A flood of qi. An ocean of bloody qi, his veins singing, heart beating, world revolving around him as he raised his blade— collapsing inwards, the center pulled out from beneath its course, perfect and sublime and so very, very deadly.

Between the two of them, for a moment, nothing else existed but the “Blade Whose Ink Rewrites the Heavens.” He slashed down, and a line of perfect, brilliant red so incandescent-bright that it would have blinded anyone below core formation split the air from heaven to earth— and then it split the earth two, and the mountain behind it, and the mountain behind that.

Then it exploded, like all good cultivator techniques should.

“Have you gone mad?” An old man dressed in the cerulean robes of the Shancun Sect shouted at him as his ultimate defensive technique cracked and crumbled away beneath the aftermath of his blow.“Do you know what do? The Ever-Joyous Harmony of Bells Sect will have your head if you dare to kill me!”

“You—” the single word was laden with such a killing intent that his enemy, hardened by a thousand battles and veteran of a hundred wars, flinched back— “killed my disciple. That I did not wipe your pathetic excuse for a sect of the face of Aurelia is proof of my boundless mercy!”

“You’re insane! All this over a disciple? He wasn’t even in core formation yet!”

The seething rage inside of him frothed at that. As though little Zhuge had been worth any the less because of his cultivation level. This time, he didn’t speak, just slashing his sword down and releasing a wave of qi that the Shancun Sect Master barely dodged.

He’d never liked the man anyways, so-called cultivation genius or not, but he’d finally gone and done something unforgivable. Ordering the death of his disciple? If it weren’t for the good fortune of the looming threat of a renewed war dragging him from his secluded cultivation, he might not have been aware until it was too late.

His enemy grasped his spear and then thrust, lightning and cerulean cold racing upwards to be deflected uselessly against a sweep of his blade. “Do you think yourself righteous, attacking me over this petty squabble? Should this not be left to our juniors?” The man had recovered adroitly from his shattered technique. If he’d not known his measure before he’d dragged him off for a duel, he might not have even realized that it had been a deadly attack. Impressive, to disguise weakness as courtesy. Not enough, though.

Daoist Bleeding Horizons merely held his sword and glared at the old man. “If I cannot back up my oaths myself, then dare I call myself a gentleman? If I did not punish those responsible for their crimes, then how dare I claim the humankindness of a Sect Master?”

The Shancun Sect Master’s face twisted into a sneer. “You’re just another young fool without eyes to see or ears to hear. You’re are like the sea bird entertained by the Emperor of Twelve Constellations— the tones of heaven are lost on one as deaf as you. You will never become an immortal if you cannot set the worthless aside in favor of practicality.”

The worthless?

He dared call his disciple worthless? Little Zhuge, with his bright smile and love of reading and laugh that never failed to lighten anyone’s day, Little Zhuge who’d trained diligently for half a century with such a bright future in front of him, Little Zhuge who’d been stabbed twelve times and disemboweled by a Core Formation Shancun Sect Outer Disciple for daring to seek a treasure for his martial brother in the Dragonspine Mountains, worthless?

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If the Shancun sect had thought he could see how angry he could get before, he was sorely mistaken. Before, he’d planned to just slice him up a bit and humiliate him, slap his face and deal insult to the Shancun Sect as they had to him. Now, though?

Now, as a corona of power burst out of him like a tidal wave of endless blood, as the very clouds in the sky were banished back beneath the weight of his sheer rage, he wanted the man dead. He raised his sword—

His sword was his heart. He raised his heart, and carried with it an ocean of refined qi like a second sun ascending.

The world washed scarlet, color fading to red alone—

His path resonated together as he called on his ultimate technique, the ultimate technique of the Bloody Saffron sect known to only a scant few, performable by him, alone, of the past five generations of sect masters—

Its name, so oddly simple

for a technique of its overwhelming dominance, fell from bloodied lips as he sliced his blade down. “Heart-Piercing Strike.”

The world exploded red.

For a second, all he could feel was the sensation of power flowing through him as he killed his enemy— but even with the sheer amount of qi the technique took out of him, it only took him a fraction of a second to come back to his senses. When he did, he scowled— his blow had been utterly blocked by a massive golden dome, the peal of its strike echoing off against an even larger dome that’d prevented him from blowing up all the mountains around them. He’d made a sizable crater, and that was pretty much it.

It wasn’t some lifesaving technique. No— as something grabbed onto the front of his robe and yanked him down next to the pale, shaken Shancun Sect Master, he already knew just who’d shown up to oversee their battle. “Really? I look away for one moment, and this is what my allies get up to?” A dark skinned man floated in front of them, his mop of messy hair ruffled by the breeze at the altitude they were hovering. Unlike the sect robes he and his enemy had both been wearing, he was dressed almost ridiculously casually, wearing jeans and a long white hoodie.

Still, Bloody Horizons did not for a single instant doubt his utter dominance. “Grand Elder Sunrise Within the Light of Virtue.”

The Immortal Ascension turned his glare on him, and for a moment he— Sect Master of one of the world’s strongest sect’s— remembered what it felt like to be a mouse under the eye of a god. “My name is Geo. Use it. I swear, everyone calls me by that stupid…” he shook his head, returning his ire to both of them. “I am… displeased at having to intervene in your spat.”

“He was the one that tried to kill me—”

“Shut up.” The Shancun Sect Master shut up. “Daoist Bloody Horizons, you were out of line. This should have been left to your juniors—” but before the Shancun Sect Master could get too happy, Geo’s gaze settled on him. “However… ordering the death of a core disciple? And not just any core disciple, Daoist Bloody Horizon’s personal disciple? That’s not even courting death— you’re were just trying to commit suicide at that point. Striking while he was in secluded cultivation was just cowardly. If it weren’t for the way the empire is posturing, I’d kill you myself for such reprehensible behavior.” He sighed. “Right, punishment, gotta decide punishment… well, you two are going to be forced to exist cordially around each other for the next few decades. That’s punishment enough. If I have to intervene again, I’m going to throw both of you into the sun.” The inescapable force holding him in place vanished as Geo turned around and slipped through a gash into reality, stepping into the Chaos Sea. His enemy took the opportunity to flee without looking back, while he… he just stood there.

Now that the rage was gone, he felt… almost empty. He’d lost another disciple. Was this his curse? To, no matter what realm he reached, constantly lose the ones he loved?

He sighed, pushing the thoughts to the back of his mind. There was no moping for him— he had a sect to run, and he still had his older disciple, who’d need consoling…

No rest for the weary.

He turned and flew away.