Among cultivators in the body refining realm the difference between one layer and the next was noticeable, but small. Winning a duel against an opponent one or two layers above one's own was merely uncommon, easily explained by variance in weapon skill or combat experience. Three layer breaches were rare, but still recognized, especially in the case of weapon or movement technique prodigies. Even battles where four layers of variance were overcome were recorded, though such events were spectacular outcomes that even at the height of the old world had occurred no more than once per century.

  With each rise in realm, however, the distance between the layers increased, and in a multiplicative fashion. Those who had reached the heights of the celestial ascendancy realm stood seven times further apart with each layer, and though their vast reserves of qi, complex panoplies of artifacts, and numerous secondary techniques meant that those of lower layers could drag out cross-layer combats for potentially a very long time indeed, in a one on one battle overcoming an opponent even one layer higher represented a legendary achievement.

  This extreme certainty of cultivation, something everyone in this realm could feel instantly upon encountering another immortal, meant that the hierarchy of layers was enforced with extraordinary force.

  Scoria Scorn stood in the fourth layer of the celestial ascendancy realm, very close to reaching the fifth. One, or at most two, immortals, or a dozen or two soul forging realm elders, and she'd breakthrough that boundary. This was a potency in which she felt great pride. Among the surviving demonic cultivators there were only twelve stronger than her, and another eighteen others in the fourth realm who might conceivably challenge her. Her strength was more than sufficient to lead a horde in an assault on a hidden land by herself.

  She had never done so. Leadership meant going in first, and she considered that a move suited to fools. Preferably more powerful fools suited to clearing out any problems that could potentially injure her. She much preferred to coordinate from behind and reap the benefits of a successful operation with minimal risk. That this reduced the rewards was a minor consequence. Advancement was necessary, but rushing was not.

  It had taken many centuries to find a suitable partner, one with the strength to lead but who was neither ludicrously reckless nor utterly irredeemable scum.

  Even the current arrangement, though it had served them both well for centuries, was not ideal. When Scoria Scorn reached the fifth layer it was unlikely to survive the change in power dynamics. Even so, seven hundred years of joint operations had forged a partnership with durability and even a measure of trust, a very rare commodity among demonic cultivators. Many of the deaths since the war had not come from orthodox survivors. In this case, she could trust in the maturity of their relationship enough to voice her concerns in person without fear of retribution.

  A direct meeting required that she abandon her observation of the horde, however briefly, but that was a necessary risk. Slicing along the sky, pulled at supersonic speeds by the power of magnetic currents both high in the atmosphere and deep beneath the earth, she covered vast distances very rapidly, crossing hundreds of kilometers in a few handfuls of minutes. Mountains and valleys flashed by as she passed southeastward. A great river began its formation there, and the immense gorge it carved across the land served as passage from the now empty lowlands to the sheltered mountain region for much of their horde.

  There, upon the edge of the waters, the Fuming Shade blasted across the valleys planting formation beacons in order to draw the horde upwards and westward. A tedious task, one that suited the abilities of a mid-layer disciple, but since no such agents remained he was obligated to direct the forces himself. The need to face the enemy with no ranks between general and conscript was a deep concern, limiting in operational capacity as it was. A horde was not an army, and Scoria Scorn very much wished she possessed the latter instead.

  Her erstwhile commander detected her approach from afar, of course, and he put down his flags and flew up on pillars of furious smoke and flame to take up oversight upon a high ridge. He stared down at the river, watching demons slowly stride their way past through the mud and marsh of the banks. Their progress was stumbling and sluggish, far worse than any soldiers on a road.

  Grand roads had run across the length of the continent, once, but they'd been destroyed in the war specifically to slow the hordes. Now the demons were stuck stumbling through the growth of centuries. Thankfully, though their progress was not rapid, it was steady. The demons could, and would, walk all day and all night, never taking breaks. Eventually, they would be gathered in the necessary critical mass.

