Amaranth Castellanos closed his eyes and then took in a deep breath, held it in for sixty heartbeats and then let it out slowly, releasing all the stress and tension filling his body with his exhaled breath. Calmer after the breathing exercise, he tilted his head up to observe the sky. The heavens above were a picturesque sight, a clear cerulean blue expanse dotted with pale floating tufts of cloud. Amaranth's lips twisted into a crooked grin as he stared upwards into a false mien of calm and idyll. He was not fooled in the slightest by the innocent seeming sky above. The tense knot that had built up behind his navel ever since he had firmed up his cultivation base in the 13th Heavenstage twisted impossibly tighter again. Just a little push and all the qi he had packed into his dantian would collapse in on itself and then, well, then he'd see beneath the mask of the Heavens.
Amaranth lowered his gaze and looked around the location he had selected. He nodded, satisfied at what he saw. This was as fitting a site to call down a Heavenly Tribulation as any. Heavensfall Crater was a place where some long forgotten impact had hollowed out a vast basin in the Organ Meat Desert, attributed in local legend to some mythological battle between celestial immortals. Whatever the cause, time and weathering had filled in the hollow leveling it out and creating a small pocket of verdant greenery in the drab brown sandy earth of the wider desert. Amaranth looked northward, remembering a village close by albeit occluded by the lip of the crater where he had once proved himself an adept exterminator of Cane Toads. Thinking about that incident, caused other momentous events in his life as a cultivator to leap out from memory: the bandit attack on their caravan to the Shen Kingdom under Chen Wuming, witnessing his first example of combat between Elder cultivators, the desperate stand against the Fifth Sea hunters where he'd burnt himself out just to hold on for a second more against superior foes.
More and more scenes of challenge and struggle flashed into his mind's eye, and there was no telling how long Amaranth would have remained reminiscing if a sliver of bronze hadn't flaked off of the back of his hand. He frowned. An old doubt crept into the back of his mind.
As much as he wanted to ignore the truth, he was dying.
This was a simple fact. A full hundred and ninety nine years had passed since the age of his birth, and Qi Condensation could only survive so long, even packed to the very brim he was.
Traditional wisdom said this'd be the last year.
If it wasn't for the fact that he regularly absorbed Blood Qi into his flesh, he'd have imagined his skin wouldn't have looked nearly as youthful as it did. Even so, Amaranth knew he couldn't just credit his appearance to merely the vagaries of chance.
No, the truth of the matter was, he was scared. And, in that fear, he had integrated a body cultivation art long seen as relegated to the Blood Path alone to avoid looking as old as he truly was. Even so, Bronze didn't lie. His patina crept with verdigris, even as he meticulously scrubbed away at it every single day.
He supposed that was also why it had flaked.
Amaranth remembered a time when he could ignore his skin for months on end without worry of something as simple as that.
It was funny, really, truly. Even as his beard grew untamed around his face, even as he projected the image of a barely civilized hunter barbarian, Clan he may be, Amaranth still cared about petty things like this.
Even though Amaranth had been the last person to focus on his appearance outside of basic cleanliness when he was younger, he still tried to give off the impression that how he looked was the very same without any deliberate effort.
He didn't want to die. What a hypocrite he was, thinking about things like this after he said he'd go on his path with no regrets.
Amaranth sighed.
Sometimes he wondered how he had even reached the Thirteenth Heavenstage in the first place, with simplistic worries like these still clinging on in his head.
Every now and then, Amaranth took a sliver of his spiritual sense, and simply stared at himself, expecting his cultivation to backlash back down to the Twelfth Heavenstage out of sheer whim.
Where was the rock solid determination of a King?
There must've been some critical insight that he had arrived on that he had disregarded, for no matter what happened, the vessel that was his body, the container that was his mind, and the repository that was his soul remained stubbornly saturated to their peak.
Amaranth breathed out slowly. There was no time for regrets now. Regrets were chinks in his heart for the lightnings to strike through. Fear slew the mind before the battle even began, bringing certain obliteration if he didn't tear it to pieces first.
Remember. There was only one way out of this situation. Tribulation, or death.
The only thing that stood in his way from continuing to live on one year from now was staring right at him above.
So what if the Heavens would send a tribulation of scale and scope unmatched by any other, reinforcing upon itself endlessly if unchallenged to the point of dashing to pieces even a Nascent level defense?
So what if, the odds of survival, even as positive as they seemed given the last two examples, were in practicality, tremendously slim?
For it should not be forgotten that traditionally, only one in ten pass the dragon's gate of the
Ninth Heavenstage into Foundation Establishment, the other nine either dying, being crippled, or having the pitiable fate of moving into False Foundation Establishment, where in all likelihood, they'd end up dying from spiritual degeneration within decades at best.
If he thought about it, this was all just an absurdity. An impossibility. Something that should be past his hands that seized for more than what he was due.
Ah.
That's where it was.
By now, his hands had unconsciously clenched at his sides until they trembled from the force.
That was why he reached the Thirteenth Heavenstage.
The decree of the Heavens themselves was that limited life was the law of this world without advancing forwards.
The decree of the Heavens themselves was that you were allotted only so much, for grasping beyond your limits drew swift judgment.
But what did that mean for someone who wanted to consume, to enjoy, to see the world in full color if it had to be cut off eternally like that?
The edges of his Dao still seemed fuzzy to him, but he knew one thing crystal clear: There must not be an end.
If limited life is Heaven's decree, then he would defy it!
So be it, then. Amaranth raised his fists as if boxing an imaginary foe, and a great rumbling filled the air, sparks dancing around him like fireflies.
He would move forward until his enemy was destroyed.
Whether that was false bravado or true resolve, he'd find out in short order.
Perhaps he'd have continued fooling around like this for even longer than he had reminisced, but a voice from behind him broke him out of his distraction.
"I'm done setting up here. The Diversion and Impedance Arrays have been checked over and activated. There's not much else to do in preparation so we're as ready as we could ever be," Zeno Angelus said, cracking his neck from bending over array plates set into the chosen arena of the crater.
Turning to look at the senior cultivator, Amaranth tilted his head in thanks. "I can't say how much it gladdens me to have you here at my side as a Dao Protector for this tribulation, Centurion Angelus. Not too many people would risk being implicated in a Heavenly Tribulation even for the Contribution Points the Clan is offering."
Zeno waved away Amaranth's thanks. "While I do admit that the wealth of Contribution Points put forward for this assignment was certainly attractive, I would have almost certainly taken you up even without it."
Tapping the hilt of the saber belted to his side, Zeno looked upwards in challenge at the sky. "It's not every day a man gets to face off against an enraged Heavens. Reading about the Callista and Myia scions' accounts of their Five Elements Tribulation sparked a desire to test my blade against the might of Heaven's Will. There's a tale here to laugh about in the celebration to come."
"I am most grateful for your confidence in me," Amaranth said looking Zeno in the eye, "I admit I felt a bit of trepidation arriving at this precipice but your words prove the lie to that doubt. I will raise a jug of mulberry wine with you after this matter, no longer as a junior but as an Expert, your peer."
Zeno flashed Amaranth a bright smile at his words. "I'll hold you to that promise. I'm certain that your other Dao Protectors in the outer perimeter are by now settled in and ready to ward off any interference from without. I'll take up a station near the rim and do my best as planned to suppress the drawn off energies and level the playing field for you."
Placing his hand on Amaranth's shoulder, Zeno spoke softly to Amaranth. "Fight well, my kinsman and may the Heavens today be frustrated a third time over as the Golden Devils celebrate a new King in defiance."
Amaranth gave a smile at that, edges firm with resolve.
Having said his parting words, Zeno retreated from the midpoint of Heavensfall Crater to take up his position near the circumference of the depressed bowl in the land. Alone in the center, Amaranth tugged at the cured Thunderous Charging Boar leather of his armor, inlaid with tiny protection sigils against elemental attack. His toes clenched in his pair of ever reliable Toad Foot Boots and he thumbed at the Mist-Command Pendant around his neck, taking comfort in the faithful tools that had carried him thus far.
The strength of the Hungering Fist stirred around his arms, his qi ever greedy and voracious as it pulled at the trace amounts of spiritual energy in the atmosphere. Amaranth was proud of his original technique, the evidence of his spiritual comprehension and qi manipulation refined and consolidated into potent strength, but for this upcoming battle he had needed something more to amplify his existing strength and deal specifically with the threat coming his way.
