Yu Di couldn’t resist the massive Qi pushing down on him. It felt like a shooting star streaking across the sky, inevitable and signaling death.

  Sect Leader Gu Zi continued to fall like a firecracker at Yu Di until he reached a foot above his head. The flames around him disappeared. With a gnarled and burnt hand, he grabbed Yu Di by the collar.

  Qi wrapped around them both as it cocooned them.

  Yu Di knew this feeling. They were teleporting somewhere else. But would it work with the government official’s barrier up? Were they about to smash into the fire dome and explode into ten thousand pieces?

  The cocoon dissipated and Yu Di saw a familiar sight. The large diamond floating above the sect’s fortress. Only, they were inside it.

  Gu Zi collapsed onto the floor, struggling to get up. He gasped and wheezed and smelled like burnt meat.

  Yu Di had to endure the closeness as there wasn’t that much space within the crystal diamond. But they were back. His daughter was down there somewhere. All he needed to do was get out of there to reach her and he won’t have to die in the festival.

  Except he didn’t know how to get out.

  Yu Di went to the very edge of the blue diamond and pressed against the wall. It didn’t budge. He looked at the seams to see if there was a hidden door or access panel or anything to get out.

  Nothing.

  Yu Di peered down from the diamond, trying to focus on his daughter. He had a sense that she was west from his current location, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  Actually, there were no disciples or servants running around the fortress.

  Where was everyone?

  Yu Di squinted as hard as he could. The diamond’s glassy surface made it hard to tell exactly what was outside, but there was no movement within the fortress. Had they been attacked while they were at the festival?

  Was his daughter alright?

  Yu Di banged against the diamond. He wanted to laugh at his pitiful self. When he first saw the diamond, he thought of it as something weak, something that is thrown away by demigods. But now he’s trapped within the very thing he ridiculed. Maybe he could use a sliver of his power to get out?

  Yu Di took out his jade tablet.

  Current Power: Realm 1, Stage 2, End Stage, Peak level (Foundation Establishment)

  Remaining Lifespan: 9 years, 1 month.

  Current Status: Cursed (13.2% lifted), Marked

  Overall Power: Fourth Realm, End Stage, Peak level (Demigod)

  What’s this? He was still marked. Did that mean that the government official could still see their actions even in the diamond itself and away from the arena? Then that also meant that everyone could be watching them right now.

  Yu Di had to be careful then. He couldn’t allow others to see anymore of his secrets, otherwise they would scramble for them. The government official was the most dangerous of all as he had higher connections than any of the other sects.

  Gu Zi coughed again, this time spitting blood onto the ground. He got up into a sitting position and cultivated.

  Being at the center of this diamond, the Qi flowed into him very easily. It was probably the most concentrated and dense Qi in the region.

  Yu Di cupped his hands and bowed to Gu Zi.

  “I thank Sect Leader Gu for saving me from the festival. But if you don’t mind me asking, how do we get out of here?”

  Gu Zi opened one eye as the other one was crusted shut with burn scars.

  “You don’t.” He took a deep breath, cycling the Qi through his body. He was healing himself. “This is either where you will teach me how to break through my bottleneck or your grave. Either way, neither of us are leaving this place anytime soon.”

  Yu Di cupped his hands again and bowed lower.

  “I apologize Sect Leader Gu, I have no idea what you are talking about. I don’t think someone as lowly as me can help you break through your bottleneck anymore than an ant can lift my foot.”

  Gu Zi took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders until something cracked, and then got up. He had healed himself enough to not be in mortal danger.

  Yu Di gasped.

  The man standing in front of him had injuries and cuts on him that would have normally killed any mortal. His Qi was running wild, but quickly calming down.

  “I just had a brutal fight with three other sect leaders,” Gu Zi said. “They were weak and dishonorable. They all attacked me. If I had broken through to the next realm, I would have ended the festival. Do you know why I haven’t broken through all these years?”

