Chương 146: Book 2 Chapter 59: Exertion

After watching the Wall come ever closer, Mo Jian once again returned to the same empty carriage where he had advanced to the mid stage of the Nascent Soul realm in, hidden behind layers of formations that swallowed sound and wandering senses alike.

Beyond those invisible veils, the rush of air and the hiss of flames drifted in from the outside, less sound and more sensation, now clear to his enhanced senses as the flying convoy rolled endlessly over the clouds, while their destination drew steadily nearer with every passing li. Three hours remained before they reached it. It was enough time. He had withdrawn here for a reason.

The idea had first taken root in the Imperial Palace – or perhaps that was giving the Palace too much credit, since in truth, its seed had been planted much earlier, back in the Kanchi Mine. Every attempt since had ended the same way: frustration, and a dead end. Today felt different. Whether that feeling was insight or wishful thinking remained to be seen. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, recalling Bai Ning as she trained atop the carriage.

Her every movement had carried a quiet intensity, each strike stripped of distraction until nothing remained but pure purpose. It reminded him of the days when he had been the one teaching her, when her world had narrowed to a single lesson repeated until body and soul remembered it. Seeing that, recalling that memory, a missing piece had clicked into place. Or perhaps he only hoped it had. The front carriage lay several compartments ahead, where Muxue had summoned Minister Shi Pao for a private discussion.

Mo Jian had felt no urge to linger for it. The juniors – Bai Ning's friends – were still immersed in their training, and the quiet, busy hum spreading through the convoy had settled over him as well, until remaining idle became impossible. Besides that, there was another reason he was making this attempt as well. Muxue's plan had occupied his thoughts in the background ever since she had revealed it to the core group.

The framework was solid: strike down the major Khans while using the Black Sulde as bait to draw them within reach, while positioning their own chosen contender as favorably as possible, but parts of it still rested on dangerous assumptions. There were too many chances for the enemy to refuse the engagement. But if he could use the South Pointing Chariot as he hoped...... it might become the piece that erased one of the greatest weaknesses in his artifact spirit, and make the plan more feasible.

The thought settled into his mind. He lifted one hand, azure-black light gathering above his palm, coalescing into the Heaven Enshrouding Ding. The little cauldron emerged with a soft glow, spinning lazily in the air, its polished surface catching the light in rippling bands of blue and black. His consciousness flowed into it. The mirrored interior greeted him first, reflecting a half-dozen impossible scenes at once, each as vivid and unreachable as a dream.

The assassins remained absent, as always, whatever concealed them still eluding even the Ding's gaze. His awareness drifted outward instead, tracing every inch of its exterior before settling on the lid, and finally the handle. An intricately carved scorpion curled around the metal, its tail looping back on itself in a perfect circle. Mo Jian reached for it, and the carving shivered like mist peeling away from moonlit water as a translucent scorpion eased free of the metal.

Pale blue flames flickered within its ghostly shell as it stretched its pincers and skittered lightly across the air. It climbed onto his forearm without hesitation, each silent step carrying it higher until it settled comfortably on his shoulder, exactly where it always did. Mo Jian raised his free hand and scratched gently along its carapace. His fingers slipped through the spectral shell- -but not entirely. There was resistance now, like brushing against something hidden beneath the surface of deep water.

Progress. The Netherworld Scorpion slowly unfurled its tail. Its pincers clicked together in perfect silence, the tiny motion carrying an odd air of satisfaction. Mo Jian watched it for a long moment before speaking through the bond that connected them. He knew the exercise was absurd; conversing with the spirit was scarcely different from speaking to an ordinary insect, or to his own reflection. Words reached it, but meaning rarely did. Still... It helped him organize his own thoughts.

"Ready?" The scorpion offered no reply. It sensed no command to follow, and after a brief twitch of its antennae, it simply remained where it was. Mo Jian chuckled under his breath and raised his other hand. This time an artifact slipped free from his storage pouch, a tiny chariot, scarcely larger than a child's toy, yet crafted with painstaking precision. Every spoke, axle, and engraved panel gleamed with a bronze sheen.

Upon the carriage stood a lone bronze figure in flowing robes, one arm forever outstretched, its finger fixed unwaveringly toward a single direction. The miniature South Pointing Chariot hovered opposite the Heaven Enshrouding Ding, the two artifacts hanging in perfect balance before him. For a long moment, neither moved. Only the steady rush of the flying convoy accompanied the silence as Mo Jian looked from one artifact to the other, wondering whether this attempt would work or not.

Then he closed his eyes and did his best to empty his mind. The exercise itself was not difficult. His daily meditations demanded much the same thing. But there was a difference between thinking of nothing and thinking nothing. Every previous failure had left him with the same suspicion: the greatest obstacle was his own desire for it to work. To truly use the gui – even in the limited way he had managed once before – he could not remain attached to expectations or ambition.

