Chapter 139: THE TWIN SNAKES

CHAPTER

139

THE TWIN SNAKES

Jieyuan

—∞—

All things considered, the snake didn’t really come as a surprise.

Jieyuan had just barely told the Amphis Concept what difficulty he wanted when the beast spilled out from the mouth of the stone snake head opposite him: a great, sinuous body covered in black and yellow scales.

It slid out from between the massive fangs and dropped to the ground in free fall, landing with a heavy, wet thump.

The snake didn’t seem all that bothered by the fall; lying on the arena directly across from him now, it raised its head up, the upper half of its body curving away from the ground.

But then the bottom half of it also lifted itself, and Jieyuan saw what lay at the end of its tail.

Another head.

The snake had two heads—one on each end.

“Oh,” Jieyuan said. He glanced down at the Shifting Feathers, and then back at the snake. “I think I see it now.”

Four unblinking black eyes stared back at him. The snake had both of its heads facing him, edging forward, like a half moon.

The beast was big, bigger than any mundane snake had a right to be; its head looked about to be the size of his torso, and he imagined it wouldn’t even have to make an effort to swallow him whole.

But its size wouldn’t be that much of an issue; he’d faced bigger snakes in the Dome. He also had some experience with two-headed snakes, though none with this particular, opposite-ended arrangement.

He wasn’t sure how that was supposed to work; he certainly didn’t see any advantage over the more traditional, same-end twin-head design.

Jieyuan narrowed his eyes. Just how did it move? Just how did it attack? Just how—

It surged forward, and Jieyuan could get some answers. The two heads swung back and forth almost like a see-saw, the body in the middle undulating forward in a wave-like pattern. They made no sound as they moved, slithering smoothly across the stone floor.

It might have looked awkward if it hadn’t been so damn fast.

Jieyuan barely had a few seconds to prepare himself before it reached him, crossing the whole arena; both its heads shot forward, converging, snapping at him.

Jieyuan swung both Shifting Feathers upward, slamming the blades against their snouts.

It felt like hitting a wall; Jieyuan’s arm shook under the impact. They hissed, bright-red tongues flicking forward. Warm, hot breath struck Jieyuan’s face, carrying with it a sharp, bitter, acrid stench.

Jieyuan barely managed to hold off the heads for a moment before he felt his arms about to give.

He jumped back to open some distance, but the snake didn’t let up; hissing sharply, they flowed forward, and Jieyuan barely got to recover his footing before the heads attacked again in perfect tandem.

Jieyuan tried to deflect this time, but they were just too big; he almost ended up slammed between the heads and had to retreat again.

But just as his feet touched the ground again, he realized the issue. The whole point of this was pursuing the Amphis, and the amphis was not meant for defense. Rather, it was the opposite: the amphis was a weapon of relentless, unyielding offense.

The twin heads came again. But this time Jieyuan stepped in, dropped his hands to low-grip for the added reach, and swung both Shifting Feathers higher than before—at their black, fist-sized eyes.

The serpents recoiled, hissing, twisting back, avoiding the blade.

Yes!

This time it was Jieyuan who didn’t let up; he charged towards them, swinging the Shifting Feathers at them again; one of the heads recoiled, drawing back, but the other surged past him, slipping behind him.

Jieyuan didn’t think, just joined the Shifting Feathers together, struck them upward—and the opposite blades met both the head snapping at him from the front, and the one that had just lunged at him from the back.

Arms straining, Jieyuan pulled the single-form back; the snakes attacked again, still coming at him from opposite directions, and Jieyuan used the full Shifting Feather to ward off both attacks just like before.

Now he understood the point of the opposite-end heads; he might as well have been facing two snakes at the same time. Except worse, because the two heads had perfect coordination.

Pair-form wouldn’t work here, not with the attacks coming from opposite directions like this; he wouldn’t be able to distribute his weight properly. Only with the single-form could he hold off the two opposite attacks.

That was the trick, Jieyuan realized. He had to do the opposite of what the snake did. Pair-form when the heads were together, single-form when the heads were apart.

The snake kept up its two-pronged attacks; the Shifting Feather stayed in single-form as Jieyuan fended off the lunges. Sometimes both heads struck together, other times one after the other.

Jieyuan kept retreating as he fended off the attacks, boots skidding back and sideways as he got a feel for the rhythm.

