I couldn't quite get my head round what had happened to my Archive but I grabbed onto that word.

  "Almost? What do you mean?" I grabbed Meiyu's arm. "Show me."

  She didn't say anything but looked at my hand on her arm then back at me and raised an eyebrow. In this place she was more powerful than me and could have shrugged me off if she wanted to, but an eyebrow was enough. I let go and she nodded.

  Without a word, she turned and began walking deeper into the ruins of my pagoda. I followed her through crumbling corridors where torn scrolls and shattered memory crystals littered the floor. Each step revealed more devastation.

  Masterpieces of maritime strategy, detailing my tactics in battles where I had commanded my fleets hung in shreds. The countless shelves that housed my analyses of the empires of my old world, the clockwork of political systems I had mastered, all lay in ruins. Even the maps of the Tidebound Seas were destroyed. That almost hurt the most, it was as if my enemies had tried to erase the ocean from my soul.

  "Seven hels." Rage built with each destroyed artifact we passed. Whoever did this didn't just steal my body, they tried to obliterate our very being.

  "I could forgive someone trying to kill me." A snarl filled my voice. "But this was a violation. There are places where even the immortals fear to die. I will take them there and watch them drown."

  Meiyu glanced back at me, her expression unreadable behind those half-moon spectacles. "That's nice, dear. Just to remind you though. Survival first, revenge later."

  She led me down a narrow staircase I barely remembered creating, into the depths of the pagoda's foundation. Eventually, we reached a small, unadorned door tucked away at the end of a simple corridor. The damage here was less severe. The books and scrolls here were scattered on the floor, but largely not destroyed.

  As she pushed the door open, recognition washed over me. "This is..."

  "…the first room we created," Meiyu confirmed. "When we were just learning to organize our thoughts."

  I stepped inside and emotion caught in my throat. The small chamber was simple, nothing like the grand halls I had later constructed here. Basic but solidly constructed wooden shelves lined the walls, and a plain desk stood in the center. This was where it all began, centuries ago. Where a young cultivator from the Azure Tide Sect had first learned to structure his mind.

  Creating this Archive had been one of the first things I had done as an Initiate. I had been so young.

  I ran my fingers along the spines of fallen books, picking one up. The title was visible, but when I opened it, the text inside was blurred. But it was there. Another volume showed similar results. But a third, a thin volume on basic breathing techniques, was blank like the scroll upstairs.

  "Meiyu, what's going on?"

  She adjusted her spectacles. "As far as I can tell, whatever was done to us focused on removing knowledge of our most powerful techniques. The ritual they used seemed to be most effective on everything we acquired after we first created the Archive. Those we had before we created this place seem to have been imprinted on our soul differently."

  I held up one of the blurred scrolls. "Then why can't I read this? It's from before."

  "If I had to guess, and it's only a guess, it's because our new body doesn't have the cultivation needed to use it. This isn't a consequence of the attack, it's a function of the Archive itself. The Archive is designed to protect us so it won't allow us to access knowledge that could harm us."

  "What good is any of this then?" My frustration boiled over.

  Meiyu's expression remained calm. "If my hypothesis is correct then, as our cultivation grows, we should be able to read more of these early texts. Find a technique that matches our current level, and we should be able to access it."

  My eyes widened as the implication hit me. "So I might be able to recover some of my old abilities after all."

  "Don't get too excited. Remember how little we knew when we built this place."

  "But it's more than I have now. Why are we just standing around?"

  Meiyu and I began sorting through the items scattered across the floor. Most were either blank or too blurred to decipher and my frustration mounted with each useless scroll or book we examined.

  "There has to be something," I said as I tossed aside another unreadable scroll.

  "Patience was never our strong suit," Meiyu observed dryly, carefully organizing the examined materials into neat piles. "Fortunately at least one of us matured after we split."

  After what felt like hours, although I knew that time didn't pass in the same way as outside while I was in here, Meiyu held up a single sheet of parchment. "What do you think? This appears readable."

  I took it carefully, half-expecting another disappointment. The page bore the title Waves Take Down a Cliff. A meditation technique. It was written in my hand and Meiyu was right, I could read it.

  "Makes sense," I said. "Without a core, meditation techniques are pretty much all I can use right now."

  I sat at the desk and began to read through the page. As I did so it was as if the words bypassed my eyes entirely. I couldn't remember when I had last accessed information this old. The words that I had put down so long ago sank directly into my being, not as mere information, but as lived experience. I wasn't learning, I was remembering.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Chen Huairen, my best friend and my mentor when we were both bright-eyed young prodigies in the Awakening Realm had taught me this technique. I could feel the gentle rhythm of Waves Take Down a Cliff, how he showed me how to use it to allow ki gathering even while performing other tasks. I recalled running through the sect grounds to find Huairen when I discovered that if I varied the pattern every fourth breath, I could increase efficiency by seven percent. How he bought a crate of spirit wine for us to celebrate and how we lay on the roof of the jobs hall that evening, drinking and laughing together with our friends. That wasn't written anywhere on the page.

  "I remember," I whispered, looking up at Meiyu. I found that I had tears in my eyes. Who could have thought that old memories would touch me even now? "Not just the technique, but how to use it fully. The tricks I developed, the mistakes I made."

