“I’m leaving, with or without the rest of you.” Tan Xiaoling stood at the foot of the path leading up the valley, arms crossed and her chin lifted.

  “It won’t be long,” He Yu said. He’d lost track of how many times he’d made the same point over the past few days. It sounded less like an argument and more like a plea now.

  Tan Xiaoling had reached Soul Refining three days prior. Ever since, she’d been pushing for them to leave, to go end things with Tan Qingsheng. So far, only she and He Yu had broken into the Sixth Realm—the other three were still at the peak of Nascent Soul.

  It had taken every bit of arguing and pleading He Yu could muster to get her to wait this long. At first, Li Heng had lent his weight to He Yu’s cause. After a heated private discussion between him and Tan Xiaoling later that first night, he’d stayed out of it ever since. Chen Fei had at least voiced her opinion that it would probably be best if Tan Xiaoling waited, but wouldn’t press the issue any further. Yan Shirong openly declared his ambivalence, then locked himself in the manual pavilion.

  Now, Tan Xiaoling was done waiting. Every moment they waited gave her uncle a chance to grow stronger, to outstrip her and become too strong once again. Although He Yu pointed out that he may have done so already, and that she should wait, her patience was at its end. When He Yu pointed out that Wang Xiaobo and Xin Lu would be there as well, she dismissed that concern out of hand.

  “Even should they have advanced, my uncle wants to fight me himself. No, those two are here for you,” she said. “He wouldn’t let them interfere. If you come along, you’ll have them both to yourself.”

  He Yu couldn’t have cared less about either Wang Xiaobo or Xin Lu at this point. Although he’d have to deal with them eventually—as he’d told Wang Xiaobo he would, back before the fall of the sect—they weren’t important. But he understood the thrust of her comment.

  Much like himself, Tan Xiaoling had grasped the fullness of her Dao during her advancement to Soul Refining. Hers was the Dao of Strife. The insatiable need for battle, to struggle against ever stronger foes. Triumph or defeat, it mattered not. The fight, the struggle, the clash. That was the essence of Tan Xiaoling’s Way.

  But keeping those two to himself wasn’t really the point. As He Yu saw it, they were a team. Although each of them stood atop their own peak, their strength was in their support of one another.

  “There’s no harm in waiting,” he said again. “Li Heng should break through soon. Chen Fei and Yan Shirong won’t be far behind.”

  “Then they can catch up. I’m going.” Tan Xiaoling turned and set her feet on the path that would lead her out of the valley, and away from the former Cloud Dragon Valley Sect. Away from the sanctuary they’d called home all these years.

  Her newly Sixth Realm presence exploded out from her as she set off at a run. A fiery black sun threw heat and light over a desert of flat, gleaming white sand. The oasis that had once hidden the tiger lurking within her spirit was gone. In its place stood Tan Xiaoling herself, but suitably altered to reflect the essence of her Way. Within the vision of her presence, her hair resembled her uncle’s, long and wild, held back by only a simple cloth strip. Black marks scored her skin like tiger’s stripes, and featureless molten gold of her eyes glowed with a hunger for violence that matched her aggressive posture. A sharpness—her refined and redoubled killing intent—pressed down on the wasteland.

  He Yu shook off the effects of her presence. A part of him couldn’t blame her. He ached to test his own power now that he stood within the Sixth Realm. The dragon that had once lurked within the storm of his spirit now coiled around it. Wind and heaven and rain barely contained. He’d not even truly tested the extent of his new technique, the Fist of the Heavens.

  As Tan Xiaoling’s presence faded into the distance, Li Heng stepped up next to him. “Go,” he said. “We’ll catch up.”

  “Are you certain?” he asked.

  “I don’t trust him,” Li Heng said. “I don’t believe Tan Qingsheng’s pride outweighs his ambition. He’ll pull a trick of some sort should he find himself on the back foot and in danger of losing. Besides, Wang Xiaobo and Xin Lu are there. I don’t trust they’ll stay out, either.”

  “You have your own grudge against Wang Xiaobo at this point,” He Yu said.

  “I do. But I trust you’ll see it ended. Go. She needs someone looking out for her, and she’s not so stubborn that she’ll refuse your help should she need it.”

  “Right,” He Yu said. He pushed qi through his meridians, activating the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering in preparation for taking to the skies.

  “Wait!” Yan Shirong came hurtling down the path from the manual pavilion, carried on the shadows of his Umbral Puppetmaster Technique. “Take these,” he said.

  A pair of medicine boxes floated before He Yu, held up by strands of shadow. Inside, the results of Yan Shirong’s hours of pouring over alchemy manuals, and practice with the pill furnace he’d brought all the way from Plum Blossom City. Refined from the herbs grown in the Cloud Dragon Valley Sect’s long-neglected gardens, they were sure to contain pills of substantial quality.

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  He Yu sent them to his storage treasure.

  Finally, Chen Fei approached. “Take care,” she said, giving him a light kiss on the cheek. “We’ll be along.”

  Wind qi surged out and lifted He Yu above the treetops. Above the peaks surrounding the valley they’d spend these past years in. Heaven surged over his arms and legs, and he shot off to the north. Towards the Jade Mountain Citadel.

  It didn’t take long for him to catch up with Tan Xiaoling. He’d always been the fastest, and his speed had only increased with his advancement to Soul Refining, and with adding another pillar to the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering. The adjustments Elder Cai had made to the Sky Dragon’s Flight when he’d added his inheritance to the Heavenly Palace didn’t hurt, either.

