Lyn crossed thousands of kilometres in a single leap. Wind compressed around him as the cold sank through his clothes and deep into his bones. The force of the flight battered him from every direction, yet he endured without slowing.
If I cannot withstand even this, what else can I possibly do in this world?
While falling through the open sky, Lyn activated Pegasus's Leap once more and vanished from that stretch of air, reappearing thousands of kilometres farther ahead. Each activation allowed him to leap from the air itself, although neither the violent wind nor the bone-deep cold offered him any relief.
Three days passed. Lyn neither slept nor stopped. His fingers had stiffened, his lips had split, and exhaustion had reduced the passing landscape to disconnected impressions. Mountains appeared and vanished. Rivers flashed beneath him like silver threads. Forests spread across the earth in dark, immeasurable masses.
The magnetic sensation guiding him suddenly intensified. The Essence Defying Sun supplied remained dormant within Pegasus's Leap until Lyn imposed his intent upon it. Rather than releasing that power in full bursts, Lyn restricted its flow and reduced the height and distance of each leap until he began a controlled descent.
A vast mountain range emerged beneath him. Forests covered the slopes, but their trees were unlike anything he had encountered before. Their trunks and branches appeared to be made from solidified light, filling the entire forest with a radiance bright enough to make every leaf and branch visible from the sky. Farther along the mountainside, a pack of golden-yellow wolves moved between the glowing trees. Each beast was as large as one of the surrounding trunks.
Then Lyn noticed a figure standing below. Long silver hair flowed down his back, while his posture remained as straight and unmoving as the mountain peak behind him.
"Defying Sun!" Lyn shouted as he descended.
"Oh, there you are." Vilen smirked as he looked at Lyn's pale face. "I was beginning to worry that you had been left behind. You were already pale, so why become even paler?" He laughed.
Anger rose within Lyn as he approached the mountainside. Vilen had supplied enough Essence to carry him across millions of kilometres, yet had not bothered to warn him about the cold or explain what the journey would demand of him.
Vilen studied Lyn, mockery lingering in his eyes. "Child, why didn't you use the fire formation to keep yourself warm?" His brows lifted. "I understand that you want to become strong. Not many people receive an opportunity like yours, but pushing yourself this far is excessive."
Lyn answered him with silence. He understood from Vilen's tone that the man was mocking him, yet what could he do? Inwardly, he laughed bitterly at his own helplessness. He simply did not have any room to argue, especially when his life was practically in the hands of the immortal before him.
Fire formation?
He sighed visibly. After allowing the silence to linger some more, Lyn concealed his agitation beneath a calm voice. "Everything is an opportunity to grow, Sir Defying Sun."
"I like your spirit, kid!" Vilen said with a laugh. His gaze passed once more over Lyn's split lips, stiff fingers, and deathly pale skin, and the laughter quietly left him. He shook his head slowly, disappointment hardening into contempt.
"Three days in the sky, and you could not even keep yourself warm?"
Lyn's jaw tightened, but he gave no answer.
Lyn remembered how effortlessly Vilen had seen through him back in Emberbar. The immortal's words did not intimidate him, but his personality made the decision to follow him feel like an even greater gamble than Lyn had first understood. Perhaps it was only because this was his first encounter with an Expression of Heaven, and because he knew so little about beings of that level, that he could still reduce the danger to risks, possibilities, and potential gains within his mind.
Someone with greater knowledge might have already understood how foolish such calculations were. Vilen was perceptive, unpredictable, and far too troublesome to manipulate, but Lyn had already chosen his path. He had already accepted that following Vilen might lead him beyond the point of return, and he intended to extract everything he could from the immortal before that happened. Still, as he reduced the danger to calculations within his mind, a quiet doubt remained.
Were these the thoughts of a man prepared to risk everything, or merely those of a fool who had not yet understood what stood before him?
Before Lyn could pursue the thought any further, Vilen lightly slapped his own forehead.
"I cannot get angry with you. You are a commoner, after all." Vilen sighed. "Naturally, you would not know how to divide your attention between activating the Shard and controlling a formation."
He studied Lyn for a moment before continuing. "Consider this your first lesson. You have already experienced the consequences of lacking knowledge. Still, I miscalculated. I assumed you possessed a Notion Shard that would allow you to split your focus." He extended his left arm. A thin vertical fissure appeared before his palm and widened to the length of his hand. A Heavenly Shard materialised within it, resembling a fragment of broken blue glass covered in faintly golden-glowing symbols Lyn did not recognise.
