Boots
patreon
4.20 - The March of Winter
🕑 Added 2024-09-12 22:00:01 +0000 UTCAs he advanced through the Third Realm and continued to refine his presence, Li Heng came to like summer less and less. The retreat of the snows, of the ice, left him feeling like he lacked something. One significant upside was that was that travel became easier. More and more frequently, Li Heng ventured into the high reaches of the Shrouded Peaks. Especially when winter retreated from the sect. At least with the coming of autumn, the grip of ice and snow tightened on the peaks once again.
He sat atop a rock on the highest peak he could find. The silver disc of the full moon shone down on him along with the silent canopy of stars. Under their soft light, the surrounding snow practically glowed. The world fell away in every direction, and Li Heng meditated upon the Dao.
A representation of the taiji swirled in his mind’s eye. The cycle of yin and yang, creating, feeding, and subsuming one after the other. The very essence of balance—the thing he sought above all else. Since forming his Wayborn Seed, Li Heng’s Way had become at once more clear and less certain. He knew what he needed to do, just not how.
His time at the Shrouded Peaks Sect had not been what he’d expected. His father, Li Bao, had been clear in his expectations as always. Li Heng was to establish himself as a nexus of influence within the sect. He was to seek allies. Perhaps find a talented retainer. His father even granted him license to arrange a politically beneficial match for himself, should the opportunity arise.
Instead, he’d fallen in with an odd mix of cultivators—none of whom fulfilled any of the objectives he’d meant to achieve. While there was no harm in building a relationship with Yan Shirong, the Yan weren’t to be counted on as allies. They were a family considered fickle in the best of circumstances, and unreliable allies owing to their position in the Ministry demanding a certain level of outward neutrality. Useful to befriend, but not the allies the Li so desperately needed.
Chen Fei was more than a mere acquaintance, but he wasn’t particularly close to her. He could see why both He Yu and Tan Xiaoling held such fondness for her in their own ways. To him, she held no use. She was a commoner who was halfway to being a barbarian, although a talented one. Sure, she’d make a name for herself in the sect, but she was the sort of person his father would tell him not to waste his time with. There was nothing of political expedience there, and thus it represented a waste of his attention.
With respect to Xiaoling—he pushed aside his thoughts of the princess. She was a problem. One that he’d have to deal with eventually. Just not now.
Finally he turned to He Yu. Of all those he’d formed relationships with since coming to the Shrouded Peaks, He Yu was the only one who could have filled any of the objectives Li Heng’s father had set out for him. He was a talented commoner who—on their first meeting, no less—had displayed uncommon drive. He was unattached to any family or clan of note, and would have made an ideal retainer. Li Heng could have raised him up, then tied him down with obligations of vassalage.
At least if He Yu hadn’t surpassed him so quickly. That particular thorn was one that still stuck in Li Heng’s pride, one that still allowed envy to seep into his thoughts and his spirit. It had been the driving thought that turned to obsession during their time in the wilds. That his behavior had come from the Sunset Empress’s influence served as only a small comfort. He’d been influenced, not controlled. If he’d not genuinely felt the things he’d said, he’d never have said them.
Which brought him around to the complicated reality of his relationship with He Yu. They were friends. The first real friend Li Heng had ever had. Sure, he’d plenty of acquaintances back home. Most of them were lesser sons of minor officials or the occasional baron. People who didn’t have other options, so they sought to hitch their fortunes to the vulnerable, yet ascendant, Li family in a fantastic gamble.
He Yu was different. Wholly ignorant of the broader political landscape, the sect had thrown him into proximity with Li Heng more or less by chance—at least; it looked that way. Li Heng couldn’t help but think that maybe Zhang Lifen had a hand in that, but the truth wasn’t worth speculating on. Their living arrangements had resulted in them training and ascending those early realms together.
When He Yu had told Li Heng that he intended to drag him up the realms, Li Heng had no reason to doubt. He Yu was, if anything, sincere. Foolish? Yes. Blessedly ignorant? Of course. But that was just the larger part of his charm. Li Heng didn’t have to be anyone around He Yu other than himself. He didn’t have to wear the mantle of responsibility. He didn’t have to silence the worry about the consequences like he did when he was with Xiaoling.
He could simply be Li Heng.
It wasn’t just that he lagged behind that caused him envy. It was that He Yu was, for the time being, free of the obligations that Li Heng couldn’t avoid. The commoner from the great Southern Forest could pursue his Way without interference from his station. Something that had clearly benefited him.
If it had been that simple, perhaps Li Heng could have lived with himself. Perhaps he could have bowed to circumstances, and that would have been it. He Yu had a drive that Li Heng lacked. He also had talent. Drive alone didn’t get you to where He Yu was. He’d even surpassed Tan Xiaoling—daughter of the legendary Tan Zihao. He Yu’s burning desire to become a living legend wasn’t mere fantasy after all.
Why couldn’t Li Heng have something like that? Why must he carry the burden of a future he hadn’t asked for? Heaven’s honest truth was simply no reason at all.
Nothing held him back but himself. The burden of duty that he raged against in his heart was a prison of his own making. A cage constructed from his ideals. The expectations he’d shackled himself with were his own.
