Jiang Xingzhou stood where he was, the wind whipping his long hair everywhere. He reached up and scraped the strands off his face, staring at the old man.
“Go on.”
The old man didn’t speak right away.
He held his teacup and sat in silence for a moment, as if deciding where to begin.
“I was still young then.” He finally set down the cup. “Back then I was nothing but a small cultivator at the Foundation Establishment stage, not even worth a name among the Six Realms. When that upheaval happened, I was meditating in the back mountains of my sect.”
“All at once the sky and earth shook, spiritual energy reversed its flow, and the shockwave knocked me unconscious on the spot.”
“That’s it?” Jiang Xingzhou raised an eyebrow. “You’ve lived a few hundred years, and the one moment that matters, you faint?”
“Young Master Jiang.” The old man gave him a helpless look. “The Six Realms were shaking then. Even seniors at the Mahayana stage couldn’t hold up. I was at the Foundation Establishment stage; fainting was the better outcome. Many had their meridians shatter on the spot and died.”
“Fine. And then?”
“After I woke, the elders of my sect told me the Six Realms had fallen into chaos.” The old man’s finger traced slowly around the rim of his cup. “The Underworld split open along a seam. The seal on the Demon Clan broke. The mortal realm’s ley lines were thrown into disorder, and for three months not a drop of rain fell. Every Immortal Sect was busy cleaning up the aftermath, and the source of all of it…”
“Li Yuan.”
“Precisely.”
Jiang Xingzhou folded his arms across his chest.
“He did all that by himself?”
“Not him alone,” the old man said. “But he was the source. They say Li Yuan was once the god with the greatest hope of touching the Heavenly Dao. His cultivation was unfathomable. Even if the other gods joined hands, they might not have beaten him for certain. But he rebelled, out of nowhere.”
“Why did he rebel?”
“No one knows.” The old man shook his head. “Some say he fell into demonic ways. Some say he glimpsed the truth of the Heavenly Dao and went mad. Others say he had simply lived too long and found nothing interesting anymore.”
At that last sentence, Jiang Xingzhou suddenly recalled what Li Yuan had said in his dream.
“One day you wake up, and suddenly all of it seems pretty pointless.”
He frowned.
“So what happened after? How was he stopped?”
The old man was silent for a long time.
“Mutual destruction.” He said those words very quietly. “Divine Venerable Yun Que, Divine Venerable Chang Yuan, and the other gods still living at the time struck together. That battle lasted seven full days. In the end Li Yuan was annihilated, and those Divine Venerables all fell as well.”
The wind suddenly stopped.
Jiang Xingzhou looked at the old man.
“All dead?”
“Yes. All dead,” the old man said. “From then on, there were no more gods in the Six Realms.”
“No.” Jiang Xingzhou lowered his arms. “You just said Yun Que and Chang Yuan died too. Then why did I see them in my dream?”
The old man raised his eyes to him.
“What Young Master Jiang saw in his dream was likely not a matter of this life.”
Jiang Xingzhou didn’t answer that.
He walked over to the low table, picked up a teacup, and took a sip. The tea had gone completely cold, bitter on his tongue.
“Then let me ask you something. Aren’t gods supposed to be powerful? Don’t they have foresight or something? Couldn’t they have known in advance that Li Yuan would rebel?”
“Gods can indeed glimpse cause and effect,” the old man said. “But Li Yuan’s cultivation was too high. If he didn’t want to be noticed, the other gods might not have noticed. And besides…”
He paused.
“And besides, even if they had noticed, what could they do? Li Yuan didn’t rebel against any one god. He rebelled against the Heavenly Dao itself. He threw away every rule and kept none. A god bound by nothing is more terrifying than anything.”
Jiang Xingzhou listened, then set the cup down.
“The gods around here sound like corporate executives. They all look perfectly normal, and then one of them quits, blows up the company, and drags all the other executives down with him.”
The old man blinked and stroked his beard.
“That’s a way of putting it I’ve never heard before, Young Master Jiang.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Jiang Xingzhou said. “But it’s about right.”
His fingers tapped twice on the tabletop.
“So now the Six Realms have no gods. What about the immortals? The demons? The Demon Clan? Someone among them has to be in charge.”
“The immortal world’s sects each go their own way,” the old man said. “The Demon Realm has never submitted to anyone’s control. The Demon Clan’s realm has been in chaos ever since the seal broke. The mortal realm is doing all right; its emperors are close with the Immortal Sects, and when trouble comes, the Immortal Sects cover for them.”
“Since that seam appeared, the Underworld has cut off all contact with the other five realms. As for the divine realm…” The old man sighed. “It has been empty ever since, and no one can set foot there.”
“So your Six Realms are just a mess now.”
The old man didn’t argue.
“Young Master Jiang is right. It is indeed a mess.”
Jiang Xingzhou leaned back, his spine against the trunk of a peach tree.
“Then I have one more question.”
“Please.”
“The person who dragged me here had me refine the strength inside me, for what? Surely not so I could retire here.”
The old man looked at him, his gaze resting on his face for a good while.
“I truly don’t know that person’s intention,” he said. “But the strength inside Young Master Jiang, as I said before, is deeper and thicker than anything I’ve seen in all my years.”
“Since that person sent you here and asked me to help you refine it, there must be something important he means to entrust to you.”
“Something important.” Jiang Xingzhou repeated the phrase. “What, cleaning up the mess?”
“Perhaps.”
“Me, alone?”
“Perhaps not alone.”
“Then what about you? After you finish helping me refine it, what will you do?”
The old man smiled.
“My task is to help you refine it. Seven days from now, I can leave this place.”
“Where to?”
“Home.” The old man’s eyes curved when he said it. “I haven’t been back in a few hundred years. I don’t know what it’s become.”
Jiang Xingzhou looked at the smile on the old man’s face and suddenly didn’t know what to say.
An old man had been placed here by someone he didn’t know, waiting a few hundred years, just to help a stranger refine his strength.
And when the work was done, he wanted nothing out of it but to go home and take a look.
“You’re surprisingly at peace with things.”
“At my age, whatever I couldn’t make peace with, I’ve made peace with.”
Jiang Xingzhou asked no more.
He stood up, walked a few steps toward the wooden cabin, and stopped.
“Seven days, then.”
“Seven days.”
“Fine.” He turned back to look at the old man. “Seven days, then. After seven days, whether or not the person who dragged me here shows up, I’m leaving.”
“If I can’t get back to my own place, then I’ll go have a look at that Six Realms you mentioned. I can’t spend the rest of my life in this peach grove.”
The old man stood and cupped his hands in salute.
“Rest assured, Young Master Jiang. I will do my utmost.”
“Stop with the bowing.” Jiang Xingzhou waved a hand. “And can you quit calling yourself ‘this old one’? Listening to it, I feel like I’m talking to an unearthed artifact.”
The old man smiled.
“Force of habit. Can’t change it.”
“Then don’t.” Jiang Xingzhou headed for the cabin. “Hey, where do I sleep tonight?”
“There’s a couch in the cabin. I’ve already tidied it up.”
Jiang Xingzhou pushed open the wooden door.
The cabin was small inside: a low couch, a table, an oil lamp.
A clay vase sat on the windowsill, holding two sprigs of peach blossom.
He sat down on the edge of the couch and looked down at his hands.
By now his fingers were no longer numb, but his fingertips were still warm. The warmth didn’t come from outside; it seeped out from the seams of his bones. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just a feeling that his whole palm was full.
He thought again of what the old man had said.
No more gods in the Six Realms.
Jiang Xingzhou flopped onto the couch and laid an arm across his forehead.
“So… is there something I’m supposed to do?”