The arcanist found himself approaching the gates of the Jade Mountain Sect. Simple stone backed by spiritual power made the walls, not tall or strong. The sect didn’t fear anyone or anything in this world. It had some of the world’s strongest cultivators as elders trying to become immortal behind these walls.

  He dragged his war hammer behind him, the head of the hammer just above the ground thanks to the runes he had been able to carve into it before he left the village. He felt the person draw and ready his arrow in one of the guard towers above and just behind the walls, but he ignored it. Silas, even in his weakened state, could tell the arrow wasn’t enchanted. It was of no threat to the master. He didn’t think so anyway.

  “Hold!” The female voice from the small room off to the right side of the wide wooden gate that would open up.

  Silas smirked and looked up at the guard tower. He heard the archer hold and his muscles tense as he held the arrow pulled back. It was only a moment before the female voice showed its owner, and he eyed Hu Ya. The woman wore the sect robes of deep green and black, and she met his look with her brown eyes. The sect’s gatekeeper was not a jade beauty; she might have been the furthest from.

  “I don’t think the legendary Anvil Saint, the Hammer of a thousand tongs, is here to do us harm. He was one of our very own elders after all, and I don’t think that simple arrow you’re using will do much against Silas Zhao,” she said it lowly but knew the unseen archer would hear her.

  The archer let go slowly at his elder’s command and went back to waiting. Waiting and watching was his entire job. The boy wasn’t strong enough to be in this position, at least in his own estimation of himself, but Hu Ya and asked him to take a position in the tower, so here he was. You didn’t turn down the gatekeeper of the sect.

  Years of fighting and defending the sect had left her looking tired and scarred. Her jet black hair was worn in a sort of a messy bun on the top of her head with some loose strands hanging down on the right side of her head. She wore a Jian, a straight sword. She was originally from the southeastern part of the Empire, the Song region. They preferred their blades straight as opposed to the slight curve the swords in the rest of the empire usually had. Though Silas had heard about a beggar that supposedly fought with a cane sword? It was short and straight.

  He smiled at the guardian and gave a soft bow of his head. “Hu Ya. I trust that sword is still treating you well?”

  Silas had made it himself as a gift to her when he left the sect. The two had always been friends, and it seemed fitting that the newly minted Village Protector of a small village nearby gift one of the sect guardians that had watched the gates of his home. He ended up calling the sword the Verdant Whisper. He used green mana stones from an earth beast. Through runes, the sword could unleash vines to lash out and grab people as she used it.

  Hu Ya grinned and stepped towards Silas to embrace him. “Don’t bow to me. You were the master here. I was but a humble servant of the sect.”

  He let go of the shaft of the oversized hammer. It fell into the dirt while the head still hung about an inch off the ground, propelled by a bit of gentle wind. Silas embraced the woman and gripped her softly. The feeling of something, someone comfortable, someone familiar to him. It had been a long journey up the mountain. The man felt her hands go to his back and hold him, though she seemed to want to pull away. The guardian felt something was wrong with the man. She wanted to look him over.

  “Silas, what is it?” she asked when she was finally able to tear herself away from the bear of a man.

  He looked up into her eyes, lost and shook his head. “I… I don’t know. Something happened down in Toyo. No one is there. Everyone is gone.”

  Hu Ya frowned and nodded her head. “Yes. Kio is down there looking into it with some others from various sects.”

  Silas recoiled and looked at her. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You knew? How could no one come down?”

  Hu Ya’s eyes went wide, and she put a hand on his shoulder. She inhaled deeply as she looked at her friend and felt the confusion and rage from his spirit. “We didn’t know until it was too late. We saw the thing coming from the sky. The night sky was raining down as a demon. The sect elders wanted to protect the students.”

  He glowered but ultimately accepted that. How could they have helped? It all happened so suddenly. One second he was working, and then the Heavens were falling on the village. He remembered feeling something odd about the world before it happened, but even now he couldn’t place what had happened or what had come down. After that, he woke up on the beach.

