Chapter 138: A WAY FOUND

CHAPTER

138

A WAY FOUND

Jieyuan

—∞—

In the place of the infinitely distant ceiling was now a starry sky. An ocean of silver orbs scattered throughout a black void.

Not just any starry sky, either. It was a mirror of the same vision Jieyuan had seen once before, when he bonded with Absolute Will Command, right after their mission gone wrong in the Fatebloom Woods.

The Heavenly Vault. For a moment he forgot his impending doom, along with all his concerns and worries. Seeing the Heavens like this again stole his breath away. Only then did it really dawn on him what was happening.

Its own Heavens. The Sword Tower had its own Heavens.

He’d heard the words, he’d heard Anren say it, but he’d been too caught up in everything else to internalize what she’d said, to really consider what her words meant.

After everything he’d seen so far, he’d thought violetsouls couldn’t surprise him anymore. But the idea of replicating the Heavens was utterly insane.

A presence came over him. Similar to the one he felt whenever he engaged in Communion; the Heaven’s presence. Except it was stronger now. Before, it had been a light, airy, distant thing, a sliver of divinity brushing against his mind from infinitely far away. Whereas now it was here—within reach, in full force.

It was also different. Vaguely, subtly. Like a song with some of its notes just slightly off key.

But that made sense. What he was feeling wasn’t the real Heavens, after all, but the Sword Tower’s replica of them. Its own private Heavens, in a way.

Private Heavens. Jieyuan still struggled to wrap his mind around it. But shock was already beginning to wear off. Still staring upward, he risked a glance down to see how everyone else was reacting.

Except that he couldn’t see everyone else. He couldn’t see anyone else, in fact. The room was gone. The walls, the floor, everything.

He was alone in some featureless black void. The Heavens above, and nothing besides.

He had a similar experience when he bonded Absolute Will Command. Found himself in the same void, with the same starry sky on top. Except back then it’d all happened in his mind. Eyes closed, sitting cross-legged on the floor, meditating.

Right here and now, Jieyuan had no way to tell whether this was also all happening in his mind, or if he’d been physically transported to this place.

Looking down at his body he saw that everything seemed to be in order; all his limbs there, with his clothes on top. The Shifting Feathers properly sheathed, hanging by his waist.

Flashes of light caught his eye, and he turned his attention back upwards.

Some of the stars were glowing, in scattered clusters across the black expanse. But they weren’t stars; they were the Heavenly Laws that governed reality. And those groups of Laws—they were the Concepts. Collections of related Laws. Constellations, in a way, given Laws were like stars.

But it wasn’t just a handful of Laws to a Concept; each one had a near-infinite number of Laws. Or was it infinite? Jieyuan wasn’t that well read on heavenly matters; he’d had other, more pressing and immediate concerns. The lit-up star groups above looked finite enough, but chances were he wasn’t seeing the totality of the Laws at play.

He vaguely recalled how Concepts weren’t static, either; how they shared Laws, and how Concepts were in fact interpretations, and how Laws were always shifting and changing to comprehend the totality of existence.

A sphere of light appeared just in front of his head, lined up with his eyes. It was small, the size of a clenched fist, and black and yellow. The colors were moving around, though. Shifting, blending into each other and then becoming clearer. The black almost merged with that of the void around them.

As he focused on it, he got some kind of sense from it. Not a sixth sense, not soulsense, but a seventh one.

The same he’d felt back in Muyeshen’s cave, from the Primordial. An intuitive understanding, a conceptual message. And it said: AMPHIS.

And together with it came all sorts of ideas and concepts. Change. Momentum. Transformation. Duality. Serpent.

Serpent? Jieyuan frowned at that last one. But before he could think on it, another sphere appeared. The same size, just to the side of the Amphis one.

This one was mostly gray, but Jieyuan could see some vague shades of color—purple? Red? They weren’t clear. He got a sense from this sphere too the moment he focused on it.

