Chương 106: Try Again

"Maya," I said, meeting her startled gaze, "I'm going to save everyone." She stared at me with confusion written all over her face. The arrow that had nearly taken my head still quivered in the wooden post behind me, and her eyes kept flicking between it and me like she couldn't decide which was stranger.

"Tomas, what are you—""Raiders!" Henrik's shout cut through everything, right on schedule.

"They're breaking through the east gate!" Maya thrust the rusty sword toward me, that same sword I'd held so many times before I'd lost count.

"Here. Try not to stab yourself with it." I didn't take it this time. Instead I gave her a quick nod and turned toward the forest.

"Get people to the south wall," I called over my shoulder as I started moving.

"The Seventh Band will try to flank through there."

"How did you—" Her voice faded as I broke into a sprint, this body's muscles protesting immediately. Behind me the sounds of battle were already starting, shouts of alarm and the clash of weapons and then the first screams as the raiders hit the walls. I forced myself not to look back. I couldn't save them if I was dead first. The trees were agonizingly slow coming closer.

My legs felt like wet clay but I knew the path now, knew exactly how far I had to push before I hit the tree line and the timing had to be perfect, it always had to be perfect or the whole thing fell apart. Last time Vayara had seemed almost reasonable, willing to spare the village because she'd seen potential in me. If I could reach the meeting point I should be able to get the same result again. She appeared exactly where I expected.

Frost-covered robes rippling in wind I couldn't feel, burning eyes fixed on me from between the first line of pines. But something was wrong and I registered it immediately, those eyes weren't filled with the curiosity I remembered from my first successful encounter. They blazed with something that looked a lot closer to religious fury.

"Just what are you?" Her voice was sharp as winter ice. I raised my hands slowly.

"My name is Tomas. I'm just a villager who—""Silence." My blood ran cold when she continued.

"Your essence. There is something wrong with it." I hadn't even considered that they might be able to sense the blue sun's energy in me. After everything it had seemed so much gentler than the red sun, almost hidden beneath its overwhelming presence, even the elders back at the Azure Peak Sect couldn't sense it unless I was actively channeling it. The only one who'd ever scared it into hiding was that presence at the Way Station.

"I can explain," I started, though honestly I had no idea how I actually would. How do you explain to a religious zealot that you're carrying the essence of what their entire belief system considered a heretical power source?

"I only recently started feeling the red sun's power—""The crimson light burns within you, yes," she interrupted.

"But there's something else. Something—" her eyes widened just slightly and the last word came out like an accusation, "tainted." Ice began crystallizing in the air around us and I knew I was already out of time.

"Are you one of them?" she demanded.

"One of those zealots who claim the blue sun's purity can cleanse our gift?"

"What? No, I—""Did you think you could infiltrate us? Pretend to be an initiate while secretly carrying that abomination's light?"

"Wait—" I had my hands up, "you don't understand—""I understand perfectly." The air exploded into razor-sharp ice before I could get another word out. There was no time to dodge, no chance to defend, I barely had time to register the cold before the crystalline shards were already tearing through my chest and the last thing I felt was my heart freezing solid in mid-beat.

I gasped awake in my quarters at the Azure Peak Sect, my original body soaked through with cold sweat. The familiar walls were about as far from the winter hell I'd just been through as anything could be but I could still feel phantom ice in my chest where it had no business being.

"That could have gone better," I managed after I got my breathing under control.

"That's putting it mildly, Master," Azure replied dryly.

"But at least we learned something valuable." I nodded. She was able to sense the blue sun. That was not something that I had expected. Even the Azure Peak Sect's elders never noticed anything unusual about my cultivation, so, how could a Rank 2 Skybound? Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Master, the Skybound have a particular sensitivity to solar energies," Azure explained.

"Their entire cultivation system is built around the red sun, it probably makes them more attuned to things like that." I didn't like the reality of it, but it made sense.

"So, we need to hide the blue sun somehow before I go back." The question was: how could we do that? I had an idea, and to see if it would work, I closed my eyes and shifted my consciousness inward. The Genesis Seed stood before me in my inner world, its branches moving gently as the twin suns continued their eternal orbit, a balance that would apparently get me killed out there if I didn't do something about it.

"The blue sun's energy is more subtle," Azure observed.

"Maybe we could use the Genesis Seed's canopy to mask its presence like we did back at the Way Station?" That was exactly what I had been thinking.

"Let's hope it works," I murmured. I reached out with my will and took hold of the blue sun's orbit. The celestial body resisted at first, but gradually it began to shift and I was able to slowly guide it under the Genesis Seed's canopy so that the massive tree's branches could create a natural shelter that would hopefully hide it from others.

"The balance feels odd," Azure noted as we adjusted to the new arrangement.

"The red sun's influence is more prominent now."

"Let's hope it's enough to stop me getting executed as a heretic again," I murmured.

