Voidlight Rising (A Xianxia Cultivation Adventure)

Mighty is the lion who defends the homes of nobles. Those who honor this great spirit beast with a statue will have their homes protected against evil yokai. However, for the grand wealth and power of a ruler, even the lion bows his head, for he knows a great dragon when he sees one. - An Archeologist's Guide to Architecture by Scholar Lu Di

"Yoru, you're bleeding." Lin knelt next to me, laying his hand on my cheek.

"Tell me honestly, will it ruin my looks?" I answered, with a smile. That smile turned into a grimace as the cut on my face sent flashes of pain through my skull.

The wood artist made a show of looking up and down. "Nope. You're marred for life, but with the size of your ego, I doubt you'll notice."

"Marred for life?!" I answered in mock distress. "Well, I can't have that, now can I?"

With a wink, I rallied the lunar qi within my core. It took a lot more qi to make this kind of replacement, but it was worth it. We couldn't afford any distractions in Half-Moon Manor, and injuries would only slow me down. I carefully pictured a reality where we hadn't been attacked at all, where I'd never been injured. Statistically, such a reality must have existed somewhere in the infinite possibilities that branch out from every single decision made by every single being on the earth. Reaching for it, and grasping a hold, I layered that version of myself on top of my current reality.

Though the qi cost was not trivial, my injuries were mended in a cascade of blue sparks. Not even scars remained once I was finished.

"You used a reality rewrite just to save your looks?" Lin asked incredulously.

Xinya snorted. "And this surprises you because?"

Lin scowled but didn't answer the little girl. She grinned in triumph. Personally, I had to hold back a laugh. She wasn't wrong. After all, even Shi Reili had made fun of me for my vanity when she was still alive. Xinya wasn't the first, and she certainly wouldn't be the last.

"We should get going," I said. "The stairs are long and there will be many guardians to sneak past."

My palace was once a beautiful place, with slate-tiled roofs and stairs, and the finest burnt mahogany to make up the buildings themselves. At the top of the cliff, it loomed imperiously over the city itself, and only three paths could lead up from the city below. In addition to the front entrance with its grand staircase and stone dragons to guard it, there were two servant's entrances, one in the east and one in the west. They were narrower than the main stair and thus required fewer guardians to defend.

They stood in darkness, slate tiles against the dark stone cliff in the shadows of the void. As we approached the bottom stair, a blue flame roared to life in a nearby lantern. From it, I felt the same protective light as the armillaries pushing back the darkness.

"Don't get too close," I instructed. Lin and Xinya nodded in agreement.

I took a step onto the staircase. Since it was likely that many of the lanterns would light as we ascended, it was unlikely we'd have to contend with the void spirits in the district below, but that didn't mean we were out of danger. The entire palace was covered in a field of qi that prevented extended sword flight as a defensive measure against intruders, and if memory served, there would be five stone guardians on this staircase alone. Five statues, built for far stronger artists than any of us, would definitely try to kill us.

The first rumble of cracking stone greeted us half-way up the second switchback. I pressed Xinya and Lin to the wall as dust began to seep from the wall ahead of us. It cracked and shifted until a creature slowly peeled itself from within the wall. It was a stone lion, a traditional symbol of divine protection.

The lion was filled with holes from years of exposure to the raw power of void qi, but that didn't stop it from stepping out onto the stairs. It wobbled on precarious paws as it raised its snout to sniff the air for qi.

"Three, two, one, now!" I whispered to the others. They knew what to do.

Xinya leapt out first, lightning shooting from her fingertips. It smashed against the creature's snout. Though the Bronze-ranked lightning did little to damage the creature, that wasn't the purpose. I'd instructed Xinya to use the alteration of her moon qi to create lightning that was as bright as possible, without wasting energy on having any actual bite to it. If anything, it was little more than an illusion, but an illusion was exactly what we needed. The stone lion reeled back, startled and stunned by the sudden display of qi blinding its senses.

Next, Lin and I darted forward in sync, swords drawn. The pathway was barely wider than the creature itself, but that didn't stop us. Lin took the lion's front right paw, plunging his sword into the weathered stone. Meanwhile, I threw Eclipse down just off the edge and leapt onto the blade. As soon as my feet touched the light lunar metal, I sprang forward, landing behind the lion. The lion's tail whipped around, and I barely ducked in time to keep from getting smacked right off the stairway. In one fluid motion, I tumbled to the side and grabbed Eclipse from the air. The blade thrummed with power as it slammed into lions back right rear paw.

Stone cracked and crumbled. The creature roared, but the sound was weaker and more mechanical than I remembered from when they were first installed. The damage of the years had taken its toll.

The lion lifted a paw to swipe at Lin. The wood artist deflected the blow off his sword, further throwing the lion off balance. The paws on its right side cracked and crumbled under its shifted weight, and it swayed dangerously close to the edge. Just one more push…

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I leapt at the cliff face, using it as a springboard to rebound back at the lion itself. My full weight slammed into the lion, further cracking its paws and sending its center of gravity just a few more inches over the edge. It let out one final roar of protest before falling. A few seconds later, the sound of stone shattering on the staircase below us echoed through the silent city.

"That…was so…awesome!" Xinya exclaimed. "That's the first time I got to contribute to a fight with you two!"

The little girl was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and I reached out to pat her affectionately on the head. Sometimes, all it took to encourage the youth was a taste of victory. Now that she'd had one, she'd work twice as hard. I was sure of it.

