Chương 1: Start Reading

PROLOGUE TO KNOW PAIN —∞— The moment Jieyuan entered the room, his eyes fell on the pill. It drew his attention invariably and inevitably, surer than any magnet, and he came to a sudden stop one step past the door. Pink and about the size of a thumbnail, the pill sat on the far-right side of the table on a small purple pillow. Under the orange and yellow light of the glowing gemstones on the ceiling, it looked small and round and harmless. But it was called Cultivator's Agony for a reason.

"Jieyuan?" He pried his eyes away from the pill. A woman in white robes and a matching elder's coat stood behind the table. Her clothes drew his attention. The long, thin coat she wore over her robes meant she was an elder of the sect, but he wasn't sure what the color of her robes meant. Odd. None of the ranks of the Gleaming Stone Sect he knew of wore white, and he'd been under the impression that he knew them all. But then their eyes met, and Jieyuan couldn't help but stare.

Immediately, he knew the woman was a Liangshibai, a royal of the Gleaming Stone Sect. She had the faceted gemstone eyes all true-blood Liangshibai had: crystal-like, like gemstones seen from above. But it wasn't the pattern of her eyes that had him staring. He'd met a couple of Liangshibai before, and their gemstone eyes weren't that much of a novelty anymore. What was new was the color of the woman's eyes. Blue. A vibrant, vivid blue. All Liangshibai he'd met before had red or orange eyes.

The woman wore an amused smile.

"Close the door and take a seat." Jieyuan did as told and walked over. There was only one chair in the room, facing the woman from across the table. Also on the table were seven large metal blocks, a small stack of cards, and an incense clock.

"My name is Wanxin," the woman said once he'd sat.

"I'm your proctor for the last stage of the entrance trials." Focusing again on the woman—Wanxin—Jieyuan found that it wasn't just her eyes that were distracting. She was striking, beautiful in the Liangshibai way: angular and lean, the lines of her face stone-cut sharp. Just as eye-catching was all the jewelry she wore. What little skin her white robes left exposed was covered in a sparkling shower of diamond and sapphire earrings, necklaces, and rings.

Jieyuan had yet to meet a Liangshibai who wouldn't bury themselves under a pile of precious stones if given half the chance, but it was his first time seeing a walking quarry like Wanxin.

"First, we must determine your heavenly affinity and alignment," Wanxin said.

"Now, I'm sure you already know what your alignment is. Most people do, and if your soul's song is any indication, your case is a clear-cut and polished one. I'll be chipped if you aren't Firesoul. But I've been wrong before, so we still have to check."

"Wait, it's that obvious?" Jieyuan asked, surprised.

"That's not usually people's first guess. Also, my soul's song? What's that?" Firesouls were hotheaded and reckless. Jieyuan was neither. He took risks, yes, but calculated ones. Only those close to him knew he was too ambitious to be anything but a Firesoul. He had his upbringing to blame for the way he was; he'd been raised to take over the family business, and a merchant needed patience, prudence, and composure, three traits Firesouls weren't really known for. His old man had done his best to rectify that.

"You're not usually taken for a Firesoul? Really? Your soul's song is…" Wanxin paused.

"Well, you'll see later what I mean. Let's just say I'll be very surprised if you're not Firesoul. As for what a spiritual song is, you'll be figuring that out yourself shortly if everything goes right. Moving on…" She motioned toward the seven metal slabs arranged in the middle of the table. On top of each one were two hand-shaped indentations, one facing Wanxin, the other facing him. Embedded in the center of each one, between the two handprints, was a gemstone.

Each metal block was a different color, matching the gemstone on it. But though there were seven slabs, they weren't of the Seven Colors, the Spectral Six plus Heavenly Silver. Rather… Blue, brown, red, light green, dark green, gray, and light blue? They were talking about alignments. The seven elements? Jieyuan caught his slightly warped reflection in the gray block and had to hold himself back from cringing.

After the duels he'd been in earlier, he looked bloated and roughed up, battered like a gold coin that had been sat on by someone with more weight than sense. With his black neck shroud and the rough, heavy-duty black robes and trousers he wore, he couldn't have looked any more Wanxin's opposite if he'd tried.

