Execute.
Li Xuan’s command was quiet, precise, and without hesitation.
The chime in the depths of his consciousness did not merely ring. It thundered, like an ancient bronze bell struck against the pillars of creation, and for one breath the whole of the Fourth Aisle went dark.
[Executing Sign-In at: Great Liang Imperial Origin Dragon-Vein Vault.]
[1000-Fold Monarch Multiplier Successfully Applied!]
[Congratulations! You have received Divine Item: <The Primordial Dragon-Vein Origin Core>!]
[Congratulations! You have received Cultivation Resource: 10,000 Monarch-Grade Divine Essence Crystals!]
[Congratulations! You have received Divine Art: <The Heaven-Birthed Absolute Blade Domain First Form Primordial Scripture: Void-Cleaving>!]
[Congratulations! You have received Spatial Artifact: <The Imperial Sleeve World-Grasping>!]
Li Xuan’s knees bent. His hand did not leave the iron.
The Mind Palace caught the reward as a man catches a falling beam, with both arms and all his weight, and for the length of three long heartbeats nothing else in the world existed.
Ten thousand crystalline stones glowing with iridescent golden light settled into the hidden space of his consciousness and stacked themselves into towering pyramids. Each held more pure spiritual Qi than all sixteen provinces of the Great Liang Empire together, and the seed in his abdomen flinched from them as a candle flinches from the sun. He did not reach for one. He knew what would happen to a cup that tried to hold the sea.
Below his awareness, in the quiet jade hall of his spirit, something vast drifted into place.
It was a golden orb the size of a man’s head, swirling with the earth-veins, the luck, and the natural laws of the whole southern continent. The Primordial Dragon-Vein Origin Core, the heart of the dynasty, settled upon the floor of the Mind Palace like a second sun. Its light was gold, but threaded through it ran black strands, thick as cords, the rot of three hundred years of royal blood spilled into it by greedy hands.
The palace did not rush to cleanse it. It laid one pale silver thread against the first black strand and began, as it always did, to work slowly.
Weeks, Li Xuan thought, and drew a shuddering breath. It will take weeks.
But the Core’s light fell upon the seed in his lower abdomen, and the seed, which had been drinking a thread at a time for a month, put out a third root, thin as silk and bright as gold.
Body Tempering, Fifth Stage.
It was no leap. It was a single step, and yet it was a firmer one than he had ever taken.
Beside the shelf where the Ocean-Severing scripture waited, a second golden scripture unrolled and settled: the Void-Cleaving Blade, an art that could fold and slice whole stretches of space with a glance, bypassing walls and arrays and the laws of the elements alike. The Mind Palace read its title. Then, as with the Ocean-Severing, it stopped, folded the scripture shut, and laid it beside the first. Two mountains side by side. Neither moved.
Last of all, the Spatial Artifact merged into the cuff of his dark blue robe, a faint warmth against his wrist, and Li Xuan felt, through the frayed cloth, a hollow the size of a cartload of grain. The Imperial Sleeve World-Grasping, the Mind Palace whispered. It would hold more as his Qi grew deeper. For now, it was a room, and a room was more than he had owned yesterday.
Creak.
The three-thousand-year-old iron doors of the Imperial Dragon-Vein Vault swung slowly inward, and cold, stale air flowed out over his boots.
Beyond lay a vast cavern built into the core of the mountain. Long ago it had been filled with golden chests, spirit herbs, and the treasures of ancestors. But the Supreme Ancestors had drained it for three hundred years, and now the stone platforms stood bare beneath thick gray dust and a few abandoned wooden cases.
Elder Gu came up beside him and peered into the dim, empty hall.
"Empty," the old man muttered, letting out a dry breath of wine-scented air. "The old dogs drained it all. Not a spirit-stone left."
Li Xuan looked at the bare stone platforms. Then he looked at the horsehair broom in his hand, and a faint, tranquil smile touched his lips.
"It is not empty, Senior Gu," he said softly. "This dust has lain undisturbed for three thousand years. It is the quietest room in the capital."