It didn’t take him long. The snake didn’t keep to a particular pattern, but between lunges and charges he got the hang of it: of how it moved just before the attack, of the best way to position the Shifting Feather, of how to balance his weight to fend off the force of the heads.

Sweat dripped down Jieyuan’s forehead; his robes were almost wet with it, his grip on the Shifting Feathers slick. It was a good thing his inability to get tired persisted in the Heavenly Room; he wouldn’t have lasted more than a handful of minutes otherwise.

They were near the middle of the arena now; between his dodges and the beast’s lunges, they’d drifted halfway across the arena.

Only one problem remained: targeting the eyes. That was no easy feat when the heads were coming from different directions, and he only had one weapon to work with.

It didn’t matter the Shifting Feather had blades on both ends; he couldn’t slash forward and backward simultaneously, meaning he’d have no choice but to leave the other head an opening to take a good bite of him.

Jieyuan had just jumped to the side before both heads came at him again, front and back. He raised the amphis to block—but in that split second, the answer came to him.

The full amphis met both heads, blocking them off—and in that same moment, Jieyuan split the Shifting Feathers again, twisting his body sideways in a half-twirl. The blades cut toward both heads’ eyes.

Both heads pulled back; Jieyuan jumped away. There was a pause, before the snake rushed at him again. This time the heads were facing the same direction again.

He realized then just how wrong he’d been. Completely, utterly wrong. It wasn’t pair-form when the heads were together, single-form when they were apart.

He’d forgotten Anren’s lessons. The amphis was all about constant change. He was never meant to stay in one form; it was all about adaptation.

The heads struck, together, and Jieyuan swung the pair-forms at their eyes again. They pulled away, one of the heads separated, rushing to the side to strike at him from behind—but Jieyuan didn’t let it. He swung again at the nearest head, then merged the Shifting Feathers back into single-form and spun backwards, targeting the head at the back.

It pulled away again. The other head tried to make a comeback, but Jieyuan was faster, spinning around, striking at it again.

The head retreated with a hiss. Jieyuan stepped forward, snapped the Shifting Feather to the side to ward off the other head. Another step forward. The snake retreated further. Jieyuan kept at it. Step by step, he pushed it back, never ceasing his swings.

Now it wasn’t the snake leading him around—it was he who had it moving, who had it backing away. The amphis was a blur in his hand, ever-shifting, unstoppable.

Momentum. Change. Relentless offense. That was the amphis’s essence.

Jieyuan grinned. Without stopping, still pushing forward, Shifting Feather still swinging, he focused on the Amphis Concept.

Second difficulty.

The snake came at him again; it was faster. Jieyuan lost his footing for a moment as he tried to dodge, caught off-guard, and as he slammed one of the Shifting Feathers at its head to redirect its attack, he felt his arm shake under the blow.

Faster and stronger.

Jieyuan’s grin widened.

Bring it on.

—∞—

Jieyuan was fairly sure something had changed in him—in both his mind and body.

He tracked the movements of the nearest pair of snake heads with one of his eyes, watching out for signs of swelling under their mouths. His other eye was trained on the other snakes—and when it lunged at him, he fended off their attacks.

Then the swelling he’d been waiting for came—a frog-like, grotesque enlarging of the area just under the head—and Jieyuan jumped out of the way as the heads spewed a thick, dense cloud of green gas.

The other snake chased after him, but Jieyuan’s other half hadn’t stopped paying attention to it, and a quick slash at the eyes had it backing away.

Half. Halves. It had started subtly, so subtly Jieyuan hadn’t noticed it at first. When he’d raised the difficulty to the third level, the initial snake he’d been up against had gotten fast enough he had a hard time keeping up. But before long he’d found himself getting used to it, able to track both heads better.

Then he’d raised the difficulty again, and the snake had gained the ability to spit those poisonous gas clouds; Jieyuan hadn’t gotten caught in one of those yet, and he had very little interest in finding out what it’d do to him.

But then he had raised the difficulty to the fifth level, and another snake had appeared (the same way as the first, slithering out of one of the massive stone snake head statues). And that was when he realized his ability to keep up with them had gotten a little too good to be just plain adaptation.

The two snakes—two bodies, four heads—rushed at him, one from the left and the other from the right. The heads diverged as the snakes closed in on Jieyuan from all four directions.