Close to where Zeno had set up the arrays prepared for the tribulation, a small chest rested on the ground. Amaranth opened it and retrieved the first of the Spiritual Treasures within. The paired gauntlets he took out and pulled on exuded martial threat, heavy with the promise of certain violence. Cruelly clawed and formed from an ebon alloy of Gravebronze and Soulsteel, the weight of the Hands of the Cyclopes were a reassuring presence on Amaranth's forearms. On the dorsal side of each gauntlet were inset five circular pieces of carved Spirit Jade in different colors in a circular pattern, each inscribed with the symbols of the Wu Xing corresponding to the color of the Spirit Jade insets. Obtaining a Tribulation Treasure of this caliber had not been easy but better to suffer in preparation than to die in combat.
Returning to the chest, Amaranth retrieved a brown wine jar sealed with white paper inked with strange symbols over its opening. Quickly he removed the talisman seal from the jar and lifted the jar over his head, pouring its contents over himself. Scarlet viscous liquid sluggishly flowed out of the container dropping onto Amaranth's hair, heavy with the scent of iron. In the moment that the stored blood made contact with his body, his Bloodsoaked Bronze Body reacted like a pool of oil into which a lit match had been dropped. The qi in his dantian began rotating, slowly then quickly building up speed. From the crown of his head a relentless pull emanated through his meridians grasping onto the thick fluid and drawing it downwards out of the upheld container. Amaranth exerted his will on his constitution preventing it from absorbing the blood as was its instinctive response but letting it pull the fluid all over his body, beneath his armor, boots and gauntlets to cover him in a slick coating of sanguine paint. When every inch of his physical form was enveloped in the life-giving fluid, Amaranth set down the jar and clasped his hands together. Carefully he recited the mantras to invoke the Anointing of the Battle-Sworn in the practice of Kuji-In, forming the associated mudras with his hands at each uttered syllable, the words of the Turtle World flowing off his tongue with ease: 臨兵斗者，皆陣列前行 (lín bīng dòu zhě jiē zhèn liè qián xíng). At the end of his incantation he shouted out the completed invocation in the language of the Clan,
Είθε όλοι αυτοί που προεδρεύουν πολεμιστές να είναι η εμπροσθοφυλακή μου!
At his shouted declaration, the blood on his body dried out as power flooded his frame. His bones creaked under increased strain but held strong with reinforced strength as his muscles swelled with a flush of might. All over Amaranth's skin, the dried blood hardened into a sort of crystalline armor that moved easily with him but did not scratch even when he forced the clawed tip of his gauntlets against the surface. Amaranth smiled at this result, a smile hidden under a mask of solidified blood over his face. Countless Spirit Toads had been sacrificed to produce the anointing blood, ironically at the direction of an Ascendant Battle-Trained Toad Amaranth had encountered. The mighty Spirit Beast had imprinted the knowledge for a single use of the traditional recipe and associated ritual of the Battle Toads into Amaranth's mind as compensation for great service provided to the Spirit Beast. Already, Amaranth could feel the memory of how to perform the Anointing fading away but he only needed it to do its work this time.
Armored in blood and armed in metal, there was nothing else left to do for Amaranth but call down the doom lingering unseen over his way forward. Taking in a deep breath, Amaranth bellowed out his challenge to the Heavens, "I DECLARE THAT I SEEK A THRONE OF GLORY, A REBELLIOUS CROWN SET AGAINST THE HEAVENS! MY PATH IS THAT NARROW GATE OF SUPREME CONVICTION, BROOKING NO DOUBT AND ALLOWING NO DIVISION! WHO DARES STAND IN MY WAY, LET THEM COME AND FACE MY WILL!"
In synchrony with his howled proclamation, Amaranth pushed at the qi in his dantian, still agitated from the experience of the Anointing of the Battle-Sworn. After standing so long on the precipice, he didn't need much effort to tip things over the edge. The qi within him pulled in on itself, compacting within his center into a dense mass as a result of an inexorable draw from within Amaranth. An endless abyss opened up in his spirit, relentless hunger reaching out to grasp greedily at all of the world. A shaky new equilibrium settled in Amaranth's being, a Foundation of Consumption in the process of being laid, requiring only acknowledgment and nurturing to be confirmed.
In response to Amaranth's challenge the sky raged. The clear blue vault above vanished beneath towering layers of dark storm clouds. Unnervingly the wrath of the Heavens gathered in utter silence. The wind lay utterly still and no crackle or boom echoed from the steadily building up storm overhead that seemed to cover the entirety of the dome above from horizon to horizon. This was not going as Rina Callista and Aretaphila Myia had reported and the change had every hair on Amaranth's body standing on end. He could feel a presence from above fixed on him, projecting an intent of malevolence utterly at odds with the calm in the environment. A brilliant whites flash illuminated the dark cloud banks above and Amaranth tensed, preparing for the descent of the Heavenly Tribulation. He felt a bit foolish holding up his arms in readiness for several long moments afterwards when nothing followed, even as the overcast sky hung low, pregnant with the threat of deliberate violence. A second flash lit up the sky above this time tinted blue but again no action came from above, other than an impossible deepening of the ill intent radiating downwards. In quick succession, three more flashes followed on the heels of the last, colored green, red and yellow respectively.
Amaranth's nerves were stretched to the point of breaking by the inaction from what by all accounts should have been a wrathful opponent fixated on his utter obliteration. Tense from keeping every sense primed for the slightest indication of attack, the pacifism so far of this Heavenly Tribulation was actually causing more stress to him than a straightforward assault and he knew that this was no happenstance. Something up there was planning a strategy against him and this torturous wait was part of its calculations.
Staring fixedly as he was upwards, Amaranth was only preserved from blindness by the dimming effect of the blood armor from the Anointing when the Heavens vomited a waterfall of lightning straight at him. Primed for action, his instincts immediately responded by activating his flipper-boots and sending him backwards in a desperate leap.
"Imperator's bloody balls!" Amaranth swore as he arced through the air, his eyes stinging and ears ringing from the blast of sound.
Frantically blinking away the spots and floating lights disrupting his vision, Amaranth landed beyond accurate mortal bowshot from his previous position and stared agape at where he had been. The lightning strike he had narrowly escaped had not been a singular blast of fulmination but five separate strikes following so closely on the heels of one another that they had appeared to be one drawn out blow. Like a living cord, the lightning bridged the gap between heaven and earth, five colored bolts wrapped around each other in an inseparable tangle.
Even as he peered through the brilliance of the strike, a story from his childhood days came to mind.
With pathetic levels of bronze and as violent as Amaranth was, in his urge to prove himself, he often found himself wounded and in the infirmary after challenging his more gifted opponents.
One day, as he lay in bed, nursing a broken arm, his nurse told him a story. A tale of heroes and the grandeur of their deeds and their arrogance, a story of gods and their machinations. It was a badly fragmented recollection of the original, he later learned, but when Amaranth had first heard of it, he was transfixed.
Come, try me immortals, so all of you can learn. Hang a great cable down from the Heavens, lay hold of it, all you gods, you goddesses too; you can never drag me down from the sky. Not Zeus, the highest, mightiest king of kings, not even if you worked yourself to death.
But whenever I'd set my mind to drag you up…
"Oh nine hells take it!" Amaranth cursed as he realized that his previous likening of the storm above to a womb was far too accurate. A massive bulge formed at the top of the channel of lightning and sped downwards, a brilliant yellow glow shining out and consuming the five-colored lightning bearing it along as it fell. With a thunderous boom as the bulge reached the ground, the Heavens birthed their champion in a massive dust cloud. In the moment the bridge of lightning was absorbed entirely by its passenger, the arrays buried beneath the surface of Heavensfall Crater activated, tearing at the stabilizing power of the fully descended Heavenly Tribulation and flinging it outwards towards the rim of the crater. As Amaranth saw the dust floating in the air around the impact site pulled suddenly down towards the Heavens' first challenge to Amaranth and revealing its form, he hoped Zeno liked scorpions.
A massive Desert Dancing Scorpion made out of swirling sand lifted up a barbed stinger in the air and snipped jagged pincers ominously at Amaranth. As long as three horses not including its stinger and standing taller than Amaranth, the craggy dun-colored carapace of the primordial champion of sand and rock in times past exuded eager menace. With a loud rasping hiss, the Scorpion transformed into a whirling dervish of sand and rock speeding towards Amaranth. Resolute, Amaranth leaned forward and leapt to meet the oncoming attacker, right fist leading the way. He wove the pattern for the Hungering Fist through his meridians, and channeled the technique through the Cyclopes' Hands. The yellow Spirit Jade inset engraved with a square lit up as qi was pumped through it. Amplified by the gauntlets, Amaranth's fists covered in the spectral flames of the Hungering Fist met the whirlwind and landed with surprising impact. The dust storm collapsed back into the form of the Scorpion, hissing furiously as Amaranth's technique stole away the animating strength of the elemental construct.
