no Dao, nothing to ground her and that had almost killed the poor child.

I walked, cradling her against my chest as I did so. She was sleeping, for now. But she'd wake up eventually. That was good.

It was a strange situation I was in. I never wanted to be a father before this, and even now, I still don't. But this child needed someone to look after her, if not for my own safety then for hers.

She needed me.

"That damned monkey," I muttered under my breath.

He should have taken her and raised her himself, but no, he'd left her to me. I don't know why, probably some God-Imperium reasoning, something I was too weak to understand.

My theory was that he would somehow interfere. I didn't know why or how, but I assumed leaving the child in my hands was the best option, at least for now. If the child had stayed with him, there may have been some risk.

Not to him directly, but some type of political risk. It was the difference between watching a criminal run away and participating in the crime. He had merely traded favors with me, each favor given for something in return. Officially, he hadn't helped me or aided me in any regard so there were no karmic ties between us.

That left his hands clean of all misgivings. Well, that and his strength. If he were a weaker being complaints would surely be brought up, but since he's Sun Wukong, The Monkey King, I doubted anyone would dare to oppose him with little disregard.

That or he was lazy.

I frowned. It could be the latter, but I hoped it wasn't.

The child turned in my arms.

She opened her eyes and blinked at me. We'd been walking for about an hour, and because of our size, we'd only made it about fifty feet from where I had first stood.

That was fine, it was just a walk after all.

"Awoo," the baby yelled.

I've thought of a name.

Oh boy. Here we go. She took a moment to focus and her face squished in concentration.

"Nai,"

"Nai?"

She nodded.

"That's acceptable," I replied.

The baby- Nai, smiled and cooed. It was adorable.

"Do you know what you tried to do Nai?"

Nai nodded.

"You tried to ascend in immortality, without a dao."

Nai nodded again, seeming a little worried this time. She had that confused look that babies had when they were unsure of what was going on.

"You're a child, barely a newborn right now. You're not ready to face the world, alright?"

Nai nodded her big head bobbing up and down in effort.

"Good, now check this out," I said pointing to the distance.

I put her back onto my shoulders and she held firmly onto my head, and then I jumped. The forest shrank beneath us and we soared over the green leafy floor. We soared past the trees and the vines, peaking into the deep blue sky above.

I kept an eye on her aura. Accidentally ascending into immortality was a dangerous thing. It normally happened to strong individuals who were all but ready to leap into the sixth rank. But with Nai, it had been different.

She had seen a fundamental truth of reality and had tried to understand it. It was the metaphysical equivalent of staring into the sun. See too much and you'll see nothing, know too much and you won't know yourself. The ego would crumble, the soul would evaporate and your very consciousness would fall apart.

That was one of the many reasons humans needed a dao. Even beasts and insects needed their own methods to push into the depths of reality.

We glided down and landed smoothly on a tree branch. A nest of ravens occupied the branch a few feet over and a caw of surprise came out from the birds.

I was about to scare them off or soothe them myself, but then Nai held up her hand.

One of the ravens hopped out of their nest and walked over to us, lowering its beak to eye level.

"Awoo," Nai yipped.

The raven looked deep into her eyes… and nodded.

Interesting. This wasn't just communication using auras, this was a beast thing. The raven had recognized her as something beyond itself.

The raven turned around and tottered into its nest and snuggled up with its mate. We walked past the pair and went down to the floor. Then we stepped into the beasts' domain.

The world flickered and suddenly all the divine beasts could be seen. I watched them occasionally but this was the first time I had visited their domain. Domain might have been a bit of a stretch, home should I say.

They had taken to the place. I watched as they bartered. That was a little strange, bartering was a despicable human behavior, but they did it anyway. They even had stalls and shops and… were those merchants?

Why would they need merchants?

I frowned.

This was weird. I walked with Nai, our bodies wrapped in an illusory array.

"No! No! This is not right! One qi berry cannot be worth three feathers of a phoenix. That is too much to give for so little!"

"I will give you three, no more!"

There was a groundhog arguing with a phoenix.

"What's going on here?" Another phoenix chirped.

