Chapter 140: TWISTS AND TURNS

And there we have it: the first chapter published following the new schedule. The next chapter will be coming out next Monday; I've also adjusted previous chapters so that paying patrons are now seven chapters ahead instead of fourteen—but still seven weeks ahead of the regular releases (and also ahead by the same amount of words). So this should've been chapter 147, but ended up as chapter 140.

CHAPTER

140

TWISTS AND TURNS

Jieyuan

—∞—

If there was one thing Jieyuan didn’t plan on, it was dying.

The empyrean sure didn’t make things easy for him, though.

The empyrean’s words had barely left his lips before he surged forward, his blades swinging down at Jieyuan.

Jieyuan brought his own pair-forms up to meet the blow. His arms almost folded under the impact. He’d gotten plenty used to dealing with heavy blows, what with the snakes he’d been fighting these last few days, but this blow nearly overwhelmed him; even Daojue wasn’t this strong.

Blades still locked, the empyrean leaned in, face inches from Jieyuan’s, true-black eyes wide and gleaming, scarlet lips still split into that too-sharp grin.

“Come on, little snake,” the creature sang. “Bite back.”

Jieyuan gritted his teeth, stepped back. He was off to a rotten start; momentum meant everything in a fight, even more so for amphis-users. But he had a way of turning things around.

I’m biting back, all right.

Before his arms gave up, Jieyuan flicked his wrists and turned his arms, throwing off the empyrean’s pair-forms to the side.

The empyrean’s eyes flared, balance lost as the sudden deflection drove his body forward. Not missing a beat, Jieyuan stepped in, shifting to high-grip for close range, then struck at the empyrean’s midsection, both blades coming in from the sides.

But then the empyrean’s grin grew even wider, and Jieyuan realized the creature was as fast as he was strong.

Jieyuan barely caught the blur of motion out of the corner of his eyes; running on instinct, he stepped back, cutting off his attack to form a cross with the Shifting Feathers, blocking the empyrean’s double-pronged side swings.

Fully on the defensive now, Jieyuan had no choice but to keep retreating, step after step. He only barely managed to keep up with the attacks; the empyrean’s amphis kept shifting forms, strikes coming from every direction.

Upward, downward, sideways—the barrage of blows just kept coming as the empyrean built more and more momentum, chaining one attack after the other. Every movement impossibly smooth, inhumanely fluid; it was like facing a twin-headed snake in human form.

Jieyuan’s own amphis never stopped moving, the instincts that he’d honed the last few days allowing him to switch forms as needed, but the situation was untenable. He was holding on but losing ground fast.

Come on. COME ON. There was one thing that could help him here: the mind-splitting soulskill he’d gotten in the pursuit phase. While he defended, he kept searching for it, grasping for that feeling.

But it didn’t come. He could feel the beginnings of it—the heightened focus, the greater dexterity—but that was as far as it went. The true split state of self stayed well out of reach.

“Ah,” the empyrean said. “I believe I see the issue.”

The empyrean didn’t stop attacking, but his movements slowed somewhat. Not much, but enough so that Jieyuan wasn’t all that pressed anymore. The empyrean’s grin gave way to an amused sort of smile.

“Twin Serpent Cognition,” he said. He spoke the words with clear fondness. “I assume you were granted it in the previous phase. A duplicated state of mind, like that of the amphisbaena.”

The singing and ringing of steel sounded against the empyrean’s words.

“You’ll never achieve it as you are now. The amphis was created by my clan, inspired by the amphisbaena, the twin-headed snake. The Concept of the Amphis and that of the Snake cannot be separated. You have grasped the technique, little snake, but not the spirit.”

The empyrean’s movements slowed further, letting Jieyuan focus more on his words. It was less like a duel, now, and more like a sparring match.

Jieyuan didn’t answer, though. Just kept defending, waiting. Sure enough, the empyrean wasn’t done speaking.

“Twin Serpent Cognition is a soulskill granted by the Concept of the Amphis. Normally, it is achieved by those who have transcended perfection, a feat only a few in the history of my clan have laid claim to.”

More attacks punctuated his words.

“You, on the other hand, have been granted a shortcut to it. To seize it, however, you must resonate with the Amphis in its entirety. Change, Momentum, Duality, and—”

“Serpent,” Jieyuan cut in. The one aspect of the Amphis he’d ignored in the pursuit phase.

The empyrean’s smile widened, black eyes gleamed. “Show me your fangs, little snake.”

The empyrean fell silent; he still kept to a lower pace, though—and Jieyuan realized what he had to do.

