The horror of the Fire-Arrays was an open atrocity committed against the mortal populations. But the secret that finally destroyed the Yan-Luo Dynasty was an even darker, more insidious trick.
It was the secret of Ascension.
Yan Zhiqiu took a small soapstone pencil and began to write upon the margin of her clean thick parchment sheet, her characters small, precise, and unrushed despite the tremor that ran through her wrist.
“For ten thousand years,” she said, her voice dropping into the solemn rhythm of an archival settling, “the dream of every fighter in the Nine Heavens was the Great Ascension. Every sect student, every rogue fighter, every royal scholar sacrificed his youth, his family. His earthly desires to climb the realm ladder. Foundation Establishment. Golden Core. Nascent Soul. Soul Formation. At each threshold, the sects taught that those who reached the peak of the Ninth Fathom would pass through the Gateway of the Immortals and enter the Higher Realm—a clean sky heaven where the qi was boundless and death was unknown.”
Qiao Ming knelt beside the low table, his Folded brass star-compass held open in his palm, watching her steady brushwork.
“And what was beyond the gate?” he asked.
Yan Zhiqiu looked up, her dark eyes hollow with a painful, ancient grief.