  Yu Di shook his head.

  “It’s because I couldn’t understand the damn line from your cursed manual.” Gu Zi took out a copy of his manual and threw it at Yu Di.

  Yu Di picked it up. It was an exact copy of the original manual Gu Zi gave him earlier. This one had annotations throughout. At first, they looked like a scholar’s handwriting, but eventually there were angry and mad ravings against Yu Di personally.

  Over and over again, the lines from the stone stele were circled in black and red ink.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  “This is a priceless manual. Thank you for giving me it,” Yu Di said.

  “Don’t play the fool with me. You can drop the act,” Gu Zi said.

  Yu Di kept his head bowed.

  “There are still prying eyes everywhere.”

  “Are you talking about the festival? That stupid mark they gave us so that they can track us and see what we’re doing? I don’t care about that. None of this matters to me anymore.”

  Well it still mattered to Yu Di, especially his daughter. He didn’t want to make her a target.

  “I’m sure if we explain to the government official, we can be shown some leniency,” Yu Di said.

  “Still won’t drop the act?” Gu Zi smiled, showing off his canines. The mole on his upper lip quivered. “Fine, I’ll force you to do it.”

  Gu Zi reached out to touch the diamond. His fingers sunk into the surface an inch and it lit up green. He pressed a few of those buttons.

  The blue diamond shuddered all around him.

  “Wait, are you going to drop the diamond onto the fortress?” Yu Di asked.

  “That would make this too easy for you,” Gu Zi spat out. “I know you have quite a few artifacts on you that could stop that. Instead, I’ve chosen the one thing you can’t prevent unless you give me what I want. I’m going to overload the diamond and blow it up.”

  “No, you can’t. It would kill everyone in this region.” Yu Di pulled Gu Zi’s hand from the diamond’s wall. But the buttons the sect leader pressed still glowed green.

  Gu Zi smiled wide like he had just heard the best joke in the world.

  “That’s right. You can’t stop it unless you help me break through and reach the next realm. None of your artifacts can contain the blast this big. So tell me what I need to know so I can save your daughter.”

  Gu Zi pointed westward, right about where Yu Di felt Yu Lin was.

  “I can’t. Please stop the diamond.”

  “Just drop the idiot act. You are a demigod, or were. You know how to break through. You know the technique to reach the next realm. Show me.”

  Yu Di shook his head.

  “I already told you, I can’t. The path to break through and ascend into the true realm of Immortals requires your own way. There’s nothing I can tell you to break through. There’s no magic pill.”

  “You lie. Every one of our brothers and sisters ascended over a hundred years ago. None of them had the same problem I did. You told them something. Something you never told me. The answer.”

  Yu Di closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what to tell this old fool to get him to understand. What’s worse was it was getting hot in there. Wave after wave of dense Qi pounded against his body. The very air heated up, but it was a dry heat that scorched his throat. They had a few minutes at most before it claimed the lives of everyone.

  “I never gave anyone else anything different from what I have given you, Sect Leader Gu,” Yu Di said. “They worked it out on their own based on the cultivation manual I developed. Every single one of our brothers and sisters ascended because they figured out their path to becoming an Immortal. That’s how it always is.”

  “That can’t be true. I followed everything in the manual.” Gu Zi ripped the manual from Yu Di’s hand. “I even followed the most crazy, asinine ideas you have written in there. With every step, I got stronger. But that last line, no one could solve in over a hundred years. You must have the answer.”

  Yu Di was getting nowhere. There was only one thing he could do at this point. He could use his teleporting artifact to teleport out of the diamond to his daughter and then run as fast as they could. With a few other artifacts he had on him, they might survive the blast and then the fallout.

  But then that would mean everyone else would die.

  Gu Zi laughed.

