Friction slowed him down. Speed was covering distance in a set amount of time. It all came down to time. Given enough time, he could dive through his surroundings and reach the gate. Life was also that way. Attachments and relationships, the sheer physical reality of everything around you. They kept you back, and while you could change your surroundings, you could never slip away from the undeniable reality that living took time. That inescapable drag suffused the transcendent waters around him, the air above the water, and even the earth beneath him.
He thought of the Flow Talisman.
The ocean cares not for drowning children;
Man is a slave to the sea of fate.
Flowing down from high to low;
Never questioning his direction.
Before, he’d felt the truth of these words. They reflected his deep emotions, his frustration with how things were. He was tired of the struggle, tired of fighting against the current. So, he changed it. He built up his own momentum that enabled him to continue without slowing in the slightest. It was what kept him going in his struggle toward immortality. It was what he needed to find Yu Wen again.
But in that moment, he saw the tiny tethers that connected him to the ocean waves and threatened to stop him. It wasn’t just the relationship he noticed, but the power they drew on. They didn’t restrict him because they wanted to, but because they had to. It was a law of the world.
Could he change that if he wanted to? It was a thought, and a silly one at that. Yet the talisman in his hands made him feel it wasn’t. He poured his soul force into it, and a fierce watery power soared within him. He recognized this power as the essence of currents, and it filled him with strength that defied his surroundings. It held a command: The waters would not interfere. Moreover, they would help. The waters would help them cross the threshold and enter the portal.
He felt the command, and in that moment, it matched the frustration in his heart. The frustration at all the obstacles around him, the constant setbacks. His shattered core; Zhou Li destroying the Water Source Marrow; the heavens destroying the Nirvana Pill. He loathed these things that stopped him from moving forward.
At the same time, the command faintly matched the emotions driving him in the first place. Despite these setbacks, he’d kept on going. His core had been shattered, so he’d wandered to Jade Moon Planet for a solution. He’d needed to learn alchemy to make the Nirvana Pill, so he’d spent almost twenty years doing just that. He’d failed at making the Nirvana Pill, so he’d tried to craft an ambitious replacement. Even now, he was grasping at straws to advance, not giving up when something held him back. This wasn’t just a hope on his part, but a weak command of sorts. He was telling everything around him that he would succeed.
He realized what he needed to do. He summoned creation essence at the tip of his brush and infused the white ink with a rush of emotions. Then he painted the first stroke. He knew that by making this talisman, he was defying the heavens, but if a transcendent demon could fight here, could he not make a transcendent treasure of his own?
Each stroke was agonizingly slow and painful. He wasn’t just infusing emotions and will into his creation; he was forcing his qi up to another level: transcendence. The first two compressions brought his qi to the peak of core formation, and another compression brought it to half-step transcendence. That was easy. What was difficult was taking that small trickle of qi an eighth the size of the original and compressing it even further. He needed this qi to not only obey his commands, but to spread throughout the heavens and the earth and muster it like an army. He needed it to control the heavens and the earth as though they were his own domain.
Cha Ming coughed up blood as he struggled. Huxian appeared behind him and pressed his large paw against his back, lending him what power he could. The brush moved slowly, and by the time he formed the first character, a full half hour had passed. He grinned when he saw it, however, and he recovered his strength.
Character after character, he wrote down his emotions. They were words he’d used before, but different. This time, the words were forceful. They were filled with a commanding presence he hadn’t known was possible. The words were no longer an observation, no longer an ethereal feeling, but an expression of frustration. The world might be the way it was, but it would change for him. Flow would change for him.
Three days passed as he wrote, and on the third day, the transcendent waters pulsed, and an unfamiliar energy rushed into the writing. The talisman required no paper; paper formed as the writing finally took shape. The runic structure flatted into his first transcendent-grade talisman.
He held the paper up and opened his eyes. He uncrossed his legs and swam up to Gon Shuren with Huxian following behind him. Lei Jiang, Silverwing, and Gua had assembled after sensing the commotion. Cha Ming poured his transcendent soul into the talisman, and everything thirty feet around him changed. Huxian retrieved his friends and shrank down, hopping onto Cha Ming’s shoulder. Cha Ming popped a cultivation-boosting pill, popped a drop of Waters of Life, and held his hand out. Gong Shuren did the same and took it.
Their potential surged as they floated out calmly toward the gate in the darkness, and tentacles flew out to stop them. Deep-violet eyes stared at them from behind the portal. They had entered its domain, so it would attack them. They were ants, and ants should be crushed with impunity.
Gong Shuren