If it were before, Jieyuan would’ve been in trouble. But right now he might as well have two separate fields of vision; his eyes went off in opposite directions, moving entirely independently from each other, his mind divided into two as he took all of it in.

It didn’t quite make for omnidirectional vision, but it was about the closest you could get to it with just a pair of forward-facing eyes.

Both snakes in sight (even if only barely for two of the heads), he saw all four attacks coming. Two of them he dodged, twisting left and right; the other two, he warded off with eye-strikes.

A soulskill. Jieyuan saw no other explanation for the way his mind and body were split up right now. It was as if a line had been drawn vertically across the middle of his body, splitting him into two separate entities. His left and right side were almost independent from each other.

He’d even tried running two parallel lines of thought at one point (when he’d managed to get far enough away from the two snakes to have some breathing room), and he’d had no trouble with it.

Now this was one power Jieyuan was really looking forward to experimenting with later. But before that, he needed to qualify for the challenge phase.

He reckoned he’d gotten the hang of the fifth difficulty. It had been about an hour or so since he’d stepped into the room; he was making good time, but he had to get to the eighth difficulty as fast as possible if he wanted to meet the deadline.

Sixth difficulty, he told the Amphis Concept.

Out of the corner of his vision, he saw a snake identical to the ones he was facing (big, yellow and black scales, twin-headed) spill out from the mouth of one of the massive stone snake head statues.

He hadn’t been sure that’d happen, but he’d suspected it.

Heightened strength and speed for the first three difficulties, poison breath for the fourth, and an extra snake at levels five and six. Anren had said that the fourth, seventh, and eleventh difficulties were the ones to watch out for, so the next increase could be especially dangerous.

And he’d still have to go for yet another increase after that—get to eighth difficulty—to have a chance at getting his affinity with the Amphis Concept to first-order in time.

Golden.

But he could worry about the seventh and eighth difficulties later; Jieyuan reckoned he’d have his hands full with the sixth difficulty for a while.

The three snakes came at him—and, as usual, perfectly coordinated with each other, all six heads acting in perfect tandem. The two nearest snakes arrived first, one of them spitting poison; Jieyuan avoided it again, and then twisted around to strike at the other two heads coming at him.

Soon Jieyuan found himself lost amid flowing bodies and lunging heads. Even in his split state, it was tough keeping up with it all, but he felt he was doing a good enough job, growing sharper with every second—

One of the heads bulged just under the mouth; Jieyuan made to jump away, but he caught the same thing happening with another head—

Right, different direction—

But then the other four heads, all of them surrounding him now, were swelling too.

And then Jieyuan’s world turned green. Green gas came at him from every direction, and immediately Jieyuan felt a burning, corroding sensation like he was being burned and boiled at the same time—

Leave! Jieyuan sent to the Amphis Concept.

The next thing he knew, he was standing in the Heavenly Law, enclosed entirely by metal, standing just in front of a door.

Jieyuan leaned against the door, taking several deep breaths. He looked himself over; he was fine. His robes were pristine, and every inch of skin he could see was entirely unharmed.

Jieyuan separated the Shifting Feather and sheathed them. He ran a slightly shaky hand through his hair, slicking it back; he was still drenched in sweat.

He closed his eyes for a moment. It wasn’t the pain that was the issue; he faced much worse whenever he cultivated. But when he was cultivating, he knew all of it was illusory, that his body was in fact fine, even if it certainly didn’t feel like it.

Just now, though, he’d been actually burned alive, stripped almost to the bone in a matter of seconds. It hadn’t been as painful as cultivation, sure, but the reality of it had been a thousand times worse.

Another couple of deep, cool breaths later, and Jieyuan was feeling like himself again. He opened his eyes, took a quick look around the room. He spotted a few cultivators near the doors, likely recovering from near-death experiences of their own. Anren and Daojue weren’t around.

One of the cultivators outside, he noticed, wore silver—an Absolute Sword Sect disciple. A woman. She was just a couple doors down from him, facing the wall.

His gaze had just landed on her when she turned in his direction. Gray eyes fixed on him, set in a surprisingly plain face. The same gray as the Sword Tower’s echo’s eyes. Steel-gray.

She was a Jiandaozhi, then. A royal of the Absolute Sword Sect. The eyes were a dead giveaway. Anren had told him about the Jiandaozhi, how they were the ruling clan of the Absolute Sword Sect, among the most powerful families in existence. Jiandaozhi had also appeared in Yikongwei Beidao’s jade books, back in the Fatebloom Woods.

