“Well, you look better this time. Still like pill waste, but not the bad kind.”

I opened my eyes and stared at the old man with smiling creases etched into his skin. My breath relaxed a bit as I realized I was back in a space that was the definition of safe.

“Can you help me up?” I asked, and a branch from nearby provided support. Before long, I was sitting on the peach tree stump with Lyfe, eating one of the peaches from the gigantic peach tree behind us.

“Why aren’t the peaches mountain-sized, too?” I questioned Lyfe, who chuckled a bit.

“Is that the question you needed to ask me?”

I rolled my eyes and asked Lyfe the same question. He puffed on his wooden pipe and stared into the sky before finally settling back on me.

“Magic.”

I groaned in response, but the smile on my face didn’t leave. A peaceful silence enveloped the both of us as I finished the peach and admired the view of Earth 2.0. Peachy, the name of the gigantic peach tree behind us, took the core off my hands and whisked it to an unknown place in the treetops. Finally finished eating, I faced Lyfe, who raised his brow and smiled.

“Congratulations on stepping onto the path of the Earth, brat. It's a Dao that fits you well, though you've chosen quite the insight. Vibrations can be a powerful starting point, but to expand on it with your weak understanding will be tough.”

“Oh, have you been watching me? Do I have my own voyeur to be careful of?” I joked and watched the way Lyfe feigned his ignorance.

“A voyeur? Don’t worry; I’ll seek him out and throw him into space.”

We both smiled and split into peals of laughter, and at the end of it all, I spoke again.

“Thanks. You know it’d be a lot easier if you just gave me some cheat treasure to master the Dao. Someone powerful like you has something like that, right?”

Lyfe waved his wooden pipe threateningly before sticking it back in his mouth.

“Stop dreaming up nonsense. There’s no such thing as a cheat treasure to master the Dao. If there was, there’d be many more fools out there getting power.”

“Are you telling me there are no powerful fools out there?”

Lyfe cocked his head and spoke like a teacher caught on their little white lies.

“Well… I can’t say there’s none.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, old man. Don’t forget things in your old age now.” I spoke and watched as Lyfe’s brows crunched inwards. Noting the soured expression and feeling a bit bad, I tried to backtrack.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything—”

“Don’t worry about it; something above your pay grade just popped up.”

“Oh, can I help?” I asked, but Lyfe waved his wooden pipe like he was dispersing my concern.

“Like I said, above your pay grade. It's nothing I can’t handle. Besides, you have more important things to do, anyway. Like learning how to talk to your elders!” Lyfe smiled and spewed out a screen of smoke into the air. The smoke shifted and turned into forms that I recognized in an instant.

“Don’t worry about your friends. They're alive and more capable than you give them credit for. That’s what you wanted to ask about, right?”

I nodded at Lyfe’s words as the concerns trapped in my heart were released.

Suddenly, the smoke shifted again as it showed the image of a roughly cut root that released spewing amounts of red particles to combat the wounds it held.

“Looks like you have a job to finish, anyway. And a nagging sword to help you with it.”

“It really does nag! I thought the same thing every time it called me an idiot!” I hurried to agree with Lyfe, who laughed at my words while cradling his pipe. After the laughter faded, he looked at me with a smile and reminded me of the obvious.

“Don’t die.”

“I won’t.”

Thwack!

 

*****

 

Lyfe watched as Louie’s soul form disappeared, and with a bit of his power guiding the way, it returned unharmed to his body on the newly formed planet.

"Karma tilts away again." Lyfe sighed.

These visits weren’t free. Unknown to Louie, the scales of Karma tipped out of his favour each time they occurred, but they were necessary. The mental boon they provided the young brat was invaluable, and Lyfe guessed they played no small part in keeping him alive outside his battles.

Thankfully, the scales of Karma were skewed towards Louie ever since a certain planet tried to crash into Earth. Lyfe only hoped to keep it skewed for long enough.

