Passage through the gateway was seamless. A tiny ripple of feeling that passed through the body as the qi flows equalized offered the only indication that anything had happened. Outwardly nothing changed. The sun, the sky, the feel of the air, these things remained the same as they always did. Mother's Gift replicated a part of the world, including all flows in and out. The sudden presence of a much greater backdrop did not present any fundamental alterations.

But there were differences, such vast variations that Qing Liao was caught with his mouth hanging open as Artemay took one step and flashed into the sky. The whiplash of that motion tore all moisture from his mouth and almost dislocated his jaw save for a last instant act of instinctual qi reinforcement.

The complex, choreographed expanse of the Killing Fields was gone from sight, as was the vast array of farmland to the west. All the open space filled with rice paddies and villages had vanished. In its place lay a vast, patchy forest. Trees, bamboo, fragmentary grasslands, blowdowns, and fire scars stretched out in all directions, an endless game board of terrain pieces viewed from on high. Each of the segments was familiar, individually, but he'd never imagined their assembly in such volume, or to see so many trees anywhere but on mountain slopes.

His eyes widened as the thought struck him that landscapes of this nature must wrap around the world entire. Wilderness without end.

Liao could feel it as well as see it. The qi was different here. The forest gave off energy that differed, in a subtle manner, from the farmland, like wine from the same vines pressed in different years. The variance came from differing balances in the qi flowing through the soil, vegetation, and even the animals. Nor were there any humans here, their distinctive signature, and the equally clear signs of their works were gone, erased. A land untouched by the plow, the axe, or even the flaming brand for twenty-five hundred years.

A world returned to a time before humanity.

"You see it, now," Sayaana's voice rang out inside his skull, unimpeded by the wind and exultant. "The true scope of the world."

Truthfully, he did not see it, not yet, his eyes had not learned the proper signs, but he felt it. The difference in qi could not be denied.

Little time could be spent appreciating this. Artemay moved over the landscape with incredible speed. Stepping through the sky, she outran the wind. Even though the harness held him in place, Liao clung to the immortal with all the strength arms and legs could provide. Discarding all modesty and decorum, he pressed his head down against the back of her neck, pushing up against the hood there for protection from the chill lash of the wind as they moved at such speeds.

He could not look ahead, only to the side. The forests flew by beneath them, too swift for his eyes to focus upon, a sea of green. He struggled to hold the cloak of qi protecting his body from the altitude and chill together.

The grand elder paid him no attention whatsoever. The totality of her focus was devoted to hunting her quarry. The sect knew his residence, and the scouts had charted his general movement patterns, but that was all they had to guide them. He moved about regularly, and while his speed might not match light, it was still that of an immortal.

Artemay's initial target was the rough fortress Rust Reaper had hewed out of the nearby hills. Streaking forth from the gateway, she reached it in no more than a few minutes. The sky shuddered at her passage.

She did not stop there. Presently empty, the outpost was no more than a marker to use for reorientation. From there, the final charge at the target could be launched. The momentary pause as Artemay hovered high in the sky and sought the traces of Rust Reaper allowed Liao to suck in a deep breath and observe the creations of a demonic cultivator for the first time.

He was not impressed. The fortress was almost childishly simplistic. Rust Reaper had simply sliced huge blocks of stone out of an adjacent hillside – the damage to the landscape was visible if he turned his head carefully – and stacked them atop each other. The result was a roughly rectangular set of walls laid atop a mountain whose top had been sliced off and leveled by the sword. Sharp spikes formed by embedding shards of stone onto the top of those walls created a ragged barrier to block anyone from climbing over.

It was more of a boxy cage than a proper defensive structure, and like any cage, it contained occupants.

The oversized box contained a full dozen of the massive, brutish, demons known as giants. Apparently placed there by the expedient of being picked up, carried, and then dumped, they crawled about the space, often overtopping each other in the manner of turtles fighting over room on a log.

The demons had been supplied with a series of piles of large boulders, suitable for use as projectiles if they sat back on their haunches and used their immense arms to throw. Not one of the giants reacted to Artemay's presence until she was directly overhead and a random chance saw one of the enormous monsters look up. It seemed the blood deception worked.

Though their qi sense was blocked, the giants retained quite large eyes. Once they noticed the presence of cultivators above, they began to roar and rumble. Lurching into motion, they rolled toward the piled boulders, clearly intent upon launching them at their hated foes.

Liao wondered why, exactly, the demonic cultivator had supplied these demons with such weapons. Thrown rocks, no matter their size, seemed rather useless in a battle between immortals. Artemay, upon noticing the response of the demons, pivoted in midair and then dashed ahead, dropping precipitously as she did until she flew along at barely above treetop height. The hulking demons were far too slow, they never had the chance to even grasp the boulders. Even if they had, the hooded immortal would have found dodging such a slow projectile almost pitifully easy.

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Trapped by the rush of flight and his inability to look forward, he took the time to consider this more thoroughly. Perhaps, he reasoned, the demonic cultivator was trapped by time. If Liao, and any number of other cultivators in the vitality annealing realm, attempted to assault that fortress, a barrage of heavy boulders would represent a devastating defense Even one such as Su Yi, and Liao recalled her abilities when fighting against the demon horde, would have found her movement seriously inhibited by such weaponry. During the demon war, using giants in such a way was plausible. Here and now it merely seemed absurd.

