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5.43 - The Dao of Heroism
🕑 Added 2025-03-04 23:00:01 +0000 UTCDays turned to weeks that stretched to months, then years. Among the peaks and in the valley, He Yu and the others cultivated and trained. They availed themselves of the resources left behind by the Cloud Dragon Valley Sect. The once-overgrown herb gardens now burst with life and qi. The formation scripts thrummed with power anew. Medicinal scents drifted through the central plaza, and the manual pavilion opened the doors to its many secrets.
As time passed, each of them spent longer in their respective locus. Li Heng sat in the center of his spires of ice and winter crept across the ground in his portion of the valley. On her nearby mountaintop, Chen Fei rose to the heavens. The burning patch of desert that Tan Xiaoling claimed for her own rang with the sounds of strife at all hours. The shadows that clung to the manual pavilion deepened with each passing year as Yan Shirong discovered ever more scraps of lost and forgotten knowledge.
He Yu called the storm. On the mountaintop he’d claimed for his own, the storm raged and grew. Within its center, he cultivated. The confluence of qi—heaven, wind, and water—rushed around him in violent, barely controlled currents. It was here, at the very edge of his control, that he came to understand the storm. Understand the inheritance he’d been given.
The jade slip containing the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace gradually revealed its secrets, the subtle adjustments left by Elder Cai. The first technique He Yu fully grasped the changes to was the Peerless Judgment. He’d long ago realized it would be the key to the rest. He’d not been wrong.
As a perception technique, it had always lived up to its name. It had always been truly peerless. The ability to see the truth of things was as flexible as it was strong. The deeper truths it revealed to him now were often too much for him to truly process. But it had also revealed a greater, more important truth. As he advanced, his ability to comprehend what the Peerless Judgment reveals would only deepen. More importantly, it showed him the path forward. As Sun Lei had said, the way to Soul Refining lay open to him.
The other techniques of the Heavenly Palace likewise improved. Their promise yet remained unfulfilled, but He Yu remained unconcerned. Their fullness would reveal itself in time. His crowning achievement in those early days was his new technique—the Fist of the Heavens.
From this point, with the benefit of hindsight, it was easy to see how it had come into being. Zhang Lifen had only been trying to give him options when she demonstrated a qi-reinforced punch. Although plenty of techniques were built from similar foundations, a true technique required something more. When He Yu used the technique in those early days, he’d taken to leaving a spike of heaven qi in his opponents—often disrupting their meridians.
Then, he’d advanced to Nascent Soul. He’d caught the first glimpses of the great dragon. Shenlong, the divine dragon of the storms. His azure scales crackled with the light of heaven. His horns flashed with the same. As He Yu advanced through Nascent Soul, his connection to the dragon deepened. By pulling on that connection—as he had taken to doing without fully realizing it—he finally mastered a technique of his own making. He inscribed it into the jade slip, adding it to his version of the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace.
Most of all, he sifted through all the insights he’d collected during his time since the Shrouded Peaks Sect fell to Jin Xifeng. With the aid of the Peerless Judgment, he drew ever closer to his Dao. The Dao of Heroism.
To be a hero was so much more than he’d ever thought. Early on, it had seemed so simple. In that simplicity, he’d been so naïve. But what else could he have been? Now he could see the necessity of it. He’d needed that youthful drive to push him. Without it, he’d never have kept going in the face of all the challenges that stood in his way.
When Sha Xiang targeted him, he’d have given up and gone home. When Tan Xiaoling needed his help, he’d have abandoned her, or run to find someone else. Upon witnessing the destruction wrought by the likes of King Hao, he’d have accepted the deaths of those mortals, setting himself on the path to becoming more like Yi Xiurong, rather than who he’d always imagined himself to be.
Instead of facing Tan Xiaoling with nothing but a shard of a broken weapon, he’d have thrown the final match of the tournament. When the Sunset Empress tempted him from within her prison, he’d have succumbed. He’d have left those mortals to die after freeing them from the spirit stone mine.
Every one of those choices, had he chosen differently, could have crippled his future advancement. But he’d chosen as he had, and piece by piece he’d built an ideal. After forming his Wayborn Seed, he continued to choose the path he’d set his feet upon so long ago. Continued to walk his Way.
And now, here.
He Yu sat among the clouds. Black and violent and barely contained, the storm churned around him. A rotating mass of wind and water and heaven, it matched the steady rotation of his cultivation base. He drew in ever more qi. He sent it through his meridians, to the figure at the center of his spirit. The primordial figure, an infant of immaculate form, sitting in a cycling position and formed wholly within his Golden Core.
Heaven’s lightning coursed through his meridians. The rain beat against his skin. The winds cradled him, lifting him from his mountaintop and into the heart of the storm. Through it all, he continued to cultivate.
Through the darkening clouds, a serpentine figure of immense proportions swam as if through water. Its azure scales crackled with great arcs of heaven, each dozens of feet long. A great flowing beard drifted gently, despite the violent winds. Its roar accompanied each flash of heaven. Its body flowed to the beat of a single, distant drum. Shenlong circled around He Yu for what felt like years. In the darkness of the storm, the taiji resolved as the great divine dragon wrapped himself around its slowly rotating halves. Heaven’s light flickered over the dragon and taiji alike, and He Yu accepted the fullness of his Way.
