Dear Max,
I hope you’re not getting into too much trouble on that skiff ride over with the princess. Remember, you have to sell it but no sex! You give that away and it will spoil the allure. Plus, she’ll become addicted to you like I am, and then you’ll have to kill her prematurely. Can’t have that!
Bryce and I miss you already.
He is getting bigger by the day. I swear he is all you and very little of me. I will have no breasts left at the rate he suckles on me. Something else he perhaps gets from his father. Seriously though, I love you. Guard yourself well wherever you are going and keep your wits about you.
I will see you in six months.
Love,
Fia
I had tears of laughter and sadness both by the time I finished reading the letter. Her humor lifted my spirits, and her love warmed my soul.
“Hey, you okay?” Blue Rose asked. “What did she say?”
Blue Rose and I were within the inner gates of the village, where time was moving only fractionally slower than the barren desert of the true world of Ri Ben outside. Or, if I were to apply what I had recently learned from Chief Muraboshi, there was no ‘true world’ of Ri Ben at all.
Everything was a made-up reality of some cultivator’s dream. I still wasn’t certain if I believed it all or not, but the truth resonated with my Flame. Perhaps one day my mind would expand in understanding enough to truly get it, but for now I was enjoying the simple pleasure of reading the loving words of my wife-to-be from across the expanse of space and time.
“Hey,” Blue Rose said again, shaking my shoulder and I realized then that I had gone from laughing with tears in my eyes to now just having tears in my eyes. As I sat on the soft grass in lotus position across from her, I casually wiped them with the back of my hand.
“Sorry Blue,” I said. “It’s just…so good to hear from her is all.” I then smiled at her. “And it’s great to see you again too.”
Blue Rose stared back at me like I was on drugs or something. Of course, for her it had only been a matter of days, having sped up the first months’ wait in the temporal void before taking the Paifang back to the Golden City to check in with Xi Xha and Mu Lin.
The thought of that made my soul grieve even more for the five years I had left to spend within this temporal training ground. While I appreciated my advancement, the words I’d just read from Fia seemed like an eon ago to me now. But for her they were still quite fresh, barely a month old. I sighed heavily and thanked the heavens that the burden of this was only on me. I couldn’t imagine putting Fia or anyone else through spending years in waiting just to see me again.
It strengthened my resolve though. I was already into my second year of training and making good progress, learning the spear forms while also practicing the cultivation techniques granted to me by Chief Muraboshi. I hadn’t managed to do anything as wild as to producing a living creature within my Inner World from a core as yet, but I had extended my technique from lasting just a few seconds to around half a minute now.
It still cost me a ton of Frenzy too, which was in short supply these days, but as always, what little I could muster I tucked away in my Dantian to get towards that final threshold of breaking through to the Lesser Deity Realm. With all the constant martial arts lessons it was easy to get caught up in the details to the point of even forgetting why I was learning it at all. That was why when Master Koh had told me Blue Rose was waiting outside, I jumped at the chance to reconnect with her and the outside world.
“So how are Mu Lin and Xi Xha making out at the grand archives?” I asked. “Did they find anything yet?”
“Yes,” Blue Rose said. “They found it will take them well over three months to look through the history scrolls that they’ve collected thus far.”
Blue Rose grinned at her little joke while my jaw hit the ground.
“Don’t lose hope though,” she said. “That Grand Sage they are with appears to be helping them quite a lot. Master Hei Dong did well to enlist his services.”
I still wasn’t sure about that guy, but maybe I’d been simply over reacting.
“Good,” I said. “I guess I won’t get my hopes up over the next three years then.”
I sighed again as I stared at the long path ahead of me. Although in cultivator terms this was still but a drop in the bucket when it came to time. Maybe I wasn’t truly cut out for the whole immortal thing because living for thousands of years still sounded bonkers to me, but for the last year I’d been living with people who had lived well over 10,000 years and they all seem completely normal and content.
Perhaps they had the exact opposite of the Flame burning in my soul. A perpetual chill of being content and happy in the moment. But for me that drive to right the wrongs against the Earth and to destroy the Hell Worlds was very much smoldering right below my surface of calm.
“Less good news from Ling Wei,” Blue Rose said as she produced another letter from her robes. “She said the High Council has determined the details of the Princess’s Trial and who you’ll be facing in the ring.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
I grabbed the letter from her to give it a read, but it was written with formal legal script. “Shit, I can’t read this. What did she say it says?”
Blue Rose snatched it back from me. “That’s why I didn’t give it to you to read, Chun.” She then sighed and began reading from the letter, pronouncing the formal tones with perfect diction. “To Ling Wei, counsel for the defense, Third Princess Lunalah of Terra. Here enclosed lies the determination of the High Council in the matter of matchmaking for the pending trial of your client’s proxy, Imperial Marshal Max Chun, also known as, The Iron Bull. A Council subcommittee, consisting of three former legionnaires and two Lesser Deity Realm Cultivators of Diamond Ranking were selected to consider the equivalency of an Imperial Marshal in terms of both martial competency and Imperial Status.
“With regard to Imperial Status, due to the rarity of the ranking of Imperial Marshal, the sub-committee determined that your client’s proxy shall be deemed the equivalent of a normal legionnaire or lesser noble. To ascribe any higher ranking would be an afront to true nobles and those within the sect patriarchy of martial clans.”
