Chapter 92: Destiny's Chosen
Finding the Azure Knight turned out to be considerably easier than Tianyu had expected.
Reaching him was another matter entirely.
The Heavenly Sunfire Tree dominated so much of the Heavenly Flame Sect that Tianyu had already begun to suspect the enormous thing had been planted specifically to make everything else feel inadequate. Its trunk rose like a white-gold mountain from the heart of the sect, disappearing upward through layers of cloud before its vast crimson canopy spread across the sky. Golden leaves drifted lazily through the air without ever seeming to reach the ground, and among branches larger than Mistforge streets nested creatures Tianyu had previously known only from paintings and old stories. Phoenixes rested in hollows burning with gentle scarlet fire. Golden Crows swept between branches like pieces of the sun that had decided the heavens were too dull. Smaller flame birds fluttered through the lower reaches, some barely larger than Tianyu's hand, while others possessed wingspans wide enough to shade entire courtyards.
Unfortunately, the moment Tianyu and Bingya approached the inner boundary, they discovered that being an enthusiastic new disciple did not grant one permission to wander beneath one of the most important treasures of an Ancient Sect. Spirit Transformation cultivators stood at intervals around the inner gardens, and Tianyu could sense several presences much stronger than those besides. He had no idea where they were. That bothered him more than seeing them would have. The restrictions were politely explained by a senior disciple before Tianyu could even ask: ordinary Foundation Realm disciples could enter the outer gardens, but the inner sanctuary required authorization. Tianyu accepted this with considerably less enthusiasm than he had approached with and began scanning the distant figures instead. He had expected the Azure Knight to be surrounded by guards, perhaps sitting beneath the tree looking mysterious while fate itself swirled ominously around him. After everything Tianyu had heard, it seemed appropriate.
Instead, he found him playing with baby birds.
Tianyu stopped.
"That can't be him."
Bingya followed his gaze.
The young man beneath one of the outer branches was perhaps Tianyu's height, though more heavily built through the shoulders and chest. His blond hair was slightly untidy, his eyes a striking golden color, and there was nothing particularly imposing about the loose blue-and-white clothes he wore except for the Heavenly Flame Sect emblem across the back. He was handsome enough that Tianyu immediately decided they were approximately equal in that regard, although he suspected the girls staring from a nearby pavilion might disagree. The strangest thing, however, was his expression. Tianyu had expected coldness. Perhaps arrogance. At the very least, someone carrying one of the most terrifying beings in recorded history inside himself ought to have possessed a suitably unsettling atmosphere.
Instead, the Azure Knight was sitting cross-legged in the grass while three fluffy golden chicks climbed over him.
One had somehow reached his head.
"No, no, that's hair," the young man told it patiently as it pecked at him. "Not nesting material."
The chick disagreed.
It pulled harder.
"Ow! Traitor."
A second bird chirped excitedly and jumped onto his shoulder.
"You don't encourage him."
Tianyu stared.
Bingya stared.
Around the garden, quite a few other people were staring as well.
There were young women pretending to read. There were male disciples conducting a conversation that had suspiciously stopped several minutes ago. Others simply stood around the edge of the permitted area watching him. Tianyu began noticing something peculiar about them. Some looked openly fascinated. Others looked nervous. A few seemed almost reverent. One girl smiled every time the Azure Knight looked in her direction and immediately hid behind her book whenever he noticed.
Love and fear, Tianyu thought.
Sometimes both at once.
Then somebody farther down the garden shouted, "Brother Caelan!"
The blond young man looked around immediately.
"Coming!"
Caelan Ardyn.
The Azure Knight.
Son of the previous Knight of Fate and former Sect Head. The sixteen-year-old cultivator who stood at the sixth stage of Foundation Realm. The boy carrying within himself the sealed being known as the One Who Knows. The strongest fighter among the younger disciples of the Heavenly Flame Sect.
Caelan gently removed the chick from his head, received an indignant peck for the insult, laughed, and jogged toward a group of younger disciples waiting near the path.
Tianyu followed.
Bingya did not.
Tianyu took several more steps before noticing this.
He turned.
Bingya remained exactly where he had been.
"Are you coming?"
The Heavenly Frost Wolf stared at him.
I want to live.
"We aren't going to die."
You said something similar before challenging Lei Zhenyu.
