Chapter 117: Chapter 117

I watched Fang Xu and Celene as they left, their divine essences fully settled from waking up, and their duties revealed. Now that they had awoken and had a nice little chat with me, they were ready to take over some of the more power-heavy logistics I needed done. Even freshly hatched, they were already among the most powerful gods in the Realms - such was the power of the Sun and Star.

I drummed my fingers on my thighs as I watched them go hand-in-hand, blue and red light shining from them, mixing together softly.

Now I only needed one more pillar to appear.

We had Inesa, Kei, Randus, Gilles, and now Fang Xu and Celene. Almost all of them, with one slot almost ready to be filled and the eighth well on its way. Gods above, I had been waiting for this since before the Shadow and the Sun War – it was about damn time the Eight Pillars finally reached completion.

Xing Wu was almost there – technically he didn’t count yet, but I knew that in the next few thousand years he’d officially take up the mantle. The real problem was Solana, but even that wasn’t a problem per-se. She was nearly ready to ascend into godhood, and from there it'd be a short jaunt. Not because of her cultivation power, but because what had once been a god naturally wants to return to that space. I folded my hands together, interlacing my fingers as I looked out over the Four Realms, admiring their beauty.

Energy of all kinds, from pure, almost translucent streams to the dark, crackling energy of negativity ran through the spherical structure in a brilliant rainbow. A symphony of sounds, the echoes of life and creation, rang in my ears with a pleasing hum, setting one foot to tapping. The Sun and Lunar Star rotated around each other and the Realms, my children happily going about their business while I watched

There was Elvira, in court, listening to the woes of spirits and gods alike, giving just verdicts and issuing edicts to her…well, not her kingdom, but yes, her kingdom. Keilan, signing documents and going over particularly troublesome karmic cases, reviewing plans and final documents as he effectively greased the wheels of the reincarnation cycle, his business and those below him running as smoothly as he could make it. Reika, in her tree, humming as she tended to her garden, content to let the natural chaos of the Physical Realm unfold, only occasionally requiring her guidance. Alexander, swimming the length of the River, soothing souls and spirits, helping maintain the flow of energy to the Realms and funneling the excess into the Hidden to be stored as spirit crystals.

And Morgan, ever the troublesome one, working its machinations with unerring accuracy.

I could not help but be proud of them. All of them. And I felt the Warrior in me stir as I looked skyward, right beside the Dragon – my purest expression, not tied to a life. They were tempered by others, sure; the Emperor, the Mother, the Artist, the Craftsman, the Healer, the Trailblazer, the Priest…

But they were still there. Waiting for me to invoke them. Praying I did not have to.

I prayed for such as well, but…who was I to pray to? Mr. Boxes? He would not answer. I did not blame him.

I would not answer a prayer like that either. Such things were a matter of personal decision alone.

Solana shrieked as the Rival slowly rowed his boat, staring at the new region that appeared out of the barrier that separated the new regions like an island through fog. Reality rolled away to show splendor – sunlight streaming down from above, gleaming against the marble-white peak of the Holy Mountain. The clouds of the Heaven Realm – which he had never truly visited yet, something he endeavored to fix once Solana had her fill of violence – shone orange in the Sun’s light as they hovered over the canopy of the Life-Giving Tree. Below the Physical was the Karmic Realm – the black ocean of memories splashing against an invisible barrier that contained it, the karmic valley gleaming with lights from the local Karmic Palace.

It looked just like a painting. A landscape. And through it all, he could still see hints of Statera. Even trying to separate herself from the Realms as she was, she still couldn’t help but leave little notes, little hints that she had been there. That it was all hers, even if she taught others to paint the picture. Like an artist’s mark.

He could see her smile in the sunlight. Her hand in the way the tree’s leaves rustled. Her laughter in the symphony of sound that echoed from the Ocean of Memories.

It was something Solana completely missed entirely, shrieking in glee as she circled the skies above; clearly sensing the foul energy that radiated from the Tree itself. But it was lost on the Rival in the moment, the darkness that claimed the tree merely mixing with what he already saw as beauty. It was different from the others, but not in a bad way. Not in a way that felt…unbalanced.