SPEAR. And with it, other impressions: Precision. Extension. Piercing—

Another sphere appeared, the third in line. It was red, with traces of gold. Jieyuan turned his attention to it.

FATE. And comprising it: Choice, Inevitability, Patterns, Connection.

The fourth sphere popped up, this one looking like a rainbow made round. A swirl of colors, quickly shifting and twisting and turning, much more frantically than with the Amphis sphere. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and all the colors between and besides.

REFINING. Transformation, Purification, Essence, Merging.

Jieyuan gave it a moment, but a fifth sphere didn’t show up.

“All right,” he said, his words sounding clear to him in this empty void. He looked between the spheres. He had a pretty good idea of what was going on. “Let’s see—”

A fifth sphere materialized, right next to Refining. This one was entirely gray. Steel-gray. And from it, he got a clear sense of SWORD.

“What?” Now that threw Jieyuan for a loop. He focused on it further, wondering if he’d gotten it wrong—

SWORD.

And the other, subtler impressions he got from it only served to confirm it. Edge. Cutting. Piercing.

“Sword,” Jieyuan said, utterly baffled. Sword had picked him? Sword?

The others at least made some sense. Amphis and Spear because he’d used both weapons extensively. Fate, probably because of the Fatebloom Heart. Refining, because he’d spent a lot of time practicing it these last few months.

But Sword? He’d have expected just about anything before he got Sword. Jieyuan couldn’t think of a worse match for him.

He glanced back up at the Heavenly Vault. The Law constellations were still glowing, and he could indeed count five groups of lit-up silver dots. Which one was Sword, though, he had no idea.

He spent a while more staring up, but the Heavens gave him no answer. The presence of the Heavens against his mind revealed nothing, either.

Jieyuan looked back down at the five spheres. What was it Anren had said? The Heavens work in mysterious ways? He’d have to leave it at that, for now.

Now, his options. Jieyuan pondered them for a bit. Not individually, but the whole selection.

Sword aside, some of the more obvious matches for him were missing. No Fire. Or Pain. Or Authority, Absolute Will Command’s source Concept. Then again, those should be Concepts he had a much better match with. So if Anren was right, they would appear in later selections.

Jieyuan pursed his lips.

Two phases each stage, Anren had said. Concept pursuit, then a challenge. Both were supposedly deadly. Seven stages, so rinse and repeat those two phases seven times. The first stage was the easiest, got harder (deadlier) each time.

Concept pursuit was supposed to be easy enough. You did something related to a Concept while Communing with the Heavens. That made the Concept pay attention to you, and that caused your affinity with it to increase. So if he picked the amphis, pursuing the Concept of Amphis should involve using the amphis. It didn’t get any simpler than that.

“Except…” Jieyuan frowned. Anren had said the pursuit phase was also supposed to be dangerous.

He didn’t see how that could be the case. For the weapon Concepts, sure. But Refining? He couldn’t think how pursuing Refining (which would normally just involve refining things) could be made deadly.

Something else he wasn’t sure was how he was supposed to pursue some of these Concepts in the empty circular metal room. But the doors on the walls probably had something to do with it.

Jieyuan crossed his arms, thinking things through further. Concept pursuit wasn’t something he had much experience with. He hadn’t really had to bother with it yet.

Mostly, you pursued a Concept to get your affinity with it high enough to create or upgrade a realmskill. The only other situation that called for Concept pursuit was if you couldn’t get your hands on a heavenly hymn based on your alignment, but for some reason had one derived from another Concept; you’d then pursue the hymn’s Concept to get your affinity with it high enough to use the hymn.

None of that was the case for him. Absolute Will Command needed no upgrading since it was already at Violetsoul, he wasn’t in the market for another realm-skill yet, and he had Fire-based hymns. He also didn’t have any Orangesoul hymns at all—not based on Fire nor on another Concept.

Still, he knew the basics of how Concept pursuit worked. Which was more than he could say about this supposed challenge phase six days later.