"And we didn't die."
That is not the reassuring argument you think it is.
Tianyu grinned. "Come on."
Bingya followed with the exhausted dignity of a creature who knew that intelligence had lost another battle against friendship.
As they drew nearer, Tianyu noticed something else. Caelan was friendly with the disciples surrounding him—genuinely friendly. He remembered names. He asked one boy whether his injured wrist had healed. He congratulated a girl on passing an alchemy examination. He laughed easily and listened when people spoke. Yet there was something missing from the conversation. Nobody interrupted him. Nobody insulted him. Nobody disagreed with him without first apologizing. They laughed a little too quickly at his jokes and watched his reactions before giving their own.
They liked him.
Some probably adored him.
But Tianyu knew what friendship looked like.
This wasn't it.
Which, naturally, meant there was an opening.
Tianyu walked straight into the group.
"Caelan Ardyn?"
Several heads turned.
One boy frowned. "That's Senior Brother Caelan."
Tianyu looked at him.
"I wasn't talking to you."
The boy's face reddened.
Bingya closed his eyes.
Caelan stared at Tianyu for perhaps two seconds before bursting out laughing.
That made things worse.
"Senior Brother, this new disciple—"
"It's fine." Caelan waved the complaint away, still grinning. "What's your name?"
"Shen Tianyu."
Recognition flickered through those golden eyes. Caelan was clearly not stupid beneath the easy smile.
"Mistforge?"
Tianyu brightened. "You've heard of me?"
"I've heard of your family. Heavenly Frost Wolf bloodline." Caelan looked toward Bingya. "And I suppose this handsome fellow is proof."
Bingya's ears lifted.
He is acceptable.
Tianyu stared at him.
"That's all it takes?"
Respect is important.
Caelan laughed again. "I like him."
That was enough. Conversation came surprisingly easily after that. Tianyu discovered that Caelan possessed the rare ability to speak to somebody as though they had known each other much longer than they actually had, while Caelan seemed entertained by Tianyu's complete lack of concern for the strange social gravity surrounding him. Eventually they walked away from the gathering almost naturally, Bingya padding beside them, while several of Caelan's admirers watched Tianyu with expressions suggesting he had stolen something that technically had never belonged to them.
It took Tianyu perhaps five minutes to ask the important question.
"Want to spar?"
Caelan looked at him.
Then he smiled.
"I was wondering how long you'd last."
Tianyu blinked. "You knew?"
"You've looked at my feet, hands and center of balance about twenty times since introducing yourself."
"Twenty?"
"Approximately."
Tianyu's grin widened.
Caelan's faded slightly.
"But there's a problem. Most people can't fight me."
"Why?"
Caelan stopped on the path.
"Attack me."
Tianyu did.
Or tried to.
His right foot pressed against the ground. His shoulder moved. His fingers tightened around his gauntlet.
And then—
Nothing.
Tianyu frowned.
He tried again.
Nothing.
There was no pressure holding him down. No invisible barrier. His muscles worked perfectly. His Ki circulated normally. His mind had already decided upon the attack. Yet somewhere between intention and action, the universe appeared to have calmly informed his body that this particular event was not happening.
Tianyu's eyes widened.
Caelan tapped his chest.
"Destiny's Chosen. Passive ability. I can't deactivate it. If someone isn't destined to fight me, they simply can't intentionally attack me."
Tianyu stared at him.
Then, instead of looking frightened, impressed or reverent, he looked horrified for an entirely different reason.
"Damn."
Caelan raised an eyebrow.
"That must make life boring as hell."
There was a pause.
Then Caelan laughed so hard he had to bend forward.
Tianyu looked confused.
"What?"
"Nothing." Caelan straightened, wiping his eye. "That's just not usually people's first reaction."
"But it is boring, isn't it?"
"Extremely."
"How do you even live like that?"
"I find other things to entertain myself. Training. Exploring. Reading sometimes. The birds." Caelan gestured back toward the tree. "And once a month I find my friend and we beat each other senseless."
Tianyu's expression changed instantly.
"You have one too?"
"One what?"
"A rival! I did that back home. Yun Che and I used to spar all the time."
Caelan smiled. "Then perhaps you understand."
"Oh, absolutely."
That was probably the moment their friendship became inevitable.