  “Hu Ya, there’s something…” Silas started but didn’t know how to finish. He looked up at his friend, who just stared into his eyes with concern. He felt a cold presence advance towards his spirit and, in reflex, his own spirit cycled and moved to block his core. The man didn’t mean to; she was an old friend. Of course he’d let her feel him if he had been thinking. It was a knee-jerk reaction after everything that had happened to him.

  Silas’s eyes went wide and once more he gripped the sect guardian. His channels felt like they were on fire, and his muscles tensed as he tried to control the pain. He grunted and clutched her as he felt like his very spirit was on fire. The last thing he heard and saw was Hu Ya looking up towards the guard tower, the one with the unseen archer, and shouting.

  “Get Elder Masaka! NOW!”

  The next thing Silas knew, he was waking up with a man’s long white beard tickling his own bare chin. He blinked rapidly as he tried to piece together what had happened. Silas realized he was lying on a table naked, and there was nothing to cover his modesty. The room, wherever he was, the room had a draft, and the table was cold. It even smelled clean.

  He lay there and groaned, listening to the healer ho and hum as he worked. The beard stopped tickling Silas as the elder walked away from the table, and a moment later he heard a charcoal pencil writing on some paper. Silas didn’t want to move and ruin the man’s work, so he stayed quiet and closed his eyes. The great anvil saint and powerful cultivator did give a bit of a giggle when the healer poked at his feet.

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  “Oh, you’re awake.” Elder Masaka lifted his head and his eyebrows and looked up at Silas. The man wore deep green and white robes, the white instead of black being a sign of being in the Order of the Dawnpetal, an order of healers that was all over the world. They all wore white, and if they joined a sect or guild they’d incorporate those colors into what they wore.

  The man had a long white beard and matching long white eyebrows. He looked over Silas with gentle green eyes and gave the cultivator a gentle smile, which accented the man’s wrinkles a little. Silas, abashed, nodded his head.

  “Yes, sorry, Elder. I was trying not to disturb you while you looked me over,” he explained to the older man.

  Elder Masaka nodded his head and shrugged a little. “It’s of no matter. I’m just testing various parts of you to see if I can get a feel of what’s going on.”

  “... and?”

  “And, to be quite honest, I don’t know. Your spirit seems fractured, incomplete. Your core is there. I can feel it, and my tools confirmed you were there. You’re weaker though than you should be, I think. Remind me, how far along were you? What rank, I mean?”

  The older man stood and walked away from Silas, who was left lying there on the table. He did try to cover himself a little with his hands. Elder Masaka may be an old man and a healer and had probably seen more than his fair share of naked bodies but, well…

  “How is that wife of yours doing? She was a great loss, a great loss to the sect. Perhaps even more than you were. Sure, sure you can bang on metal and inscribe runes and blah blah blah but she..” he motioned with his hands like he was reaching for something in lament. “She was a true artist with herbs and plants. I still can’t get my hands on any decent Fire Shiso. Those damn apprentices…” Masaka trailed off while he was looking for something in a set of drawers on the other side of the room.

  “No, Elder.” Silas had tried to interrupt him. Had tried to get a word in edge wise but it wasn’t any use.

  The room Silas was in was very much what you’d think of as a doctor’s office. Cold and sterile, with not much in the way of decoration besides an actual human skeleton that hung in the corner of the room. Elder Masaka kept rambling as Silas looked around the room. The arcanist was used to Elder Masaka’s habits. The man was one of the best healers in the world, Silas was sure, but the greats often did have their quirks. Masaka’s was that he’d ramble nonstop while he worked. The problem was compounded because it had been so long since Silas had been back to the sect.

  “Elder,” Silas tried again.

  “Last I heard, you were trying to have a child of your own? How did that work out? You should have come and seen me. You know I could have helped. Make sure you have a boy that would rival even your build,” Elder Masaka said and laughed as he walked back over towards Silas and clapped his large arm.

  “ELDER!”