“Well, are you going to keep an old man waiting?” Lyfe spoke aloud and watched as an inconspicuous speck of violet dirt rapidly grew into a man dressed entirely in violet garments and accessories. With a flourish of his sleeves, the violet-dressed man introduced himself and apologized in a single breath.

“Even an immortal such as I can not hide their small capabilities from a person of such prestige as yourself, Grandmaster Life. I, the Violet Earth Immortal, beg for your forgiveness for intruding.”

Lyfe’s calm eyes didn’t shift as he bluntly replied.

“Save the apologies for someone else. All I need to know are your intentions in coming here. Did you not sense the domain I’ve cast over this place?”

“I—apologize, Grandmaster Life. I’ve come because of something the Witch of Fate—"

The Violet Earth Immortal hurried to explain himself until a single shift in Lyfe’s presence made him kneel. An action that the immortal hadn’t done in a very, very long time. However, even if word got out, none would question something as natural as an immortal kneeling to a primordial.

Lyfe’s presence quickly turned tranquil as he cursed under his breath.

“Trying to throw around a weighty name, or is the Witch of Fate trying to manipulate things again?”

“She—I’m unsure. As compensation for a multitude of things I’ve done for her, she told me she would look into my future.” The Violet Earth Immortal remembered the events of a few years past, connecting dots that previously didn’t make sense.

“She laughed at me. And— and told me my fate was sealed with a mortal of all things. I was to come here, to this point, in the Desolate Reaches. But along the way, the tracking talisman was destroyed. I thought I wouldn’t ever find it until a grand explosion of light—”

“That’s enough.” Lyfe shut the immortal up, and his eyes thinned. “Leave.”

The Violet Earth Immortal’s head shot up as he started to speak but was immediately hushed by the faint swaying of the gigantic peach tree behind Lyfe. The threat of death, a true immortal’s death, loomed on the horizon for the Violet Earth Immortal until his eyes noticed a sapling just below the swaying leaves of the gigantic peach tree.

Swish.

A single leaf brushed past the Violet Earth Immortal’s neck, causing a thin line of violet-coloured blood to seep from the wound. The droplet of blood dripped down from the immortal, cradled in that same leaf, and the leaf fluttered back to Lyfe, who sealed it in a container of clear leaves.

“Do you know what a primordial can do with a drop of blood?” Lyfe asked, and the Violet Earth Immortal shivered at the prospects. In his mind, he cursed himself for following the convincing words of the Witch of Fate.

A silence loomed in the air until Lyfe’s expression eased, and he stashed the container with the blood droplet in his sleeve.

“The mortal you speak of is off limits. Don’t interfere with him until he interferes with you. Lest you tilt Karma away from him and rain disaster on this world.”

The grass underneath the Violet Earth Immortal shifted as the Violet Earth immortal suddenly appeared within Lyfe’s grasp. Lyfe leaned forward and took a puff of his wooden pipe, exhaling it in the Violet Earth Immortals' face.

“Do you understand?” Lyfe asked.

The Violet Earth Immortal nodded without a peep and blinked his eyes. When he reopened them, he realized that he was in a place far, far away from where he previously stood.

"Did he just teleport me? Without me resisting at all?"

Another shiver ran across the Violet Earth Immortal’s skin. After the shiver passed, a frustrated feeling welled inside him, and he cursed into the stars surrounding him.

“Damned witch… thinks she can send me to the lion’s den? I’ll show her… Why would an immortal like me choose a mortal as a disciple, anyway? Billions of them die every day, and hardly any of them reach immortality.”

The Violet Earth Immortal’s words trailed off as he ventured back into the stars. His destination was the nearest Starry Sky Waystation. He could use a warpstone back to his section of the universe and forget any of this happened there.

Well, except for one thing. A smile graced the Violet Earth Immortal's face as his gold-lined instincts guided him.

"Better yet, why would a primordial...?"

The heavenly sects would likely pay with some exquisite treasures for information on a primordial’s whereabouts. And they pay exceptionally well for information on the whereabouts of a primordial’s disciple.