The training in the woods outside the city had a different quality from everything before it.
Not harder — they'd all had harder. Not more dangerous. Just more honest, the kind of training that happened when people had been through something real together and had stopped needing to establish anything about themselves first.
Lieya broke things and taught him how to break them better. The explosive force application she'd been refining since she was twelve turned into practical instruction that the Body Path integrated immediately. She'd stopped pulling her punches after the first session when she realized pulling them was the less useful option.
"More hip rotation," she said, watching him hit a training stone. "The power starts from the ground, not the shoulder."
"I know where power starts."
"Then use that knowledge." She crossed her arms. "Again."
He hit the stone again. She made a sound that was not quite satisfied but moving in that direction.
"The Red Dragon Fist," she said, after the third attempt. "You named it in the moment. What did it actually feel like when you did it."
He thought about the restaurant wall. About the General going backward through two buildings. "Like the three paths had been looking for something specific to do with all that combined pressure and the General's face was the correct answer."
She was quiet for a moment. "That's actually a useful description," she said. "The technique instinct — when all your cultivation pressure converges on a single point because the situation calls for it rather than because you decided it. That's the War God Heart approach." She looked at him. "Most cultivators never access it because they're too busy choosing."
"And you?"
"I stopped choosing at fourteen. The Heart makes better decisions than I do in the moment." She paused. "Which is uncomfortable to admit. Don't tell anyone."
"Filed," he said.
Jinyao refined his Spirit control from nearby, never directly, always the one-thing correction that was better than the many-thing correction. She didn't look up from her correspondence when she gave it.
"Your left channel is running hot when you sustain the scan," she said.
"How do you know that?"
"The Insight Eye reads output variance. Cool it by ten percent and the scan range extends naturally."
He tried it. The scan range extended.
"Thank you," he said.
"Mm," she said, turning a page.
Around the fifth day, sitting by the campfire outside the city while the mountain's silhouette filled the horizon above them, Lieya looked at him with the directness she brought to questions she'd decided deserved asking.
"Are you scared?" she said.
The mountain in the dark was enormous. Not tall — enormous, the way of things that were too large for height to be the relevant measurement. The cloud line sat halfway up and hid the upper section completely, the Dragon's Heart invisible behind it.
Zero confirmed completions. Every generation.
"No," Xiao Yan said.
She looked at him.
"Which part do you actually mean?" she said.
He looked at the mountain. At the hidden section. At the ten thousand years of patience sitting behind the clouds.
"The scared part I'm not admitting," he said, "is that I might not be worthy. That I get to the Dragon's Heart and what's there looks at me and finds something that isn't enough." He paused. "The part I mean is that I'm going anyway. Those aren't the same thing."
Lieya was quiet for a moment. The fire moved between them with the small, honest sound of wood doing what wood did.
"No," she said. "They aren't." She looked at the mountain. "For what it's worth — I've trained with a lot of people. I've fought with a lot of people. You're the first one I've met who gets stronger specifically when the situation is supposed to stop you." She picked up a stick and poked the fire once. "Whatever is up there — it picked the right person to wait for."
He looked at her.
She was looking at the fire, expression at the ninety-five-percent level.
"Don't make it a thing," she said.
"It's already a thing."
"Then don't make it a bigger thing."
Jinyao, who had been reading at the fire's edge with the complete absorption she brought to correspondence, turned a page without looking up. "She's right," she said, about the original statement rather than the subsequent exchange. "The Azure Dragon's soul didn't wait ten thousand years for someone who could clear the mountain under ideal conditions. It waited for someone who would clear it regardless of conditions." She paused. "That's a specific quality. You have it."
"You've been listening the whole time," Xiao Yan said.
"I always listen. I just don't always indicate it." She turned another page. "Get some sleep. We move in the morning."
He looked at the fire. At Lieya, who was still looking at the mountain with the ninety-five-percent expression. At the Dragon's Heart hidden above the cloud line.
[One day,] Michael said.
"One day," he confirmed.
He lay back on the grass and looked at the sky — the specific sky of a mountain city at elevation, stars closer than they should be, the air thin enough that the cold was present even by the fire. He thought about the branch. About the palace steps. About nine versions of himself in a grey non-space and the one that had come from the end of the road.
Does it cost what I think?
More.
And I'm going anyway.
He closed his eyes.
The fire crackled between them, and the night was very large and very quiet, and in the morning there would be one day, and then the mountain would open and they would find out what they were made of.
He was looking forward to finding out.