After Sometime had passed, the cliff had gotten smokey, and then a whirlpool appeared, The mist came first, thin and yellow gold, curling along the gray road, then his robes, black as deep water, gold threading catching what little light the sky still held. His Fuchen rested in his hand, jade beads and crescent charms hanging still, The Bagua wheel behind him in the air, faint, and through it stepped out Daoist Aydris, he was quite for a moment then stepped forward.
He walked to the ridge and looked down at the valley below and then at the dust of the road and then at the small pale gem sitting in the gray earth
His expression did not change, just still as he stood there for a while whatever faint breeze left drifting carrying his robes into wind then he simply reached down.
"Master."
The word landed between them like a stone dropped in still water.
Echo stood at the edge of the ridge, red robes catching the dead wind, Aydris did not look up as eh responded
"Disciple," he said,
"This is not yours, nor is it yours to take" Echo said, Her voice cold,
Aydris's fingers hovered above the gem.
"It is unclaimed," he said, "A Dao seed outside any lineage, Unprotected, It belongs to whoever has the fortune to receive it."
Echo then said firmly this time weight in her voice "It belongs to him."
"He no longer exists in a form that can claim ownership."
Aydris finally looked at her, his eyes were calm, Completely and utterly calm,
"This is not cruelty, Echo, this is simply how the Dao moves, the way of the world You know this"
"I know," Echo said, "what you taught me."
Something in the air shifted, the wind stilled all of a sudden
Aydris straightened without the gem, his Fuchen rose slightly in his hand.
"Then you understand," he said, "that what you are doing now is not sense, It is sentiment."
"Yes," Echo said simply, "It is"
She moved.
Not toward Aydris, Away from him, one step to the left, and her hand came up and the air between them rang like a bell struck once, clean and resonant, a single tone that expanded outward in a visible ring, Aydris swept his Fuchen and the ring came back. Echo was already not where she had been.
Whatever Aydris sent moved through the air toward her and came back wearing his own signature, his own weight, his own intent turned in the opposite direction,
Echo waved her fuchen forming complex symbols with her hands, then closed her hand the floor below Aydris just a inch away from the gem suddenly collapsed, but Aydris did not fall, he just stood levaiting in the air then waved his fuchen the floor going back to its original state, then he swept his Fuchen in a wide arc, golden light blooming from the strands in a fan of pressure that would have flattened the ridge, It bloomed' and It expanded' It swept towards Echo, and then it came back.
The pressure reversed and struck the ground at Aydris's feet and the ridge cracked along the seam of it, stone splitting cleanly, the valley below suddenly visible through the fracture.
Aydris stepped back one step, Looked at the cracked ground, The calm not leaving his face, his Fuchen rose again, and this time the golden light was not a fan, It was a needle, concentrated, precise, aimed not at Echo but at the space around her, three points at once, to pinpoint her before she even had the chance to move,
The three needles of light reached her.
And then the clouds came, Not from the sky. From everywhere at once, white and vast and sudden, pouring over the ridge like a waterfall, the three needles of light dissolved into the white before they landed. Where Echo had been standing there was only cloud, thick and formless and moving.
Hmmmmm descended through it.
His white curling hair fell loose around his face. His robes moved the way clouds move, slow and without hurry. He touched the ground with bare feet and the cloud that had poured over the ridge gathered around him
He looked at Echo,
She looked at him,
Neither of them spoke for a moment, then he said
"Junior sister," Hmmmmm said finally, His simply neutral
"Elder brother," Echo replied.
"Step back," he said. "Let Master do, what he came for"
"No."
Hmmmmm closed his eyes for a moment. Opened them.
"Then don't blame me for this," he said
His body came apart at the edges first. Not dissolving. Restructuring. The white of his robes and the white of his hair and the white of the clouds around him stopped being separate things and became one thing, and that one thing moved without the limitation of having a body,
His Upper Body reforming above, as he raised his hand opened his palm then closed it then pressure and mass and the suffocating weight of altitude, of a sky pressing down on everything beneath it.
Echo was pushed back three steps, Five, Her red robe snapped in the pressure of it, bearing the pressure of the sky
Aydris said nothing, then moved toward the gem once again, He reached down.
And then the world stopped, not froze it just simply stopped, time had no meaning in the world, from the grey sky to depths of hell, the world simply stopped
The cloud that was Hmmmmm hung frozen mid-motion, Echo's red robe, caught mid-snap in the wind, did not move, The smoke rising from the valley below stood still in the air, columns of gray frozen against the gray sky. Even the dust on the road had stopped falling.
Aydris's fingers, a breath from the gem, did not close.
A man in white robes came through the frozen scene from the side, Unhurried, No particular expression on his face, it was Supreme, once again humming that absurd song, he stopped infront of Aydris then looked at Echo then at Hmmmm, and then bent down his face facing Aydris before looking down picking up the gem then muttered
"I went out for a stroll, and you turned into this, sigh' stupid fellow you still haven't told what's so wrong with my song"
Supreme stood up, walked in circles a bit, then stopped and muttered
"and i'm bored once again, sigh when is that fellows drama going to end, if it doesn't i might just straight up throw the table, mmmmmmm"
Supreme muttered with in a tired voice as he walked away his voice drifting in the frozen world, and then time came back again, the grey clouds moved' the smoke drifted, Hmmmmmm above Echo below, Aydris's fingers closed on empty dust.
He straightened, looked at his empty hand, Looked at the dust where the gem had been, His expression unchanged he remained looking at the empty space for one long moment
Then he folded his hands into his sleeves and turned.
Echo was still standing, Barely' Her Fuchen in her hand, strands tangled from the pressure of Hmmmmm's cloud. Hmmmmm himself had returned to his body fully, white robes settling, hair falling around his face.
Aydris looked at Echo.
"This changes nothing," he said. "Whatever took it has only delayed the natural order of things"
Echo looked at him. Looked at him the way she had looked at him for years from the front row of the Grand Hall of Pure Mind.
She raised her Fuchen,
The air between them rang again, but not outward this time, Inward. A single tone that contracted rather than expanded, that folded back on itself, resonating at the frequency of a specific thing, a bond, a thread of cultivation and lineage and years that ran between a master and a disciple like a root grown too deep into the same soil.
The thread snapped.
No sound, No light, just snapped the sound quite crisp in the air
Her red eyes glowing with intensity, then she lowered her Fuchen.
Aydris said nothing. His expression remained what it had always been. He turned, and the gold mist gathered around his feet, and the Bagua wheel dimmed behind him, and he walked back into the mist the way he had come, without hurry, without any anger, Hmmmmm watched his Aydris go.
Then he looked at Echo.
"You have destroyed yourself," he said quietly,
"I have returned what was his, it was never mine anyways" Echo said, "That's all"
Hmmmmm was silent for a moment. Then he too turned and followed the mist, following the direction of his Master as he always had,
Echo stood alone on the ridge above the smoking valley.
Her Fuchen hung loose in her hand. Lighter now. Strands missing, but the Aura around her glowing in intensity
She looked at the dust where the gem had been.
Then she looked at the empty road stretching ahead, then she simply vanished like an echo, her existence appearing in different places in "time" around the stretches of the road before disappearing into history of the world
all that was left was simply a cracked token with "Pure Mind" and the name echo, that was disappearing bit by bit
.
.
From somewhere in the deepest part of Hell, and yet it seemed like it was above the world, cracked floors yellow mist drifting everywhere, a figure in yellow slightly moved his body, only his silhouette could be seen, he simply waved his arm a faint yellow robe flying the in mist, then his voice sounded again in the vast space
"it's time' "
and then he was gone...