“Pass or die,” Jieyuan said to himself. Those words just wouldn’t get out of his head. Granted, for good reason.

If he had examples of how this challenge phase worked, he’d be able to make a more informed choice. But all he really knew was that it could kill you (would kill you, mind you, if you didn’t pass) and that it had to do with the Concept you chose.

Given the context, odds were it would be about testing how much progress he’d made in pursuing the Concept he’d picked. But couldn’t they measure affinity for that? Unless the Tower’s Heavens didn’t work on an affinity system or something.

Six days also wasn’t nearly enough to make any sort of progress with Concept pursuit. It was supposed to take years of dedication to raise your affinity order with a Concept, even with a good pursuit method.

Jieyuan heaved a heavy sigh, pretty much exhaling pure regret. He really shouldn’t have indulged Anren back outside the tower and let her act all mysterious. He should have pressed, should have tried to get as many details out of her as he could about this next stage of the Absolute Sword Trial.

If he’d insisted, he had little doubt he could’ve gotten her to tell him more. They’d spent hours outside the Sword Tower, doing nothing, just waiting.

But hindsight was fool’s gold; pretty to look at, but ultimately worthless.

Guesswork it is, then. Jieyuan pushed could’ve-beens aside, made himself focus on the present.

Amphis, Spear, Fate, Refining, Sword.

Again, the weapon Concepts should be straightforward enough; their challenge would definitely involve fighting. He could work with that. Combat was what he was best at, really.

But Refining? Fate?

He glared at the two offending spheres. One a swirling rainbow of colors, the other red mixed with gold.

Refining aside, Jieyuan wasn’t sure how you could even pursue Fate, let alone make a challenge based on it. And back to Refining: he’d spent maybe half a year working on it. Sure, in the two months after his reunion with Meiyao he’d made plenty of progress; he’d even successfully refined a few pills on his own. But refining was hardly something he was good at yet.

They were out, then. Both Refining and Fate. Sword, too, for obvious reasons.

That left him with Amphis and Spear.

Jieyuan looked between the two spheres. If there was one upside to being in a black void, it was that it made concentrating on things very easy.

Amphis and Spear were his best choices, the ones he was most confident in pursuing and being tested on. So now he just had to pick the worst between them, the one he was least confident in. Assuming he was right, and the pursuit and challenge phases involved combat?

He barely had to think about it.

He narrowed his eyes at the black-and-yellow sphere.

AMPHIS, his senses told him.

In the last month, he’d gotten better at using the amphis. Way better. Compared to his current level of skill, the way he used to wield the amphis before was almost comical. Like a child flailing with a stick. Anren’s lessons had been nothing short of Heavens-sent.

But it had only been about a year since he’d first picked up the amphis, and it was just in the last month that he’d started using it properly. That was too little time.

The spear, on the other hand?

Jieyuan glanced at the mostly gray sphere tinged purple and red.

He’d been training with the spear since he was a kid, practically from the moment he could walk. At barely five years old, he used to have this kiddie wooden spear he’d swing around in the gardens, and it hadn’t taken his old man long to get him tutors. He’d dedicated almost all his life to the spear.

He might have given up on it, but that didn’t erase the years of practice, of both spilled sweat and blood.

Amphis or Spear. The choice was obvious.

The worst of the best.

He was better off saving Spear for later—for a harder stage.

“Amphis,” Jieyuan said, still focusing on the black-and-yellow sphere. He waited a bit, but nothing happened, so he gave it a tentative poke.

The moment his finger made contact with the Amphis sphere, the other ones vanished. Just winked out of existence. The Amphis sphere flashed, briefly lighting up. And then it disappeared too.

Except Jieyuan still felt its presence—inside him now. Nowhere specific, more like it had merged with him, diffused throughout his body.

And then he was back in the circular metal room. Just like that. One blink, he was in the void with the Tower’s Heavenly Vault; blink again, and he was standing next to Anren and Daojue, right where he’d been earlier. Everyone else was there, too, positions unchanged.

