6.8 - Under the Eternal Sky

It took them another two days to descend. Although the battle with Qingzhao had frightened away most of the spirits and beasts on the south slopes of the mountain, they’d needed a full week to recuperate after, and the north slopes had suffered far less than the side the battle had occurred on.

Much like on the way up, the dangers present in the Mountains of Heaven revealed themselves. Spirits and beasts pestered them frequently, although with less apparent organization than on the way up. Qingzhao had likely acted as some authority figure for the denizens of the area. Given what he’d said about trespassing and warnings, many of the attacks had likely come at the serpent’s direction. Chen Fei mentioned that deep in the remote wilderness, such arrangements weren’t uncommon, with spirits and beasts forming hierarchies based on individual, or sometimes group, strength. Much in the same way human societies did. The order of heaven touched everything under it, after all.

The frequent battles and the glut of resources made He Yu glad for his greatly expanded storage treasure. Although they’d taken to using cores they could easily cycle rather than hanging on to them, they were filling their treasures faster than they could deplete them. If their journey onto the steppe was beset by conflict as frequently as the mountains, they’d quickly run out of space.

Chen Fei assured him that wouldn’t be the case. The steppe, she claimed, was mostly devoid of powerful spirits and beasts. At least compared to the Mountains of Heaven. Sure, powerful creatures roamed there, but they’d be few and far between. Smaller beasts and the occasional spirit might give in to curiosity, but they’d mostly be left alone.

As they made their way ever lower on the mountains, He Yu easily saw her point. There was an emptiness to the steppe that he could sense even from here. A vastness that he almost couldn’t truly grasp. His entire life until this point had been spent in forests and mountains. Even when traveling through the lowlands of the Shrouded Peaks Sect’s territory, a stand of trees or a mountain peak always broke the horizon. The fields and paddies had people working them. Roads cut through the countryside, dotted by formation stones and other markers of civilization, of people.

None of that existed here. Below and beyond stretched the same and the same, a majestic expanse of… not nothing. It wasn’t nothing. But it lacked so much of what he was used to. It was eerie and unfamiliar. Empty, yet somehow containing what felt like limitless potential. As they drew ever closer, He Yu shared his thoughts with Chen Fei.

“It’s quite something, isn’t it?” she agreed with a smile. “I’ve never encountered anything quite like it. Even the White Desert, just as open, just as vast, doesn’t quite match the steppe.”

As much as he’d marveled at what lay before them on the way down, when He Yu finally set his feet on the flat earth at the base of the mountains, it was like placing himself firmly in another world. Before him, the land reached to eternity. There were mountains, like the range behind them. They tugged at the distant edges of his perception. The vast plain had features—he could pick them out easily enough now that he was level. Rolling hills, a sea of brown, hardy grass. Wind raced over the land, and the sky above went on forever. It seemed larger here than anywhere else he’d been, as if its eternal embrace was somehow more than he was accustomed to.

He Yu turned to the north, casting the Peerless Judgment far into the distance. There, he saw what he’d come here for. A thunderstorm raged, as it had for a thousand thousand years. Unending. Unrelenting. At its center lay a confluence of qi more potent and ancient that He Yu had ever felt. An awareness stirred. It perceived him, and it waited.

He turned to Chen Fei, about to speak and tell her what he’d sensed. She stood with her hands clasped at her waist, braid tugged by the wind as she faced east. Toward a far off range of mountains beyond the horizon. Without asking, he knew where she looked. He took his place next to her.

“I’ll have to go back eventually,” she said. Her voice was quiet. Small. There was a weight to her words that she’d only ever hinted at before. A part of her that she’d carried for nearly forty years at this point. As she’d climbed the realms of cultivation, struggled against the heavens, and reached out to form her Way. A part she’d never let go, and never truly faced in spite of all her strength.

With a word, he could turn her north. She would do it. Not only for him, but to avoid the inevitable. To push this down the path for yet another day, year, or lifetime. She wouldn’t even argue; she’d probably even thank him, if only in her thoughts.

He Yu turned to the far-off mountains. “It won’t take us long to get there,” he said.

She turned. “We came here so you could get past your bottleneck.”

“We came for the both of us.”

They stood on the flat earth under the eternal sky for a long time. Eventually, Chen Fei spoke.

“I abandoned them. I ran.”

He Yu lifted into the air, the Sky Dragon’s Flight tugging at his robes as he floated on currents of wind. “You can tell me about it on the way.”

A bronze disc appeared before her. She stepped onto it and gave him a smile. It looked only a little forced. “We’ll have plenty of time.”

Together, they set off. He Yu carried by his technique, and Chen Fei sitting atop her disc in a cultivation position. They appeared as immortal in each their own way. As they flew, He Yu commanded the winds so they could speak.

