Heaven's Laws - Lifestone - Chatper 1

Chao had taken over the room across the hall from his marriage chambers in the Frigid Moon Mystic Realm. It was in case his mediation lasted late into the night. He didn’t want to occupy the bed or inconvenience his wife while he worked.

Sitting in the middle of the room on the stone floor, he was surrounded by heaven and earth qi artifacts. He’d only owned one artifact before the battle, but now there were many thanks to the spatial rings they’d won from the nine overlords. Another had been a tribulation cultivator, but the man had only just broken through. There was a second divine cultivator, Prince Jin, that he and his wife had killed, but Chao’s space containing sound technique had destroyed its physical form. Theoretically, it should be possible to retrieve its contents. He’d have to leave that to Quinyuan and his father. Father Zan had arrived in time for dinner and had said as much.

Chao sat with his shirt off in the moderately cool room. Dual cultivation with his wife and his advancement to the sky realm had greatly improved his physique so that he could handle the cold of the Frigid Moon Mystic Realm.

Huifen was still standing at the door, seemingly unwilling to leave. He held her gaze until it became awkward. Instead of turning away, she narrowed his eyes as if turning it into a contest. Then he patted his lap, requesting her to join him.

Even when she’d still cultivated heart of ice consistently, her scowl had been one of legends. That hadn’t changed now that she was commonly going without the technique. The only difference from normal was that she still looked tired. It was emotional exhaustion and not physical. He knew she had thought she killed thousands of the Aureate Empire’s military cultivators only to find out after the battle that she’d somehow mirrored the Divine Ice Phoenix’s breath technique. In doing so, she had frozen the army but most of them had survived. She’d also killed the emperor whose son had stolen her virgin yin. Instead of seeking justice, the man had sought revenge. There were also a handful of outer sect disciples who had died in the battle because they hadn’t left the sect grounds when asked. By most accounts, it was an overwhelming victory, but she felt the weight of every loss.

Chao summoned his little ice fairy and awakened it. The icy creature that shared many of Huifen’s features flew across the room and kissed her on the cheek.

His wife didn’t seem to like it, but her scowl faded instantly. She gave him one last doleful look before mouthing, “Husband, I’ll see you soon.”

His Huifen had tried to talk him into refining the Regal Blood Essence Stimulant right away, but Chao had convinced her that his injured state provided him a rare opportunity. His eardrums were ruptured. To observe the world without the ability to hear and try to grasp sound without it was a challenge that seemed designed especially for him.

His use of the sound laws against the Aureate Empire’s Overlords and Prince Jin had left him with several unanswered questions. How could sound act as the container for other laws as he had assumed space would? And even more baffling, how had it been able to contain space itself. All logic demand it should work in the opposite way, but it hadn’t. He needed to find out why. If he could learn to utilize sound in the same way consistently, then he’d be one step closer to be capable of protecting his wife in not just the lower realm, but the divine.

There was more to it than that. He could feel that he was on the brink of something—something possibly at the level of unlocking a divine law, or a new law entirely. Sound wasn’t an element after all. Borrow, create, and enhance worked in a similar manner to the way it did with the elements, but what if the divine laws were different for sound? Even morph seemed to follow similar rules. It was possible he’d been wrong.

Father Zan had reassured his wife and Mother Quinyuan that waiting a few more days wouldn’t affect his recovery, so they finally gave in.

The one regret he had in taking this opportunity was that he knew Huifen wasn’t just worried about him. She also wanted him to recover quickly because she needed him. She wanted to be able to discuss what happened—what went right and wrong. Also to celebrate. The sooner he got started the sooner he’d be done.

The first thing he consider was the ringing in his ears. He wasn’t sure if there was an actual ringing or if that was what absolute silence sounded like. It could’ve been his eardrums still trying to send feedback to his mind, or his mind itself sounding the alarm because it wasn’t receiving the feedback it expected. To truly observe sound without the ability to hear, he needed to stop the ringing or understand it well enough so that he knew he could ignore it. If he didn’t understand it, then it might corrupt his observations.

