A quiet wind blew over the park, as he walked through its lovely embrace, dark and deep. The trees stood their lonely watches, fissured bark running up to heavenward embrace— embracing, as the heavens leant down and in turn brushed the fingers of mist and fog through its highest reaches, the gloam of emerald canopy. An ivy of some sort ran alongside him, jumping over the rumpled earth past the pathside, and diving amongst the pine-detritus and fallen leaves, scattered by wind and thrown about, and leaping— up those pillar trees, to climb and bloom and luxuriate in the light so joyously. So simply, not understanding the depth of the world around it.

  Then again, Mingtian couldn’t help but think as he watched the small island of nature he stood within abound about him, constrained to mortality as he was, it wasn’t like he could understand the totality of things either. The profound connections at the heart of it all, the immortal cycles that governed the turning of the world… in almost every way that mattered, they escaped him. Of himself, all himself— at least and only his domain remembered, but he was his domain— boundless and inescapable radiance knew the whole of its vast purview.

  A city. He stood in the center of a park, alone, in the center of a city, one amongst untold millions. It was only now that he found himself bereft of the little projects he’d taken upon himself— for Avyr, for Lily, for himself most of all, to play the role of the hidden master imparting heavenly knowledge, that he found out how little the mortal really was. He couldn’t even cultivate, the sole sure-fire thing to do when bored, because mortals didn’t cultivate. Only a few weeks, and he was already bored out of his mind. Time passed so fast when everyone around him acted as though each and every moment was… momentous.

  He stepped off the path, stepping shortly through the light underbrush until he reached— at last— a very familiar area. He smiled lightly at the scene— could not but smile, even as he observed the first echoes of nature’s reclamation. The packed dirt remained more or less the same, though a few weeds had started to grow within its bounds; the grass around it had gotten a little overgrown, taking advantage of the summer’s last lushness and the lack of impetuous interlopers, once present, now gone.

  He stepped forward, remembering his own childhood, back when he’d been mortal for the very first time. It had been so utterly different from his current existence. He remembered… so much chaos, so much panic, all the stuff he’d put his mind and whole self to, against, as though they’d been the most important thing in the world. An ethos he’d taken with himself all the way through his rise to the peak of the Heavenly Realm, actually…

  He wondered when he’d lost it. Standing at the very center-pivot of the circle, unmoving, barely even breathing as the gentle heat of summer washed over him and the quiet wind whispered, and the strange four-winged birds twittered and chirped and sang their people’s songs, he remembered—

  It hadn’t been all at once.

  It hadn’t even been purposeful. Of course it wouldn’t have been. It had merely been…

  Meaningless.

  He breathed out, shifting his stance ever so slightly— adopting the Rising Golden Crane, remembering the ones who’d held so strongly to that method, even when the world around them had changed so violently… it was a fond memory, almost. Maybe he’d visit them after he was done with this whole hidden master in a lower realm thing— what with them being one of the preeminent factions in a Heavenly Realm, it was entirely possible that they’d survived the immense expanse of eons since his ascension to Immortal Sovereign. Possibly.

  Second stance. The kata of the Rising Golden Crane were sublime in their perfection. A Peak Divine technique, designed for mortals— there was no wonder they’d made such a name for themselves in the Heavenly Realm. Third stance. Perfect balance, perfect force, a golden afterimage overlaying his punch as the very qi of heaven and earth sought eagerly to copy even an attenuated fraction of divinity. Fourth stance. It was said, in the parts of the Heavenly Realm where the Rising Golden Crane clan were famous, that each stance mastered would bring heavenly enlightenment to the practitioner. That wasn’t the case— though for someone able to truly grasp the fundamental essence of its foundation, enlightenment was sure to follow— but it was a remarkably potent cultivation aid. In imitating divinity, so did one become divine.

  Fifth stance. Rising, leaping— pushing off from the ground, buoyed up by some impossible power— and falling, like a meteor descending, wreathed in golden qi as the world resonated with him, and the wind about him flickered and thrashed and burned with heavenly inspiration—

  He hit the ground like a meteor, a whump of force echoing over the clearing as he blasted a small crater into the ground— and just stood there, then, panting heavily as his mortal body recovered from the sudden exertion he’d put it through. To no applause, to no awe— to nothing, but the still tremulous wind, and the far off city sound, and his own heartbeat.