  Falling in next to Tan Xiaoling, he gave her one of the medicine boxes. “From Yan Shirong,” he said.

  “Glad you decided to come,” she admitted as she sent the box to her own storage treasure.

  It took them several weeks to make it through the rugged terrain of the Jade Mountains, even as Sixth Realm immortals. He Yu had mostly forgotten how far they’d come to finally arrive at the ruins of the Cloud Dragon Valley Sect. Although He Yu’s mastery of the Sky Dragon’s Flight had only increased, Tan Xiaoling still had to run. She had no technique that granted anything close to He Yu’s mobility, and no treasure with which to fly. The lack of a treasure, she said, would only be a temporary impediment.

  He Yu hoped she was right. The more he thought on Li Heng’s concerns, the more he came to agree with them. He couldn’t see any world in which Tan Qingsheng hadn’t either advanced or devised some trick. Why else would he simply let Tan Xiaoling hide in the mountains for all these years and train? Although he doubted that either Wang Xiaobo or Xin Lu would have advanced in the weeks since his own ascent to Soul Refining, they also had to have some tricks.

  Either that, or they couldn’t return. From what He Yu had pieced together, their positions were contingent on hunting him specifically. If that were the case, pursuing him into the Jade Kingdom and then returning without any token of success would be deemed a failure. He didn’t think Jin Xifeng was the sort of empress to tolerate failure from her subordinates.

  So the two most obvious possibilities were a trick of some sort, or they simply couldn’t go back empty-handed. He hoped it was the latter.

  When Jade Mountain Citadel finally came into view, neither Tan Xiaoling nor He Yu made any effort to hide their approach. Their arrival was not missed. A presence that could only belong to Tan Qingsheng erupted from within one corner of the fortress city that sat on the border between mountain and desert. Two more presences, Wang Xiaobo and Xin Lu, joined in a moment later.

  “We wait here,” Tan Xiaoling said, coming to a stop on the crest of one of the last hills before the land grew truly flat.

  It was a sensible place to wait. The coming fight was certain to cause tremendous destruction. He Yu remembered well the valley where they’d last clashed with Tan Qingsheng. He remembered well his fight with Xin Lu near Shulin all those years ago. There would be at least two Soul Refining stage immortals vying with one another now.

  They did not have to wait long. Tan Qingsheng arrived first, taking up a position on a nearby hilltop. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his wild mane of hair cascading behind him. A few moments later, Wang Xiaobo and Xin Lu arrived, taking up positions behind Tan Qingsheng.

  “I’d just about given up hope that you’d come,” Tan Qingsheng said. “It seems you have some real fight in you, after all.”

  “Enough to bury you,” Tan Xiaoling said.

  Neither of them bothered to raise their voices. Each spoke as though they stood mere feet from one another. They also kept their presences mostly restrained, although the impression of a scorching desert and a dark sun still pressed upon the mortal world with both of them present.

  “Do you, truly? You didn’t come alone, after all.”

  “I’m here for those two,” He Yu said, jerking his chin towards Wang Xiaobo and Xin Lu.

  Tan Qingsheng arched an eyebrow. “Are you? I’d hoped to face you again, now that you’d advanced. You put up more of a fight that I’d expected last time. It would be a shame not to test you now.”

  “Make no mistake,” He Yu said. “Those two are beneath me. They unfairly sought to starve me of resources because of some grudge they held against my master. When I put them in their place, I told them I would come after them with everything I had if they didn’t leave me or my friends alone. Xin Lu came after me, and Wang Xiaobo after Li Heng. I’m only making good on my word.”

  Tan Qingsheng laughed. It was a sharp bark of a sound, full of mockery. “How about we make things interesting, then? The three of us against the two of you. If they’re as insignificant as you claim, surely you won’t object.”

  “You would sacrifice your allies in such a manner?” Tan Xiaoling asked, eyes narrowing.

  “These two have spent the past ten years as guests at my estate, and I can’t say I’m impressed. Come now, I hadn’t expected you’d be the one to object, Xiaoling.”

  He Yu glanced over at Tan Xiaoling. The muscle in her jaw flexed, and her eyes shone with just-contained fury. But she said nothing. It was easy to see why she was so angry—Tan Qingsheng was insulting all of them. Wang Xiaobo and Xin Lu would be little more than distractions in the coming melee. Unless they had some sort of trick at the ready. Once they’d been dealt with, it would be He Yu and Tan Xiaoling both against her uncle. Hardly a fair fight. Since he’d suggested the match-ups, that meant he was confident in his ability to take them both on at once. Despite their advancement.

  “You’re consigning them to death, you know,” He Yu pointed out.

  Tan Qingsheng merely gave him a self-assured smirk, far too reminiscent of his niece’s.

  “I accept,” He Yu said before Tan Xiaoling could voice any objections. He wasn’t sure if he was just playing in to some plan the others had hatched or not—but this was likely the best chance at ensuring their victory.

  To their credit, Wang Xiaobo and Xin Lu both stepped forward.

  Meeting He Yu’s gaze, Wang Xiaobo said, “When I’m done with you, I’m taking everything I can from your corpse. I’m going to advance, then I’ll hunt down Zhang Lifen and make sure she knows I killed you before I do the same to her.”

  “Then let us begin!” Tan Qingsheng bellowed, his nine-ringed blade falling into his hand.