Chương 134: Return to the Western Seat

October 2029, Hidden Hideout, Azure Profound Continent Leo stood at the cave mouth of their Hidden Hideout and looked out at the open skies. It had been six months since he'd held a flying sword in the Azure Profound Continent. He had spent the last six months trapped in East Rutherford, living in what felt like a prison cell. No flight, no speed, just four walls, a floor, a ceiling, and the constant awareness that he couldn't leave them behind. He looked at Sunshifter. The Ferrari red was ridiculous and perfect.

He'd spent the last few days at the Giants training facility getting familiar with it. The newfound power, the flight, the way the blade responded to his intent. But the training center had safety limiters and padded walls. Here there was nothing between him and the mountains. He stepped out of their hideout and leapt into the air. Leo shot across the frozen valley like a missile. Mountains blurred past. Ice fields became smears of white.

He climbed, banking hard around a granite cliff, then dove toward a glacier and pulled up at the last second. The G-forces pressed him into the blade. The Bronco's G-force bleeding formations absorbed most of the power, but he could still feel the strain. Then he hit his max speed. Although T4 power gave him ten times the force, he still had to respect the laws of physics. Due to the nature of air resistance, he was only about thirty percent faster than he had been on his Moonrider.

A little disappointing, maybe, but that thirty percent was the difference between outrunning a Lord and becoming a smear on the landscape. The real advantage was elsewhere. Acceleration, maneuverability, defense, and hitting power. He could reach top speed in a fraction of the time. He could tank hits that would have obliterated T3 defenses. And when he connected with a strike, the impact would carry ten times the spiritual force. Leo grinned. He could work with that.

He oriented himself to the southwest, toward the Great Barrier Range. Even from this distance, the Range dominated the horizon. Walls of black granite and blue ice climbed until they vanished into the jet stream. It had been over a year since he last made the trip to the Western Seat, and now he would be making it with the rest of his team. The grin faded. He could still feel the wind on his teeth, but the joy had gone somewhere else, crowded out by what he knew was waiting to the west.

The Great War of Western Unification had escalated in the past few months, and it had been devastating. The Lanternmarches had launched their counteroffensive in August, fighting for control of the autumn harvest. But the Thousandsteppes had been unusually resilient. Years of explosive population growth had left the Thousandsteppes in poverty. The cultivators there had nothing to fall back on. When the Central Provinces sent their armies for their harvest, they weren't facing unmotivated civilians.

They were facing desperate farmers who had everything to lose. Hundreds of thousands dead. Tens of millions displaced. The refugee camps outside the Western Seat had grown to the size of cities. The scale of the war had escalated beyond anything people had predicted. The group liked to joke that this was just a game. Log in, fight, log out, grab a sandwich. But everyone knew it wasn't that simple. The people here bled real blood. They grieved real losses. They died real deaths.

The only difference between Leo and the cultivators of Azure Profound was that Leo got to log off when things went wrong. They didn't.

Leo spotted their camp after a few hours of flying. The group had built a makeshift ski lodge on the eastern face of one of the Great Barrier peaks. A squat structure of packed earth and mud clung to the mountainside. Smoke curled from a chimney pipe. Skis stood planted in the snow outside like a fence. He landed on the flat area they'd carved out as a landing pad. The snow crunched under his boots. Arthur emerged first, pushing aside the hide flap that served as a door.

"Kid!" Arthur squinted at the sword in Leo's hand.

"That the new toy?" Mike and Kevin followed him out.

"Dude. Dude!" Kevin was already reaching.

"Can I hold it? Let me touch it!" Leo handed it over. Kevin turned Sunshifter in his hands. The Ferrari red caught the afternoon light and threw it back in a way that made the whole sword look like it was on fire.

"Oh my God." Kevin traced a finger along the formation scripts.

"This is so sick. This is literally the coolest thing I've ever held." He pulled his own La Ferrari Eclipse from his storage ring and held it up next to Sunshifter. The La Ferrari Eclipse looked like a butter knife next to a greatsword.

"We're all flying Ferraris again." Arthur grinned.

"Just like old times." Leo watched Kevin hold both swords up to the light. Something in his chest loosened. Three years ago they'd been four idiots with matching flying swords and no idea what they were doing. Now, even still didn't have a clue what their plan was, at least they had matching swords again.

"Speaking of which." Arthur turned to Shen Tianyi, who had been standing in the doorway.

"Hey, Tianyi. Kid's never seen your ride. Why don't you show him?" Tianyi's expression didn't change.

"I fail to see the relevance of such a display."

"Come on." Arthur spread his hands.

