Tan Xiaoling fought on a battlefield without end. Her spirit roared as each swing of her sabers trailed tongues of flame. A dark sun outlined with an orange-red corona beat down on a flat and desolate land. Metal and flame swirled around her in a storm of death. And still they came.

  A trail of bodies told of her passing. Her passing through this unending strife. All around her, cultivators fought. They fought, and they died. Who they fought, it didn’t seem to matter. Two figures, locked in a duel to the death, would turn and attack a newcomer as one. Or they would ignore all the others and fight until they could fight no more. Upon her approach, the combatants would just as likely attack Tan Xiaoling as not.

  It suited her just fine. This wasn’t a battle, not in any proper sense. It was chaos. Violence given form. Strife.

  It was everything she’d ever wanted.

  Tan Xiaoling threw herself into the struggle. Her blood surged in her veins, singing with each swing of her blades, each technique she called. It thundered in her ears, pushing her ever forward. Ever towards the promise of more. More struggle. More ways to test her strength. To push herself to her limits and then go beyond. This was the purest manifestation of her Way.

  Like the golden tiger her arts took their name from, she attacked. She did not hold back—she wouldn’t dishonor these experts by giving them anything less than her all. If they died by her hands, they died as warriors. What better death could one seek? What better death could she give?

  A glittering trail of ruby droplets gleamed under the desert sun. They fell on the ravaged land, on foes unworthy. Tan Xiaoling roared. It was not the paralyzing technique of the tiger itself, nor that of her uncle, Tan Qingsheng. It was a call, a summons.

  Come to me, it said. Face me. Defeat me. Prevail against me, or die.

  All around, the nameless, faceless experts turned as one and heeded her call. They rushed up the mountain of corpses she’d claimed as her own. They attacked not in ones or twos, but as a mass of undifferentiated killing intent. She met them in kind.

  The Breath of the White Desert whipped up around her. Its new, vastly improved form shredded anyone who got close. Laden with razor metal qi and the sharp weight of her killing intent, it served as both her first attack and her first line of defense. The flames that licked the length of her tiger-headed dao, the first stage of her Phoenix Feather Sword Art—were barely a technique, yet to grow into the fullness of the promise those flames held. Still, the flames lent their fire aspect to her strikes, leaving the cloying scent of burnt flesh hanging heavy in the blood-thick air.

  Her ultimate technique, the Mark of the Dark Sun, claimed lives by the dozens. No longer did she need to banish one of her swords, raise her hand, and pour tremendous amounts of qi into the black blazing spear. She only needed to focus on her target, will its destruction, and the technique would follow her guidance. The Mark of the Dark Sun left blackened, scorched craters wherever it struck, obliterating all traces of these weaklings around her. She laughed as she continued to fight. The technique still hadn’t come into its fullness yet—it would only grow stronger the more she advanced, the more she fought.

  So she fought, and so around her, her opponents fell.

  “You’ll never defeat them all.” He Yu floated above her, hands folded in his sleeves and the winds tugging at his robes.

  “So I should give up then?” she asked, turning back to the task at hand. A storm of metal crashed into a dozen experts, shredding them to nothing.

  Above her, He Yu tapped his chin as he thought. “No, I don’t think that’s what’s needed here,” he said after some time. “But what’s a battle without victory?”

  “I’m not a scholar,” she said. Once again, she threw herself into the battle that raged all around her. The battle would continue with or without her—it would be a waste not to participate.

  “What if I helped?”

  Tan Xiaoling drew back from the fray, the Breath of the White Desert expanding to create a tiny space of calm. Just enough to allow her to talk, and no more. “I don’t need your help.” She glared up at him.

  “Clearly,” he replied, landing next to her. He spent a moment studying her, the faint flicker of distant heaven deep within his eyes brightening for an instant. “I see,” he said. “You’re so close.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” she said, readying her blades for battle once again.

  “Do you have time for a companion? A brother in arms? Li Heng and I fight together frequently enough. It’s better to have someone to share the outcome with, whether it’s victory or defeat.”

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  “I don’t need anyone,” she said.

  “I wasn’t asking if you needed anyone.”

  “Just don’t get in my way,” she said. The storm of metal circling around her died away. The press of experts collapsed in on them, and the battle was rejoined.

  “Hadn’t dreamed of it.” It was the last either of them spoke for a long time.

  The tiger and the storm both raged over the field of strife, each in their own way. Their techniques called fire and heaven and metal and wind. Their combined killing intent pressed down upon the world, the weight of their techniques sundered heaven and earth alike. The battle raged on, and as she fought, Tan Xiaoling felt as much as saw the path her Way traced through the carnage.

  It was merely a glimpse—but a mere glimpse was enough. Enough for now. It would take months—years, perhaps—to come into the fullness of these latest insights. But they were hers, and she knew with the certainty of a sage that she’d opened her path to the Sixth Realm, to Soul Refining. To finally, at long last, defeating her uncle.

