The autumn wind sharpened over the capital of Great Liang, but ten zhang below the ground the cold of the Seventh Nether Floor did not change.
Two days had passed since the raid.
Li Xuan sat behind his mahogany desk in the Fourth Aisle with a plain goat-hair brush in his hand. He dipped it into a shallow dish of black pine ink and drew a single stroke upon a sheet of coarse paper.
The stroke was straight, thin, and ordinary.
Yet as the ink sank into the rough fibers, the air three fingers above the page trembled. A faint, invisible edge of sword intent hung there, sharp enough to divide a falling mote of dust, though unevenly, and not without a quiver. No master would have called it skill. But the paper beneath was unmarked.
Elder Gu sat on his stool twenty paces away with his wine gourd. He looked at Li Xuan, then at the paper, and shook his head slowly.
"Boy," he said with a sigh, "if you go on writing like that, some sword cultivator will find your scrap paper and be ashamed of himself for a month. You are nineteen. At nineteen I was still struggling to align my meridians at the Third Layer of Qi Condensation."
Li Xuan did not look up. He let the ink dry and laid the sheet carefully on a small stack at the edge of the desk. "Writing soothes the heart, Senior Gu. The court upstairs is making ready for the Crown Prince’s coronation tomorrow. The noise from the parade grounds reaches even here."
"Hmph. Coronation." Gu spat upon the slate, his eyes sharp with disgust. "Stealing his brother’s spirit-veins to buy a crown. That little tyrant thinks a golden chair makes an emperor. He does not know that half the border generals already curse the rot of the court."
Li Xuan said nothing. His dark eyes were calm, as though nothing had ever stirred them.
He rose, took his brush and a fresh sheet of paper, and walked to the northern end of the floor, where the Ancestral Sword-Inscription Wall ran beside the Boundary Stone. Three thousand years ago, the founding generals of Great Liang had carved their oaths into it. He laid his palm upon the cold stone.
Hum.
[Location Verified: Ancestral Sword-Inscription Wall (Historical Weight: 3,000 Years of Dynasty Intent).]
[Daily Sign-In available. Would Host like to execute Sign-In?]
Execute, Li Xuan commanded in his heart.
[Executing Sign-In at: Ancestral Sword-Inscription Wall.]
[Triggered 100-Fold Multiplier on Historic Landmark Sign-In!]
[Congratulations! You have received: 100 Primordial Sword-Nourishing Pills (Grade-9 Monarch Quality)!]
[Congratulations! You have received Sword Art: <The Boundless Blade First Form Ocean-Severing Primordial Scripture: Monarch>!]
A hundred crystalline blue jars settled into the hidden space of his consciousness. Each held a pill that looked like a miniature ocean current, turning slowly upon itself.
In the jade hall of his spirit, a vast golden scripture unrolled.
Unlike the silence of the Water-Tracing Blade, the Ocean-Severing Blade was an art of total mastery over one’s domain. In its highest forms it turned a cultivator’s Qi into a wave of sword intent that could topple mountains, split an ocean, and break the cultivation of an entire army in a single blow.
The Mind Palace opened the scripture and read its first line. Then it stopped.
The line was too large. It was an art for a body that could carry an ocean, and Li Xuan’s body could carry a cup. The palace folded the scripture shut, set it high upon a shelf of moonlit jade, and left it to wait.
Li Xuan stood a long while with his hand upon the wall. He felt no stronger. He did not mind.
A mountain is not climbed by looking at its peak.
That night, Elder Gu came to the northern end of the floor with a lantern and two cups.
"Tomorrow they wake the old arrays," he said, setting one cup before Li Xuan and filling it from the pot. He did not look at him. "Every drum on the plaza will beat upon a line of iron that runs under this room. The old array drinks two things, boy: royal blood, and the key. You have both."
"Then it will answer me."
"It will." Gu looked into his own cup. "But that is a loan, not a gift. Do you know what a loan costs?"
"Tell me."
"Whatever you have. And then a little more." The old man drank. "When the stone stops answering, your legs go first. Do not stay upstairs long."