"Good, take that energy and use it to climb," I answered. It's what my master would have said.

The climb didn't seem to dampen her energy in the slightest, and she jogged up the stairs a few steps ahead of Lin and me. Once she got about ten steps ahead, she stopped and waited, clearly frustrated that we weren't climbing as fast as she was.

"Ah, the innocent energy of youth," Lin said with a sigh as the little girl scowled at us. I looked incredulously at the wood artist.

"Lin, you're like, twenty-seven." I tried not to grin at the silly artist. "You don't get to complain about getting old until you're at least two hundred."

"Says the man who stopped his aging when he was barely out of his teens. Did you ever really get old?"

I shrugged. "Aging is optional. I opted out."

"Come on, you slow pokes!" Xinya called from the next landing. "I might just die of old age waiting for you!"

"Then again," I scratched my chin, "maybe I am old. She's exhausting."

Lin pat me on the shoulder. "You'll always be older than the rest of us, no matter what you look like." Then, he took off at a jog, leaving me staring at him with my jaw hanging open. "Keep up, old man!"

"You brats! Both of you!"

I ran after them, taking the stairs three at a time to catch up. They all darted ahead, spirits high. It wasn't long before we reached the second guardian. Much like the first, it peeled out of the wall, taking the form of a stone lion. Once again, Xinya dazzled the creature's senses while Lin and I wove around it, poking holes and widening cracks before shoving it over the side.

The third guardian never rose from its prison in the wall. It never so much as moved. It was a stone crane, one of Jinshi's favorite animals, but holes from the void peppered its stone feathers. Climbing higher, the void was getting thicker. I had no doubt that this guardian succumbed to the disintegrating touch of the void long ago, its qi spilling out to feed the hungry spirits that normally wandered here when the lanterns weren't lit.

As we passed it, Chiho poked it several times before trilling at it. I got the distinct feeling that the hairpin was expressing its own inflated superiority over the dead creature.

However, the last two guardians were by far the greatest threat. They both guarded the final stretch and were designed to work in unison to prevent unauthorized entry to the palace proper. Furthermore, the strategy to let gravity assist in the destruction of the guardian would not work here. These last two were stone dragons.

"Can we sneak by them?" Lin asked as we stood in the last safe zone before the dragons would attack.

I shook my head. "If they're still active, it's doubtful." There was a chance that they would be destroyed, like the crane had been, but if I knew anything about the palace's defenses, I really doubted they would fall as easily.

This palace was once home to four Ascendents: Me, Jinshi, Reili, and Chouko. In our time, each of us added our own unique elements to the palace, suffusing our qi into the very stones that built the cliffside. Most important to our current climb, the statues had once been exposed to Chouko's star qi. The stars relied on the power of symbolism. A statue that had the form of a dragon would naturally inherit some draconic features.

In the end, we settled on a simple plan: Xinya and I would both dazzle the statues with a burst of qi before the three of us made a daring escape into the palace itself where the statues could not follow.

Xinya and I crept forward, with Lin lagging a dozen or so steps behind. The long lengths of the dragons remained still in the stone as we climbed the stairs. It wasn't until we reached the crest of the staircase that the stone behind us cracked.

The entrance was in sight. I pushed Xinya forward, not wanting to waste the scarce seconds it took for the dragons to break free of their prisons.

"Run. Go straight to the door. Don't look back until you get inside," I ordered.

"But what about the plan?" she protested.

"Being a cultivator requires flexibility, as I'm sure Lin could tell you in far greater detail. Now go!"

Xinya didn't argue any further. She sprinted along the slate stone path, eyes fully focused on the dark wooden door before her. I followed after her at a slower pace, ensuring that I'd be close enough to both her and Lin should things go south.

The dragons roared, their voices far louder and more menacing than the damaged lions had been. Just as Lin crested the stairs and began to run across the flat stretch to the door, two twin bodies shot up the cliff face behind him. Their eyes burned silver as they dove at the pathway in perfect unison.

"Lin! Duck!" I shouted.

Without hesitation, he threw himself to the ground. Two stone claws narrowly missed his shoulders. Their next target was me, then Xinya behind me.

I narrowed my eyes, drawing my bow in a flash. Though there hadn't been room for effective archery on the stairs, that wasn't the case up here. I put two arrows to my string, infused them with voidlight, then fired. They shot forward like twin stars in the night, each one burying itself into the stone scales of the dragons. On their own, they didn't deal much damage, but I spun on my heels, already half-way through my next attack.

Two brilliant blue-silver blades erupted from the ground like spikes. Low as the dragons flew in order to swipe with their short legs, they were close enough to the ground to impale themselves on the blades.

The attack didn't do much to damage the creatures. Only a few chunks of stone fell from their bodies and onto the tiles around me. It did, however, force them to reconsider the avenue of their attack. They peeled off over the overgrown gardens to regroup further back. Lin reached me, and I took off, keeping in step with him as we fled the dragons.

A scream pulled my eyes up from the rough terrain before me. Xinya threw herself to the ground, covering her head with her hands to avoid the enormous tendril of green vines that swiped at her. In our single-minded dash for the palace entrance, I'd completely forgotten what the years may have done to the plants of Chouko's precious garden.

Now, two stone dragons bore down on us from behind, while a ravenous plant monster blocked the only path of our escape. I took a deep breath. This was just about to get interesting.