Ling Qi felt her feet sink into deep, cold mud, and the scent of rot filled her nose. Those sensations barely lasted a second. Screams. Crackling flames and hissing steam. Heat seared her, an impossible, cooking heat pressing down in every direction. She let out a hacking, gagging cough as white smoke engulfed her. The Heron General stepped past her, hand loosely gripping the hilt of her sword. Ling Qi could barely perceive her silhouette in the smoke. Only,… it was not smoke. The essence of the Liminal died wherever it touched Xia Ren. Su Ling's arts had shown her a glimpse of this once, a technique that froze and stole the changeability of the Liminal's matter. But Xia Ren's effect was infinitely greater. The dense mangrove swamp they had stepped into, with its bruise-colored sky and infinite vista of glittering faerie lights in the mist, was a labyrinth; one which Ling Qi instinctively understood could have trapped her for eternity in its peaceful and serene pathways. It all died around the general. Water, mist, and light turned to dust. Where the general walked, the Dream was bleached, burned, and flattened, a spreading blight of still, white dust that devoured the landscape. Ling Qi bent double, a whimper escaping her lips as the pain crashed down on her. The staggering weight and the burning power vented from the segments in the woman's armor washed back into Ling Qi's channels. Here and now, she did not feel her vision waver or her senses spiral off into desperate metaphor. Instead, she saw Xia Ren in her fullness and wished that she had not. The general's shadow towered. She was a twisted giant of segmented steel, gaunt and razor-edged and spiked. Blazing light poured from every crevice in her armor, smoke and ash that smelled like burning flesh,the heat of a furnace burning and blackening whatever her mere presence did not bleach into dust.Smoke and Ash that smelled like burning flesh rose in sky-choking columns, rippling with screaming, suffering faces wrought in smoke. Her sword burned with a trailing pale blue light where its edge sundered even the air. Still tasting bile on her tongue, Ling Qi rose higher as the stone temple groaned, naturalistic spires flexing like the spines of some titanic beast, exuding mist and faerie lights in every color. They whipped around its perimeter, an achingly beautiful shell of dancing and refracting light. From deep inside the temple, a mournful tune played, the sounds of an ancient zither piercing the screams that roared and crackled from the general in her advance. Preservation. So much had been lost, so much taken. One chop after another felling the Forest People, a thousand insults and changes to the ways of the ancestors. Insidious whispers claiming betterment, superiority, even kindness. Lies all. Lies all! The Stone Builders, the Heavenly Jailors, the Hill Burners, the False Dreamers, the Slayer of Foundations! None had ever been worthy. Each sought merely to crack the shell of the last and chosen people, the final stewards of the Diviner's legacy. Conquerors and heirs to the Beast Kings! Thieves and despoilers all that would taint the kin, take from them the last vestiges of pride and identity. Still Waters Deep and Cold would drown it all before surrender. Ten thousand years of history sang in the foundations and the depths, and he would not go quiet into the night. It was unbearably sad. Ling Qi felt like her heart might freeze even as she felt her world go mad. Her senses threatened to rebel, twisting the world into a nonsensical smear of chaotic sensation. Only the sharp pain remained real, the feeling of blood running from her nose and eyes as if her skull was threatening to burst. A sword that cut down mountains rose into the sky. No lurid light crawled on its surface, only raw and ineffable heat, rippling in its fury. Ling Qi gagged as she felt the name sear into her mind, stripped of the niceties of courtly characters and human language. She darted into what remained of the mangrove forest, far from the titan’s tread. Amid the burning, withering canopy and the wails of dying faeries, she hid herself in the boiling waters without a splash, diving deep, deep down into the muck. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Legends shall die. Heroes shall die. History shall die. Songs shall die. Languages shall die. Petty little nations shall end. The Crucible would devour them all and let there be only one people, one dawn, and one future. Tradition wields no swords, raises no shields, marshals no armies, fills no bellies, fulfills no lives. False comfort, aiding none. Scream then. Rage then, if you would not go quiet. The result is the same. She felt the sword strike, and the earth bucked and heaved with the impact as a zither shrieked and stone cracked. A firestorm devoured the sky. The sundered marsh was set alight, and dream veins of pulsing black spread like fractal cracks in the world as all went to dust. It threatened to devour her. The pressure was in her own veins, straining and throbbing with the pain of Visit NovelHub for more amazing novels and chapters. She could feel her qi wicking away with frightening speed. It was only the trickle of darkness flowing in from the thread around her finger that offset the drain. It was sickening. Sickening, because she could feel its resonation. Barriers. Borders. These impeded communication. People divided themselves in order to quarrel and fight to define who was kin and who was not. That was the ugly root at the core of a community. The exclusion of not-kin was how its boundaries were defined. She had seen the rusty blades sprouting under the Emerald Mourner’s rot-slick hooves in her Liminal tribulation. She had seen the passage under the mountains lined with dying slaves in her dream journey with Xuan Shi to meet Grydja. This was the Unity of Blades, the iron Law written into the fabric of the Emerald Seas.