“I admit it, Statera. You’ve got me stumped. Been looking around for a long time and I still don’t know who else you were. The Mad Scientist was right. I need to meet the rest of the Big Four.” He muttered, shaking his head. Solana screeched once more from above and he picked up the pace, his qi settling in his chest as he rowed. Reality bent beneath the prow of his vessel, distance shortening from a century of travel time – such was the vastness of the region, that he could see it from so far away – to merely a decade.

A decade of watching as the devilish power waxed and waned with the movements of the Sun and Lunar Star. A decade of blissful silence.

It was with a grunt of effort that the boat broke into the Physical Realm’s galaxy, stardust roaring past him as it rotated. Planets and asteroids hurtled through the depths of space, the Heaven and Karmic Realms vanishing from sight entirely. His oar bit into reality as he continued to row, stars floating by him – not Dao Stars, but true suns – their solar systems rotating merrily about them. Most systems were completely uninhabitable, holding planets that would require terraforming to live in, were too close or too far from the sun, or even contained only gas giants. The Celestial Empress had a system for some of those such solar systems, even going so far as manually dragging planets into the correct orbit before beginning the terraforming process.

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It was an intensive project, each time they did it, requiring many, many resources and some of the strongest immortals to live in order to get the planets to be in the right place for life to flourish. So expensive was it that the Rival knew for a fact it was a net loss, and would be for hundreds of thousands of years until said planet started being able to produce cultivation resources capable of making up for those that were used. But he respected the dedication.

Sometimes you didn’t do things because they were necessary. Sometimes, you did things just because you could. Moving a planet to make it inhabitable? Talk about a flex.

If he wasn’t certain the Mad Scientist would rip his head off for even considering it, he probably would have flirted with the Empress plenty by now. Those two need to hurry up and get together.

“Student, hurry! To the central island, the false Pangaea!” Solana screeched, circling his little canoe. The Rival grunted and looked up at her with a glare. Her wings flared with heat, embers trailing off of her body – honestly, he was getting pretty annoyed with her. Not because she was dragging him around the Realms in search of evil, that he didn’t mind much, but because for some reason he couldn’t catch up to her cultivation.

Sure, he had ways to make sure he eclipsed her in strength. Hells, he could even use rituals to speed up his own cultivation growth. But he shouldn’t need to. He was the Rival; he had a perfect foundation, the likes of which had never been seen before. He had traversed an Immortal Bridge longer than any other. He had lived a trillion goddamn lifetimes – give or take a few hundred billion, which absolutely was still an exaggeration. So why couldn’t he naturally catch up to the little shit?!

“I’m going as fast as I can.” He grumbled, keeping his thoughts to himself. Solana chirped and swooped down, perching on the prow of the little craft and preening her feathers. For a while longer they were silent, the Rival playing around a bit – surfing in the trail of a comet with his boat, driving through nebulas just to see the interior and whatever hidden realms they might hide – in one case, an actual entrance to the Hidden Realm, even – and soaring past miniature suns that spat fire at them, the spirits within waving as they passed.

A few planets even had life on them, little sects of demonic cultivators setting up shop.

“Student,” Solana said softly, breaking the Rival’s distraction. Her tone, for once, was calm. Settled, even, her bird-like form glowing with a soft golden light, pulsating like a heartbeat. It immediately made him nervous. “I envy you, you know.”

“Oh? How so?” he asked, genuinely curious as he dipped his oar to the left, tapping away a chunk of ice the size of a small country to keep it from crashing into them. The formations on the oar flared, keeping the wood from shattering as he redirected the icy behemoth. Within, he knew, was a frozen heart that would greatly boost ice cultivation – but he had no need of such treasures.

“You always seem so sure of the path you walk, each step just another in a long line.” She said softly, not turning her head back to look at him.

“Not always.” He mused. “I have a terrible time deciding some things.”