He set the air humming with low realm sound. His focus was on his ears and the ringing itself. He new his sound laws were working correctly because he could feel them through the surface of his skin, even if he couldn’t hear it. Sound wasn’t the foundation of his sound laws, either. It was the memory of his mother and cultivating her garden that connected him to them. The many memories of playing for his wife were just as powerful.

Almost immediately he realized the ringing of his ear wouldn’t be the problem he feared it might. The ringing didn’t change even as he increased or decreased the intensity of his hum. That’s all he needed to know.

Pulling his pipa out of his spatial ring, Chao began to play. It wasn’t a sorrowful tune or lullaby he played, but a joyful one. It was very likely his music would affect his friends and family in the surrounding area so he might as well make it enjoyable.

He did something within the first few seconds that he hadn’t done in years. He fuddled up the tempo with a late finger pick. Chuckling to himself, he knew what had happened. Because he couldn’t hear any notes, he was unable to judge certain aspects of his own playing. If he tried to focus on what he couldn’t, it stole too much of his focus.

He began playing again and stopped thinking about the act in so much detail. He didn’t make another mistake. Now for the first real test. He could create a hum of sound with his laws easily enough because he was the direct source, but could he enhance sound that came from an external source?

Having ears certainly made things easier. He put his focus into trying to hear the music of his pipa without hearing. He focused on the vibrations running through the pipa itself and those running across the surface of his skin.

It wasn’t a quick process. Ears had their advantage since they were designed for sound, but to hear without them wasn’t impossible, even if it wouldn’t rightly be called hearing at all.

He played the same song until he got lost in it. The longer he played, the more he could feel. Not only could he feel vibrations, but he could vaguely distinguish the pitch of different notes. He’d need much more practice to do it proficiently. Tempo was the easiest thing to discern.

What surprised him the most was that even without hearing he had fallen into a semi-entranced state. It added emphasis to something he’d already known. There was a special relationship between sound and human emotion. Even without his laws it was true. He could simply enhance this already natural aspect of it.

Being lost in the music lasted longer than he probably should’ve allowed it, but it also put him in the right state of mind. He began enhancing the music and tried to discern what had changed in his currently injured state.

There was distinction in the intensity of the music itself. Enhancing it didn’t just make it louder, but even without an obvious change in the vibrations, it carried with it a lighthearted fluttering that was infectious.

That’s when the question came. Do I even cultivate the sound laws or just the emotional aspect of sound? He knew the answer in part already. He could manipulate many different aspects of sound, so it couldn’t be strictly true. However, with the limited amount of experience he had, he’d never heard of sound cultivators cultivating the emotional aspect of sound directly. Maybe it was a focus that only he and his mother shared? He’d have to seek out other sound cultivators and find out the truth.

Chao eventually engaged his inquisitive mind in the questions he’d sat out to consider. Some of the questions were old ones that he thought he already had an answer to, but he couldn’t waste this opportunity. What was sound and what wasn’t it? What was music? Was it as simple as adding order to controlled noise? How can it cause such a wide range of emotions? Where does emotion end and sound begin?

He didn’t simply just mediate and play his pipa. It wasn’t long until he began trying to recreate the massive fire dragon he’d made during the battle with the overlords in a miniature form. He hadn’t started with his fire, but emotion. He had seen his wife think he might be dead, and it lit a raging fire inside of him. He’d fed his awakened dragon to it and his sound.

A palm-sized nascent realm fire dragon appeared then was snuffed out of existence. He had failed. He continued experimenting for several hours. Keeping track of time in the Frigid Moon Mystic Realm was difficult because its moon was the realm’s only source of light and it remained stationary in the sky. It made it even easier for Chao to lose himself.

