Tian could never reach whatever was stopping his fingers from healing. Those gates were simply beyond him, in every possible sense. The creations of a higher being.
But no matter how great that being was, the Dao was greater still.
Tian saw himself fold inward, as though “he” were leaping in that strange direction, carried on the breath of the Dao towards those gates. The fall wasn’t steady- it started from near stillness then with a massive jolt, he launched forward. Then came a second jolt forward, moving him even faster. Then a third jolt, then a fourth, then a fifth, each followed by brutal acceleration. Faster and faster, nine times. The acceleration was matched with with a feeling of greater density, a feeling that, while he might not be getting bigger, there was increasingly more of him.
The gates grew too. As he got closer, he began to appreciate the scale of what he was challenging. They were gates, yes, but machines as well. He could feel life itself flowing away from him, down the chains and out into the void beyond. Chains came in, life flowed out. It was easy enough to understand, as was the consequence of shattering those other gates.
Was this why his growth had been so stunted? Why, despite everything, his carnal desires were so muted? It was all being drained away. No life, no next generation, and the brief span of existence was to be defined by suffering and weakness. What a hateful god.
The center of the gate was a knot of obsidian and steel, moving as though it was alive, or as though it were boiling, and things from within were emerging and sinking constantly. Looked at another way, and it was a grand array, constantly adjusting itself for maximum efficiency. Looked at yet another way, and it embodied some unspeakable, obscene principle.
Beyond his understanding. It was all beyond his understanding, all the arrangement of some being who interacted with the universe in ways he could not perceive with his limited senses. And he was crashing directly into it. What could he do but condense his body into as tight a ball as he could manage, and be carried by the flow.
Tian couldn’t possibly describe the moment of impact. He hit something, hard, hard enough to shatter it. If it existed at all. Which it didn’t, except it did, and it was cold and hot and the smell of rotting leaves and sulfur, and it tasted like the screams echoing through the Redstone Wasteland.
For a moment, he remembered being trapped in a bed. Everything hurt. He couldn’t think. Could barely breathe. He felt his body start to spasm. It was agonizing, and he couldn’t even scream properly. And then the moment passed.
And something shattered.
And he was suddenly free from pain, for a blessed moment.
The pain returned tenfold, trying to shatter his mind. The last gate was digging in even harder, ripping into him, tearing away his will and his vitality and there was simply no way he could even resist it, let alone defeat it. The last fourteen years had been a dream, a blessed dream, but like all dreams, it ended. This was the end. There was never any hope of winning. Never any chance the mad god could be killed.
Some eddy, some twist in the breath of the dao spun him around, sending him back the way he came. So much for the heavenly realm. He could only hope he had enough life left to see Liren ascend.
His eyes cracked open, then shot wide. He wasn’t going back the way he came. He was accelerating again, even faster this time, charging the last gate from behind.
From behind, the gate seemed utterly organic. Organic what, or even why, he couldn’t say. He had seen bellies torn open on the battlefield and in hospitals. Organs had a way of shivering and convulsing in the cold air. It seemed something like that. Or nothing like that. Words broke down, thoughts, emotions, all broke down. The sheer enormity of what the gate represented, the will it manifested, could not be reduced to language or mortal thought.
The second gate didn’t hold up any better than the first. So much accumulated fortune, such sturdy foundations, could not be denied. Not when the force of the dao itself was propelling him along.
Tian didn’t understand anything that was happening, but he perfectly understood the moment his shackles were broken. He floated in a vast emptiness, untethered to lightness or darkness, hot or cold, alive or dead. He simply was, and all of existence was with him. Thus, he was not, for how could he separate himself from everything? Where was there space for even the idea of division?
And from that void, a single golden seed was born. There was something of the moon about it, but more of lotuses, and the whiff of incense. Above all, it was Tian. A single piece of the infinite, illuminated by a moment of impossible, transcendent clarity. A revelation.
Tian’s mind returned to his body just in time to see Liren haloed in golden light, the sun descended into the mortal world, carrying all good things with it. Joy hammered at him, glory and power and life hammered on him, a fierce cry of outrage at the evils of the world hammered on him and she was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Strong and wild and free and so, so full of fire.
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His eye was pulled upwards. The sky was also full of fire. Black clouds turned magenta in places as coiling demonic dragons circled within them. Temple guardian deities clutching divine weapons glared down at them, long tongues flapping between protruding fangs as the screams of the eternally damned were carried on the wind.
“When Burning Heaven broke through, there was cheering. When Brother Fu broke through, everyone came out and guarded him.” Tian felt like his eyes were spinning in their sockets. The sheer sensory overload made him twitch and his muscles clench, while the aftermath of the revelation rang his brain like a bell, drowning out all competing thoughts.