From that initial contact Amaranth assessed his opponent and divined the shape of the Heavens' stratagem in this tribulation. The Five-Elements Tribulation was supposed to be a gauntlet of forty-five clashes between the aspiring Single Pillar King and the Heavens, arranged in nine cycles of five elementally aspected threats empowering one another in a generating cycle. For whatever reason, the Heavens had sidestepped the use of the generating cycle of its defeated challenges and directly empowered the first and last challenge of the first cycle through the five-colored lightning of its arrival. As a result the Scorpion was terrifyingly strong, beyond anything Amaranth could have opposed without his gauntlets and Anointing and even now it was just the slightest bit in his favor. However, even the Heavens were forced to bow to cosmic balance and this strength was the peak of what this cycle could achieve, much less than a fully generating cycle could have ramped up to exhibit. The Heavens had traded potential strength for immediate empowerment out the gate and it would have worked against anyone but Amaranth. He had the strength to survive the Scorpion's opening blows and the means to wrest its strength from it and add it to his. Already, the earthen energy he had seized with the Hungering Fist was being directed into Amaranth's dantian to replace what he'd spent. The bulk of it was as yet unrefined, containing a strong intent that he couldn't yet fully suppress but it was strength in his grasp and out of his opponent's.
Smiling determinedly, Amaranth leapt back into the fray, dodging stabs from the obsidian stinger arching down at him. That gleaming point dripped with a clear fluid that crystalized the earth it fell upon. He had no intention of finding out what it did to human flesh. He'd never been more grateful for the High Speed Earth Shaping Art he'd learned from the Eight Hundred and Eighty Technique Palace during his recovery after burning his bloodline at Pleuron. The sensitivity it had given him to earth manipulation allowed him to sense when the Scorpion was disrupting the terrain for its advantage, avoiding what he could and contesting the terraforming when there was no alternative.
***
Meanwhile along the rim of Heavensfall Crater, Zeno was no longer laughing. He needed the breath hilarity would have used to keep ahead of the swarm of arachnid foes chasing after him.
"Scorpions," he muttered as he stopped for a moment to tackle the leading elements of his pursuers, "Of course it's scorpions, just when I give my staff to Abel."
Swift and keen as the saber was in his hands, Zeno found himself less cutting through his opponents and more bludgeoning them into broken rubble. The energies of the Heavenly Tribulation that the mitigation arrays in place had diverted had coalesced into scores of scorpions formed from earth and rock that reached waist high. The resulting constructs lacked the weaknesses of a biological form and possessed unflagging stamina and focus. The only saving grace to Zeno's current circumstance was that while being damnably durable and strong enough to crush stones in their grip, the scorpions were not particularly fast. These factors had produced the comedic farce currently taking place along the circumference of the crater. Zeno ran from the constructs. The scorpions pursued, stringing themselves into a line as Zeno tossed back talismans to slow and separate small groups. Then, he halted to clear out the foremost group only to resume his flight as the trailing scorpions caught up, rinse and repeat as round and round they went.
Finishing off his current target group, Zeno took once more to his heels followed by an infuriated hissing swarm of arachnids. As a Mid Foundation Establishment Expert, Zeno had the stamina to keep up the chase indefinitely so long as he kept his qi use measured and relied on talismans. This knowledge didn't comfort him in the slightest because from the moment that the Heavenly Tribulation had sent down lightning, he had felt a premonition as though someone was cheerily walking across his grave and pissing on it. Given the current situation, he thought he had a pretty good idea of the source of the foreboding.
Glancing to the side, Zeno saw his shadow beside him, flowing disjointedly across the landscape as though something were trying to pin down the absence. Oh yes, he was known and his interference had been marked. Thankfully the barrier arrays splitting Heavensfall Crater into a circle with an outer ring cut out of it were holding strong. None of his pursuers seemed inclined to break off and attempt to join the primary manifestation of the Heavenly Tribulation currently duking it out with Amaranth. Zeno, it seemed, had been implicated enough to merit dealing with in his own right. He might not have directly attacked the Heavenly Tribulation first to avoid an undesirable escalation in the trial but he had certainly put himself in the way of its agenda
Further philosophizing would have to wait though as Zeno skidded to halt, alarm ringing through his foresight.
"Bollocks," he swore as the ground ahead of him rippled and stone spears shot up toward where he would have been had he continued running. The ambush had been unsuccessful in its initial strike but the chittering constructs that unearthed themselves from beneath the transformed earth did not appear to be perturbed about failing to land a hit. Zeno wouldn't call himself an insect whisperer but he could have sworn that he read anticipation in the snapping pincers and darting stingers of the not-so-dull-after-all scorpion constructs as they caught him between the anvil of an ambush party too large to easily cut through as he had been doing before and the hammer of the oncoming swarm from behind.
Wreathing his saber in the lambent glow of focused sword-qi, Zeno revised his estimates of just how long he could keep up suppression for Amaranth.
***
The Desert Dancing Scorpion and Amaranth had cavorted all across the center of Heavensfall Crater in deadly caper. Craters and rents torn into the earth were the evidence of their lethal frolic but this duet had run its course. Amaranth panted through the broken mask of the Anointing as he hammered a staccato beat with his armored fists into the carapace of the Scorpion from atop its back. He'd taken powerful hits from the Scorpion's limbs cracking the blood armor in several places. Even more dangerous had been blasts of scouring particulate fired from its stinger that had ground their way in moments through unfortunate boulders caught in the crossfire of Amaranth's evasion. The tail of the Scorpion swayed impotently at its rear, stinger and almost all the length of its tail ripped off in a desperate effort by Amaranth as he'd clambered onto his foe. The stony surface of the back that he was pummeling shuddered, trying and failing to escape into a flurry of sand and rock as Amaranth struck at the bindings that held the elemental construct together, disrupting its movements as he harvested from its strength using the Hungering Fist with each landed blow. Grit and dirt filled Amaranth's mouth as he hammered down, the colloid of dusty air from the duo's exertions stinging his lungs.
Beneath Amaranth the Scorpion tilted and then froze. Sensing the destabilizing energies within his opponent, Amaranth leapt off it barely in time to avoid being dead center for an explosion of rocky shrapnel carried in a shockwave of dust. Amaranth felt his heart pound in his chest and his dantian stuffed full of stolen power, straining the receptacle of his cultivation. He'd never felt more alive in that moment of victory.
He didn't have long to savor it because the storm above which had been quiet all throughout the fight, crackled loudly with clear frustration. The heaped rubble which had been the Earth Dancing Scorpion was struck by a five pronged bolt of lightning. The earthen ore warmed up with a radiant heat Amaranth could feel across the distance as silver liquid frothed up from the remains of his defeated foe, expanding rapidly into a long segmented form three times the length of the previous opponent he had just overcome. Winding in on itself, the metal plated form of a silvery centipede reared up into the air, snapping razor-edged maxillipeds at Amaranth, its many legs creating an atonal piercing screech as they scratched against its shell. Again the buried arrays activated and Amaranth swore he could hear Zeno cursing his name from the distance.
The Storm Armored Centipede announced its arrival with a booming shriek like tearing metal, mandibles spread agape at Amaranth. Lightning sparked around the head of the Centipede and it was instinct that had Amaranth sidestepping in the moment before it launched a projectile moving fast enough to leave a flat crack echoing behind its passage. Amaranth blinked and looked down at the crater where a splash of mercury spread over the bottom of a deep trench, the surface of the liquid metal still electrified and throwing off sparks.
"Is that all you've got?" He taunted the Centipede, giving no voice to the sudden sweat breaking all over his skin.
Infuriated, the Centipede screeched at Amaranth, maxillipeds leaking silver fluid and charged forward straight towards the upstart would-be King, mouthparts spread wide to catch and rip apart the fool who dared go against the Heavens. Eager to close the distance and avoid trying his luck against those incredibly swift projectiles, Amaranth moved forward to meet the headlong rush of its advance. In a clash of a pebble against a boulder, the pebble always came out the worse off. Considering just what worse off could look like in this encounter, Amaranth feinted at the last moment, employing his Mist-Command Pendant to create a sudden low-lying bank of fog just as the Centipede got close and dove aside from its hundred-legged lunge. Amaranth knew his concealment would be fleeting at best, his opponents did not exactly rely on line of sight to locate him and the eruption of Water qi would only veil his location briefly. He darted for the side of the Centipede away from the fierce weapons it called mouthparts and landed a one-two set of punches that lifted up the midsection of the Centipede, burning a distressingly large portion of the energy from the Scorpion that he'd so far managed to refine for his use just to accomplish that feat. Bright white light flared before his eyes and he blinked as he found himself on the ground twitching.
