Chương 2: Chapter 1

Wu Zetian woke in a panic. It was vanishingly rare the morning that saw the Mistress of Inverted Onyx Mountain with anything different from perfect aplomb. And maybe the record held, since the consciousness currently contained in her lower dantian wasn't the same as that of a thirty-thousand-year-old monster. Wu Zetian… I am Wu Zetian! Wu Zetian (that was her name! It was her name!) remembered falling asleep reading one of her son's novels. And now… she was in it. Calm down, she told herself.

Panicking is highly illogical. Assess your situation first. She was in a peculiar garden. Porous rock the color of windswept mahogany formed delicate formations that resembled a mix between coral formations and mountain ranges. Dark rivers traced among them, liquid darkness flowing like water among iron sand that softly crunched underfoot. The garden, if a garden without plants could be called that, floated above a mountain top. Pitch black darkness lapped at iron slopes like a living sea.

The same darkness rose on all sides in great inverted flows, joining above to form its own night sky. A small sun hung over the horizon. Clasped among titanic shadows that writhed like flames, it was stuck in an eternal twilight that licked the darkness around it with a red and gold gleam. It was a small, self-contained world, pulsing with a dark magnificence that tore her breath away. And it was hers. She should have been terrified, but all she felt was a deep pleasure and sense of belonging.

She could perceive every shadow like it was part of her own body, could taste all the variations that darkness could take just shy of infinity. She could feel where the… Abyssal Iron Blossom melded gently with the normal space-time continuum, worldly concerns as capable of piercing its enclosed nine-petal lotus structure as rain could pierce an iron door. An ornate chair was set on the sand, allowing one to gaze over the trapped sun. Without thinking, she sat.

As always, gazing over the Black Sun did much to settle her inquiet spirit. This is wrong… Surrounded by her Night, looking over herself was the work of a thought's flicker. Hair the color of ebony piled in long, silky strands around her, or floated lazily in the air. An ample kimono fell delicately over a slim frame, the luxurious cloth shifting from silver to abyssal black in gentle waves.

Images of the day giving way to night, of dragons and Gods engulfed by darkness, and an inky sea rising were sewn in a thread that glimmered like spun starlight. And yet, the most startling thing in her appearance was her face. She was pale, unearthly so, her skin gleaming with a soft glow. Her features had a sharpness to them, and yet it was impossible to discern her age by watching them: she could have been thirty or one thousand years old, which was far, far closer to the truth.

Her eyes held the night sky, stars and distant suns frozen in an endless night of black and ruby. I am Wu Zetian. She was calm now, as calm as one could be given the situation. It was clear now. As it happened in those stories, she had transmigrated into one. More precisely, she had transmigrated into Tales of Ascension and became the Mistress of the protagonist's original sect. Which… wasn't ideal. Like so many characters at her level, Wu Zetian was a narrative device.

The dreaded Sect Master of the Godless Night Sect, she was barely mentioned and then only to show the horrible state of the Sect, of which she was directly responsible. An Earth Immortal cultivator of impossible power, she had founded the Sect to fund her continued growth. In a world where Heaven took a keen interest in those like her, having capable servants, infrastructure and the workforce to support it was essential to any ambition for more.

Wu Zetian may have been comparable to a God in power, but even she couldn't attempt to continue cultivating and risk Heaven's wrath on her own. The Godless Night was just that: a cow for her to milk for support, resources and sacrifices. Its only saving grace was that for all its ruthlessness, it wasn't a demonic Sect. Its methods may have been less than tasteful, but the Godless Night always tried to keep a careful neutrality between those who called themselves righteous and the truly foul.

All to give its Mistress the greatest space to keep cultivating. It was less of a Sect and more of a labor camp, and that had made itself heard in time. By the time of the story, the Godless Night was a shadow of its heyday. Wu Zetian had been in secluded cultivation for almost a millennium, and the ruling elders had devolved into a bunch of self-serving fanatics who followed their mistress's egomaniac example to the letter.

The latest generation had gone as far as to fall into a civil war and, when no rebuke came, to plunder the Sect's treasuries and find shelter in other main Sects where Wu Zetian's vengeance couldn't follow. The protagonist was born to a gutted Sect, with a few elders too weak or stubborn to follow their comrades, a body of students that were slaves in all but name and a dog-eat-dog mentality that was impressive even for a cultivation world.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. To him and the readers, Wu Zetian was meant to represent the selfish indifference of those in power. Even her never appearing had to reflect that. Not a real character as much as a narrative device made to create emotions and a drive for change. And I am that now. She thought of anything. A dream? A psychotic episode? A hallucination?

Maybe she was still in bed, eyes closed and brain lost to sudden senile dementia. But if it was a dream, it was the most realistic she had ever felt, and she was far too lucid for a psychosis. Then there were the memories. They were all there, arrayed orderly for her to have a perfect look at. Thousands upon thousands of years of memories from one who had lived through an age and wished for eternity. To say that Wu Zetian had been vicious would have been an understatement.