***

At first, Huifen had taken advantage of Chao’s happy song and sat on the roof cultivating her laws. She was barefoot and wearing an orange ankle long gown. The color was a little mute in the perpetual moonlight, but in her opinion, it was needed. She’d used her heart of ice technique for a decade and only after her husband and father-in-law had challenged her to go without it had she started learning about what she preferred.

This was the very place Chao had often gone off to at night while they were training for the battle against the Aureate Empire. She’d mostly given him privacy when he came here, but she’d checked on him enough to know he rarely came for carefree contemplation. Despite that, she felt a sense of peace. While he played in a room below, she felt his presence even more.

She had an ice lotus made from her nature laws in her lap. She mused about supplying it the orange of her dress to give it some color. She would’ve condemned the thought just a few years before, but now she appreciated playful fascination so much that it was almost like an element she was cultivating.

When he’d stopped playing his pipa, darker thoughts returned to her. She’d finally gotten the revenge she’d sought after Prince Jin’s violation. The prince and Great Elder Jilpa had been killed by Chao and Mother Quinyuan, but the emperor had wanted revenge despite what his son had done. She’d frozen him to death in tribulation ice. She was glad that justice was done, but at the same time, she felt nothing. It didn’t give her satisfaction or peace. At the most, she was relieved it was behind her.

The minutes came and went as she continued to wait for Chao to finish his experiments. He went late into the night and early into the morning without stopping. She checked on him periodically and ate her meals alone. By dinner time of the second day, she was starting to get annoyed. She knew he wanted to take advantage of this opportunity, and even agreed with his decision, but after what they’d just been through how could he leave her alone like this for so long?

As if to answer her thoughts, she felt a familiar presence arrive beside her. She moved to get up, but Father Zan called out to her. “Don’t get up on my account.”

Then he did something she would’ve never expected and sat down on the roof beside her. “Nice view,” he mumbled.

“Hello, father,” she replied, remembering her manners. “It is.”

He chuckled, then knocked on the roof beneath them to direct her attention. “You’re mad at him for not giving you enough attention.”

“I am not,” she huffed.

He chuckled even louder. “You’re acting like that is a bad thing. Isn’t this the longest you’ve been apart since the day of your wedding?”

She felt embarrassed for her sudden breach of etiquette. “It is…”

“Then wouldn’t it be odd if you didn’t feel jealous for his time?”

“I—I don’t want to be like a pestering, mortal wife.”

He just grinned without looking at her. “It’s the proper time for this old man to relay to you some proverb. Since I’m not wise myself, I’ll just pose to you a riddle. There are countless human cultures on this planet and in our universe. All of them have their own opinions and philosophies of what a man and woman’s roles should be. How are we to know which one is the best to follow?”

“Senior Long, I don’t doubt your wisdom,” she reassured him. “To answer your question, how can we know if we haven’t been to all of them?”

“True, however… You and Chao will soon go out into this world and experience many new cultures for yourselves. Despite what the royal family has done to you and the Fire and Ice Phoenix Sects, you will find this little continent is one of the most civil and well behaved. Even though you and Chao grew up thousands of kilometers apart, you hold similar views of the world. If that wasn’t the case, I would’ve never let him leave home with you.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but the last thing he said made her wonder. “You knew my parents?”

“Nothing like that. As soon as I saw you, I knew you were Quinyuan’s personal disciple. Your physique and realm at your young age were the first clues. There’s no way she wouldn’t have seen the danger you were in without a master’s backing. Then you began interacting with Chao and it became undeniable. The moment you apologized for your initial treatment of him and acknowledged him as your savior, I saw her fairmindedness in you. It isn’t universal amongst ice fairies even in your own sect.”

A part of her rose up to deny it out of principle, but she silenced it. He was right. Heart of ice allowed a person to better focus on cold logic, but it didn’t purify their motives. He was also an Ice Phoenix Sect Great Elder now. As critical as it may have been of the sect, it was also a compliment to her master and mother-in-law.