  The battle continued, and at length, the tide of opponents slowed. When it finally ended, Tan Xiaoling stood alone with He Yu. In the depths of her spirit, she felt empty. The victory was sweet, yes, but it paled compared to the taste of combat. To the thrill of the fight itself.

  Turning to He Yu, she said, “This can’t be it, can it?”

  He shrugged. “There’s always more. Come on, we’ve still got to deal with your uncle. Then Jin Xifeng.”

  A part of her wanted to stay. On the horizon, an army approached. Thousands upon thousands of cultivators, of new foes. All glaring their hatred at her. It would be a struggle, to be certain. But now that He Yu mentioned it, such a clash would nothing before the ones she’d find with him. He did always seem to collect powerful enemies.

  * * *

  He Yu blinked as the remains of Tan Xiaoling’s one woman war twisted before his eyes. When the world righted itself, he stood before the stone pavilion once more. Although He Yu could have sworn it had taken him hours to track down his friends, the moon still hung directly overhead, as if no time had passed at all. He suspected that Sun Lei’s claims about a time limit may not have been entirely sincere.

  The Cloud Dragon Valley Sect’s patriarch lounged in the same spot he’d been when they descended. Although Sun Lei still carried himself with the demeanor of a lazy eccentric, He Yu wondered if he’d revealed any portion of himself to the others. He supposed it didn’t really matter. Sun Lei clearly had his reasons for sending them below, and He Yu wasn’t about to guess at them.

  “It seems you’ve made it out in time,” Sun Lei said, casting a glance up at the moon, still at its zenith. “Well, the night grows short. I certainly hope you found your time below instructive.”

  He Yu took a moment to study his friends’ faces. Each of them appeared some flavor of pensive or perturbed, each in their own fashion. He’d caught glimpses of what they had experienced when he’d found each of them. All would have to meditate on what they saw, untangling the insights from their experiences.

  The sealed realm itself had been a boon, to be sure. Although he only stood at the middle stage of Nascent Soul, he’d once more glimpsed the fullness of his Dao. From all the study he’d done in his time at the Thunder God’s Shrine with Yongnian, cultivators typically needed to advance to the Soul Refining stage to grasp such insights. Perhaps that was what Sun Lei had meant when he’d said the path to the Sixth Realm was already open to him.

  “Before I return to my seclusion, I suppose I ought to give the lot of you one last boon,” Sun Lei said. “My sect is gone. Through no fault of your own, so fear not. But it would be a shame to waste all they’d collected before they abandoned me. Avail yourselves of whatever remains here. Hopefully, you can find some use for everything my former disciples saw fit to leave behind.”

  The world lurched the instant Sun Lei finished speaking. Night turned to day, and the formation surrounding the pavilion at the valley center winked out. The pavilion itself, and the stair leading into the earth below, likewise vanished. He Yu found himself standing in the center of the overgrown valley once more.

  Five potent sources of qi blazed in He Yu’s spiritual perception. One for each of them. Toward the frozen waterfall, lunar qi had joined what once had only been water and ice. The intensity of that source had increased markedly, so that it now matched the power of the other four sources that had appeared.

  A solid mass of earth, metal, and mountain qi came from a nearby peak that formed one of the valley walls. Power streamed off it, cascading over the land and into the sky. From the opposite direction, an inferno of fire qi ringed by sharp metal blades burned in the center of a desolate expanse. The sect’s manual pavilion was now cloaked in a cloying mass of shadow. Another nearby peak had gathered a storm. Churning clouds, flashing heaven, and howling wind obscured the summit.

  He Yu looked at each of the others. “It seems we’ve been given more than simple access to the abandoned sect,” he said.

  Yan Shirong spoke first. “Shadows within the manual pavilion,” he said, turning to the place where he’d surely spend his foreseeable future. “This has to be Sun Lei’s work.”

  “Agreed,” Li Heng said. “Each of these locations is suited to one of us. I suppose that it could simply be chance, and that these locations have existed since the time of the Cloud Dragon Valley Sect. But somehow I doubt it. I can only speak for myself, but my experiences inside the sealed realm were far too personal.”

  The others murmured their agreement. It was too convenient, too right. Five tremendously powerful sources of qi had appeared, each of them suited to one of their cultivation bases specifically. Added to the fact that they had just emerged from a realm designed to give them insights into their Way, the next steps couldn’t have been more clear.

  They were facing down a Soul Refining level expert who cultivated the Golden Tiger Cultivation Law. Then, there was Wang Xiaobo and Xin Lu to worry about, a pair of Nascent Soul experts who would no doubt try to advance as well. Finally, Jin Xifeng still ruled the empire.

  If there was ever a time to push for advancement, that time was now.

  “Soul Refining,” He Yu said, halfway to himself.

  Li Heng stepped up next to him and clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ve come this far, this fast,” he said with a laugh. “Why not go all the way?”

  “What better way to forge a legend?” He Yu asked. Activating the Sky Dragon’s Flight, he shot off towards the storm that raged on the nearby peak.