  No point. No reason. He didn’t even know what he was doing. Heaving a sigh, he sat down heavily, flicking his hand in a silent gesture and drawing a formation out of nothing to repair the training ground. No point leaving it in worse condition than he’d found it in— that’d just be disrespectful, of course. Then… he simply sat back, closed his eyes, and grasped at the sunlight around him. It responded gleefully— he responded gleefully, for the sunlight was as much him as he was the sunlight. His domain was perfect, and immense, and… words could not fully do it justice. To touch upon it in the body of a mortal… it felt almost more like he was touching on mortality with the edge of something utterly vast and fathomlessly profound. It reminded him of back when he’d first really begun to understand the difference between qi and what lay beyond it.

  With a flick of his will, he wrought runes out of— nothing, essentially, invisible light entangling together into invisible runes, dynamic things written as much in what contained them as their own structure. A stack of cards supporting a stack of cards, supported by a stack of cards, supported by the first stack, all the way around and around in a recursive, echo of perfect creation, all made in the space of a moment. They were formations onto themselves, and yet, in turn, so grand— not merely vast arrays of lesser runes, but something else entirely. One by one he called them into existence, letting them tumble over his metaphysical grip, and drip down into infinitesimally tiny nothingness. Yet, they were not quite nonexistent— instead, reaching the sort of non-being that only the infinitesimal and phantasmal could touch on.

  It was different from Lily’s passion— matured, for one, and comprised of more than just formations alone; all the arts he’d practised over those long eternities. Smithing, formations, and refining; each and every one of them the path of the creator— his sole path, pinnacle and alone amongst everything like it. Still though, in some fundamental way, it was essentially simillar— for though he had never really gotten the chance to share it as such…

  As much as Lily did, he loved to create.

  A tiny clod of earth— no larger than a child’s fist, shivered as a vast amount of ambient qi was funneled into in. Slowly, it began to transform— shedding its cloddy appearance, hissing and bubbling and shattering apart only to come back together, each second by second emerging more lustrous and bright. Swirls of different elemental metals began to shimmer as they were wrenched free from their bonds, brought back to purest form— then, further, a furious heat only contained by his utter dominion over all radiance as he shattered the very atoms themselves, unifying it all into iron of a single birth. It was not Lunar Cold Iron, nor starsteel, nor really anything— if there could even be a name for it— other than what he wanted it to be. A truly blank slate. Primordial.

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  Fresh material for the immortal smith. A rain of new runes cascaded from the sky as he twisted and turned and tempered the metal in front of him, forming it into a long and slender blade. Its whole length was filled with runes so small they appeared not even to be there at all. On its blade, he stamped the characters Sovereign Immortal Crosses Heaven, linking them into a complex interwebbing of…

  Just as he was about to finish, the thought struck him that it was all so pointless. He’d made the blade on a whim, just as he’d practiced the Rising Golden Crane, and it would be destroyed on a whim too. Dourly— heart no longer in the act of creation— he scattered the last few runes he’d been crafting, watching with some bitter sort of satisfaction as the delicate enchantments twisted and curled and snapped in parts, whorls of destruction working through a blade that could have been an immortal’s treasure, had it been completed correctly.

  For a second he thought the blade would shatter completely— and a lesser smith might have— but his work wasn’t that of a lesser smith. It twisted, and buckled in one part until it looked more like a hooked blade than the dagger he’d been making, but the central enchantment held it together. Though, it did look like it read Sovereign Immortal Crosses Laughter, when all was said and done.

  He smiled wryly, and chucked the still-cooling blade into his storage ring. How very fitting…

  For a while longer, he just sat there and so silently contemplated the universe.

  ………

  That’s where Zhihu found him, a few hours later, still sitting on the dirt and staring up at the sky, as though mere mortal eyes would somehow reveal something he’d missed as an Immortal Sovereign. “I’ve been looking all over for you. You didn’t come in to work today.” The sound of leaf-litter crunching underfoot clued him into her arrival before he could even see her— more of a courtesy than anything, really. “You’re a hard man to find when you don’t want to be found. Not very predictable.”

  “Really?” He didn’t even look back at her. That was becoming almost part of their ritual by now— her, the cultivator whose very presence usually demanded respect, and him, the man who refused to give it to her. An odd dichotomy, indeed. “I don’t think I’m all that different than most.”

  She sat down beside him, folding her robe underneath her and settling into languid pose. “You’d be surprised.” And, too, the way that she seemed to become so much more… casual around him. Maybe it was because she clearly assumed that he was also some sort of cultivator, even if she wasn’t exactly sure what kind. Maybe it was because she was just a remarkably casual sort of person, which if what he’d seen over the course of their brief and furtive relationship was accurate, was probably not too far from the truth. Maybe it was something else entirely. “I think that there’s plenty of people who don’t understand just how many things in this world are regular, and how losing even a few of those things mark one as deeply not.”

