Chapter

“Hao Chan, are you ready?”

The beautiful vision dressed in nothing but a diaphanous silken gown with golden bangels at her ankles and wrists nodded, bowing once before showing her forms, the explosive power of her crescent, hook, and wheel kicks apparent even while embracing the most graceful of dances. Alex couldn’t help smiling, admiring not only her form but how in tune she was with her own body’s strengths and weakness to even dream her form so perfectly. And with what were now eleven perfectly positioned meridians glowing with vitality, spiritual energy, and so strikingly wide, compared to the meridian channels he had sensed in so many opponents and sparring friends Soul Sight had eventually pinged on, that Alex couldn’t help but wonder about her true origins. But all he did was applaud and regret that they couldn’t do even more.

“You look incredible, Chan.” He shook his head ruefully. “I wish we could truly spar here. Hell, we risked our lives for the privilege, but it seems that the Endless Dream perk just lets us share dreams, not actually train.” He chuckled softly. “Not unless I’m a transcendent spirit risking his own oblivion, anyway.”

Hao Chan laughed as her movements naturally flowed to a stop.

And between one heartbeat and the next, she was in his arms, amber eyes peering so intently into his own. “True. But at least I can hold you here in my arms. And if it weren’t for a certain forbidden art…”

Alex chuckled. “An art that saved our lives, multiple times over.” His heart was racing. It was all he could do not to lose himself in her embrace, locked as they were in Chan’s crystal clear perception of her dream palace in the sky, a strikingly beautiful wonder quite similar to his own palace as he turned to gaze at the perpetual golden sunset. At that moment he wanted nothing so badly as to surrender to the flames at last, and burn rapturously in this strikingly beautiful girl’s arms.

But he wasn’t a fool.

And neither was she.

“I do love you, you know.” His cheeks flushed as he said the words, but her heartfelt smile made it all worth it.

She squeezed his hand tightly. “I know. And it fills my heart with joy whenever I see your gaze, and makes all the hours of grueling effort worth it. Knowing I have a wonderful dream I aspire to achieve, beyond even my love of dance.”

Alex swallowed, heart racing, gazing into those gorgeous eyes, wanting nothing more than to kiss those sensual, full lips.

Willpower check successful!

Eyes widening when his interface message popped across not just his own mind, but Hao Chan’s as well.

“Alex, what the hell was that?”

He grinned, words strangely husky. “That was my interface. I guess maybe I forgot we’re still linked as a party. So I guess, um… you can hear it… or maybe see it? And we really shouldn’t be holding each other quite so tightly. Not yet, I don’t think.”

Hao Chan smirked and stepped back, “Willpower check. Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.” She bit her lip and pouted. “But I’m so damned hungry for you ,it’s absolutely driving me crazy!”

Alex laughed. “Me too.” His gaze then turned serious. “But no more dreams. Not for us. Not until we both achieve Silver,” he quickly added, catching sight of her forlorn expression. “Until then, we train our hearts out, every day. Just as we had the two weeks my spirit was joined to your own. Just like you had for months while we were forced apart.”

Hao Chan nodded. “Agreed.”

“But tomorrow I’m going to be doing some private studying. Piecing together what I can from the manuals I got from Elder Ru and Chun An. I hope you and Yinzi understand.”

This earned him a soft smile. “It’s alright, Alex. Learn whatever you can. Master anything and everything that will help us forge our own path forward. We’re happy to spar with others in the meantime, and Zhu Bi and Yingpei both expressed an interest. Of course, we’ll spar very carefully with her, because, well…”

“She pregnant?”

She flushed and nodded. Then her smile turned wicked. “And there was a Silver Giant or two who expressed a certain amount of admiration for Yinzi and I both, and promised to spar with us very carefully.”

Alex’s grin matched her own. “Don’t embarrass them too badly. But seriously. Spar only with the rules in place we talked about, so if they violate it and go too far…”

“They’re immediately exiled. Don’t worry, Alex, we won’t go too far, and I’m wise enough to know when and if someone’s control is starting to crack.” She flashed an arch smile his way. “So no holds or grappling will be in play, and we’ll have a friend as an ever-present referee. We can call yield and break off with no real penalty at any time, and our opponents will receive the pleasure of getting crushed by the most beautiful girls in the palace.”