Fancy eyes aside, the woman had narrow brows, thin lips, and a sharp jaw. She was beautiful by mundane standards, to be sure, but nothing special for a cultivator. And well below average compared to the other violetsouls he’d seen so far in this place.

The Jiandaozhi woman stared at him for a long moment; her eyes dipped down to his waist, noting his weapons, before flicking back up to his face. She opened her mouth like she meant to say something, but closed it soundlessly the next moment.

Frowning slightly, she tipped her head in his direction (a greeting, maybe?) before she opened the door in front of her and disappeared back into her room. The door closed after her, darkening, the handle vanishing.

“All right, then,” Jieyuan murmured. “What was that about?”

He cast another look around the Heavenly Hall; it was emptier now, and nobody seemed to be paying him any attention. He noticed that his mind and body were no longer split; his body seemed entirely whole again.

Deciding he’d gotten enough rest, he opened the door and stared into the impossibly black void on the other side. Drawing the Shifting Feathers out again, he braced himself and stepped inside.

He appeared in the arena again. It was the exact same place—same stone floor and octagonal walls, each with its own massive stone snake head framing it. Same dull, evenly lit gray skies above.

The three snakes were gone, though. That was good; it meant he could work back up to it. And this time he knew not to let himself get surrounded. He wasn’t looking forward to another acid shower.

He didn’t start it off yet, though. Instead he swung the Shifting Feathers a few times in pair-form.

He still hadn’t regained that split-up state of mind and body—he’d thought it would return the moment he stepped back into the room. But as he swung the weapons in front of him, he felt something. His focus sharpening, branching out; not quite splitting in half (not yet), but widening.

There we go. It seemed he’d regain that state in time, then. That was all he needed to know.

Jieyuan focused on the presence of the Amphis Concept, and said, “First difficulty.”

A twin-headed snake flowed out from the mouth of one of the stone snake heads. It dropped to the floor; it lay there for just a moment before it came to life, both its heads turning to face him. Its four black eyes were unblinking as they fixed on him.

Half an hour, Jieyuan decided.

He’d give himself half an hour to make it to the eighth difficulty.

—∞—

Ninth difficulty. That was where Jieyuan hit his limit.

Jieyuan’s left-hand Shifting Feather warded off one of the heads with a jab towards its eyes, while his right side deflected an attempt to bite him.

His feet didn’t stop moving as he jumped away, avoiding a spray of poison; mid-air, two snake heads surged toward him. He brought the Shifting Feathers together and met the attacks; the impact of it pushed him farther back in the air.

His feet didn’t even touch the ground before another snake head snapped at him. The Shifting Feathers still in single-form, Jieyuan swung it at the head; it backed off, and he managed to strike his landing—only for another two heads to rush toward him.

All the while, he focused on the core ideas behind the Amphis Concept, the ones he felt resonated with himself the most: Change, Momentum, Duality.

Five snakes, ten heads. That was what Jieyuan was dealing with right now. He was only vaguely aware of the numbers, though; in the thick of it, it was almost impossible to tell when one of the twin-headed snakes ended and another began.

He could only barely see the arena now; almost all his field of vision was taken up by twisting, shifting, coiling black-and-yellow bodies.

But there was one part of the arena Jieyuan did make sure to watch out for, even as he fended off the attacks—the snake-head stone statues.

And because of that, he caught it when the mouth of the statues opened wider.

There we go again. Jieyuan braced himself even as he dodged two more attacks and fended off another two. He drew a deep breath, bracing for what would come next: the new mechanic introduced by the seventh difficulty.

Then it hit: a shrieking, ear-splitting noise. It filled the arena, setting Jieyuan’s head ringing and his vision blurring.

Jieyuan shut his eyes and fully gave himself to his instincts. No more thoughts in his head—only action and reaction.

A slithering sound (almost inaudible against the shrieking), a faint rush of wind from the left—Jieyuan swung his Shifting Feather at it. The same thing, from the right and front; Jieyuan split the Shifting Feathers and fended off both attacks.

A waft of a sharp, bitter stench—Jieyuan couldn’t tell the direction of the source, so he just jumped back and put as much distance as he could.

And so it went: between subtle sounds and even subtler sensations, he dealt with the relentless assault of the snakes while the shrieking threatened to split his head apart.