  Through their shared surrounding of demonic qi, she felt the frustration of her fellow demonic cultivator at this pace. He looked up as she approached, and with a short hop moved to a large exposed boulder, a point with enough space they could stand face to face. A single stride carried Scoria Scorn from the edge of mortal vision to side by side her superior.

  “What news?” The Fuming Shade's voice was, even for an immortal, deeply inhuman. He spoke through billowing smoke and crackling clouds, a furious furnace given the power of speech as it scorched its way through curtains, walls, and beams. No mouth could be observed beneath his crimson, horned crown and the thick wall of constantly twisting black hair that endlessly expanded to shroud his head in a ring of black smoke. Something dark red and metallic, vaguely structured in the shape of a mouth, if one extended that to cover those of terrifying deep sea beasts, existed where his lips would be. It lay below the furious coals that burned in his head in place of eyes. Nothing more of the face could ever be seen, perhaps did not exist at all.

  As to what lay beneath the black silk hanfu, golden brocade battle robe, and layered bronze plates fastened above both, no one knew. Scoria Scorn had journeyed with him for seven hundred years and never seen any flesh.

  The demonic cultivator’s hands shifted and twisted as he moved. They lacked solidity, seemingly condensed from black smoke and ash. His touch, stone solid despite its immaterial source, tended to strike sparks out against anything he grasped tightly. Being near him, it was immediately obvious that he radiated out heat, burning constantly at the temperature of a working kiln.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  Few immortals, demonic or orthodox, so fully abandoned the trappings of their humanity upon completion of soul forging. Many refused to associate with the Fuming Shade as a result, considering him disgusting. Scoria Scorn welcomed such deviance. Behind the commonality of theme in their techniques, which allowed for useful combination effects, the inhuman nature of her superior’s biology likely explained why he'd never raped her despite being in the sixth layer and completely free to treat her as he wished.

  The absence of such crude violations, all too common otherwise, did much to sustain the illusion of camaraderie.

  “I believe our gathered strength is insufficient for the coming assault,” she did not mince words with this man. He did not require flattery. He measured all choices according to utility and destructive efficacy. His wrath was only too easily roused if he felt his time was wasted.

  “Unlikely,” the dark furnace grunted, and the air temperature increased markedly. “We are strong. If we cannot win, then we retreat. There is no enemy strong enough to pin us with the horde behind us, not even Bloody Roam.” Few lesser in power than the Fuming Shade would dare to speak that name aloud for any reason. Few wished to draw the attention of the only remaining cultivator in the seventh layer of the celestial ascendancy realm, a being on the edge of ascension. “No hidden land has that level of strength, not that exists still.”

  It was not an assessment shared between them. In the absence of targets, consumptive growth stalled. Spiritual growth did not, though enlightenment was surely hard to find trapped within the limited confines of a hidden land. Nevertheless, though Scoria Scorn considered her superior's view faulty, she dared not contest that point directly.

  Thankfully, alternative approaches remained, and with earth surrounding her on all sides, she felt confident enough to push, slightly. “And if there are few dozen in the soul forging realm present? Our demonic buffer is rather thin. A massed counterattack could be problematic.”

  “True,” the furnace grunted a second time. “A formation trap is possible.” It was not exactly agreement, but acknowledgment of a different danger sufficed to make the point clear. The shadow-fringed core of the demonic cultivator grew hotter still. The outpouring increase sufficiently fast that it saturated his surroundings. Nearby leaves began to blacken and char.

  “There are no more demons to be had,” he growled. “If I pushed the distance further, others would call it poaching.” This truth, baldly stated, infuriated them both. A greater horde would insure victory, but it would draw many competitors. They were already forcing the horde to grow beyond natural size, and further manipulation would surely be noticed, and contested. The Fuming Shade had few rivals, but few was not none.

