Beyond the [Arrays], and natural hazards presented by the locale, the classification within the [Twilight Lotus Expanse’s] [Law of Origin] raises equal danger.

Foremost, it is a [Beast Realm].

Without the Sect’s intervention, this meteor’s surface would stand barren. [Air Qi] holds no sway there, and those of the remedial elements and [Affinities] possess similar availability.

It is beneath, in the following, subterranean sections that their roaming [Spirit Beasts] prowl.

* Three smaller reservoirs of water stand beneath the disciple’s lodgings.

* One grove of roots holds [Spirit Beasts] of avian nature below the gatehouse to the [Paifang].

* Previous infiltrations have noted a small series of tunnels that none without body contorting [Arts] might pass. A sprawling network with myriad entrances within the meteor’s upper surface.

- (Addition) Twenty three of these entrances were sealed in a prior [Season], used and discovered for the distribution of the [Three Evils Dream Toxin].

The [Spirit Beasts] of the realm hold no loyalty to the disciples, and are as any population in wild locales. Yet the [Core Formation] nature of the realm presents their cultivation towards middle, late or peak stages.

As of yet, there is yet to be a [Tribulation] reported. But diligence is advised regarding the possibility of any [Origin Realm] beasts that have escaped our surveillance.

- “Twilight Lotus Expanse. Section Nine, Category: Infiltration”

Its stem is hollow. Yet is it not unbending?

Was experience not a rod to prop him up, Fu’s wits might well have fell to ashes. For now, with the Sepulchral Saber Sect within this realm, he felt more imprisoned than Zhu.

Her voice- for a woman had uttered those whispers some span of minutes prior- was a true torment, and another force to contend with alongside the pervasive [Allegiant Mind-Spirit Array]. By design, he knew.

Each pond held a wisp as he passed. Peripheral sights, and half-seen images. He met small puffs on his infiltration of the training hall ahead. On its incline, steps, arch and entrance.

In potted lotuses, white emerged. Then it trailed along the steps, coalescing as if to birth some spectral assassin. A [Spirit Tiger] perhaps, for Fu was certain he saw ephemeral claws rise, or the flicker of a forming, sabered tooth.

Yet he could not claim to guess why he still stood.

So it was that sweat glistened as he bowed to the disciple there, and received a spurious reply that spoke of concern. Or suspicion.

“State your business within the training hall, disciple,” said the man. Features aged to a degree that might have matched Fu’s own. “The daily instruction already takes place beneath our [Twilight Lotus].”

Fu offered his jian flat, and proffered it for inspection above his bow. “This humble disciple has been instructed to replace his blade.”

“Replace, disciple?” offered the man, and put the weapon under scrutiny. “This jian appears recently polished, and unblemished.”

It does not sully itself with vines or branches. Yet is it not whole?

Worry was conjured with little thought, and Fu plastered it across his face. “This disciple…” he trailed. “The-” He then looked to his blade, affecting a look of longing. “The Second Step eludes me, and I am unfit to wield anything but a training blade.”

“The Second Step?”

“As you say, brother,” sighed Fu, and he rose to meet an understanding look.

“I recall the stern words of Master Fifty-Third, this… this exchange of blades I know well. As I do the shame,” said the older disciple. “Take heart brother. At times, I find it is better to know one’s limits. To leave honour to those with talent in abundance, those whose diligence outstrips the efforts of… of those such as us. Apologies. I ramble. Pass quickly, brother.”

Fu dispensed another bow. “I will reflect on your words, senior. I thank you.”

The entrance was passed, and he found more absence within. A silence only broached by the distant grunts or yells of concerted blades beneath the great lotus. But dampened, and merely added to the chorus of words about his ears.

It stands tall and true. Yet is it not unbroken by the winds?

Where the Clouded Courts held sand upon which disciples would clash, here he saw unblemished grass. It gave ponderance to their iconography, at least, for what profundity- or connection, the care of lawns had with twilight escaped him.

But he strode across the periphery regardless, in the shadows of inner balconies that looked upon the affair.

Smoke growing ever bolder.

Hushi then lashed from the robes some ten paces from the exit, and engulfed a figure behind with a spread of arms. His cultivator was no slower, and the great blade of his hook sped to become barred against another’s throat.

Niwai was freed at Hushi’s insistence, and the octopus slung back into his fabric midden with no small haste.

The lotus comes from mud. Yet is it not regal?

The pristine skin about her eye crinkled under the whispers.

