Carried by the Sky Dragon’s Flight, He Yu shot toward the sunset. The Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering sent trailing sparks of heaven qi into the vortex of wind trailing in his wake. Xin Lu followed.

  The flat plains of the former sect lands raced by below. What were once farms, fields, and villages now gave way to spirits and bandits both. Absent the watchful eye of the Shrouded Peaks Sect, the land had become wild and lawless. Xin Lu, governor or no, had been lax in his duty, it seemed.

  He Yu couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. Not now. Whatever authority over the sect’s former territory, Xin Lu had been given, and for what purpose, he could find the answers later. Right now, He Yu had to escape.

  As he drew closer to the Shrouded Peaks themselves, Xin Lu fell further behind. Over the hours of his attempted escape, He Yu had learned well enough that Xin Lu could keep pace easily enough, but couldn’t catch up completely. Whatever treasure or technique he had, it only gave him enough speed to keep pace in bursts.

  Not that it mattered, really. He Yu didn’t have enough left. The ocean of qi at his core was all but empty, and his meridians ached with the strain of a battle that had lasted three full days. Xin Lu didn’t need to be faster—he just needed to be fast enough to keep He Yu within the furthest edge of his qi sense. They both knew who would run out of qi first.

  He Yu touched down at the edge of Xu Xiang, the old sect town. He stumbled forward, carried by the momentum of his movement technique. From within his storage treasure, he summoned his guandao and used it to catch himself. To keep from pitching forward into the ruined earth. He grimaced, righted himself, and sent the weapon away once more.

  Chen Fei was at his side in an instant. “Are you alright?” She shoved a pill at him.

  “I am,” he said before he bit down on the pill. The medicine flooded his meridians, and his dantian lit up with the revitalizing qi. It was one of the most potent pills he’d ever taken. Under any other circumstances, he’d have refused it. Or at least asked her where she’d gotten it from. Now? He was just grateful for the help.

  Once he’d cycled the initial burst of medicine, he turned east and activated the Peerless Judgment. Xin Lu was still there, but he’d stopped. Now that he was with Chen Fei again, He Yu couldn’t escape. Not without abandoning her—which he considered out of the question. Even with the medicine, he wasn’t certain he had another escape left in him, anyway. That didn’t seem to matter, though. Xin Lu had to know where they were. There wasn’t any world where a cultivator of his advancement couldn’t detect He Yu and Chen Fei both. Even with both their spirits withdrawn, Xin Lu had to know where they were.

  It was Chen Fei who gave voice to the question. “Why isn’t he coming?”

  “Couldn’t say,” He Yu said. Turning to the ruined town at his back, he swept his perception over it, aided by the Peerless Judgment. It confirmed his suspicions—nobody had been here since the fall of the sect. He’d noticed on his arrival that there were no signs of looting. No signs that anyone had attempted to rebuild, either. The town had been abandoned, then forgotten.

  Could it have something to do with Xin Lu’s mention of Jin Xifeng? Maybe her command had included a prohibition of revisiting the sect. Given her clear hatred for Elder Cai, she may have given such an order. Either way, He Yu wouldn’t question it further. They’d a chance to recover and it would be foolish not to take it.

  “May as well see if we can find anything here,” he said.

  Together, they entered the sect town proper. Or what was left of it. Even fifteen years later, evidence of Jin Xifeng’s return remained. Unburied corpses of mortals and disciples alike lay among the rubble and the empty streets. Stripped to the bone by scavenging beasts, it was only by the tattered remains of the clothing—half rotted and all ruined—that He Yu could tell them apart.

  What had once been a bustling settlement at the base of the mountain was now little more than the charred remains of shops and homes. The unpaved streets were a mess of hardened mud and the scars of battle still lingered; nobody remained to repair the damage. Darker rust-colored stains marked where bodies had fallen, only to later be dragged away by scavengers.

  An uncomfortable silence hung over the town as He Yu and Chen Fei poked through the abandoned town. Only a collection of mundane objects remained in the rotting, half-collapsed buildings. With the eternal mists of the Shrouded Peaks themselves and the frequent rains, the once-sturdy timbers had gone soft in the absence of regular upkeep of the former residents.

  The town itself had never been much of a stop for the disciples—at least not for anything related to cultivation. The few trinkets that remained were of little interest to either He Yu or Chen Fei, neither of them much needing or wanting the sort of self aggrandizing vanities that made up the bulk of the sect town’s trade.

  While they searched, Xin Lu remained. Far enough away that they had to use techniques and actually search to sense him, but more than close enough that he’d soon catch up should they try to run. He Yu and Chen Fei both came to a similar conclusion as their meanderings through the town brought them to the foot of the path leading up the mountain.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Think we’ll find anything?” she asked as they both stood beneath the remains of the formation gate that once marked the trial for newly arrived disciples.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to look,” He Yu said. Then he looked in the direction where Xin Lu still waited. “It might also give us a chance to lose him. If he’s not coming to the town, I doubt he’ll follow us up the mountain.”

  “Worth a try.” Chen Fei set her feet upon the path and climbed.

