6.36 - Trial of the Azure Dragon

As it turned out, rebuilding an empire was a far greater endeavor than rebuilding a single village. Seeing to the well-being of an empire’s armies was a far more involved task than covering a single retreat. And maintaining harmony across even the capital was a greater challenge than doing the same in an ailing sect. But somehow, they managed.

After the initial confusion of their situation wore off, it hadn’t taken He Yu very long to come to grips with things. It was all rather simple in some respects—a famine had triggered a widespread rebellion. As things worsened, ambitious noble clans joined in to increase their own power relative to the emperor. Even once the famine had passed, the nobles still used it as a pretext to dispute the emperor’s mandate.

As things progressed, the loyalist forces were pushed back until finally the rebels laid siege to the capital. The Grand Commandant, newly elevated to his position, enacted a brilliant strategy, and the besiegers were routed in a single decisive battle in the streets of the city. But not before assassins made it past the defenders and struck at the emperor himself.

Although the loyalist forces ultimately claimed victory, the empire lay in ruin. Rebellion simmered in the countryside, and sickness ravaged the capital. Deprived of many talented ministers from the noble clans, the bureaucracy fell to pieces. He Yu stepped into the role of Grand Chancellor, the highest minister of the imperial government, and had to hold together an empire that was in tatters, and on the verge of collapse.

He immediately set Yi Xiurong to oversee the day-to-day of the capital. She took to her task with the sort of brisk effectiveness she’d shown in the other trials. Soon, imperial examinations were taking place in the capital, and talented junior ministers began filling vacant positions. With the capital proper seen to, they expanded their control outward, bringing safety and plenty both to the surrounding lands. Discontent faded, and order was gradually restored.

He Yu gave Ren Huang control over the army. At his direction, the rebels were hunted down. Common soldiers who surrendered were pardoned on the condition they joined the rebuilding efforts. Officers and those who resisted were put to the sword. As tales of the suppression spread, fighting became far less common as rebel soldiers turned on the traitorous officers before throwing down their arms. Soon, the rebel armies had turned into a willing construction force.

Zhang Lifen went to work purging traitors from the imperial administration. It was a task she took to with disturbing enthusiasm and shocking effectiveness. He Yu decided it was for the best that he didn’t ask questions. He’d always know she had a ruthless streak to her, but seeing it in effect was something else entirely. Her work was just as necessary as that of the others, though. It wouldn’t do to go to all this effort, just to see someone tear it down again at the first opportunity.

As He Yu delegated out what tasks he could, and saw to the larger decisions himself, he had plenty of time to reflect on this final test. As he’d since come to expect, this test had him put to use the lessons he’d learned in the previous three. It also forced him to wrestle with his newly formed Daoist Mind.

Time passed strangely in these realms, created wholly for the tests themselves. The first trial in the village had taken them just under a year, but it had felt like hardly any time passed at all. Similar to their time at the sect, but roughly ten years had passed in that trial. Now, as they worked to rebuild an entire empire, their work stretched into its third decade. Despite this, He Yu didn’t feel any older. He hoped the passage of time in this place was more his perception than anything else. Nearly forty years inside this realm would be a disaster. And he had reason to suspect that time very well could be passing outside while they worked to prove themselves to the four guardian beasts.

He suspected as much because after the first ten years in this final trial, he reached the middle stage of Divine Body Attainment.

Part of the strangeness of time passing came from how much of it he spent in cultivation. There was only so much he had to do in any given “day.” That left him with little to do other than to cultivate. At first, he’d just assumed that would be a part of the Grand Chancellor’s daily routine. Nobody rose that high in the imperial administration without being a talented cultivator as well—the insights immortals had into the world and their own nature made them far better suited for such tasks than mortals, after all.

At first he’d assumed the qi here was just another part of the illusion, but then he noticed that his cultivation base had been steadily increasing. He began to wonder. Then he advanced. He’d spoken to the others about it, and while they shared his concerns, it seemed there was little they could do. Time would pass in the trial whether they wanted it to, or not. Yi Xiurong also pointed out the advancement might simply be a part of the trial, too. A way to add a sense of verisimilitude to the whole thing.

He Yu didn’t think that was the case.

As he cultivated, his meditations turned ever more toward his Daoist Mind. Each of these four tests was connected to his Way. That much was clear. The further this final trial progressed, the more clearly he saw it was meant to tie the other three together. He needed to lean on the insights he’d gained in the previous trials to make headway in his task here. But there was more, too.

The trials themselves were deeply connected to his past. The very moments that had, over the years, come to define the man he’d become now. A man who struggled to rebuild an empire after strife had torn it apart. He couldn’t help but see the echoes with his own prospective future.

As he probed the limits of his awareness, both of his Way and of himself, he thought back on what Li Renshu had said at their very first meeting. That’s he’d only “newly awakened” to his Daoist Mind. That new awakening had limited him in his ability to render aid. Instead, he’d sent them out of the empire, so they could increase their power.

Power, it seemed, wasn’t everything, though. At least not in the higher realms.

To be certain, a greater and more potent cultivation base was important, necessary. Jin Xifeng had demonstrated that over the Shrouded Peaks. So, too, had the Monarch of Sky’s Throne when it tested He Yu and aided in his breakthrough to Divine Body Attainment. But as had been revealed to him with that breakthrough, He Yu also understood the truth. The final three realms of cultivation were their own unique triad, just as the previous two sets had been. Although it wasn’t something that he could have easily seen at the time, it was obvious in hindsight.

