Chapter 145: FIRE AND SELF

Chapter 1 of 2 is today. The next chapter will be published immediately afterward. There will also be another chapter tomorrow—today’s two are the one I owed from last week plus a bonus as an apology for the delay (the fifth stage ended up needing two chapters, rather than just one).

Tomorrow’s chapter is already written (I actually finished it before this one because I was stuck on a specific scene in this chapter), but it still needs a quick revision pass, which is why it isn’t going up tonight.

CHAPTER

145

FIRE AND SELF

Jieyuan

—∞—

Jieyuan eyed his surroundings, curious and confused.

He was in a forest. Tall, lush trees surrounded him, their canopies blotting out the sky and letting only a sprinkle of sunlight through. His boots pressed into dense undergrowth—grass, fallen leaves and branches, sprawling roots. The air was thick with the rich, earthy scent of nature. He could even hear wildlife: high chirps and crackles, creaks and croaks, the faint patter of footfalls.

It resembled the forest his Heavenly Room had conjured for Refining’s pursuit phase. And a forest had made sense, back then. Nature and refining went hand-in-hand. But this time around, he’d gone with Fire (it’d been his only option in the Heavenly Selection, for that matter), and this wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind for it.

At least with Pain’s briar garden, he’d figured quickly enough what it was all about; nothing here stood out to him like the throne of thorns had. It was just a forest, best as he could tell. It wasn’t even a chromal forest; the vegetation looked mundane, with none of the strange colors, absurd dimensions, or glow found in chromal plants.

He wandered on, scanning the trees and undergrowth. He saw a few animals: birds zooming past above, insects scaling the tall trees, squirrels, and other small creatures bouncing about.

If this had been Wood’s pursuit phase rather than Fire’s, he wouldn’t have hesitated to believe it.

Seeing he was going nowhere fast, Jieyuan instead focused inward, feeling out for the Concept cradled in his chest. He found Fire immediately; he felt it more clearly than all the Concepts so far. As his senses brushed the Concept, it was as if it sang to him; visions of flame—red and glorious destruction—flashed before his eyes.

If he’d had any doubts that his Concept for this stage was Fire, those were just put to rest quite firmly. He delved deeper into the Concept, prodding, trying to convey his confusion, asking for guidance. It answered promptly, like it’d been waiting for it, and knowledge seared into his mind like a brand.

Just like that, Jieyuan understood what he was supposed to do.

“Huh.”

Anren had told him some pursuit phases could skew a contestant’s perception; how the Laws within the Heavenly Room could be so bizarre, so drastically different from those of the outside world, that afterwards you’d need to rest for a good while to settle yourself. It was, supposedly, why the Sword Tower’s ego gave them one hour to relax before the challenge phase.

None of Jieyuan’s pursuit phases so far had been quite like that; Pain’s pursuit phase had left him rather rattled, but that was because of the absurd levels of pain he’d subjected himself to. He hadn’t had any issues with having his sense of reality (or anything along those lines) messed with.

From the looks of things, though, that was about to change.

He drew a deep breath and took one last look at the surrounding forest. Then he plopped down, letting the undergrowth swallow his lower body, crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and focused on Fire again.

More visions of terrible, glorious flames crossed his mind; he kept focusing on the Concept, diving deeper, channeling all his consciousness, all his awareness, towards it. Fire welcomed him, embraced him, enveloped him.

In one fell swoop, Fire claimed him—mind, body, and soul.

And then Jieyuan became fire.

Where he had been before, sitting cross-legged among the foliage, was now a human-shaped flame. It burned a deep, dark red. Jieyuan was aware of every aspect of it—color, temperature, size—as if it were his body.

Because it was his body. His body, converted into flame.

Fire—Burn—Heat—BURN—

The human flame Jieyuan had turned into flickered, its shape distorting; the plants he’d been sitting on began to burn, and he felt as they fed into him, fed into the fire he’d become. His thoughts were chaotic, his emotions running as high as the Heavens, a need to consume and spread and burn taking over him, twisting his mind—

FOCUS.

