Abyssal Maelstrom. One of my signature techniques. A last resort, not because I lacked the will, but because unleashing it at anything less than a Transcendent Realm opponent was excessive and embarrassing. I had last used this technique to pull the stars from the heavens and tear a hole in reality, now I was using it against a single Vanguard stage cultivator. I would have to end him if only so that no one would ever hear of this.

  Han Kuanglie only stood in the Martial Realm. I should have held back, but I dared not to. Pride meant nothing if I was dead.

  I pulled the ki from where it pooled around my body, silently cursing whatever was preventing me from accessing my cores and meridians. Pressure built in my chest and skull and I felt something give in my side as a wet heat spread under my ribs.

  It was a fraction of the ki I would normally have used for Abyssal Maelstrom. An insult both to me and to the technique. But it was all I had to give.

  With a roar, the typhoon burst from my palms, and a churning force tore through the space between us. This was not just a physical force but an elemental and a spiritual force as well. The floor shuddered under the pressure and cracks raced across the timber before, inevitably, the boards gave way and we fell.

  Abyssal Maelstrom slammed into Han Kuanglie and his body became a whirlwind of shredded flesh and shattered bone. His roar turned into a strangled cry as the technique tore into his very essence.

  His triumph faded as the pocket dimension, tied to his fading life, fractured around us. The room I had been trapped in and the corpses disappearing into nothing. Abyssal Maelstrom wasn't just an attack; it was an annihilation, consuming both his physical form and his soul. The wheel would not turn for him again.

  But I wasn't going to let him off that easily.

  With a thought, I stopped channeling ki into Abyssal Maelstrom. The technique weakened but did not collapse. With what ki I had left I threw it all into one final gambit.

  "Eye of the Storm."

  Time warped, and froze. Our fall had become a dance where we drifted together in an unnatural calm. To be clear, time hadn't stopped, but it had slowed. This was a variation to the base technique that I had personally honed and modified. For most people, Eye of the Storm simply allowed them time to regroup in the midst of battle. However, I had adapted the technique to allow me to draw another person inside that bubble.

  Understanding dawned on Kuanglie's ruined face and his eyes widened even as he realized that a consequence of what I had done was to extend his agony. A single drop of blood escaped his lips, and floated, suspended in the stillness. "You pulled this one in," His voice was a whisper. "To witness your mastery of the Eye…you give this unworthy wretch too much face."

  Oh, we were back to referring to ourselves in the third person were we? You may look like a lump of rock, Han Kuanglie, but you have manners.

  "I've had a little time to refine my techniques over the years." I floated closer to him, our bodies barely moving through the air. "You know that you are dead." A statement not a question.

  He nodded, face calm despite the ruin of his chest. "There is no dishonor in falling to one such as you. This fool misjudged your power even when you had been weakened almost back to a mortal."

  "Then make your death serve a purpose. Who sent you? Why am I here?"

  Kuanglie's laugh was a wet, broken sound. Even in his agony he tried to bow in the air. "Apologies once more. This one wishes to reply but the geas under which he labors forbids it. Yet, it matters not. You were not expected to awake before you were fully drained of your residual ki. When this weakling does not report back as scheduled they will send another Vanguard for you within a year."

  "Another like you?"

  He coughed, blood trickling down his chin. "Stronger. And should they somehow fail, a Transcendent Realm cultivator will swiftly follow."

  Crippled as I was, that would not be ideal, but I was the most powerful Transcendent cultivator there had been outside of legend. No one alive even came close. I feared no woman or man. "A Transcendent? How sweet. For what purpose?"

  "You can run but they will track you. There is no escape. You are no longer in your world and you have none of your strength. There is no way for you to go back. The ritual that brought you here…" His voice trailed off as his eyelid began to flutter.

  "What ritual? " I reached for him as we continued our glacial fall.

  Kuanglie's eyes were growing distant. "Your techniques are exquisite. This one's pathetic treasures are already destroyed, all except these. As this one is to die at your hand then his honor is greater if, as you die, you crush many of those who would thwart you."