The moment it stopped, Jieyuan opened his eyes, pulled himself away from that state; he’d learned that the longer he stayed in that state, the more likely mistakes became. He had long since stopped trying to keep track of the number of times he’d been forced to leave the room since he’d gone past the sixth difficulty.

What followed was business as usual: dodging and defending and attacking without stopping. In the midst of it all, Jieyuan found himself surprised to be lasting so long; normally, he didn’t manage to make it more than an hour in the ninth difficulty before something happened and he had to leave, but right now, he was nearing his third hour.

He was almost tempted to rise to the tenth difficulty—but the few times he’d attempted it, he hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds. The addition of a sixth snake always proved too much for him; five was his limit.

Besides, he reckoned the pursuit phase was almost over. He wasn’t sure, but he probably didn’t have more than a few hours—

The arena was gone. The snakes were gone. Metal walls surrounded him. A plain steel door stood barely a foot away.

Jieyuan stared at it, still half-crouched, Shifting Feathers in hand, bewildered. But then his brain caught up, and he realized what had just happened.

He’d been transported outside of the room, back to the Heavenly Hall. And since he hadn’t been the one to do it, that meant…

“Jieyuan?”

He turned around and found Anren standing behind him. Behind her, he saw that the Heavenly Hall was full again; all the contestants were there.

“Anren,” Jieyuan said. His heart rate slowed, his breath settled; he sheathed the Shifting Feathers.

He gave Anren a once-over. She looked fine, sword drawn but otherwise unruffled. Daojue was standing beside her, and he seemed equally composed. Jieyuan gave him a nod in acknowledgment.

It was his first time seeing the two of them since the Heavenly Selection; they hadn’t been outside any of the times he’d been forced out of the room.

Anren then turned to look at the center of the hall. Following her gaze, Jieyuan found that the Sword Tower’s ego was back. He was floating over the Absolute Sword Sect disciples again, gray-robed and gray-haired, expressionless.

“You have one hour before the challenge,” the Tower ego announced. “Prepare yourselves.”

Jieyuan thought that’d be it, that the Tower ego would disappear after his announcement, like the other times so far. But he didn’t. Instead, the gray-robed man turned his attention to a specific part of the room. And then he vanished.

But he wasn’t gone; the next moment, Jieyuan saw him reappear right in front of a blue-robed woman.

The woman paled, but stood her ground. “I—”

The Tower ego’s arm shot forward, fingers extended, and his hand cut across the blue-robed woman’s neck.

It all happened too fast: a flash of red, a faint snapping sound, and then the woman was gone, vanishing into thin air.

The Tower ego remained in place for a moment longer before he also disappeared.

For a while, the whole hall was silent, unmoving. But then the low murmurs of conversations and shifting feet returned.

“Well, there’s always one,” Anren murmured.

Jieyuan kept staring at the spot the blue-robed woman had just been at. “That’s what happens if you don’t meet the challenge’s requirement, then?”

“Pretty much,” Anren said. “Mind you, they are unharmed; the token saved them. But it’s not the most dignified way to go, is it?”

“It sure isn’t,” Jieyuan said. It wasn’t his dignity he was concerned about, though. It was more the thought that if he’d been that contestant, his headless body would be lying on the ground right now.

“Enough about that,” Anren said, turning to face him. “How did it go? The Tower ego didn’t come for you, so you must’ve reached at least first-order.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Jieyuan said. He hadn’t bothered checking after he’d made it to first-order. He sent his attention inward, reached for the Amphis Concept. Its presence was fainter here than in the room, but he could still sense it.

“Well enough,” he said. “Second order.”

As he spoke, he scanned the hall, trying to see whether the numbers had been reduced any (besides, of course, the one contestant who’d just gotten taken out). He was rather surprised to find that the numbers had taken a visible hit; there were still several hundred in the room, but it didn’t look as full as before. He’d put the current numbers at three of four hundred; about a fifth of the original five hundred seemed to be gone.

“Second-order?” Anren nodded. “That’s a good result.”

“You?” Jieyuan asked her. He recalled she’d picked Vibration as her Concept.

Anren smirked, tapping her finger against her lips. “It’s a secret. But suffice to say, I passed.”

Before Jieyuan could press, Anren turned to Daojue. “What about you?”

“Seventh-order,” Daojue said, evenly.