"These are affinity gauges," Wanxin said.

"They measure your affinity with each of the standard alignments, if there's anything to measure. We'll use that to determine your heavenly affinity."

"Right," Jieyuan said. The topic of alignments came up often enough among mundanes, even if they didn't have the means to really determine theirs. Jieyuan also knew about heavenly affinities, though that was because his old man had worked for cultivators.

"We'll start with Fire," Wanxin said, placing her hand on her side of the ruby-embedded red block. Each of her long fingers was adorned with multiple rings. They were just like her bond band, embedded with sapphires and diamonds. Jieyuan mirrored her. The surface of the block felt cool to the touch, almost chilly. His heart drummed with expectation. He'd reached out to his father's old contacts in preparation for this.

Although none of them had been from the Gleaming Stone Sect, entrance trials didn't vary too much between the local sects, so he'd managed to find out a little about this next step. Next, the block would start flashing, and the number of flashes would determine his heavenly affinity, which was supposedly just another word for his talent, his aptitude for cultivation. He wasn't quite clear on the details, though. But one thing was for sure. The more flashes—the higher his heavenly affinity—the better.

He held his breath, tensing. The next few moments might just be the most important ones of his life. The block lit up with a bright red glow. The large ruby in its center flashed four times, each time just a little brighter, before the whole thing went dim. Four flashes. From what he'd heard, most people got only one flash. Two was rare. Three, practically unheard of. And he'd gotten four. Four flashes. He looked up at Wanxin, hoping he didn't look as anxious and desperately hopeful as he felt.

She was staring, wide-eyed, at the block. She looked up at him, then back down at the block." Fourth- order?" she finally said, sounding as incredulous as she looked.

"I figured you'd have high heavenly affinity. Second-order. Maybe third-order… But no. Fourth-order Firesoul. Chip me to shards." Jieyuan swallowed. If Wanxin's reaction was any indication, he'd struck gold. Still, he kept himself from getting too excited. Or at least he tried to.

"That's good, then?" That he was a Firesoul barely registered in his thoughts; if he'd turned out to be anything else, then he wouldn't have known himself at all." Good?" Wanxin said.

"Gleaming Heavens, you have no idea how big this is, do you, gemstone?" She let out a little chuckle, like she was privy to some secret joke. Then she said his name, slowly, " Haoyujin Jieyuan. Back when I first heard it, I didn't recognize that family name, Haoyujin. I thought it might be a clan of the Radiant Gold Sect, since mundane-borns seldom did so well. But you are a mundane-born, aren't you?" Mundane-born. Normally, spoken by a cultivator, that would be an insult.

Right here and now, though, it felt more like praise. His parents might have been mundanes, but he'd still managed to come this far. Jieyuan couldn't fight his smile anymore.

"So fourth-order's more than just good, then?" Wanxin snorted.

"That's a crude understatement. But you're not wrong. Let me put it this way. Unless the other two got just as good a result, which I doubt, you just took first place in the entrance trials." The other two. Jieyuan knew very well just whom she was referring to. The pair who'd beaten every other competitor in the dueling stage of the entrance trials with effortless, almost dismissive ease, Jieyuan included. First place had been Jieyuan's goal.

It would've served as irrefutable proof that his origins didn't define him. After the dueling stage, though, he'd been sure that position had been pushed soundly beyond his reach. Wanxin's words just now weren't quite enough to shatter that belief. She might be making a big deal about his results now, but he couldn't shake off the feeling that those two would also beat him in this, or at the very least match him.

Even though he'd only met those two today, and only for the brief moments they'd faced each other on the dueling platform, he just couldn't picture either of them as inferior to anyone else in any way.

"The Gleaming Stone Sect's been around for thousands of years," Wanxin continued.

"And you can count on two hands the number of fourth-orders that have walked our halls. A fourth-order heavenly affinity means you can reach as high as Greenrealm." That struck Jieyuan like a shock of cold water. He froze.

"As high as Greenrealm?" he repeated.

"What— What does that mean, exactly?" There were six realms of cultivation, one for each of the spectral colors. Redrealm, Orangerealm, Yellowrealm, Greenrealm, Bluerealm, and Violetrealm. And Jieyuan had been aiming straight for the top, Violetrealm. He had no intention to settle for less. As high as Greenrealm. That implied things Jieyuan did not care for. Not at all. Wanxin gave him a searching look; she must've noticed his apprehension.