'Ah,' his dazed mind put together, 'Metalliic carapace plus Metal affinity equals do not touch carelessly.'
The electrical discharge from the Centipede had not been overly damaging but mostly disorienting which was hazard enough as the head of the Centipede loomed blurry in his vision above him, drooling mercury onto him. Wide-eyed, Amaranth rolled sideways desperately as that large head descended, feeling the jolt of charged metal close to his skin as the Centipede barely missed bisecting him with its maxillipeds. He rolled frantically away as the Centipede writhed around where its head was embedded in earth that Amaranth had loosened and quickly rehardened, blasting out lightning bolts blindly that miraculously only struck Amaranth twice. Feeling slightly well-done, Amaranth rose onto his feet and clutched at his left upper arm feeling an odd weakness there.
Examining the location, he cursed under his breath, "Self-fellating Buddha!"
Some of the mercury from the Centipede's mouth had dripped onto his arm and apparently gotten into a cut on his arm. The heavy metal poison had infiltrated just the slightest portion of his arm but already he could feel a progressive weakness spreading as the mercury bonded to the Bronze in his blood. He fumbled at his belt, and took a pill bottle thankfully undamaged from the physical tussles he'd been involved in today. Pulling out the stopper with his teeth, he dropped a Blood Burning Pill into his mouth and gritted his teeth as his body heated up uncomfortably. True, it was painful, but this was nothing compared to what he'd forced himself through during the stand at Pleuron so he merely endured as his body flushed bright red under the much battered covering of the Anointing and silvery steam misted out of the wound.
Returning the pill bottle to his belt, Amaranth limbered up his arm, happy to feel his body recovering quickly now that the poison had been expunged. Ahead of him, the Centipede had managed to release its head and angrily enveloped its entire form in lightning. It appeared little inclined to approach again, rather charging up another of those high velocity missiles.
Amaranth knew he had to turn the tide fast or the Centipede would pick him off from a distance. He pulled as much qi from his dantian as he could spare without letting the earthen energies of the Scorpion loose in his innards and pumped it all into the Mist-Command Pendant. As he did so, he willed his intent through the artifact, tenuously holding on to his qi transformed by its passage through the pendant and then directed the now Water-aspect energy through his gauntlets. In seconds, Amaranth's form disappeared cloaked in a shroud of dense fog that hung close in a sphere of around twenty feet wide, a sphere that began to advance rapidly towards the Centipede.
Amaranth was counting on the saturation of qi-laden fog around him to make it impossible for the Centipede to make out his exact location in the umbrella of fog. It seemed to work because the Centipede swayed side to side seemingly uncertain of its target before choosing to fire straight through the middle of the sphere. The passage of the droplet of mercury tore a foot-wide hole in the concealing fog but did not reveal a struck Amaranth. He might not have been the sharpest tool in the box but keeping himself off-center within concealment was just good thinking. Step by step he built up steam, charging towards the Centipede in a zig-zag approach all the while moving the fog around him to never be in the same position within it.
For its part, the Centipede held its ground and transformed into a living turret of venomous missiles, spraying everywhere in the advancing blob of fog. Nothing halted the fog's advance and as the mist made contact with its body, the Centipede turned the air around it into a death trap of lightning. It kept up the close hugging field of electrical charge for seconds running into minutes and then stopped confused. As an aspect of a Heavenly Tribulation, it knew that its target was not dead but said target appeared to have vanished.
Suddenly the earth beneath the Centipede roiled, the soil slumping into boggy mud that captured the body of the Centipede. In that moment of distraction, a sharp prick pierced the metallic chitin of it's underbelly and a deathly hunger fastened its maw on the Centipede's innards and began to drink it dry. The Centipede tried to escape, flailing its feet in the mud but finding no purchase. Discharges of lightning into the thick slurry proved futile, the current unable to travel far in the soup of mineral particulates. Slowly the Centipede shook and stilled, shrinking in on itself until it collapsed in a din of clattering metal, hollowed out.
Amaranth climbed out of a tunnel he had dug out beside the mud pit, grimacing as he did so. The energy wrested from the Centipede was even more lively than that of the Scorpion and the two district energies digesting in his system made him feel like he'd swallowed a living storm.
"And of course, you don't give me a moment's rest," he groaned as lightning descended once more from the dark sky, striking the Centipede's discarded shell. The shell flaked away under the attention of the Heavenly Tribulation, the particles sinking into the muddy water Amaranth had created by overtaxing his Mist-Command Pendant amplified with the Cyclopes' Hands.
"Well I'll be damned," he grunted as a thunderous croak bellowed out through the crater.
Bilious blue-green, twice as tall as Amaranth and almost four times as wide, a Lake Defiling Toad hopped out of the mud pit, putrid purple tongue licking its eyeballs as it stared dead-eyed at the man the Heavens had called upon it to eliminate. Its bulk shook but gave little other reaction as the arrays re-activated.
"Toads," Amaranth said slowly, a grin blossoming on his face, "Toads I know how to kill. Thank you for this blessed meeting."
He punched his fists together, bowed, and then lifted them up into a guard as experience with the amphibian form guided him. True to form the first strike came head on, a darting tongue speeding for his head. Choosing to conserve energy in these opening engagements, he dodged the whipping tongue and sought to dash closer where his fists would be more useful.
The Toad did not allow Amaranth to approach unopposed though. The throat of the Toad swelled up and it vomited out a deluge of reeking effluent at Amaranth. The cone of the blast was wide enough to catch Amaranth even if he attempted to dodge so he didn't. Accessing one of the functions of the Cyclopes' Hands, Amaranth drew on the energy that had been slowly accumulated in the gauntlets during his assault on the Earth Dancing Scorpion and overlaid a qi projection of Earth energy over his body. Against the Metal Storm-chasing Centipede, this armor would have been worse than useless, Metal being empowered by Earth. Against the Toad though, the energies of Earth weakened the Water-based attack, Water being controlled by Earth in the restraining cycle. The armor had blocked the physical force of the attack but it had done little to protect Amaranth from the other elements of the torrent. The smell of the expelled fluid combined the worst smells of sewage and spoilage, prompting Amaranth to breathe through his mouth, a decision he immediately regretted as he gagged, tasting every foul aspect.
Undeterred, the Toad remained in place, choosing to shoot out whipping tongues of poison, lashing against Amaranth's armor. The armor held but the impacts depleted the stored reserves of Earth energy compelling Amaranth to duck and weave as he slowly approached. He'd nearly gotten within reach when the Toad hunched over and a slimy orb of thickened water appeared around it and exploded outwards pushing Amaranth back almost to where he'd begun his advance.
"Okay, so not as easy as expected," Amaranth complained, checking how much energy he had left. The gauntlet had lost almost half of its Earth-aspected reserves and his own stores of qi were not too promising, after taking into consideration what he needed to render impotent the lingering intent in the energy he'd absorbed. Amaranth was considering his option when a ghostly voice whispered in his thoughts.
'King-To-Be, lend us the strength of the foe before you and we, the ancestors of the Battle-Sworn Toads, shall assist you in facing these lessers. Let us fight under your banner till your ascension becomes the truth.'
Decades of combat experience were all that let Amaranth recover from the unexpected communication and split his attention between the squatting Toad and whatever interloper was in his mind.
'Who are the ancestors of the Battle-Sworn Toads and how do you come to be in my mind?' he thought to the voice in his head.
'Did you not call upon our strength and blessing before offering a challenge to the Heavens? Our scion Mu Chanchu taught you the secret rites to call upon the strength left behind by those of us who sleep the rest of the ages.' The voice he now heard was different than earlier, younger sounding than the aged warble it had been before.
'Why do you wish to assist me against the Heavens?' Amaranth questioned.
Laughter rang out in his thoughts.
'We are the Battle-Sworn, seekers after all battlefields and lovers of war. The chance to stand at the side of an usurping lord against the greatest foe possible is a glorious gift we would have pleaded for in life. Now our silent hearts wish to capture the thrill of the fight once more.' A third voice answered, distinct from the two before.
Amaranth made a snap decision. This was not a moment for long deliberation and he had accepted one boon from a strange beastman, so what was it to further rely on that aid?
'What do I need to do, ghosts of the bygone?' Amaranth asked.
'Advance and let our anointing touch your opponent's defenses. We will create an opening for you to reach out and drain its strength. You must channel this strength into the markings of the anointing and that will give us life to fight by your side,' a chorus of croaking voices now said to Amaranth.
With a plan of action now, Amaranth wasted no more time, racing forward and trusting in the armor formed by the gauntlets to protect him from the harassment the Toad sent at him. True to form, the Toad reformed the defensive globe as before but this time Amaranth headbutted the globe. The impact rippled through the shell of water like a rung gong, disorienting the Toad and creating an opening for Amaranth. He struck in that moment, right hand flattened into a stabbing strike, clawed gauntlet punching through slick flesh into the Toad's guts.