He focused fully on the empyrean’s movements. He’d noticed, earlier, the fluidity of it, how it reminded him of the twin-headed snakes. But now he took it all in properly, doing his best to understand just what it was that gave the empyrean’s every motion that fluid, serpentine quality.

It wasn’t one specific thing, Jieyuan quickly found. The smooth, dance-like footwork; the easy, almost boneless flow of the empyrean’s limbs; the forward, predatory posture. Together, all of it created that unmistakably serpentine impression.

Jieyuan got to work. Gradually, piece by piece, he started to replicate the empyrean’s movements. He adjusted his footwork, getting it closer to the empyrean’s: feet not just stomping and twisting but gliding; arms following the very flow of the amphis, letting the momentum fully take over; and the posture—forward, eager, like a snake on the prowl.

The shift came all of a sudden. One moment, he was defending, retreating as he dodged and deflected the empyrean’s attacks; the next, he was the one attacking, the one advancing, while the empyrean retreated.

The pleased smile on the empyrean’s face told Jieyuan that he wasn’t actually winning, that the creature was going easy on him, but Jieyuan didn’t care. His focus was elsewhere.

Twin Serpent Cognition. It was back. Jieyuan could feel the two halves of his mind as different entities, working in unison but also distinct, separately controlling his body.

Except the separation wasn’t as clear as it’d been back in the pursuit phase; the soulskill wasn’t complete. There was still something holding back, keeping him from achieving a truly split state of self. His mind was almost fully split, but their control over the two halves of his body wasn’t absolute yet.

“That’s it, that’s it!” the empyrean sang, delighted. “Now become the serpent! In body and mind, become the amphisbaena!”

Become the amphisbaena. That was it. He was mimicking the empyrean, trying to imbue his own movements with that same snake-like quality, but intent was still wrong. It wasn’t the empyrean he was supposed to copy.

Letting half his mind focus on his movements, with the other half he recalled the twin-headed snakes—the amphisbaenas—he’d faced in the pursuit phase.

The long, sleek, endlessly shifting body; the paired heads, acting at times as one, at times apart, but always together, in perfect synchrony; the ceaseless attacks with no beginning and no end.

Jieyuan broke through that last bottleneck; he felt the shift in him as his body and mind fully split into two. He was still one man, his body one whole—but the two halves of him might as well be wholly separate entities.

He didn’t hesitate; he threw himself fully into the offensive. Still channeling the amphisbaena, Jieyuan forgot about everything else besides the duel.

He didn’t see the empyrean in front of him; he saw nothing but prey.

“Yes!” his prey laughed even as he retreated, fending off Jieyuan’s attacks. “Show me your poison! Show me your fangs! Show me your bite!”

Jieyuan hissed. His amphis didn't stop shifting forms; when separated, they acted entirely apart, coming from opposite directions, moving in completely different ways; when together, all of Jieyuan went into his movements, the two halves of his mind superimposed, greater than the original whole.

He didn’t know how long he kept it up; how long he stayed that way, doing everything he could to bring down his opponent. None of his attacks landed, but Jieyuan didn’t let up, his momentum unbroken as he kept pressing forward.

“All right,” the empyrean said, suddenly, just as he deflected Jieyuan’s single-form strike. He was still smiling, but he didn’t seem so exuberant now. “That will do.”

The empyrean’s body blurred; Jieyuan acted immediately, not defending but instead attacking, trying to drive him back, but it was no use. The empyrean was too fast.

Before Jieyuan knew it, a pair of void-black blades were at his throat, crossed, and the empyrean was leaning over him.

Jieyuan stilled even as his heart sped up.

“Easy, now, little snake,” the empyrean said. He stared down at Jieyuan for a few moments longer before taking a step back, letting his arms fall to his side. His long, flowing black hair fanned around him like a curtain of darkness.

Jieyuan fought back the urge to attack. His fire was still running high. It didn’t help, either, that when he looked at the empyrean part of him still thought prey, stuck in that predatory state of mind.

The empyrean looked him up and down, appraising, then nodded, “You’ve passed.”

“That’s it?” Jieyuan frowned. Part of him had thought that might be the case, but… He wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Glad for staying alive, sure, but also strangely disappointed it was over just like that.

The empyrean chuckled. “This is merely the first stage of the Sword Tower, little snake. If you had chosen the Amphis later, I might have expected you to put up more of a fight, perhaps even defeat me. For this first stage, however, you’ve done enough.”

“Right,” Jieyuan said, still rather unsure. “You have my thanks, then. For the instruction.” Because the empyrean had instructed him, both shown him and told him what to do.

