In the void, several figures stood facing one another.
“Li Yuan, you’ve gone mad.”
The speaker was a female cultivator, long hair bound high, her sword still sheathed, yet its intent alone had scattered the clouds for miles around.
The man she called Li Yuan stood opposite, wreathed in dark crimson spiritual power, like fog soaked through with blood.
His face was young, his brows even carrying a lazy hint of a smile, but there was nothing at all in those eyes.
“Yun Que, after all these years apart, the first thing you say is that I’ve gone mad.” Li Yuan tilted his head. “That’s not very nice.”
Another cultivator, tall and broad, stepped forward, ripples spreading through the void beneath his feet.
“You slaughtered the entire Cangwu Mountain sect.” His voice was low. “Three thousand seven hundred people on that mountain, including your own junior brother from back then. Li Yuan, tell me, if that isn’t madness, what is?”
Li Yuan said nothing.
He looked down at his hands, knuckles defined, fingers long and slender, now threaded with dark crimson light. After a moment he raised his head again, his tone light.
“Chang Yuan, you’re right. I did kill them.”
“Why?”
“There doesn’t have to be a why.” Li Yuan smiled faintly. “I wanted to kill them, so I did.”
Yun Que’s hand settled on her sword hilt.
“You know exactly what chaos you’ve thrown the Six Realms into.” Her voice was trembling, not from fear but from fury she couldn’t suppress. “That rift in the underworld is one you tore open. The seal on the demon clan’s side was one you broke. And now the mortal emperor has come begging the Immortal Sects for help, saying the three southeastern provinces haven’t seen rain in three months, that the earth veins have gone completely haywire. Li Yuan, what exactly are you trying to do?”
Li Yuan tilted his head and thought about it.
“I don’t know.”
“You!”
“I really don’t know.” He cut her off. “One day I just woke up and suddenly found all of it terribly boring. All those years you spent cultivating, becoming immortals, becoming deathless and eternal, and then what? Guarding the rules of the Six Realms, guarding all those rigid little codes, is that fun?”
Chang Yuan’s expression darkened.
“So you decided to drag the Six Realms down with you into your madness?”
“More or less.”
Li Yuan even wore a careless smile as he said it, as if they weren’t discussing the survival of the Six Realms.
Then Yun Que’s sword left its sheath.
The instant the sword light swept out, the clouds for a hundred li around split in two. That strike went straight for Li Yuan’s face, no probing at all, a killing move from the start.
Li Yuan didn’t dodge.
He raised his right hand, pressed index and middle fingers together, and simply caught the blade between them.
“Yun Que, your sword is still too slow.”
No sooner had he spoken than dark crimson spiritual power burst from his fingertips, surging back along the blade toward her. Yun Que released the sword and pulled back without hesitation, but the force still grazed her shoulder, and she was hurled backward through the air.
Chang Yuan caught her, and with his other hand formed a seal. Golden array patterns lit up beneath Li Yuan’s feet.
“Bind.”
The word fell, the patterns contracted, becoming countless chains that wound around Li Yuan.
Li Yuan glanced down at the chains on his body, his expression unchanged. He flexed his wrist slightly, the chains let out a piercing shriek, and then shattered.
Golden fragments scattered through the void like shattered glass.
Chang Yuan’s pupils contracted.
“Your cultivation…”
“Is it really so strange?” Li Yuan rolled his wrist. “As I said, I don’t want to keep following those rules anymore. Once you stop, everything feels different. Have either of you ever tried it? Throwing away all of it, the so-called Dao, the so-called reason, the so-called rules of the Heavenly Dao.”
“We cultivate the righteous path.” Yun Que stood, hand pressed to her shoulder, blood seeping between her fingers. “Not whatever this is you’ve become.”
“The righteous path?” Li Yuan repeated the words, then laughed. “Yun Que, tell me, what is the righteous path? Ascension means cultivating away every last emotion and desire, turning right and wrong into regulations, turning living itself into a procedure, and that’s the righteous path?”
As he spoke, he raised his hand.
Dark crimson spiritual power gathered in his palm, denser and denser, darker and darker, until it turned nearly black. The pulsing of that mass of power made the whole space begin to tremble.
Yun Que and Chang Yuan’s faces changed at the same moment.
“Li Yuan, stop!”
“Too late.”
Li Yuan’s voice was soft, and then he closed his hand into a fist.
The mass of power detonated.
Dark crimson light swallowed everything. Yun Que and Chang Yuan’s figures blurred within that light. Then came the other immortals who had remained silent all this while, their protective barriers shattering in the same instant.
The light devoured all sight.
Jiang Xingzhou’s eyes snapped open.
The ceiling was wood, grain marked with that texture unique to old houses. He stared at the lines for several seconds, chest still heaving.
He could barely breathe.
Slowly he pushed himself up against the bed frame, the undershirt on his back was soaked through, clinging to his skin, the chill raising goosebumps all over him. His forehead was slick with sweat too, running down past his brow, one drop finding its way into his eye and stinging until he turned his head aside.
Jiang Xingzhou groped at the head of the bed and found a jacket he’d tossed there at some point, maybe yesterday, maybe the day before, and scrubbed it roughly across his face.
His hand was still shaking.
He turned his palm over and looked at it, fingers spreading and closing, over and over, until the tremor finally eased.
“Why do I keep dreaming about this?”
The room was very quiet.
The window was shut, light filtering in from outside, falling in a bright patch on the floor.
He had no idea what time it was. Maybe afternoon, maybe dusk; he’d slept so long he’d lost track.
Jiang Xingzhou sat a while longer, then reached up to feel his forehead.
“No fever. Why was I gasping like that just now?”
He lowered his hand, gripped the edge of the bed, and set his feet on the floor. The ground was cold, and the instant his soles touched it he flinched, before slowly pressing them down firmly.
His legs were still a bit weak when he stood, and his knee banged against the bed frame, drawing a hiss of pain through his teeth.
“Sss.”
He steadied himself against the bedpost and looked back at the pillow, where sweat had soaked a dark stain.
The images from the dream were still turning in his head: the dark crimson light, the void tearing open, and that final gesture of the man called Li Yuan closing his hand.
He didn’t know any of those people, yet every time he dreamed of them, his chest went tight.
Jiang Xingzhou rubbed his temples and padded barefoot to the table to pour a glass of water. It was cold, probably poured yesterday, and when he gulped it down his whole throat went cold with it.
He set the glass down, hands braced on the table edge, head lowered.
“Third time.”
The third time dreaming this.
The first was half a month ago, and he’d blamed it on reading too many storybooks during the day.
The second was a week ago, and he’d woken with a headache that lasted half the day.
Today was the third, clearer than either before, so clear he could remember the exact curve of the man called Li Yuan’s smile, the way Yun Que’s sword light cleaved through the clouds, the golden patterns that lit up on Chang Yuan’s fingertips as he formed his seal.
But he didn’t know them.
After three rounds of it, though, the names had stuck.
Li Yuan, Yun Que, Chang Yuan.
Jiang Xingzhou set the glass back on the table and traced a circle around its rim with his finger.
“Surely it isn’t something from a past life.”
The thought was so absurd he smirked at himself, but no actual laugh came out.