The flickering ceased, Jieyuan’s form stabilizing. He’d known this would happen and had braced himself, but it wasn’t something he could truly prepare for without prior experience. His fire stopped spreading, though the leaves he’d already ignited kept burning, adding to his flames. His thoughts threatened to run amok again, but he forced himself to focus.

Focus. Focus. Focus. Focus.

He chanted the word in his mind like a mantra over and over. His form stabilized further, and he gradually grew accustomed to this new, incandescent state of being. It wasn’t only his body that had become fire; his emotions blazed, and his thoughts flared—each a small flame—mingling and twisting in the pyre of his mind.

But Jieyuan enforced control, taming the flames of both his body and mind. It took him a while (he didn’t know how much; his perception of time was fuzzy), but once he felt confident of his control, he spread his awareness outwards.

He couldn’t really see or hear the forest; he didn’t have eyes or ears anymore. But he could sense it. Sense the life around, plant and animal, each one a source of heat—a source of fuel to be consumed, absorbed, burned—

Easy now. Easy. Jieyuan reined his mind in again, then returned to his observation of the forest. Then he considered what he was supposed to do: destroy it. To spread himself throughout all of it and burn it down until only ashes remained.

That was Fire’s pursuit: become flame and burn everything in his path.

It was dangerous. Just staying put, burning only the leaves and branches in his immediate surroundings, had almost overwhelmed him. And if he ended up overwhelmed? He could tell, instinctively, that that would be the end of it. That there’d be no going back; he’d lose all sense of self and become fire. Fire, and nothing else. It would kill him, sure as a blade to the throat.

So the idea of growing into an inferno, of taking in the entire forest, the size of which only the Heavens knew? It was terrifying. Terrifying but also overwhelmingly, impossibly tantalizing—and all the more terrifying for it.

He wanted to burn more than he’d ever wanted anything before. He could only barely suppress the need to let himself go, to give in to the fire that he’d become and consume everything—

NO. Jieyuan took a few moments to get himself back under control.

He knew what he was supposed to do. He knew the dangers.

Now he just had to toe the line and get things done.

Bracing himself, Jieyuan slowly allowed himself to spread outward. It felt strange, the way the flames that made up his body advanced and lengthened. Branches and leaves were enveloped by his red heat, and new sparks of fire bloomed within him.

Each new flame he swallowed made him flicker, his emotions spiking, a ripple rushing through his unstable mind, but he quickly reasserted control over himself, again and again.

Slowly but surely, he expanded. The vegetation wasn’t exactly dry, but it wasn’t wet, and it burned without much effort from his part.

Before long, he spread to cover a few feet in every direction. He lost the shape of a human, now looking like a small circle of crimson fire, but that didn’t matter; what mattered was control—and he held it.

Plant life burned within and under him, crackling and shriveling leaves and grass, darkened and charred branches, all of it fueling his fire. The insects weren’t spared, either; ants and grasshoppers crisped in his heat.

He was aware of all of it. Of every single life he burned, plant and animal both. Of their bodies, distorted and destroyed by his heat. All of it became part of him, transformed and subsumed.

Red flames kept spreading, and he found that the bigger he grew, the more it took to make him flicker. By the time he reached the trees’ edges, now covering several feet of undergrowth in every direction, he barely had to bother stabilizing himself anymore as he took in more of the forest floor.

The urge to let go, however, didn’t diminish at all.

Slowly, slowly. Jieyuan stalled his growth for a few moments as he considered the trees around him, all of them pillars of life and vitality, calling to him. He felt like a starved man before a feast. It’d be dangerous, he could tell as much, but it needed to be done.

He picked a tree to start with, the smallest, thinnest one he could sense, and tentatively licked its bark with his flames.

Old wood crackled under his touch; a flicker ran through Jieyuan, and more of him latched onto the tree, the flames spreading and growing—

SLOWLY. Through sheer force of will, Jieyuan stopped the spread of the fire. He stayed that way for a while more, keeping himself tightly constrained. The sheer vitality of the tree urged him on, but he was in control again.