  It was a stark difference from when they’d first made this climb together. They’d been eager and wholly ignorant of the path fate had laid before them. They hadn’t even known the path itself was trial—meant to weed out disciples who hadn’t the tenacity to push through fairly harmless spirits, and keep climbing despite the impending danger. A trial meant to teach what it meant to walk the world of cultivation.

  They’d not even made it halfway up the mountain when the mist spirits attacked.

  They burst from the mist, appearing from nothing. The spirits lunged at He Yu and Chen Fei both, with dark, half-solid claws. The first one threw itself into Chen Fei’s formation barrier. Silver characters blinked into a shimmering circle, then collapsed in on themselves. The spirit popped like a bubble. She didn’t even spare it a look. He Yu grabbed the first spirit that came within reach, catching it by the throat. A brief surge of heaven qi and the mist creature faded away like so much smoke. As they continued their climb, the attacks only increased.

  “Why are they attacking?” Chen Fei asked when they were about halfway up the mountain. “Except for when they were under Jin Xifeng’s control, they’d always run from anyone past Foundation.”

  He Yu had been wondering the same thing himself. Through the insight of the Peerless Judgment, it seemed that some of Jin Xifeng’s influence yet remained—it was faint, but even after fifteen years, it was still there. “It’s Jin Xifeng,” he said.

  “I can’t sense anything with my perception,” Chen Fei said. “She’s not still close, is she?”

  “No.” That much was obvious to him, but it wasn’t the thing that was most pressing—why could he sense her lingering effects, but Chen Fei couldn’t? Somehow, his cultivation art had always been connected to Jin Xifeng. The Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace had been key in sealing her, but it went deeper than that, somehow. In ways He Yu didn’t understand. In ways that could likely have only been explained by Elder Cai.

  They continued their ascent, harried by mist spirits the whole way. As they climbed higher, the attacks lessened. The spirits, while still unusually aggressive, weren’t mindless. Whatever lingering influence of Jin Xifeng’s remained, it wasn’t strong enough to drive them to the frenzy they’d reached during the massive attack on the sect. By the time they reached the entrance to the sect proper, the attacks had all but stopped.

  Arriving at the once proud gate to the Shrouded Peaks Sect, they both stopped and stood together in silence. This was the first time either of them had returned to the sect since fleeing Jin Xifeng. Now, seeing the very same formation gate that had once been the first glimpse of his life as a cultivator stirred an uncomfortable mix of emotion in He Yu. How could something that had once seemed so indomitable now lie in ruin?

  The frame still stood. One gate hung from a single valiant iron hinge, while the other lay shattered in the courtyard beyond. The wall had half a dozen breaches that He Yu could see—places where the Sunset Court had attacked and broken through the outer sect defenses. Beyond lay the gardens and plazas and terraces of the sect proper. The manual pavilion where he’d gotten his first real cultivation technique on Zhang Lifen’s advice. The house where he’d first met Li Heng.

  Chen Fei bumped his shoulder. “You still want to go in?” she asked.

  He’d never been good at hiding his emotions from people. Not in the way he was expected to, or in the way so many cultivators always did. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I just hadn’t really thought about all this since we left.”

  They crossed the threshold together.

  The outer sect beyond was much as He Yu had feared it would be. Pavilions lay in pieces. The outer sect assignment hall had burned down, now only a pile of charred wood and scorched brick. The gardens were all tangled with weeds and overgrowth—the manicured beauty he’d taken for granted in his time here vanished under the relentless march of the natural world, always quick to reclaim whatever it could.

  Evidence of looting was everywhere. Broken chests and vases littered the entries of what buildings still stood. The remains of the manual pavilion sat amid a sea of cracked jade slips and rain-washed bamboo scrolls. A broken pill furnace lay in pieces near the old medicine hall.

  And everywhere were the bodies. Most were outer disciples, marked by their nondescript gray robes. Expression twisted into the pain of their last moments, eyes staring at nothing in the blank, misty sky. Others could only be members of the court. A few were twisted, with limbs blackened or features made demonic. Victims of demon cores, no doubt—their cultivation now returned to Jin Xifeng, as it had always been destined to.

  “They didn’t leave anything,” Chen Fei said.

  Given what they’d both seen from Jin Xifeng’s presence, and the overwhelming sense of want that clung to her like a gown, it wasn’t a surprise. A cultivator of her level would be as bound to her Way as He Yu was becoming to his—she would have picked the sect clean, taking any treasures she desired for herself.

  Any disciples that had escaped would have doubtless done the same. The way that simply being near Jin Xifeng inflamed one’s desires would have seen to that, if common sense hadn’t done so first. Any members of the Sunset Court would have likewise long since picked over whatever Jin Xifeng left, deeming it beneath her.

  There would be nothing of value left here, but something pushed He Yu to look, regardless. They poked through the ruins and gradually made their way toward the inner sect. When they first approached the lower mountains of the inner sect, He Yu felt the ghost of a presence so dim he thought at first he’d imagined it. He looked again, this time with the Peerless Judgment. He saw it clearly, if only faintly. A faded impression, barely enough to identify, rose in his spiritual sight.

  An alabaster pillar, carved with a face looking to the four directions and crackling with sparks of heaven. First Elder Cai Weizhe.