Chapter 5

In Jingzhou, storytellers loved tales of cultivators roaming the world with swords, vanquishing demons and defending righteousness.

In Lingzhou, cultivators lived too close at hand. Storytellers no longer wasted their breath on them.

They struck their wooden blocks and spoke of the Father God and Mother Goddess.

A husband and wife had created the world, cutting all living things from paper, mending the broken sky with crystal, and giving their creations souls with blood.

The Mother Goddess depended on the Father God, and the Father God protected her.

The storytellers said that deep in the rear reaches of Divine Sword Mountain lay a sea of fire. Beyond the fire stood a mountain of snow. Climb over it, and you would find a relic of the Mother Goddess.

A mother loves her children. Everyone who reached her with a true heart would receive a generous gift.

I scoffed.

Never mind climbing a snowy mountain. Who could walk through a sea of fire and live?

I didn’t linger over these tales.

I returned to the mountains and settled beside the water.

Three years passed. Drought gripped the land, and even the mountain springs began to dry up.

I had no choice but to follow the mountain paths upstream.

Between the cliffs, a trickle ran slowly down. Someone had divided it into two channels.

One flowed toward the mortal world, clear to the bottom.

The other flowed toward Divine Sword Mountain’s temple, tinged with pale pink.

So this was where the spirit spring branched off.

I bent and buried my face in the stream. Spirit water flooded my mouth.

Sweet. Fresh. With a faint trace of something metallic and raw.

Suddenly I wanted to know where the spirit spring began.

There was no path left.

So I climbed the cliff.

Again and again, stones broke away beneath my feet. Again and again, I nearly fell to my death.

Fortune favored me. At last I reached the summit.

I looked down.

Before me stood Divine Sword Mountain’s great hall, halfway up the mountainside. A golden ward shimmered in the air above it. Majestic beyond compare.

Behind me the spirit spring surged down, its pink growing deeper.

I followed the water into a cave.

Darkness slowly brightened. Gold blazed all around.

A formation appeared before my eyes. A person hung suspended inside it.

Covered in blood.

Her hair drifted in the air, every strand joined to a thread of golden light.

Blood trickled down her body.

The golden light sustained her life. It wouldn’t let her die.

I wasn’t meant to know about this.

I stumbled backward in panic. My head struck the hard rock wall, and I cried out.

The suspended woman lifted her head a little.

Such a tiny movement. She was too weak; her body would no longer obey.

I froze.

My cousin. Li Qi.

The girl with heavenly-grade roots. The prodigy given the name Beloved of the Gods.

She hung here now, a figure made of blood, bleeding into the spring.

I threw myself forward and caught her feet, trying to lower her to the ground.

She shook her head. “Jiu’er, it’s no use.”

I wailed. “How did this happen? Who locked you up here? Who did this to you? Why hasn’t your master come to save you?”

She was barely breathing, yet she still smiled. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t stay with you.”

“I’ll take you away. I’ll take you away—”

I clawed wildly at those golden threads. They hurled me back, the impact sending pain through my whole body.

I could do nothing. I could only kneel there and sob.

Mortals were so very, very weak. Ants trying to shake a tree. A mantis raising its arms against a chariot. When my cousin and I studied together, we had laughed at their absurd ambition.

Now we had become them.