Just as gradually as he’d expanded on the ground, he began to take it over. Inch by inch of trunk at first, then foot by foot, then yard by yard, until several dozen feet of tree were afire, burning, becoming a part of him.

He was feeling confident again when he reached its crown, having grown to the point that the tree didn’t pose as much of a threat anymore to his stability. He let himself spread onto the branches, rapidly taking them over. His flames brushed against the canopy of other trees, and after a moment’s hesitation, he took them into himself.

Not long after, where there had been a forest was now a sea of burning red flames.

—∞—

Jieyuan was a crackling ocean of yellow flames, submerging a vast, sprawling ancient forest. He felt the entire forest—the hundreds of thousands of plants within it—brought down by his heat, feeding him.

His mind also burned, a spiraling, mental inferno. The line between himself and Fire blurred. Jieyuan was only vaguely aware of himself now; his memories of what life as a human was like were distant, fuzzy. But his will remained strong as ever, burning against the flames he’d become, keeping him steady.

It wouldn’t be long before the forest beneath him was reduced to nothing but ashes, and he’d find himself in a new forest to consume. It was a relentless cycle of destruction.

He was in the third difficulty now. The forests he’d faced in the first difficulty had burned easily; for the second difficulty, he’d had to put in more effort to claim the life around him, to make his flames burn brighter, hotter. It’d made retaining control harder, but he’d quickly gotten the hang of it.

Then had come the third difficulty, where his flames had changed from red to yellow as he forced himself to burn even hotter to burn the moisture clinging to the vegetation. More than once, he’d almost had to leave the Heavenly Room, so close he’d come to losing himself, but he’d managed to persist in the end.

Since then, he’d already burned down two forests in the third difficulty, and it was time to move on.

Fourth difficulty.

The space around him warped. His body shrank from one moment to the next, reduced to a human’s dimensions. Jieyuan would’ve been jarred by the sudden change if he hadn’t experienced it several times now, every time he finished with a forest and was presented with a new one.

He was jarred, though, by the change in his surroundings.

He’d known the fourth difficulty would be different from the ones before, but he hadn’t known by how much. He wasn’t sure where he was. He’d grown used to his new senses as a being of fire, to perceiving the world as life and heat, but he couldn’t quite make sense of what it was he was sensing now.

Dry, dead wood was stacked beneath him. A pyre? Further out, he could sense more wood. But it was dead wood, shaped into blocky, massive boxes…

He also sensed something else paving the ground and mingling with the wooden shapes, something dead, cold, and inert… Stone?

Then realization struck. It was houses he was sensing. He was in a town, burning on a pyre in the middle of what should be a plaza. He could feel the people, too, milling about. They were around him, in the plaza, and also further out, in the streets and in their houses, each a beacon to his senses.

His instincts screamed at him, telling him to consume the pyre and then expand, blaze across every bit of wood, and set the town on fire. But again, he resisted; it wasn’t that he had any hang-ups about destroying the town. Nothing about this place was real; everything had just been created on the spot by the Heavenly Room.

Rather, the problem was that it couldn’t be so simple. Just going from a forest to a city wasn’t enough of a bump-up for the fourth difficulty. There had to be something else about it, something he wasn’t seeing right now.

Keeping his urges under tight control, Jieyuan took more of the pyre into himself; then, when one of the humans came close, he let out a little burst of fire; it caught onto the human’s clothes. There was a flurry of movement all around him now. He couldn’t hear anything as he was, but he imagined there must be screaming. He paid it no mind, focusing entirely on the person he’d set alight.

The burning human was running, flailing about, and as the flames got through the clothes and brushed skin—

Jieyuan was struck by a flurry of sensations. Agony. Pain. Terror. A shock of frenzy, rushing through him. It was so different from what he’d been expecting that his control slipped, and the human crashed into another, and the fire spread—and a new wave of frantic emotions came over Jieyuan, and the next thing he knew, he was flickering, spreading onto others.