"You dare to spit at our Firey Fowl Clan? We will burn your lands and scatter seeds elsewhere if you dare!"

I studied the ongoing trade. The qi berry was small, barely anything worth staring at in terms of qi, but it was concentrated with laws. Yes, it held mainly fire and wind laws and would be a gift for most phoenixes to nurture.

I'd known stuff like this would happen. The array was eating the laws these creatures provided, studying their nature, and tossing out laws in return. It was growing.

"Nonsense, our Fiery Fowl will give you three and a half feathers no more! Asking for anything else would be extortion."

The groundhog frowned, then smiled.

"It's a deal!"

The phoenix dug into his wings and pulled out three full feathers and one half of one, each of them being holy treasures from a tenth-rank being, and traded them for the berry.

The berry contained fire laws and so did the phoenix's feather, but the difference between the two was notable. Even with deeply explored laws like fire and lightning, there were so many variances and so many nuances in their forms.

Did the fire burn, rejuvenate, heal, destroy? Phoenix fire burned away the old and withering. It was a fire that would burn down forests, only to provide them with more life than they'd ever seen the very next day. If a phoenix burned an old man it would hurt him, but it would burn away at his old age and rotting flesh, leaving behind a youthful man.

Phoenix fire burned away things like rot, age, weakness, and disease.

I'd once seen a sixteenth-rank phoenix. It was the very nature of change, burning away the void itself and creating countless realms as it flew by. I had been dying then, wounded from a grievous battle, and though its flames hadn't touched me, my injuries burned away and I was made a new, just from seeing it pass in the distance.

And that was all from a distance. The fire laws the berry contained were that of ash and heat, fire that would come from a dragon's mouth.

It was a good trade for the phoenix, though I didn't know what the groundhogs would use the feathers for. They studied the laws of connection, things like time and space, what good was-?

WHAT

DAO?

The damn beast had a dao.

How? Beasts were different from humans. We needed something to tether our souls, a purpose to tie ourselves to, and that was our dao, our meaning.

For beasts, it was more of a law, The Dao of the Jungle. The desire to be the strongest, strength for strength's sake. It was their way, their power.

Beasts didn't live for any other reason, but to live.

And yet…

I stared at the little bundle of dao within the groundhog's mind. Yes, the dao of wealth. The merchant's dao. It was there and it was blooming.

Connections. Laws that connected things, that was what the groundhogs tended to study. They varied, of course, space, time, qi, and portals, but this one was taking up a dao.

Trade also connected people I suppose.

I watched the area, witnessing multiple other groundhogs come by with similar daos, not as strong as this one, but budding in their own way.

I wondered if they knew. Some beasts had daos, it wasn't a new thing. But those beasts were rare. You'd hear about them in folktales and myths, beasts who fell in love with a human or became human themselves.

You'd also hear about men who became beasts. That was more common actually, The Dao of the Jungle appealed to a lot of humanity. I myself had mimicked insects, ripping away my emotions and desires and becoming almost machine-like in my existence.

But this, this was a human dao and they had taken to it willingly, if unknowingly. I'd have to speak to Lin Tai about this.

Chapter 57 Penance Part 1

The man ran.

His feet pattered against the ground with as much strength as he could muster and his qi fueled him even more. He would have flown, but that was where the monster was.

The Unraveler.

He was coming. He had seen the blood, seen their evil and the man had not even blinked.

There had been no care in his eyes, no empathy, no disgust, and no judgment. Their sect, of which only a few remained, had believed him to be a great candidate.

He was a powerful man, he would have served the sect well. That had been their desire. He seemed unaffected and willing, and so, they had shown him their domain.

But that had been a lie. All a lie. The skies shattered and the corpses of his brethren rained from the hells above.

He ran. He even pushed on the most sacred of places, using his innate qi to push himself forward. His life for his life, yes. A strange trade, a stupid one even, but better to wither and die running than face the man above.

The screams came, one by one, and then all as one. They mixed and turned and shrilled into the sky like a choir of suffering. They begged, they pleaded, but the man would not relent.

Of course, he wouldn't relent. He had seen their evils, their sins that they had made with pride, and he had not cared.

