Year 663 of the Stable Era,

  Thirtieth day of the eleventh month

  The very moment of the sixth second of the fifty-third minute of the twenty-first hour

  Fireworks glinted faintly in the distance, their lights a pale illumination against the night sky. So bright, to those close enough to be blinded by their brilliance, but for those with the appropriate perspective, they were terribly dull things. From atop the apex of Founder’s Peak they were barely specks, outshone a dozen times over by the stars of the Tiara and the moon above. One of the many burdens of knowledge and power, perhaps, to no longer be able to derive enjoyment from such small things.

  No doubt the sort of metaphor that a thousand poetic cultivators had been writing about since the inception of the brush and ink.

  Too far above it all to be able to be captivated by the momentary.

  Too enduring to appreciate something as fleeting as the ephemeral moment of the flame. Or the change of leaves. Or the melting of snow. Or the dozen other short-lived things that those endless poetic platitudes used to contrast the relentless journey of cultivation. Even the tournaments below couldn’t help but share such a fate, the month-long celebration a mere moment compared to his cultivation.

  Fireworks, to their credit, had been an invigorating companion for their short time with him, his study of their mechanics an interesting diversion. At least for the months it had taken him to develop more than a mortal’s mastery of the art. Interesting enough, for the delicate interplay of flame and color, but far from his preferred cup of tea. Far too momentary, for all the work involved. And far too small as well.

  He much preferred the permanence of stone, and working with both scale and detail. To create with purpose, for purpose, in a way that drew deep from his wells of understanding and craftsmanship. That his works might leave a lasting mark, that would captivate and inspire those that beheld them long after his own passing, should such a fate ever find him. One that would remain to touch the minds of many, persisting beyond the momentary memory of fireworks that would burn bright only in those that witnessed them.

  Like his statues.

  Or his arenas.

  Or even his mountains, which still flew through the sky with the grace that he’d designed them for even after so many years.

  It was likely that a great artisan would elevate the art of the firework in the coming centuries, like those of the Thunderous Calm Sect’s aspiring masters, but for now it was like delicate spring buds; too immature and fragile to truly blossom. Mere centuries young, after all. Its maturity, while more inevitability than possibility, could still be so far away. So far that even he might not live to see it realized.

  Although that thought carried far too much melancholy in its consideration. That he might remain discontented for an eternity, unable to find satisfaction in countless ephemeral moments all the while waiting for the mere possibility of another.

  Lee Taijin sighed as he contemplated the stars, that last reminder the Immortals had left on the world. His hundred brushes swished away in their work as he did, his personal inaction barely a burden on his namesake brain. The stars twinkled back joyously as he scowled at them, unbothered by such earthly matters. Uncaring for those below as they gleamed with purpose, be they mortal or cultivator, fresh disciple or senior elder, or even the mighty master of the Teal Mountain Sect himself.

  Infuriating, infernal things.

  A blight left by those that had come before to remind of those that had come after of their passing. Each star of the Immortal’s Tiara blazed with the Dao, their flames not that of mere flame but the perfection of comprehension. Manifestations of the aspects of the Dao that their respective Immortals had shaped, given form by the nature of the Heavens themselves.

  Just shy of two hundred in number, they formed a thin, erratic constellation across the night sky, one that almost appeared to carry the moon itself between its invisible lines. Scholars had debated the purpose of their placement over the ages, postulating and theorizing what their arrangements could mean of the nature of the Dao itself.

  What their positions relative to each other meant. If the gaps in the constellation represented truths that had yet to be discovered, even contemplated. Or if there was even meaning at all, and the placements were not simply the result of Immortal pique.

  But such a thing was to be expected of the legacy of the Immortals. Toying with others even in their absence. But…The Strongest Brain shook his head, catching sight of a familiar green star. A vibrant aquamarine, its form blurred with nebulous purpose rather than the gemlike clarity of those around it. The legacy of the Immortal of Dancing Mists. One of the rare heroes of the Age of Drought, at least as far as he was concerned.