He lost control entirely, the pyre exploding in a burst of flaming chunks of wood that landed on other people, on houses, and the flames spread, and the chaos kept growing, inside and outside him, spreading, a raging storm of agony and despair and the need to just burn and burn and burn—

OUT.

Everything faded. The fire. The emotions. The heat and the life.

And Jieyuan found himself staring at something gray. Staring—not sensing. Staring. With his eyes.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, just staring at the steel door, before awareness fully set in, and he snapped out of it.

He inhaled sharply, and the sensation of the cool air filling his lungs was almost enough to send him into a shock again. He felt as if his head was submerged in turbulent, muddy waters.

Breathe. In and out. Slowly, he reasserted control, reacclimating to his human body.

He didn’t know how much time he’d spent as a living flame, but it felt like it’d been forever; he’d thought he’d never forgotten his humanity while in that state, but now that he was back in his real body, he knew that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Everything felt odd, unfamiliar.

More than that, there was the urge—the urge to rush right back into the room, to become fire again, to shed his body and become free, unfettered, to let loose and burn it all to the ground.

A shudder ran through Jieyuan, and he firmly pushed those thoughts away. He pried his eyes away from his door; his gaze fell on the next door over, to his left.

Daojue’s door. Jieyuan focused on it, glad to have something else to occupy his mind. Normally, Jieyuan avoided thinking about Daojue’s progress too much, what with how much he had on his plate already, but right now the distraction was just what he needed.

He forced himself to wonder how Daojue was faring right now; he’d gone for Death this stage. Would he reach seventh-order? Was he facing the bone-men? Did he also get Absolute Death Sight?

There was also the question of his own soulskill. He doubted transforming into fire was one; it was too different from all the other soulskills he’d gotten so far. Did that mean he wasn’t getting a soulskill this time around?

“Excuse me.”

A woman’s voice came from behind Jieyuan. Startled, he whirled around on his feet—he must’ve been really out of it, to not have heard any footsteps—and found himself staring into a pair of gray eyes.

The eyes were set in a face a mundane might have called beautiful, but by violetsoul standards, it was plain at best. A face Jieyuan recognized.

His unwanted admirer from the Absolute Sword Sect.

Jieyuan tensed, thoughts about challenges and Concepts forgotten for a moment.

He didn’t speak, not at first, but it didn’t seem like the woman was inclined to speak, either. She just kept looking at him, expressionless, and Jieyuan realized she was waiting for him to say something.

Casting a quick look around, he saw they were the only ones in the Heavenly Hall. He stopped himself from grabbing onto the Shifting Feathers; things hadn’t gotten to that point.

Not yet, at least.

“Yes?” Jieyuan said.

“I am Jiandaozhi Ronglie.”

Unsure, Jieyuan gave his name. She nodded, then moved her placid gaze to a door to the side of him—Anren’s door—and then back to him. “Your friend. What sect is she from?”

Anren? Jieyuan had been sure he was the one who’d drawn the woman’s attention. Or, if not him, Daojue. He considered the question for a moment, but didn’t see any harm in answering. “The Whirling Wind Sect.”

Ronglie’s brows bunched together above her gray eyes. She didn’t seem surprised, though; more like she’d received confirmation about something. Something rather unpleasant.

“She can’t be.”

“What do you mean?” Jieyuan asked. “Can’t be what?”

“She can’t be from the Whirling Wind Sect,” Ronglie said. “They traded away all their trial tokens.”

“All?” Jieyuan recalled his conversation with Anren when they’d been outside the Sword Tower, right before they reached it. “No. Anren said they kept one. Hers.”

“They sold all of them,” Ronglie insisted, a hint of irritation edging her voice now.

“How do you know?”

“I was from the Whirling Wind Sect. My aunt is the sect leader. She told me. She wouldn’t lie.”

Jieyuan stared into her gray eyes. “That doesn’t add up. Your surname, and your eyes—”

Looking like she’d been expecting the question, Ronglie cut in, “I was recruited by the Absolute Sword Sect and blood-adopted into the Jiandaozhi Clan.”

Blood-adopted? Normally, Jieyuan would’ve focused on that (he could guess what it was, and if he was right, he definitely needed to learn more), but he had a more pressing concern right now. “When did your aunt tell you this?”

