The Laws of Cultivation: Qi = MC^2

Lightning crackled, a storm brewing as the two domains clashed with one another. I watched with relief as Elder Yan stood there, in the demon’s path, Qi swirling around him menacingly as the demon reconsidered his position.

“How are you escaping my domain?” The creature asked, with a hissing undertone as the mismatch spoke for it.

“Because mongrels like you have no hold over me. I would offer you the opportunity to scram and escape, but that is far too much dignity for filth like you. Let it be known that your end was writ at the hands of Yan Xian,” Elder Yan said, taking a stance as golden lightning crackled around him, pushing back on the demon’s domain.

I couldn’t believe I was thinking this in this situation, but he looked kind of badass right now.

“Very well, you shall be chained as well,” the demon exclaimed, rushing forward as the two engaged. The world shook around them as the battle commenced, Qi vs Gu, lightning vs chains.

Elder Yan jumped and moved and dodged the strikes, avoiding the chains from binding him and using his lightning to burn any out of existence that got close as he defended my companions, but I didn’t have the luxury to spend my time watching him.

I needed to figure out a way to get free, and to beat the demon. I focused inwards, putting my attention on the chains. I felt the domain around me, felt it wrapping my core, and almost nullifying it. Like a block that prevented me from channeling my Chi through my body.

I focused inwards still, at Xuanwu’s aura protecting my soul and from the chains taking claim entirely.

I needed to think. How could I break free of this?

My attention was taken by the battle ahead of me, and I opened my eyes to watch Elder Yan and the unnamed demon clash against each other. The entire domain around us had cracks forming in reality now, and the world itself was shaking and shivering. My friends were all unconscious, the chains binding them in place and holding them there. Even I felt myself being drained, my energy sinking into this domain… I paused as a realization hit me.

This thing was draining me.

A similar feeling had overwhelmed me when I’d first entered Zhang’s core all that time ago to fix his shattered cultivation. The miasma and the edges of nothingness beyond the spirit had been sucking all my energy out. But all of it had to go somewhere?

I looked around myself and saw Elder Yan’s lightning creating cracks and weakening the domain around us, but after moments those cracks would begin to heal, starting to stitch themselves together before vanishing all together.

A crackle of lightning flashed around the battle, and I realized that the demon was making this a battle of attrition. He was using us against ourselves.

I grit my teeth, anger rising, but I had to continue taking note. If he was pulling from me… what could I do?

I watched the demon fighting and realized that the injury I’d given it was not healing as it normally would. There was still a hole in its chest, and it was why the demon had to use miasma to speak out at all.

I had an inkling why. It was the same reason the void bombs worked. The void was an oversimplification of the concept but when I struck the demon, I’d nullified it entirely. These creatures, like I had suspected all this time, were not truly alive. They were puppets made out of Gu, out of death and its energies, that is how they defied death. The core was the only part within them that could be called alive. Something to keep the soul within the body, to keep the puppet moving and walking, as if it was truly there and not simply a shadow running a corpse.

It was sickening, but it enlightened me on how they worked. And thus, I got an idea on how to beat them.

Back in Zhang’s core, when the wraith had come and the miasma had started to overwhelm me, I’d pulled it all inside of me. Even before I’d understood the First Law, and even before I’d obtained Chi, I’d been able to understand that Gu was part of the key, and that purging it would purge the creatures it sustained.

I’d already tried that with the demon here, already tried to pull at its Gu, to absorb it within myself. But there was a torrent there, a storm and the creature’s spirit resisted me. Unlike a mindless wraith these demons had a soul within them that could direct their powers, they were mockeries of life, but they worked in a fantastic way and in an almost sickening way I could appreciate the thought and craftsmanship that must have gone in creating these creatures. And that was precisely why I also abhorred them so much as well.

But even if I could not simply drain the Gu out of these Deathless, these pits of Miasma that ran so deep even my spirit would not be able to simply take it all within me fast enough, but that was not the only way I had to purify them, did I?

I focused on the chains binding me, and focused on my spirit. I reached inwards and towards Xuanwu and told him to let the chains enter within my spirit.

The Divine Beast did not reply. I could feel what he was thinking. It must seem like I’d lost my mind, but by now Xuanwu knew to trust me in these moments, and without much hesitation he let my spirit fall as the chains rushed inwards to trap me, and him both.

I let them enter, let them head inside as my spirit began to pull away from my body, almost as if trying to escape. The world around me dimmed, and I almost lost consciousness but I held on. The chains reached deeper as Xuanwu roared in outrage, his aura blasting against them but they continued relentlessly charging in.

The chains wrapped around the divine beast, trapping him as the black tortoise was chained by them.

The chains headed inwards, to my soul, deep within and started to wrap around me as well.

The tree in my soul shivered, as my entire being was confined by the domain around me, like a parasite seeping in and latching onto me to drain me.

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An ethereal chain reached within and touched the tree inside of me, and it touched upon something even deeper within the tree.

Its roots.

The roots that tied me to Zhang, the roots that tied me to Labby, to all my companions, to my friends, to Taizhou and to my sect and all of seventh peak. From the mortals to the cultivators to any who’d followed my path and accepted the guidance of the tree within them, it touched onto those.

It took simply a moment, nothing changed here, nothing changed within the domain, and I doubt even the demon noticed as I flooded all of that which was me, all of that which made me, and the people tied to me, their spirits and souls, into those chains.

They stood no chance.