"Ah, is that what people call a Notion Shard?" Lyn asked, happiness entering his voice as he remembered reading about them in the library.
Vilen's expression remained relaxed, yet his attention settled fully upon Lyn. He said nothing, merely watching the slight widening of Lyn's eyes and the way his gaze remained fixed upon the Shard. Lyn glanced at Defying Sun for the briefest moment. The immortal was smiling faintly, his eyes lingering on every small change in Lyn's expression.
He is estimating me.
The realisation came quickly, though not quickly enough. His surprise had already appeared, his attention had already narrowed, and his hand had already shifted toward the Shard. By the time Lyn understood what was happening, Vilen's attention had seemingly wandered elsewhere. Even after realising that he was being examined, Lyn could do nothing to take back the reaction Vilen had already seen.
But why had Defying Sun been watching so closely?
His happiness was genuine. Lyn had not pretended ignorance to lower Vilen's guard, nor had he exaggerated his surprise. He had truly never possessed anything like a Notion Shard. Or perhaps that was precisely what Vilen had wanted to confirm. A colder possibility followed in Lyn's mind. Defying Sun might have been waiting to see how quickly Lyn's excitement would give way to suspicion.
Lyn's fingers tightened almost imperceptibly.
Defying Sun had not forgotten how difficult it was for commoners to acquire Shards. He had calculated Lyn's reaction before presenting the Notion Shard. Most people barely earned enough to survive, and such Shards rarely reached ordinary markets. When one did, the price was absurd, though justified.
A Notion Shard was like the sail of a ship. Without one, a person could never truly set out upon the path ahead. Their average value exceeded one hundred thousand Contribution Tokens, while most people survived on five hundred to eight hundred each month. As a worthless miner in a small village, Lyn had earned only fifty, assuming the overseer did not deduct some for supposedly failing to mine enough.
"Indeed, it is. Take it." Vilen allowed a hint of surprise to enter his expression at Lyn's delight over a mere Rank Three Shard. "It contains no foreign Essence and is completely clean." Inwardly, Vilen sneered. The others he had chosen had been near the Restless Mountains, and most had already distinguished themselves through natural talent. Several even possessed Notion Shards of their own. Lyn was the exception. Without the Echo of Fragmented Heaven, Vilen would never have considered him.
As Vilen looked at Lyn, his gaze briefly passed over the area near Lyn's heart where his Vessel Realm existed as an invisible organ. Just as he had during their first meeting, Vilen secretly examined Lyn's Vessel Realm without allowing the slightest trace of his intent to escape. Within a fraction of a second, several investigative techniques passed silently through Lyn's body. No matter which method Vilen used, he could not pierce the Vessel Realm or see what it contained.
Vilen continued smiling.
"Thank you, Sir Defying Sun!" Lyn spoke with genuine enthusiasm.
Yet he felt no gratitude. A gift this valuable only made Vilen more dangerous. No one surrendered such a thing without expecting more in return, yet Lyn could not see what Vilen intended to gain from him. The uncertainty soon narrowed into a more urgent question: could he still escape, or had accepting the Shard already closed that path?
Had Father possessed a Notion Shard, perhaps he could have become a true Dao Chosen.
Combat, especially complex techniques, demanded immense concentration. Without such a Shard, most people could perhaps reach Rank Four, Stage Two. For many, that was enough. The Notion Shard grew heavier in Lyn's hands. Khor had spent his life knowing it would remain beyond his reach, yet Lyn now held one without paying anything for it.
He scoffed at his own thoughts. He had paid for it with the near certainty that Vilen would eventually lead him to his own death. Even if the Shard concealed some danger, refusing it would change nothing. If an Expression of Heaven wished to harm him, he would not need to hide the method inside a Rank Three Shard. Lyn had spent his entire life without opportunities precisely because people like him could not afford to reject them when they finally appeared.
Lyn opened his Shard Gate above the Sea within his Vessel Realm, and the Notion Shard fell into the galaxy-filled darkness, settling several light-years from his other Shards. His inner awareness crossed the distance in seconds. As his Essence entered it, the Shard's dark-blue glow intensified and its golden symbols lit up, establishing ownership.
When Lyn drew the Shard back out, Defying Sun's gaze briefly shifted toward the open Gate. Lyn closed the Gate and reduced the Shard to a millimetre. The tiny Shard floated behind him like a satellite.