Comprehension did not come because one sought it. It simply was: a state of mind, a way of perceiving the world. It was simple enough to say, but immensely difficult to put into practice. Of course he wanted it to work; the reasons were selfish, and scrubbing that desire from his mind was no easy task. Besides, he had hardly been thinking of nothing when he had used the chariot in the Kanchi Mine. Yet when he thought back to the state of mind he had been in then...

Mo Jian shook his head, banishing the useless thoughts. Think of nothing, he told himself. Desire nothing. His jaw tightened with the effort of it, some part of him dimly aware that he was doing it wrong, because you couldn't strain toward an absence of strain. A minute passed. This is stupid. What am I, a Buddhist monk? He reached instead for the expression Bai Ning had worn, that elusive quality that had lingered in his memory and made him think this might be possible. Had she been thinking of nothing?

No, that wasn't quite right. She had been focusing so completely that conscious thought had seemed to fall away. It was as though instinct, rather than deliberate reasoning, had guided her actions. She hadn't looked like someone talking herself through each step. She had simply... done. That was the state of mind he needed to reach. He let his shoulders drop and exhaled, asking the gui to breathe, trying this time to simply trust rather than force. Nothing happened.

The South Pointing Chariot remained as motionless as ever. He tried again, doing his best to let go of expectation, of hope itself, offering the gui a quiet certainty instead of a desire; an invitation rather than a demand. When it still refused to stir, the disappointment that followed was softer than frustration, and somehow harder to shake. By the third attempt, stillness had abandoned him entirely.

Mo Jian gave up trying to empty his mind and let it fill instead, turning his thoughts away from the gui altogether. His fingers drummed absently against the floor as his mind churned through what lay ahead: the Wall, the journey still before him, Muxue's unwavering resolve, Liu Rushi's quiet declaration, and even... Shen Jinglan's death. Work, he thought, as long minutes passed, his restlessness mounting with nothing to spend it on. Still nothing. All he felt was tired. At last he let his hands fall.

The two artifacts slipped from his grasp and struck the floor with a muted clang. The Heaven Enshrouding Ding rolled lazily onto its side, utterly unconcerned, while the South Pointing Chariot landed awkwardly, its outstretched finger coming to rest pointed squarely at his chest, almost accusingly. Another failure. He could try again, but he already knew it would change nothing. Whatever he thought he had sensed, whatever fragile hope he had been chasing, had led nowhere.

He doubted another attempt would fare any better. With a sigh, Mo Jian stowed away both his natal artifact and the gui and rose to his feet. He deactivated the formations concealing him from the outside world and extended his spiritual sense through the convoy once more. Muxue was still speaking with the old minister, everyone else giving the pair a respectful berth. Wei Shentong remained exactly where he had been for days, silently refining the Unbroken Jade Coronet.

Duan Cheng and Liu Rushi had vanished into another empty carriage, their presences faint but unmistakable, as were those of Bai Ning's friends, still deep in their training. Bai Ning herself was still atop the lead carriage, trying to carve a glowing arc of qi through the air under Qing Zhanyue's watchful gaze. Mo Jian watched for a moment before shrugging and heading there instead.

He had little desire to insert himself into Muxue's political discussion, and even less to finally meet Minister Shi Pao, whom he had managed to avoid since joining the convoy. Muxue was more than capable of handling the old minister on her own. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. He opened one of the carriage's side doors. The howling wind instantly seized his robes and hair, whipping them into a frenzy. Then he stepped out into empty air.

For a heartbeat, he simply flew alongside the carriage, a streak of blue racing beside its blazing wheels. Then he angled upward toward the lead carriage. Only then did he notice the hour. The sun was sinking beyond the horizon, surrendering the world to dusk. The lower clouds still glowed with soft amber light, while deep blue and muted violet steadily claimed the heavens above.

Against that vast canvas, the flying carriage, with its flaming wheels and shimmering Peacock at the fore, looked less like a vehicle than a celestial ship sailing across the sky. Mo Jian slowed. He watched towering clouds drift past like mountain ranges, their edges gilded by the dying light, and breathed deeply, filling his lungs with the northern air: cold, dry, and carrying scents utterly unlike those of the south. A smile spread across his face.

The frustration of his failed attempt faded with every passing moment, until he suddenly realized what he had been denying himself. He had spent so much time shut inside the carriage that he'd forgotten he was crossing an entirely new stretch of the world. There had been practical reasons, of course; his recent breakthrough demanded stability, and there had always been something to do. But since when had he become the sort of person who could cross the heavens without sparing a thought for the endless sky?