  “You know it’s funny.” He took a deep breath. “A few months ago, I was resigned to my fate. I was coming to terms with my mortality and how I would never break through. I accepted my soon to be death. And then you show up again in my sect, churning all my memories and my hopes that finally, the heavens were showing me mercy. I thought that maybe my idolized senior brother came back to bring me out of this deep and dark pit. Instead it seems you came back to kick me down one last time, is that it?”

  Yu Di bit his lip, stopping himself from saying the first thing in his mind.

  “No, that was never my purpose. I’m sorry you thought I was taunting you, but I wasn’t. And you are a good sect leader. You shouldn’t allow your legacy to be genocide.”

  “Stop mocking me and tell me!” Gu Zi grabbed Yu Di by the neck and slammed him against the walls of the diamond. The entire structure shook, its blue glow shimmering on and off like a candle sitting in the wind.

  “I’ve followed every teaching. You must be hiding something. You were always afraid I would be better than you. That’s why you didn’t tell me the answer. You want to prove that you’re smarter. I don’t care anymore. I just want to ascend.”

  Gu Zi’s eyes were frantic. He looked between Yu Di and the wall. The Qi build up was reaching a critical point.

  “I can’t!” Yu Di loosened Gu Zi’s fingers off his neck. “I would if I could, but I can’t. Maybe you just weren’t meant to be a true Immortal.”

  “Or maybe you were just a bad teacher.” Gu Zi threw Yu Di across the diamond, slamming into the other wall.

  Yu Di’s head was spinning and there was a ringing in his ears. Enough of this, there’s no reasoning with a mad man. He was sorry for all the people here, but he had to get out.

  He reached into his storage ring to pull out the teleportation device. Before he could press it, Gu Zi yanked it from his hand.

  “You’re not going anywhere until I get my answer,” the sect leader said.

  Yu Di sat up, glaring at Gu Zi.

  “Fine, you want the answer, I’ll tell you. I remember you now, even after all these years. Yes, you were the star pupil when I first joined the sect so long ago. You had everything, but you didn’t have the one thing that would have let you ascend.”

  Gu Zi got closer, stooping low to Yu Di.

  “You never asked for help,” Yu Di said. “You always thought you were better than everyone and that you could solve any problem on your own. Our fellow disciples were always curious and helped each other. We figured out things as a community.”

  Gu Zi stepped back.

  “That can’t be it.”

  “I might have figured out how to ascend, but it was all our brothers and sisters and their vast experience that helped me.”

  Gu Zi looked down at his manual, over the words that he circled over and over again in black ink.

  “All I had to do was let go of my ego and ask for help? That was it?”

  Yu Di forced himself up. Being thrown around like a doll really banged up his body. He absorbed the ambient Qi within the diamond, quickly healing his internal injuries. Movement caught the corner of his eye.

  Many disciples came rushing out to the blue diamond, but one among them made Yu Di catch his breath. There was a pink tunic riding among a sea of blue and grays.

  Yu Lin.

  “I see it now. I see the answer!” Gu Zi shouted.

  A blinding green light shot out from him.

  Yu Di knew what that meant.

  Gu Zi had finally ascended to the next realm. His hair became full and shiny like a youth’s. The wrinkles on his face disappeared. He corrected his slight hunch and stood taller.

  Years of cultivation and absorbing Qi was finally released into this transformation. Sect Leader Gu Zi was now a new man, one who looked like an Immortal. He also had the Qi to back it up.

  “Congratulations Sect Leader Gu,” Yu Di said. “You’ve finally achieved your dreams. Now can you please stop the diamond from exploding? My daughter is down there.”

  Gu Zi stared at his hands, admiring it before he turned to Yu Di.

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Even his voice sounded youthful, surprising him. “I can’t believe I’m an Immortal now, a true Immortal.”

  Gu Zi went to the panel on the wall and pressed a few buttons. Instead of cooling down, the blue diamond made a loud, whining noise like grating two pieces of metal together.

  “Senior Yu, I think we have a problem.” Gu Zi turned to face Yu Di. “I can’t stop it.”

  “What?”