They spent the next several minutes talking about rivals, training, annoying elders, techniques they wanted to learn and the particular satisfaction of discovering someone who could expose weaknesses nobody else could. Caelan warned Tianyu eventually that being seen around him might complicate his life in the sect. Some disciples worshipped him. Others feared what lived inside him. A smaller number hated him for both reasons.
Tianyu shrugged.
"If I want to make friends with someone, nobody is stopping me."
Caelan regarded him quietly for a moment.
Then his smile returned, softer this time.
"All right. If you ever need help, find me."
"Good. Now let's work out how to hit you."
Caelan blinked.
"You really aren't letting that go?"
"Obviously not."
It turned out destiny had loopholes.
Tianyu discovered the first one by accident when he kicked a loose training stone in frustration. The stone flew past Caelan, struck another rock and showered them both with fragments. Caelan casually moved his head aside.
Tianyu froze.
Caelan froze.
Slowly, Tianyu's grin appeared.
"Oh."
Caelan pointed at him. "Don't."
Tianyu kicked another stone.
This time it struck the ground beside Caelan and exploded into fragments.
"Interesting!"
"You are exactly the sort of person fate should have considered when designing this ability."
Tianyu was delighted.
He could not attack Caelan.
He could attack something else that happened to create circumstances dangerous to Caelan.
The distinction was absurd.
It was also enough.
Their "small spar" therefore became half combat exercise and half Tianyu attempting to argue with destiny through increasingly creative collateral damage. He shattered stones to throw fragments, froze sections of ground to alter Caelan's footing, sent attacks past him toward trees and used the resulting falling branches as obstacles. Bingya created ice behind Caelan rather than directly beneath him, trying to change the battlefield instead of targeting the knight himself. It worked—occasionally.
Unfortunately, Caelan possessed the other half of the equation.
Tianyu could barely dodge anything he did.
Caelan did not draw a weapon. He did not put on armor. He did not summon some magnificent manifestation of fate. He merely shaped one hand as though gripping an invisible lance and stepped forward.
A thrust.
Tianyu saw it.
His danger sense screamed.
He moved.
The fingers still touched his chest.
Again.
Tianyu twisted aside earlier.
Caelan's hand changed direction halfway through and tapped his shoulder.
Again.
Tianyu used an air step.
Caelan struck the exact point at which he landed.
"What—"
A palm thrust caught him beneath the ribs and sent him sliding backward.
Tianyu sprang up laughing.
"Again!"
Caelan's eyes brightened.
They continued for half an hour.
Tianyu never managed a clean hit.
Yet Caelan enjoyed himself enormously, because Tianyu did something most people didn't: he kept trying. Every failure became another question. Could he attack Caelan's clothing? No. Could Bingya create an avalanche without intending to hit Caelan specifically? Apparently yes. Could Tianyu attack a clone if he didn't know which one was real? Complicated. Could he deliberately create a dangerous environment and then simply allow probability to take over?
"You're going to make Destiny hate you," Caelan said.
"Excellent."
By the time they stopped, Tianyu was bruised, sweaty and happier than he had been since arriving.
Then he checked the time.
His face changed.
"One-thirty."
Caelan winced sympathetically.
"Test?"
"Test."
"Go."
Tianyu was already running. "Lunch afterward!"
"Find me!"
Bingya sprinted after Tianyu.
You made friends with a calamity.
"I made friends with Caelan!"
Those statements are not mutually exclusive.
The comprehension evaluation took place in one of the quieter wings of the Library of Heavenly Flames, and Tianyu arrived with four minutes to spare, which he privately considered an extraordinary achievement given that he had spent the previous half-hour attempting to outwit destiny.
His examiner was Elder Xu Wenqiao, a Spirit Transformation scholar who looked considerably younger than the combat elder Tianyu had faced that morning. He was thin, straight-backed and handsome in a severe way, with dark hair neatly tied behind his head and narrow spectacles resting on his nose. Books surrounded him in carefully organized towers. There was not a speck of dust anywhere.
Tianyu disliked him immediately.
Elder Xu looked at Tianyu's disheveled hair, damp clothes and bruised cheek.
The feeling appeared mutual.
"Shen Tianyu."
"Yes, Elder."
"You have been fighting."
"Training."
"There is a difference."