"Everybody's got their toys out. Only fair. What's that thing called again? The yarn stick?"

"It is a flying shuttle," Tianyi said.

"Right, right." Arthur snickered.

"A flying yarn stick." Tianyi's jaw tightened. He reached into his storage ring and withdrew his treasure. The flying shuttle was beautiful. Leo had to admit that immediately. It was shaped like an elongated spindle, tapered at both ends, carved from spiritual wood with veins of gold. A thin thread of white silk ran through its center, looped around a small spindle mechanism built into the body.

"Wait, is that thread?" Kevin leaned in.

"I saw it glinting on the way over and I was like, no way, I must have been seeing things. But it's thread." He looked at Tianyi.

"I'm sure it does something really important though."

"The Silk Harmony Thread serves as a spiritual qi conduit and stabilization mechanism integral to the shuttle's core architecture," Tianyi explained.

"It's got thread in it." Arthur tilted his head.

"Like a sewing machine."

"The thread represents an unbroken lineage of Shen family craftsmanship spanning seven hundred years. Each generation of the Shen main branch has contributed refinements to the weaving technique. To hold this shuttle is to hold seven centuries of accumulated wisdom."

"Oh, cool! My grandma had something like that." Kevin brightened.

"For sewing. Hers was plastic though." Arthur doubled over. Tianyi looked at Kevin like he was deciding which end of the shuttle to impale him with. He returned the flying shuttle to his storage ring with a little more force than necessary.

"Perhaps we should discuss the mission."

"The main Shen family branch has tasked me with delivering a message to Lord Shen Zhaowen at the Western Seat. The matter concerns our ongoing investigation into Monarch Cloudpiercer's true intentions behind this war." Leo winced. The same Lord Shen who had threatened to chain Tianyi to a formation desk until his fingers cracked. The one who had promised that Tianyi would make three hundred kowtows before the ancestral hall. Leo hoped the old man had cooled off over the past year.

He didn't really know how to broach the topic with Tianyi.

"Should we expect trouble from guards or patrols on the way?" Leo asked.

"None of us have sworn fealty to a major central power. We are classified as loose cultivators. We can fly openly without harassment." Tianyi glanced at the sky.

"The greater concern is the journey's length. Multiple days of continuous travel."

"I've got daycare pickup and dropoff," Mike said, turning to Leo.

"My daughter is at that age where if I'm late she tells her mom I abandoned her. Tianyi can sleep during my logoff windows."

"Not a problem." Arthur pointed to the skis outside.

"Mike made everybody skis. We travel, we rest, we ski. Simple."

"Ever since I flew past here last year I've been thinking about skiing the slopes," Leo said. He looked outside. The mountains of the Great Barrier Range rose in the distance. Miles of powder, couloirs, and jumps.

"Then let's get moving." Arthur pulled his collar up against the wind.

"Hey Tianyi, before we head out, you mind whipping up some scarves for the road? You've got the equipment." Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Tianyi glared at him.

The five of them flew in loose formation through the Great Barrier Range, Tianyi at the front with his wooden shuttle, the others spread out behind on their flying swords. Leo kept to the rear, still adjusting to Sunshifter's responsiveness. Every small intention translated into motion faster than he expected. They flew for hours without seeing another soul. The peaks grew taller as they pushed deeper into the range. Snow gave way to bare rock, and then to ice so thick it looked blue.

The air thinned until breathing required effort. Around midday, they spotted the first sign of civilization. A guard post sat on a ridge overlooking a mountain pass. Talisman pennants in deep red and burnished gold flapped against the gray rock. A signal fire pit dominated the center of the outpost, stacked with kindling and ready to ignite at a moment's notice. Tianyi reached into his storage ring while flying. He pulled out a jade slip stamped with the Shen family seal and flicked it toward the guard post.

The slip streaked through the air, trailing a faint golden light. A soldier emerged from the post and caught it midflight. He scanned the contents, checked the seal, and turned back toward the structure. Three seconds later, a green firework shot into the sky and burst above the ridge. The group flew through without slowing down.

"Huh." Arthur watched the guard post shrink behind them.

"Wish airport security worked like that."

"It does," Leo said.

"If you're flying with one of those black diplomatic passports." More watchtowers appeared as they progressed. Some stood intact, their T4 formations radiating spiritual pressure he could feel from thousands of feet away. Others lay in ruins, their walls crumbled and their talisman banners burned to ash. On three separate occasions, patrol ships intercepted them midflight. The first time caught Leo off guard.