Or-

Once pristine, he supposed, and Fu refrained from comment to see the vileness etched upon one half of her face.

Some reddened, blistered imprint that conjured no uncertainty that a burning hand had grasped her skin. Five fingered, and fresh, placing her eye between the crook where index met thumb.

“A woman broke my stupor beneath the lotus,” she said, and severed the gaze by passing his shoulder. “The [Array] is too great.”

Fu met her side, and urged with a gentle brush of fingers to make even their gait. As two disciples would. Though Niwai recoiled as if lightning had emerged to clamp upon her wrist. No subtle gesture alongside her growl.

Maintenance of the [Clouded Ghost Arts], or a lack thereof where location demanded, this was a key facet of their plan. No Lotus Blade disciple would practise Qi-suppression, nor many that walked the sun-facing side of the Jianghu.

As such Fu’s, now, was unrestrained.

Niwai’s spilled like waves through a leaking hull, and matched in its danger.

Its stem is hollow. Yet is it not unbending?

“Once,” broke Fu. “Two men walked upon a bridge. Wise men, and daoists each.” A threshold was crossed. A descent into terraces, and into dimming light.

For this, Niwai’s expression turned unguessable, exposed only in flashes. “A fool would speak in these circumstances,” she cut.

“Beneath swam a single fish, and the first man commented on it. ‘That fish seems joyful’, he said. To which the second said, ‘You are not a fish, what do you know of its joy?’”

With each word spoken purposefully, the pair moved far. Deeper, to where lanterns became distantly spread, and a spectral sheen presided across the ceiling. Starlight or Qi, in their three patterns - these streaked with the makings of dust now.

Coloured dust, which Fu had held no name for despite the familiarity held from the deck of his old boat.

The rhythm of Niwai’s [Art] drew slower, and Fu dared not draw her eyes to the pooling smoke through which they dredged.

“‘You are not me’ the first retorted, ‘what would you know of what I know?’.”

“Then the bastard answered his own question,” she snapped. “The first admits that no other might know what another knows, for they are only themselves.”

Fu pooled his [Intent], twinned with Hushi. Held a single breath away from activation, should they- for when they required it.

It does not sully itself with vines or branches. Yet is it not whole?

His [Senses] had caught three figures upon the grasses. A li’s distance, such was the scale. But watchful.

Forms with rake in hand, or totes laden with an assumption of seed or herb.

White as smoke.

The beginning of this tale may well be for my own benefit.

The Sepulchral Saber disciple was cunning indeed, to inflict such guesswork. Such dread in the unknown.

For these forms may well be foes. Or apparitions. The massing smoke, gently wafting.

Could this not be an illusion? Were they to be stirred into a starlight plunge? Did these forms know their allegiance, and already did they move to strike them down?

Could the assassin mask it?

Was the heat upon his back sweat, or the warm ooze of blood accumulated through cuts he had yet to notice?

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Her breath, perhaps, upon his nape?

“The second replied as such,” continued Fu. “And congratulated himself with a growing laugh.”

Niwai’s [Spirit Bird], Uktaka, loosed an agitated chirp. “This is all?”

“No, sister. But we have arrived,” said Fu, and moved then to a great door of stone inlaid in the meteor’s innards. The head of this wide corridor that he was certain Niwai had yet to notice they stood in.

Nor would she have spied the lotus stylised upon its circular front. Or the [Earthly Retribution Seal Array] subtly inscribed through its petals. Their barrier to the inner disciple’s area beyond, and to the blades that held [Of Perennial Shade’s] attention.

A danger. If not one imminently, and instinctually passable.

🀧

A pressure abated upon entry, and what followed it. This circular door rescinded, if strangely, showing that it was immaterial once Fu had broken through.

This lapsed as the [Array] within his cell had, the circuits of Qi - interrupted.

It exposed what neither ghost might have named as a training hall, for the deepest bowels of this majestic rock held a vast glade, and a pool at its centre. Some profound and tranquil thing that did not so much as lap upon the tended shoreline.

The night sky was mirrored upon it in perfection, and spread as a canvas upon what could be walls. Though Fu could see no end. Only the roots that descended from cosmos, forging one immaculate platform with their width.

Both cultivators stalled, and took count of the passing seconds. Sighing some minutes later.

The [Allegiant Mind-Spirit Array] does not chase us here. That lifts but one burden from our path.

Few accounts of this place had made it to record, and what was written had been glimpsed only from the terraces behind. Thus Fu tread carefully, and slunk into waist high grasses on his advance to the water.