The Hungering Fist roared to life, greedily biting into and gulping down the Toad's essence. The Toad croaked weakly, stunned by whatever the spectral ancestors haunting Amaranth's thoughts had done and too weak to put up more than a feeble response when the disorientation wore off. As instructed, Amaranth drank deep of the animating force of the tribulation manifestation, his stomach roiling as what felt like pure filth coated his meridians and flooded into his dantian, from which he then channeled the bulk into the tattered remnants of the blood armor on his body. The remaining blood upon his skin liquefied at the influx of power and ran down his body to pool at his feet. As he wrung the Toad dry of all the strength he could absorb, the pool expanded, growing into the form of a towering humanoid toad, a head taller than Amaranth.
Finally, there was no more for Amaranth to take and he stepped back from the deflated skin of the Toad which fell to the ground.
"Back up, things are going to get a bit exciting shortly," he warned his new companion.
Amaranth and the blood simulacrum moved away from the Toad's carcass not a moment too soon. Once more the Heavens let down a column of lightning on the remains. Amaranth would have liked to quickly discuss strategy with the Battle-Sworn Toad but he was too occupied keeping his legs locked stiff as his body seemingly rioted. The Toad's energy joined the other two conquests and if two had been a struggle three was akin to trying to keep a lid on a steam boiler on the brink of rupture. Scorpion, Centipede and then Toad, Amaranth knew he'd seen that sequence before and as he thought back to the three fights he'd just experienced he had a disturbing inkling of what was coming next based on what was currently ailing him.
"It's going to be a spider," he announced, the Battle-Sworn glancing over at him before returning to staring at the roiling energies consuming the Toad's corpse and birthing a new manifestation of the ongoing Heavenly Tribulation.
True to Amaranth's prediction, the unstable reaction brewing where the Toad had fallen exploded into an entangling overgrowth of vines and wooden branches. A thick mound of vegetative matter shuddered and rose up on eight limbs, the Forest Putrefying Spider reeking of rot and decay. The Spider wasted no time in acting. Closed buds all along its form opened up and began spewing golden pollen into the air.
Unwilling to let the Spider set the stage to its liking, Amaranth indicated towards the wooden construct and asked the blood simulacrum.
"Would you be so kind as to help me with this one as promised?"
Silent up till now since its manifestation, the Battle-Sworn Toad nodded and sprinted forward forming a massive double handed axe from its body and croaking a loud battlecry. Amaranth followed on its heels thinking rapidly.
Gu poison. The Heavens were brewing a Gu poison and they'd done a superlative job of sneaking it under his nose. No wonder it had disdained to employ the ordinary five point elemental sequence for each tribulation stage. Concentrated essence compounded faster and four steps into the process, the very air from the lingering energies cast off from each defeated opponent was making Amaranth's head swim, not to say what the poisons and venom of this new construct would do. The Toad's poison had killed off every bit of greenery left alive in the crater after the prior two fights and that had been the most easily countered. The trick of it was that even now knowing about the stratagem, Amaranth didn't have many options to deal with the poison. His entire approach in this Heavenly Tribulation relied on draining the manifestations to recover the energy he needed to face the next one, yet if he tried that now he'd be mainlining poison straight from the source, a poison no manner or number of purification pills on him could tackle. Refuse to take in the spiritual energy and he was left as easy pickings for the next manifestation empowered greater than that prior as his reserves guttered and his strength failed him.
Then there was no time for further thought as he joined his Toad companion against the Spider. Two against one, they whittled down the Spider like a team of lumbermen taking apart a tree. Oh that was not to say that the Spider didn't fight back, it did. Entangling vines shot out from its body and darts of virulently green toxin were sprayed at the two attackers all the while the Spider leapt and pounced around, trying for a grapple. Here the Cyclopes' Hands really shone in their use, crackling lightning empowering Amaranth's hands as he scorched and blasted his way through the Spider's defenses. One by one they hewed off the Spider's limbs, crippling it and reducing it to a stationary target desperately trying to fend off the two.
There was a purity to combat that offered a hint of transcendental enlightenment and as Amaranth hacked his way into the Spider, he grasped upon a slim chance of overcoming the Heavenly Tribulation's brewing plot. But first he had to ensure that he had the strength to continue on to the next fight, so first consuming a qi replenishment pill, he steeled his spirit and devoured the Spider. Amaranth staggered back after the act, vision doubled and ears ringing. Three had been pushing the limit, four had blown straight past that into meltdown. Amaranth forced down as many qi replenishment pills as he could stomach, spending the precious supply to bolster his efforts at containing the internal explosion slowly cooking off inside him. It worked if slowing down his demise from immediate to merely imminent could be called success.
Lightning fell and a conflagration of fire rose up. Proud and cruel, the Volcano Smog Viper coiled its elephant-thick body and reared up more than a dozen feet into the air, looking down imperiously on Amaranth and the Battle-Sworn Toad. Coal black scales lit up from within with the bright glare of a furnace hidden in the construct, a flame that pumped out choking smoke from the Viper's body. Sinister fangs dripped rainbow-sheened fluid that shimmered with radiant heat and promised to cook any unfortunate injected with it from within as their blood boiled away.
The Viper swayed hypnotically, belching out a thick blinding plume of smoke that settled low. Amaranth knew that waiting gave the Viper the advantage of building up the smog so he weakly nodded to his companion. Everything now relied on the Battle-Sworn Toad and the host of spirits animating the simulacrum delivered. In a dizzying display of martial ability, the simulacrum deployed an arsenal of outsized weapons formed from blood against the Viper. Massive hammers bludgeoned the serpentine form only for grand cleaving edges to open up gaping wounds in its flesh leaking liquid flame. The Battle-Sworn Toad held off the Viper for a fevered minute, then five as Amaranth rushed through his preparations.
As the Battle-Sworn Toad began to falter, its form diminishing to a size equal to Amaranth from lost fluid volume, Amaranth completed his preparations. Racing into the fray, he struck resolutely at his target. Not the Viper but the back of the Battle-Sworn Toad. Triggering every stored reserve in the Cyclopes' Hands and channeling every erg of qi he could spare into the body of the Battle-Sworn Toad, he flooded the simulacrum's form with power, ruining the artifact and simulacrum together. Surprised, the Viper had little time to react as the opponent holding it off shuddered and then collapsed, transforming into a massive ebon tipped spear of blood. Striking swiftly he plunged the spear into Viper's side and leaned in, forcing the weapon deeper. The Viper writhed and flailed, belching bloody steam as the quenching power of the spear warred with the flame at its heart and prevailed. Slowly, the Viper slumped to the ground, its animating flame dwindling fast. Not wasting any precious time, Amaranth plunged his bare hands into one of the open wounds in the Viper and touched the prize within.
The Gu poison the Heavens had been concocting in its present form had a dominant fire attribute. Water overcame Fire and smothered it so burning through the last strength of the Anointing of the Battle-Sworn and exhausting the innate power of the Cyclopes' Hands, Amaranth had not just felled the Viper but transformed its body into a living cauldron to refine the blood of the Anointing. Touching the boiling fluid within the Viper, Amaranth let his Bloodsoaked Bronze Body drink deep of the strength imbued into the blood, the strength of a Gu poison turned into an elixir of empowerment. He was no skilled apothecary to brew up a tailored cure to the rampaging energies within him so he'd gone the other direction. Why cure when you can endure? Like tapping from the veins of divinity, power a magnitude greater than what the Anointing had first given him bolstered his body and allowed him to eradicate the lingering intent of the Heavens in the energies he'd seized. Stilling their conflicts with one another, he subsumed the previous quartet with the placid strength of the blood and assimilated it all.
Rising to his feet, bereft of the two Spiritual Treasures that had carried him this far but feeling no weaker for it, Amaranth dared the Heavens to give it another try.
"That's one delicious meal," he taunted, "What else have you got to fill my belly?"
The Heavens had stilled as they waited to see if their ploy would defeat the cursed spawn of the invaders. In response to the provocation of Amaranth's and the added insult of his continued survival, they raged. Crimson lightning bolts lanced down at Amaranth who danced laughing between them, a hair's breadth from death in every moment but exhilarated by his triumph. After the flurry of unsuccessful lightning strikes, a peeling cry echoed in the sky. Bright red wings stretched out wide, the Vermilion Bird descended, lord of the Cardinal South. The five-colored plumage of the heavenly pheasant blazed as it glared death at the insect that dared oppose the Celestial Order.
