The years passed like clouds drifting across a mountain sky—slowly, gracefully, but with an inexorable movement toward a destination that Nicholas could sense but not yet see.
Yunyu grew.
Not in the explosive, fifty-second burst of her birth—that was a one-time event, a catching-up of flesh to soul. Her subsequent growth was more measured, more mortal in its pacing, though still accelerated by the standards of the world Nicholas had left behind. A year in the Deva Realm saw her develop as three years might have developed a mortal child. By the time she was five—by the reckoning of the grotto heaven's pulsing sun—she looked ten. By ten, she looked twenty. By fifteen, she was a young woman, her features sharpened into beauty, her body strong and supple from the cultivation exercises that had become her daily routine.
And through it all, Nicholas watched. Waited. Learned.
The question of Yunyu's father had hovered at the edges of his awareness since the moment he realized that Lian was not an ordinary immortal. The mother was powerful—her Qi dense, her cultivation advanced, her knowledge of the grotto heaven's history and hierarchies extensive. But she was not the source of Yunyu's authority. That strange, composite power over clouds and reflections, over mist and light—that came from somewhere else. Someone else.
Yunyu asked about him when she was seven, by the grotto heaven's reckoning. She had reached the stage of Spirit Condensation, her soul gathered and solidified into something more than the diffuse essence of a mortal. The achievement had filled her with pride, and she had run to her mother to share the news.
"Mother," she said, her young face flushed with excitement, "the old man says I have advanced faster than any student he has taught in a century. He says my foundation is strong. He says I have my father's talent."
Lian's expression flickered—a micro-expression that Nicholas, with his fragment-senses, caught and cataloged. Pain. Pride. And something else. Something that might have been fear.
"Your father," Lian said slowly, "is a Divine Immortal. He serves in the Heavenly Court, under the Heavenly Thunder and Universal Salvation True Lord."
Nicholas's attention sharpened. Divine Immortal. That was what the East called beings who used faith to attain immortality. In Nicholas's terminology, a god. A being who had taken the same path as the Olympians, as the Aesir, as the Western pantheons he had absorbed into his Atrium. Not a cultivator who had refined their soul through Qi, but a being who had accumulated faith, who had been elevated by the worship of mortals, who was bound to the very system that Nicholas had spent his existence mastering.
A Thunder God.
"He is called Leigong," Lian continued, her voice soft. "He is high in the celestial hierarchy—not one of the highest, but respected. Feared, even. His authority over thunder and storms is considerable, and his position under the Heavenly Thunder and Universal Salvation True Lord gives him access to the inner circles of power."
Yunyu's eyes widened. "A Thunder God? My father is a Thunder God?"
"He is," Lian said. "And he is... proud. Of you. Of what you have become. He asked me to tell you that he watches from the Heavenly Court, that he is pleased with your progress."
Nicholas felt a surge of something that might have been triumph.
He had hit a jackpot.
Leigong. A Divine Immortal. A Thunder God serving under a disciple of Tongtian—the same Tongtian who had shattered the continents, who had been sealed by his brothers, who was the patron of the dark Maoshan sect. The connections were weaving themselves into a tapestry that Nicholas could almost see.
If Yunyu's father was high in the celestial hierarchy, then Yunyu herself had access. Not now—she was a child, a student, a cultivator in the early stages of her journey. But in time, as she advanced, as she proved herself, the doors would open. The connections would activate. And Nicholas, hidden in her soul, would walk through those doors with her.
He settled in to wait. But patience, he was learning, was easier when the waiting was punctuated by progress.
---
Yunyu advanced.
The old man—whose name, Nicholas learned, was Master Chen, a cultivator of the ninth rank who had been assigned to educate the grotto heaven's young—pushed her hard. He recognized her talent, and he was determined to mold it into something that would bring honor to the Qinfeng Immortal's domain.
The breathing exercises that had seemed so simple in the beginning became complex meditations on the flow of Qi through the body's meridians. The basic techniques for gathering and condensing Qi evolved into sophisticated methods for purifying and strengthening the soul. And through it all, Yunyu excelled.
She reached the Yin Spirit stage at twelve. Her soul, condensed and strengthened, could now separate from her body and travel the grotto heaven freely. She visited the floating mountains that drifted in the distance, the lakes of liquid light that dotted the landscape, the forests of crystalline trees that sang when the wind blew through their branches. Nicholas went with her, seeing the grotto heaven through her eyes, mapping its geography, cataloging its inhabitants.
She reached the Primordial Spirit stage at twenty-two.
The transformation was dramatic but not final. Her Yin Spirit, which had been a pale, ghostly thing, was refined into something more substantial—a bridge between the immaterial and the material, capable of interacting with the physical world in limited ways. She could manifest her Primordial Spirit in the grotto heaven for short periods, could speak to others while her body remained in meditation, could begin to touch the spaces between worlds.
But she was not immortal. Not yet. The Yang Spirit—the final transformation that would make her soul independent of her body, that would grant her eternal life and the ability to wield authority without faith—remained ahead. Master Chen told her that she was on track to reach it within another two decades, perhaps less. Her talent was extraordinary.
Nicholas watched her progress with satisfaction. She was advancing exactly as he had hoped. The Primordial Spirit stage gave her enough power to be noticed, enough status to be valued, but not enough to attract the wrong kind of attention. She was a promising young cultivator, not a threat to anyone.
But the question of her father remained. Leigong did not visit. He did not send messages. He did not acknowledge his daughter's existence in any tangible way. Yunyu, who had grown from a curious child into a proud young woman, began to ask harder questions.
"Why does he not come?" she demanded of her mother, her voice sharp with hurt. "I have reached the Primordial Spirit stage. Surely that is enough to earn his attention?"
Lian's expression was pained. "The Divine Immortals are bound by faith," she said, her voice careful, measured. "They cannot leave the Heavenly Court lightly. Their duties are constant, their responsibilities immense. If Leigong were to abandon his post, even for a moment, the storms would rage unchecked. The world would fall out of alignment. Catastrophes would follow."
Nicholas, listening from within, almost laughed.
He knew the gods. He had been a god for longer than Yunyu had been alive, had ruled a pantheon, had absorbed the authority of beings who had claimed to be essential to the functioning of the cosmos. And he knew, with the certainty of a Fate-weaver reading the threads of reality, that it was a lie.
The gods did not have duties in that way. The world did not need them to maintain its alignment. Storms would rage whether Leigong attended to them or not. The sun would rise whether the Heavenly Court existed or not. The claim that Divine Immortals were essential to the functioning of reality was a fiction—a convenient fiction, perhaps, a fiction that served to keep the gods in their place, but a fiction nonetheless.
So why were they prisoners? What was the Heavenly Court hiding?
Nicholas was curious. Deeply, intensely curious. The regulations that kept Divine Immortals confined to the Heavenly Court were not about duty. They were about control. About preventing something—or someone—from escaping. About maintaining a system that had been in place for so long that no one remembered why it had been established in the first place.
He filed the question away. It would be answered in time. For now, he had what he needed—a talented vessel, a connection to the higher ranks of the celestial hierarchy, and a front-row seat to the inner workings of the Eastern multiverse.
Yunyu, inconsolable, retreated to her meditation chamber. Nicholas, hidden in her soul, settled in to wait.
The journey was far from over.
To be continued...
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