Looking at Anren and Daojue, he saw that they looked steady enough. Granted, it took a lot to shake Daojue, and it looked like Anren was used to this kind of thing, being a violetsoul and all.

Anren smirked, but just as she opened her mouth, she shut it, turning her attention to a spot in the center. Jieyuan followed her gaze.

The gray-haired man—the Sword Tower’s ego, apparently—was back again. Hovering in the air on the same spot as earlier, over the Absolute Sword Sect crowd.

“Enter the Heavenly Rooms,” the man (was he a man, a spirit, or something else entirely?) commanded.

If a sword could speak, Jieyuan imagined that it would sound just like the Tower’s ego. Its voice was cool, no-nonsense, as straight to the point as it got.

“You have six days to raise your affinity with your chosen Concept to first-order. Those that fail to do so shall be removed from the trialworld.”

The Tower ego vanished.

Those that fail to do so shall be removed from the trialworld.

Great. As if he didn’t already have enough problems already.

Also, raise your affinity to first-order? In six days? That didn’t make any sense.

About two-thirds of the cultivators there got moving all at the same time, heading toward the doors lining the walls. They didn’t hesitate, didn’t stop to consider which door to pick; just walked over to the nearest one, opened, and stepped inside. The doors seemed to close on their own behind them.

Jieyuan managed to catch a few glimpses from the opened doors; there were just empty black voids on the other side.

The remaining cultivators, on the other hand, bunched together, and soon the sound of low conversation filled the hall.

The Absolute Sword Sect disciples, whom Jieyuan was paying special attention to, belonged to the first category; they’d immediately gone for the rooms.

“So?” Anren asked. “How did it go?”

Turning to her, Jieyuan found she was looking at him expectantly.

“Amphis,” Jieyuan said.

Anren’s eyes lit up. “Nice! I went with Vibration. What about you, Daojue?”

“Crystal,” Daojue said.

“Oh?” Anren glanced at Gleaming End. So did Jieyuan. “Hmmm. That’s a good one, too.”

“On that topic,” Jieyuan cut in, lowering his voice a little. “I’ve got questions.”

“Stab away,” Anren said.

“What the ego said, raising your affinity to first-order—”

“Ah, yes, I got it.” Anren nodded. “So, remember how I told you earlier that the Tower has its own Heavens? You saw them just now, right?”

“Sure did.”

“In here, your affinity with every Concept is reduced to zero. You also have zeroth heavenly affinity,” Anren said. “That’s because, while you’re inside the Tower, its Heavens take precedence over the true Heavens. Now, you chose a Concept just now. Amphis, in your case. This means that throughout the entire first stage, the Amphis Laws will have their attention on you.”

“Wait, hold on,” Jieyuan cut in. “Zeroth affinity—”

“I’m getting to that,” Anren glared at him “Anyway, you don’t need to Commune with it; the Concept’s attention is always on you while you hold its sphere. Communing with other Concepts doesn’t work; that’s because Communing calls the true Heavens’ attention to you, not the Tower’s Heavens. And right now, the true Heavens don’t matter.”

She pointed to the door closest to them. “When you enter one of the Heavenly Rooms, you’ll find the perfect place to pursue the Concept you chose. You can go as high as you want; there are infinite difficulty levels. Changing the difficulty is intuitive, you’ll understand once you’re inside, don’t worry. What’s important is that the difficulty you choose determines your affinity with the Tower’s Heavens as a whole. Your heavenly affinity.”

Jieyuan’s heart nearly stopped. He stared at Anren, wide-eyed. “You mean…”

“First difficulty, first-order heavenly affinity. Second difficulty, second-order heavenly affinity. And so on.”

Anren smirked at his expression, which was probably dumbfounded.

“You can also check on the Concept whenever you want to tell your current affinity with it and how far you are from the next order,” she said. “You also intuitively understand what you must do for training when you enter the room; the Concept whispers it to you.”