  No, it would be unfair to paint all past Immortals with the same brush. So many had come before and after those Immortals. Those of the Primordial Era that had first grasped the fundamental truths of qi had been the trailblazers of the Dao, after all, giving birth to the foundations of cultivation and the greater world.

  The Immortal of Words, the Immortal of Pills, the Immortal of the Crystal Peaks, the Immortal Shipwright... Their existences, and many more, had all bettered the world. Their lasting marks the ways that they had aided, rather than hindered. Even the Immortal of the Inevitable End, despite all his faults and deeds, was a far better cultivator than those that had so carelessly smashed the rice bowl after eating.

  The bastards.

  Crippled cultivation and a thousand years of torture would be too good for them. No, they deserved a much more thorough punishment. If such a thing was even possible.

  With any luck justice also existed in the Heavens, and their predecessors would have seen they received the punishment they deserved. But that Dao had already left such a faint mark on this world, so it would be truly na?ve to think that it carried any greater importance beyond.

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  No, it was more likely that the Heavens were simply too ambivalent to care. After all, only mortals and fools believed that the Heavens heard the cries of those below, much less deigned to answer with anything more than silence.

  One day they might answer for their deeds, he reflected. Another reason, as if any were needed, to complete his cultivation. As a Mind Coalescing cultivator he might have enjoyed whiling away the rest of the evening inventing increasingly more elaborate tortures to curse those hateful beings with, but in his old age he hardly had the time for such youthful indulgences. He turned his eyes from the tiny sparks in the distance, back to the map stretching across the far wall of the room.

  His great work, or at least a part of it. The Dao that he sought to crystalize, in the same way that he’d crystalized his mind into a perfect instrument of copper and jade. The legacy that would shame those that came before him.

  It stretched from the floor to ceiling, an impressive feat considering the dimensions of his abode. His chamber atop the peak spanned its full width, the single room eclipsing all but the tip of the mountain’s majesty and a single juniper tree.

  Careful lines of ink and qi filled the map’s surface, thousands of arrays and formations crammed into hundreds of feet. At a distance, it could vaguely be said to resemble an ordinary map of the world.

  The eight continents were still there, their topographies stretching out from the stone as miniature waves of liquid lapis lazuli crashed against their shores. Animated stone, kept in motion by artistry alone, occasionally glinting with gold veins that hinted at further symbols secreted within. The formations almost resembled shading at this distance, their blending colors resembling the sort of thing the Empire’s diplomats would use to track potential problems.

  But as one drew closer, they revealed themselves for what they were. Lines took form as the illusion of distance was stripped away the illusion of coloration, growing thinner and thinner the closer one looked, until you realized that even the narrowest of bands were themselves composed of countless smaller symbols.

  And if you looked close enough, for long enough, it almost seemed like they were moving. As if the map itself was breathing, each exhalation the labor of hours.

  To most it looked like something out of a calligrapher’s worst nightmare. The sort of thing that made the hand cramp up just considering the hours it would have taken to plan, much less execute. Even a cultivator well-trained in the arts of formations and arrays would consider it a monstrous thing. The sort of creation that would either fail to function after centuries of coaxing or simply explode the second it was activated.

  Lee Taijin stretched as he contemplated it with his full attention, his eyes the least of the senses he was using to take it in. Compared to the colossal capability of his crystalline cranium, his sentimentality was a mere afterthought. His mind was perpetually awhirl with thought as it pondered the subject of his Dao, in the sort of way that would make many lesser cultivators question their own grasp of mental structure.

  There was no division. No hierarchy or collective of minds. His thoughts were like an ocean in and of itself, the border between conscious thought and action blurred among their overlapping currents. Singular, yet composed of countless multitudes.