That had been their Dao, their way of life. The Dao of Evil, the Dao of Self, and the Dao of Death, those were the central Daos of the Demonic Heart Sect.

Each of the three leaders pursued one of these Daos and their disciples did the same. It was the Dao of Evil and the Dao of Death that fought above. Idiots. He, the leader who pursued the Dao of Self would live, he would flee.

There was a crack in the sky and one of his folk shrilled. It was the leader of the Dao of Evil. The man had a deep voice and a prideful tone. When he spoke, one could imagine it being a lion or a tiger growling in the distance.

But now he could not even recognize it. He only knew from the flare of qi that rose up in the distance. The voice screaming now had been a high-pitched squealing and it was begging.

The man was begging for death. He was pleading for it. The cultivator of the Dao of Self would not normally risk looking back, but this time, he turned, still running but using his eyes to look up behind him.

In the distance was a man trapped in a ball of qi, an array and he was being tormented. Outside of it was another man, watching with interest as the man within the array screamed.

"PLEASE!!!" His brethren begged.

The scream dug at the inside of his mind like claws scratching through steal. The observer seemed unaffected.

There was someone there, his brother with the Dao of Death, held in another array unable to move or scream.

But the fleeing man could see the dread on his face still, the horror and the fear. Something was happening to him, something the fleeing man did not want to meet.

If he hadn't known these people then he wouldn't have cared. But he did know them. He had fought with them for eons. He had seen them strike down their fellow eighth-rank members in wrath and power. They had withstood torture from the righteous sects and slaughtered billions. They were evil, they were death, they were suffering and pain, gods among men.

"MEEERCY!!!"

This time the voice broke into sobbing wails and sadness left the man's lips.

Sadness, not rage, not fury, not just suffering, but sadness. The monster who cultivated the Dao of Evil wept.

Why? The fleeing man wondered.

He turned, not daring to look any longer, and kept running. And though he didn't want to know it, he felt it. He felt the two men's lives blink away in an instant.

Just like that, two of the strongest people within this land had disappeared. Dead. Both of them. The two men who had aided him, whom he had sided with for his own selfish gain had died.

More.

His feet pushed even harder against the ground. Strength that even he didn't know he had poured out of him and it was all to flee.

And when he had run a million miles, when he thought the divide between him and that monster was wide enough, he crumbled onto his knees. He fell onto his chest, heaving with every breath, and saw the grassy fields of a land he didn't know.

He could feel himself dying. He could feel his innate qi withering away after he had used it.

He was dying, he had decades, maybe a century left if he was lucky. He was an immortal but his innate qi was gone, used up in his effort to flee.

Maybe he could recoup it through some divine treasure but the chances of that happening were-

The world held still. His qi held still. The breath would not leave his lungs.

His head was still against the grass and from there he saw it. The feet of the man who had killed his brethren.

He had never left. He thought he had, he believed himself to be fleeing but the bodies of his people were on the ground once more. It had been an illusion.

The monster walked up to him.

Array Master Dane, that was his name. He was at the eighth rank, the same as them and yet he had defeated them all. He could beg and plead but he knew the man wouldn't care. He was like them in that sense, unaffected by the people around him.

So he fought, his blade of starlight and destruction swung, aiming for the man's neck only for his technique to crumble.

The Unraveler. That was what they called him, Dane the Unravler. He didn't have a secret technique or a divine talent. All the man did have was his arrays, his strange little enchantments.

But they were still too much.

The man could somehow see through techniques. It was his mind, yes, that was what gave him strength. Array Masters needed to know about everything, didn't they? Bits of laws collected, clumps of dao understood? That was how they worked.

And while Dane didn't know enough to make a divine technique, he knew enough to break them. He would tear away at his opponent's laws before they could coalesce.

The man found himself swinging furiously, his blade full of a mixture of undoing and destruction. The Life Severing Sword Technique. It would gather the essence of destruction and decay, laws that the user would have to know first and mix them into the blade. The cut would rot and run all the way through the meridians and into the dantian, rotting the dantian through and through.

But the technique would break before it could even touch Dane, it would unravel into nothing but mists of qi. He would taint the attack and corrupt it.

