The setting sun's glow lingered on the mountain paths, fading into the evening mist as Lin Feng carried Meixiu toward rest, their quiet banter fading into the evening mist. But elsewhere in the Celestial Sword Pavilion, the training of other disciples had already begun in earnest - those who could feel qi moving through their meridians advancing to more profound lessons under their masters' watchful eyes.
At Thousand Threads Peak, the air shimmered like disturbed water as Yan Lihua stood at the center of the training grounds. Her lavender robes fluttered without wind, the fabric rippling as if caught in an unseen current. Before her, the very world bent—the training ground fractured into a nightmare realm of living reflections. Disciples screamed as their own doppelgängers stepped from mirrors of distorted air, each copy moving with eerie precision three seconds before its original. One young cultivator drew his sword only for his reflection to plunge the blade into his chest a breath before he could strike—an illusion of pain so real he collapsed gasping.
Elder Xiu observed from the shadows, her blindfolded face tilted just so. Her fingers danced, silk threads glinting as they sliced through the warped air. With each precise tug, a distortion unraveled—a screaming reflection silenced, a fractured space mended. The threads hummed as they worked, vibrating with corrections only she could hear. Yan Lihua didn't flinch when one strand brushed her cheek, leaving a thin red line that healed as quickly as it appeared. This was their dance: the prodigy who bent reality, and the master who stitched the world back together with silent, surgical grace.
The last reflection dissipated with a sound like shattering glass. The disciples lay panting on the now-calm ground, their faces pale with residual terror. Yan Lihua exhaled, and the air settled around her like a sigh. Somewhere far below, a single lantern flickered to life in the gathering dark—a tiny point of warmth against the coming night.
But not every disciple on Thousand Threads Peak was a master of elegance and nightmare.
At the opposite end of the same training ground, Mu Xiaohua stood trembling, her honey-blonde pigtails quivering with nervous energy as she clutched her singed plush tiger, Master Huahua, to her chest.
"Focus," Elder Xiu's voice cut through the girl's concentration, sharper now than it had been with her prodigy. "Your qi is not a flood to be unleashed. It is a thread to be guided."
Xiaohua nodded vigorously, causing her crooked jade badge to swing wildly. She extended a shaking hand, peach-colored eyes screwed shut in determination. A wisp of qi flickered at her fingertips—unrefined but present, the energy spiraling like a clumsy dancer. Across the field, one of Yan Lihua's mirrored illusions briefly turned polka-dotted before reverting.
Elder Xiu's lips thinned. One of her silk threads lashed out, not to correct but to demonstrate—the strand glowing faintly as it traced the proper meridians in the air before Xiaohua. "Like this. Not a stampede. A whisper."
Xiaohua bit her lip, trying again. This time, the qi formed a shaky but coherent strand that wove between her fingers—for three glorious seconds before Master Huahua's remaining ear caught fire.
"Ah! Not again!" She panicked, smothering the plush against her robes as Elder Xiu sighed, silk threads darting to extinguish the minor blaze.
In the distance, Yan Lihua paused her own training to watch, her perfect lips curving in the barest hint of amusement. Xiaohua, noticing the attention, turned crimson and nearly tripped over her own oversized sleeves.
"You're thinking too hard," Elder Xiu adjusted her blindfold, the motion weary but not unkind. "Qi responds to instinct, not desperation." She flicked a thread, righting Xiaohua before she could faceplant. "Again."
Xiaohua nodded, hugging Master Huahua tighter for courage. The plush's single button eye gleamed in the fading light as if to say: You've got this. Somewhere above, the first stars blinked awake, bearing silent witness to the slow, stumbling path of an accidental prodigy.
Elder Xiu's threads flickered once more, snuffing out the last ember from Xiaohua's plush. A weary sigh escaped her lips, though her blindfolded face betrayed nothing. For a moment, Thousand Threads Peak fell quiet, filled only with Xiaohua's uneven breaths.
Yet elsewhere in the Pavilion, silence was not mercy but trial.
At Dream Blade Peak, where the late afternoon sun slanted through the ancient banyan trees, the Phantom Twins stood motionless before Elder Yue. Their white hair gleamed like fresh-spun silk in the golden light, their shared shadow stretching long and lean across the polished marble tiles.
"Begin," Elder Yue murmured, their voice soft as wind through dry grass.
Jin Lei and Jin Mei spoke as one, their voices overlapping perfectly. "We hear and obey." Their shadow twitched—a fraction before Elder Yue's wooden sword flashed out in a testing strike. The twins moved in perfect sync, dodging what hadn't yet happened, their bodies reacting to their own shadow's movements rather than the attack itself.
Elder Yue's mismatched eyes gleamed. They shifted stance, and the twins' shadow split—suddenly there were two versions of it, each mimicking a different combat form. The real twins stumbled, their eerie harmony breaking for the first time as their own shadow divided against them.
"Focus," Elder Yue intoned, their blade tracing slow circles in the air. "Your gift is a mirror, not a weapon. To master it, you must first face yourselves."