It took Jieyuan a moment to process it. Then his eyes widened. “Seventh?”

Daojue glanced at him, said nothing.

Jieyuan composed himself under Daojue’s stare; straightened his back, schooled his expression. He was still rattled, though. Seventh-order. Daojue had reached seventh-order affinity right from the get-go.

Daojue had gone for Crystal as his Concept in this first stage. Jieyuan had no idea what its pursuit phase had been like, but he doubted it had been much easier than the Amphis one.

And where Jieyuan hadn’t been able to handle more than a few seconds in the tenth difficulty, reaching seventh-order affinity meant Daojue hadn’t just made it to the eleventh difficulty: he had conquered it.

Jieyuan knew he would have to reach the eleventh difficulty eventually if he wanted to qualify for the later stages (and, more to the point, avoid being killed by the Tower ego). But he still had a few more stages to go before it came to that. And between now and then, he should have improved further, maybe even gotten a new soulskill or two to go with it.

But then, something else occurred to Jieyuan: there was an upside to Daojue reaching eleventh difficulty right off the bat.

If Daojue could manage it from the get-go, Jieyuan felt better about his odds at pulling it off after he got some more work in. There was still a big gap between him and Daojue, but it was smaller than ever nowadays. Less an abyss, more like a chasm. Whatever Daojue could do, Jieyuan reckoned he should be able to do the same in time.

“Seventh-order, you say?” Anren also looked surprised; she gave Daojue a long, thoughtful look. Then she nodded, smiling. “Not bad.”

Daojue didn’t reply, but there was something in the way he looked at Anren that was almost tender.

“So what now?” Jieyuan asked. “Do we just wait?”

“That’s about it,” Anren said. “The reason behind the one-hour break is to get ourselves settled. Sometimes the pursuit phase can skewer your perception quite badly; that’s when you actually need the hour to get yourself ready for the upcoming challenge. But it doesn’t seem to be the case for any of us.”

Jieyuan looked around the room again, looking for anyone who seemed out of it—and to his surprise, he found quite a few. Some wide-eyed, dazed-looking men and women here and there. What would their pursuit phases have been like, to leave a violetsoul in that kind of state?

“Anything I should know before the challenge?” Jieyuan asked Anren.

“Not really,” Anren said. “I think I’ve told you everything already. The echo will just— Oh, right. The echoes. I don’t think I told you about them. Did I?”

“Echoes?” Jieyuan asked. Daojue also looked interested.

“The echoes are— Well, you can say they’re memories given life; echoes of cultivators of old, technically,” Anren said. “The Tower holds hundreds of thousands of them. They’re created by the Tower based on cultivators who’ve taken part in the trial before. Or by cultivators with ties to the Absolute Sword Sect who’ve let the Tower create an echo of them, for one reason or another.”

Anren focused on Jieyuan. “I’ve heard there are even a few empyrean echoes here. And chances are you’ll meet one in the next phase. See, the Tower picks an echo related to the Concept to hold the challenge phases. And there’s no better match for the Amphis Concept than a Xieyueshen lunar. If one of them left an echo here, no doubt you’ll be meeting it next.”

Anren had brought up the Xieyueshen lunars a couple of times now. From what he’d managed to piece together, they weren’t just the best amphis users out there: they were the ones who invented the weapon. He had wondered if he’d ever meet one; he sure hadn’t thought it might be this soon.

“I’m looking forward to it, then,” Jieyuan said.

And he was, but not just because of the Xieyueshen lunars’ reputation. He wanted to know more about the empyreans. He still only barely understood what they were; all he’d really figured out was that they were roughly comparable to humans but something different. And that there were multiple types of empyreans, lunars being one of them.

“You said you trained with them before, right?” Jieyuan asked. “Got any advice for me?”

“Hmmm.” Anren seemed to think it over before she gave an apologetic shrug. “Just do your best. The challenges get harder the higher the stage, so the first challenge shouldn’t give you too much trouble. If you’ve made it to second-order affinity, you should be able to beat it. But don’t let your guard down, of course.”

“Of course,” Jieyuan agreed.

“Anyway,” Anren said, “I say we meditate until the hour’s over. We might be fine, but you want to be in top form for the challenge phase. Think on what you learned during the pursuit phase, too; it should come in handy in the challenge.”