The path forward would be hard, yes. But when had it ever not?
It would force him into conflict with ever greater threats. But hadn’t that always been the case?
He’d chosen this path so long ago, so many times over.
Heaven opened. Not in tribulation, but in acknowledgment. As the taiji continued its eternal rotation, He Yu became the storm. Shenlong recognized him. The God of Thunder beat his drum. The gates of the heavenly palace opened. As his body exuded a flood of impurities, he stepped into the Sixth Realm—Soul Refining.
He Yu stood. The mountain he’d been sitting atop was gone. Reduced to a crater. The black clouds of the storm still drifted away, blown off by the explosion of power that had accompanied his advancement. Heaven still surged around him, another remnant of his cultivation. But that, too, faded. The locus of qi Sun Lei had manifested for him was absent as well, absorbed into his massively expanded cultivation base.
In his spiritual sight, a sixth pillar had joined the other five of the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering. He looked down at his right hand and made a fist. An azure dragon of crackling blue and gold heaven formed along his arm. Casting his sight over the land with the aid of the Peerless Judgment, he turned his attention north.
In an opulent palace, three cultivators lounged. Arrogant in their assured victory. One of them turned back in his direction, a slight crease between his brows. Although it was clear Tan Qingsheng didn’t quite grasp the fullness of what had just occurred, he realized something had passed out here, in the lost reaches of the Jade Mountains.
Wang Xiaobo and Xin Lu remained oblivious. They were still at the late Nascent Soul stage—nothing to him as they were now.
He Yu turned to the east. To the empire, and to Jin Xifeng. Merely a tiny spot in the distance, impossibly far away, he felt the bloody sun of her presence low over the land. Her attention was yet occupied. For how much longer, he couldn’t have said. But for now, Li Renshu’s advice had served him well. His advancement was far enough beyond her perception that she hadn’t noticed. He still had time.
When He Yu slammed down in the center of the plaza before the manual pavilion, the others were already waiting for him. He couldn’t help but grin as he saluted each of them in turn.
“Figures,” Yan Shirong said with a shake of his head. “For the record, I am no longer surprised by this sort of nonsense. You’re what, forty-five years old? Soul Refining already. Absurd.” With that, he turned and headed back into his pavilion. “Congratulations,” he said over his shoulder with a half-dismissive wave.
The rest were far more gracious. Chen Fei practically tackled him, her eyes shining as she shouted her congratulations. He Yu was only a little surprised by how easily he kept his feet, even given her immense strength.
Li Heng waited until He Yu had untangled himself, and clapped on the shoulder. “You’ll have to tell me how you did it,” he said. “I couldn’t bear to remain a realm behind for another decade this time.”
“I think after everything you’ve learned about the need for balance, you’re likely closer than you realize,” He Yu said with a laugh. He meant it, too. Li Heng didn’t give himself nearly enough credit. A quick check with the Peerless Judgment confirmed he was half a step into Soul Refining already. It was only a matter of time.
“I’ll be joining you soon,” Tan Xiaoling said. “Then I trust you’ll make good on your word.”
He Yu gave her a silent nod. The accord they’d first struck with one another still stood—He Yu and the others would help her deal with her uncle, and she would bend her father’s ear to their cause. In the years since their journey into Sun Lei’s sealed realm, Tan Xiaoling had also softened on certain key issues.
Most importantly, she’d accepted that she didn’t need to settle this issue on her own. He Yu and the others had offered their help, and they’d done so willingly.
Finally, He Yu found himself alone with Chen Fei. Her fingers twined through his, and they walked towards one of the Cloud Dragon Valley Sect’s gardens together, now in far better condition than when they’d first arrived. Finding a spot away from any prying eyes, they sat together for some time. With the intense training and push for advancement they’d all been pursuing since arriving here, they found precious few opportunities like this.
After a time, she asked, “Can we truly do it?”
“You’re not asking about Tan Qingsheng, are you?” It was more a statement than a question. He already knew the answer.
“I keep going back to what Elder Cai said. That no one cultivator can defeat her. It’s been, what, over twenty years since she first broke free? What if she’d reached the Ninth Realm?”
“I don’t think she has,” He Yu said. Although the brief glimpse he’d caught when he turned the Peerless Judgment to the east hadn’t given him a very good look, Jin Xifeng didn’t appear to have grown any stronger. “But even if she does advance, we’ll just have to advance as well.”
“Where do you get the confidence?” she asked.
He laughed before he answered. “Too stupid or stubborn to know better, I guess. I said I’d be a hero, so I suppose that’s all I can do.”
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“All the time. But I can’t let that stop me.”
“I think you’re a hero, Yu. It’s only right you become a legend, too.”
He Yu leaned into her. The world could wait until tomorrow. All the concerns—Tan Qingsheng, Jin Xifeng—it would be there in the morning. Then they could worry about advancement, and what the future would hold then.
