ding them, I started to run into a problem. When
Ming told me that the pill put my body into stasis, he
definitely understated how strong its affects were. I was
having problems forcing my body to respond. I couldn get
the denser energy into my muscles, because the stasis pill
was blocking me. I drew deeper from the stone around my
neck and focused the energy into my lower core. I then
spiraled the energy quickly up through my heart core to my
upper core to help increase my concentration level, and I ran
into problem number two.
The fire element seemed to condense in my upper core,
and I was having problems controlling the heat. I couldn
use water element, because, well, steam being pumped into
your brain pan was a bad idea. I needed metal aspect, but if I
tapped into the metal cores I had in place, it would
imbalance the formation. I tried to purify the energy in my
middle core, but it was so intensely hot that I couldn clear
it of the fire aspect. The deepest part of my consciousness
was starting to become concerned. The stress on my upper
core was quickly becoming a serious issue. I really didn
want to melt my brain. I wasn ready to panic just yet, but
things weren looking good. Suddenly, I felt a familiar
presence.
”Ming! Thank the gods you are here. The stone and pill
you gave me aren working correctly. ” I risked losing my
concentration to talk to him, but I needed him to adjust the fire qi around me. ”The combination is making me cook
from the inside out! ”
Ming blew through my wards again, and walked to the
edges of the energy building around the formations.
”Ming, I need your help. Please, shift some of the fire
energy away from the formation so I can balance the
temperature in my upper core. ”
He kept his eyes on the floor, apparently observing the
formation plates. For some reason, I felt a spike of anxiety.
Why wouldn he look at me?
”Jim, I told you that I do everything for the greater good. ”
I was having trouble focusing on him and maintaining the
energy levels throughout my cores.
He kept circling me, refusing to meet my eyes with his
own. ”I am the uncontested leader in this Empire. I am the
only Emperor-ranked cultivator since my father passed, and
I cannot allow a challenge from a student who doesn follow
my ideals. ”
I could feel the confused look upon my face.
Ming looked up for a moment before returning his focus
on the formation plates. ”Don look at me like that, Jim. You
and I both know it would only be a matter of time before you
surpassed me, and your empathy would have led you to rebel
against me. ”
I started to get a sinking feeling in my stomach. ”Ming, I
have never betrayed you. I would not turn on you, even if I
did surpass you. You are my best friend. My brother. My own
sense of loyalty wouldn allow me to turn on you. ”
He continued to look at the formation, as if he were
looking for something. ”Jim, I know you feel that way now,
but in the centuries of life ahead of us, you cannot guarantee
me that your views would not one day override your sense of
loyalty. No, it is better this way. ” He still wouldn meet my
eyes, just keeping up his slow walk around the circle.
The heat was building in my heart core now, working its
way down my body from top to bottom. The qi spiral was out
of my control. If I stopped cultivating, the stone on my chest
would explode with the backlash. There was enough energy
contained inside it that I had no doubt it would mean instant
death.
Maybe it was time to panic.
I looked up at Ming just as he started to touch one of the
corners of the jade formation plates. The plates he had gifted
me, along with the focusing stone and pill. Despite the heat
trying to melt me from the inside, I felt my blood run cold
with realization. He had set me up.
”Ah, there it is. We can have you leveling half of my
palace, now can we? ” Suddenly there was a clicking sound,
and the entire array shifted into a shield formation. Instead
of the shield facing outward, however, this one was set to
contain whatever was inside the array. ”If you only knew
how many times I have had to use this trap array over the
past two hundred years, you would be astounded at how well
it has held up. ”
My eyes widened with disbelief. I had to pause to gather
my thoughts before asking, ”Do you mean you have done
this before, Ming? How many of your students have you
destroyed with your fear? ”
”It isn fear that drives this, my student. ” He looked at
me with pity in his eyes, the first time he was able to meet
my gaze for more than a second since walking into the room.
”It is simple common sense. Do you mean to tell me that you
haven noticed how those who came before you were slowly
disappearing? You honestly couldn tell that they were
burning out, one by one, as the years passed you by? ”
”No, Ming, ” I said while shaking my head. ”I actually
believed you when you told me that they were off on special
assignments. I had no reason to doubt you. ”
He turned to walk away from me. ”Then you were a
greater fool than I thought. You might have been a powerful
cultivator, but you were far too naïve to make it in this world
without my protection. I will see you in the afterlife, Jim. ”
He was already talking about me in the past tense. I felt a
burning rage begin to build inside me. My best friend, my
mentor, and the leader who held my undying loyalty, was
about to throw me away like a piece of garbage. Ming may
have been like an older brother to me, but he forgot one
thing.