"Ah. Yes, I should have expected this. You are a Firesoul." She sighed.

"Look, we don't have the time to go over the specifics of how heavenly affinity works. You'll want to look it up in our libraries later. But… Well, to keep it simple, your heavenly affinity imposes a limit, of sorts, on what realm you can reach. First-order, Redrealm. Second-order, Orangerealm. Third-order, Yellowrealm. Fourth-order, Greenrealm. That's you." Jieyuan just stared at her, frozen, chilled.

"So it's… impossible? Greenrealm, that's as high as I can go?" Wanxin paused, gave him a long look. Then she said, a bit more deliberately, "Well, as far as I know, yes. But we're in a Redrealm sect. So who knows? It could be that higher-realm sects know of some methods. I mean, everything's possible under the Heavens." She shrugged.

"If I were you, however, I'd worry about getting to Greenrealm first. You can concern yourself with Bluerealm and Violetrealm afterward." Jieyuan nodded slowly. Wanxin was right. One step at a time, and all that. And if, later, it turned out nobody had ever broken past the limit of their heavenly affinity? Well, in that case, he'd just have to be the first one to pull it off. Jieyuan took a deep breath, pushing those thoughts aside for now, and looked down at the table. He considered the colored slabs on it.

"What about other affinities? Are we testing them too?" He was a Firesoul, no doubt about that, but he might also have a bit of Metal in him. He had no idea if it worked like that, though. If people could have more than one affinity. Wanxin gave him an amused look.

"Have you ever Communed before?"

"Communed?" She shook her head, smiling again.

"I thought as much. You'll find out these things later. For now, all you need to know is that if you haven't Communed before, all your other affinities should be zeroth-order. People are only born with one innate affinity, their heavenly affinity; in your case, it's clearly your fourth-order Fire affinity. Anyway…" Wanxin plucked a hand-sized card from the small stack on her side of the table and held it out to him.

"Memorize this." Jieyuan felt his throat dry up, and all thoughts of affinities and elements vanished. He gave the card a long, wary look, then took it into his hands slowly, almost reverentially. It was made from the crisp, expensive kind of paper that his old man used to reserve for big contracts. Written on it was a poem: six lines, each one noticeably longer than the last. He had to stop himself from crushing the paper in his grip. What he was holding in his hands was precisely what he'd come so far for.

What he'd left his old life behind for. He'd seen attempts to replicate it, though none of them had been effective. Mundane fabrications, nothing more than words on paper. Sects—cultivator organizations—guarded the real thing with even more zeal than merchants held onto their gold. This. This is what would make him into a cultivator. Into someone who could use chroma: the miraculous substance around which all the powers of cultivators revolved. He'd dreamed of this very moment since he was six years old.

Since he'd understood just what it meant to be a cultivator and what it took to become one.

"I take it you know what you're holding?" Jieyuan looked up. It took real effort to tear his eyes away from the paper.

"A heavenly hymn," he said. He wet his lips.

"A chromalization hymn."

"Correct," Wanxin said.

"Fire-aligned, too, so it's guaranteed to work for you. How good are you at memorization?"

"One minute's all I need." He'd always had a good memory, and he'd trained specifically for this.

"Then it's a good thing you have half an hour." Wanxin looked to the side, and he followed her gaze to the incense clock beside the stack of cards. A long incense stick ran through the body of the device, coiling in closed loops, with six little weights hanging from it, evenly spaced from each other. Wanxin rubbed one of the ends of the stick with her fingers, and it lit up. A trail of barely visible white smoke rose from the flame.

The colored lights coming from the glowing gemstones in the ceiling cast faint, hued curtains of light against the smoke.

"Once the last weight drops, we proceed. And trust me, Jieyuan—you want to carve those words into your mind. Cut them in sharp and deep. You'll need that for what comes next." Jieyuan glanced at the pink pill. It seemed bigger than before. More real. He gave the hymn another read, slowly this time.

