He Yu and Chen Fei crashed into the fight as one. A rolling thunderhead and an unstoppable avalanche. Lightning cracked and sparked while formations shone. A swipe from one of the spirit’s claws glanced off the Spring Rain Mirror. He Yu opened a gash across the spirit’s swollen belly. Maggots and rotten meat spilled out as it howled in fury and pain.

  “Stupid children!” Elder Cai shouted. He held out one palm before him. A beam of radiant light and jagged heaven qi poured forth. “Run while you still have the chance.”

  He Yu didn’t answer—not with words. He swept his guandao before him, and heaven opened. Next to him, Chen Fei’s presence crashed over the spirit she’d set her sights on. Each punch and kick she launched at the abomination was enough to shatter stone.

  The spirit’s flesh fared poorly.

  The renewed clash of presences wasn’t without consequences. From all around, a horde of the shambling corpses—most easily equal to Fourth Realm cultivators—shuffled inexorably towards the powerful confluence of qi. The first opportunity for feeding they’d had in over a decade. Although his dantian was dangerously empty, the ocean of qi at his center nearly dry, He Yu pushed everything he had into his Nascent Soul level presence.

  A storm broke over the ruined terrace courtyard they now occupied. Winds howled as they wrapped He Yu in their violent embrace. Lightning of every color imaginable lit the sky and ripped chunks of stone from the ground. Dark clouds covered the sky and a torrent of rain drowned the land. In the heart of the storm, a dragon stirred. The world trembled.

  Looping sweeps of a blade forged by his own father carved through the spirit before him. Crackling trails of lighting cut arcs through spiritual flesh and the very air itself, sending miniature thunderclaps echoing across the plaza. A mirror of water qi flashed into being and turned away black and hungry claws. Winds lifted him and deposited him right where he needed to be—where he could rain judgment and death upon the hungry ghosts who sought to devour his martial grandfather.

  With each swing of his blade, his Wayborn Seed sang. His killing intent pressed down on the world. Some of the weaker spirits or corpses would rupture or separate before he’d even landed his blow. Through it all, he moved in accordance with his Way. He moved with the Eternal Dao.

  Elder Cai ceased his protest. Instead, he focused on the battle at hand. The alabaster pillar that had once seemed so mighty, so eternal, showed cracks and missing pieces. The faces bore marks like wounds or scars. Still, it contained power. Four pairs of eyes opened, and their gaze brought destruction. The walking corpses fared the worst under the combined power of the stark light of radiance and the judgment of heaven itself.

  With his own formation of Heaven’s Descending Blade, Elder Cai called down lighting from the storm of He Yu’s spirit. His defensive formations resembled the Spring Rain Mirror. They were faster and more practiced, calling as many as a dozen discs at once. They were more like Yi Xiurong’s golden discs than He Yu’s technique.

  Those attacks Elder Cai didn’t deflect simply missed him as his mastery of the Peerless Judgment allowed him to avoid strikes before they happened. Weakened as Cai Weizhe may have been, he was still an expert over a thousand years old. He’d still achieved the peak of the Eighth Realm. He was still a force of destruction and power made flesh.

  Chen Fei summoned the Titan Panoply. With her activation of the White Mountain Body Art, she grew to a height of over ten feet. She waded in to the fray, scattering the hungry spirits and ravenous corpses like grains of rice spilled before the wind. Even with her nearly doubled size and bulk, and with the massive suit of spiritual armor that encased her from head to toe, her powerful bursts of speed were no less incredible. She slammed into one foe, a formation enhanced punch turning it to dust. An instant later, she was two dozen feet away, the impact of her fist echoing off the mountains and flagstones alike.

  Each of her steps cracked the earth. Each of her punches sent shockwaves ripping outward. She was immovable and unstoppable. For every new foe that got within reach, she simply drew more upon the Eternal Mountain Root, pulling strength from the very ground upon which she stood.

  Despite their diminished cores, despite their aching dantians, and despite Elder Cai’s rapidly fading presence, the battle turned. Bit by bit, the momentum swung in their favor. The hungry spirits with their distended bellies and lolling tongues were of the Fourth and Fifth Realm. He Yu dealt with most of them, as Chen Fei’s Seventy-Two Blessed Symbols art was particularly well-suited to banishing the walking corpses of their former sect siblings.

  Elder Cai helped where he could, raining down lightning and radiance both as he swept his alabaster sight over the battle. It was worrying, though, the way his spirit flickered and dimmed. His spirit was fainter and more diffuse now than when He Yu had first sensed him. As if this battle was taking the last of his cultivation after all this time. He Yu pushed the thought aside. By whatever stroke of fortune, or secret technique that Elder Cai had survived Jin Xifeng’s attack, surely he could weather this.

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  The fight wore on, until finally, He Yu slammed his guandao down on one of the hungry spirits. He turned, expecting to find yet another foe, but met only silence. Chen Fei had returned to her normal size, and the Titan Panoply was gone. Fatigue lined her features, but her eyes shone with triumph. Elder Cai sat down on the shattered remains of a nearby boulder. To He Yu’s dismay, his spirit felt no stronger than a mid Third Realm.