“Let’s get back to the whole adjustable heavenly affinity business,” Jieyuan said, tightly. It took all his effort to keep himself from grabbing Anren’s shoulders and shaking her. His mouth felt dry. Because if he was right… “You said I can go as high as I want?”

“Yes,” Anren said. “But the pursuit methods here—they’re really effective. They’re far better at raising affinity than anything in the outside world. But they’re also all, without exception, dangerous. They all carry the risk of killing you, and the higher the difficulty, the deadlier it is.”

“So I can’t go too high,” Jieyuan said.

“Exactly. But you also can’t go too low—because you need your affinity to your chosen Concept to a specific order. First-order for the first stage, second-order for the second-stage, and so on. If you fail that, you can’t even take the challenge. The Tower ego will snap your token before the challenge phase.”

Jieyuan had about a thousand questions right now. “And this snapping of the token…”

“It’ll kill you. But you’re welcome to break your token first, if you’d like to spare yourself the unpleasantness.”

“Ah.” Jieyuan licked his lips. Why wasn’t he surprised? To the next question, then. “Do the pursuit phase of all stages last six days?”

There was something else he wanted to ask—something he desperately wanted to ask, the question burning on his tongue—but he couldn’t bring himself to ask it yet. He was still working up to it.Because it would change everything.

“That’s right.”

“So at the seventh stage, I have six days to get my affinity with a Concept from zero to seventh-order?”

He hadn’t even known seventh-order was a thing; he’d thought sixth-order was as high as it went. One order per realm, that was how he thought it worked.

“Correct,” Anren said. “See, pretty much everybody here already has the calculations worked out. It’s common knowledge the level of difficulty you need to choose at each stage to get to the required affinity in time. But I’ll go over that later; I haven’t gotten to the real stabber yet. The reason why the Sword Tower is so special.”

Jieyuan had a feeling he knew what it was, but he didn’t really dare believe it.

Come on, come on, come on.

“Whatever affinities you manage to get here, with the Tower’s Heavens?” Anren said. “You keep it, afterwards, if they’re higher than your true affinities. They carry over to the true Heavens.”

Jieyuan took a deep breath. Cold air flooded his lungs, but it did nothing to quench the furious flames erupting inside him. His blood surged and boiled. He gritted his teeth so hard they nearly cracked. He felt a wet warmth pooling in his clenched hand; blood, from where his nails had dug into his palm.

This was it.

What he’d been searching for since the moment he’d become a cultivator.

A way to surpass the limits of his fourth-order heavenly affinity, that would leave him stalled at Greensoul.

A way to make it to Violetsoul.

“Jieyuan?” Anren frowned, leaned closer. “What’s wrong?”

Jieyuan shook himself out of it, took a deep breath, and forced himself back under control. It wasn’t easy. Something he had thought was centuries away was now right around the corner—within reach.

But that also meant it was more important than ever that he focus. It wasn’t just his survival at stake now; his dreams were also on the line.

He didn’t even need seventh-order; if he raised his affinity with any Concept to sixth-order, he only needed to find Bluesoul and Violetsoul heavenly hymns based on it, and he’d be set.

“It’s nothing,” Jieyuan said, his voice carefully steady. “I was just surprised; I didn’t think something like this was possible. That you could change your affinities this way.”

Daojue, he noticed, was also shaken (or at least as shocked as Daojue could be), if the tense, narrow-eyed look he was giving Anren was any indication.

Could it be that Daojue had also been searching for a way to Violetsoul?

Jieyuan wasn’t sure. He’d never been all that convinced that Daojue’s heavenly affinity was really just fourth-order, even with all the evidence pointing to it. The way he saw it, if there was someone born to be the best, it was Daojue. He just couldn’t see Daojue stuck at Greensoul. No way. If the world was a puzzle, Daojue would only fit at the very top.