"But I need to rest first before trying again." My soul essence had taken a real hit from the violent death, so I spent the next few hours in meditation carefully rebuilding my reserves. The Tri-Essence Harmony technique helped but it was slow work regardless. Status Update: Soul Essence: 70/104 Spiritual Essence: 55 Physical Essence: 27"Are you ready?" Azure asked as I opened my eyes.

"Yeah, let's just hope I make it to the academy this time." With everything prepared, I reached for that familiar connection. The transition between worlds felt different this time, the red sun's pull was stronger without its blue counterpart visible, but the path was still clear and soon I felt myself settling into that other body. I didn't wait for Maya to react to the arrow this time. As soon as I felt solid, I was already moving, calling back over my shoulder, "I'll be back! I promise!"

My muscles screamed in protest just like before, my legs burning as I pushed this mortal form down the same path I'd already memorized. The treeline crept closer with agonizing slowness and behind me the sounds of battle started erupting from the village. Vayara appeared exactly where I expected her to and this time her burning eyes held only the curiosity I remembered from the first successful loop.

"You're afraid?" she said. My heart jumped so hard I almost lost my composure right there in the treeline, because those were the exact words I'd been waiting for, in the exact tone I remembered, and that meant it was working, the Genesis Seed's canopy was doing its job and the blue sun was staying hidden. I kept my expression carefully neutral and gave her the same answer I had the first time.

"Who wouldn't be terrified of seeing a frost-robed figure floating in front of them?" The conversation moved forward exactly the way I remembered it. She mistook me for an escaped initiate at first, the way she always did, her burning eyes scanning me for confirmation of what she already suspected, and when I told her I was just a villager who had changed on his own, her entire demeanor shifted, that cold calculation replaced by interest.

"This is perfect, actually," she said.

"I've been lacking in contribution points, and recruiting a natural awakening... yes, this will do nicely." I let out a slow breath through my nose as the rest of it unfolded. The fight against the Sun-touched, Vayara's absolutely devastating display of power that I hadn't gotten any less horrifying on a second viewing, the harvest of essence from the fallen bodies after. The villagers watching from a distance with fear and gratitude. Maya's confused expression when I left.

All of it stung, but I focused on what mattered and kept moving forward. The journey to the academy felt longer this time, or maybe it just felt that way because I had nothing to do except walk beside Vayara and try not to look like I was constantly checking whether she had noticed anything wrong with my spiritual signature. Every time she glanced at me I tensed up. Every time she looked away again I reminded myself to breathe. But the blue sun stayed hidden.

The Genesis Seed's branches held and the red sun's presence filled the space where the other one should have been, providing just enough power to make me look like what Vayara expected to find. The floating citadel came into view above the treeline and it was just as impossible looking as the first time, spires of ice and crystal hanging in the crimson-tinted sky at angles that made no physical sense, the whole structure rotating slowly like something breathing.

The temporary flight rune burned cold against my chest when Vayara traced it, that familiar discomfort spreading through my sternum, though learning to stabilize myself in the air went smoother now that I already knew what the adjustment was supposed to feel like.

"The elders will want to see you immediately," Vayara said as the citadel grew larger ahead of us.

"Natural awakenings are rare enough to warrant their personal attention." I nodded and kept my face calm even though my mind was running through every failure condition I could think of. The elders were Rank 7 Skybound, which put them in a completely different category from anyone who had looked at me before, and I genuinely did not know if the Genesis Seed's concealment would hold at that level.

Elder Chen Yong had only barely sensed the blue sun when he was freshly advanced into the Life Realm and was actively trying to perceive it and even he had described the experience as confusing more than clear. These people had built their entire cultivation system around solar energy. We stopped in front of a set of doors that I could have fit my entire quarters inside.

"The Council Chamber," Vayara said, looking at me.

"The elders are waiting inside." There was a pause where her expression did something complicated.

"Try not to die too quickly in there. You're far too interesting for that." Coming from her that was probably as close to encouragement as she was capable of, though I was also about sixty percent sure her primary concern was losing her contribution points. The doors began to move.

I pulled my attention inward for just a moment and found the Genesis Seed exactly where I'd left it, its canopy thick and steady, the blue sun resting in the shelter of its branches with its light diffused down to almost nothing, the red sun blazing in its usual orbit and providing a clean strong signal that should read as uncomplicated to anyone looking. Should. I didn't have the luxury of certainty right now.

The doors finished opening and the chamber beyond them did something to my sense of scale that I couldn't immediately correct for, the ceiling was either ten feet overhead or so far up it had ceased to exist, lost in a vortex of crimson energy that churned in slow spirals, the walls were sheets of ice burning from the inside with cold fire and the light they produced painted everything in bloody red and I had to remind myself to keep walking. Seven figures waited in a circle at the center of the room.

Their eyes were all burning. The spiritual pressure from all seven of them together hit me like walking into a wall.

"Azure," I thought, because I needed to know and I needed to know right now.

"The concealment is holding," he said.

"Though I'd rather not test it for long." Well, this is where we find out if I could fool gods.