One of the lightning dragons had enough of waiting. It dove towards the two of them. Tian only registered the movement when it smashed against a glowing turtle shell made of starlight.
“I had wondered what the ward was. It’s a turtle. I seem to have fate with aquatic animals.” Tian wondered who spoke for a moment, before realizing it was him.
“Not just any turtle, look, it has the snake tail. It’s the same turtle-snake from the Six Turns Cavern. Or the same kind, anyway.” Liren sounded about as out of it as he did. Tian entirely understood. There were tens of lighting dragons, and hundreds of the infernal temple guardians, all glaring down from the clouds. This wasn’t tribulation. It was extermination. No amount of merits could possibly offset this.
The demon gods descended, stabbing at the turtle shell with long spears and glaves, hacking at it with sabers and shooting it with war bows. Some used more unusual treasures, like bowls overflowing with purple-black flames which spilled down like water onto the glowing shield. Others used pestles, like they were trying to crush and grind Tian and Liren from existence.
The turtle shell endured, but it wasn’t the nature of a snake turtle to passively take a beating. The snake head lashed upward and outward, biting at the demon gods and ripping them into clouds of dispersing fire or crackles of lightning. Evil dragons twisted around the snake’s long body, ripping at it, biting, trying to consume the ward between them and what they existed to destroy.
The scale was impossible. Wards that covered the sky battling demonic dragons and gods that were bigger than ordinary mountains, all in an effort to kill two people. It was madness. It was absolute chaos. And ultimately, something got through.
Compared to the godly chaos above, the lightning that broke through the ward was barely a trickle. A little thread of lightning, far smaller than the dragon’s claw that came for Brother Fu. It didn’t shout or roar the way the demon gods above did, or howl like the infernal dragons. It was inevitable. It was the promise that the heavens could never be defied forever, and no matter how much they struggled, the ending would always be the same.
Death. There was no immortality, merely slightly longer lived mortals. The heavens treated human lives as straw dogs. It was time for Tian and Liren to burn. No need for them to rush around. The end was coming to them.
Liren had never been one for waiting.
“COME THEN, AND DIE BENEATH MY SPEAR!”
The ancient spear was once more in her hands. With a leap, she rose to meet the lighting. Tian couldn’t help it. The sheer crushing insanity of it all, the relentless hateful heavens crushing down on them, and Liren didn’t even blink. She didn’t hesitate for a single second. Tian felt laughter clawing up his throat and he didn’t try to stop it escaping. He laughed, and jumped after her.
The two rising immortals met the descending tribulation lightning with a crash. The lightning broke apart on Liren’s spear, but that wasn’t enough to destroy it. Instead, it spread. Little reaching tendrils wrapped around them, trying to burrow in. Tian watched it crawl over Liren, seemingly struggling to break through her bronze skin. If anything, it seemed to be adding luster and depth. Tian wasn’t made of such stern stuff.
The lightning sank into him, and was met with hunger. Tian’s laughter was loud enough to echo off the guest house and bounce around the trees. It was a hellish sort of lightning, corrupted and evil and filled with a will of death rather than life. Nonetheless, it was lightning, and lighting was of the element of wood. Cursed energy and wood qi? His body cultivation practically purred with satisfaction. He only wished there was more of it.
Something above seemed to hear him.
“Ah. That is… considerably more lighting. This is going to hurt.”
The lightning had grown from a thread to a serpent. Liren snorted, ready to jump up and stab it again, but Tian rested a hand on her shoulder. “Together.”
It hurt like hell. Burning, corroding, little sparkles of pain that ran through the nerves and convulsed muscle. The pain was momentary. The benefits it gave to his cultivation and his body refinement? That would be forever. He met Liren’s eyes, and saw a certain hunger in them. Then they both looked up.
When the tribulation gathered its final strength to force an anemic looking lightning dragon through a crack in the ward, Tian and Liren were eager for it. Tian would forever deny he was rubbing his hands in anticipation.
They tore that overgrown snake to pieces. “Location, scripture, treasures and people. We have all four. With all our accumulated foundation, how could a lighting tribulation touch us?” Tian thought. He would have to reflect more on what the vision with the gates was about. But at the very least, he could now hold Liren with two whole hands.
The tribulation clouds broke apart, returning the blue to the sky. The sun and moon shone down on them, anointing and blessing them.
“A flower?” Liren murmured.
“What?”
“You have a flower over your head. A lotus crown. A saint.”
“What’s a woman with a halo, then? You are more of a saint than me.” Tian grinned.
The two admired each other, falling into easy bickering, as the sound of distant temple bells rang, and flocks of birds took to the air.