“Right before the trial.”

There was a chance that Ronglie was lying. But why would she? What did she stand to gain? On the other hand, he also couldn’t think of a reason why Anren would lie about where she was from. “I take it you don’t recognize Anren?”

“No.”

Jieyuan weighed the possibilities. There was a chance that neither Ronglie nor Anren was lying; maybe Anren’s existence and participation in the Absolute Sword Trial had been kept a secret from the rest of the Whirling Wind Sect. It felt like a bit of a stretch, though.

The real question, though, was: what then? If Anren was lying, what would that change?

“Assuming you’re telling the truth,” Jieyuan said, slowly, “what do you think I should do about it?”

Ronglie didn’t answer at first; she just gave him a blank look. Then she frowned. “I don’t know.”

That wasn’t quite the answer Jieyuan had been hoping for. “Then why tell me?”

She looked uncomfortable now. “I just thought you should know.”

Then, without waiting for a reply, she turned around and started walking away.

Jieyuan watched her retreating back in silence. But after she’d taken a few steps, he called out to her, “Wait.”

Ronglie froze, glanced back at him. Didn’t say anything.

“Thank you,” he said. If Ronglie was telling the truth, then she’d come over to warn him out of the goodness of her heart.

She slowly nodded.

Something else occurred to Jieyuan, and he asked before she could look away, “Also. Do you know how much time has passed? Since the start of the sixth stage, I mean.”

It wasn’t easy to keep track of time as a living flame. He just hoped not too much time had passed; otherwise, he’d be in some real trouble.

“Twenty-one hours,” Ronglie said.

He felt a surge of relief. He still had time. “Thank—”

“Forty-three minutes,” she continued. “And fifty-two seconds.”

A pause. Jieyuan stared at her.

“Forty-four minutes,” Ronglie amended.

That was a fair bit more precise than what he’d had in mind. “Thank you?”

Ronglie gave him another stiff, shallow nod, then resumed walking. Reaching a door on the opposite side of the Heavenly Hall, she opened it and then disappeared inside.

Jieyuan turned back to his own door. He let his mind linger on the subject of Anren for a little longer, but he got nowhere with it, so he put it away for later.

He had a town to burn.

—∞—

“Jieyuan?” Anren’s voice was heavy with concern.

Jieyuan didn’t answer. He sat on the steel floor, legs crossed, eyes closed, as he focused on his breath and did his best to get his mind in order.

He was shivering like someone who’d been left out in the cold too long (which wasn’t that far from the truth), and right now his priority was to stop shivering.

A short while ago, he’d abruptly appeared in the Heavenly Hall. It was only sheer force of will that had kept him from crumpling; instead, he’d slowly lowered himself to the ground, ignored everything around him, and tried to get himself under control.

He’d been in the eleventh difficulty. And where in the first ten difficulties he’d had to burn hotter and hotter, in the eleventh difficulty, he’d had to burn colder. There’d been nothing to burn, in fact; he’d been placed inside an inferno, and he’d had to keep his own temperature as low as possible to keep himself from merging with the surrounding flames and losing himself. All the while fighting his every instinct.

It hadn’t been fun. Not at all.

The cold… Heavens, it’d been worse than the heat. A shudder ran through him at the memory, and he forced his mind away from it, back to his breath. To the cool air—no, not cool air, just air, nothing cool about it—flowing in and out of his lungs.

Only once he felt stable again did he open his eyes. He found that Anren had sat down beside him and was looking at him intently.

Her eyes brightened as his gaze fell on her.

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“Y— Yes,” Jieyuan said, his tongue stumbling over the word; it was like he hadn’t spoken in an eternity. His tongue felt like an unfamiliar weight in his mouth.

He was really coming to appreciate this small break before the challenge phase, because if just speaking gave him trouble, then he really wasn’t in any position to put his life on the line in a trial.

“You still look rather pale,” Anren said. “You can take a bit longer.”