The fires spread outwards, burning the chains, cleansing them, ripping the miasma off as it melded with my Qi to become one with my spirit. The domain tied to it cracked, but those cracks around me did not heal, for there was nothing left to heal. The piece of the domain that had held me was gone, subsumed within myself.

I opened my eyes and looked at the battle once more.

The demon continued to battle, the injury I’d given him still there, but despite that, it was smiling as a frown was now etched across Elder Yan’s face. He could feel it now, feel that the demon had not lost any strength whatsoever in all this time and that concerned him.

I’d almost expected him to flee by now, to have abandoned us all. But perhaps I’d misjudged him somewhat. Despite our differences, despite all he’d done, he was still an elder of the empire.

It seems there were some beliefs he held to.

I looked down at the chains wrapped around me. I’d stopped myself just before I’d burned it all, leaving only a husk that remained. I didn’t want to tip my hand too quickly. I let them stay there, gathering my power, pulling on that connection.

I felt Xuanwu join in, contributing to it alongside the rest.

I needed one more chance. A second shot, a single strike to make it count.

I gathered my Chi and reached out to Elder Yan with a request.

The man glanced towards me ever so briefly before the battle continued between the two of them once more. He’d heard me. But whether he would listen… I’d only be able to tell if I waited.

And so I waited, and watched.

Elder Yan continued to fight, as lightning crackled around them. The demon moved, chains wrapping and flowing all around it like serpents as blasts of miasma crackled like flames from them.

Bolts of golden lightning shot forward from Elder Yan, burning the chains and sizzling the deathless as it laughed silently, seemingly enjoying the battle.

Elder Yan moved in, his Qi gathering strength around him. A brilliant bolt of lightning rose in the form of a dragon around Elder Yan as the demon rushed in without any care. The lightning dragon rose and spun around the skies as an enormous amount of Qi shivered around the elder and I heard his domain strike out.

“Domain: The Thunder Dragon.”

And so the dragon rose, into the skies, across the demonic domain and breaking through it, showing the storms brewing up in the heavens above. And lightning gathered together, swirling all through the world as it fed into the dragon.

And then it descended.

The world turned white, as the strike landed, lightning sparkling all around. The domain around us shook, crackling, more and more cracks appearing in reality as both domains fell apart, destroying each other.

I had to close my eyes for a moment from the intensity of the light and as I opened them, I saw the demon standing with burns all over its body. One of its arms was nearly entirely gone and it had chunks missing from it all over.

But Elder Yan was on his knees, and chains wrapped all around him.

“What a pointless display. What a pointless resistance. You and your entire empire, you fight for nothing. You think you are so powerful but ultimately you are just disgusting worms,” the demon hissed, stumbling over to Elder Yan. “But that’s alright. Because when Yang Shen is lord, we’re going to rewrite the rules of this world to make it better. And you will no longer be needed in that world.”

As the demon gathered its power to land a final strike, and Elder Yan closed his eyes, I let the restraints on me finally collapse. The demon turned towards me, eyes wide in shock but it could not stop what was happening anymore.

I let the floodgates open.

I was fire.

The incarnation of strength, of energy.

The world burned all around me. So much energy flowed through me, that my eyes lit up, the inside of my body glowing with light as I became a conduit for all that was around me.

I didn’t even realize it when Harmony kicked in, when Genesis molded my breaking body under the burning tides of forces that I called upon. All I felt was… peace.

I was here, in this moment, connected to all that was around me, to my people, to my loved ones, to those I had helped and those who believed in me.

And it was their strength that I drew upon, their power that fed me.

And I was limitless.

I opened my eyes, and I knew I had found something. Something that was at the core of my being. A piece of my domain.

I moved instantaneously as the demon struggled to react, fiery power burned me so much that my skin began to crack from the energy trying to escape me, but in this moment I did not care.

I was wrath, judgment incarnated, and I would mete out justice as was necessary.

I grabbed the creature by the throat as it stammered and hissed, reaching out once more to try to chain me under its control, to take a hold of me, but I simply burned those chains into vapors, finding them unable to touch me.

“You- you do not understand who you are fighting. Even if you kill me, this will change nothing. You cannot stop Yang Shen,” the demon spat, grasping and choking under my hold.

“Even if I die, remember my words, the name of the demon who called your demise. It is I, Lon-”

I poured all my Qi into the creature as it shrieked. It flooded the deathless, mingling with its body of death that struggled to reign the energies, and so… it simply crumbled apart. A brilliant flash of light burned as the demon caught aflame in my hands, the power in my soul now going all to him. Every drop of Qi that I held, I poured into the deathless. I broke the Unity of Chi to make more Qi with each second and within a few seconds, only ash remained.

“I don’t care,” I said to the now dead Deathless.

I looked down at the pile of ash at my feet, and a strange ball with a character inscribed with the word Soul onto it rolled against my feet. I picked it up in my hands and crushed it, as I felt the soul inside shudder in relief as it broke free.

The tree within my soul reached out, grasping even that wayward soul that had been inside, and pulling it within its embrace and I felt a wave of emotion pass me as I absorbed its last thoughts.

Thank you.

Within all of that… within that demon, had been a man, a man turned into a rotten vile creature tainting all that he had once been.

I clenched my fist in anger till my knuckles turned white.

I would not let this continue.

And to do so, there was a task that still remained. I looked at the remnants of the demon, where the box that contained the Azure Dragon had clattered to the ground. As the soul escaped and submerged into me, the source of the chains died entirely and all my friends became free.

And so did the Azure Dragon.