“Then does the Monolith Continent have one of the best philosophies to follow?” She asked.

“Would I have raised my son here if I thought it was amongst the worst?”

She quickly shook her head to assure him she’d never think that bad of him.

His grin widened. “This old man has been to so many different worlds that I’ve forgotten many of the cultures I’ve experienced. I’ve partaken in many opposing philosophies and suffered the consequences. There are only a few things I can say for sure. The ways of life that are the most tempting, are often the most destructive. Those that put hard work and sacrifice on a pedestal aren’t very enticing—they could even be considered boring and unattractive—but every great kingdom has them as its foundation. As well trained as you are my, dear daughter-in-law, your cultivation can’t protect you from being seduced just as easily as any mortal. Your only advantage is what your teachers have taught you. As much as I want you to experience the world, being too openminded is foolishness. Temper it with wisdom.”

“Let me give you a warning, Little Lotus. A person’s mind is always at war with the illusion of their own imagining and reality. How you see the world, your role as a cultivator and wife, and even your husband, is diluted to a degree by your own imagination. With much wisdom comes much sorrow. The clearer you see and understand the truth, the more your illusions will be dispelled. This includes the way you see Chao. In time, you’ll see his every spot and blemish—his weakness and the faults in his character. Take a moment and observe him.”

She did as Father Zan said and extended her perceptions to where he sat in his room. Chao had created two little nascent realm fire dragons small enough to fit in one’s hand. They were facing off and roaring at each other. Huifen noticed it wasn’t the sound of wind-blown fire as normal, but genuine roars. She wasn’t surprised for she’d seen the life-sized dragon he’d created during their battle with the overlords. It had had its own voice. These smaller dragons were the same.

“Chao’s fascination with the laws is infectious. It is one of his most attractive qualities, yes?”

Hearing Zan’s question brought her back to herself. She felt color brightening her cheeks at the personal nature of the question.

“It was one of An’s most attractive qualities as well,” he admitted. “And yet, tonight, this part of him that you find so appealing is competing against you for his attention. It is possible that you might grow to hate the very thing that makes him unique. Don’t ever let that happen. Your relationship is still young. There are things he fancies about you that will one day annoy him as well. But let me reassure you of what you already know. As alone as he seems in his room, you’re right there with him. It is as you fear. He is capable of getting so lost in his experiments that he forgets you for a time. However, one of the main reasons he is willing to do this after what you’ve just been through is because he’s doing it for you.”

“Little Lotus, I know right now you feel that nothing will ever be able to separate the two of you. But most great kingdoms are destroyed from the inside and not from an outside enemy. There is no danger that your current annoyance will drive you apart any time soon, but if you let bitterness grow…”

She gave him a beholden squint. “Thank you for the reminder, father.”

He began rising to his feet and stretched like it was possible for him to actually get stiff. “Lecture time is over. I’ll find him later and tell him the same thing. Quinyuan will likely say something similar in a few days. We’re going to be bothering you more than normal between now and when you leave. Remember to pretend like it isn’t the hundredth time you’ve heard it. Now go and make clear your annoyance to him. A pestering wife may be like a dripping faucet, but without even a single drop he won’t know something is wrong.”

She bowed her head respectfully as he flew off. Her first inclination was to cycle heart of ice. Her second, was to sigh, and so she did.

Sending her perceptions to check again on Chao, she watched as he continued to tinker with the fire dragons. She climbed to her feet then flew toward the entrance of the staging facility. It was time she interrupted him.

***

From many kilometers above the facility designed for disciples to stay during their time in the Frigid Moon Mystic Realm, Zan joined Elder Law. The Divine Fire Phoenix Sect divine lord was observing the moon itself. It was a divine artifact his sister sect had gifted this lower realm. The elder’s attention fell upon Zan as soon as he returned.

“You’re still determined to have them attend the Divine Flying Tiger Clan’s trials?” Elder Law asked.