I was not some meek kitten, or powerless peasant. I was
now, albeit temporarily, an Emperor-ranked cultivator. I
was, quite literally, the second most powerful person in the
entire Empire. I had over six centuries of knowledge and
experience, and I would not be tossed into the midden heap
that easily.
I gave up on trying to save myself, throwing away my
fear, and began concentrating on destroying Ming. I spun
out threads of qi as thin as spider silk in a cloud so dense it
was visible to the naked eye. I cast them about me in an
attempt to find a gap in the shield formation that had been
activated around me. It took me but a single breath to find
over a dozen tiny gaps in the formation plates. I shoved as
many threads as I could into the gaps, widening them bit by
bit, forcing the plates farther apart and allowing more of my
energy to escape.
The shield cracked. I felt it happen just as the heat in my
head caused blood to begin pouring out of my eyes, tinting
the world around me red. That was fine, now the world
looked more like how I felt. My rage was building at the
injustice Ming had leveled in my direction. The greater good?
My death would only serve Mings good, and I would make
him pay for it in blood. I forced the cracked shield wide open,
and stood up.I cast my qi threads as wide as they could reach in the
confines of the room, and used them to latch on to all of the
thousands of high-level cores placed around me. I knew I
was dead, so there was no need to hold back now. I drained
the cores. Every. Single. One.
The influx of power was like nothing I had ever
experienced. Killing the Rock Wolf Horde sixty years ago was
nothing compared to this. I became a pillar of qi, the energy
flooding me, threatening to wash me away.
No, it was too dense for qi. The power became more than
simple qi; it was concentrated enough that it had become the
rarest form of energy. This was pure and unfiltered mana. I
couldn contain it.
However, I could direct it. I chose to point it in the
direction of the main palace where I knew Ming would be
walking towards, smug in his own victory. There was a cone
of intensely white light that poured out of me like a wave,
erasing everything it touched like it never existed. I could
feel myself disappearing, the wave erasing me just like it did
everything else. I only needed to hold on for a few seconds
longer. The wave needed to reach the palace, to ensure Ming
was caught up in the destruction, before I could let go.
I felt it then, a sense of resistance. Something was trying
to push back against the wave, but it was like trying to hold
back the ocean itself. This power would not be denied.
It wasn Ming trying to hold the wave back, it was the
wards placed along the inner wall of the palace complex. I
felt them shatter like glass, and the walls were washed away.
I began to rise into the air, buoyed up by the mass of energy
that had been built around me. This was more than the cores
could have possibly contained. I had no idea where this much
mana could have come from. It was like I had broken open a
floodgate on an invisible dam, and the floodwaters would
never end.
I heard laughter. Was it me, laughing like that? It was me,
but it was more than just my own voice. It was like a
thousand voices were shouting out in maniacal cackles, their
volume loud enough to shatter my ear drums, turning the
sounds around me into a roar that shook what was left of my
cooking brain matter. I was only alive now because of the
force of will I had to see this done. I looked out across the
plateau that held the seat of power in the Empire, and I was
stunned as I saw the devastation.
Nothing remained. A massive city built around a towering
castle, where millions of people lived, that had stood for
millennia was just… gone. The towering castle pagodas were
laying on their sides, shattered like toys kicked by an unruly
child. Their size meant it took them longer to be erased.
Miles away, I saw the edge of the city melt as if it was
consumed by the lava from a volcano.
The wave of mana was washing over the far side of the
plateau, dissipating as it fell down the steep sides of the
flattened mountain top. As the mana was turning into a mist
and washing away, there were… things… left behind. They
were like nothing I had ever seen. They were similar to the
demons found in the deep forests at the northern edges of
the kingdom, but they weren solid. They were like the mist
given form. I felt a deep sense of dread as I watched them
run into the distance.
Then, I saw him. Ming was standing at the edge of the
former inner wall, a dazed look upon his face. He had a
shield around him, diverting the mana around him like a
rock in a stream. He looked up at me, his eyes wide in shock.
I felt the rage keeping me afloat begin to die. I had missed
my chance. Instead of killing Ming, I had killed millions of
innocent people. I fell, my heart going cold as my brain got
hotter. This whole time, the stone around my neck had not
stopped pumping fire energy through my meridian system,
passing through my lower and heart core and dumping into
my upper core, melting my brain with the heat. I was done. I
fell into darkness, and I knew no more.