“You have a terrible time deciding small things. Like which flavor ice cream to get.” She pointed out, voice colored with amusement. He chuckled, unable to refute that one. It was hard to decide when they were all so good. “But never the serious things.” The seriousness in Solana’s voice was telling, and the Rival paused his rowing, laying the oar across his lap. Their boat sailed smoothly through space, no longer propelled by the oar as they aimed directly toward the Tree.

“Not really,” he said softly.

“How do you know? When you jumped in to save the old man, when we first met, you acted without thought. Even watching you now, in the long time we’ve spent together, you always seem to know. How to calm the children. How to soothe the conflict. Who to strike and kill.” Solana continued, feathers flaring up. “I have been chasing these people for a long time. We come here, to find them. Even if they are not here my decision after this will remain the same; I will be done with the chase. But…how do I know what to do with them? How am I supposed to know the right choice? I feel myself standing on a knife’s edge, with no way to know what is at the end of the path. And some part of me, some weak, terrified part, both fears falling and wants to fall.”

The Rival stared at his friend for a long, quiet moment.

“Inside you is the answer.” He said told her. Solana puffed up in outrage, wings spreading as she hop-skipped once to whirl upon him at the philosophical answer – but froze when she saw his expression. The burning orange in her feathers dimmed, ever so slightly. “Inside everyone in the universe is a simple truth; the difference between right and wrong. Light and Dark. Good, and Evil. It’s beautiful, actually. Now, I call it good and evil, but it’s really closer to light and dark. The path that leads you closer to the Heavenly Dao, and the path that leads you further away.”

The Rival looked heavenward, eyes going distant as he looked to where he hoped Statera would be. A gentle hand laid itself on his shoulder, comforting and immaterial – the Heavenly Dao saying hello. But it wasn’t within him, and it never would be. He had no such luxury. His learning of such concepts of what was good and what is evil had come through a long, long life, through far too much bloodshed and an uncountable number of mistakes. All in the service of trying to stop one from damning their own existence, for all the good they could do.

“The trick is to listen to that little voice that tells you, the one that echoes in your heart and vibrates your being. You can see it in some of the priests, in warriors who experience a surge of strength with righteous duty, in healers who push their bodies to the limits during disaster to save one more, just one more. You, Solana, can hear it too. You are just afraid to listen.” He whispered that last part sadly, pressing his thumbs together and expecting the little bird to explode on him for such a talk.

“You speak as if you are not one of us. As if you cannot hear it.” Solana said instead. The Rival met her beady little eyes, hiding his internal surprise at her insight. He really shouldn’t be surprised. This was Statera’s realm, and it was filled with annoyingly perceptive bastards.

“No. I cannot.” He agreed. Solana hummed and tweeted out a little song, turning back around to face front.

“You must tell me, sometime, about who you once were.” She whispered.

“And I will tell you who I was. I can feel it, you know, the stronger I get. The hole within me, waiting to be filled. Memories, echoes of things I should not remember…echoes that terrify me. I – I fear I will fall to darkness. It is not a rational fear. It is the kind of fear that tells me I have fallen once before.” She breathed.

“Then I will be there with you. And at least one person will not judge you for it, if you do.” The Rival told her, picking up his oar and getting to rowing again. Orange light pulsed from Solana again, soft like the sun’s rays.

“That was supposed to be the part where you tell me you’ll pick me up when I fall.” She told him.

“I’ve never been good at that.” The Rival admitted cheerfully. “Besides, it’s far more fun to trip people, then point and laugh.” At this Solana chirped out a laugh, spreading her wings.

“You are a terrible friend, student,” she chirped, soaring into the skies. The Rival laughed and flipped her off, digging in with his oars once again. Only when he was certain she was not watching did his smile dim, heart echoing with that same pain, that same duty he had felt since the Bridge. If only you knew how bad of a friend I am.

A sad smile danced upon his lips as he looked to his left, the ghost of Statera sitting beside him, as if to tell him he was not alone. Pity. I truly do not deserve a friend like her.

And so he rowed, not toward his own destiny, but to see the result of another’s.

He had to see it himself. To show himself once again that those who had fallen could indeed be redeemed – even if he was unaware of how far Solana had fallen before. Thɪs chapter is updated by novel※fire.net