“No. I’m fine,” Jieyuan said. He spoke slowly, carefully, and this time he didn’t have any trouble with his words. Then, just as deliberately, he made to stand up, shifting the position of his legs, pressing his knees against the ground, and rising off the ground.

Anren stood up together with him, watching him attentively, looking like she was ready to support him at a moment’s notice. But he ended up not needing any help; he got to his feet without faltering, even if he still felt a little weak.

Daojue, he noticed, was standing to the side, also observing him.

“Upright now, Jieyuan flexed and relaxed his muscles; once he felt more confident, he did a few quick stretches, twisting his arms and spine this way and that until he felt the satisfying crackling of his bones. He also worked his legs, getting his blood flowing.

As he stretched, he looked around the Heavenly Hall—Daojue and Anren silent beside him—and marveled at how empty it was. The fifth stage’s challenge phase had cut their number from a little over two dozen to half, and now, after the sixth stage’s pursuit phase, exactly nine cultivators remained in the Hall.

Besides himself, Anren, and Daojue, there was Ronglie plus three other Absolute Sword Sect disciples at the center of the Hall; further away were two disciples from sects he didn’t know by name, one wearing yellow and the other purple.

They were in the final stretch. He’d known as much, but it only really dawned on him in that moment.

“All right,” he said. “I’m good now.”

“Hmm.” Anren gave him an appraising look before crossing her arms. “So. What’s your new soulskill like?”

That gave Jieyuan a pause. “I didn’t get one, actually.”

“You— You didn’t?”

He shrugged. “Seems like my luck’s run out.”

He wasn’t hung up over it; he was just glad to have passed the pursuit phase, really. Besides, he’d reached seventh-order affinity with Fire; now he just needed to get his hands on Pain or Fire hymns of each realm, and he’d make it to Violetsoul. Just the thought of it was enough to set off a spark inside him.

“That’s just…” Anren shook her head. “You know what? Forget it. Nothing about you makes sense.”

Speak for yourself, Jieyuan thought. But before he broached that particular subject, there was something else he wanted to check. He faced Daojue.

“Seventh-order?” he asked, not bothering to mince words.

“Yes,” Daojue said.

So Daojue had succeeded where he had failed. He’d reached seventh-order Death affinity. Unlocked greater deathwilling.

Jieyuan did his best to keep his bitterness out of his voice. “Soulskill?”

“No,” Daojue said.

“Right.”

He didn’t bother asking whether Daojue had also faced the bone-men; not even Daojue could’ve survived Jieyuan’s Death pursuit without Absolute Death Sight, so he must’ve had something different thrown at him.

“A deathwiller…” Anren murmured, giving Daojue a considering look. “If you weren’t a”—she glanced around, made sure nobody was listening in, lowered her voice—“Tianzijun, I’d tell you to seek out the Absolute Sword Sect; they’d absolutely take you.”

Daojue said nothing.

Jieyuan looked toward the center of the Hall. He found that Ronglie was staring at them.

He focused back on Anren.

“Anren,” he said, drawing her attention. “You…”

“Yes?”

He turned Ronglie’s words over in his head again; he hadn’t really had the time to actually consider them and the implications. The question remained: if Anren was lying about where she was from, what could he do about it?

Was it even worth getting into it? Anren had been nothing but absurdly helpful so far; besides, he was lying about plenty of things (almost everything, really) himself.

“Jieyuan?” Anren asked, earnest eyes boring into his own, searching. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” Jieyuan said.

It was better to keep things as they were; he didn’t want to risk driving Anren away. At least not right now.

“Hmmm.” Anren looked him over, then shrugged. “If you say so.”

They talked a bit more, mainly about his and Anren’s pursuit phases (her Concept this time was Rhythm), though Anren tried—and mostly failed—to pry answers from Daojue about his trial.

Before Jieyuan knew it, their one hour was over. The Sword Tower’s ego appeared, told them to enter the Heavenly Rooms, and disappeared. Brief goodbyes and good lucks were exchanged. And then Jieyuan opened the door to his Heavenly Room, drew the Shifting Feathers, and stepped inside.