Alex grinned and nodded. “I almost envy them.”

And between one eyeblink and the next, Hao Chan’s diaphanous gown had disappeared, and the glorious sight before him left him breathless with hunger. “You can claim your prize any time you like, hero.”

It was all he could do to laugh at her evil grin. “I love you, Hao Chan. Now train as hard as you can! Because I’m afraid one day soon, I just might take you up on that offer, consequences be damned.”

And before she could say another word, he snapped himself out of his dream, taking deep ragged breaths on his bed, chuckling ruefully at just how close he had come to giving it up right then and there, and embracing sweet bliss in her arms for all time.

_______________________________

Alex gazed at the four tomes before him as he devoured Belgium waffles that tasted just the way his mother would make them, with just the right amount of strawberries and heavy whipped cream.

One radiated a powerful sea blue aura, sharp with waves that could tear through any hull, rich with the power and potency of a raging river, and the endless deep blue sea.

The other three radiated the blackness of entropy and death. And hinted at sweet, perilous power as well.

He gazed at the enticing silver blue tome for long moments. If his experience with the most novice of elemental strike and ward tomes was anything to go by, his Spirit Qi wouldn’t just let him better understand the author’s meaning, but truly immerse himself in the life and memories of the author in question.

But as much of a boon as it was, his Spiritual Student skill also left him totally open. If there were any incompatibilities between himself and the author… he risked perilous damage.

He shivered in memory of how close he had come to injury after trying to absorb a single basic Metal striker technique with a paradigm of rigidity like Earth, not fluidity like Water, which, thanks to Dantians shifted for his forbidden art, was the paradigm he lived and died by.

He shook his head, feeling a sudden flash of chagrin. He knew that what he dared was madness, gambling with so many unknowns, with two precious young lives now utterly in his hands. Their future, their foundation, perhaps their very survival. And here he was, attempting not just to read but to directly absorb whatever insights were hidden in the priceless tome even now he hesitated to open.

Before frowning at his own weakness, accepting that his hesitation was fear of getting lost in the work before him, more than anything else.

Because if basic striker techniques had taken hours of his life, and White Crane a handful of days… how deeply would this tome pull him in?

“Seneschal?” Alex thought aloud.

“Yes, Child of the Heavens?”

“I’m about to immerse myself in a Silver Tier tome I’ve been trying to get my hands on for months. It incorporates the cornerstone of my art, and I need to glean whatever lessons I can from it. I might be lost in my studies for days… perhaps weeks.”

A momentary pause. “Understood, Child of the Heavens. I will make it clear that you are not to be disturbed.”

“Unless Hao Chan or Yinzi say otherwise, or Lady Chun An says Elder Ru’s condition has worsened. Of course, if you sense I’m in imminent peril, feel free to countermand that order, though hopefully it won’t be a problem with my unique skillset.”

“Understood, My Lord. Best of fortune to you in your studies.”

Alex smile, even as his heart began to race. “Thank you, Dong Xiao. And just one more thing…”

Getting the affirmation, he needed, with several contingency plans now in place with Elder Ru or Lady Chun An at the helm should things truly go south, Alex decided he was finally ready.

“Alright Hao Chan, Yinzi, I’m going in.” A final surge of thought to his disciples, still linked in a party by both their insistence. “Are you sure you want to risk coming along for the ride?”

Alex could sense Hao Chan’s bemused smile. “You’re damn right we do, husband. This is the cornerstone of our art. And we might not be able to realistically spar in our dreams if it’s just us, but we can still share them, still learn from them, especially linked up as a party, riding your mind. Because lying in our magical beds means we can be fully rested and immerse ourselves in one of the founding tomes of our art, far better than we could if we were studying it alone, thanks to our party link and your Spiritual Teacher skill.”