Thus, it was a much calmer and thoroughly grinning Mo Jian who finally landed atop the lead carriage nearly half an hour later, his hair windswept and his robes in complete disarray. He had spent the time flying like an overgrown child, diving beneath the convoy before racing ahead of it, only to dismiss his qi at the last instant and plunge through open air, laughing as his stomach lurched somewhere between his throat and his feet.

Every dive ended with him catching himself just before the ground could become a serious concern. It had been exhilarating. More than once he had whooped loud enough for the wind to snatch the sound away before anyone else could hear it. At one point Qing Zhanyue's spiritual sense had followed his erratic flight, no doubt wondering what had possessed him. It lingered only until he began tracing glowing characters through the air with strands of qi, carefully writing: Mo Jian is the greatest.

The words had barely finished glowing before Qing Zhanyue sliced them apart with a casual wave of her hand. He was still laughing when he landed atop the carriage.

"That was hurtful." The broad roof had become Bai Ning's training ground. She stood at its center, held in place by only the barest thread of qi anchoring her against the rushing wind. Before her hung a glowing crescent of qi, like the lingering trail of a sword slash. Slowly and deliberately, she guided Green Destiny through the arc, trying to trace it with absolute precision. Mo Jian doubted she had even noticed him arrive.

Her expression was one of complete concentration, though a faint tremor had crept into her sword arm, one she seemed determined to ignore. The sword followed the curve perfectly until it reached the center. Then the crescent rippled and dissolved. Without a flicker of frustration, Bai Ning lowered her sword and waited. The scattered qi slowly gathered itself back into a flawless crescent. The moment it did, she began again. Qing Zhanyue smiled sidelong at him, amusement flickering across her face.

"Say that when you reach the late stage of the Nascent Soul Realm, not before." She inclined her head toward Bai Ning.

"Your student is a gem. That level of qi control would give someone a century older than her a splitting headache, yet she keeps pushing through it. She isn't going to stop until she gets it." Mo Jian smiled ruefully, remembering similar scenes back on the Islands. They had been uncommon – Bai Ning learned far too quickly for stubborn repetition to become a habit – but hardly unprecedented.

"No," he agreed.

"She won't." Qing Zhanyue wasn't praising Bai Ning simply because she had spent two full days continuously training. A day was insignificant in a cultivator's life; most entered closed-door cultivation for decades, or even centuries. Training wasn't measured by time alone, but by what one poured into it, and by what one gained in return. By that measure, Bai Ning was pushing herself to the limit. General Qing spoke again.

"Her friends came back about an hour ago while you were still meditating. They looked half dead." A faint smile tugged at her lips.

"Then they learned she was still out here training, and all three willingly went back for more." She chuckled.

"Takes guts. She has good friends." Mo Jian hummed in agreement.

"She does. They'll go far with that kind of dedication, even if part of it comes from not wanting to fall behind." Zhanyue snorted.

"No, they won't." He looked at her in askance.

"None of them will ever reach Nascent Soul." The certainty in her voice made Mo Jian turn fully toward her. She, in turn, looked mildly surprised that he found the statement surprising.

"I'm not saying it to be cruel," she said.

"It's simply what I see. Reaching Nascent Soul takes more than diligence or the desire to keep pace with someone else. None of them have that hunger." Her gaze remained on Bai Ning.

"They're content. They strive, certainly. They work hard. But they chase the next milestone, not the horizon beyond it. Their ambitions are small enough to be fulfilled, and once they are, they'll be satisfied." She shrugged.

"There's nothing wrong with that. Most cultivators are the same. But it isn't the mindset that reaches higher realms." Her eyes shifted to Mo Jian.

"Bai Ning has that hunger. The desire to never stop climbing." A brief pause.

"So do you." Mo Jian remained silent for a long moment, watching Bai Ning repeat the same motion yet again as the last light of day slowly bled from the horizon. Finally, he said, "I'm not sure I agree. If you had met me two years ago, you wouldn't have seen any such hunger in me either." He folded his arms.

"And advancement isn't determined by conviction alone. Bai Ning already knows too much. I revealed things to her before her foundations were truly complete. That knowledge will weigh on her cultivation. When she attempts Nascent Soul, she'll have more to reconcile than most. It'll make the breakthrough harder." Qing Zhanyue dismissed the concern with a small wave of her hand.

"Harder," she agreed.

"Not impossible." She glanced at him.

"I'm not looking down on your juniors. I merely told you what I observed. Believe me or don't." Her tone remained utterly unconcerned. There was no challenge in it, nor any attempt to persuade him. She had stated her conclusion and left it at that. Whether he accepted it or rejected it made no difference to her. Mo Jian grimaced but let the matter rest. Qing Zhanyue had walked a road far longer than his own. To insist she was wrong would more likely reveal the limits of his own understanding than hers. Even so...

he wasn't convinced. The thought drifted through his mind without demanding an answer. Silence settled between them once more, broken only by the rush of wind around the speeding convoy and the occasional swish of Bai Ning's sword as it traced another careful arc through the waiting crescent of qi.

