“Is that your limit, boy?” The statue asked, smiling with teeth of translucent jade.

  I pushed myself to my feet, staring warily at the old ghost inhabiting the statue.

  “Oh, don’t be like that. If you want to inherit our legacy — and my power — my scepter — you can’t be weak.”

  The golem retreated back to the start position, still smiling.

  I walked up to it more warily this time. When he shot forward, I met his blade and parried. When he punched, I shifted our blades, pushing the stone golem back despite the difference in our weight. The black of anti-light qi sheathed my blade.

  “Why is this technique able to manifest qi in the Third Realm?” I asked.

  “Oh, that? Any paltry middle grade technique can do that.” Old Ghost said. His voice was deep and gravelly coming out of the statue’s throat. “Still, the girl being able to learn that power and integrate it into the magic of Ludus Arbor… the Vascaran Scion’s are as terrifying as ever.”

  The statue shoved me back. We traded ten blows. I expected them to ring through the room, but they were dead silent where our blades met, the Anti-Light element of my blade reducing even sound to nothing.

  “You’re not going to get through me fighting like that.” The statue smiled.

  My mind was moving. Analyzing every strike, defensive, ready for his trick attacks, blocking each blow. My heart race. There was a feeling sparking to life inside me that had been dead for so long. But I felt at least a little responsibility.

  I stepped back, holding my blade in a guard.

  “Where did you send her?” I asked.

  “She’s safe. I sent her ahead to a small scenario. You’ve been aiming too low. I picked something deadlier.”

  “She didn’t agree to that.” I said. “This entire legacy makes every scenario the choice of the participant. That can be no accident.”

  We circled each other as we spoke. I had no doubt that the moment I revealed a weakness, Old Ghost would pounce.

  “You said it yourself, didn’t you? A good cultivator must be greedy. You cannot protect her from herself. And for you… I can see it in your eyes. But not in the way you fight. You’ve lost the arrogance you need to carry yourself. You fight like a mortal. Show me that you can be a proper inheritor, Feng Sai. Show me the power of a man who would become immortal.”

  The moment his foot extended an inch beyond where it had before, I raced forward. So did he. I swung even as I ducked. His sword cut the air above my head with a rush of air.

  Fire bloomed in my heart. A smile crossed my face. My blade bit into stone.

  The golem kicked me away. When I pushed myself up, I was spitting sand. Multiple feelings warred within me. I wanted to fight him. I wanted to beat him. I knew I could.

  We fought for what felt like seconds and what could have been hours, dancing around each other. Old Ghost fought with exactly enough power to match me. It must have taken another hundred blows before I landed a second strike on him.

  He kicked me away with the same prejudice. I looked up, hungry now for more. The smile couldn’t leave my face. I needed this. I needed to defeat him.

  But to my shock and disappointment, he came no closer.

  “What is it that you want, Feng Sai? Why do you cultivate?”

  Slowly, almost too slow to be discernible, the statue was changing, warped by the presence of Old Ghost inhabiting it. It took on features that I knew to be his. Features that had warped the face of Jian Yi.

  Most cultivators who looked old were fools and weaklings. But I could sense he wasn’t. This was a cultivator who had stood over the world in life. And he wore his wrinkles with dignity.

  “I am the Prince of the Iron Mountain.” I said, standing with my blade readied. “I was born to be immortal.”

  “You believed that once, too.” The golem’s face turned into a sneer. The sneer stayed there, frozen into the stone. “Try again.”

  The statue shot forward far faster than it had the previous times. I blocked, but only barely. Its blade pushed my own until it neared my neck. I stared in horror at the sneer frozen into the stone. The Old Ghost spoke without moving his mouth.

  He pulled back, his blade singing where it slid against my own. The black qi had faltered in my hasty block.

  When the statue’s blade turned black, it was nothing like mine. My own radiated darkness, swallowed all light, and reflected nothing. But Old Ghost’s blade was a hole in the world. The sheer magnitude of knowledge contained in his execution of the technique was larger than the room; larger than the Feng Empire; larger than the world.

  For a brief moment, there was nothing but that sword.

  Then it passed through my stomach.

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  The world turned black.

  The statue’s face moved like a humans, expression vivid and living, sweat slicking stone-skin.

  “You are still playing around. Solder has broken through a section of the labyrinth. Speed. Up.”

  He was gone. I was on my knees, gasping for air, and finding none; there was no sound, just the cold against my knees. Seconds stretched into minutes. The wound in my stomach didn’t bleed; it didn’t even hurt. It was a cold nothingness.

  Why did I want power? Why did I want to cultivate again?

  It was no longer for the greed of my youth or the arrogance of my birthright.

  I rebuild Sandgrave to take my destiny into my own hands; to change the lives of so many mortals like Fang whose lives were crushed beneath the wheels of a machine more massive than they could comprehend.

  I had a new greed and a new arrogance; that I could change the world. I looked up with determination. I knew what my truth was. I knew my reason to cultivate, to accumulate power. It was why I had built Sandgrave, why I had split apart from the sect entirely. I opened my mouth.

  The pitch black void around me broke.

  Then I was on the ground of the scenario room, panting. The golem was on the other side of the room, not the green jade golem, but the smooth gray stone.

  I grabbed at my stomach. There was a hole through the front of my robes, but my flesh was unmarred.

  The only other sign of what had happened was the sneer stuck on the golems face, and the door behind it. It opened into the warping, bubbling black of another scenario.