  “Plenty being me, I take it.”

  “At least you’re smart enough to figure that out yourself.” She snorted, then, the half-laugh taking out most of the tension of the conversation. “I think the most notable thing is that you practically never eat.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I… do, though?”

  “But not with the regularity of someone who has to eat. Not even with the irregularity of someone who’s just bad at taking care of their own health— barring the times you’ve been with others, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you take a single bite.”

  “Have you been watching me?”

  She waved a hand. “Immaterial. The more important part is that your refusal to eat is only one part of the greater picture, no? You don’t eat, you don’t get cold, you don’t complain about the heat… you are almost more a marble statue than a man, when looked at in that respect, differentiated only by all the things that make humanity so very worth-while.”

  “Smart.” It was a slightly begrudging admittance, ultimately. “You don’t understand everything, but… that was clearly well thought out. What stops me from eating satiation pills, though? Or using a formation to keep myself from feeling the bite of cold and blow of heat?” It was Zhihu’s turn to look a bit sheepish, then. “You know that I’m not at all incompetent in those—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Zhihu grimaced, flopping down to her seat with a sigh. “Clearly I didn’t think things through well enough. I finally thought I’d find something you weren’t able to wiggle out of.”

  “Tough luck.” Zhihu just glared at him; he pretended not to notice. “Here.” Slipping his hand inside his pocket, he summoned the dagger he’d made earlier out of his spatial ring. It wasn’t some great treasure— actually, with how horrible it was, it wasn’t the sort of thing he’d usually show to anyone at all, actually— but by some strange whim, he laid it on the ground between them anyways.

  The outer disciple squinted at the knife, running a finger across the scarred inscription. “Laughter transcending immortal sovereign? Pretentious.”

  “You’re reading it the wrong way.”

  “Oh.” She furrowed her brow. “Sovereign immortal transcends laughter? Or, crosses laughter?” She frowned. “I don’t really understand. As in, the jade emperor? It would fit, I suppose— those sorts of myths comport with the older style of writing… more runic, as it were. Did you make this?”

  He hesitated only for a moment before shrugging. “It’s just an old piece of junk I had. You might be able to do more with it. You know, as you’re a cultivator and all.” He was lucky he had plenty of experience controlling his emotions— the urge to smile at how frustrated Zhihu looked in that moment was enormous.

  She snatched it off the ground, rolling smoothly to her feet and adopting a battle stance. “Alright, then. I can’t let down the honor of the Bloody Saffron Sect now, can I?” She held the blade out, arm upraised— “for those who drink the blood of fate— Blood Ink Strike!” A mighty aura of bloody qi swept down to the blade as she swept it down— only for her to yelp and drop the thing, utterly fowling the technique as the qi burst from the blade in several spots.

  This time, he did laugh, as she blushed brightly. After all that talk, too… she looked ridiculous, wringing her slightly bloodied hand out in front of him.

  “That,” she spoke after a short while, kneeling down to pick up the blade— “did not happen. Not at all. You saw nothing.” He just blinked. Slowly. “Heavens damn it all, I can’t believe…” she stared down at the weapon intently— at first more as an excuse not to meet his gaze than anything, then in genuine befuddlement. “This conducts qi well. Almost too well… I can see that it used to be something great. Or that it might have been something great, had it been properly completed… hm, maybe if someone were to attune themselves to it well enough using a refining technique, they would be able to use it properly? Was it once some sort of natural treasure?”

  That was a little unexpected… though, sensible. Robust enchantments like the ones he made, even limited by his current existence, would appear sort of similar to a natural treasure. Of course, it wasn’t like natural treasures materialized as fully formed weapons— usually, for under heaven almost everything was possible— so to think that it was a natural treasure someone had failed to turn into a weapon wasn’t an entirely bad guess. “Maybe. I have my theories.” Mainly, that he was the one who made it, and that it had been made by an Immortal Sovereign playing pretend mortal, but it wasn’t like she would believe him even if he told her, so he kept that to himself. She could come to her own conclusions on what he’d meant.

  “Cool.” She held the knife carefully, slashing at the air a few times before gingerly slipping it into a pouch. “Thank you, truly. It may not be perfect, but it’s certainly a remarkable weapon in more ways than one. You know I was teasing when I asked for help, right?”

  He blinked. She’d… right, that. “I’d honestly forgotten entirely.”

  Zhihu stared at him for a long while, then just laughed. “Of course. Of course…” she giggled. “I should have expected as much, you insufferable man.”

  She was smiling, though.