“What the hell does all that mean?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
“It means your title means jack shit in the ring,” Blue Rose said. “You’ve broken the mold and they don’t want to offend clan elders and royal lords and ladies by considering an Imperial Marshal any higher than any other legionnaire.”
For the first time in months my Flame spawned new Frenzy from the core of my Twin Dao. Those conniving Yee bastards were at it again. “So the people that actually save their society from the Hell Worlds don’t mean jack shit, huh?” I fumed with simmering rage. “Typical.”
“Don’t get so hung up on that,” Blue Rose said. “That’s not the important part. Listen to this.” She cleared her throat and switched back to the formal tones again while she read. “Regarding martial competency, while there were some arguments against the relevancy of Legionnaire status in this matter, the subcommittee ultimately determined the resilience requirements for repeated exposures to high levels of Demonic Qi, as experienced upon the Hell Worlds by legionnaires, was material and amounted to a scaling factor of plus three tiers. Considering your client’s proxy, having endured three such exposures as an Imperial Marshal, the subcommittee has granted an equivalency factor of plus nine tiers to the opposing proxy.”
“Plus nine tiers?” I said. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that someone in the next realm can challenge you.”
“Shit.”
“And not just next realm,” Blue Rose said. “Nine whole tiers above you, meaning someone who is nearly at the end of the Lesser Deity Realm can challenge you now.”
I instantly thought of King Theos and his crew. That chick with the giant katana and the guy who could make portals through space and time. Were they trying to put me up against people like that?
“What the hell?” I said.
Blue Rose shrugged haplessly. “Ling Wei said this is likely all the workings of the Su Long family. They’ve used their influence to balance the scales against you.”
“Yeah, no shit,” I said, and Jei Su Long’s yellow-bellied uncle came to mind. “So who the hell are they putting me up against then?”
“You’re going to love this,” Blue Rose said. “It’s someone you’ve fought before. Well… kind of.”
Blue Rose showed me the next page and the image of the cultivator in question immediately sent my stomach into convulsions. It was a girl that looked around twelve, but who I knew in truth, was much older than I was.
“That weird, freaky pedo-chick again?” I said. “What the hell?”
“I don’t know what a Pi Do Qi is, but yes, it’s the Lady Rei Su Long again, she’s an elder cousin of Jei Su Long as well, so you know his uncle had some influence in selecting her.”
“But she wasn’t Lesser Deity Realm,” I said. “She made a big deal about never wanting to advance because it would lock her into her childlike age.”
“Well, she is now,” Blue Rose said. “Whatever you did to her in the ring must have left a mark, because she’s advanced a hell of a lot since then. Her evaluation places her as a Mid to High-Tier Lesser Deity Realm cultivator now.”
“Damn, how did she advance that much?”
Blue Rose shrugged. “Guess they’re pulling out all the stops to win this. They probably gave her every advancement pill the family has. Plus, she’s considered a cultivation prodigy so…yeah. This is probably correct.”
The fire in my gut went up another notch as my Flame got roaring back to its old self again.
I grinned.
“What the hell are you smiling for?” Blue Rose said. “This isn’t good news, Max.”
“It is to me. That baby-faced bitch has no idea how much she just helped me.”
Blue Rose continued to stare at me like I was crazy but the Demon within me knew what I was talking about. The last time I faced Rei Su Long it was a literal shitshow, with me winning by default due to puking my guts out all over her. But I was no match for her then, and in my current state I’d probably be no match for her now. I recalled that massive Naga form she took on as she combined her twin river spirit techniques or whatever it was. Before it was simply a spectral form, but now, as a Lesser Deity Realm cultivator, she could become that massive god-like naga for real. No different than King Theos and his crew when it came to power.
That meant the [Odds were Against Me].
As the fresh Frenzy poured from my Flame, I cultivated it quickly to strengthen my Dantian. That bastard Tai Su Long had probably arranged all this as revenge for his nephew, putting me up against a foe they knew I couldn’t beat.
But they would have a surprise coming.
The goal post had moved, but that was just fine with me. I went into this knowing I had to evolve my martial skills, but advancing to the next realm just got a lot more urgent than conquering a planet in the distant future to earn my royal title. I needed to accomplish that shit pronto now. Before the trial and before my six months were up.
“Ling Wei said she’s going to appeal the decision,” Blue Rose said. “She doesn’t think there will be much chance of success, but it’s the best she can do for now.”
I looked to Blue Rose and smiled. “Tell her don’t bother. I’ll be ready in five months trust me. I’ve got more than ten times that amount of time in here and breaking through to the Lesser Deity Realm just became top priority on my to do list.”
* * *
Blue Rose stayed for a couple of days in the village to catch up, but after she left for another year, Mal’Kira and I got back to our training in earnest. There was a new fire in my belly now, a familiar hunger that turned the five years ahead of me from a wait that was too long to now a sprint that might just barely have enough time for me to advance.
The steady trickle of Frenzy from my thoughts of facing Rei Su Long was enough to put my cultivation path back on track. As the months went by, my training became threefold. I was a smith and martial arts student by day and then a Frenzy Cultivator by night, enhancing my Inner World with weapons and artifacts while inching ever closer to the boundary of the celestial realm.
The uncertainty I had felt before, when it came to the consequences of my impending godhood, took a backseat for now. I focused on simply accomplishing the task of achieving it first.
I had a new date with destiny.
And advancing as far as I could was all that mattered now.