The twins' shared shadow warped, twisting into a loop where it fought against its own movements—an endless, impossible duel of reflection versus reflection. Sweat beaded on their identical brows as they struggled to parse the chaos, their usual perfect synchronicity fracturing under the strain.
Somewhere in the gardens below, a sparrow froze mid-hop, as if the very air had stilled around them. The twins panted, their movements growing sluggish, their unified shadow now a tangled knot of conflicting impulses. Elder Yue watched, their expression unreadable, as their newest disciples learned the first real lesson of Dream Blade Peak:
Even mirrors must eventually break before they can see clearly.
The Phantom Twins struggled, their unity fraying as their shared shadow writhed against itself. Elder Yue lowered their blade, the illusory world melting back into sun-dappled marble. For a heartbeat, Dream Blade Peak lay hushed, the twins bent over their own fractured reflections while the sparrow below finally completed its hop.
Yet not every trial in the Pavilion was born of mirrors and whispers. Some peaks did not test the mind with illusions but the body with pain.
At Iron Tear Peak, the late evening sun burned low in the sky, casting long shadows across the bloodstained training grounds. The air carried the metallic tang of scorched earth and sweat as Elder Ru stood like a crimson-armored sentinel between her two disciples. Shafts of golden light glinted off the sweat-slicked skin of Shui Daiyu as she raised a trembling hand to her lips, the Kingmaker's Venom dripping from the needle-sharp fang of a spirit serpent.
"Now," Elder Ru commanded, her voice like grinding stone.
Shui Daiyu's silver eyes burned with fierce determination as she pressed the fang to her forearm. The effect was immediate - her pale skin turned translucent as mountain ice, revealing the dark network of veins beneath as they pulsed with corrupted qi. A choked laugh escaped her lips as the hallucinations began, her pupils dilating until only thin rings of silver remained. Blue-green scales rippled along her spine in instinctive defense.
"Focus through the poison," Elder Ru barked, circling her shuddering disciple. "Your clan's blood makes you resistant, not immune. Mold it. Control the corrosion before it controls you."
Nearby, Feng Yan watched with uncharacteristic solemnity, her usual flamboyant silks replaced by simple training robes. Elder Ru turned to her, tossing a jade tablet that glowed with faint inscriptions. "You lack the poison tolerance. So we build your foundation differently. The Jade Body technique - layer your qi like armor between skin and bone."
As Shui Daiyu fought to contain the venom's spread through her meridians, her body alternately flushing and paling, Feng Yan began the painstaking process of weaving protective qi through her flesh. The contrast between them was stark - where Shui Daiyu's training was a violent battle against invading toxins, Feng Yan's was an exercise in meticulous construction, each breath layering another invisible shield beneath her skin.
Elder Ru moved between them like a battlefield surgeon, her armored fingers making precise adjustments - pressing pressure points along Shui Daiyu's shuddering arms to guide the venom's path, then demonstrating the proper wrist angles for Feng Yan's qi circulation. The slanting sunlight painted the three women in molten bronze - one writhing in controlled agony, one meditating with uncharacteristic focus, and the master who stood unwavering between them.
"Again," Elder Ru ordered. Neither disciple complained. This was the path of body cultivation - not the flashy sword techniques of other peaks, but the slow, brutal forging of flesh into fortress. And under Elder Ru's merciless tutelage, fortress they would become.
The sun sank lower, across Iron Tear Peak where Elder Ru's disciples endured agony in silence, their bodies slowly reforged into fortresses of flesh and will.
But not all training in the Celestial Sword Pavilion was built on blood and venom. Some lessons were hidden in laughter, imbalance, and the taste of wine.
At Drunken Sword Peak, where the scent of fermented plums hung heavy in the late afternoon air, Jian Nian stood alone in a courtyard littered with empty wine jars. The mute disciple clutched the worn manual Elder Bao had tossed at him earlier - "Eight Cups, One Sword: Beginner Drunken Forms" - its pages stained with what smelled suspiciously like actual liquor.
He opened the manual carefully, his scarred palms tracing the erratic brushstrokes that depicted swaying forms and lurching footwork. The illustrations seemed to dance before his eyes, each stance more unbalanced than the last. Setting his jaw, Jian Nian picked up his practice sword and attempted the first form.
His body moved with its usual lethal precision - the exact opposite of what the technique demanded. Where the manual called for loose, stumbling footwork, his steps automatically corrected into perfect balance. When the form required a deliberately sloppy grip, his fingers instinctively tightened into textbook perfection.
A nearby wine barrel suddenly burst open as Elder Bao's laughter echoed across the courtyard. "Hah! Little mute cabbage, you're too sober!" The rotund elder took another swig from his gourd before tossing it at Jian Nian's feet. "Drink first, then practice. The sword follows the body, the body follows the wine!"
