The passage leading deeper into Kang Zhu’s lair sloped sharply downward. At least the roof of the tunnel was high enough that they didn’t need to stoop, owing to its need to accommodate Kang Zhu’s size. Each step brought them closer to the source of the unaspected qi, and into a denser soup of the same. It was hardly any Kang Zhu had grown so strong with a cave like this to cultivate in.

  When they emerged into the lair proper, Yan Shirong let out a low whistle. A pillar of raw spirit stone dominated the center of the chamber, casting a soft pale light over the rest of the space. A cooking area sat near one wall where a fissure ran from the floor to the cavern ceiling. He Yu could feel the shifting air currents with his sensitivity to wind qi coming from the natural chimney. The banked coals gave off meager heat and light. Nearby, a stack of kindling and firewood promised enough fuel for at least several days’ worth of use.

  Opposite the cooking space was a makeshift sleeping area. Brush and leaves and boughs from the mountains fragrant pines made a bed large enough for all four of them to share, if they’d the thick hide of an awakened spirit boar. The lair’s real prize—aside from the pillar of spirit stone—was the pile of loot stacked against the wall furthest from the entrance.

  They set about to sifting through the pile. There were a few weapons scattered about, but nothing worth their notice. They set them aside anyway, as they’d at least fetch a handful of stones once they made it back to Jade Mountain Citadel. The stacks of pills and elixirs were another matter entirely.

  Yan Shirong set about to identifying the most potent ones, judging by the powerful medicinal energy they gave off. A stack of paper talismans, tucked off to one side and seemingly forgotten drew Chen Fei’s interest. As she set about to pouring over the formation characters written on them, Li Heng joined He Yu near the central pillar of spirit stone.

  “Well, no tiger-headed sabers,” he said, the note of relief in his voice unmistakable.

  “Did you really think we’d find something like that?” He Yu asked.

  “No, but you can never know. It’s been so long, and we didn’t exactly part on a sweet note.”

  He Yu arched an eyebrow, but said nothing. Although a decade and a half had passed, he and Li Heng had quickly fallen into their old habits, once reunited. The door was open, and all Li Heng had to do was walk through it.

  “I wanted her to stay with me in the Western Passage,” he began. “I may have been a bit more insistent than was entirely appropriate. She didn’t agree.”

  “I don’t think she’d hold it against you.”

  Li Heng settled into a cultivation position next to the pillar. “Maybe. She was awfully angry. Especially when I refused to come with her. We both said basically the same thing to one another. We had our duties to our families, and that was the most important thing.”

  “The weight of nobility,” He Yu said, joining his friend on the ground.

  “Well, we’re free from it now, I guess.”

  Wasn’t that the truth. They’d all but abandoned the empire, with Yan Shirong forsaking his place in the Ministry of Information and Li Heng doing the same to the Western Passage. It seemed like the sort of thing He Yu should have had a problem with, but he didn’t. Li Renshu had been correct—there was no way they’d ever grow strong enough to truly challenge Jin Xifeng had they stayed.

  Wang Xiaobo and Xin Lu wouldn’t give He Yu the space to grow strong if he stayed where they could reach him. He suspected they wouldn’t give Li Heng the space either, especially if Li Heng left Iron Gate City and the protection of General Li Bao. Besides those two, there was Jin Xifeng herself.

  The connection that he somehow shared with her via the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace would lead her to him. He couldn’t have said why exactly leaving the empire would be enough, though. Perhaps the answer lay in Jin Xifeng’s own arts? Li Renshu said that she practiced arts as ancient as his own. Arts that He Yu barely understood.

  If there was one safe bet about the connection, it was that whatever Elder Cai had done likely only reinforced that connection. And as Hu Yu further explored his art and accessed ever greater portions of Elder Cai’s inheritance, he’d no doubt be drawn ever closer to facing Jin Xifeng.

  Once Yan Shirong finished up with the medicines, he joined the rest of them around the pillar. They decided to spend the night in Kang Zhu’s lair. The great boar had been here at the bridge for some time, it seemed. If the quantity and variety of elixirs were any evidence. Yan Shirong had identified several pills suitable for each of them. Between the spirit stone pillar and the medicine, they would be in peak condition by morning.

  For the next several weeks, they climbed ever higher into the Jade Mountains. If He Yu had thought their encounter with Kang Zhu would be the last of its kind, he quickly realized how incorrect that assumption was. Upon emerging from Kang Zhu’s lair, they were immediately set upon by the same sort of carrion birds they’d seen on their first day in the mountains.

  This flock was smaller than the one they’d seen in the lower reaches, but significantly stronger. The ensuing battle was brief—the birds, it seemed, were only looking for an easy snack after feasting on what they’d left behind of Kang Zhu. Once it became obvious He Yu and the others could put a significant fight, the largest of the birds called out to the others and they all took to the wing.

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  Whether the flock would follow them was a moot point, they decided. There was little they could do about it, as He Yu was the only one of their number capable of actual flight. The birds were too great in number and too high in advancement for him to deal with them all by himself. Following them would be pointless, and the birds seemed content not to bother them.

  They crossed the ravine, then spent another full day climbing before they suffered another attack. This time, it was a pack of stone monkeys. All were at least the late Fourth Realm, with nearly half their number in the early Fifth Realm. The pack leader was equal to a middle Nascent Soul in advancement, judging by the density of its qi. Despite being poor fighters on their own, the stone monkeys were smart and coordinated. They used tactics more advanced than lesser beasts employed, attacking as a group and fading away when one cultivator turned their full attention to any of the small squads they’d organized themselves into.