“Exactly!” Yinzi chipped in. “Of course, we really have no idea what we’re doing and we might be courting absolute disaster, but how else are we going to make sure we can actually go forward with our Pearlescent Path of compression that violates absolutely every rule and already cost me my Shadow? Count me in!”

Alex chuckled softly. “Alright. Buckle up, girls. The ride starts now.”

And hesitating no longer, Alex opened the cover of the ancient tome and began to read.

“You must train harder, disciple. As if your very life depended upon it. Because it does.” The words flowed through Alex’s soul as he gazed upon the hard, unforgiving face of the mistress who had been assigned to find the most promising future concubines of the First Emperor whose glorious reign the author remembered so viscerally, so clearly, as she stood, shivering in a too thin garments of silk after kowtowing thrice before her new mistress.

Feeling life and death in the cold measuring stare burning through the author’s back before she righted herself once more, and began to rehearse the forms Lady Kunwan had showed her again and again in the emperor’s favorite dance uniform even as cold northern storm showered them with icy rain.

At first, the young disciple had shivered at the cold. Once, she had even dared to complain. But after a whipping that burned through her memory to this day, she had put aside such weakness, finding that the only way to truly keep warm was to embrace the storm of Qi flowing through the air, through her meridians, through her very soul. To become one with the storm as she mastered first the dance of grace, then the dance of power, and finally the dance of battle.

She was no longer the frightened young girl terrified of the lewd promise she had seen in so many guards’ faces. She had grown from the mewling broken child whose legs throbbed and bled after pounding pels of leather, to the fierce, powerful young woman now able to smash pels of stone with the strength of her legs and the power of the storm flowing through her soul.

And still, it wasn’t enough.

“You have finally forged a Bronze cords worthy of only the least of my students. It is now time to twine those cords into your first Silver Cable so strong that nothing can break it, so mighty it can endure the fiercest of storms, so wide it mirrors the rivers even now flooding their banks. Only then will you truly be a worthy disciple of our art.”

Hesitating no longer, the young disciple did just that. Her breakthrough forged not after countless weeks or months of meditation and contemplation, but in the Crucible of Conflict Alex knew so well, put on the front lines of one of the emperor’s many wars. She and her fellow disciples were expected to embrace the savagery of war firsthand, their mentor’s only task to assure that they were never completely overwhelmed. But against individual soldiers charging forward in a shoddy line of pike, she was expected to slip past the trembling spear tips of terrified serfs and cleave through them with ruthless zeal, until her dance was embracing a sea of blood that somehow meant she and her sisters, unlike most other warriors and even cultivators, never once slipped or lost their footing, even as their bodies dodged peril’s way with the grace of a ballerina, their legs hitting with the force of a thousand sledge hammers, mowing their enemies down like wheat before the scythe.

And those Bronze cultivators who dared to stand in their way, smirking their disdain for their opponents, would know only surprise and terror before falling just as quickly as their serfs did to the storm of death that washed the entire battlefield in a sea of blood.

“Black Swan!” The girl roared in Alex’s mind, using the very word Alex had over a thousand years later, as if some truths transcended time’s grip itself.

An art that no longer strained as Lady Kuia Jie broke through to Silver in the maelstrom of combat, her fierce exultation as readily apparent in the lessons she taught as the flood of insights infusing Alex’s soul. Alex’s soul howled under the strain of absorbing countless hours of discipline and insight, learning how to channel his deadliest attack incorporating not just his own revelations, but the thoughts, insights, and breakthroughs of an entirely different human being as the pair became one.

Willpower check made.

You have chosen to ANCHOR party members with your resolve.

A fusion both wondrous and terrible as Lady Kuia Jie trembled with dread, feeling the spirit enter her own as their joined revelations trembled through her soul, a strange mind reflecting upon the shimmering scales of her sea green armor, looking both strikingly familiar and utterly expected, the enchanted treasure serving her in that moment as it had through countless battles as the soul she had feared would doom her instead flowed into her movements, spinning away from the massive pair of Ogre Giants wielding enchanted steel helms and breastplates as well as vicious looking war blades, glaring at her even now with black beady eyes, roaring to the heavens about how they would shatter her legs and claim her right then and there.