Swooping down into a blazing dive, the Vermilion Bird grasped Amaranth in its claws and lifted him into the skies. It burned bright as a comet, cloaked in a blanket of stone melting heat, screaming indignation to all. Yet as it rose up it choked, its cry cut off and overwhelmed by the laughter of a madman. The might of the Vermilion Bird reflected in the Heavenly Tribulation was only a fraction of its potency matched and capped by the strength allotted by the Celestial Machinery to oppose a Qi Condensation challenger. As hot as it raged, it was not hot enough to overcome the quenching strength still lingering in Amaranth. Ever hungry, he clasped the Bird tight and gave in to the abyss in his spirit. Like a star that burned bright and short, the light of the Vermilion Bird flickered and then faded as it was consumed as fuel for the relentless rise of a man who would be King.
Amaranth fell from the sky, quickly forming the Two-Headed Eagle to turn a fatal plunge into a bruising landing. The Heavens gave him no time for respite, quickly sending in the next foe. From the West the winds were stirred up and racing along the ground outlined in the wrath of the storm, came the master of that direction, the White Tiger. In a coat of black stripes of white, the regal feline sped around Amaranth, raising up a wall of wind from its passage. Larger than a horse, it stopped atop a surviving boulder, golden eyes looking down without mercy.
It stalked the prey it had been sent to bring down, roaring with the fury of thunder and pouncing swift as lightning. Just that morning, Amaranth would have died like a dog before the might of the Imperial Sacred Beast, yet now the strength of his thews let him strive against this terrible foe, holding its mighty jaws away and surviving the clawing of its limbs on a body forged stronger in battle and quenched more resilient in blood. Across the ground, the two tussled rolling in a snarl of fur and limbs. Finally Amaranth slipped out from beneath white-furred terror and seizing its tail leapt onto its back. The White Tiger bucked and tilted like a raging bull, but Amaranth grasped on tight around its neck, his arms locked in an unbreakable vice. Lightning surged across the White Tiger's form, through its unwanted rider but still he clung on grimly, rictus grin on his face. Slowly the proud beast stilled as it panted for breath that could not come, its strength sapped by the hungering touch that stole away everything for its master. Tongue flopped out, the White Tiger fell on its side defeated.
Staggering to his feet, Amaranth eyed the north and the east wondering from which direction his next challenge would originate. He was not waiting long. In the crash of thunder from above and flash of lightning, Amaranth spied a form in the heavens and turned towards it. Lithe with powerful muscle and armored in gleaming blue-green scales, the ruler of the Eastern corner swam through the skies. At its approach the much battered greenery suffering from the repeated clashes of the day, stirred, growing taller.
Wind roared around the Emperor of the Skies, as it yawned lazily, flashing gleaming fangs in a maw wide enough to swallow Amaranth up in a single bite.
Amaranth stared wearily at the new challenger. The last two Sacred Beasts had been incredibly strong foes but he had overcome them both. So he set his feet and prepared to pull off a hat trick. The Azure Dragon descended in the east of Heavensfall Crater, cocking its horned head in curiosity at this little thing that had caused it to be sent forth.
"What have you got?" Amaranth dared it, waving the Azure Dragon forward.
Gleaming fangs flashed in a lazy grin and the Azure Dragon sniffed. It blurred from its position and appeared where Amaranth had been. For his part, the Golden Devil took a shallow flight through the air halted by an impact with a half-buried boulder. Groggily standing up, he looked for his opponent but didn't find him. Warm breath on the back of his neck had Amaranth whirling around, turning just to see the upraised clawed hand of the Azure Dragon flick at him and resume his experience of unpowered flight.
***
Dodging and Slashing, nothing else mattered in this cacophony of lightning, elemental constructs and dust storms. For every scorpion, centipede, toad or other beast Zeno cleaved apart, another 10 had joined the fray, fresh on his heels. His armor, freshly repaired, was dented in ways only the bloody Core Elder in the plains had managed before. Thankfully the armor and lack of attention by the Heavens meant his actual wounds were negligible.
The few glimpses he could manage into the crater itself told of a monumental struggle. Corpses of various animals lay strewn about, but their target was not among them. Battered as he was, his qi shone brightly. Or was that the heavenly lightning? It was really hard to concentrate with so many orphaned beasts at his heels. All that mattered was that the cloud overhead was growing and the arcing of lighting with it.
Knowing his qi reserves was not enough for his horde, Zeno planned. Heavenly lightning was, well, lightning thrown down by heaven. According to Abel, Lightning searched for the nearest spot to the ground. Considering this particular stuff was heavenly, it was mostly hurtling towards the King-to-be, mostly. A few errant strikes threw up dust around him. There was an opportunity!
"Time to see if heavenly lightning can be cut, because I sure won't survive the aftermath of fighting this horde the normal way," Zeno muttered.
As Zeno dodged another tail swipe, he carved an arc into the sand below him with sword qi, forcing the enemy to heed his newly cut border for a moment. Before the growing pile of dragonlings split off from the raging Azure Dragon nearby could scatter, he leapt upon the top and took a stance. His foolishness was soon rewarded.
Time slowed to a crawl and with it every movement became deliberate for him. Every breath carefully adjusted, the grip on his sword and his qi cycling adjusted for the one moment.
As his Gravebronze sword met heavenly lightning two things happened. At first the sword qi cut lightning, but it did not last. Sword qi was uncompromising and heavenly lightning was - as anything by heaven- unstoppable. Heavenly lightning quickly found ways around a measly part of its law, making sure Zeno could suffer the consequences. By sheer might of powers involved all lesser under him suffered worse.
By the end of it, his part of the crater rim looked to be more of a small crater entrance, if it wasn't for the corpses under him. The swordsman himself looked barely better, the wounds on him severe.
The moment of silence around him was a nice reprieve. He looked at the sky, where new horrors were already brewing and then over at the center of the crater. Things were not going so well over there and Zeno made a snap decision
Zeno readied himself for the finale, choosing to take a more direct hand in the Heavenly Tribulation and trusting that he and Amaranth together could survive the inevitable reprisal.
***
Amaranth would perhaps have been bitter over being so outmatched if the ringing in his skull would stop and let him focus on the pit he'd found himself in at this stage of his Heavenly Tribulation. The last few minutes had been an unenviable experience of being used as a toy by the grossly overpowered Sacred Beast, tossed hither and wither as it pleased. His muscles shook and he thought he had bruises down to his bones but the singular focus that had carried him up from the Great Circle of Qi Condensation to the 13th Heavenstage and a half step onto the path of the Single Pillar King, compelled him to get up again and again to seek out some victory against his opponent.
He could tell that the Azure Dragon was growing tired of its sport and he didn't fancy his chances after it decided he was no longer fun playing with. He had gone through all his possible options and was now contemplating the impossible ones.
'Perhaps if I dive into its throat, I can choke it to death from within,' Amaranth considered seriously. Before he could plan out a tactic to realize that particular insanity, a shout from nearby drew both his and the Azure Dragon's attention.
Zeno Angelus stood at the border of the suppression arrays that drew off the energies of the Heavenly Tribulation each time it manifested a construct. In his hands he held a smoking brazier, one that Amaranth recognized after a moment's focus on it. It seemed that the repeated blows to his head must have disrupted his memory if he'd forgotten about that Spiritual Treasure. Zeno threw a Hundred-Year Lake-Condensing Incense Burner at Amaranth, trusting him to know what to do. Even that much active interference on top of what Zeno had already been doing as a Dao Protector was enough to invite immediate response from the Heavenly Tribulation. A pillar of lightning descended on his position and Amaranth could only hope that the other cultivator had the means of mitigating direct action from the Heavens. He had little attention to spare for anyone else as the Azure Dragon breathed in, an incredible vortex of qi building up in its maw as it prepared to conclude this matter.
Falling to his knees, Amaranth placed the Incense Burner before him and offered it to the Azure Dragon. The potent herbs burning in the artifact filled the air with a cloud of sweet-smelling incense just breathing in transported Amaranth's mind to his calmest experience upon the waters, calming emanations of Water qi saturating the atmosphere.
"Please accept this humble offering," he said bowing.
The Azure Dragon breathed in deeply, drawing all the wafting incense into its nostril and then turning into a crackling pillar or lightning that consumed the incense burner before rising back into the clouds. Amaranth sighed, relieved that the appeasement had worked. A dragon it would appear was ever a dragon even in a Heavenly Tribulation. An offering of Water to empower the Wood embodied in the Azure Dragon had provided a solution where violence had no answer. Propriety, perhaps unsurprisingly, was an important thing for the most august Imperial Sacred Beast.
Amaranth stared up at the clouds above, which were dispersing. After the retaliation for Zeno's interference, the sky had become calm, and now the heavy stormfront of the Heavenly Tribulation was lightening.