Where blades might be in such a place… Perhaps this would be unveiled from its centre.

Niwai then copied his motion, and the [Clouded Ghost Arts] expunged both of their presences as they melded deeper into the brush. Their pace, a crawl, and the only motion a blur as Uktaka flashed to the stars above.

Of the five hundred strides distance, they covered a tenth.

A ninth.

An eighth.

A seventh, as such an advance would follow.

But where white smoke was their prior vexation, there came a beat of gold.

Never, should I expect simplicity.

Fu’s blade appeared in hand, stealing the starlight’s reflection in equal measure with Niwai’s singular jian.

It came in strings, formed upon the great lotus’ roots. An extension from the platform that rose into the abyssal heavens above, and there, from a splay of spindled arms, plucked another note.

But in consolation, no whisper.

“Fear not your trespass, but what it births,” sang a silken voice. Its accompaniment, a third golden note. “The kin-eater, the blade-winged, the twice-scorned, she is ready for my insight. To face the trial of my domain. But you, the three-seeded. You are unwelcome.”

Hushi drove to Fu’s shoulder, his [Intent] unfurled. The grasses bowed as it flooded out, a gale soon subdued. It carried an impression, and one not only to his cultivator.

Yet Fu reaffirmed this with words. “The [Constellation Seed] is not our intention, venerable guardian,” he said, and bent double in respect. “Passage is all that we seek. If you would allow it.”

“[Constellation Seed]?” parsed Niwai.

An immortal, perhaps. But unknowable all the same.

The spider’s eight limbs became twelve. Chitin became flesh, as rich as any Vajra, and moonlit strings pierced from the waters below to clad her in fashion with the stars. Yet still, her eyes betrayed her original nature.

Sixfold diamonds, each creasing as the spindled legs upon her back caressed a single golden string.

“Hospitality binds our words, three-seeded. Not honor. But by laws older than you might fathom. What would you stake upon your words?”

Fu saw Niwai. Her incredulity.

And spurned it.

This reveals much, and to those I would not have know.

“My life cannot be offered, for it is not my own to give. But speak a thing to wager, and I shall present it fairly,” he said.

“That which I grant,” the spider said. “I would have your talent.”

Fu brought his blade higher, for the air about them was severed. As if a cloth was cut, bisected by singular, moonlit strings to expose the [Spirit Beasts] beneath. They emerged, padding, stalking, and clicking.

Sharpened things, well suited to disciples of blades.

“You may have it, venerable mistress,” he said. “But I am afraid the trade is unequal, and give apologies in advance.”

Preservation overrode Niwai’s disbelief, and had her jian levied.

This horde ringed the pair, and lent credence to the [Law of Origin], its descriptor as a [Beast Realm].

For a tide approached.

Light-licked, and star-entwined. Fanged with moonlight, or with claws and manes that blazed as suns.

“Strive, then,” the spider said. “Step well, and inspire through dance so that I might best find a fitting melody.”

No note was struck but that of meeting metal. A piercing [Might] that blew Fu backwards at the behest of a [Spirit Ape]. [Light Qi] ablaze on its claws, illuminating scrags of midnight fur. These blurring strokes a match of any blademaster’s [Prowess].

But the [Wind Phantom Strides], its second set, put speed over physical strength. Put Fu beneath the rampage of arms, and the tears upon his Lotus Blade disguise.

To be countered.

And again.

And predictably, again.

The [Spirit Ape] put minimal steps to block, and left no gaps in its strikes. For rear blows, from above when Fu took to leap, in a lash when distance was created.

Five [Seasons], is it not? Since I began this path against the Heavens. Two, for the [Wind Phantom Strides].

Niwai’s foot propelled a [Spirit Mantis] to the ground, now but a limp corpse in a pile of three.

“Hushi,” he grimaced, bending so searing claws might pass by his latest, parrying kick. “Is this not…”

[Light Qi] enraged blades upon this [Spirit Ape’s] hands, and they swelled to thrice their original length.

“A fateful encounter?” Fu finished.

The octopus and he blurred in opposite, striking from north and south. Teal arms to wrench back the beast’s shoulder, and vanish before cruel fangs might snap in descent. Then, in tandem, came the visceral gouge from the creature’s spine before Fu landed beyond it.

It released a sound in oscillation. One scream cast across the stars, quieting as the spider there prepared a string. The silent massing of [Dao] that had it wax in a suffusion of gold, and released with a single, impossibly profound note.