A sleek war vessel dropped from the cloud layer and matched their speed, its bow cannon tracking their formation. A Gold Core officer leaned over the railing and demanded identification. Tianyi handled it. He produced his Shen family token and explained their business. The officer pulled out a pale white pearl, held it toward each of them in turn, and shook it twice. He seemed to be expecting something. A glow, maybe, or a color change. The pearl remained inert.

"Loose cultivators," the officer muttered.

"Proceed." The patrol ship banked away and vanished back into the clouds. On the third day, Leo saw the Western Seat. The river appeared first, a wide band of gray water that split the Great Barrier Range clean in half. The Western Seat rose from that gap, its white walls and jade spire exactly as he remembered. But everything around it had changed. Refugee camps stretched for miles in every direction.

Tents and makeshift shelters covered the valley slopes like a second city, sprawling far beyond the outer districts Leo had walked through a year ago. Thousands of cookfires sent smoke upward in thin threads that merged into a single gray cloud over the valley. Military cultivation warboats filled the sky above the city. Massive vessels of dark wood and spiritual steel, bristling with formation cannons and troop transports, moved in designated lanes, streaming in and out of the city in endless procession.

Some carried soldiers packed shoulder to shoulder on their decks. Others hauled cargo containers marked with crimson and gold insignias. Below, on the valley floor, armies drilled in formations that stretched to the horizon. Tens of thousands of cultivators moved in lockstep, their weapons flashing in the morning light. Columns of soldiers marched eastward, pulling supply carts whose wheels dug through the dirt. They flew closer. The smell came first. Smoke and waste and unwashed bodies.

Without a word, all five of them activated their laundry talismans simultaneously, and the cleaning formations created thin barriers of fresh air around their faces. The camps had a kind of order to them, sections divided by muddy lanes that served as roads. Leo could see people moving through the gaps between structures. Children playing in the dirt. Old men huddled around fires. Women hanging laundry on lines strung between poles. But he could also see the desperation.

Cultivators fighting over scraps near a supply distribution point. Former soldiers with missing limbs huddled outside an overcrowded medical tent, their stumps wrapped in dirty bandages. A line of people that stretched for hundreds of yards, all of them waiting for food. They landed near the outer district, in a small plaza that Shen family retainers had cleared. The retainers recognized Tianyi immediately. One of them stepped forward.

"Young Master Tianyi." The retainer bowed.

"Lord Shen Zhaowen received word of your approach. He has cleared his schedule to receive you personally." Tianyi's expression flickered. Just for a moment, something that might have been dread crossed his face.

"The Lord is too generous with his time," Tianyi said.

"This Tianyi will pay respects immediately."

The retainers led them through the inner gate without stopping at the checkpoint. A flash of the Shen family seal and the guards waved them through. The inner city caught them off guard. The streets were clean. Spirit lanterns burned at every corner despite the afternoon sun, their light a soft gold that made the white stone buildings glow. Merchants hawked high tier spiritual treasures from storefronts. A tea house on the corner had a line of Foundation Establishment cultivators waiting for tables.

A woman in silk robes walked past them, a pair of servants trailing behind her carrying shopping bags. She didn't even glance at the group of mud-spattered cultivators standing in the middle of the street. Five minutes ago Leo had watched cultivators fighting over scraps. Now a woman was shopping for silk. He could feel his jaw doing something and made it stop.

"The Western Seat has grown fat on the blood of this war." Tianyi swept his gaze across the boulevard.

"In other immortal cities, the Monarchs jealously guard their T5 spiritual qi, consuming it themselves to maintain their cultivation. Here in the Western Seat, Monarch Cloudpiercer is the sole Deity Transformation cultivator in residence, so there is extra, left unused." They kept walking. Tianyi pointed to a merchant's shop where spiritual weapons gleamed behind glass windows. T4 swords sat in display cases like ordinary merchandise.

"Cloudpiercer distributes the excess T5 qi among dozens of Nascent Soul families. Each house receives enough to fuel their formation workshops and spirit forges. Enough to produce high tier equipment for open sale. Yet no single family receives enough to forge a divine body and ascend to Deity Transformation." Leo understood the subtext. Any family that tried to gather sufficient resources would need to take from the others. This created natural enemies.

The families policed themselves, each one watching its neighbors for signs of excessive accumulation. An elegant system of control. A patrol of soldiers marched past them. Their armor gleamed with formation scripts. Leo extended his divine sense. The soldiers were Foundation Establishment, nothing special. But their gear was another matter. T4 formations on their standard issue armor and swords. They were much stronger than they had any right to be.

"This year, the Monarch opened his vaults," Tianyi said.

"He distributed centuries of stockpiled high tier equipment. Every soldier in his personal army now carries T4 gear. Swords, armor, talismans, down to the last supply clerk. Even though the Central Provinces have more cultivators. The Western Seat has more weapons." He glanced at Leo.