Defying Sun's gaze lingered where the Gate had vanished. Lyn noticed the unusual attention but could not determine its cause. Either way, it reinforced his decision to keep the Shard outside. He had already guessed that he would not be alone at the training grounds, and he had no intention of revealing that he could invoke it directly from within his Vessel Realm.
Satisfied that the tiny Shard would be difficult to seize, Lyn turned his focus toward its actual function. The moment Lyn imposed his intent upon the Notion Shard, an unfamiliar ease spread through his mind. His thoughts became calmer and more expansive, and he immediately sensed that his attention was no longer restricted to a single point. He observed the grass glowing faintly beneath his feet while simultaneously listening to the birds singing among the trees and studying the branches of solidified light above them.
"Sir Defying Sun?" Lyn murmured.
"Hm? Yes?" Vilen replied. His gaze rested on Lyn for a moment longer than necessary.
Even the opened Shard Gate revealed nothing?
The fissure itself was ordinary, but it should have offered at least a glimpse of the Vessel Realm beyond. Vilen had seen only featureless light. His gaze passed once over Lyn's expression before ten Shards of different shapes rose around him.
Lyn kept his eyes on the Shards circling Vilen. "What is this place?" he asked, forcing himself to look away. Nothing in the surrounding forest resembled anything he had encountered before.
"Ah, you finally thought to ask." Vilen looked toward the radiant forest. "This is one of the mountains within the range known as Lightbloom. It is a mid-sized resource point belonging to our sect. The mountain produces various materials."
The scent of burning lingered in the air.
While Lyn examined the forest, Vilen completed a formation. A temporary shelter rose around them almost instantly, and by the time the process ended, they were already standing inside. The floors and walls were made from dark wood. Three rooms occupied the interior, along with two separate beds and basic embedded formations that provided water, bathing, and other necessities.
Faint veins of light ran through the walls, while two windows overlooked the golden-glowing forest outside.
"Kid, the bed on the right is yours," Vilen said while stretching his back.
He opened his Shard Gate and released another Shard. It resembled a miniature bag made from glass. Vilen squeezed it until it shattered.
A table and two chairs appeared in the room, followed by simple, nutritious food and water.
"I love this Simple Dish Shard," Defying Sun said, his voice filled with joy. He looked Lyn over to see his reaction, wondering what someone who had only recently learned about Expressions of Heaven would think of this.
"That is... incredible. I had no idea such a thing was even possible!" Lyn said, allowing open admiration to enter his voice.
He wondered whether a little flattery might please Defying Sun, though he doubted it would truly sway him. As far as Lyn could tell, Vilen was toying with him and regarded him as beneath serious concern. There was no harm in reinforcing that impression.
"Come. Let us eat. We can speak over the meal," Defying Sun said in a relaxed tone. He had seen through Lyn's flattery from the moment the words left his mouth. Still, a trace of amusement stirred within him. The boy either possessed remarkable courage or had not yet understood the danger before him. Most would scarcely dare breathe too loudly in the presence of an Expression of Heaven, much less attempt to manipulate one.
"I won't refuse!" Lyn took a seat beside the table.
As they ate, Defying Sun explained that they still required approximately three more days of travel. The Restless Mountains remained another 4.32 million kilometres away.
The world was simply too vast. Lyn could not even begin to guess how long such a journey would take with only a Rank Three speed-type Shard. As the name suggested, these types of Shards were primarily used for travel, though they could also be used in combat. Some time ago, he had estimated that crossing the distance between Emberbar and the Restless Mountains without a high-ranked speed-type Shard might take several years, perhaps even decades.
In truth, who could say how vast the Ashen Light Sect truly was? The maps Lyn had seen inside his Light Information Shard showed only its principal territories, while entire provinces were reduced to names along the borders or omitted altogether. Hundreds of cultures lived beneath its banner, many separated by distances so great that they might never speak the same language or obey the same customs. Its population was spoken of in estimates that differed by hundreds of millions, and even senior officials seemed uncertain where the sect's authority truly ended. Yet across the World of Fragmented Heaven, the Ashen Light Sect was still regarded as little more than a pseudo middle-tier power.
"Finish eating. We will sleep and leave at first light," Vilen said through a yawn.
Lyn smiled, although excitement and profound unease moved together beneath the expression. He realised that the freedom he sought was beyond heaven and earth itself. As he tried to sleep, part of a poem emerged in his thoughts. Long ago, while helping an old villager in Hazelrun, Lyn had found a poem among several damaged pages. At the time, he had remembered it because the words sounded beautiful. Now, faced with something so far beyond everything he had once understood, those same words returned to him.