“Oh, right,” Anren said. “As far as I know, the Absolute Sword Trial is the only way you can do that. Even the Heavenly Order Sect doesn’t have anything like that.”

Normally Jieyuan would’ve taken this chance to ask more about the Heavenly Order Sect; Anren had mentioned it in passing a few times before. Jieyuan got the impression it was supposed to be on the level of the Absolute Sword Sect, if not even higher. But he had other priorities right now.

“Anyway, you said seven stages, each with two phases: a pursuit phase and a challenge phase. What else do I need to know?”

More people started to leave for the rooms; fewer than a hundred remained in the Heavenly Hall now. The doors they chose turned a darker shade of gray, and the handle disappeared. One person per Heavenly Room, then.

Jieyuan knew that every single second spent here and not in one of the rooms, raising his affinity, was a second wasted. An almost physical itch urged him to rush to the nearest room and get stated.

But information was power—and clearly, everyone else here already knew exactly what to do and how it all worked. All except him and Daojue.

They needed to learn more. Competing against Violetsouls was bad enough; they didn’t need any more disadvantages on top of that.

“Hmmm.” Anren looked thoughtful. “Let’s see. The most important thing is affinity calculations. See, the first difficulty only gets you first-order heavenly affinity; in the pursuit phase you can pursue Concepts much faster than in the outside world, but that’s still nowhere near enough, not even for the first stage.”

“So I need to start higher? Third? Fourth?”

“Eighth,” Anren said.

Jieyuan stared at her; she shrugged.

“Everyone here is the best that the Absolute Sword Region has to offer,” Anren said. “The trial isn’t about to coddle anyone. The math’s straightforward. Assuming you train nonstop, it takes ten days to raise your affinity with a Concept by one order at seventh difficulty. At eighth difficulty, five days. And then two and a half days at ninth difficulty…”

“One and a quarter days at tenth difficulty, and about fifteen hours at eleventh difficulty?” Jieyuan cut in. “Half as much every difficulty level higher?”

“See? Straightforward.”

“You said I need to reach first-order affinity for the first stage, second-order for the second stage, and so on. Right?”

Anren gave a nod.

“So…” Jieyuan ran the numbers in his head. “For the first stage, eighth difficulty; second stage, ninth difficulty; third stage, tenth difficulty. Fourth stage… also tenth difficulty? Yes—at tenth difficulty you can nearly reach fifth-order in six days. And for the fifth, sixth, and seventh stages, eleventh difficulty should do. At fifteen hours per order, that’s almost ten orders in six days.”

“Exactly,” Anren said. “In all stages, you have a little bit of breathing room. That’s intentional. You don’t have to spend all your time at those difficulties, just most of it; you’re supposed to work your way up to it. I told you earlier that even the pursuit phase was deadly; that wasn’t a lie.”

She gave him a stern look that made it clear this was serious. “Start at first difficulty and work your way up. Otherwise chances are you’ll die on the spot. The fourth, seventh, and eleventh difficulty are also markedly harder, so that’s something else to bear in mind.”

“Got it,” Jieyuan said. That was indeed the kind of information he needed. “And seventh-order’s the maximum?”

“It is,” Anren said. “You can’t raise your affinity past that here. So don’t bother going above eleventh difficulty; most challengers can’t even survive eleventh difficulty, and I don’t think anyone’s lasted more than a few seconds at twelfth difficulty.”

Here, Jieyuan noticed. That implied it was possible to go above seventh-order elsewhere. He’d already been surprised that sixth-order wasn’t the limit, that seventh-order was a thing, but it looked like you could go even higher than that. Just how much about cultivation did he still not know?

But something else she said was more important right now. “Most can’t handle eleventh difficulty? How many make it through all seven stages, usually?”

“Hmmm. Usually, one. Sometimes, two or three. There have also been trials nobody has passed the seventh stage. The record’s seven, funnily enough. If multiple challengers pass the seventh stage, then the Tower picks the winner from among them; if nobody does, then there’s no winner.”