  Elder Masaka raised his eyebrows once more and drew back a little when Silas yelled at him. Silas felt bad for having to yell, but he knew it was going to be the only way he got a word in. Silas raised a hand and closed his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Elder, but I’d like to explain,” he said and opened his eyes once more. He found Elder Masaka smiling, almost laughing at him. A big, wide, toothy smile.

  “Sorry, I know how I can be. Yes, what?” The elder inclined his head and gestured for Silas to speak. At least the man knew how he could ramble.

  Silas smirked and could almost laugh himself. “The village, Toyo, it was attacked. The heavens came down and…and I don’t know what happened. I woke up by the water, and everyone was gone.”

  Elder Masaka drew up and stood straight now, losing the little hunch he usually walked with. “Oh my, what?”

  “Minako is gone. Reiko, my apprentice, everyone is gone and I’m..” Silas trailed off and motioned around his body.

  Masaka nodded his head and grew serious. His brow was furrowed, and he looked right into Silas’s eyes now. Silas would never understand how the man didn’t know about the attack, but he was known not to pay much attention to things.

  “Yes, you have something very odd going on. Tell me, what rank were you?” The elder asked Silas.

  Silas frowned. He wasn’t of as high a rank as people thought he was, or he himself thought he should be by his age. There were twelve total ranks in cultivation, so far as the philosopher’s thought. The physical realm, or earthly realm, was the first three ranks. You had to go through them and then enter the spiritual realm, and there were six of those. Finally after that, there was the realm that no one on the planet had ascended to. At least modern thought said no one had; there were three so-called Heavenly realms. The final rank was known as Celestial, and that’s when you would truly be immortal and get a seat in the Heavens.

  Elder Masaka ran a clear crystal over Silas’s body as Silas lay there. He didn’t answer the healer because he was being inspected. He didn’t want to throw off whatever test it was the healer was doing.

  The crystal cycled through various colors that represented the various types of mana. Deep violet, almost black for shadow, blue for water, etcetera. It finally landed on a deep metallic gray for metal, which was the element that Silas cultivated, so it made sense. He ran the crystal around Silas’s body, letting it hover when, and only randomly, and only for a moment, the crystal turned jet black with bright speckles of light in it. Masaka raised an eyebrow and let the crystal continue to inspect Silas.

  He ran the gem in a circular way over Silas’s body and started wide. As he went more towards Silas’s middle, more towards Silas’s core, the gem started to black out more often.

  “Elder, what’s it doing?”

  Masaka just lifted his eyebrows and shook his head. “I’m not sure what rank?”

  Silas grunted, still a bit ashamed, even though logically he knew he shouldn’t be. “I’m of the Jade Vein.”

  Many people disagreed on the names of the latter three spiritual realm rank names, but the thought was once you hit the Jade Vein realm you’ve truly awakened your spiritual channels like a jade mine. It was valuable and endlessly deep. The final two ranks were Sapphire Heart, which meant your essence had been refined into a serene and focused core, and it was enduring. Finally, there was Diamond Soul. Diamond Soul meant the cultivator knew their path and their spiritual self was clear to them and the universe. It was indestructible and radiant.

  Personally, Silas knew only one man higher than he was, his father. Zhao Tseng sat at the rank of Sapphire Heart last Silas had heard. There were murmurings and myths of people who may have been stronger, but Silas or most of the world didn’t know who they were or if they really existed.

  The final ranks Silas was sure no one had reached were Nascent, Ascendant and then Celestial. He and everyone else were sure no one had reached these heights of power because it was said if anyone reached them, if anyone reached Nascent, the Heavens took notice and would attempt to strike you down. This hasn’t been seen in this world.

  Elder Masaka raised his eyebrows and looked over at Silas. “Oh, is that so?”

  Silas nodded his head a bit worried at the Elder’s reaction. “Yes, what? Why, what’s wrong?”

  The healer furrowed his brow once more and looked down towards the crystal as it hovered above Silas’s core. Neither man said anything as they watched the crystal give its final verdict on Silas’s core. It cycled through the colors and then went black once more. Silas looked up at the healer, and before Elder Masaka could say a word, the crystal exploded.

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