Li Xuan looked at him for a time in the lantern light, and the old man, who could not see him, looked at the flame. Neither said what both were thinking: that a drunk who sweeps a cellar has no business knowing the price of an ancestral array.
"Thank you, Senior," Li Xuan said at last.
"Hmph." Gu got to his feet. "Drink your tea."
The next morning, the sun rose over the capital and poured golden light upon the white marble plazas of the Grand Palace. Ten thousand red banners cracked in the autumn wind, and hundreds of bronze ceremonial drums boomed along the city walls.
Nobles from the sixteen provinces, sect masters from the southern border, and envoys from foreign courts gathered upon the white jade steps outside the Grand Imperial Hall to witness the coronation of Crown Prince Li Chen.
Li Chen stood upon the highest of the jade platforms in magnificent golden robes embroidered with dragons. Upon his head sat a golden crown set with nine spirit-pearls. As he looked down on the thousands of officials kneeling before him, his face was full of supreme pride.
Beside him stood Imperial Protector Zhao in robes of deep purple, his nine-ringed bronze staff resting against the marble. To the Crown Prince’s right, beneath a canopy of gold, a seat of yellow silk stood empty. It was the Emperor’s. He had not been seen since the Ancestral Rite three months before, and the court said only that he was in closed-door seclusion.
"All officials, bow!" the master of ceremonies cried, and his voice rolled across the plaza as he proclaimed the new Crown Prince of Great Liang.
As the thousands of nobles lowered their heads to the ground, a cold, clear voice rose from the western side of the jade steps.
"The coronation of a prince who stole his brother’s spirit-veins is nothing but a farce."
The drums stopped at once.
An absolute silence fell upon the plaza, and the air grew heavy. Thousands of heads turned toward the western stair.
A young woman in pristine robes of white and silver silk walked slowly across the white jade. A fine silver veil covered her face, and a sword of ice-jade hung heavy at her waist. A pale frost mist coiled about her ankles, and at every step the white marble beneath her boots turned to ice.
She was Ji Ling’er, the Saintess of the Feathered Frost Sect.
Four elders of her sect followed behind her, each bearing the suffocating pressure of a Core Formation grandmaster.
Li Chen’s face darkened, and his knuckles went white beneath his dragon sleeves. "Saintess Ji! This is the sacred coronation day of Great Liang! What do you mean by such insulting words?"
Ji Ling’er halted thirty paces from the throne platform. Her cold, starlike eyes were fixed upon Li Chen.
"I mean what I said." Her voice crossed the silent plaza like ice upon crystal. "Three months ago, Prince Li Xuan was the true pride of Great Liang. You and your mother, by poison and court intrigue, stripped him of his veins, cast him down, and drove him into a dark pit beneath the earth. A tyrant who climbs by theft is unworthy of the dragon crown."
Imperial Protector Zhao stepped forward and brought his nine-ringed staff down upon the marble with a great BOOM.
A terrifying aura at the peak of the Nascent Soul Realm burst from his body and swept across the plaza like a hurricane. The lesser officials gasped and fell prone as the pressure bore down on their shoulders.
"Ji Ling’er!" Zhao roared, his golden eyes blazing. "Even if the master of the Feathered Frost Sect stood here in person, she would not dare meddle in the internal affairs of Great Liang! Li Xuan is a crippled servant rotting in the archive. He is nothing!"
Ji Ling’er did not flinch before the Nascent Soul pressure. She lifted her cold, proud chin, and a faint, mocking smile showed beneath her veil.
"Rotting in the archive?" She laid her hand upon the hilt of her ice-jade sword. "Do you believe the man you buried in the dark is nothing? You must be quite blind."
Zhao’s eyes narrowed dangerously. "What nonsense is this?"
"Enough!" Li Chen roared, his face a mixture of shame and rage. "Protector Zhao, seize her! After the coronation, I will send the Feathered Frost Sect a formal letter on her insolence!"
Zhao sneered and raised his heavy bronze staff. "Little girl, since you insist on making trouble at the royal rite, stay here and reflect on your deeds!"
He became a streak of purple light, crossing the thirty paces of open ground in a heartbeat, one hand outstretched like an iron claw toward Ji Ling’er’s shoulder.