Jieyuan kept his expression carefully neutral.

Usually, one. He and Daojue needed to pass all seven stages, too; failure meant death, and they didn’t have a death-cheating trial token like everybody else. So they needed to be better than the best Violetsouls of the current generation.

Those were some rotten odds. Some really— No. He cut off the thought. That line of thought led nowhere.

“All right,” Jieyuan said. “What else should I know?”

“A couple of things,” Anren said. “During the pursuit phase, you can leave your room at any time and as many times as you want. And when you leave, all injuries you suffered are instantaneously healed; this applies both during the training and after the trial phase. So, while training, if you’re maimed, you can just step out of the room for a moment, fully regenerate, and then head back inside.”

More and more cultivators were leaving the Heavenly Hall; besides him, Anren, and Daojue, fewer than a dozen remained. They got a few glances sent their way, but he and Anren were speaking too quietly to be heard.

“To leave, all you need to do is tell your chosen Concept that you want out; again, you’ll know how to do that once you’re inside,” Anren continued. “The pursuit phase is still dangerous, however. You can be killed instantly, incapacitated, or injured so badly your token breaks.”

“Good to know.” Really good to know, in fact. Getting all these details from Anren was paying hefty dividends. This kind of information could literally save his life. “Anything else?”

“Interpretation,” Anren said. “You know how, when pursuing a Concept, you need to focus on what your actions have to do with it? How they relate? That has to do with how you interpret the Concept.”

Jieyuan hadn’t, in fact, known that. He really hadn’t looked that much into Concept pursuit.

“You’re a Firesoul, so let’s take Fire, for instance,” Anren said. “It can be destruction, regeneration, renewal, all sorts of things. What’s important is that your specific interpretation has a say in what your challenge is like later. Not always, and to varying extents, but it’s something to watch out for. You can influence what kind of challenge you get.”

Anren tapped her lips, brow furrowed, then nodded. “I think that’s about it— Wait. There’s something else. Soulskills. You might get one. During the pursuit phase, you might be given some temporary ability or power to properly pursue the Concept. If that happens, and you pass the challenge later, it becomes permanent—including outside the tower.”

That sounded too good to be true. “Permanent? Outside the tower? Soulskills?”

“Yes. They’re anchored to your soul, so they’re soulskills, technically—like aura-lashing and chromal sustenance. Now, they aren’t usually anything major, but they tend to be useful, kind of like bloodskills. Soulskill granting is another special aspect of the Absolute Sword Trial; you can’t get new soulskills in any other place that I know of.”

“That’s…” Jieyuan didn’t have the words for it.

The Absolute Sword Trial was a death trap for him and Daojue—but it was also the greatest opportunity Jieyuan had ever been given. All at once, things were looking up so quickly he began to wonder what the catch was.

“Mind you,” Anren said, “getting soulskills here is fairly rare; it depends on how much of a shine the Concepts here take to you. Most challengers who make it through all seven stages come out of the trial with at least one new soulskill, but even that’s not guaranteed. So don’t get your hopes up too high.”

“Too late for that,” Jieyuan said. These special soulskills weren’t bloodskills, but they seemed like the next best thing.

Anren shot him a sour look; he laughed a little. She really was easy to be around.

“That’s all, then?” he asked.

“Just about,” Anren said. “What else? Oh, right. Obviously, it’s a good idea to pick Concepts that are normally hard to pursue—you know, esoteric ones, like Time, Space, and Darkness. And you’ve probably figured this out already, but if you get selected by Pain, Death, or Space later? Don’t think twice. Pick them.”

Jieyuan tried to work out what was so special about those three Concepts, but this seemed like yet another piece of Violetsoul common knowledge that hadn’t made its way all the way to the lowly redsouls.

This time, though, Jieyuan decided not to play along. He needed to know as much as he could. Anren was already giving him an odd look, anyway; she must have read his confusion in his expression.