It is fire, That burns bright and burns bold; When the touch of the flame lights the pyre, And the heat of the blaze quells the creep of the cold, Does the world feel the burgeoning might of the burning desire; And does man learn that fire is all man will ever need to stand firm, uncontrolled. Two reads later, he already had it down, but he kept reading it anyway, over and over, while the room filled with smoke and the faint herbal scent of the incense filled his lungs.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. One by one, the weights of the incense dropped, a bright chime ringing as they struck the bottom of the clock. A fire was burning inside him, and with each weight that dropped, it got stronger, fiercer, fueled by the knowledge of what each of those chimes was bringing him closer to. —∞— The sixth weight dropped.

Jieyuan lowered the hymn card and looked up at Wanxin, but she only put out a hand, looking at him closely, searchingly. Unsure what she was looking for, he waited, breathing in the faint, tangy smoke of the incense. An overwhelming sense of raw clarity struck him—and he jerked back as the entire world seemed to snap into place. The lingering smoke from the incense, previously faint and barely distinguishable, was now clear and sharp, hanging in the air; he could both smell and taste it.

Just as clear was the roughness of his sturdy cotton robes and trousers, and the softness of his silk neck shroud, tightly wrapped around his neck. His heart drummed in his chest, impossibly loud. And there was a presence in his head, above and around him—a bright presence, somehow—airy but heavy.

"There we go," Wanxin said. Had her voice always been this pleasant, this melodious? And her eyes: they seemed bigger than before. Brighter. Resplendent pools of crystalline water, split into tiny, hypnotizing fractals.

"You asked about Communion before, didn't you? Well, this is it. You've just entered Heavenly Communion. Usually, it'd take you years of meditation to reach this state, so you can thank the Gleaming Mind incense for this." She tapped the bit of incense remaining in the clock.

"And this presence you're feeling, this vague awareness of something around you, in you? That's the Heavens themselves, paying attention to you. Heavenly hymns can't do much if the Heavens don't know they're supposed to listen to them." She smiled." Now we can proceed." The Heavens? Jieyuan had always thought of the Heavens as something abstract. The overarching collection of laws that governed the world. Not as something that could listen to him.

Wanxin picked up the pink pill and held it out, and Jieyuan banished all other thoughts from his mind. As sharp as his senses had become, he still couldn't detect any of the utter foulness he knew the pill contained. Cultivator's Agony. To be a cultivator is to know pain.

"I'm assuming you also know what this is, from how you're looking at it. Have you taken one before?" She was right on the gold.

"I have." Wanxin smirked.

"Since you're here, I'm assuming you survived it. How old were you? What strength?" Smirked. Jieyuan didn't think he'd ever seen a cultivator smirk before. There'd been some exceptions, but most cultivators he'd met before had regarded him with nothing but frosty apathy. It was the treatment they normally reserved for mundanes as a whole. For those who didn't really know pain. The Pain.

Jieyuan had had but a little taste of it years ago, and that had been enough for him to never begrudge cultivators their arrogance.

"Twelve," he said.

"Half-potency." It'd been six years, but he could still remember it clearly. It was like a red, angry scar across his mind.

"Good," Wanxin said.

"Most mundane-borns have no idea what they're in for. The pill you're holding is a full-strength dose, not half, but at least you know what to expect." She quirked an eyebrow.

"Still, twelve? That's young, even for a non-lethal dose. Then again, you are a Firesoul. Not the most patient sort. You're currently eighteen, aren't you? It's usually only chromal-borns that take entrance trials at that age, and even then, most of them still wait a few years to better prepare themselves. But you don't strike me as the waiting type."

"I am not," Jieyuan confirmed. And Wanxin was right, at least partially. If he'd been able to take part in the entrance trials even earlier, he'd have, but you had to be at least eighteen to undergo chromalization, to become chromal, regardless of whether your parents were mundane or chromal. She was mistaken about one thing, though. Taking Cultivator's Agony hadn't been a matter of patience. It wasn't him who'd procured the pill, even if he'd been planning on doing so eventually.

Rather, his old man had given it to him, hoping it'd scare him off this path. It hadn't quite had the intended result. Wanxin placed the Cultivator's Agony pill in front of him.

"You know what to do next?" Jieyuan picked up the pill, eyed it, licked his lips.