He’d grasped at it in those moments of clarity after his breakthrough, seated at the base of Sky’s Throne and speaking with the Monarch. But integrating that knowledge came only now, after forming his Daoist Mind and connecting it fully to his Way. With time and reflection, he’d come to understand what the realms of cultivation represented in their fullness.

The early, middle, and late stages of the Body realms were marked by gathering the necessary qi to form a foundation. Then refining one’s body into a vessel capable of withstanding the rigors of what was to come. The Spirit realm was marked by forming one’s Golden Core, the vessel that contained the Nascent Soul. By further refining that soul through connecting with one’s personal Dao, and through it, the eternal, the cultivator crafted an anchor.

To step into the final stage—that of the Mind—everything they were, everything they’d become must be remade. The Dao connection and the Nascent Soul allowed them to survive that transition into Divine Body Attainment. The transition into true immortality. From there, the only task left was to contemplate, then comprehend, the Will of Heaven. To grasp the ineffable. One must form their Daoist Mind in its fullness to pass beyond this gate. To remake one’s body wasn’t enough. It was merely the first step of the last journey.

Except normally cultivators took centuries to do this. For how long did Li Renshu cultivate, grasping for his own Daoist Mind, such that he only just awakened it when he was at the peak of Divine Body Attainment? From his talks with Tan Zihao, He Yu knew well enough that forming one’s Daoist Mind was the key to Divine Soul Apotheosis, the Eighth Realm of cultivation. What then was the key to the Ninth?

It had to be some form of understanding. He Yu recalled his battle with Tan Qingsheng. How, by firmly grasping his Dao, he overpowered the older, more experienced warrior. In that moment, he impressed his will upon the world. He’d overwritten the effects of Tan Xiaoling and Tan Qingsheng’s spirits both at once. His qi hadn’t grown any more potent, and he certainly hadn’t gained any more of it—in fact, he’d been inching closer to running out, as the battle had progressed for days already at that point.

He thought back to the contest between Tan Zihao and Long Tingguang outside Iron Gate City, along with his own fight against Sha Xiang. With his advancement, battles of that nature had taken on an increasingly metaphysical aspect. As though the individual attacks and techniques and wounds were merely expressions of some greater truth. A truth that He Yu felt he could just brush his fingers against, and that if he could reach just a bit further, he could grasp it fully. It was that close.

Then he broke into late Divine Body Attainment. It had happened after twenty years of rebuilding. Twenty years of contemplation and cultivation. He shared the news with the others, concerned rather than elated, as he would have once been. Their response was predictable. Zhang Lifen shrugged, told him not to question it, then offered her congratulations. Ren Huang told him to keep working. Yi Xiurong held firm to her belief that time wasn’t truly passing—at least she said she did.

He Yu could tell she was no longer certain. A consequence of his Daoist Mind. No longer did he need the Peerless Judgment to see such mundane truths. She was worried, just as he was. It wasn’t her nature to express such worry. So she assured him that time behaved strangely in places like this. That, at least, she believed. And so did he.

Finally, their work was complete. He Yu and the others stood in his office. A small, well-appointed chamber within the palace that had become nearly as familiar as his cultivation chamber over the years. Ren Huang had just delivered his report that the last of the rebels had surrendered some months ago, and had now been set to rebuilding roads and villages in the commandery they’d been operating in.

“That’s the last of them, then,” He Yu said, trying to keep thirty years’ worth of fatigue out of his voice. He spoke not just to Ren Huang, but to all three of them.

Yi Xiurong and Zhang Lifen both voiced their agreement. Their work had also recently concluded. Yi Xiurong had not only rebuilt the imperial bureaucracy, but she’d expanded and streamlined it. Zhang Lifen had conducted her ruthless purge, and then replaced those vacancies with loyalists. The empire was stable once again, even though the emperor himself had still—somehow—not fully recovered from the assassination attempt during the rebellion. He’d not even awoken yet.

“So,” Yi Xiurong said. “What now? Do we wait? Do we continue to rule in this simulacrum of the capital?”

“Well, I think that if we are forced to stay here, we at least know we’re doing a good job of it,” Zhang Lifen said. “Seems He Yu has taken quite well to the burdens of rulership.

As much as he could agree that he’d done well, He Yu couldn’t wait for it to be over. For the past thirty years, he had been the de facto emperor. Was he protecting people? Yes. Banditry was all but nonexistent under his leadership. Was the empire just? With the help of Yi Xiurong, laws were executed faithfully, and even the lowest of mortal peasants could petition for redress, had they cause. Was it harmonious? More so than it ever had been in He Yu’s memory. But as much as he’d feared power when he was younger, he’d come to discover a truth that was—in its own way—worse.

Ruling an empire was tedious.

As much as he wanted to bring justice to the world, sitting behind a desk wasn’t heroic in the least. Sure, he’d done good work, but where was the fun in it? The villains he struggled against were complicated tax codes and outdated laws, not monsters that threatened the wellbeing of the weak and the helpless.

“Hopefully we’ve done our part here,” he said at length. “If I never have to adjudicate another legalistic dispute in my life, I’ll die a happy man.” The world faded to blue, as the office fell away and the trial released them at long last.