  “A third would provide insurance for out side,” it was the simplest counteroffer, but also the most dangerous. Scoria Scorn had considered very carefully before daring to suggest it. They had an arrangement, one that benefited them both, but nothing more. They were not friends. Their kind knew not such jovial and generous associations. While internecine struggle was broadly pointless, for as agents of the plague they could not absorb each others’ qi, and the strong had long since claimed any artifacts they wished from the hands of the weak, this made little difference at times.

  They had all grown comfortable with slaughter long ago. Millions had died at the hands of every demonic cultivator. What was one of their own against such numbers? Bloody Roam might claim feuding was pointless, and be respected for his strength, but he had killed more of their kind than any enemy. Most wished to husband their strength and preserve their numbers, but such motives could never compare to the power of hatred, nor the fury raised against one suspected of stealing the only prize that remained, the qi of human prey.

  A point the Fuming Shade did not hesitate to raise. “And further splits the spoils.” Burning eyes searched the her veiled face. “You are close. Does it not matter to you?”

  “It is not worth the risk,” she stood firm now, willing for a moment to reveal a small fraction of her true feelings before that mask. She did not elaborate as to why, knowing it would spark face-melting rage. Even so, the thought surfaced within. The never-to-be-spoken revelation that all demonic cultivators knew to be true, even though most eternally denied it.

  They could not ascend.

  It was not that they could not succeed, or that by becoming demonic cultivators the already miserable chances of success were reduced even further. That would have been wretched enough, but the truth was somehow worse. They could not even attempt to challenge the heavens. They were tied to the plague, and the plague would not let them. For all its immense power, the demonic contagion was a thing wholly manifested of terrestrial dao. It had no tie to the heavens and no ability to push past the world. Ascension meant nothing to the disease, and had therefore been discarded.

  The plague, of course, neither knew this nor cared. It was not aware any more than consumption or flu, but the demonic cultivators knew. They might try to deny it, loudly, but they knew. They could use their red-tinted benefactor to reach and grasp immortality, but the celestial ascendancy realm was as far as they would ever go. Any attempt to approach that boundary only made the chains ever-more clear. The final step forward could not be taken.

  Most still denied it, but it had been twenty-five hundred years, and every effort to solve the problem had failed. All who endured knew the truth, admitted or not.

  Scoria Scorn found it distressing how few of them were willing to adjust their behavior in response to this reality. Too many of her fellows remained utterly dedicated to the relentless pursuit of growth, ignoring the risks, as if working toward ascension still mattered, as if it remained the reason, the goal, to push ever onward it did for the orthodox. She knew them all, including the man who stood before her, to be fools unable to move past childhood motives.

  They were immortals bound to this world. Survival was the only prize remaining to be claimed. Given the chance, she would grow her power, for strength insured greater chances of survival, but risk herself? Never. Death stood outside her spectrum of acceptable possibilities. The strange difficulty the others had in recognizing this priority confused her, such folly, but their blindness rebounded to her gain.

  When they failed, and perished, this was generally beneficial. It removed potentially threatening pieces from the board. So long as they did not all perish, depriving her of forces, she encouraged them in their idiocy.

  “If we bring in a third I will forfeit claim to anyone in soul forging or above, and ask only a third of the lessers.” She chose to make the offer almost absurd in its generosity, reducing her share to nearly nothing.

  “So be it,” The Fuming Shade accepted at once. He knew her well enough to understand the ploy, the gamble. If the enemy was strong, as she guessed they might be, it was possible one of the three would fall in battle. That victory would demand a new negotiation. “I will go north,” he proclaimed. “Black Howl is near the ice. Once contacted, he will agree.”

  At this, the veiled woman nodded. It was as good a choice as any. Black Howl was also in the fourth layer, and legendarily hungry for violence. He was always open to mercenary endeavors, being too impatient to bother herding demons for many months. A weakness, in the eyes of many, but he had made much of it. Savage though he might be, with that addition of strength they would surely triumph.