"I take it, then recite the hymn." There was little information about the chromal world that cultivators allowed mundanes to know, but he'd used every connection he had, most of them inherited from his old man, to figure out everything he could about the entrance trials of sects. This very last step was what he'd managed to learn the most about.

"That's it. Just remember that if you stutter or falter, you have to start over. The Heavens aren't all that nitpicky, so you don't have to get the rhythm or intonation right, but the words need to be said clearly and in order." Wanxin made her way around the table, and he noticed that she was unarmed. It was the first time he'd ever seen a cultivator without a weapon hanging by their belt.

"Whenever you're ready," she said, standing behind his chair now. With his enhanced senses, he could feel her breath brush against his scalp and neck. She was there to intercede if he couldn't handle it, to use some sort of chromal method to suppress the effects of the pill. If the rumors were right, full-strength Cultivator's Agony could be lethal. The pain was so great it could outright break the mind, with the heart giving out only moments afterward. Jieyuan rolled the pill between his fingers.

This was the last step of the entrance trials, where the majority of mundane-borns failed. The final and greatest watershed. Worst-case scenario, he'd come close to dying—or even outright die, if Wanxin didn't step in. Best-case scenario, he'd wish to die. Eyes on the pill, he reached deep inside himself and searched his heart. And found not a hint of worry or apprehension.

Six years ago, he'd only barely pulled through taking a half-strength dose, but he knew that he could handle what came next—knew it as surely as the weight of gold. Because six years ago, as he lay on the floor, caked in his vomit and tears, he'd mustered what was left of his strength to grin up at his father's pale, sickened face and ask for another. It wasn't dread he felt as he looked at the pill.

Rather, all he found inside himself was a burning, fervent anticipation so strong it left no space for anything else. The pain was terrible, but it was nothing more than a price for power. The price for the power. I win, old man. He flicked the pill into his open mouth and swallowed. It was just as sickeningly sweet as he remembered. Wanxin's hands grasped his shoulders.

"Brace yourself. And don't start reciting until I tell you to."

"Got it." That one time Jieyuan took Cultivator's Agony had also been his last. His old man had refused to get him another, and Jieyuan had never managed to procure one on his own. So he'd prepared himself for this day in other ways. Some of his nails hadn't grown back quite right, and darkened burn scars littered his arms and parts of his back. If he'd done anything these past six years, it was getting acquainted with pain—in any way he could think of. He'd made the investment.

Now it was time to collect the profits. Jieyuan closed his eyes and waited. It wasn't long before he felt it. A minute prickling sensation, just above perception, like needle stabs, all over his chest and upper back. The moment he noticed it, the sensation spread throughout his body, up his shoulders and down his stomach. Barely a breath later, he could feel the stabbing pain all over—and it registered as pain now, the intensity of it growing even faster than it had spread.

Like dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of needles, drilling into him, faster and faster. Jieyuan settled back into his chair, willing his body to relax. He let out a slow, steady breath as the pain kept building and building. He could've smiled. This was nothing. Just a pathetic little prelude. Prickles gave way to brighter, sharper stabs of pain. There was heat to it now—a searing, scorching quality. It wasn't quite there yet, but it was getting closer.

Jieyuan shifted in his seat a little, but that was the extent of his reaction. So far, it was just like it had been six years ago. Back then, he'd tried to ignore the pain, to fight it, and although it'd worked to some extent, it hadn't felt right. Over the years, he'd learned a better way of handling it. The pain was there for a reason. It wasn't meant to be rejected or ignored, but embraced. It was a dividing force—what set apart the worthy from the unworthy. So he focused on it. Immersed himself in it.

He wouldn't ignore it. He would give it the respect it was due and face it fully. The stabs disappeared altogether, leaving behind only the burning. And then everything exploded. Jieyuan jerked, almost jumping off his chair, but he quickly seized back control over his body. Breathing more deeply, he pressed himself firmly against his chair, this time holding his body taut, hands gripping the armrests.