“I am,” Zan said confidently.

“They’re familiar with Asura cults and the practices of such sects?”

“They’ve both been taught how far some will go to increase their cultivation. As for what the northern continent is like, only the rumors they’ve heard.”

“So you’re not just sending them to fight this world’s most vicious overlord and tribulation cultivators, but into the demon’s den without knowing?”

“They will have warning before we send them off, but too much preparation will only dilute that bitter pill they need to swallow. They’ve also committed to getting involved in the Aureate Empire’s new emperor selection. It will be good for them to consider such things, but I will not let them waste much time on it. Chao’s desire to do what is right is as potent as his mother’s, and Huifen isn’t immune to that way of thinking. There will be a time for that, but it’s not now. The joint sects will take over the empire’s oversight in all but name. Why are you so worried, Elder Law? They have yet to make it to your divine realm. Isn’t it too early to give them much of your attention? Aren’t there hundreds if not thousands of disciples you’re keeping an eye on?”

The divine lord remained unmoving. “You have promised them to my Divine joint sects and to make me their martial uncle. Is it ever too early to show my concern?”

Zan laughed heartily. “If you didn’t think so then I would’ve never made such a promise. They are amongst the peak existences in this lower realm, but they are growing so fast. Too fast. While they’re still young, they need to gain the experience Lifestone can provide. There are still a couple years before the trials, and they haven’t even visited the monoliths this continent is named for. There’s also the land bridge continent before they even reach the northern one. When they reach it, they will get a mild introduction to the Asura way of life. Then, when they arrive in Divine Flying Tiger Clan territory, they’ll see how truly different the world can be.”

“You think they will remain unaffected by its corruption if you send them alone?”

“Unaffected? Never. But disturbed... And when the trials grow close, Quinyuan and I will join them there. There will be other divine realm cultivators there from your rival Asura sect. They will not bully them if that’s you’re concern. Just think of it now. Chao and Huifen arriving at your joint divine sect being escorted by a Divine Flying Tiger Clan envoy. Not even the most talented divine realm brats arrive in such an honorable manner.”

As irritated as the elder was, Zan could tell the thought delighted the man. It was then that Law turned to Billi, the blood cultivator whose sisters they had just saved from a corrupt Divine Fire Phoenix elder just the day before. Her hair was ruby red, and her skin tone was blush all over. Quinyuan had gifted her a couple Ice Phoenix uniforms of which she wore now. The girl had sworn herself to Zan and floated there with them like an emotionless husk.

“And what plans do you have for the girl?”

“The same that I recommend for you to do with her sisters. Request that they stop cultivating for a time, but don’t forbid it. The reason is so that they can abstain from everything that might remind them of their old life as they figure out who they are now that it is over. I have some jobs for her to complete that should give her a break from having to spend so much time with her own thoughts.”

The elder nodded as he listened. “I see no flaw in your prescription. I’ll do the same. As much as I’d like to sever the ties between them and my sect, sending them away at this time instead of supporting them is just too cruel.”

“My thoughts are the same. Would you like to meet your martial niece and nephew before you return?”

“And have them pretend the advice I give them isn’t something they’d heard a hundred time before?”

“Elder Law, you’re drawing awfully close to making a joke.”

The man snorted. “I still don’t trust you, Zan.”

“Well, just look at it this way. If I’m wrong or there’s an accident and Chao or Huifen are killed by the Divine Flying Tiger Clan, I’ll cleanse their sect from this world and become such a thorn in their divine sect’s side that they won’t have any time to consider my connection with you. If you consider that a breach of our contract, you won’t have to kill me because their whole sect will be trying to do it for you.”

“That is rather comforting.”

“See. I knew we would get along.”

---

This first chapter is still subject to change. Instead of using more action for the hook, I'm doing more what I did in CF book 4 by giving a bunch of reminders of the last book and layering in a bunch of plot-line promises.

Cheers!