There were crimes nestled there that would have sent a dozen heroes rushing for vengeance, if anyone except the Sect Master was alive to remember them. A whole record of pain, ferocity and single-minded focus, backed by talent and a willingness to sacrifice everything and everyone for her goal of power and immortality. She felt a mix of amusement and disbelief. She's just like me. It was a laughable thought, and brought more weight to the psychosis theory. Wu Zetian had no past in the story.

What better way to fill the blanks than with her own? Mulling over that, she started experimenting. At Earth Immortal rank, the Nascent Soul of the previous realm had ascended into an entropy-free state. It sat where her lower dantian stood, a coiling ribbon of darkness so deep it may have been a crack in the fabric of the universe. It didn't absorb ambient Chi like a dantian or accumulated energy like a Core. It breathed its own Immortal Night, enforced its own logic over the world. It didn't bend or adjust.

It bent, turned, converted, and dominated. Sound, movement, light, even time, to a very limited fashion; they all existed at her sufferance. All the territory the Godless Night laid claim to, everything under the Night's sway, as known to her like her own body was. And the Night… The Night was marvelous. It was the very personal element of Zu Wetian, her immortal soul made manifest. It was darkness, but also heaviness, privacy, secrets, depth, the unknown and the space between stars.

It lay over the land like a blanket and the land changed to accommodate it. Elements opposed to it were erased and new ones blossomed under its influence. It was its own biome, denser the closer one walked to the Abyssal Iron Blossom, and it was hers in all the way one thing could be possessed. Her breath. Her soul. Her body. And it was. So. Very. Strong. Her fingers twitched. It'd take her a flicker of them for the Night to muster itself and fall upon intruders.

To smother and crush in frankly terrifying proportions. It's me. I am the Night. Not just that. The Night also carried Wu Zetian's Dao. Her logic, motto, declaration to the heavens and guiding principle all rolled into one, it was the idea that informed her drive and upon which her drive was built. And it was… I have no limits. She snorted. Yes, you do. For all her overwhelming power and nigh-omniscience, the Wu Zetian of her memory had been a woman on the verge of despair.

Cultivators above Nascent Soul were more vulnerable than others to Heart Demons, and she was fighting her own small army of them. Why? Because she was stuck. As she attempted to pass from low-tier Earth Immortal to mid-tier, she had hit a bottleneck. No matter how many resources she threw at the wall and how much talent she refined, she couldn't break through. Her Dao hated that. It was such a perentorystatement that the limits made it writhe like a worm on a hook.

It disgorged Heart Demons like candies, and Wu Zetian had passed her last century stomping them out. A veritable God, stuck like a Qi Condensation student at his first breakthrough. There was something deeply ironic to that. I have no limits? Don't make me laugh. It was such a ridiculous conundrum that for a moment, she forgot her situation and focused on it. Everyone had limits. Even the so-called immortals.

They may live for eons, and yet one day they would die, by their own hand if nothing could kill them, by the end of existence if they clung to their own. Immortality was a work in progress, never truly fulfilled. A garden to prune and enjoy and take solace from, for yourself and others. Not a cold, unmoving painting whose final stroke was done. The old Wu Zetian couldn't see it. Her Dao was so ingrained in her soul that she couldn't have reneged on it without reneging on her whole existence.

I Have No Limits was what she was, and she wouldn't settle for anything else. The new Wu Zetian? She wasn't nearly as fixed. I have limits. She thought of her previous life (funny how easily the words came), of the incredible, absolute power she wielded, and the emptiness she couldn't push away. How many times did money fail to get her what she wanted? How many times had she had to work around finicky partners and pesky governments instead of brute-forcing her way through?

Drive and an almost divine conviction that success belonged to you were essential, but they couldn't be unbending. Trickery, calculated retreats, alliances of convenience, knowing when to pull back; they were all tools in the successful economist's belt. And then, what of the simple joy she wished for and couldn't attain? In her obsession, the old Wu Zetian had forgotten that basic teaching, and unlike the corporate world, the Dao admitted no self-delusion.

I have no limits, she thought and it was like a go piece sliding in its right spot at the right moment. Except the ones I accept. I know no defeat except the one I resign myself to. Far less dramatic, and yet… it was more adaptable, more pliable. Far truer to reality. Because even a God couldn't escape from it. Wu Zetian let out a breath, something unfathomably heavy sliding off her. The world shifted. The darkness paused before resuming its course at a more leisurely pace. The Night sighed, looming larger, deeper.

Outside, the great Lotus danced, a new petal joining the previous ones. Inside, the Black Sun waxed larger, swelling on the horizon. Wu Zetian looked down at herself. Did I just… break through? Yes, she did. Her Immortal spirit had developed a new coil in its abyssal frame, welcoming her to mid-tier. Cold irony washed over her. For all the abyss of difference, Earth Immortals weren't so different from the least talented student. They too lived for ascending the Dao's rungs.

They too flailed and stumbled and struggled. Only the proportions changed. The quality of it remained the same. She sighed, the simple gesture putting the still air in motion like a dragon's breath. Lovely. But now what? Doesn't change much. You can have one billion or ten billion and still be unable to spend it all in one lifetime. The world replied by sending a tremor through the ground that almost made her stumble.

Thinking about feet put into mouths and similar precautions, Wu Zetian turned her perceptions outward to see what shook her domain.