Jian Nian stared at the gourd, then at the manual's warning: "Three cups to loosen the limbs, five to cloud the mind, eight to find the truth." His battle-scarred fingers flexed uncertainly. This went against every instinct beaten into him by years of disciplined training.
Yet when he finally took a cautious sip, the fire that burned down his throat carried an unexpected warmth. The second sip made the world soften at the edges. By the third, the manual's chaotic brushstrokes suddenly made sense - not as random drunken scrawls, but as the erratic patterns of a leaf caught in the wind.
His next attempt at the form was still terrible - his usually perfect balance now frustratingly elusive as his feet tangled beneath him. But for the first time, when he stumbled, it felt intentional. When his sword wavered, it traced an unpredictable arc that might have been genius or might have been luck.
Elder Bao's approving chuckle carried on the plum-scented breeze as Jian Nian fell flat on his back, staring up at the swirling clouds. The mute disciple's normally stoic face cracked into something almost resembling a smile. Perhaps there was wisdom in learning to fall before one could truly dance.
Jian Nian collapsed in the courtyard of Drunken Sword Peak, the taste of wine lingering like fire on his tongue. Elder Bao's laughter rolled over him, booming and carefree, as the mute disciple lay on his back staring at the sky—learning, for the first time, that falling could also be a form of flight.
Yet beyond the haze of plum wine and laughter, silence stretched its dominion across the highest ridges. The Pavilion was vast, its peaks each holding a different philosophy, and not all of them were forgiving. Where Drunken Sword Peak taught chaos, another taught control so absolute that even the clouds dared not move.
At Veiled Silence Peak, the fading light painted the training grounds in shades of molten gold and deepening blue. Elder Lan stood alone at the center of the black marble expanse, her bare feet leaving no impression on the frost-laced stone. The wooden practice sword in her hand seemed an extension of her arm—no, an extension of the mountain itself—its unremarkable surface humming with restrained power.
She moved without preamble.
The first strike was a whisper, the blade cutting upward in a line so pure it seemed to divide the world. Ice shards burst from the ground in its wake, crystalline spears shooting skyward with such precision they might have been measuring the heavens. They hung there, suspended, glittering like a constellation of frozen stars.
The second strike came slower, deliberate. As the sword arced downward, the very air crystallized around it, forming a bridge of frost that shattered the moment the blade completed its path. Each falling shard dissolved before touching the ground, becoming mist that swirled around her ankles like obedient spirits.
Her third movement was not a strike at all, but a pause—the sword tip hovering at the exact point where all lines of force converged. The suspended ice shards trembled. The mountain held its breath. For one impossible instant, the clouds above seemed to freeze in their endless journey, pinned in place by the sheer will radiating from that single point of wood and intent.
Then she exhaled, and the world remembered how to move. The ice shards fell like dying comets, vanishing before they could mar the perfect black marble. The wooden sword returned to her side, its surface now rimed with patterns of frost that curled like living vines before slowly fading.
The wooden sword stilled in her grip, its rough grain humming with residual energy. Elder Lan's breath fogged the air before her, each exhale crystallizing into tiny, perfect fractals that hung suspended for a heartbeat before vanishing. Her pale eyes tracked the last fading ice shards as they dissolved into the twilight, their ephemeral existence mirroring the thoughts crystallizing in her mind.
'Born prodigies master qi circulation in weeks. Exceptional talents grasp it in days.'
Her fingers flexed around the hilt, feeling the subtle vibrations of the mountain's energy through the unremarkable wood.
'He understood it in moments. As if his meridians were carved for this purpose long before he ever stepped foot on this peak.'
Without looking up, without even a shift in posture, she flicked the wooden sword upward in a motion almost too casual to be called a technique. The air screamed.
A blade of pure frost energy tore through the sky, shattering every cloud in its path. The heavens themselves seemed to crack open as the vaporized remains of the clouds rained down as diamond dust, glittering in the last rays of sunset. For one breathtaking moment, the entire sky stood empty - a vast, unobstructed canvas of deepening blue stretching endlessly above the mountain peaks.
'No precedents in the archives. No warnings in the ancient texts.' Her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly as the diamond dust settled soundlessly around her. 'Just... absence. A cultivation path with no footprints to follow.'
The final light of evening fell unobstructed now, painting the training grounds in liquid gold. With deliberate precision, she sheathed the practice sword. The motion sent a final ripple through the settling diamond dust, each glittering particle freezing midair for an instant before continuing its descent.
Somewhere beyond the peak's edge, the wind carried the faintest echo of laughter - too distant to be truly heard, but present nonetheless in the way the remaining frost shivered at its passing. The mountain held its silence, but the questions remained, sharp as the ice still melting from her blade.
'What have I set loose upon this mountain?'
The thought carried neither fear nor regret - only the weight of inevitability. 'And what will he become when he learns to wield what already obeys him?'
The first stars blinked awake in the now-clear sky as she turned toward the pavilion, her shadow stretching long and lean across marble that remembered every step. Night deepened its hold on the peaks, and somewhere in its embrace, the void stirred.
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