  “You run out of power?” I asked, looking up the ceiling. “I… I wasn’t done.” My voice grew quieter at the end. The hunger inside of me died down.

  My eyes locked onto the sneer on the golem’s face.

  The arrogance of a cultivator.

  I needed more.

  I used [Appraisal] on the wall of boiling black behind the golem.

  [Level 20 Challenge Room Portal]

  Poppy was in danger. I had pushed her onto this path of cultivation and taken her into these challenges. Even if she had only received some minor instruction from me, I had taken a single step as her teacher. My honor demanded that I protect her at minimum to the dangers I had exposed her to.

  And even if it didn’t, I needed that power for myself.

  I freed my sword again and approached the golem.

  [Level 20 Scenario]

  [Objective: Survive]

  [Heaven’s Crest will fall; the city will be unmade, but the sect of the Bent Peak will survive. Retreat from the wall and survive within the keep of Heaven’s Crest. You are the leader of a team of Outer Disciple cultivators assigned to hold the West Wall. The wall will fall. You must survive.]

  [Warning: This scenario has been altered by a grade 0 authority object. Local time has been accelerated to dangerous levels. Spacial warping detected.]

  From Poppy’s perspective, it had been an entire day since she last saw Feng Sai. She was currently sitting astride the two surviving members of her team, an open wound on her left arm bandaged as the three of them camped in the basement of a building.

  Poppy had never seen anything like the monsters that overran this city. Each one of them were monsters in their own right.

  “We have to move soon.” Poppy said. “This section of the city will be entirely overwhelmed in a moment.”

  Her two subordinates were doing worse than her. One of the two seemed ready to pass out at any moment. He had lost blood when a bird whose feathers seemed to be made of metal dove into them, cutting them open. They had all taken wounds from it before felling it.

  Poppy wasn’t doing much better. Weariness was settling into her bones. But that was exactly why she had to push herself further. She had been equipped with the arms and armor of Heaven’s Crest cultivators. She even had one of their cores.

  “We should stay here and hunker down.” Yan, one of her two subordinates, suggested. He was more awake and less injured. “It’s our best option. The city is crawling with spiritbeasts.”

  “Is that reason or cowardice?” Poppy asked, squinting at the man. He couldn’t have been real. But they felt so real. Acted so real. Cried when their comrades died. Called out to her for help.

  Most of Poppy’s team was already lost.

  “Do not think to call me a coward!” Yan said. He didn’t raise his voice, but it gained a dangerous edge. He leaned forward. “There are hundreds of spiritbeasts overrunning the mortal city. Even if we’ve killed many, how many more can we kill? We’re out of qi, pinned and alone. Reinforcements are not coming. The Sect has abandoned us; they hold the walls of the Sect and not this city of… of mortals.” He spat the last word.

  Poppy leaned back and sighed. Yan made a good point. They needed to recover qi. The issue didn’t affect her as much; after converting the cultivation into [Skills], the system seemed to substitute some amount of qi for mana.

  “You’re right that we need to rest.” Poppy said. All of them kept their voices down; the streets above crawled with monsters hunting any human survivors. She was grimly resigned to this. There was one thing that she was gaining out of this, at least.

  She had gained three levels since the start of this scenario.

  She looked down at her finger. The scenario had taken away every piece of equipment. Including the cursed ring of the Bleeding Crown. She closed her hand into a fist. Feng Sai’s words came back to her.

  She needed to be greedy.

  A stray thought echoed through her. Maybe she shouldn’t try to complete the scenario at all. The spiritbeasts rewarded so much experience that each one pushed her forward faster than dozens of goblins.

  All it cost was her subordinates lives.

  “We rest and recover. Then we head for the sect.” She said.

  Her second subordinate — the one beside Yan — had passed out. He was pale as a ghost against the wall.

  Despite the sneer on the golem’s face, it fought the same way it had against Poppy. With my blade cloaked in darkness, I met its sword. Each exchange made no sound, the power of anti-light suffocating all noise.

  Our blades met in five blows as we each mirrored the Anti-Light sword style. After the fifth, the golem accelerated.

  Compared to before, it was nothing.

  The rush that filled me competing with the golem controlled by that venerable monster was no where to be seen. Our fight was hollow without the challenge, empty of progression.

  The entire time, with a cloak of black suffocating the edge of my blade, I could only think of how my own execution of the technique was a pale imitation of Old Ghost’s; he had comprehended the sword on a level that I could only aspire to.

  Darkness blazed off the edge of the blade, turning into vapor that trailed away. I tightened my technique, bending, shaping, refining, and solidifying it. Less and less mist extended from the edge of the blade with each impact.

  After the 10th exchange, it accelerated again.

  I saw a height above me. One that I could grasp.

  On the fifteenth strike, the golem’s blade failed to stop mine. The vapor leaking from my blade was gone.

  My blade passed through the sword of the golem without stopping. The metal tip of the sword and the stone head of the golem hit the ground together. I was panting. Anti-Light qi burned in my meridians; I had compressed it farther than ever before, almost to the point of being solidified in my meridians.

  My dantian was empty; all of the power I had was roiling through my arms. I had to maintain careful control of the technique, slowly winding the qi back into my core before dismissing it, less it dissipate into my arms.

  I sheathed the sword and stepped into the portal without any more hesitation.

  [Scenario complete!]

  [Generating rewards…]

  [Damaged Spirit Repair Progress: 25%]

  [Legacy Authority Two Progress: 20%]