Elder Chou and Lady Hong flew through turbulent skies, supporting the bleeding Elder Bai between them. They were top-tier qi cultivators. They knew they had been noticed. They knew they needed to vanish.
They didn't.
A black coffin dropped from nowhere and hung in their path. Yun Qian arrived after it, two chains dangling beneath the floating sarcophagus.
The three administrators split. Elder Bai, worst wounded, flew slowest. Before long, he saw another coffin ahead. He turned. Another. Every direction led back to that same black box.
"I don't understand," he whispered, drifting toward it helplessly.
Elder Chou and Lady Hong arrived from opposite directions, heads bowed, faces gray.
Yun Qian stepped from behind the coffin. Her voice was gentle. "Now. Shall we talk?"
Elder Chou's face crumpled into deeper sorrow. "In the dharma-ending age of qi cultivation, you still reached this level. Your talent is terrifying. What do you want to discuss?"
"The Immortal Who Doesn't Age," Yun Qian said. "The rise of nuo masters. The disappearance of qi cultivators."
The three exchanged glances. Lady Hong spoke carefully. "We handled the Immortal Who Doesn't Age. But we are bound by oath. Speak a forbidden word and our souls shatter. As for the rise of nuo masters and the fall of your kind—we had nothing to do with that. We managed the Immortal. Nothing more."
Yun Qian's nature was soft. "I'll tell you what I know. Then you'll tell me what you can. I won't force you."
Lady Hong exhaled. "Old men. We'll test sentence by sentence. If one of us dies to the oath, the others stop."
Yun Qian began. "I first saw him four thousand years ago. I was a novice qi cultivator attending the Fengshan ceremony at Mount Tai. The First Emperor had unified the divine continent. He brought the boy back from overseas—he'd been sent as a sacrifice to seek immortal mountains, and returned alone. The Emperor hoped to offer him to heaven. He didn't understand what he possessed."
Elder Chou nodded slowly. "The Emperor took him to Fengshan because he had been chosen as a sacrificial youth. Xu Fu took him overseas. Only he came back. The Emperor used him to communicate with the heavens. But the Emperor never grasped the truth."
"My master pointed him out," Yun Qian continued. "He said, look, that is a ghost wandering the mortal realm, unable to die. My master had seen him as a child. Still the same youth. He wanders with blank memory. Why?"
Elder Bai chose his words like stepping through a minefield. "Our purpose in existing... is to keep his memory blank."
"How long has he lived?"
The three shook their heads as one. "Can't say."
"Why did he become like this?"
"Can't say."
"Who do you serve?"
Their mouths clamped shut.
Yun Qian let them go.
When they were distant specks, she leaned against her coffin and sighed. "For a thousand years after, I sometimes saw him. My master died of old age—he spent his whole life wanting to face tribulation, but never dared. Only the Immortal Who Doesn't Age wandered on, changing names, changing faces, a deathless ghost."
She closed her eyes. "Before the catastrophe, I saw him again at the foot of Mount Jiuyi. Still that youth. He didn't remember me. But he carried so many of my memories."
Three thousand years of imprisonment. When she climbed from the well, she saw him again.
She smiled, flew away, and searched the world. Everything had changed. Everyone was gone. Only she and he remained.
* * *
The Underworld Emperor's ship sailed upstream on the Naihe River. It stopped at the Bridge of Helplessness.
He disembarked, his Primordial Spirit drifting to the bridge, and queued behind the ghosts. When his turn came, he took the tea bowl—and froze.
"Nearly got me," he laughed, setting it down. "Mengpo, that joke was in poor taste."
The old woman looked up, cackling. "Your Majesty not holding court? Coming to an old woman's bridge? Wanting to reincarnate? Even emperors must drink my tea."
"I won't bicker with you," the Emperor said. "I want to know about the old man with the green paper umbrella. He comes here often for your tea. Who is he?"
Mengpo's eyebrow twitched. "Your Majesty, you're shaking a tree with a mayfly's wings. If I told you, I'd be killing you."
The Emperor's aura blazed like immortal fire. "I'm a fallen immortal. I command millions of gods. Are you saying I lack the standing to know?"
"Yes," Mengpo said calmly.
The Emperor turned and left, fuming. "That old man who fed Su Yan the tea—his background runs that deep?"
* * *
On Mount Wuwang, Su Yan watched the tribulation reach its end.
"Zhou Qiyun's ascension will be the first in the nuo era," he told the great bell. "When he becomes immortal, even the Mud Pill Palace Master can't touch him."
Their relationship had been fraught. Zhou Qiyun had threatened his life more than once. Yet he had never acted on it, and Su Yan had learned much from him.
He hated the man. He admired him more.
The thunderclouds contracted. The final strike fell—a pillar of lightning as thick as Mount Jiuyi's main peak.
"In his last letter," Su Yan said, "he wrote that if he ascended, my life would be safe."
The bell sighed. "A true hero of the age."
The clouds dispersed. Ascension light fell upon Mount Jiuyi—holy, beautiful, unreadable.
Zhou Qiyun smiled. He had survived.
The tribulation had cost him two centuries of accumulated wealth. Countless treasures. Ancient treasures. The bodies of primordial beasts. The three hundred and sixty gods had been wounded protecting him.
Zhou Qiyun was wounded too. His Mud Pill Secret, his nine grotto-heavens, his body, his Primordial Spirit—all battered to the edge of breaking.
But he had won.
In that moment, he wanted to talk to someone. A friend. Anyone. He looked at the light from the other world and thought of Su Yan.
"He's watching too," Zhou Qiyun whispered. "Why do I want to tell him? Because he was also a snake catcher?"
The gods' massive bodies blocked the ascension light. Mount Jiuyi fell into darkness.
A shadow moved within that darkness.
On Mount Wuwang, Su Yan saw it. A massive form flying toward Mount Jiuyi through the gaps between the gods.
His heart seized. He tried to shout a warning. No sound came.
Too far. Much too far.
He stared through his Heavenly Eye and prayed. "He has no weakness left. He's already survived. He's an immortal. He can't lose."
Faint flashes came from the darkness. Like combat.
"Lord Bell! Seven!" Su Yan shouted. "We're going to Mount Jiuyi!"
Yuan Qi tucked into his collar. The great bell flew into his head. The bull demons he left behind with orders to guard the grotto-heaven.
Su Yan became a streak of sword light, breaking the sound barrier.
A thousand miles. At this speed, two quarters of an hour.
As he approached, the last god withdrew into the Heavenly Dao world. The ascension light spilled through, turning the night beautiful.
Su Yan landed beneath the phoenix tree, drained.
The light fell on a white-browed youth sitting beneath the tree, facing east. The sun was rising.
He turned and smiled. "You came to see me off."
He looked back at the dawn. "I thought of you before the end. I knew you'd come. Snake Catcher Su Yan. I lost."
He turned again, still smiling, still encouraging. "You need to be more cunning than me. That's the only way to live."
The sun's first ray touched his face.
"The mortal world is beautiful," he said. "I wish I could live another life."
The man who had united nuo and qi cultivation, the first of his era to attempt ascension, crumpled into a human skin before Su Yan's eyes.
Behind him, exhausted Zhou family disciples arrived. They dropped to their knees and pressed their foreheads to the earth.
No one made a sound.