Gong Guo grinned beneath his tattered black veil as his feet impacting the sand, kicking up a cloud of grey and gold. Before his eyes, the downward sloping dunes stretched onward toward the horizon, and there, at the very edge of his vision…
"It will be half a year before the city returns. You are still certain?" His head twitched to the side, as the shadow of his traveling companion fell over him. A retainer of a retainer, Ding Yuan, nonetheless matched him in cultivation at the Fortification Stage. The man was a hulking brute, but surprisingly soft spoken and subtle in his movements.
"If I am not willing to risk death, I will never breach the cyan realm, my friend," Gong Guo laughed.
"Hmm," Ding Yuan hummed, the sound like boulders tumbling downhill. He Peered south. Shading his deep set eyes with a linen wrapped hand. Like Gong Guo, he wore heavy grey and brown robes that shielded his skin from the poisonous qi of the desert, leaving only a thin slice of flesh around his eyes visible. "There is a difference between risking death and courting her young man."
Gong Guo merely grinned at the curmudgeons warning. "Indeed so! But all the same I must, my family cannot languish forever, barely clinging to our title." Gong Guo's grin faded as he spoke. Four generations since they had gained their title, and now he and his brother were the only third realms the Gong clan had, Patriarch Gong had passed, dying in breakthrough, and though their were a few promising youngsters those damn Fu clan bandits would not leave them time to grow. He could not fail here. "Please, convey to your lords again my thanks for the hospitality of Grandfather Fortress."
"It is nothing, we merely repaid our debt to Lord Chu," Ding Yuan replied. "Or we will, when I return in half a years time. I will wait three days."
Gong Huo grimaced, scratching his cheek sheepishly at the reminder that he had only been so welcomed due to the… incident with Lord Chu, the barbarian, and the goat. He was glad to be rid of the debt, if he was honest. Holding the debt of a higher noble could be dangerous, especially if one was not careful in asking repayment. "Hah, I will be sure to be here. I would not like to try catching up to Grandfather Fortress on my own!"
"You would not," Ding Yuan agreed gravely, turning away. Behind them, their mount stirred, twenty meters of brown and grey chitin rising from the sand as six legs churned up sand. Gong Guo sketched a bow to the great scorpion that had carried them this far. The howdah afixed to his back rocked as Ding Yuan blurred, reappearing in the drivers stirrups, and spoke to the scorpion in its own clicking tongue.
He turned his eyes back south, ignoring the churned sand that billowed out and engulfed him. Gong Guo instead turned his eyes back south, to the sea of descending dunes. He traced the change as golden sands dimmed to grey, and then darkened to black. Qi flowed through his eyes, sharpening his vision, and he saw further, where sand became grey and white ash, and the air curdled in great curtains of shimmering heat. At the very edge of his vision, he saw the Phoenix's tears, great pillars of twisted volcanic glass, said to be the last remnant of the Purifying Sun.
Here, in the Grave of the Sun, he would rise, or he would die.
***
Fire was energy and light, it burned and raged, roaring across the land if left unimpeded. Only the lightning that fell from the heavens was a more pure expression of the Nameless Father, and the Yang energy which was his gift to the world. One would imagine that it had naught at all in common with Darkness at first glance. Darkness was many things, a stepping stone toward the element of void, shadows and opposites,
hunger and desire. That was the point where fire and dark intersected. Fire hungered, fire consumed, flames took and took until at last there was nothing less to burn, or the sparks were doused.
These were not, Gong Guo mused as his burning sword clove through the crumbling ribcage of an ash caked skeleton, unique insights. He spun on his heel, his heavy cloak fluttering in his free hand, and deflected the swing of a twisted lump of melted iron that might generously still have called a mace. A second flick of his sword took the head from a shriveled and blackened mummy, still wearing the tattered raiment of a Second Dynasty soldier. He did his best to ignore the way the head still moaned and gnashed its teeth, and instead kicked the thrashing body out of the way, opening a gap in the ring of Ash Walkers seeking his life.
Dark, gelid qi coiled through the channels in his legs, and he vanished into a blur, skipping across the dunes like a tossed stone skipping through water. He had to keep moving. To stop at night was to invite death. Though the walkers were weak individually, they were endless, and no technique of his could give them a final rest. Add to that the growth of their strength with their numbers, ancient bones remembering skills from lives long lost. His first night had taught him the folly of standing to fight the Walkers under the wan and faded light of the moon, his second the folly of expending his qi freely in this hungry land.
And yet, and yet, the restless bones still feared fire, shied back from it if only a little, despite the burning qi that suffused the grave. Even now, in the dead of night, the desert seethed with heat. It poured from the ground like an oven, heating the air, and whorls of fiery qi danced in his spirit sight, devouring moisture, devouring life. Only his garments, given to him by Ding Yuan, shielded him from the deserts hunger. For certain, he could have survived for a time, shielding himself from the desiccating heat with his own energies, but he would have swiftly exhausted himself.
Pressure, then pain bloomed through his right foot, and Gong Guo hissed out a curse and stabbed his sword down, destroying the mummified skull that begun to form in the sand and ash, he had allowed his thoughts to wander too much. Here, the ground itself roared with hunger for life. Another bound carried him high into the air, and though he could not fly, he spread his cloak, stiffening the fabric with qi, and glided on the wind. There were two hours yet until sunrise, when the Walkers were at least somewhat suppressed.
Even now, the desert shined in his sight, the conflagration of fire and death that raged in every particle of sand and ash danced before his eyes, a tapestry of gigantic scale and lurid detail. He had been right, there were certainly lessons to be learned here. Lessons which would serve his clan well, if he could codify them well enough. The dance of ash on superheated wind, the reaching claws of the desert, the all encompassing, all devouring hunger that laid here, barely chained beneath the earth…
Gong Guo grinned, drawing a twinge from the long white seared scar that now cut across his lips. The fire in his spine burned with delight, and the darkness curling through his limbs stirred with desire. After two months, he had the workings of a technique, a simple thing suitable perhaps for one of his nephews or nieces to cut their teeth upon, but a true technique, something which he could make a central part of his Way still evaded him.
And just as before, his eyes turned south, ever south. He stood now in the liminal band where sand mingled with ash, and the vast monoliths of twisted volcanic glass, like black bonfires frozen in time loomed ever higher, the endless white storm of choking, clinging ash still raged, and even here kilometers away, flakes brushed past him, crying out faintly in his spiritual senses, hungry for heat and vitality.
He had been warned not to go beyond this zone, and for good reason. No cultivator who still relied upon mortal organs and vitae for life could survive the lands beyond the Tears. However, the ash storm itself…
It was a barrier, so much like the barrier which held him back from the peak of the third realm and the beginning of the fourth. If he meant to brave that barrier, could he not brave at least the first steps of this one as well?
His grin widened, and Gong Guo tasted the coppery flavor of his own blood. His wound had split open. Some would imagine it a bad omen, but Gong Guo was not so superstitious. He turned his eyes to the writhing ground below, where dead seethed with hate, hundreds upon hundreds of empty eye sockets staring up at him with hunger.
...When the Sun rose then. There was a difference between risking death and courting her, after all.
AN: Here you go guys, another commission piece, sidestory this time, regarding the creation of a certain art.