Tianyu considered this.
"Not always."
Elder Xu closed his eyes briefly.
Bingya lay down near the door.
I am going to enjoy this.
The elder placed a thin manual on the desk.
"Your combat evaluation determines what you can do. Mine determines whether you understand what you are doing. You will study this technique, demonstrate it, and then explain the principles that allow it to function."
Tianyu opened the manual.
Second Grade Light Art: Mirror-Light Clone.
Simple.
Light Ki was gathered, bent through controlled layers and shaped into a false image of the cultivator. The clone possessed no meaningful physical strength, but with sufficient control it reproduced movement convincingly enough to mislead an opponent for a moment.
Ten minutes later, Tianyu stood up.
Light gathered around him.
It stretched.
Bent.
A second Tianyu appeared beside the first.
Elder Xu looked up.
The clone waved.
Tianyu waved.
The clone scratched its head.
Tianyu scratched his.
Elder Xu's eyebrow rose.
"Good. Explain the principle."
Tianyu opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
He looked at the clone.
The clone looked at him.
"Well..."
Elder Xu waited.
"You take the light."
"Yes."
"And make it do that."
Silence.
Bingya lowered his head onto his paws.
Elder Xu removed his spectacles.
"Do what, precisely?"
"Become me."
"How?"
"By bending it."
"According to what principle?"
Tianyu frowned.
"The principle where... light bends."
Elder Xu stared at him.
And thus began the longest thirty minutes of Tianyu's day.
The problem was not that he understood nothing. Quite the opposite. Tianyu understood the technique physically with remarkable speed. He could feel when the angle was wrong. He knew instinctively how much Ki produced excessive brightness, how quickly the image collapsed when its structure became unstable, and how to compensate when the viewing angle changed. But asking him to translate those instincts into a formal explanation was like asking Bingya to explain the mathematics of running.
Slowly, painfully, Elder Xu dragged the answers out of him.
Refraction.
Controlled light paths.
Ki acting as the sustaining medium.
The difference between producing light and redirecting existing illumination.
Why the clone became less convincing from multiple viewing angles.
Why excessive Ki actually made the technique worse by producing unnatural brightness.
Why movement increased the difficulty because the entire projected structure had to be recalculated continuously.
Tianyu knew most of these things.
He simply had never bothered naming them.
At last Elder Xu leaned back.
"Your practical comprehension is excellent."
Tianyu smiled.
"Your theoretical comprehension is undisciplined."
The smile vanished.
"You learn through action, intuition and repetition. That is useful. It is also limiting. You understand that something works before you understand why it works."
Tianyu glanced at the clone still standing beside him.
"Doesn't the first part matter more in a fight?"
Elder Xu's expression became positively pained.
"Until you encounter something your instincts have never seen."
That shut Tianyu up.
The elder tapped the manual.
"A cultivator who only memorizes theory becomes a scholar incapable of applying knowledge. A cultivator who only trusts instinct eventually reaches a problem intuition cannot solve. Higher concepts are not forgiving, Shen Tianyu. Fate, light, elemental interaction, space, laws—at some point, 'I can feel how it works' stops being enough."
Tianyu thought of Caelan.
Of an ability that simply informed reality who could and could not attack him.
For once, the lesson found fertile ground.
"So I need to study."
"Desperately."
Tianyu frowned.
"Was 'desperately' necessary?"
"After the last thirty minutes? Yes."
Bingya made a suspicious coughing sound from beside the door.
Tianyu glared at him.
Elder Xu wrote several lines onto the evaluation sheet.
Practical comprehension: Excellent.
Learning speed: Excellent.
Adaptive application: Excellent.
Conceptual articulation: Below expected level.
Theoretical foundation: Inconsistent.
Recommended focus: structured elemental theory, conceptual analysis, and advanced technique principles.
Tianyu read it.
His face fell slightly.
Elder Xu returned his spectacles to his nose.
"Do not look offended. A test that only tells you what you are already good at is worthless."
Tianyu stared at the evaluation for another moment.
Then he smiled.
That, at least, he understood.
Yesterday, the Heavenly Flame Sect had looked like paradise—a place overflowing with monsters he wanted to fight, techniques he wanted to learn and people he wanted to meet.
Today it had done something considerably more useful.
It had begun showing him how much he didn't know.