The four elders of the Feathered Frost Sect rushed forward to bar his path, but before their Core Formation spells had taken shape, Zhao swept his staff and hurled all four ten paces back, each spitting blood.
"Core Formation juniors dare to stand in my way?" Zhao laughed with open arrogance, and his claw fell toward Ji Ling’er’s throat.
She did not retreat. Her hand tightened on her sword hilt, and she made ready to burn her blood essence for one last blow.
Ten zhang beneath the plaza, Li Xuan sat cross-legged upon the cold slate, with one palm on the Boundary Stone, a brush in his other hand, and a fresh sheet of paper spread before him.
He had come here before dawn. The stone had been warm since the first drum. Now it burned.
The ancestral arrays of the capital, awakened by the Grand Imperial Ancestral Rite, ran through the earth like veins, and the Dragon-Vein Suppression Array beneath the Archive lay among them like a heart among its vessels. It did not care what words had been spoken upon the white jade steps three months ago. It knew blood older than any oath, and it knew the key that three thousand years had left in his hand.
Through his palm and the soles of his feet, he felt the plaza as one great, confused weight: kneeling thousands, the thunder of drums, and above it all a roaring pressure like a mountain lifting. A Nascent Soul in anger.
And under that, one thin, cold thread that he knew.
Frost. The same pale frost that had curled toward the Fourth Aisle at a veiled girl’s ankles. Now it trembled, a hair’s breadth from breaking.
Protector Zhao, Li Xuan thought. The only man in this capital who could break my floor.
He had not meant to meet him so soon. He had meant very little beyond his tea.
But a wall that no one defends is only a door.
His right arm still ached from the last time. He set the brush to the paper anyway and drew a line.
One line, straight, thin, and ordinary. The first stroke.
He did not throw it. A man of Body Tempering could not throw a sword across ten zhang of living rock. He only laid the line upon the old black iron beneath him and let the array carry it, as a river carries a leaf.
Hum.
Deep beneath the white jade steps, a faint tremor passed through the earth.
It was not thunder, and there was no flash. A single hair-fine thread of pale blue sword intent rose through ten zhang of solid bedrock and through the marble of the plaza, and left not a crack upon the stone.
Slink.
It sounded no louder than a leaf falling.
Protector Zhao’s charge stopped in mid-air.
His iron claw hung three fingers’ breadth from Ji Ling’er’s face. The arrogant sneer froze upon his lips, and his golden eyes slowly, horribly, understood.
"What... what sword is this..." he rasped, in a voice that was scarcely a breath.
CRACK.
The nine-ringed bronze staff, a treasure of the seventh grade, split cleanly down its length and fell to the marble in two pieces.
A thin red line appeared along the center of Zhao’s forehead, ran down his nose, his throat, his chest, and the purple of his robe.
Pfft.
Before the eyes of thousands of royal officials, the mightiest Nascent Soul ancestor of the Great Liang Empire was parted into two halves, and he fell upon the white jade in a flood of blood. His Nascent Soul was wiped away before it could even rise from his brow.
Silence.
An absolute, suffocating silence settled over the Grand Imperial Hall. Upon the highest platform, the nine spirit-pearls of Li Chen’s crown rattled faintly against one another, because his head had begun to tremble.
Ji Ling’er stood motionless, staring at the two halves of the ancestor lying at her feet. Then she turned her eyes down, toward the earth, in the direction of the Imperial Archive. Her heart beat hard against her ribs.
At her ankles, the thin frost mist curled once toward the ground, and was still.
Far below the white jade steps, in the dim light beneath the Boundary Stone, the brush slipped from Li Xuan’s fingers.
Blood ran from his nose and dripped upon the paper. The seed in his lower abdomen had dwindled to a spark, and the whole of the floor seemed to tilt around him. Elder Gu, who had been watching from his stool, crossed the distance faster than a drunk should have been able to. He caught the falling brush, wiped Li Xuan’s face with a greasy sleeve, and said nothing at all.
Li Xuan took a slow breath. Then another.
"Too loud," he murmured to the dark aisle. His voice was soft and steady, though his hand was not. "The sweeping is not finished yet."
He took up his horsehair broom in both hands, and leaned upon it, and rose.