Decay would mix with life and become age. Destruction would mix with time and become change, and then the technique would collapse.

"Why?" He asked the man. "Why kill us? We could give you everything. We have the world at our-"

The man moved, trying to cut down at Dane from another angle, trying to surprise him.

But he failed again.

"You're in an illusory array," Dane stated. "Fighting is useless."

The man struggled nonetheless, throwing technique after technique, only for it to miss Dane entirely or for the array master to dissipate it into nothing.

"Why?" The man asked.

He didn't care to know why, he was just stalling, and Dane must have known that. But the array master took a second to think about it anyway.

"Why did you kill those people?" He asked him.

The man thought about lying for an instant, but he knew it would do him no good.

"I wanted to, and I could."

Dane looked at him and nodded.

Then the world went black and the pain began.

Horror, horror, horror, over and over again. Pain suffered repeatedly.

He was confused at first. He had woken up as a boy in the streets crawling through the slums of a city. He thought he escaped somehow, maybe reincarnated through sheer luck. But no, a man came and cut him up into pieces mere hours later.

The next time he was a mother, a wife of a nobleman, and for a moment, he thought his previous life to have been a lie. He was a mother, not a cultivator, a jade beauty, not a vile villain.

Then he saw him. The man came and forced himself upon her daughter and cut her to bits while she watched. The next time he was the daughter. The next time he was the father. The next he was the servent and after that the servent's brother.

Over and over, he would wake up, thinking all he had seen to be a lie. And over and over the man would come, tormenting him at every turn. He screamed and begged for mercy every time but the man wouldn't stop, and right before his final breath, right before the end he would recognize the man.

It's me.

His comrades, those strong men of strength and power, they hadn't been begging Dane for mercy.

They had been begging themselves, their past for mercy.

Chapter 58 Penance Part 2

Eventually, he started to remember. Sometimes he'd know the name of the victim and remember how they had died, how he had killed them, and how he would kill himself. That was the worst, he would try to avoid it and somehow change the past, but he would always fail.

Always.

Then came the wars. In one war he had killed thousands and in another millions, and he would live through those deaths in painful agonizing detail.

At first, during those final moments of realization, he would be angry or hateful. He cursed Dane, the man who had damned him to this suffering over and over and over again. He would spit and scream and damned him with his final breath.

Then came regret. It was slow but it was there. He regretted killing. He regretted taking unjustly. He did not have empathy of course, his Dao was far too strong for that, but he regretted being such a beast.

Then when he saw a child being ripped to pieces for the hundredth time in front of his eyes, when he wailed over the corpses of his children with the tears of a mortal man, that was when he started to hate.

That was when his past self turned from memory to stranger. He noticed the grin on his face, the lust in his eyes, and the joy in his voice. How? How could this man find joy in such suffering? How could he do this over and over again and smile through it all?

It was as if he were killing insects as if the people didn't matter to him at all.

How?

That was when the hatred started. After that he did not flee, instead, he ran toward the man swinging with fury and rage. He knew he couldn't kill him, but he had to try.

Foreign thoughts like justice came into his head and strange things like empathy flowered in his mind. Now not only would he feel the suffering of his past victims but he would feel the suffering of those around them as well.

He saw one of his old followers stomp a baby to death and he saw the mother scream while clenching his bloody foot and he knew. He knew what she felt. He felt what she felt. He cried for her as well as himself.

That was when the sadness came.

Fury, the man learned, was the armor the heart wore, and once that had failed came sorrow.

He did not beg. He did not fight. Now, he wept. He wept at his own feet, looking that stranger in the eyes.

But the man just smiled all the brighter as he cut him down.

A thousand, a million, ten million.

It didn't matter. The pain didn't fade or become more bearable.

He would suffer, as he should. As he deserved to.

Hell was the home of devils after all.

Then he was a cultivator, one of the many eighth ranks he had killed. He waited, slumped upon the floor waiting for his past self to cut him down.

A man stood over him, eyes blank and uncaring.

That was strange, normally he was giddy to kill.

But the man didn't move and the man's eyes were not his own.

"Dane," he whispered. "It's over?"

The array master nodded and the man slumped closing his eyes as tears flowed from them.