What is freedom to a man?
Only when nothing can command where he flies,
May he call himself free beneath the endless skies!
Lyn opened his eyes as he remembered the words. He glanced over and saw that Vilen was not sleeping at all. He sat cross-legged in meditation. Lyn eventually fell asleep. It felt as though he had only just closed his eyes when a sharp snap tore him awake.
The shelter dissolved around them, separating into ten distinct Shards that Defying Sun summoned through his Shard Gate and stored away. The table and chairs created by the Simple Dish Shard simply remained where they were. Lyn found himself lying on the faintly glowing grass where the bed had previously stood.
"You could have waited until I was standing," he muttered as he pushed himself upright.
Defying Sun laughed.
"Time is a luxury, child. You are not my only student." He spoke with relaxed finality before vanishing from the mountainside.
That much I already guessed.
Lyn did not immediately follow. For a moment, he remained on the grass and stared into the clear blue sky while breathing in the faint, ever-present scent of sulphur clinging to the Lightbloom Range.
Lyn felt the magnetic pull connecting him to Defying Sun slowly weakening. The sky appeared endless, yet he could not cross even a small portion of it without another man supplying the Essence that carried him forward. Perhaps the poem described something no one could ever attain. Or perhaps that was precisely why it had remained in his mind. Then he stood, focused his intent upon Pegasus's Leap, and vanished after Defying Sun. As the Shard flung him thousands of kilometres through the air, Lyn poured Essence into the Notion Shard and divided his attention during the flight.
So he was not lying. There really is a fire formation.
A wave of calm passed through him as the newly divided portion of his mind searched the stream of Essence Defying Sun continuously supplied. Lyn located the embedded fire formation in the Pegasus Shard and activated it. Perfect warmth spread over his body, neither cold nor hot, maintaining a precise equilibrium despite the wind tearing past him.
A faint reddish glow radiated from his skin as he continued hurtling through the sky. As he leapt from one stretch of air to another, he realised that he would have to proceed carefully. The magnetic pull remained a constant reminder that escape might not be possible. Caution hardened into something colder as he began weighing distances, weaknesses, and the narrow possibility of survival.
For the next two days, he did not sleep.
The magnetic pull is growing stronger.
Lyn restricted the Shard's output and began another slow descent. While searching the ground below, he quickly spotted Defying Sun standing rigidly at the edge of what appeared to be an ordinary forest.
"This entire region... could it be..." Defying Sun's voice became clipped.
In an instant, a Shard Gate opened beside Defying Sun, and hundreds of unknown Shards poured into the sky. They fanned out in silence, glowing in countless colours like suspended gemstones. The air seemed to thicken around Lyn. Each breath became harder, and instinctive dread coiled inside him. Then Defying Sun's Essence leaked. It lasted less than a heartbeat, but the pressure struck Lyn with enough force to blur his vision. The pressure vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The Shards abruptly turned and streamed back toward the still-open Shard Gate.
"Hmph. Kid, we need to make a wide turn around this entire region. It will add another day to our flight, but it cannot be helped. This area and the towns within it are..." He trailed off and shook his head.
"Never mind. Just follow me." In the next instant, Defying Sun vanished.
So this is the presence of an Expression of Heaven?
Had Defying Sun allowed even a fraction more of his Essence to escape, Lyn doubted he would still be standing. He turned toward the forest, forcing himself to focus on whatever had caught the man's attention. They had already passed thousands of villages, towns, and forests that appeared no different from this one. No matter how carefully Lyn searched, he could see nothing that explained Defying Sun's reaction.
What secret does this region hold?
He pushed the question away. After putting his intent into Pegasus's Leap, Lyn rose into the sky once more. Their journey continued along a wide and silent arc around the territory Defying Sun had refused to name.
By the time the magnetic pull finally became a direct tug, four days had passed since they had left the Lightbloom Range. The journey had blurred into almost constant travel, interrupted only by brief pauses lasting a few hours. During those brief pauses, Lyn had managed to steal fragments of sleep, although never enough to clear the heaviness behind his eyes.
Then the world opened beneath them and revealed a wall of mountains so immense that it appeared to support the sky. Lyn's breath caught.