Before snarling in frustration as Kuia Jie effortlessly spun around them, sensing her opponents’ attacks like never before as she read not just shifts in stance and balance, but the very flow of Qi her spiritual companion had gifted her with as she spun free of grasping hands that thought to claim her, springing back out of range from cleaving changdao that sought to cleave her in half, laughing with fiercest exultation when the pair of Silvers sought to trap her over and over became little more than puppets dancing wherever she willed. Before finally crashing over in howls of agony as she snaked free of their increasingly desperate maneuvers, only then revealing who truly was the predator and who the prey when she ruthlessly struck ankles and knees before shattering their wrists, somehow sensing the weakest points in her foes. For there were countless vulnerabilities to be found in imperfect, hastily rushed Silver Ascensions that would never get beyond the first rank with the dozen Dragon Pills each had consumed in a desperate bid to get stronger in time to meet the emperor’s invasion.

And within a double handful of seconds, the vanguard of this five hundred man strikeforce had fallen to her blows.

Qi Perception check made!

And she didn’t know how she knew, only that she did.

Sensing the Kitsune assassin whose killing sharp blade was whipping out for her neck at that very moment, Kuai Jie’s skull roaring with a howled command as she lifted up her forearm to counter the killing blow, the kitsune assassin’s eyes widening when her blade shattered, falling to the bloodsoaked ground.

For endless moments, the two women stared at each other as lightning flashed and men howled and screamed and fought for their lives, the stench of blood and offal in the air.

“Leave, little sister.”

Kuai Jie knew not how those words had slipped from her throat, her mind still locked on the gauntlet of Water and Steel flowing up and down her forearm that, for just a heartbeat, she had thought was the Qi of Death itself. A gauntlet capable of shattering even a magical treasure. A feat of insight no one had ever shown her, forged on the battlefield, that now fit perfectly within her discipline. A flood of insights on how best to use that gauntlet in combat was now flooding into her mind, for all that the reflected glimpses of the blond haired Ruidian wielding death’s gauntlet was one she had never seen before.

A day of wonders and mercy, it seemed. For when the trembling kitsune bowed her head and raced away, Kuai Jie did not follow, even when she heard her mentor roaring her fury, speaking of abominations and righteous purges.

But all Kuai Jie had to do was turn around and show her wide-eyed mentor the miracle on her arm for her to instantly understand. Before being commanded to hold tight to her epiphany and make it one with herself on the battlefield, til sage-like revelations became the dreamlike reverie of a breakthrough too long embraced. But by that time she was alone in her officer’s tent, the field around them a sea of corpses as trembling hands pulled free her most treasured tome from her storage pouch. And before she dared let sleep claim her, she transcribed every facet of her insights onto the pages Alex was now peering so intently at, transcribed with the ink of her own blood and tears.

Until at last she gazed into the tiny silver mirror stand placed to one side of her cramped officer’s tent, looking at her own brilliant sky blue eyes.

“A fair trade, spirit?”

Alex saw her smile and nod in the mirror. “More than fair.” His last cogent thoughts were of her sky blue eyes turning back to relieved brown as Alex faded into dreamless sleep once more, mind racing back to the time and place resonating most strongly with his soul, for all that it was weighed down with all the revelations the tome had brought him.

A tome that perhaps he now knew far more intimately than should even be possible.

Congratulations! You have embraced Soul Immersion without drowning in perilous waters after daring to wade through time’s flow!

Silver Swan Kung Fu is now Rank 8!

Black Swan is now Rank 8!

You have learned a new Qi Discipline: Silver Wing! Cover any limb you choose in a sheath of liquid Metal! Particularly strong against Fire and Wood! Weakest against Earth. Damage absorbed increases with rank achieved. Can counter any direct attack of Silver tier or lower. Cost to use is negligible, unless boosted for added resilience!

Qi Perception check successful!

You manage to hear the panicked screams of your only known descendant!

And between one moment and the next, the awe and wonder of miraculous revelations transcending the bridge of time itself turned to the cold horror of realizing he had been away for too long. Far, far too long, with so many enemies still on the board.