His thoughts turned once more to Princess Tan. Xiaoling, she’d insisted he call her—at least in private. It was a salacious entanglement they’d gotten themselves into. Tan Zihao and Li Bao weren’t exactly rivals, but the relationship was tense. If the Jade Kingdom was a loyal vassal of the empire, then why did the emperor place a fortified march on their shared border? That question was the crux of everything, and had been a sore spot between the Dragon Empire and the Jade Kingdom ever since the Western Passage had been established as its own holding.
All complications spun out from there. As heir to the Western Passage, his relationship with the heiress-presumptive to the Jade Kingdom posed challenges and ambiguity. Would a union be seen as a move by the Tan to bring imperial territory under their control? Would it be seen as an attempt by the empire to exert greater authority over the Jade Kingdom? What would the other nobles think? Surely the axis of power that emerged between the most prestigious assignment in the West—below that of the large ducal provinces, of course—and the empire’s most powerful vassal would upset the status quo.
With the rumblings of discontent in the east and the north growing ever louder of late, the emergence of such a disruptive alignment would surely embolden the Li’s enemies. If only to squash the nascent yet clearly ascendant family while it was still possible to do so.
It would have been far better had he found a safer, more stable match. But wasn’t that what had first drawn him to her? The sharpness that clung to her like a gown of fine silk. The knife-edge sense of danger that had soon given way to something far more complex than what he’d first seen?
Then again, how was that truly any different from anything else he’d done with his time at the sect? Li Heng walked between extremes. Between the thrill of desire and burden of duty. Between the expectations of station and the companionship of a true friend. Between the mirror and the blade, the flat and the edge.
All around him, the snow reflected the sky above. Amidst the black field above, the single silver disk of the moon dominated the countless pinprick stars. In the one, the other.
Li Heng’s dantian pulsed, then contracted. The vast expanse of lunar and icy qi collapsed. His presence exploded outward from him. Great spires of ice burst from the snowy field, but Li Heng remained still.
For so long he’d denied this one simple truth. It had gone against everything that he’d believed about himself. Just because he believed something didn’t make it true, however. Balance—that was his Way. To walk upon the knife’s edge, to walk between the extremes, and find the reconciliation within.
Why couldn’t he take Tan Xiaoling as a lover? It had become clear that what lay between them was so much more than a dalliance. It had started as such, in those moments of a hitched breath when they sparred, of sidelong looks when they were among the others. Of secret meetings that began somewhat formally, then much less so. Damn the consequences. That was how she thought of it. Whenever he raised his concerns with her, she’d simply shrugged and said it would work out. What was stopping him from looking at it the same way?
More spires of ice burst from the snow. Hoarfrost crept out from where Li Heng sat, encasing the rock beneath him. Snowdrifts piled around him, and the night grew somehow more still and more silent than it had before. The cold deepened, sapping what little warmth remained.
Why couldn’t his friendship with He Yu be genuine and also bring benefit to his family? If he knew anything about He Yu at all, it was that should Li Heng need for anything; he had but to ask. He Yu would come and give any and all the aid that he could. And if He Yu’s obsession with becoming a legend drove him to the heights of cultivation? What better ally could someone in Li Heng’s position ask for?
The surging pool of gathering power in Li Heng’s dantian grew. As it expanded, threatening to rage out of his control, he pushed on it, condensing it, collapsing it. All around him, ice formed on the ground, the stone he sat upon. On him. The spires of ice grew, expanding outward and merging with one another. A dome of ice encased him, a glimmering surface that reflected both the dark and the light of the sky and the moon above.
Why couldn’t he look upon the backs of his lover and his friend and feel driven instead of inadequate? Would his father, Li Bao, sulk in the face of another’s advancement? Would his grandfather, Li Renshu? No. They would move forward. They would advance like the inexorable march of the seasons. Of the winter that his family art took its name from.
The dome of ice thickened and grew. It encased him, crushing him as he crushed his core. Dimly, Li Heng sensed that outside his dome—his crystal chrysalis—a blizzard raged. A blizzard whipped up by the icy qi raging through his core and his meridians. He was in so many places at once. He was the full moon, gazing down upon a lone cultivator sitting atop a mountain. He was a wall of ice, crushing the very being that had brought it into existence. He was Li Heng, sitting in the center of a blizzard that he’d called to a mountain in the middle of summer.
He pushed again. His core collapsed. The now-solid sphere of ice he’d encased himself in collapsed with it. It pierced through his flesh, his spirit. It joined his core as the brilliant golden sun in the center of his spirit shone forth. The moonlight cast its cold silver light on him. He became aware, and he gazed into himself.
The heart of winter. The moon. His own reflection.
The world around him shattered. An explosion of ice and snow and moonlight made solid broke the silence of the mountaintop night. Li Heng stood. He found himself in the center of a now-flattened expanse. Perfectly circular. One half swept clean, only the naked stone exposed to the sky. The other covered in snow. In each lay a seed of the other—one lone boulder, unaffected by his advancement; one remaining spire of ice, still intact after he’d shattered his limits.
Li Heng flexed his spirit. The world became cold and dark. The only spot of light hung in the sky—a round silver disk. An endless field of snow stretched out in all directions. Silent and still. At his back, the faint image of the taiji spun. Visible only to him, and rotating slowly with the pool of Fourth Realm qi at the center of his newly forged Golden Core.
![MirrorArtIA :]/ from patreon](https://leakoo.com/kistorage/94735.jpg)