“It was my pleasure,” the empyrean said. “I only ask one thing of you. Should you one day have the opportunity to visit my clan, please invite my kin for a spar. Show them your Twin Serpent Cognition; show them that they are not the only masters of the amphis.”

The empyrean shrugged his shoulders in a slow, graceful roll; even now, outside of combat, his every movement reminded Jieyuan of a snake.

“I know not the state of my clan in the present day, but such a reminder will always be welcome. If nothing else, it should encourage my kin to strive harder. Believe me, little snake; there’s nothing an empyrean finds more insulting than being bested by a human.”

“I’ll try,” Jieyuan said.

He only had the faintest idea of where the empyreans lived (another plane, supposedly). He also had a feeling that he might not be so readily welcomed by the Xieyueshen Clan if they looked down on humans like that. But he’d already been intending on visiting the clan, even before the empyrean’s requests. He’d just have to see about it later.

“Then that will be it,” the empyrean said. “Best of luck, little snake.”

Jieyuan blinked—only to find himself back in the Heavenly Hall.

It took him barely a moment to regain his bearings; he’d already grown quite used to being suddenly relocated like this.

Like the previous times, he was standing right in front of his door, except it was still unavailable, darkened and without a handle. Looking around, he saw only a few dozen cultivators; fewer than a hundred, maybe fifty in all.

That had him confused for a moment, because he hadn’t thought the numbers would be cut down like this from just the first challenge. But then he noticed neither Anren nor Daojue was there, and he realized he’d gotten the wrong idea.

The challenges probably each took a different amount of time; the challengers were being transported gradually back to the Heavenly Hall as they passed.

That was the only reasonable explanation. The alternative was that neither Daojue nor Anren had passed the first challenge, a possibility Jieyuan obviously couldn’t accept. Moreover, a good chunk of the Absolute Sword Sect cultivators were also missing, and Jieyuan also didn’t think so many of them would be eliminated this quickly. That Absolute Sword Sect woman from before wasn’t there, either.

Sheathing the Shifting Feathers, Jieyuan settled back against his door to wait. He kept his eye out, scanning the room, and a few minutes later, he saw another cultivator appear out of thin air in front of another door.

His theory proven right, Jieyuan allowed himself to fully relax. Turning his focus inward, he tried to use Twin Serpent Cognition, searching for the feeling of it. Nothing happened. His mind remained fully whole. He didn’t feel even the faintest hint of the soulskill. He kept at it for a few moments longer. Nothing.

Maybe… Frowning, Jieyuan reached down, grasped the handles of the Shifting Feathers sticking out of their sheaths.

And he had it. Just like that, his mind and body were split in half.

He let go of the Shifting Feathers. Back to normal, mind and body one whole. No signs of Twin Serpent Cognition.

He grasped the shafts again—and his mind was duplicated, his control over his body perfectly split.

Jieyuan hummed under his breath, considering the possibilities. He turned the empyrean’s words again and again in his mind. Transcending perfection. Granted by the Concept of the Amphis.

“Hmmm.”

Some experimenting was in order. He knew what Twin Serpent Cognition was meant to be used for: mastery of the amphis in combat. But how far could he deviate from that intended function? He had to be holding an amphis to use it, sure, but were there limits to what he could actually use the soulskill for? He didn’t need to have the amphis drawn to use it, after all, so there had to be at least some wiggle room.

I think Absolute Will Command might have spoiled me a bit, though.

Hands grabbing onto the shafts of the Shifting Feathers, Twin Serpent Cognition taking hold, Jieyuan started experimenting. His now-split minds immediately took over control of the two hemispheres of his body.

Jieyuan first tried his hand at looking at different directions at once, until his field of vision was wider than it had any right to be, while the area immediately in front of him looked rather hazy, indistinct.

Good. Next. Jieyuan tried a few other things he’d done in the heat of combat, both back in the pursuit phase and in the challenge phase just now, as well as any other ideas that came to him. Inhaling from just one nostril, relaxing one side of his body while tensing the other, having half his mind focus on sight and the other on sounds: all of it worked.

Then he tried to stretch it a bit further; his mind was split into two, but maybe his body didn’t have to be. Ignoring his body for now, he started one train of thought—and parallel to it, another. It was something else he’d done in both phases, but he hadn’t fully explored the limits of it.

With half his mind, he crunched some numbers, did some random calculations; with the other, he tried conjuring completely unrelated images in his mind’s eye. Numbers got divided and multiplied in his head while he pictured Meiyao as if she were standing there, in front of him, flawlessly beautiful.