"It is, I believe, similar to how your country wages war." Leo nodded. It was exactly how the Allies won World War II. The Axis powers had stronger individual cultivators. Germany's Monarch Wilhelm had been a terror on the battlefield. Japan's Nascent Soul corps had seemed unstoppable in the early years. But America had stockpiled T5 spiritual qi for hundreds of years and poured it all into equipment. T4 tanks, aircraft and artillery that Foundation Establishment soldiers could operate.

The strategy worked because America was young. The founders who made the decision were still Gold Cores with centuries ahead of them. They could afford to wait to advance. They could afford to sacrifice personal power for national strength. But that calculus was changing. Many of the founding fathers were approaching the 320-year lifespan limit of a Gold Core. Every year, more congressmen pushed for restrictions on T4 spiritual qi allocated to formations.

Every year, more voices demanded that the qi be made available for cultivation instead. The rhetoric was always dressed up in policy language, but Leo knew what it really meant. Old men seeing the end of their lifespans. Old men who wanted one more chance at Nascent Soul, at three more centuries of life, regardless of what it cost the country that had made them powerful in the first place.

The Shen family estate came into view at the end of a wide boulevard. The familiar pale blue spirit lanterns flanked the gate, their glow washed out by the afternoon sun. The same gate Leo had walked through a year and a half ago. And standing outside that gate, bundled in a heavy coat and stamping his feet against the cold, was a very familiar face. The same guard from before. The one who had manned the checkpoint.

"You," the guard said.

"Hi again." Leo said. The guard stepped forward. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. Then he seemed to remember where he was, and his hand moved back to his side.

"State your name," the guard demanded.

"Leo Chen."

"This guard knew it." His voice cracked.

"I knew the moment I laid eyes on you. How do you still draw breath? I watched you die before my own two eyes!" Leo blinked.

"I think you're confused. That was my evil twin."

"Your evil twin."

"Yeah. Eeo Chen. Very tragic."

"Leo Chen." The guard said the name slowly.

"This evil twin of yours bears the same name?"

"No, no, you probably heard wrong. Eeo. E-E-O. Different name entirely." The guard's eye twitched.

"This Eeo Chen. He bore the same face as you?"

"Like I said. Evil twin. Eeo was a foolish Qi Refining cultivator. I, on the other hand, am a respected Foundation Establishment cultivator." Leo spread his hands.

"Completely different people." The guard stared at him. His face had turned an interesting shade of purple.

"Does this young master understand what befell this guard after that day?" His voice was tight.

"After the Shen family retainer cut you down and your body vanished into thin air? All this guard had to present were empty clothes. Empty clothes! I reported to my superior that the suspicious cultivator had been neutralized. She demanded the body. There was no body. She demanded the head. There was no head." The guard was breathing hard now.

"I presented her with pants. A robe. And one left shoe." He jabbed a finger at Leo.

"She stripped my post! I once stood at the inner gate. I worked on top of a warming formation. Hot tea was delivered to my hand. Now this guard freezes at the outer estate wall from dawn to dusk, watching for suspicious characters, questioning every decision that led him to this miserable existence!" Leo nodded sympathetically.

"That sounds difficult."

"It is difficult! My fingers lose all feeling by noon! What business brings you here again? Have you come to torment this guard's spirit?"

"Well." Leo gestured toward the Shen family estate behind the guard.

"I'm here to get revenge for my brother, I guess." The guard paused.

"Revenge?"

"Yeah. The Shen family killed him. Right here, actually. So I'm here to demand an explanation. Or something." Leo shrugged.

"Isn't face important?"

"Did this young master not just claim his brother was evil?"

"He was. Very evil. Terrible person." Leo scratched his chin.

"But family is family. I should at least act upset about it." The guard's eye twitched again.

"Then at least put some conviction behind the performance! This is a most sensitive time. War has come to the western provinces. Security has tightened threefold. This guard cannot simply allow deathless aberrations to walk through the city on a whim." Leo looked at him steadily.

"What would your supervisor think?"

"That you are a deathless aberration of questionable origins."

"Or," Leo said, "that a certain guard lost track of his ward and lied to her face about it." The silence stretched. The guard's shoulders slumped. He stepped aside and waved them through.

"Go," he said.

"Just go. And should anyone inquire, this guard has never once laid eyes upon your face." Leo patted the guard on the shoulder as he passed.

"Your hands look cold." He turned to Tianyi.

"Don't you have a flying sewing machine? Make the man some mittens." Tianyi's face went very still.