  Fighting the pain he touched his storage ring and a stone the size of his palm appeared in his hand. He reached out and placed the stone onto one of the drops of my own blood that drifted between us. Then he paused and pulled off the storage ring itself and also placed it in a drop of my blood.

  I felt the internal tug that indicated that these were soul bound items. It was no small thing for someone to voluntarily detach an item from their soul and pass it to another, yet he was doing this for me. I invited the items into my soul and felt them become part of me. No soul bound items could harm their owner and, if the odd stone was useless, I could reject it later.

  He smiled at my acceptance. "All this one asks is that his name is not forgotten. And he leaves you with one last gift."

  Even as he spoke he pulled a thin leaf of diamond from the pouch at his waist. I could see that the sigils carved onto it echoed those on the formation that I had woken up in. "The anchor to the formation, Emperor. This one cannot save you but he can buy you a little time. The ritual can be subverted. Your soul will bind to a new vessel where they will not immediately find you."

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  "A new vessel? What vessel?"

  He gave me a small smile. "With apologies, this one cannot control that. It will be the nearest vessel whose owner no longer needs it. May the heavens smile on you Emperor. Remember me."

  It was only because I was watching him so closely that I could tell what he did next. Channeling ki into one of the sigils activated it and it tore a chunk from Han Kuanglie's soul. Even as it happened Kuanglie somehow directed that portion of his soul into the leaf of diamond and a number of the sigils writhed and changed.

  Then Kuanglie was falling away from me and there was a wrench at the very heart of my being. The word became a vortex of spiritual agony as my spirit was ripped from the failing form of my Emperor’s body.

  My technique failed as the Ki of my true cultivation base abandoned me entirely, the connection severed. Time snapped back into its proper flow.

  We plummeted again, my soul and my body separate, the world rushing up to meet us as my Abyssal Maelstrom raged once more. Kuanglie's final words were lost to the wind as gravity reclaimed us both.

  The last thing I saw before the collapsing pocket dimension absorbed him was Han Kuanglie's eyes closing as a beatific smile spread across his ravaged face even as both that face, and my body, were shredded into nothing.

  * * *

  From falling down through the air I found myself stumbling backwards out of a door and slammed into someone before I landed on the floor with a thud.

  When I say I slammed into someone I say that in the most literal sense. My soul poured into a body that was not my own.

  I felt truly awful and it wasn't just my undignified landing. My limbs and my thoughts were heavy and slow. If I thought I felt bad before, now I felt infinitely worse. My body was now foreign to me.

  A pair of hands grabbed my wrists and I kicked out to free myself. My mind demanded an Iron Dragon Kick but my leg on offered a lazy, amateurish flail. Somehow though I felt myself connect. Thanks goodness. Defeating Han Kuanglie wasn't the end. It appeared that someone was trying to take advantage of my incapacitation.

  I wheezed, hauling myself up from floorboards sticky and filthy with spilled ale and worse. A far cry from the jade-inlaid decks of my flagship.

  Through eyes that struggled to focus I saw someone lurching towards me and, on reflex, headbutted them. Even though I hurt myself in the process I was rewarded by seeing them stumble away. Crude but effective. Scrambling backward my sluggish limbs felt like they belonged to someone else.

  My attacker decided that there was no need for subtlety. The next attack was a fist, a crude, telegraphed swing that, in any other circumstance, I would have dodged with contemptuous ease. But my body moved like lead, and even though I managed to get my face out of the way the blow still landed with a sickening crunch. My shoulder exploded in pain and sent me reeling, stomach first into a nearby table as the impact drove the air from my lungs. My legs betrayed me, and buckled as I tried to breathe.

  Air? I gasped, a choking, involuntary need. What need had I to breathe? I had suppressed the necessity of breathing centuries ago, replacing it with perfect Ki circulation. Yet now a mortal function had returned. I had lungs again.

  This was an outrage. The indignity of being so powerless, so, frankly, helpless, was an unwelcome novelty.