There and then, Jieyuan decided that he’d be plenty satisfied even if he got nothing else from the Absolute Sword Trial.

—∞—

It was Anren who appeared first, just a door to Jieyuan’s left.

Finally. Just a few minutes had passed since he’d appeared in the Heavenly Hall himself, but it had felt like an eternity. He pushed off the door and walked over. She turned to him and broke out into a smile. Jieyuan couldn’t help but smile back.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You got here before me, then. In a hurry, were you?”

“You were the one who took your time,” Jieyuan shot back. “How did it go?”

“What do you think?” She huffed, then looked past him. Her smile turned into a frown. “Daojue’s not back yet?”

“I think he’s taking his time too.”

“Hmmm.” Anren looked thoughtful for a moment, but then she shook her head, focused back on him. “So, did you meet a lunar?”

“I did,” Jieyuan said. “What was your echo like?”

“Rather pushy, if I’m being honest,” she said. “No, hold on. I forgot to ask something earlier. Any luck with a soulskill?”

Jieyuan glanced around and saw nobody was paying attention. “I did, actually.”

Anren’s eyes widened. Then she beamed, eyes shining, stepped closer. “Really? You got Twin Serpent Cognition?”

“You know about it?”

“I trained with the Xieyueshen Clan, remember?” Anren said, looking excited. “The soulskill’s got a legendary reputation there. By the Absolute, I wish I could see their faces when they find out a human achieved it when none of them has managed it in—Heavens, several hundred thousand years, I think.”

Several hundred thousand years. Jieyuan had suspected violetsouls had a bit of a different view on the passage of time (redsouls only lived to three hundred, and they often spoke in terms of thousands of years), but he hadn’t thought numbers that big would get thrown around so offhandedly.

“The empyrean said something about it being granted to those who surpassed perfection,” Jieyuan said, fishing for information.

“Hmmm.” Anren’s smile fell. Not just that, her expression turned serious—almost as serious as when she’d been telling him about how delicate the whole Tianzijun business was.

She glanced around, much like Jieyuan had earlier, then lowered her voice. “That’s… a bit of a dangerous subject.”

Now it was Jieyuan who had his brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”

“There are rumors that— Well, that it’s possible to surpass tenth-order affinity with a Concept.”

He’d never seen Anren look so hesitant.

“Not here,” Anren elaborated, “but in the outside world. And this is regardless of your original affinity with the Concept. Regardless, even, of your heavenly affinity.”

Her voice went even quieter. “Supposedly, you have to do something major. Something big—big enough to draw the attention of a Concept. But these are only rumors. Rumors you’re better off keeping to yourself, in fact. There are… dangers.”

Just like that, Jieyuan not only had it confirmed that tenth-order affinity was indeed a thing, like he’d been suspecting for a while now, but he’d also learned that it was possible to go even higher. And to think that barely a week ago, he had thought sixth-order affinity was the limit.

He was just as interested in the second part of what Anren had said, though. “Dangers?”

“Take Death, for example,” Anren said. “Pursuing it is simple enough: kill others. You can kill animals and beasts, of course, but killing people works the fastest. And nobody will bat an eye; a little murder here and there is perfectly natural. But if you heard that you could get your affinity with Death in one dead swing past tenth-order if you did something big enough to draw the Concept’s attention?”

Jieyuan felt a chill. He knew just where Anren was going with this.

“You’d have cultivators going around on killing sprees, murdering millions, if not billions, to get Death’s attention. It’d be utter chaos,” Anren said. “It’d be even worse for greensouls and bluesouls, who’d see this as a way of surpassing the limits of their heavenly affinity. A way of reaching Violetsoul—one much more straightforward than somehow extending your lifespan and pursuing a Concept for thousands of years.”

Those words struck Jieyuan more than Anren knew; she had had no idea that, before the Sword Trial, and the possibility it offered of raising his affinities past fourth-order, he’d been in the same group as those greensouls and bluesouls she’d mentioned. Desperate for a way to reach Violetsoul.

“And there’s something else,” Anren said. She glanced toward the center of the room, where the Absolute Sword Sect disciples were gathered.

“This is something I overheard my master talking about, once.” Her voice was barely a whisper now. “Supposedly, the Absolute Sword Sect is very interested in those who surpass tenth-order affinity. It tracks them down, and… well, takes them away. There’s a division of the sect that handles that, apparently: the Heavens-Piercing Bureau. I’m not sure if it really exists, but I’d rather not take my chances.”

