Tian was by the side of the pit once more. Liren was unconscious but breathing steadily. Burning Heaven was slumped against the cave wall. He could see the elements cycling through her, moving lively. Fine, for a certain value of fine. He slowly exhaled, and checked himself. His eyes ached. There was a faint tremor in his hands. It took more effort than it should have to move them. His feet felt leaden, as though the liveliness of them had run away and he was now too slow to catch it. Whatever he had done in the illusion had been real enough to wear him out.

The array had finished, the lines dissolving with the last of the spirit crystals. He staggered to his feet, looking up the shaft towards the strange sky. There was no evidence of his fight with the dragon. No holes in the wall, no fallen rocks. Had he hallucinated the whole thing? It was possible. He didn’t want to believe it, but it was possible.

He shuffled over to the edge of the pit and peeked inside. Even with his medical training and battlefield experience, it was rather difficult to describe the state Heavenly Demon was in. It would be considerably harder to draw it, even if the artist had a strong stomach. From what he could tell, every bone in the tall man’s body had been thoroughly broken, his ligaments torn apart, organs pierced, shredded, wrung out, even his skull was crushed and brainmatter was leaking out onto the stone below. And yet, against all logic and reason, Heavenly Demon still lived.

There was a resonance. Something inside of that suffering mass thrummed, vibrant and yearning. Through the skin of this hidden realm, cold starlight fell, landing on the Heavenly Demon. There was a richness to the light, a brightness and a sense of meaning. What meaning, Tian didn’t know. He could just feel it. This was, as he understood things, a qi from some powerful beings residing in the constellations, coming down and carrying some of their shen, combining with the vital energy that still struggled inside of the Demon’s remains.

His cultivation required sacrifice, and great achievements. What was two hundred years of stagnation but struggle and overcoming a challenge? What was nearly three weeks of torture in an array if not sacrafice? All of it, the years in the wasteland, finding the hidden realm, putting up with Tian and Liren, enduring the array, it was all achievement. It was all something he could lay before his Primordial Demon gods and say “This is what I have achieved. Now give me what I’m owed!”

No, that wasn’t right. He was wronging the man. He would say “This Seat had done all he ought. Now render unto him his due!”

It seemed the Primordial Demons were quite scrupulous in their accounts. He could see organs stitching themselves back together with streams of starlight. Bones sintered themselves into seamless repair, faint stars twinkling as the white bones turned inky black. Galaxies and nebulae whirled on his hip bones, as the river of heaven flowed up his spine. Muscle flushed and filled, bright red and throbbing, flowing and binding to the midnight bones. Tian had the irresistible image of woven cloth catching the wind and filling, swelling, growing fat with blood. Fascia came down in sheets, tendons grew out, great hawsers of elastic tissue running through muscles and binding joints.

It was beautiful. Horrifying, gory, and more than a touch demonic, but beautiful nevertheless. To see a body formed so perfectly, to see organs nestle properly in their places, each marked with shining foreign constellations, was a true wonder.

There was a stirring behind him. “Ow.”

“Stay down. Your sun set.” Tian managed a small grin, though he kept his eyes on Heavenly Demon’s reconstruction. “What was that, by the way? I didn’t know you could manifest your suns.”

“Just the one. The first one. Uh… maybe that will change, but for now, just the one.” Liren sounded as shattered as he did. “My head is killing me. I feel like my brain is three sizes too big for my skull.”

Silence returned for a few minutes, broken only by the soft sounds of Heavenly Demon pulling himself back together.

“By any chance did Sister Mei recommend any seductive language for me to use?” Liren asked. “I could really use a massage, and I’m tired enough to try to act all cutesy for one. I’ve seen girls act all flirty for a massage. It looked effective.”

Tian reckoned it would be lethally effective on him, and resolved to bury such a dangerous secret with misdirection. “I’m afraid I didn’t ask. And who’s going to give me a massage? I’m battered as hell, fighting all those things. Really, though, what was that sun, and why did you manifest it? Why did you keep it manifested?”

It took her a minute to string together the words. “Because it would work, and it’s strong enough to come out now.” She paused again, trying to wrap words around what she wanted to communicate.

“I can feel that the suns needs things to be better. Things to help them burn brighter, hold more energy in them, that kind of thing. Mostly it’s just yang qi and lots of it, but the longer we were here, the more I got the feeling that it was actually kind of hungry for this shen qui floating around. So I just… manifested it, as a way to purify all the gunk building in the array, figuring what the hell. Then I passed the hell out, but I could feel it drawing in the shen fragments.” She smiled, and her voice turned soft. “I could feel you guarding us.”

“Always.” He turned his head and looked back at her. She had propped herself up on one elbow, the red in her hair dancing like fire in the odd grey light of the hidden realm, and she was smiling at him and he thought his heart would explode with all that he was feeling. All the rabid insanity that was coming, the horror of Palace Lord Song, all of it was pushed to the side for this. Liren looked away first, a blush creeping up her neck.

“We’ve been together for far too long for you to have that effect on me. Stop it at once.”