“Pain and Death?” Jieyuan asked. “Why?”

“You don’t— Deathwilling? Planesrending? Soulburning?” Anren’s eyes were wide. “You don’t know. You actually don’t know. That’s… All right, this is getting ridiculous. Did your master pick you up from a Redsoul sect or something? And did he teach you jack all afterward?”

Well, if she was giving him a way out… Jieyuan put on a rather embarrassed look. He didn’t even need to fake it. “You aren’t quite off the mark.”

“Unbelievable. But that explains so much.” She shook her head; she still looked utterly incredulous. “Hmmm. No. We’ve already wasted too much time. For now, just know that you should pick them if you get the chance later. If that happens, I’ll explain it properly. Specially Space; it’s normally near-impossible to raise your affinity with it. Death and Pain are far easier to pursue in the outside world.”

“It’s a deal,” Jieyuan said.

He wanted to know more, but he was in a hurry to get started. There was a lot on the line.

Too much, even.

He turned around to face the nearest door, just a couple steps away. No one had entered it; it remained a lighter, steely gray, the handle still in place.

Only Jieyuan, Anren, and Daojue remained in the Heavenly Hall now. About half the doors lining the walls were darkened.

“Just head inside?” he asked, glancing back at Anren.

“That’s right.”

She made her way over to the door to the left of his, also unoccupied. Daojue went over to the door on the right.

“Best of luck,” she said, opening her door.

Jieyuan saw nothing on the other side, just blackness. A void.

Without another word, Anren drew her sword and stepped inside. The door closed behind her, darkened and handle-less.

Jieyuan glanced at Daojue. Daojue looked back at him.

“See you in a while,” Jieyuan said.

Then he opened the door, drew the Shifting Feathers, and crossed into the darkness beyond.

—∞—

The change was instantaneous. Like when the metal rooms of the Heavenly Room had given way to the Tower’s Heavens and the void. Except this time, it went in the other direction—the void transformed into a room.

Or rather, into an arena.

Shifting Feathers in hand, ready for a fight, Jieyuan cast his eyes about the place, looking for threats. But he didn’t find any.

The arena was mostly stone. It was big, easily several hundred yards across. Probably about the size of the Viridian Cradle—a comparison that didn’t bode well.

Unlike the Cradle, though, the arena didn’t have sloping stands; the pit took up all the ground level. It also wasn’t circular like the Cradle; instead, it was octagonal, with eight broad sides.

The walls reached high into the air. They were inscribed with faint, coiling patterns, reminiscent of scales. Far above, Jieyuan saw the same flat, featureless gray sky as the trialworld outside the Sword Tower.

On each of the eight walls was a massive snake head, also made from stone, overlooking the arena, each of them well over ten times his size. Their massive mouths were open, pillar-like fangs bared.

Snakes. Golden.

Jieyuan had never had much of an opinion on snakes—until the Viridian Dome. That had changed his mind on the slithering, limbless critters, and not for the better.

One of the impressions he’d gotten from the Amphis Concept was Serpent. It seemed like he hadn’t read that wrong, after all.

And speaking of the Concept… Jieyuan could feel something. Something inside him, in his mind. A presence, or maybe a connection. It felt much like his bond with Huaxin. It hadn’t been there before, in the Heavenly Hall; it had only appeared after he stepped into the room-turned-arena.

He looked around again. Nothing moved. He was completely alone. He figured he had to be the one to start things off.

“Let’s see,” Jieyuan murmured. He sent his focus inward, feeling out the presence in his mind.

Information flashed in his mind. A surge of it, taken and assimilated in an instant, much like Huaxin’s messages. No words to it, just pure impressions and ideas.

It was just like Anren had said; he knew exactly what to do. How to change the difficulty, how to leave the trial, what he was supposed to do.

Jieyuan got himself into a stance, braced himself. Then, reaching for the Amphis Concept again, he sent: First difficulty