"You're not going to kill yourself?" Dane asked.

The man looked at him and shook his head.

"I am not worthy of death. That would be far too kind a fate."

Dane's eyes seemed to shine at that statement.

"Interesting," he replied.

"Why?" The man asked. He didn't know why he asked. The why had stopped mattering long ago.

"I wanted to see if karmic retribution was possible for someone so evil."

Karma. The stains souls left on each other. He knew it was real but it was a rare law to meet. Karma was one of those laws that danced between a dao and a law. It was ethereal, not physical, yet it was as real as fire or water.

"Did it work?"

"Well your past is on your soul and every action you take is recorded by it, though I wouldn't know if that would change once you leave this realm," Dane shrugged.

All of that for a shrug. All of that suffering for such useless results. The man laughed, he howled into the sky for a moment, and then he stopped.

What should he do? Should he die? No. That would be the easy way out.

He wasn't worthy of such a thing.

Then what? Seek redemption?

Not even the Buhdda could redeem him now.

Rot? No, for him that would be easier than death. He would sit here, believing his suffering to be enough to pay for all that he had done.

It wasn't enough, it would never be enough.

"Again," he muttered.

"What?" Dane asked.

"Cast the array again."

Dane obliged.

And the man suffered once more.

"Again."

And he did.

"Again."

He'd barely spoken this time.

He cycled through his own suffering over and over again and at one point.

The array had been changed, it was now something automatic, recycling his suffering countless times over.

Hundreds of millions of lifetimes relived in a moment. Thousands of moments. Hundreds of days. Years. Decades. Centuries. Eons. Epochs.

He noticed the mountains around him withering away and he saw the horizon change as the moon slowly retreated from the earth. People came sometimes, but none saw him, he was cloaked in eternal suffering.

Every blink came with millions of lives and every moment came with regret.

Penance. 

The stars faded away. He could see them die in the distance.

Penance.

The land around became valleys, mountains, deserts, oceans, and then valleys again.

Penance. 

He should have died by now. He had used up his innate qi against Dane. He should be dead by now.

Penance.

Why wasn't he dead?

Penance. 

The sky broke, the stars screamed, and the world was swallowed by the sun. The people of this world had moved to a new one, but he remained.

Penance.

Why?

Penance. 

Because he must. He must suffer. That was his place.

Penance.

The realm withered and the laws that bound the universe started to break.

Penance.

The void swallowed him whole. The universe collapsed and reality turned to dust. But somehow, this array still persisted. Was that man truly only at the eighth rank? To have created something so powerful?

Penance. 

Oh well, it didn't matter now. He didn't remember that man's name and he had long since forgotten his own.

Penance.

All he was now was

Penance. 

Then, he was free. There wasn't enough qi anymore. The world had broken and the array could only do the same.

It didn't matter. He remembered. He knew every detail, every smell, every person, and every ounce of pain he had caused. And he would never forget.

"I will seek redemption," the man said to the void. "I will not find it, but I will seek it nonetheless."

Yes. He would pay Penance.

He wandered the void for some time, and though time didn't exist here, it existed within him. He had crossed over into the tenth rank at some point. He hadn't noticed it, he was too busy, too concerned with the memories.

Still, he couldn't whether the void. The lack of laws was enough to rip his body to shreds and for an instant, he wanted that. He wanted the void to take him, but that would be death, and he was unworthy of that.

But he was unworthy of life as well.

Penance, his soul sang.

Yes. He would pay Penance, but how?

Time surrounded him and with it came space. A voidwalker technique, one of his own construction. He was back. The array was gone but its nature had long since been imprinted onto his soul.

The pain surrounded him. It protected him. Penance. Yes, that was his Dao, that was his being.

He would suffer for his actions and he would bring suffering to those who sought to do the same.

Penance.

He trespassed through the void, surrounded by his sins. The sins that protected him and tormented him. The sins that had given him meaning and taken it as well.

He wondered if he could ever find mercey if he could ever be complete. He wondered if there was someone out there who could free him from this suffering.

Not someone with power but someone with virtue, a being worthy of setting him free.

And even if there was, was it right to seek them out?