In an instant, the pain grew past the burning, vivid rawness of ripped nails, the sharp, jagged agony of broken bones, and the white, searing ache of scorched skin. Past, even, the pain he remembered from his childhood, which had brought his twelve-year-old self to his knees, then to the floor, twitching and curled up into a ball, lying on a pool of blood and vomit. The fire was everywhere. Head to toe, every inch of his body turned into a source of endless heat.

Magma flowed in his veins, steam filled his lungs, and red-hot metal pokers tore his muscles apart. And his eyes—they boiled in their sockets, melting in syrupy goo. His viscera twisted and warped, sizzling in the magma that was now his blood. His heart was a miniature sun, a wrathful, white orb of pure, beating agony. There was no end to it. His blood kept boiling, his eyes kept melting, his organs kept sizzling, and they didn't stop. As if there was an endless supply of flesh and viscera for the fire to ruin.

His body remained in a state of raw, unending destruction. The liminal instant of absolute pain stretched into incomprehensible eternity. He heard something—a faint whisper amid the all-consuming heat, too low for him to hear. It came again, clearer, but still indiscernible. The third time he heard it—a shout, right next to his ear.

"BEGIN!" Begin? What— His thoughts were distant, hollow, like echoes. As if they weren't his own. It is fire… The hymn. Right. Awareness bled through. He was still sitting, spine upright, motionless. Not a jerk or twitch. As if his body understood, instinctively, that there was no running away from this pain, that no flailing about would help in any way. As if the most fundamental part of him understood that the fire came from within, that there was no escape.

He tried opening his mouth, and though the muscles readily responded, no sound came out. He shut it, took a deep breath, and gave it another try.

"It— It is fire." He could only barely hear his voice. His words didn't sound quite right. They were unsteady. Shaky. Blood boiling, eyes melting, viscera sizzling— Again.

"It is fire." That sounded clearer. But…

"It is fire," he repeated. For good measure. Next…

"That burns bright and burns bold." Voice steady, he reminded himself. Steady.

"When the touch of the flame lights the pyre," he forced the words out between breaths.

"And the heat of the blaze quells the creep of the cold." Blinding, deafening agony filled him.

"Does the world feel the burgeoning might of the burning desire," he said.

"And does man…" He stopped, swallowed, then pushed the remaining words out through his throat, "… learn that fire is all man will ever need to stand firm…" The last word left his lips like a whisper.

"… uncontrolled." Everything vanished. He saw it. A constellation, a sea of silver stars, gathered together— —a glimpse of gold, red, orange, yellow— —of flickering, flaring, fluttering flames— —of warmth, of heat, of radiance—"JIEYUAN!" Jieyuan jerked back, slamming onto the back of his chair, eyes flinging open. The pain was gone. Just like that, as abruptly as a silenced storm. But it lingered, echoes of otherworldly agony thrumming in his bruised, battered mind.

His vision swam, shapes and colors blurring together. Where… What— Where am— Hands grabbed onto his shoulders. Jieyuan was only barely aware of it. His body felt distant, his five senses dulled, diminished.

"Steady now, gemstone," came Wanxin's voice. It sounded as if it came from a mile away, but it pierced through the haze Jieyuan was in.

"Focus on your breathing. Breathe steadily. Slowly. Gather yourself." Jieyuan shut his eyes and did as he was told. One breath. Two breaths. Three. Air, cool and smooth, flowing in through his nose and pooling in his lungs. With each breath, he felt his mind clear, sharpen as his head stopped throbbing. He clung to the feel of his breath, using it as a focus point as he let everything else, every other sensation, fade away. Clarity returned to him; he recalled fully where he was, what he'd been doing.

He shuddered, his next breath coming in sharply, like a blade piercing his lungs. Cultivator's Agony. He almost reached up to check whether his eyes were still there, still whole and unmelted, even though he'd been using them to see just moments ago. He was hardly a stranger to a fire burning inside him. All his emotions, positive and negative, felt like fire to him past a certain point. But the fire from Cultivator's Agony had been of a different kind. Just as intangible, if not imaginary, but utterly destructive.

Purifying, even, as it stripped you down to your very essence. Feeling his breaths get longer and deeper, controlled, he opened his eyes, only to find black locks crowding his vision. He ran both hands through his hair, moist and sticky with sweat, and swept it back. It was a familiar motion. He didn't wear his hair long, just about level with his ears, but he usually left it messier than an uneducated man's ledgers, so it got in the way of his eyes at times.