  With no foes yet remaining, He Yu send his guandao back to his storage treasure. Fatigue crashed over him as he released the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering and finally, fully, felt the ache in his limbs and the countless wounds he’d taken. He’d lost track of how many days he’d been fighting for. He supposed it didn’t exactly matter—there were more than enough days left in his future. Especially now that they’d found Elder Cai.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” Elder Cai said as they approached. “You’re too late, anyway.”

  “Why haven’t you left?” He Yu asked. “And why are you so weak? I have pills, if you need them. Once you’ve recovered, we can rebuild the sect and challenge Jin Xifeng.”

  “Foolish child,” Elder Cai said. He leaned back and stared up at the sky. He sighed, long and heavy, then he said, “I don’t suppose it can be helped. You were still only at Golden Core when you left. Even now, you wouldn’t comprehend what happened when Zhou Shanyuan and I failed to stand against Jin Xifeng.”

  “But you lived—” He Yu began.

  “I did not. Cai Weizhe is dead. You speak to his Nascent Soul, although I suppose that now I am all that’s left of what we once were. In our last moments, I used a technique to create a clone. I trust you remember our first meeting. With that technique, I tricked Jin Xifeng into believing she’d destroyed me—my Nascent Soul. Into believing that she’d fully, and finally, earned her ultimate victory.

  “But Jin Xifeng is nearly as vengeful as she is covetous. Despite thinking she’d destroyed me fully, she placed a curse on the sect with a fragment of her own spirit. She created a formation to bind the wandering spirits here. Once she and her followers had taken what they wanted from the ruin, they left. But I remained, along with the restless dead.”

  “Are we?” Chen Fei didn’t need to finish her question. There wasn’t any other one she could have asked.

  Elder Cai waved her off. “The formation traps spirits, not humans. Escape should be possible for you both. A budding formation master like yourself might even disrupt it enough for spirits to pass through, given enough time.”

  “So we can get you out,” He Yu said. “You’re Elder Cai’s Nascent Soul? Then we can help you reincarnate. You can help us defeat Jin Xifeng.”

  “My time is done.”

  The finality of that statement slammed down the gate on He Yu’s last, fading hopes. “What?”

  “I have been fighting for fifteen years. I have never stopped. Not since Jin Xifeng placed her seal on this place and left it for the cursed ruin you now see. That anything of me still remains must be the will of fate,” he said as he looked from He Yu to Chen Fei.

  He Yu was too dumbfounded to speak. This wasn’t how things happened. Even though he’d done his best to erase any records, Cai Weizhe was as much a legend as someone like Tan Zihao. Legends didn’t simply fade away. Not like this.

  “What do we do?” Chen Fei asked.

  “Leave. Jin Xifeng won. Even if you could match her in advancement, you saw what happened at the sect. No one cultivator can best her. She draws strength from the multitude of her servants—she cannot fall by a single expert’s hand alone.”

  Something in He Yu stirred at that. His Wayborn Seed twisted in his spirit, and his very nature, too, rebelled. “We can’t simply give up,” he said.

  Elder Cai looked up from where he sat. With each passing moment he looked less the strong, middle-aged man that He Yu remembered, and more the wizened elder. With each passing moment, the weight of his spirit grew lighter. “I had wondered once whether you would make anything of yourself. You’ve come far, but not nearly far enough. Tell me, do you wish to continue?”

  “I will follow my Way to its end.”

  “Then you will need allies. As I said, no single expert can hope to stand against Jin Xifeng, let alone defeat her. You are far too weak as you are now. A mere Fifth Realm is like dust before her.” Elder Cai held out his hand. “If you still have it, give me your jade slip. The one that holds the secrets of the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace.”

  He Yu produced the jade slip from his storage treasure. The string binding it together was frayed. Many of the characters etched onto the jade had worn so far down they were barely legible. A few of the pieces showed cracks. It hardly looked like the repository of an ancient and powerful cultivation art that it was.

  Elder Cai took the slip. “Whether you make something of yourself—make yourself into what you’ll need to be—is up to you. I can bestow only this.” Elder Cai’s spirit flared, and for an instant he became as He Yu remembered him. Ancient and powerful, a graven alabaster pillar towering to heaven. “Remember what I said. You cannot do this alone. Seek allies.”

  Heaven qi flared. He Yu collapsed under the weight of a peak cultivator of the Eighth Realm. Blood poured from his nose. Next to him, Chen Fei groaned. Here he was, only an arm’s length away from the full power of a Divine Soul Apotheosis level spirit. He cycled his cultivation base and poured everything he had into resisting the overwhelming spiritual weight of his martial grandfather.

  The presence vanished. The jade slip fell to the ruined flagstones with a soft clink. He Yu pushed himself to his hands and knees, afraid of what he knew he would find.

  Elder Cai was gone. On the stones where he’d once sat, only He Yu’s cultivation manual remained. The string now mended, the characters clear, and the weathered old jade shining like it had just been carved. When He Yu looked deep into its faintly shimmering surface, he saw the distant flicker of heaven within.

  Chen Fei joined him, twining her fingers through his. “What now?” she asked.

  He Yu remained silent for a long time. Eventually, he said, “We find allies.”