An [Epiphany] graced the air. If such things could be granules in the breeze or the memory of a taste upon his tongue.

But he felt it.

Even as the second [Spirit Beast] entered this most feral tournament, cold [Lunar Qi] glinting across its fangs. Thus he raised his blade once more, and vowed to follow this glimpse of insight granted.

This haze of a step forward on his martial path.

🀧

The [Green Blight Valley], and then on, to myriad [Mystic Realms]. To the [Demons] within the splinter. Each life reaped between such points. Even the meagre contribution to death his plight in the [Thousand Shore Mystic Realm] had caused.

This was nothing against the slaughter about them.

Indeed, the path to martial power was littered with a thousand corpses.

Bloodied and tarnished, Fu swallowed a second [Winter Rejuvenation Pill]. The Qi flooded his [Core], as it had some minutes ago. Yet this might well have been hours. Amidst a [Half Cloud Step] - his solace from the beast upon him, he streamed by Niwai to dispense her own [Season’s] pill.

And once more, he landed, and Hushi pressed the overflowing energies into sealing each gristly wound upon him.

For all the effect it might have.

A body undergone [Bone Refinement] and the inherent density this brought to muscles in strengthened flesh and tissue.

This was no thin cloth to mend.

Thus he rolled clear of the [Spirit Wolf] whose [Dao Principle] birthed a conjured jaw to snap around his waist, and grimaced as blood squelched from the gash upon his side. It brought him through greased grasses, and pasted him in the red-soaked mulch beneath.

The [Dao Principle] came again with claws in place of fang, loosing four great strikes of golden light to sever head from spine.

[Dao of Wayward Breezes].

Both cultivator and partner appeared in the downstrike of the beast’s lunge, and Fu’s chain wound taught with a single snap. Seven loops to ensnare its mane and choke what vital air this place provided while Hushi pried back its snout.

A vertical crack resounded, and a whimper might well have come before the [Spirit Wolf’s] limpness were it not deafened beneath a rising twang of strings.

[Ink] burned upon his arm, and had come on four separate occasions. Unchecked, for only a fool would do so in these circumstances. However, this fifth could not be ignored. So Fu launched high, stepping twice upon the conjured platforms of cloud his [Art] provided.

Bathed in starlight.

Even this sudden glimpse put his body into equilibrium. The changes such practice and implementation had forged within his body, now put into clearer light. A dull haze, faded.

As with advancing his [Dao], the traversal between stages - from [Initiate] to [False Imitation], akin to the [First] and [Second Pool], granted a greater increase of his attributes. Values that could only have him imagine how high he might soar once his cultivation was furthered.

And the second pair, revealing why just his [Ink] had burned, had him strain. It had him narrow his eyes mid-descent and put them upon the distant [Spirit Spider], her arms in a rhythmic pluck.

Such growth was incredible, but unnatural.

Only a genius might ascend the Heavens in a single bound.

Fu knew well what he was, and what he was not.

With grace, he fell to the bloodied grasses. “Sister,” he grunted, and blurred with such speed that her [Spirit Tiger] foe could do little but flinch as he spilled its neck. “This trial is no part of our mission. Zhu awaits, and we have indulged enough.”

Her shout was half-obscured by the strums behind, calming from their crescendo. If melodic and sombre. “Gao Fu,” it came, her pupils large and unfocused. “This opportunity can’t be squandered.”

The pair rounded at a twinned advance. A [Spirit Serpent] with scales of metallic glint, and fangs to match. Then the thrum of a [Spirit Wasp], fleet and of a size to match most hounds.

Newforged instinct drew Fu’s blade up so the stinger ground in deflection. Three times, then eight, and it was as if his body responded in confluence. Attributes, experience, [Prowess], [Control]. It filled him with a notion, one that relayed that this dance of the [Wind Phantom Strides] could never be performed worse than this.

That this was the minimum standard set, collated by all he was and all he had done.

As if he were an expert of some descript.

Hushi crumpled the insect with uncanny deftness, more a swift cloud than beast. Done so that Fu might address his junior unburdened. “We must find a way to conclude this,” he warned. “Our duty demands it.”

“You’re my senior by a half-step, old man,” she spat. “I’ll not be denied this by the likes of you.”

Fu granted her a final look. From weary joints to filth-splattered, burn-marked flesh. “Then face it as you are, sister,” he said, and reared back so her [Spirit Serpent] foe might stream by. Unbarred by his passage. “I wish you fortune.”

[Half Cloud Step].