“Look sharp, Wu!”

“Nnggg!”

Wu Jian gritted his teeth as Hou Jingshu attacked him. She wasn’t using her spear but her fists. He recognized the style she used as the one she had learned years ago from the Wu Clan’s Library. Her punches were straightforward and basic, but each strike packed enough power that his entire arm went numb whenever he blocked.

He wasn’t the type to just stand there and take that sort of punishment, sso he quickly countered after blocking her next strike. He threw his arm out, causing hers to go wide, and punched her solar plexus.

The loud clapping of his fist striking her flesh echoed around them as she was sent soaring backward. Hou Jingshu skidded across the forest floor. She stopped several dozen chih away, clutching her chest. However, Wu Jian did not have the time to celebrate his minor victory.

“Goof!”

Something hard struck him from behind. The attack dug into the left side of his torso and lifted him off the ground. He tried not to swallow his tongue as he tumbled across the forest floor. While he managed to skip back onto his feet, it was only to find a foot soaring toward his face. His eyes widened as he went back onto his stomach. The sound of the foot slicing through the air over his head caused sweat to trickle down his scalp.

He leapt back up and attacked his attacker, Zheng Yawen, with a series of punches and kicks that kept the woman on the defensive. She backpedaled toward a tree. Wu Jian already knew what her goal was, and he wouldn’t play it. The moment she had backed up, he threw her off with a low kick that struck her shin and sent her tumbling to the ground.

“Haaaaaaah!”

A shout behind him alerted Wu Jian to Hou Jingshu’s renewed assault. He quickly leapt aside as the woman threw a kick that plowed into the tree he had been standing in front of. Bark exploded as the tree went crashing down. While this destruction of property seemed detrimental to their goals, the tree would be back to normal the next day. Everything here reset every 24 hours.

“Haaaah… haaaah… haaah…”

Wu Jian had been training with Hou Jingshu and Zheng Yawen for the past two days. They had relentlessly barraged him with attacks. Their goal was to push Wu Jian to his utmost limits, thereby forcing him to exceed those limits and break through to the Asura Realm.

They had pondered how to defeat Sǐwáng Hou and decided that the best way to do it was to use Wu Jian’s space manipulation to counter his death chi. The theory they had was that Wu Jian could lock Sǐwáng Hou inside of a private space that nullified his death chi. Wu Jian didn’t know for sure if he would be able to do this after reaching the Asura Realm, but this was the only hope they had to win.

“Don’t drop your guard!”

A new voice suddenly entered the picture. Wu Jian’s eyes felt like they would pop from his sockets as he rolled forward across the ground. Something hard struck the earth where he had been standing. He skipped back to his feet, spun around, and found a grinning Wu Yong standing in front of him. At that exact moment, Zheng Yawen and Hou Jingshu appeared on either side of him, boxing him in with a triangle formation.

“I didn’t realize… you were gonna join us,” Wu Jian said through his heavy breaths.

“The two of us don’t seem to be enough to push you to your limit, so we decided to add someone else,” said Hou Jingshu with a shrug.

“Get ready because here we come,” Zheng Yawen added.

Wu Jian’s vision blurred as the trio attacked him at the same time. He found himself forced to avoid or block a hailstorm of fists and feet. Several attacks slipped through his guard even though he used Nihility to avoid the vast majority of attacks he couldn’t avoid. He felt their hits like a dull throb on his body.

Wu Jian pushed himself harder than he ever had before, expending more chi in an effort to both attack and defend against his three opponents. Sweat blurred his vision. His chest ached with a sharp pain every time he breathed. Hou Jingshu, Wu Yong, and Zheng Yawen used impeccable teamwork to disrupt his ability to truly land an attack. Every time he thought he had one of them in his sights, one of the others would be present to protect their comrade.

As the battle continued to push Wu Jian past his breaking point, he could feel something inside of him loosening. His chi was growing stronger. It pushed against the barrier into the Asura Realm. Of course, this distracting sensation caused him to take several hits he could have otherwise avoided, but he doggedly clung on, refusing to back down.

“Haaaaaaaaaah!!”

Wu Jian diverted a punch from Wu Yong, then launched a palm thrust containing the Dao of Space. The distorted chi launched Wu Yong further away than normal. He managed to flip around and land on his feet, but he would not be able to arrive in time to help the other two.