Despite this, a single glance at the wilderness below was enough to infuse a sense of timelessness across his senses. The wild, untouched by human hands, was strange. Even seen from above and at speed it was unapproachable. It was not an unchanging expanse, the gaps opened by fire, wind, landslides, and other disasters revealed that much. Instead, it challenged human perception. A land without people, one they had not tamed.

Liao found that idea fascinating. He wanted to drop from Artemay's back and roam the woodlands until he fell over from exhaustion. At the same time, a part of him, the part that returned to the sect periodically and took solace in the existence of hot meals and warm blankets, found it terrifying. Perhaps, in building his strange fortress and filling it with demonic soldiers, Rust Reaper had similarly sought to recapture some of the world that once was. Enough to restore equilibrium within his plague-addled mind.

For his part, Liao found the block-made thing a miserable stain upon an otherwise glorious vista.

Artemay simply ignored it as she raced across the sky. Her lower altitude caused her passage to whip up leaves and branches, startled birds, and sent fountains of water spraying in waves on each side every time she passed over a stream. This too, Liao recognized, was a violation of the rhythm of the wilderness. Benevolent though the Twelve Sisters worked to be, and Liao clung to his faith in the grand elders even in his darkest moments, they were immortals empowered by the supreme light of the stars. A human-sized chunk of star stuff, cast down to earth, could not help but be disruptive.

Small wonder then that Celestial Origin Sect dominated and transformed Mother's Gift. The sects of the old world had surely controlled their territories with no less power and certainty. Though he had no time to consider it in the moment, the thought lodged in Liao's mind, something he would not soon forget. His cultivation, his path, had cast him into the wilderness. That was rare, but it mattered. He could never disregard his own vector toward the dao.

No further time would be found to contemplate this. Artemay halted then, a deceleration in midair of such startling speed it took tremendous effort for Liao to cling to consciousness. Without the strengthening of his cranium he'd obtained by reaching the second layer of the vitality annealing realm he surely would have surrendered to the black. As matters stood his limbs, un-annealed, went completely numb. Feeling returned slowly and painfully, as if he was being massaged by hot coals.

Having stopped, Artemay hovered in space for half a breath. Then she dropped like a stone, crashing through branches to slam hard against the dark leaf litter of the forest floor.

Daggers materialized in the immortal's hands. With impossibly swift strokes she sliced free the harness, moving even as Liao tumbled to the earth following this release. "I sensed him," All teasing vanished from her manner as she turned her focus towards the dance of death to come. "I will attack. Try to find cover." She said nothing more. A single step carried her back into the sky without further warning. The duplicated presence of his qi receded rapidly into the distance.

Liao could not sense the presence of Rust Reaper, but this confused him only for a brief moment. Just long enough to recall how much more accurate the grand elder's senses must be compared to his own.

"Follow her," Sayaana's voice resounded in her ears. "Find a vantage. If we are lucky, the battle will move within sight. This is a thing to witness, and perhaps the dao may yet find work for you in this moment."

Though Liao doubted the latter half of that statement, he did indeed wish to see the immortals fight. Stuffed underground during the demon horde, he had only felt the great battles waged then, not observed any of it. To witness a clash between such potent cultivators, from a safe distance, was not a chance to be missed. Gathering his qi, he jumped, just high enough to clear the forest canopy. A single glance sufficed to reveal a high ridge in the general direction that trailed Artemay's rapidly receding qi.

He raced toward it with all the speed the Stellar Flash Steps allowed, bounding from treetop to treetop. His boots brushed the tips of the upper branches, swift indeed. In short bursts Liao could outrun a deer or wolf and keep pace with many birds. Though his heart hammered in his chest, he managed to hold both exertion and footwork together long enough to reach the crest of the heights. A mighty pine, slashed apart in the recent past by lightning, offered both a clear view and a sturdy stump to stand behind.

Though the run strained Liao's abilities to the absolute edge, they remained woefully insufficient. Artemay had raced across the sky at the bare edge of sound itself. She was far, far beyond this point. The sense of her, normally a bright, blue star of qi hanging in the sky, was also confused, obscured by the overlay of his blood used to blind the plague. He searched and failed to detect her at all.

"South," Sayaana, better able to grasp such fraught clues as the high winds carried, murmured. Then, she paused and Liao felt something twitch through the flow of their shared qi circuitry. "And now returning." Sudden urgency compelled the next words. "Be ready, a chance may come."

A heartbeat later, Liao felt it too. Two stacks of qi, one pale and cold, the other the reddish and wretched mess he'd come to know so well while stored in darkness. His bow was already out, and an arrow rose in his hand without thought. Instinct bent to the need to strike back at the monstrousness that had tormented him for far too long.

His hand trembled as he grasped the arrow, for though the signature of the demonic cultivator was weaker by far than that of Artemay, it was still an immortal power before which he was a mere ant.

Liao discovered, through a trick of mental navigation Sayaana had drilled into his motion practice, that he stood between those two burning fires of qi and the wretched little stone cage the demonic cultivator had constructed.

The quarry was retreating toward his burrow. Liao did not dare to wait and see what might happen if he reached it. The arrow vibrated along the edge of the string, ready to draw and shoot should the moment come.

A single moment, only one, and that unlikely. He extended his senses, stared hard into the blue above, and prayed to the Celestial Mother that if fate gave him this one chance, he would not miss it.

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