Properly taking in his surroundings, he realized that the effects of Heavenly Communion were gone: both the presence of the Heavens and the augmented senses. Wanxin was standing back in her original position across the table, looking at him intently.

"How are you holding up?"

"I… I'm fine."

"Hmmm." Wanxin gave him an assessing look.

"Tell me. Are you feeling any different now that you're a cultivator?"

"Now that I am a cultivator…" Jieyuan looked down at his hands and clenched them. He didn't feel any stronger, nor were his senses any sharper. In fact, now that he was no longer Communing, everything felt dull again. Mundane. This… This can't be it. Can it? But just as he searched himself for any difference, he felt it: a presence all around him. Vague, faint, indistinct. But, more importantly, different. S omething he'd never felt before.

Something that didn't seem to have to do with any of the senses he was used to. He latched onto that feeling, and it came into focus; the vagueness gave way to detail, texture. It was red. He could see it now; only, he saw it not with his eyes but with something else, some other sense previously unknown to him. It was all around him, suffusing the air. A faint red haze. He could hear it, too, but like this new, strange way of seeing, he wasn't hearing it in the traditional sense. A slow, steady rhythm.

A vibration, a thrumming. Ambient chroma, he realized. It was normally beyond the perception of mundanes unless materialized—turned physically visible and tangible—in the form of prisms. But he'd heard that it was all around them, in the air, like a gas, and that cultivators could sense it. There were also other things he could sense. A deeper, more tangible presence within him, as well as on Wanxin. Particularly on Wanxin.

With this new sense of his, he could also see a vague, faint red outline around Wanxin's body and a deeper, solid red sphere in her chest. Mystified, he concentrated on that sphere. And that was when he heard it. A melody. Crisp but whimsical. And he also saw something. A glimpse, an impression. Something blue, with a shimmering, crystalline quality, and—"You can experiment with your soulsenses all you want later," Wanxin said, pulling him away from whatever it was he'd just been doing.

"Soulsenses?" She gave him a confused look, then waved her hand dismissively.

"Right. Mundane-born. Spiritual sight, hearing, and gleaning. Sight, sound, and impression. But you'll figure it out soon enough." Jieyuan took a steadying breath.

"What now?"

"The ones who passed are supposed to gather outside for the final formalities. Nothing that warrants worrying over. All that's left is to be properly inducted as a disciple." Wanxin moved back to stand by his side.

"Can you stand up?" Jieyuan pushed himself off against the chair and planted his feet on the ground by way of answer. He looked over to Wanxin. Standing near each other like this, he noticed how tall she was. Not much shorter than he was, and he was unusually tall himself, even for a man. Then again, all the Liangshibai he'd met had been unusually tall.

"Out through the door, then," Wanxin said. Jieyuan complied, treading more slowly than he normally would, but also as steadily as he'd ever walked. His body was soaked with sweat. Wanxin trailed from a step behind him. He was halfway to the door when she spoke up.

"You know, if it weren't obvious you'll be leaving the sect at the first chance you get, I'd offer to apprentice you." Jieyuan turned to face her.

"What?"

"A fourth-order Firesoul like you? There's no way you're staying here for long. I know ambition when I see it. You're climbing the sect ladder as high as you can go. This year's a Summit year, and with your heavenly affinity, you're guaranteed to be scouted."

"I…" Jieyuan settled for a nod. He saw no reason for pretense. Not when the facts were laid out like that. The Gleaming Stone Sect was just Redrealm. The second-strongest sect in the Radiant Gold Province, yes, but still a Redrealm sect, putting it at the bottom of the sect hierarchy. He hadn't defied his family and become a cultivator just to stop here. As Wanxin had said, he'd go as far as he could. And then, if he had any say on it, further still. Four and a half months. One hundred and thirty-six days.

That was how much time was left until the Radiant Gold Summit. When all the sects of the Radiant Gold Province would gather, with the Howling Lightning Sect—the Orangerealm sect all the Radiant Gold Province sects were subordinated to—sending over an envoy to oversee the proceedings. And, more importantly, to scout talented disciples.