Jieyuan would’ve liked to take the opportunity to ask Anren a few more questions, but passing the first stage was the priority. It didn’t matter that the first stage’s challenge was the easiest; he had to stack his odds as high as possible.

His life was on the line, after all.

—∞—

When Jieyuan stepped into the void on the other side of the steel door (after the hour was over and the Tower ego commanded everyone to head to the Heavenly Rooms), he wasn’t too surprised to find himself back in the arena from earlier.

Around him were the same stone floor and walls, the same massive snake head statues overlooking the pit. But Jieyuan wasn’t alone there this time. Standing in the middle of the arena, across from him, was a black-robed man.

No. That wasn’t quite right. Jieyuan narrowed his eyes. They were rather far away, but he could still make out some details. There was something off about his appearance—

“It has been a while since I’ve been called upon,” the man said. His voice was quiet, but it carried clearly across the arena. It was a beautiful voice. Lilting, musical. “Come closer. I’d like to meet the one who would choose the amphis in the land of the sword.”

Jieyuan kept quiet as he walked over. He already had the Shifting Feathers drawn, currently in pair-form.

As he got closer, his suspicions were proven correct; whatever was standing in the arena was no man. Or at least not a human man.

The man-like creature’s skin was pale; not a smooth, unblemished, statue-like white like Daojue’s, but unnaturally white, like fresh snow. It was also glowing; subtly, faintly, but undoubtedly glowing, radiating a soft, eerie light.

His hair, in stark contrast, was the same impossible black as the abyss lines back in the rocky plains, so dark it seemed to turn the area around it dimmer. The same could be said about his eyes: they weren’t black as in very dark brown; they were truly black, the same color as his hair.

His lips, at least, were the right color. Red. Except they were too red, almost scarlet.

Bloodrights, Jieyuan had learned, could result in some rather unusual looks. But this was a step too far. This had to be an empyrean. A lunar.

Closer now, Jieyuan saw that it wasn’t just the lunar’s coloration that was different. His body was thin, slender, long-limbed. He was beautiful, too. Inhumanely so.

But not like Meiyao, who was so beautiful she didn’t look real. The empyrean actually looked inhuman: the cheekbones too high, the jaw too sharp, the eyes too large.

For all that, though, he was still beautiful, like a figure stepped out of a painting or a fairy tale; Jieyuan might have even mistaken him for a woman if not for the lack of curves and the deep, masculine voice.

As Jieyuan observed the empyrean, he felt the same scrutiny in return. The lunar’s gaze lingered especially on Jieyuan’s hands. On the Shifting Feathers.

The empyrean had no weapons drawn, but paired sheaths hung by his waist. His robes were black, but lighter than his hair and eyes, and Jieyuan could see faint coiling patterns on the fabric.

Unlike just about everyone Jieyuan had met so far, the empyrean had his neck mostly bare; he wore neither a shroud nor a band. All he had on was a thin circlet; at the center of it were two little snake heads, biting each other.

It seemed the neck wasn’t a taboo for empyreans as it was for humans.

Jieyuan came to a stop a few yards away. The empyrean still spoke nothing. Jieyuan saw now that the empyrean was tall—so much he’d even tower over Daojue. Combined with his long limbs and slender frame, it made him look even more unnatural. Snake-like, even.

“That is a lovely amphis you have. A tad gaudy, admittedly, but not without its charm,” the empyrean said, his gaze still on the Shifting Feathers. “I hope you do it justice.”

“I try to,” Jieyuan said, still a little put-off. It wasn’t only the empyrean’s appearance that had him uneasy. The situation itself was unsettling him; he’d have expected to be fighting already.

“Good, good,” the empyrean said. His void-black eyes flicked up to Jieyuan’s face. Smoothly, unhurriedly, as though not to startle Jieyuan, he reached for the sheaths at his waist and drew his weapons.

The empyrean’s amphis was pure black, like his hair and eyes. All that Jieyuan could really see was the outline of the pair-forms. The shafts were longer than those of the Shifting Feathers, while the blades were thinner and more curved.

“Well, then,” the empyrean said. “Your challenge shall be simple enough. Hold your own against me, and I’ll consider you passed.”

The empyrean smiled, scarlet lips parting to reveal pearly white teeth. But the smile kept widening, growing, until it was inhumanly large. And the teeth: the front ones looked human enough, but further back the teeth grew sharper and longer, until they were almost fangs.

“In other words,” the empyrean said, “try not to die.”