  Meiyu nodded. "I felt it come back too. You never really understood that before. What you stored here was always memories and experiences, they're part of us, not just simple knowledge. That's why the damage to this place hurts so much."

  I carefully folded the parchment and handed it back to Meiyu. "I need to go. There's work to be done."

  "Of course there is." Meiyu adjusted her spectacles, surveying the chaos around us. She paused and set down a damaged scroll with deliberate care. "Before you go though. In light of the fact that we don't have access to most of our knowledge now, wouldn't it make more sense to seek out a sect to join?"

  I looked up from the desk with a quizzical look.

  "After all," she continued, "if we turned up with a core and showed off just a little of what you know, we would be hailed as a prodigy. They'd give us much of what we would have found here if the Archive was still intact and more besides."

  Meiyu had a good point. If I played my cards right, and I would play them right, I could gain admission to the most powerful sect in Shuilin Haven. If I entered as a proven prodigy then I would be provided with techniques, treasures, meditation chambers and more. I would have access to the best trainers and training partners. With their resources, and my knowledge, I would be able to get to Martial Realm faster than anyone in any sect in this realm had done before. It was the obvious thing to do.

  "No," I said to Meiyu. "Joining a sect would be a terrible idea."

  "May I ask why?"

  "What would happen after I entered the sect?"

  She rolled her eyes. "They would give their newest prodigy everything they could ask for."

  "Right, but also wrong. The sect would give us what we needed but at their own pace and in their own way. Remember, I would just be a stranger who had turned up at their gates. They wouldn't trust me with their more valuable treasures for years. No sect elder will believe that it's possible to get to Martial Realm in a matter of months," I shrugged, "and who knows, they may well be right.

  "If I developed a core and went to them as an Initiate now then they might give me what I needed to get to Disciple after a few months with an unblemished record. By the end of a year if they were convinced that I was a loyal and unparalleled prodigy, then they might give me what I needed to get to Adept. But, honestly, I can't see them doing even that. What they definitely wouldn't do is give me in that time is what I needed to break into the Martial Realm."

  "But it would be better than what we have now."

  "It would be worse. In return for everything they would give me they would keep me on the shortest of leashes. The elders would keep a close eye on me at all times. I would have no freedom to go and do what I needed to get strong enough."

  "So we're going to do it all ourself?" Meiyu adjusted her spectacles.

  I gestured around the ruined Archive. "Someone powerful enough to steal our mind and put it into another body in another realm is coming for us again. Han Kuanglie said a Vanguard would arrive within a year, followed by a Transcendent cultivator. I can't face enemies like that playing by sect rules."

  I gave her a wry smile. "Anyway, I'm not doing it all myself. I have you don't I?"

  Meiyu rolled her eyes then gave me a nod. "Well, if you're not going to listen to sense then off you go," she said. "I'll continue to go through the papers in here to see if there's anything else that either we can use now, or that we should be able to access once we progress a bit more. After that I still have plenty to do straightening this place up ready for the new knowledge that I hope you're going to bring here. In fact, I've been mulling over a new filing system for about three hundred years. This might be the perfect opportunity to implement it."

  I couldn't help but smile properly this time. "When the world gives you grapes..."

  "…fill them with lead and turn them into grapeshot." She returned my smile and shooed me away with a wave of her hand. "Go. Cultivate, fight, grow. Bring me back knowledge. I'll be here when you return."

  I closed my eyes and exited the Archive, returning to my physical body in the boathouse loft.

  * * *

  I still had a smile on my face when I opened my eyes. That diversion in my Silent Pagoda Archive had been more emotional than I had expected. Seeing Meiyu had been a little slice of normality, an echo from my past. But I needed to look to the future. Time to get back to opening my meridians and getting stronger. I sat down and started to meditate using my newly reacquired technique.

  Of all the meditation techniques I could have access to, Waves Take Down a Cliff was by no means the worst that I could have found, far from it. But it also wasn't the best.

  A memory drifted up unbidden of my former self, floating at the bottom of the Pearl Abyss Grotto. For twenty-three years I had remained there, using Celestial Ocean Convergence to rebuild after the War of the Five Harbors. Now that was a meditation technique. Much as I would like it to be otherwise, the luxury of such unbroken meditation wasn't for me now.

  The sparrow's cheep brought me back to the present once more. It seemed that I was getting nostalgic in my old age. This wouldn't do. I closed my eyes, feeling the subtle pulse of ki flowing through my opened meridian as I used Waves Take Down a Cliff. It was less efficient than a dedicated cultivation technique like Celestial Ocean Convergence but, as the name suggested, this humble technique operated in the background like the persistent lap of waves against a shoreline. It would reliably channel modest amounts of ki into me while allowing me to carry out other tasks. Both now, as I tried to open my other meridians, and over the coming days when I had so many things I needed to do, it was a solid option.

  Well, with that all sorted, the other three meridians that made up the Tidesworn Pillars awaited my pleasure. Experience told me that opening each one would be harder than the last.

  I couldn't wait.

  I savored one more moment of anticipation before I shut my eyes and sank into the darkness.

  Time to do battle with myself once more.