What? That was bizarre.
Amaranth might have been battered about enough to forget certain tools but he wasn't that far gone that he'd lost the ability to count. He'd survived and overcame eight primary stages of a Heavenly Tribulation and that was one short of the nine expected. Call him a cynic but the hope one tiny part of his mind held that it was all over seemed nothing more than a last poison pill from the cruel Heavens.
But even so, light shone and thickened through the cloud banks, drifting apart into the background of the sky.
For a brief moment, he allowed himself to consider the idea that, in fact, that the tribulation had ended.
He felt at the swirling ball that had become of his Qi Sea, jolted into wild motion by the bolts of lightning that had tempered his flesh throughout the tribulation, eagerly forming shapes as per his desires.
It could, with a flash, echo only a portion of his Dao, and Establish a traditional Foundation that would take him on a well-trod path with the strength of the twin purities of the body and Qi to trample over his peers, and with the thread that connected his body and soul enhanced several times over, his mind could even resist the domineering oppression of the Single Pillar Kings.
And sure, all of that was good and all, but why the hell would he do that?
Amaranth hadn't come all of this way, spent all of this time, for a mere consolation prize.
With a mighty exertion of Will and a savage grin on his face, he squeezed the ball further.
An image, blurry at first, began to take shape on the surface.
Well, he shrugged, if it really was fine then he might as—
The sky shattered.
Great cracks into the sky yawned open, revealing a gleaming, gleaming light that hurt to look at, hurt to even
think about.
The shards of sky swirled around like a soup pot being stirred by a ladle as liquid light dripped through. For some reason, that comparison made him laugh, though he was not sure why.
Four claws descended, revealing a great leathery limb that pierced into the earth.
The ground started to shake, fissures opening up from the strain to parallel the sky above. An earthquake? Now?
Then, with a start, Amaranth realized what was happening. It, whatever it was, was
pulling, trying to get itself through the hole in the sky. It was too big, it seemed, to arrive in one shot.
That meant there was an opening.
Amaranth pounced forwards in a flash of green light, ready to seize a fragment of the power that creature surely held, stabbing his gauntlet forward into its thick flesh to grip on, when—
The flesh moved an inch. The gauntlet shattered with a keening noise, spilling red crystal fragments all over his body.
With a second twitch, he was flung backwards like a ragdoll in the face of a storm, with only the blood hardened leather on his chest preventing a hole being outright struck through his body.
The carefully carved sigils were all burnt out now from redistributing the sheer force of the hit across the surface, ripping it apart at odd angles.
With a great sound of cracking and groaning unlike any sound Amaranth had heard before, two massive eyes finally peered past the breach in the firmament, and Amaranth's eyes widened.
Not because the shards had splintered to shreds, not because it was a turtle, but for two reasons far more simple.
Those eyes were not made of lightning.
Unlike the almost ethereal elementals the previous beasts had been, those black orbs felt as substantial, no,
more substantial, than reality itself. All else was mere illusion in comparison.
Even he was merely an illusion in comparison. Simply by being directly seen, Amaranth could feel his body break down, revealed to be a sham in face of the truth.
The other? It was staring at Amaranth with the sort of rage that couldn't be explained by the capricious annoyance of a sacred beast to a stranger. It was a hatred born of long, painful experience, mixed with grief and sorrow and terrible resolve at the same time.
A sovereign had come, and it was out for blood.
***
...When had he fallen?
How had he fallen? He didn't particularly recall getting forced down at any point. Amaranth had been looking at the sky mere moments ago, and yet, now he was pressed flat against the sands.
Why couldn't he get up? Even as he tried to raise his legs, they simply refused to move. His Qi refused to even cycle themselves into the pattern to raise himself up on buffets of Wind Qi as per the Sky Treading Art he had picked up so many years ago.
It was as if it was only natural for him to be pinned to the ground, but that couldn't be correct, right?
With a thundering crash, the turtle landed on the ground. Great trees were uprooted in its wake, but Amaranth still was stubbornly pinned to the ground, feeling each step like it was a thunderbolt running through his body.
And then, barely being able to peer upwards, he saw the turtle grin. In an almost casual motion, it lowered its head to Amaranth, who tensed himself in response to an attack. After almost brushing over his hand with his mouth, it began to gnaw with a horrific sound of the grinding of metal.
Rivulets of shining crimson spilled out onto the sand as pieces of bronze sizzled and burned and corroded, almost the color of ochre than anything else. And Amaranth, quite simply, screamed.
Qi and life and vigor flowed from the wound, filling what he had left with muck and grime and the
impurity that held mortals down from the sky. Skin, painstakingly kept youthful, finally began to wrinkle, teeth - kept whole and pristine - rotted to black, and even the base senses that let any mortal perceive the world, dulled to nothing. The sky was blurred, his hearing could barely pick up the grinding sound of the turtle's jaws, reduced to feeling base vibration. The vigorous yell that came out of his lungs, reduced to a mere whimper.
After all of his ambitions, after almost nearly two centuries of follies and victories that took him to where he was, he was to be eaten by a turtle? A literal turtle? Amaranth could almost laugh.
As the remaining pinpricks of light finally left his sight, Amaranth only had one thought.
Ah. So this is how it ends, is it.
***
Images flashed past a fading mind, barely able to grasp what moved past it.
A cycle, a wheel, a miserable wheel that ground and destroyed as it turned.
Once he finally died, everything that he gathered, everything that he dreamed, everything that he was, would be blown into the wind and buried into the earth where someone else would take that power, which would be taken by someone else, which would be taken by someone else.
But the wheel was constantly breaking itself even as it spun. There would be a time where it snapped in half and continued no longer, and even that would cease.
He hated this. He hated that his power would no longer be his. More than anything else, he hated that even when it was taken, and taken, and taken again, it would crumble to dust, leaving even that vestige of himself to fade into nothing.
There shouldn't be an end. There should never be an end. Wasn't that the truth of his path?
Even so, as Amaranth looked at himself, initially whole in the eye of his mind, he could see fingers, legs, crumbling away in accordance with the rules of nature.
"Stop!" he shouted within his heart. "Stop this!" he raged impotently, smashing a hand to the ground, cracking both in two.
When even his mental body toppled to the ground, mirroring his physical body, the decay had nearly reached his face.
If only everything could just stop.
For some reason he couldn't find resolve behind those words. He just felt resigned.
So, where was it? Where was it where was it WHERE WAS IT— Amaranth tamped down on his rising hysteria. There wasn't much point to it, anyway. For some reason, his head felt oddly clear.
Maybe the rot had gotten to the right part of his brain? Or maybe it was the wrong part of his brain, it depended on perspective— and he chopped off that line of thought before he wasted more time.
With a last spark of will, he tried his best to imagine a world where things did stop, but he could only imagine not being chewed on by a turtle.
Alright, fair enough.
But he had to look past that if he was going to have any hope of success. It might be a flawed realization, but anything would work at this point.
With his last
last spark of will, he continued to think.
As his right eye drifted away into glowing embers, his left eye stared intently into the distance, engrossed in thought.
If everything did stop…
If that wheel stopped spinning, just to preserve itself, then what would that mean for those bound to that wheel?
The act of consumption, and as a result, life itself, was a hot, bright process that burnt at the world just to persist.
To slow the wheel meant to slow life itself, to halt it meant to stop it entirely. Was that his truth?
This world needed destruction, it needed change, to continue functioning. Even if it meant an inevitable doom.
A lathe spins and enacts transformation upon whatever it touches. It grinds away, but it creates beauty in the process.
No matter what transformations that were undergone, however, the arrow only pointed in one direction. So many had died to fuel his cultivation to the point that it had risen to today, an amount much more significant than the Qi he held within him, and even as he died, that amount would become lesser and lesser throughout his successors.
And so what?
If the lathe being stilled meant that power wouldn't do anything at all, it would be infinitely worse.
And for that matter, if it had never spun, Amaranth wouldn't have been able to get to where he had in the first place.
Amaranth would become the one that turned the wheel. It might be only for a little bit, but the wheel continued because of the sum of those small acts.
As a crumbling arm continued to reach upwards, another hand firmly grasped down to meet it, offering liberation.
***
The turtle observed the broken body of the man, no, of that
thing on the ground. It just barely clung to life, reduced to little more than a withered mortal husk on the ground. Good. This wasn't the least bit of repayment for that sin it dared parade around, but it was a start.
As he descended upon the fool's head, ready to snap it with his jaws in two, the turtle saw its lips twitch. A few last words, perhaps?
It was a soft, almost crackling noise, but only air rushed past its lips, lacking the strength to even form words.