Zheng Yawen and Hou Jingshu attacked him at the same time, one aiming high, the other low. Wu Jian activated Nihility to phase both areas of his body into another space. The attacks went through him, and he countered with a pair of punches, though both were blocked.

And then he felt it.

He was breaking through!

Wu Jian quickly sat down, crossed his legs, and formed the dragon seal with his hands. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the wellspring of chi pushing against the barrier that led to the next realm.

“Looks like it’s happening,” Hou Jingshu said.

“About time. I don’t think I could have lasted much longer,” Zheng Yawen muttered.

Wu Jian heard their words, but it sounded like they were coming from a vast distance. He couldn’t afford to focus on them either. Sweat poured down his face as he released all the chi he had gathered and used it to attack his bottleneck.

Something seemed to break, dark chi exploded from his body, but then it dissipated. Wu Jian furrowed his brow and gritted his teeth. He grimaced as he pushed and pushed and pushed, and yet the bottleneck wasn’t breaking. It was like someone had shoved a cork into his dantian that put a stop to his break through.

“What’s going on? I thought he was going to break through?” said Hou Jingshu.

“He was. I saw that he was close… but I guess maybe it’s too soon,” Zheng Yawen said, scratching her head.

“Damn. It would have been nice to have another Asura Realm cultivator on our side,” Wu Yong muttered.

Wu Jian acutely felt their disappointment, but none were more disappointed than him. They had worked for several hours every day, pushing him to the limit so he could break through. He felt like he had repaid all their effort and support with failure.

“I… I’m sorry,” Wu Jian said.

“It’s okay.” Hou Jingshu smiled at him. “I can tell you’re not far off from breaking through. I guess we can’t use this method because all of us are sub-consciously holding back to avoid truly injuring you. If anything, this is our fault.”

The method they were using was pushing Wu Jian past his breaking point and forcing him to find strength beyond it. This was a dangerous method, but it could work under the right circumstances. However, it required someone to truly be forced to the brink of life and death, to stare death in the face, confront their own weakness, and push beyond it.

Wu Jian could not do that here. Hou Jingshu, Wu Yong, and Zheng Yawen couldn’t bring themselves to truly wish harm upon him, which made breaking through impossible.

“I don’t think training like this will provide anymore benefits,” Wu Jian said, sighing as he stood up. “Let’s hope that my current cultivation level is high enough to help you defeat Sǐwáng Hou.”

***

“I think I’ve figured out how to get us out here,” Yin Wuhan said after several more days had passed.

They were gathered around the camp. Everyone had their own tasks to complete. Huǒ Shuchang was cooking alongside Zheng Yawen.

“Come on. Give me a chance.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“You look like the kind of frivolous guy who sleeps around. I’m not about to go on a date with someone like that.”

“That’s harsh.”

As always, Huǒ Shuchang was hitting on Zheng Yawen without success. Wu Jian wondered if they should stop him, but no one seemed to care all that much. Even the one getting hit on seemed to pay him no mind.

Wu Yong was taking down their tents. That was his job. Wu Jian was tempted to help, but Hou Jingshu had asked him to remain by her side for the time being.

“What must we do to leave this place?” asked Hou Jingshu.

Yin Wuhan summoned a sheet of parchment and unrolled it, revealing a much more detailed map than the one Wu Jian had drawn. He laid it on a table they had summoned so Hou Jingshu could lean over and look at it. Once he was sure he had her attention, he began pointing out specific areas on the map.

“In traditional cultivator philosophy, this symbol represents yin and yang, but in this case, it's referring to time and space. The area normally representing yin is instead representing space, and the other side is time. You see these areas right here? This is the yin within the yang.”

“Which means it also represents space, right?” Hou Jingshu asked.

“Correct.”

“Then this area here, the yang within the yin, probably time,” Hou Jingshu murmured.

“Correct again.” Yin Wuhan nodded. “I believe that to get out of here, we have to simultaneously change the yin within the yang to mean time and the yang within the yin to mean space. Doing so will break the formation and let us out.”

“How are we going to change those?” asked Wu Jian.

Yin Wuhan glared at him. “I was getting to that.”

“Wuhan…” Hou Jingshu said in a warning tone.

“Apologies.” Yin Wuhan coughed into his hand and continued. “The arrangements of the trees and rocks are what gives this formation its meaning. So if we rearrange them, we can change their meaning and reverse the formation to let us out.”