That name struck a familiar chord in Jieyuan. He immediately focused on that feeling of familiarity, chased it down. And then he recalled where he’d come across it before. It had appeared in the jade books left behind in the Fatebloom Woods by Huaxin’s creator, the violetsoul Yikongwei Beidao.

He had the feeling this division might be more truth than myth.

He was spared from having to say something, though, as Anren focused on a point behind him, just over his shoulders. Then she beamed.

“There you are, Daojue!”

Turning around, Jieyuan saw Daojue walking over.

Like Anren, he looked completely fine. He stopped next to Jieyuan, and Anren immediately started peppering him with questions about his challenge. Normally, Jieyuan would have been interested too (though not so enthusiastic about it), but something else caught his attention.

A few doors down from them was the same Absolute Sword Sect woman who’d caught his attention earlier, back in the pursuit phase. She was standing there, unmoving, and staring right at them.

Staring hard. Glaring, even.

But then her steel-gray eyes met his, and she realized he’d noticed her. Abruptly, she turned away. Then, without a word, she stalked off toward the center of the hall, where the rest of her sect was gathered. Neither Daojue nor Anren seemed to have noticed anything.

Jieyuan kept his eyes on the woman’s retreating form. Before, he’d been curious about the attention she’d paid him, but that’d been about it. Now, though? Knowing what he did about the Absolute Sword Sect and the Heavens-Piercing Bureau?

He narrowed his eyes. In his head, lines were being drawn between dots he’d thought completely unrelated. And he wasn’t sure he was liking the picture that was forming.

Yikongwei Beidao had mentioned the Heavens-Piercing Bureau in his jade books. When Jieyuan assimilated Huaxin, the distracter field over the center of the Fatebloom Woods had disappeared. But afterward, according to Meiyao, nobody found any trace of the stump-pedestal Huaxin had been cradled in, or Beidao’s golden wooden cabin.

At the time, he hadn’t paid it much thought; he’d been too busy with the Radiant Gold Tournament and the assassination attempt he’d just suffered. He’d thought that the sect had found something but was keeping it a secret. Or that whoever it was who had discovered the center of the Fatebloom Woods had destroyed all evidence of something having been there, kept the mystery to themselves.

But now, with an Absolute Sword Sect disciple focusing on him like this, for no apparent reason…

Now he wasn’t so sure.

—∞—

The Heavenly Vault hung high above Jieyuan.

He, Anren, and Daojue had spent hours waiting in the Heavenly Hall until everyone had passed the trial (the numbers hadn’t decreased much, as it turned out) before the Tower ego appeared and announced the start of the next Heavenly Selection.

And now here he was, standing in an infinite black void, staring up at the vast, starry sky, at the Sword Tower’s own rendition of the Heavens. Waiting for the Concepts to make their selection.

A cluster of stars lit up, then another, indistinct constellations burning in scattered groups across the endless void.

Then, from one of those lit-up star clusters, a sphere of light descended. It reached Jieyuan in moments, coming to a stop just in front of his head.

He recognized it. It was red, with golden, vein-like lines running through it. As he focused on it, Jieyuan received confirmation: FATE, his mysterious seventh sense informed him. Choice, Inevitability, Patterns, Connection.

The next sphere to descend was just as recognizable: a shifting swirl of colors spanning the entire spectrum. Sure enough, as he focused on it, he got the sense of REFINING. And composing it, the ideas of Transformation, Purification, Essence, and Merging.

“All right,” Jieyuan murmured. So far, so good; it was turning out just like the first selection. He waited for the next spheres to come.

He kept waiting.

Frowning, Jieyuan looked up. No new spheres were coming down. And up there, in the Heavenly Vault, he could only see two separate groups of stars shining.

Two, and no more.

A cold weight settled in Jieyuan’s gut as he turned his attention back to the two spheres floating in front of him.

Refining. Fate.

Nothing else.

“No, no, no,” Jieyuan said. “Where’s Spear? Where the rot is Spear?”

He had no issue with the Sword sphere being gone. The absence of the Spear sphere, on the other hand, was a completely different business.

In the first stage, he’d been torn between Amphis and Spear; he’d then picked Amphis under the assumption that Spear would appear again. He’d been following Anren’s advice: picking the worst from the best.

But now the second stage had come, and Spear was nowhere in sight.

Jieyuan looked back up at the Heavenly Vault, hoping against hope. But as the minutes passed, nothing happened. No new stars lit up. The number of spheres in front of him didn’t change

Refining and Fate.

Those were his only options for the second stage—and Jieyuan wasn’t sure which was worse.