The event didn't concern mundanes, but with crowds of cultivators arriving in the city in droves every five years and always on the same date, it was hardly as if the mundane population could stay ignorant of it. And since cultivators employed mundanes, the details had long since found their way into the city's consciousness.

"Consider yourself lucky that my grandaunt isn't around anymore, though," Wanxin said, sounding amused.

"Obsessed with Firesouls as she'd been, she'd have fought tooth and nail to keep you around." Grandaunt? Jieyuan didn't get any time to think about that as they came to a stop in front of the door. Wanxin gave him a smirk.

"I'd brace myself if I were you." That smirk again. It made Jieyuan wonder if Wanxin might actually be as young as she looked. He wouldn't have put her past the early twenties, but being a cultivator, she might very well be as old as sixty. And one thing made sixty more likely than twenty. He hadn't missed the neckband she wore; patterned with sapphires and diamonds, and more importantly, silver. Only one type of neckband was made from silver. Bond bands. And wearing a bond band meant Wanxin was married.

Cultivators, as far as he knew, tended to marry late, in large part because of how long they lived. Wanxin pulled the door open, and Jieyuan was jerked away from his thoughts. Light and colors struck him like a physical blow. He staggered back, furiously blinking, before shutting his eyes. Even then, the light remained almost blinding. But he felt his eyes settling, so little by little, he forced them open.

Beyond the room was a wide, circular courtyard, carpeted in a hundred different shades of green, vaulted by just as many shades of blue and white in the sky above. In the center of the lawn were two figures, their backs toward him. One, a green-robed woman with long, lustrous light brown hair that didn't look tinted, even though Jieyuan had never heard of a natural hair color other than black.

The other, a black-robed man with a build that served as all the proof you could ever need that the Heavens sometimes played favorites. Linzushen Meiyao and Tianzijun Daojue. Those two. The pair who'd beaten everyone else in the dueling stages. Who'd utterly beaten him. Jieyuan balled his hands into fists, then slowly opened them back up until his fingers were splayed wide and fully taut, before relaxing them. Good. Good. It wasn't envy that he felt, but fierce satisfaction.

He'd known Meiyao and Daojue would pass, but it was good to have it confirmed. He had a score to settle with them. Ledgers to match. Reparations to make. He'd eat his weight in gold if Daojue and Meiyao weren't chromal-borns. Their martial arts prowess aside, mundane-borns didn't have green eyes like Meiyao's or violet ones like Daojue's. Nor did they have Meiyao's brown hair or Daojue's towering, ridiculously broad-shouldered frame.

If anything, Daojue and Meiyao weren't just chromal-borns, but clan-borns: precious scions afforded all the advantages possible growing up, trained and mentored specifically for this day. Jieyuan had never heard of a Tianzijun or a Linzushen Clan, and there'd have at least been rumors about another clan with unnatural eyes like the Liangshibai in the Radiant Gold Province, but they could be from a different city.

So many things about the two were so out of the ordinary that they made the average clan-born seem mundane. Whatever Daojue and Meiyao were, mundane wasn't it, so now that they were on a level playing field, all of them disciples, it was only a matter of time before he surpassed them. Jieyuan hadn't become a cultivator to glisten copper to someone else. And if Wanxin's words so far were any indication, he was meant for greater things. Jieyuan turned to Wanxin. Cast in sunlight, she looked even more dazzling.

Her eyes, faceted like sapphires seen from above, seemed to glow with a light of their own. He couldn't help but grin at her. It was only now that his life would begin in earnest. Everything up to this point had only served to get him here. To this place, to this moment. Mundanes didn't matter. This was the truth that his family (his father, most of all) had never understood. Everything his old man had worked for all his life, the family businesses—all of it was irrelevant, inconsequential.

Whatever power they had was an illusion. The only ones with power, real power, were cultivators, and there was no way Jieyuan would settle for the mundanity when he could be more. Not when he knew he could be more. The fire in him was back. Not that of Cultivator's Agony, but the familiar, galvanizing rush of burning ambition, so great it threatened to lift him off the ground. Wanxin shot him an amused look, like she could tell what he was thinking.

"Everything all right, gemstone?"

"Oh, I'm golden," he said, meaning it.