They flew beside cliffs that rose without end, their surfaces scarred by ancient glaciers and concealed beneath drifting veils of mist. A flock of crimson-feathered birds swept past them, their eyes resembling burning coals. Warm air hissed across Lyn's face before the birds plunged into the chasm below and disappeared. A fortress occupied one colossal shoulder of rock. It was a brutal, square structure built from dark greyish stone, its walls merging with the mountain as though they had grown from it. Directly beneath the fortress, immense training yards and obstacle courses had been carved into the mountainside like steps made for giants.
Defying Sun descended toward the outer wall, a seamless face of rock rising a hundred metres above the surrounding terrain. Lyn followed and landed beside him upon the broad stone walkway running along its summit.
"Follow me to my office," Defying Sun said, his voice flat in the thin mountain air. "Do not lag behind. The patrols will reset the perimeter soon."
Lyn straightened and stopped. Hundreds of armoured figures stood along the walkway at rigid intervals, motionless as statues. Polished white armour covered their bodies, while masks made from faintly glowing, solidified light concealed their faces.
Every soldier radiated Rank Five Stage Three, suggesting that only Dao Chosen who had reached that exact threshold were permitted to join the unit. For all Lyn knew, they formed a small, elite battalion of the Ashen Light Sect. Lyn studied their precise formation as he tried to suppress his ragged breathing. Their combined Essence leakage was no joke. He could scarcely believe how many people of such a rank were gathered here.
Are they Defying Sun's private garrison, or are they stationed here for something beyond the training ground of a single Expression of Heaven?
"Hellooo? Kid, follow me." Defying Sun looked back impatiently. "Let us get this damned paperwork over with. I hate this part."
As they began walking, one of the masked soldiers stepped out from the line and saluted with a fist against his chest. "General, you are needed. There have been fatalities during training on the lower obstacle course."
Defying Sun did not break his stride. "Send a detail to bury them. Deduct the disposal cost from the survivors' Merit Points."
The soldier opened his mouth, perhaps intending to add something more.
Defying Sun glanced at him.
There was no visible movement. One moment the soldier's left arm remained at his side; the next, it struck the ground behind him, severed cleanly above the elbow. Blood poured across his uniform, yet Defying Sun continued walking as though nothing had occurred.
"Do not bring me such useless matters again," he said. "Lower Administration exists to concern itself with corpses and complaints. I have one duty here, and that is to oversee you Pool Realm nobodies."
The soldier pressed his remaining hand against the wound and bowed. His body had gone rigid, but his voice remained carefully controlled.
"Understood, Sir." He returned to the line without another word. No one dared move to help him while Defying Sun remained nearby. More disturbing than the violence was the soldiers' reaction to it. No one appeared shocked. Several did not even turn their heads, as though seeing a man lose an arm for speaking out of turn was nothing unusual here.
Lyn's gaze lingered on the severed arm and the blood spreading across the ground. Defying Sun did not look back.
"Come on. It is just around the corner," he said to Lyn, his voice settling once more into that false, relaxed ease, as though nothing worth mentioning had happened.
He led Lyn down a broad staircase carved into the fortress's inner wall. At the bottom, Lyn saw a building that looked profoundly out of place among the grim barracks and functional training halls filling the courtyard. Flawless white marble formed its walls, every surface polished enough to catch the cold mountain light.
A graceful arched door of dark wood stood open between two tall windows of leaded glass, while an elegant terrace encircled the second floor and overlooked the crowded courtyard below.
If I did not know any better, I would think this was a castle from a painting.
The rest of the fortress teemed with activity. Some disciples wore light blue, while others wore clothing that marked them as nobles, mercenaries, or commoners. Many gathered in groups, sparred within fighting rings, or bartered around temporary stalls.
The air carried the combined scents of sweat, steel, and more than a dozen cooking fires.
"Administration," Defying Sun said, gesturing toward the marble building as though it were an unavoidable nuisance. "This is where potential is weighed, recorded, and reduced to a number. Let us make you official."
Lyn observed the disciplined ranks of sect soldiers and the sprawling, varied crowd of disciples while his mind worked through the implications. This was no secluded retreat belonging to a reclusive immortal. Defying Sun was not merely a mentor pursuing a personal grudge, as Lyn had hoped.
He was a commander overseeing a system built to turn people into weapons. That only made Vilen's attitude more unsettling. He possessed authority over the soldiers, students, and training grounds around him, yet clearly regarded all of it as something beneath his attention.
Lyn followed Defying Sun through the ornate doorway. Behind them, the chaotic vitality of the courtyard faded into the orderly silence of clerks, scrolls, and softly scratching pens.