  The sort of broad focus that allowed him to continue his calculations so easily, a hundred brushes easily able to maintain their pace with barely a hint of exertion. Thousands of calculations recorded with lightning speed, so that the knowledge he distilled could be further and further refined. The world laid bare, as even the most minute pulse of the dragon veins roiling beneath the land noted with detail, down to the faintest waver of its mighty qi. The power of a cultivator who had reached the Mind Materializing stage before Body Reshaping, breaking through to the Void stage with intellect alone before his body rose to the same level.

  Obsessive, perhaps, but nothing as great as Immortality was ever achieved with less. To a cultivator of the Void stage only two options remained for him: to grasp the secrets of the Dao and ascend past his own mortality or to perish.

  That was a secret that few knew, much less even considered.

  That that great leap of cultivation, that half-step towards Immortality, carried within itself an insidious trap. He’d felt it himself when he’d ascended all those millennia ago, that dreadful, impossible certainty that had slipped into his mind, even as the final flash of thunder and ice faded from sight. A truth that the world, that the Heavens, had revealed to him. An impossible, inescapable truth trapped within himself by his own perfect memory.

  Four thousand four hundred and forty-four years.

  It was a merciful sentence, far longer than he’d lived prior to receiving it. But it was still an inevitable mortality. A finite time before his body failed and his own cultivation consumed him.

  That was the truth of the Void stage, that so few knew. The twofold meaning to its name.

  For many it simply represented testing the limits of understanding, grasping the fundamental nature of the origin of all things. Simply another stage of comprehension to be grasped, so long as one was willing to break through the fourth stage. To explore the nature of the Void, the origin of all things, and the canvas of existence. A chance to finally grasp the fundamental truths of the universe.

  But in truth facing the Void meant baring oneself to the cosmos and realizing the truth of your own inadequacy. The point where the limits of your own cultivation finally crushed you beneath their weight.

  For a Void cultivator was a being stuck between worlds. An imperfect state between mortal and Immortal. Their cultivation, their qi generation, was simply not enough, as their might outstripped their ability to sustain it.

  It was a truly loathsome state to persist in. A leech of the world, sucking at its lifeforce like those wretched Immortals who had drained it dry even after they had freed themselves from such a fate. His cultivation, the might he had been so proud of, itself now something that he had to chain and seal. Something that needed to be held back, lest he destroy the very things he sought to protect.

  The only way to escape it was to form something that could sustain it. Something beyond the cultivation he had worked so hard to form before. A Dao; a truth of the world coalesced and shaped. The truths of the universe not merely grasped but seized. Raw understanding carved into shape by his unrelenting determination, its roughness ground away by his understanding and polished by his wisdom.

  A mere sliver of the True Dao, that truth that encompassed all things, but enough to break through the final shackles of mortality. A true foothold for the first step towards true understanding.

  But through all his efforts, he was still so far. Still had so much to do. So much to fix. And only so much time remaining.

  1584 years now.

  1584 years, 213 days, 5 hours, 44 minutes and 21 seconds. An easy calculation for his mind to make, as if he needed to with the way that he felt it in his soul, like a hanging blade poised to strike at its promised moment.

  For the first millennium it had almost been enough to drive him from rest entirely, his every moment frantic as he searched for the means to stabilize his woefully inadequate body and begin his great work. Nothing had stopped him on his quest for enlightenment. But as time passed, he’d slowed. Realized that his own zeal could very well destroy his work in his haste to complete it, rushed preparations as harmful as none at all.

  A hard pill to swallow indeed, but one made easier by its delivery. That being advice from another that had walked the same path as him. Another that had—

  “So, what’re you thinking about tonight?”

  Lee Taijin whirled in his sanctum, turning to face the familiar voice. The one being that could slip through his defenses as easily as a sunlit garden.

  Pale brown robes danced in the wind as moonlight peeked through the holes centuries had worn through the fabric. The star rising towards the Tiara glowed brightly in the distance, lighting the tip of the staff so casually slung over his shoulder like a celestial gem as its bearer grinned at him.

  The sole hegemon of the Stable Era: The Thousand Li Immortal.

  Dun dun dun!