Much like he’d suspected after joining her in Sun Lei’s sealed realm, Chen Fei’s village had come under attack from raiders. Nomads from the steppe that had ventured into the mountains in search of supplies and slaves. It hadn’t been the utter disaster that He Yu had expected, though. Quite the opposite, in fact. The village had fended off the raid, largely because of the techniques that Chen Fei’s people practiced, like her own Seventy-Two Blessed Symbols. The problem had come from Chen Fei’s part in the defense.

She’d already reached Foundation and was considered capable enough to take part in the defense. Her role, along with the other young adults at her advancement, had been to act as support. Calling formations to aid and defend the stronger fighters at the front lines. When the fighting was joined, she’d given over to her fear. She couldn’t even bring herself to summon the simplest of barriers, and instead she’d run. Off into the forested slopes. For three days she’d hid, and only come out when her father finally tracked her down.

Even though her parents were understanding, the more she saw the wounded villagers and the damaged buildings—even as her village rebuilt from the failed raid—the weight of her shame only grew. A week later, she left.

Her parents had begged her to stay. They told her it was normal. That others had done the same in their first fight. That despite it all, the village endured and repulsed the raid. She wouldn’t hear it.

Her mother gifted her a pendant, a minor treasure scripted with formations and meant to ward off spirits. Her father had given her a staff, inscribed with a script that would augment her barriers and create light to guide her through the darkness. Both the items He Yu had noticed when they’d first met. She left her village behind, determined to find the strength to fight, so one day she might return.

For weeks she wandered the mountains. She hid from every spirit and beast. When confronted with a group of bandits, she’d thrown down some spirit stones and ran while they fought over a pittance of loot. Eventually, she made it to the other side, crossing into the empire proper.

Although she was an empire citizen, who spoke the imperial tongue and carried an imperial name, she was treated as a barbarian from the steppe. She certainly looked like one. Her clothes resembled the nomads more than those of the imperial citizens, and her features were decidedly those of the nomads, rather than the settled folk of the interior. For months she wandered and begged, faced with judgment and insults wherever she went. It only caused her shame to grow.

She wandered further south. Eventually she met a wandering expert who gave her a jade badge. The badge that led her to the Shrouded Peaks, and granted her entry into the sect. Later, she came to suspect it was Ren Huang in disguise. When she arrived, she’d tried to make it up the path on her own, but had turned when she sensed the spirits in the mist. Then she’d waited at the inn, asking anyone she could muster up the courage to speak to if she could join them on their way up. Until she met He Yu. During their journey east, He Yu listened as Chen Fei spoke. Between what he’d seen of her trial in Sun Lei’s sealed realm, and the way she’d jumped to protect anyone she could during their time at the sect, so much of the why and who of the person she’d become fell into place.

“I understand, in a way,” He Yu said. “The unknown always holds possibility. It could be better than you imagine, but it could also be worse.” It reminded him of how he’d felt those fifteen years after the fall of the sect. When he’d questioned whether his friends who’d left still cared, would want him to return, or accepted him if he did. At least he didn’t have the weight of failure and guilt to add to it.

“I’d figured,” she said. “I don’t know why it’s so hard though.”

“Wouldn’t have been a problem if it had been easy.”

The ground raced by beneath them. The brown grass and the rolling hills becoming a blur as the mountains to the east first broke the horizon, then climbed ever higher. As they drew closer to the mountains, Chen Fei pointed out a peak that rose above all the surrounding summits.

“That’s where we're headed. Just to the north, there’s a valley. That’s where we’ll find my village.”

At the rate they could move with their Soul Refining technique and treasure, it only took a day to reach the mountains. The Northern Reaches would have been an extension of the same range that was home to the Shrouded Peaks far to the south. Broken only by the broad valley where Li Heng made his home, the Western Passage. This far north, they were a different sort of mountain range altogether.

They reminded He Yu more of the Mountains of Heaven, just far less dangerous. Most of the animals he ran across had no cultivation to speak of. Those that had been awakened were typically no more advanced than Body Refining. After spending so long in the Jade Mountains, it was an odd feeling to be in a location with so little ambient qi. To be in a place where anything with spiritual sense fled long before He Yu could draw close.

Given how low everything’s advancement was here, He Yu and Chen Fei kept their spirits well restrained as they climbed the mountains. Even though this meant He Yu couldn’t fly, they both still had endurance far beyond that of any mortal. They hiked at a brisk pace, going for days at a time without any need for rest or food. At length, they came to the valley Chen Fei had described.

As they crested the lip of the isolated valley between the tall peak and its closest neighbor, He Yu’s heart sank. The valley below was mostly devoid of qi—even in a place with as little qi as the area around Shulin, the presence of a settlement, and the formations to protect it, would have gathered enough for an expert of his realm to detect.

Although he could make out buildings between the trees on the valley floor, the forest was too close, and the canopy too thick. Not to mention the absence of smoke from cooking fires, or the sounds of village life. He Yu checked with the Peerless Judgment, anyway.

Chen Fei spoke from beside him, asking the question he’d hoped she wouldn’t. “Where are they?”

For whatever reason, in the past forty years, her village had been abandoned.