Mo Jian watched: Bai Ning's unwavering concentration, Qing Zhanyue's relaxed posture, the crimson glow fading from the western sky, the towering clouds surrendering their edges to violet, the endless plains below already swallowed by gathering shadow. Ahead, the Great Wall stretched across the horizon like the spine of the world, dividing the Steppes from the Empire with effortless majesty. He found himself simply... existing. There was nowhere else he needed to be, nothing he needed to understand.

The convoy flew onward, the wind against his face cool enough that he could almost taste the coming night. For the first time that day, he was not wondering whether he would succeed. He was only watching the world pass by. And somehow, that was enough. Something loosened, not just within him, but in the world itself. It felt like the release of a breath held far too long. Xian seeped into the world, quiet and invisible, as inevitable as the tide creeping over the shore or dawn pushing away the night.

Qing Zhanyue turned sharply toward him, sensing it. Alarm flashed across her face, chased immediately by disbelief, then awe. Mo Jian barely noticed. He felt... content. Complete, as though for one fleeting instant there was nothing lacking in the world and nothing within himself that wished for more. Without so much as a thought from him, the Netherworld Scorpion crawled from the folds of his sleeve, climbed lazily along his arm, and settled once more upon his shoulder.

"Jian, wha-" Zhanyue's voice broke off. The xian bent. Like water finding the course it had always intended to take, it flowed into the ghostly scorpion. The tiny creature accepted it without ceremony, same as an animal not questioning the food before it: it simply ate. Yet the xian did not stop. It continued pouring into the world around them, and the world quietly answered. The clouds shifted first, their slow march across the heavens turning unmistakably toward the south.

Behind the convoy, the fiery wake streaming from the wheels leaned with them, still backward as dictated by their flight, but subtly, impossibly, toward true south. The wind changed next. It circled around the convoy in broad, invisible currents, brushing past robes and banners while somehow leaving those upon the lead carriage untouched. Then the wood beneath his feet stirred, the grain rippling like the surface of a pond.

Across the roof, then the walls, then every carriage in the convoy, swirling patterns emerged from the timber itself. Rings and lines spread through the polished wood before resolving into countless compass roses, each one perfectly formed, every needle pointing south. At the very front of the convoy, the peacock wrought from radiant light threw back its head. Its cry rang across the evening sky like crystal struck by crystal.

Its trailing feathers unfurled behind it, each plume blossoming into the shape of a luminous compass rose, each one pointing south. Qing Zhanyue already had her sword in hand. She hadn't drawn it consciously; it was simply there. She stared at him with an expression he had never imagined seeing on the face of one of the Empire's greatest cultivators: wonder.

"What..." she whispered.

"What was that?" Mo Jian did not answer. Some distant, more sensible part of him understood that he ought to be far more shaken by what he had just done than he was, but the calm he had found hadn't lifted, and the questions felt like a problem for some other version of himself, one less at peace than he currently was. The gui resting inside his storage pouch had fallen silent once more, as though it had never stirred.

On his shoulder, the ghostly scorpion continued feeding with placid indifference, faint strands of xian vanishing between its translucent mandibles. Along the ridge of its back, its chitin slowly thickened, as naturally as a snake shedding its skin or a tree adding another ring. Then the shell split, two delicate wings unfolding from the opening. They were impossibly thin, like moonlight woven into silk, shimmering with a faint silver translucence. The scorpion flexed them once, experimentally.

They quivered in the evening breeze before folding neatly against its back, as though they had always belonged there. The last traces of xian faded into the world. The wind returned as the convoy flew onward and the Great Wall drew ever closer.

"Aha!" The jubilant cry shattered the silence. Both Mo Jian and Qing Zhanyue turned. Bai Ning stood where she had been all along, breathing hard, Green Destiny lowered until its tip hovered just above the roof. The glowing crescent still hung before her, perfect and unbroken. For a heartbeat, she simply stared at it, as though she scarcely believed it herself. Then she looked up. The last rays of the setting sun caught her violet eyes, setting them aglow.

Her face broke into a smile so bright, so utterly unguarded, that it chased away every trace of the exhausting day. It was the smile of someone who had wrestled with an impossible wall, failed a hundred times, and finally found a way through. She looked impossibly pleased with herself. Mo Jian couldn't help but smile back. The sun slipped beneath the horizon. Soft darkness settled across the world like a blanket. And, with perfect timing, Bai Ning swayed where she stood.

"... Master?" Her knees buckled, and she pitched forward without so much as a yelp. Mo Jian was already moving before she hit the roof.