Tian shook his head. “It’s innate. You are doomed. Fortunately, I will care for you in your doomed condition.”

“Who is doomed?! You’re the doomed one.”

“No, it’s definitely you.” Tian shook his head and they fell back into easy bickering, each hiding their little smiles, knowing they weren’t fooling anyone.

“Oh good. I was worried we were beaten up, but if Bro and Sis are bickering, I’m definitely still alive. Which is starting to feel like a shame. My head feels like it shrunk and my brain feels like it grew.” Burning Heaven groaned, then waddled over to collapse next to Liren, resting her long, featherless head on Liren’s belly. Liren looked down fondly, and gently stroked her neck.

“Yeah, we lived. How’s Heavenly Demon doing?” Liren asked.

“Fantastic. I’m genuinely curious to see how he will look in the end. Hey, don’t we have some tiger bone wine sitting around?”

“Yes, but it’s not even two years old at this point.” Liren gave him an inquisitive look.

“Well, what’s the best wine we have?”

“You’re asking me, but who should I ask?” She grumbled, then said “Maybe the Red Horse Village wine? The jar looks both old and fancy.” Tian pulled the chest sized jar from a storage ring and looked it over. He pushed a little vital energy into his eyes, and the wine suddenly seemed very lively, bursting with yang qi and racing horses. It was a Heavenly Realm wine, one of the few they had and suitable for the moment. It was a worthy gift.

“The starlight is converging.” Burning Heaven said, then paused. “Have I ever used the word ‘converging’ before? I know what it means, but have I ever used it before?”

“Dunno.” Tian shrugged. She was right. The light was pulling together, beams of cold light coming from impossibly far away and piercing through the mountain. They fell heavy, like a cold oil come to anoint the rising demon. There was music too, alien strings and vibrating tones coming together to make an inhuman harmony. Whatever the Primordial Demons were, they had no interest in pretending to be human. Watching the starlight come pouring down, it seemed that they approved of Heavenly Demon. Or his sacrifices, anyway.

He could feel something building in the pit. The weight of the light hadn’t been his imagination, he could feel a pressure growing. The light was filling up the pit, growing brighter as it grew. Starlight like clear oil, dotted with mercury, ruby, sapphires and citrines. Then the light shrank down, growing brighter even as impossible shadows filled the hole. Night’s darkness pressing down on the starlight, making sure its brilliance was unmistakable, driving towards the eyes of all who could see, understand, and wonder.

“I will never look at the night sky the same way.” He wasn’t sure who had spoken. It took him a few seconds to realize it had been him.

“It’s not like my suns. It’s too yin for that. But there is something about it that feels familiar. I can’t think what, but there is something about it that says it should feel common as air to me.” Liren murmured.

“It’s all the colors, including all the ones you can’t see. I can feel it in my feathers. My Myriad Colors Plumage is changing too. Can light become deeper? If it can, my light is. I… my head… it’s throbbing. Everything means so much.”

“It’s normal. After you have an experience like this, a real fortuitous encounter, it’s normal. You aren’t the same person who flew in here. A little pain is normal when you grow.” Tian’s voice was soothing, but his eyes never left the falling starlight.

The music changed, bass notes rising from the high pitched harmonic whines. Tian thought of someone playing the guqin, rubbing away at the deepest notes while another drew out the highest. Did Heavenly Demon exist between fear and courage? Or was that the point of his path- to leave humanity for the Primordial Demons existing in the night sky. He would have to ask.

Heavenly Demon’s heart started beating, drumming loud enough to echo off the cavern walls. The light condensed into a single brilliant ball surrounded by endless darkness- then shattered.

If the Heavenly Demon they knew before was the sketch, this was the completed picture. Seven and a half foot tall, and built to the most exacting proportions. The shoulders were wide, but not too much so, the waste narrow, the arms strong and slim, as were the legs. Starlight wrapped itself around him, gauzy robes to cloak a perfected human body, crowned by midnight hair that tumbled all the way to his knees. It floated around him, now, like wings of night lifting him up. His eyes blazed with sunlight-golden light.

He looked like a human perfected, but there was nothing human in his gaze. This was the true Heavenly Demon. Everything an orthodox cultivator was supposed to be- tall, beautiful, perfectly formed, he was. If the body was a reflection of the soul, then surely logic would insist he was an orthodox and good person. Even if your instinct was to run, or beg, or worship, at the sight of him. Even if looking at him made you count your own imperfections. Even if being near him made you count all the ways you were lesser, slower, stupider, inferior in every conceivable dimension.

No, there was nothing so flawed or limited as humanity in that gaze. This was a demon. Heavenly, because it descended from the heavens and was perfect in form, but a demon. Something fundamentally other. A daoist withdrew from society to learn what it meant to be truly human. The Heavenly Demon despised that. The demon withdrew from humanity. It labored mightily to beat the humanity out of itself. It insisted on becoming a higher sort of being. One that looked down on humanity, one that looked down on the whole world and everything in it, and always had.

They had brought such a being into the world, and it glared at them without a shred of recognition. Or gratitude.