He stepped across the threshold with his broom raised.
"I will sweep it before we leave."
In the center of the hall stood a round dais of black stone, and upon it lay a clean circle in the dust where something had sat for three thousand years. Around the circle’s edge ran a line of script so old that Li Xuan could not read it. The Mind Palace read it for him, slowly, one word at a time.
Return what you borrow.
He stood a long while with the broom in his hand, looking at those four words.
Then he began to sweep.
Three days later, the capital of Great Liang lay under a held breath.
The court had posted new notices at every gate: the Crown Prince was in seclusion, the Emperor was in seclusion, and the grain and labor levy of the new moon would proceed as written. Eleven days. The ministers, terrified of the thing they had felt beneath their feet, moved about their offices like men walking on thin ice. In the outer districts, women kept their children indoors after dusk.
Li Xuan sat in the Fourth Aisle with a map of the Western Reaches spread across his desk.
"The Crown Prince’s men will not trouble us for a few days," he said. "They are afraid. The Ancestors will wait until the dome is full. That gives me eleven days to learn what a Core can teach a seed, and a month after that to be ready by the first snow. I cannot do it here."
"Why not?" said Gu.
"This floor is read." Li Xuan touched a spot on the map, near the western edge. "Iron Pass. The frontier forts that Great Liang abandoned fifty years ago, where the generals’ journals were sealed. Fifty years of fallen martial intent, and a battlefield beyond it that nobody has swept since."
He felt rather than saw the old man go very still.
"Fifty years," Gu said. His voice was strangely quiet. "I have not been west of the capital in fifty years."
"I know, Senior."
Gu said nothing for a long while. His clouded eyes rested on the lamp.
"I do not like sleeping with three old corpses above my head," he said at last, gruffly. "And the donkey will need someone to shout at it."
Li Xuan said nothing. But he bowed, slightly, as a man bows to his elder.
At dawn, on the dirt road outside the capital’s western gate, a simple two-wheeled cart stood waiting, pulled by an old gray donkey with a very bad temper.
Li Xuan sat on the front bench in his familiar dark blue servant’s robe. Strapped to the side of the cart were his horsehair broom and a small copper tea stove. Elder Gu sat beside him with a fresh clay gourd of cheap mountain wine, and the look of a man who had just climbed out of a well he had lived in for fifty years.
Ji Ling’er stood at the roadside, her white-and-silver robes stirring in the morning breeze. Her silver veil was lowered a little, and her ice-carved face held a deep and settled respect.
"Senior Li." She bowed with her hands clasped. "The news from Great Liang has begun to reach the Nine Sects beyond the border. Many old clans will send scouts to see what has happened here."
"Let them come." Li Xuan held the leather reins loosely, looking down the winding road toward the distant, mist-shrouded peaks. "The Archive is open to anyone who wishes to read. As long as they wipe their boots before they enter, no one will disturb them."
Ji Ling’er lifted her cold eyes to the young man who held a power she could not name, and who had chosen to travel in a squeaking wooden cart.
"And the new moon, Senior?"
"Is eleven days away. I will be back before it." His voice was soft. "Keep the road, Saintess."
"I will keep it." She bowed again, more deeply. "Where will Senior go?"
Li Xuan breathed in the cold, clean air of the morning. His dark eyes were calm and bright as the autumn sky.
"West, to a fort whose walls have not been swept in fifty years." A mild smile touched his lips. "After that, I hear the Sky-Clearing Sect in the Great Wilderness keeps a scripture library five thousand years old. Their front steps have not been swept in fifty years, either. But that is for later."
He flicked the reins.
The old gray donkey gave a lazy bray and set off down the dirt road, pulling the creaking cart slowly toward the mists of the west.
Behind them, high above the inner palace, the great red dome of the Ancestral Sanctuary flickered once, like a candle in a draft.
Inside it, the First Ancestor’s eyes snapped open.
"The door has been knocked," he rasped.
The Emperor, pouring his blood into the altar, did not dare to ask what door.