  A pair of snow leopards provided some measure of relief with their arrival. The fight turned into an all-out brawl when the two early Fifth Realm leopards leaped from the tree line. The attack took enough pressure off He Yu and the others that they could make their escape. He saw little point in wasting time fighting the monkeys, even if they’d overpower them eventually.

  Their journey fell into a frustratingly predictable pattern as they climbed higher. They’d run across a spirit or a beast of some sort. Either a foe that blocked their way as Kang Zhu had, or an aggressive specimen that simply attacked with little warning. They would fight, emerge victorious, then harvest their spoils.

  At least both Chen Fei and Yan Shirong were by now half a step into the Fifth Realm. Between the constant battling all of them were subject to, the abundant natural qi, and the unending flow of beast and spirit cores, it was little wonder. The only they needed now was a place to break through, and the time to do so. Advancing to these higher realms could take weeks, at a minimum. The powerful confluence of qi that such an advancement produced would be certain to attract even more attention.

  “It wouldn’t be difficult to carve out a cave,” He Yu said one night after they’d stopped to cultivate.

  “I could even put a formation at the entrance. It would make it easier to fight off anything that tried to bother us,” Chen Fei offered.

  “We need to keep searching,” Li Heng insisted.

  This wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument. He Yu wanted to stop and give Chen Fei and Yan Shirong the opportunity to advance. If all four of them were at Nascent Soul, it would make the going that much easier. Both of them said they were ready, and they’d plenty of elixirs and cores to aid in the breakthrough. Yan Shirong had gotten quite good as a refiner in the time they’d been up here, and they still had the resources they’d looted from Kang Zhu.

  Li Heng wanted to find the mysterious cultivator they’d come up here to chase after. He remained convinced the rumor had spoken of Tan Xiaoling. Although they had found no traces of any other humans outside the rare village—let alone a cultivator that could be a match for the rumors—he insisted they keep looking.

  He Yu said their search would go faster if all four of them were at the same level.

  Li Heng said they couldn’t afford to wait any longer.

  Chen Fei and Yan Shirong stayed out of it. Since neither of them were willing to break the stalemate, He Yu begrudgingly deferred to Li Heng’s preferences. He saw little benefit in letting a simple disagreement spiral into something larger. If neither Chen Fei nor Yan Shirong were going to weigh in, he wasn’t going to press.

  At least he took a bit of solace in the fact that Chen Fei felt the same as he did. She brimmed with energy, and her presence had grown incredibly more potent in the short time since they’d entered the Jade Mountains. He couldn’t imagine how frustrating it must be to hold back an advancement like this. But she was almost as eager as Li Heng to find Tan Xiaoling. The only solace was the knowledge that by delaying, both Chen Fei and Yan Shirong would increase the quality of their eventual breakthrough.

  While they searched, the ground grew hard and the air grew cold with the turning of autumn to winter. Soon after, the snows came, creeping ever further down the peaks. Rain turned to sleet, then to snow, and each new storm dumped more snow on the peaks and the slopes. Through the winter storms, they searched. When a particularly bad storm hit the mountain, Li Heng relented.

  They couldn’t see more than an arm’s length in front of them, and even Li Heng and He Yu had to cycle their cultivation to keep pressing on. With Chen Fei’s help, He Yu built a makeshift windbreak. Yan Shirong divined the location of a cave, and they hunkered down. Yan Shirong advanced first. With the extra boost from the set of elixirs Li Renshu had given him, it only took six weeks. Thankfully, the storm obscured the power released in his advancement.

  Chen Fei took longer. The storm passed soon after she began, but with three Nascent Soul cultivators guarding the cave, those few spirits that came too close were little threat. After two months, the worst of winter passed and Chen Fei emerged from the cave and into the Fifth Realm. With spring finally approaching and all of them at Nascent Soul, they renewed their search.

  For another month, they struggled against spirit, beast, and nature itself. Yan Shirong was the first to suggest they head back to Jade Mountain Citadel. Li Heng had nearly gone to blows over the suggestion. As much as he hated to admit it, Yan Shirong’s idea had merit. They could gather more information, at the very least. Narrow down their search, and likely have more success. They’d just been wandering aimlessly around the mountains, fighting anything that got too close. They hadn’t left with much of a plan, and they hadn’t formed one in the time since.

  Spring continued to warm and summer drew closer. He Yu gave ever more of his own attention to openly siding with Yan Shirong on the question. Then he sensed it. The Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment was the best perception technique they had among them, and it was that technique that alerted He Yu to a flash of metal and dark flame. It was as brief as it was distant, but it was unmistakably familiar.

  He told the others. Li Heng, who was practically beside himself with worry, raced off in the direction He Yu had pointed them. The rest followed. They crossed the peak and made their way through a high mountain pass. Finally, a broad alpine valley opened up below.

  The feeling was unmistakable. Razor sharp metal, dark flame, and the sword-glint danger of refined killing intent. Through his perception technique, He Yu could even see the storm of metal qi distantly on the valley floor below, as it tore apart a cluster of trees.

  “That’s her!” Li Heng shouted, flashing down the slope.

  He Yu followed, grimly noting that she wasn’t alone. A second presence was there, too, and it was the stronger.

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