“I see what you’re getting at,” Hou Jingshu nodded. “We have someone go to the yin within the yang and change the meaning from space to time, and we have someone go to the yang within the yin and change it from time to space.”

“Yes, but it must be done at the same time.”

“What will happen if it’s not?” asked Wu Jian.

Yin Wuhan gave him a grave expression. “This place will probably implode on itself and we’ll all die.”

“Oh, no pressure then.”

Hou Jingshu informed the others about what Yin Wuhan had told her over dinner. They came up with a plan to get themselves out of here, then went to bed.

Everyone woke up bright and early the next day. Because Yin Wuhan was the one who understood this sealing formation better than anyone else, he directed them all. Wu Jian and Huǒ Shuchang were sent over to the yin within the yang, while Hou Jingshu and Zheng Yawen went to the yang within the yin. Wu Yong and Yin Wuhan were acting as the go-betweens. It was their job to make sure the last change that reversed this formation happened at the same time.

Wu Jian and Huǒ Shuchang followed Yin Wuhan’s instructions as they began rearranging the rocks according to his specifications. It was easier than Wu Jian thought it would be. The boulders were large, but he had been using rocks this size for his handstand pushups for the past several months. He could easily lift them up and set them down.

“You’re making me feel a little inadequate here,” Huǒ Shuchang complained.

Wu Jian shrugged. “If you want to get stronger, then you should exercise more.”

“But I don’t like getting sweaty unless I’m doing so in bed with a hot woman.”

“Then stop complaining.”

The friendly banter continued until they had rearranged every stone. Now the character no longer represented space but time instead. There was just one boulder missing to make the change complete. However, Wu Jian was asked to wait until the girls had finished making the appropriate changes on their side.

“You went far too fast,” Yin Wuhan complained to him. “So you’ll have to wait for a while.”

“That’s fine,” Wu Jian said with a shrug. He didn’t mind waiting.

Time passed quickly as Wu Jian and Huǒ Shuchang played a game of Wei Qi. They didn’t have a board or pieces to actually play, so instead, they used characters combined with numbers to represent places on a board and said where they were moving. This also served as visualization and memorization training. Wu Jian had to constantly keep in mind where he and his opponent’s pieces were on the “board” and state his moves accordingly.

Wei Qi was a game that had been invented roughly 5,000 years ago by a cultivator by the name of Tang Yao, who had also been an emperor that ruled over the Xiao Continent before it fragmented into thirteen nations. According to legend, he had invented the game as a teaching tool for his son.

The board was marked with 19 parallel vertical lines and 19 parallel horizontal lines, making 361 intersections. Nine points on the board were dotted and called star points. The point in the center was known as the central star. Players used 181 black pieces and 180 white pieces. Each player places a stone on the point of intersection of any two lines, with the ultimate goal being to conquer territory by completely enclosing vacant points with boundaries made of their own stones.

“Star 16.”

“Sky 10.”

“Star 15.”

“Sky 9.”

“Sky 11.”

“Star 9.”

“Dammit, Wu! You ruined my strategy!”

“That’s what you get for trying to trap me.”

Time passed. Wu Jian won five of their ten matches. Two were a tie and Huǒ Shuchang won three.

Yin Wuhan looked annoyed with them, but the two friends ignored the surely man. He seemed to have an instinctive dislike of Wu Jian.

“Looks like the girls have finished,” Yin Wuhan said after a moment. “Get ready, Wu. I’m going to have you set down that stone soon.”

“Okay.”

Wu Jian grabbed the stone again and positioned himself over the place he would set it down. He bent his knees and prepared himself.

Sweat trickled down his scalp as doubts clouded his mind. What if this didn’t work? What if he didn’t manage to set it down in time, or he set it down to fast? Would they even be able to get out if they did everything perfectly? Wu Jian’s heart tried to pound its way out of his chest as all these doubts filled him, but he did his best to shunt that aside and strained his ears to listen for Yin Wuhan’s command.

“Now!”

Wu Jian lowered the rock to the ground. He stepped back. Nothing seemed to happen.

“… Did that not work?” he asked out loud.

But less than a second after the question left his lips did the world around him distort. Dizziness overcame Wu Jian and he closed his eyes to avoid looking at the blurring lines. The sensation soon stopped, and he opened his eyes again to find that he was standing back at the pagoda with everyone else.

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