Not like it mattered much. The jaws began to close, and—
A noise finally came out.
"...Thank you." A hand came at slow, pathetic, mortal speeds to touch the turtle, almost as if it was going to pet the shell. Even so, his instincts blared, and he leaped backwards.
The figure rose up, hunched over, the stump of its arm bleeding lifeblood. There shouldn't have been enough Qi left inside of its vessel to continue to sustain itself, and yet, the husk stood, like some sort of twisted undead abomination.
With a brief effort of thought to focus its senses, the turtle made what the thing would've thought as a surprisingly human reaction if it had been more cognizant, and double-taked.
There was
no Qi in that body. In fact, there was little distinguishing it from the rocks and sand that surrounded him other than the fact that even they had a small, but still present, level of Qi from the beasts that walked through them.
Even the threads of Fate circled around the figure, instead of touching it directly, a hole in the world itself.
An abomination.
As such, it needed to be exterminated.
Grey clouds billowed out, whipping up high winds from their sheer speed of release that buffeted the sands in a ring. Droplets of rain the size of entire towns fell from the sky, as if entire lakes had been scooped out of the earth.
As it fell, the winds chilled the water, slowing ripples down until they stopped, glittering like great jewels in the sky, that grew larger, and larger, and larger, casting a shadow over the figure on the earth.
As if nothing had happened, it continued, staring right through the falling colossus as if it didn't even exist. "Oh, such inspiration! What beautiful, gorgeous inspiration." The eyes of that thing were actively frantic now, words spilling from its mouth like a flood bursting past its lips. "I've been missing it all along. Destruction, consumption? I only viewed it from one side. But you, in your glorious, brilliant beneficence, deigned to show me the truth of the matter."
Suddenly, as if the thought only came to its mind right then, the figure grinned.
"Let me share it with you."
And then, in a single motion, even as icebergs fell on the man with apocalyptic force, piling up like a child stacking flat pebbles on the side of a lake, the figure walked straight through, and touched the shell.
The world twisted inwards.
***
Unknown to Amaranth, that hand had moved past defenses that had been woven into the bones of the world he stood on tens of millions of years ago. Laws that declared "I shall not be touched", "All that harm me face ninefold vengeance", and "my power shall doom all those who seek to grasp it without my Will", among a manifold of other edicts, for even a fragment of fragment of the fragment of the Lingering Will of a being so infinitely greater than himself was afforded those protections.
But there was one fact that stood above all, and it was that the Dao, and only the Dao, could stand above certainties when the moment was right.
First, all would be touched eventually, for even the Turtle would dissipate in time, and in fact, was in the slow, slow process of doing so already as Wills cannot recover. If it wasn't for that one fact, even this miracle wouldn't have sufficed.
Second, it was inevitable that Amaranth would be consumed, so reflecting that ninefold didn't mean particularly much.
Third, well, that part would take some time to reveal itself.
***
Amaranth could feel his newly grasped insights leave him steadily as the turtle roared and thrashed around, disincorporating and streaming into his mouth in a flood of smoke as ice melted into water that furiously boiled away from the aftershock of the struggle. But there always had to be a trade, for things like this.
He had been the strongest he had ever been for that moment, and he wasn't sure if he'd ever reach that point ever again. But, if he held onto that rock solid certainty for one second longer, Amaranth would have surely been consumed by it himself.
As Qi began to flood his body again from the turtle inside of his chest, his body once again obeyed the Laws of the world, slumping down from his injuries.
His meridians were clogged, acupoints barely visible to his shattered spiritual sense, and his dantian had taken one hell of a beating, though thankfully it still remained enlarged from his ministrations close to two centuries ago.
Any semblance of bodily or spiritual purity, though, was thoroughly torn to pieces.
Despite that fact, he weakly smiled.
This wasn't quite how he expected to be making his Single Pillar, but it'd have to do.
The roaring Lightning of Heaven rushed through his meridians, clearing the impurity of Earth to return it to where it had been so long ago, filling up with the Qi that had floated aimlessly beforehand.
The First Heavenstage.
As more Qi and Qi flowed, digging through well traced channels that had become packed with silt, his Acupoints flickered to full view again, and once again became repositories of Qi, the hallmark of proper time taken at the Third.
Even as he did this, Qi gushed out from the ruptured meridians on the stump of his arm and his leg, which was hardly ideal, but he was working with a surplus of energy.
Besides, the natural direction of the flow made clearing his meridians easier than he had remembered, even when the blood from that Core Elder had landed onto him. It turned out that wasting some Qi gave it more thrust than it otherwise would for scrubbing jobs like these. Who knew?
Finally, as he breathed inwards, his dantian finally filled to its peak.
The natural limit was the Ninth Heavenstage for a reason, he supposed.
With a rush of nostalgia, he felt the channels inside of his body flood their banks, cleansing out pockets of impurities inside of his flesh and bone. It had taken eighty years since he had reached the Ninth to attain this stage, which Amaranth had later realized was because of his shaky foundations. It felt almost a bit petty, considering he was doing the rough equivalent to tracing in the lines in a drawing book, but being able to complete it moments after still felt wonderful.
In a step, Qi followed, slowly condensing back to a fragment of the density of the Turtle's own power, not increasing in quantity but gaining the unmistakable doubled intensity of the Eleventh. With it, the bond between the soul and the body snapped back into place with an intensity that even surpassed how it was before, for it was through tests like these that were the true way to make it stronger.
It had been in the Xin Kingdom where Amaranth had been able to make that particular breakthrough, six decades after he had first burnt out his bloodline. He had been resting on his laurels since then, he had to admit, and it was only then that Amaranth's ambitions had re-ignited. That fateful day, where he had reached past the limits of his body
The thread vibrated for a moment, sending nausea through his body that he easily fought off, bringing up memories from a certain lecture. "You were… you were right all along, weren't you Gaius? It really was as simple as that."
The final Keystone was almost casual in comparison.
All the work had been done. The only thing needed was the Qi to fill the gap. Even as it did, however, he instinctively felt that the result was a faded copy of what he had once held.
It wasn't truly Qi that gave the Thirteenth Heavenstage its power. It should have been clear to Amaranth earlier, but he only truly realized that now. It had been, and always had been, the touch of the Dao.
As his body finally filled to the point that even with jets of shimmering, bizarrely vibrant gray flooding out of his arm and leg to release pressure, he felt a tight strain inside of his body.
This should be enough.
Now, it was time to build.
***
The turtle gnashed its jaw. So this little bastard wanted to teach him something, did it? What a joke.
He had eaten more salt than it had eaten rice. Even the scraps of knowledge that he possessed on that wretched path surpassed what specks of dust it had picked up from rolling around from the dirt
Even constantly drained by the mist-shrouded terrain, even unable to replenish his Qi due to the current nature of his existence, even if most of his knowledge was sealed past his power, and even if he was cut off from support from his greater self, he would prevail.
With a terrible grin on his face, he pointed its flipper upwards. It was done holding back.
Turtle.
Turtle
TURTLE.
Raw Turtle power filled the very air, as its shell blackened, flames peering through the cracks with a baleful aura, for he was not merely a master of Water but—
…Wait, why was there a giant toad falling down—
OW!
Rubbing his nose as he shoved it off, he glared upwards when a hoof took him to the head.
Was that a Terracotta Horse or a Rusted Stone Bull?
How was there even a Nine-Colored Scorpion up there? He could've sworn he rooted those only a few million years ago. Damn, guess he didn't use enough Space Raid.
Alright, he was pretty sure Mountain-Top Camels weren't supposed to be in the Third Sea. He could've sworn that it was a birthday gift to the Fourth. Though, he supposed he couldn't blame that kid for regifting. Not like his old man was any better.
What did that Steelback Gorilla even do to you?!
Slowly but surely, even as the turtle made his best attempts at getting out, he was buried under a sea of bodies, piling up in a much more haphazard tower than the one that he had tried to put Amaranth under, with a few muffled noises coming out of the pile.
Then, a mist gently covered the mass, so it vaguely looked like it was an actual pillar instead of the equivalent of a bunch of clothes thrown into the corner of a room for cleaning up later, and the sound became quiet.
***
At long last, a Dao bloomed from the cracks of a Pillar, consuming away the water that surrounded him, creating a perfect circle of dry land even as fragments of icebergs rushed past him in the rapids formed from the meltwater.
As the air shimmered and buckled under the force of a new King, Amaranth took a moment to record the image on a spiritual jade, while he tried his best to pose as heroically as he thought he could to check out later.
Zeno
was writing an article about this, after all, so really, he was just being a good friend.
Then, Amaranth collapsed, since he had just spent the last dregs of his Qi on a party trick while badly injured.
He would not wake up for seven days.