  I caught myself on the sticky surface, and managed to lash out at my advancing opponent. Luck rather than judgment meant that I connected with his face and he took a half step backwards. In a half-crouch I stumbled away to put the table between me and my opponent.

  My eyes swept the room confirming that I was in some kind of tavern and I had, apparently, just stumbled out of a storeroom. If I had to guess I would say that Han Kuanglie had moved the anchor of his pocket dimension here before he died. Now no trace of the pocket dimension, or any of it's inhabitants, was left. Frustrating to say the least. I had defeated a Vanguard with only a fraction of my power, but with his death I had lost my immediate, and best, source of answers.

  The patrons looked on in mild interest and it was clear that I wouldn't be getting any aid from them. I didn’t recognize any of the faces but I knew their type. The kind who would sell their mothers if they could see coin in it. If they realized who I truly was they would turn me in without hesitation.

  I'm not going to lie, under different circumstances I would have felt right at home.

  I drew a shuddering breath and the air tasted wrong, thick with spirits and unwashed bodies instead of the purified essence I had grown accustomed to breathing. Even the gravity felt heavier, as if the world itself rejected my presence. Time enough to consider that later. For now I needed to focus on my attacker.

  Loose shirt, shoulders like an ox, and surprisingly good teeth. In short, pure, dumb muscle. He had got back to his feet and now advanced with his ham-like fists hanging low.

  “Decent punch.” His teeth bared in a grin as he rubbed his chin. “Do we really have to do this? I was trying to be nice but it looks like we're doing this the hard way.”

  To be assaulted by one such as him was an insult. At least those who had attacked me earlier were cultivators. Pathetically weak cultivators, but cultivators nonetheless. He was a mortal. Time to put an end to it.

  I reached inward and drew on my ki. I felt drained but, even in a new body, there must still be something.

  Nothing. Even though I had been able to use ki just a few moments earlier there was nothing left.

  I tried again. Harder. Still nothing. I tried to meditate to drag some ki into me but Tide Renewal still wouldn't work.

  This wasn't ideal but also not unheard of. Artifacts that could suppress my cultivation were surpassingly rare but they did exist. It would explain why I had felt off from the moment I opened my eyes. The manacles that had initially constrained me were a joke, but a joke that made sense if the manacles were only to back up a more powerful spirit treasure.

  As Han Kuanglie had indicated, anyone who would dare to challenge me like this would have put years, if not decades, of planning into an attempt if they were to hope to avoid the obliteration of not just them, but their entire clan. An artifact that could limit the techniques and arts that I could use was the minimum that they would have prepared.

  My mind raced. I had insisted that everyone in the sect train without the use of their ki precisely for moments like this. I didn't need my powers to defeat a novice like this.

  Drawing myself upright I moved into a basic fighting stance. My movements in this body were devoid of my normal smoothness.

  No matter. This was just a mortal

  I surged forward, muscle memory from seven centuries of combat drove me forward to finish his. My punch, which should have shattered his skull, connected. To merely kiss his cheek.

  How was I so pathetically weak?

  His eyes widened momentarily, genuine surprise flickering across his features before dissolving into amusement.

  "Really? How much have you had to drink, Taros?" A smirk spread across his face. “That all you got? Bit embarrassing, no?”

  He wasn't wrong. But, Taros? Was that the name of the vessel? The name was both foreign and yet somehow familiar. A problem for another time.

  Centuries of power had made me arrogant. I had faced down titans and kings without blinking, commanded fleets that levelled empires. Now, I couldn't even fend off a common, mortal, thug. Perhaps the lesson that the heavens were teaching me, was to learn humility the hard way. Or, in the best case, perhaps this was simply a test, one final trial before my true ascension.

  Without even bothering to draw his knife my opponent caught me around the waist and tossed me onto the table that splintered beneath the weight. Pain sparked across my ribs and my legs folded.

  I tried to rise and my hands caught splinters from the floor. The hammering behind my eyes intensified. If the pull of gravity was heavy before, now it felt doubled.

  A hand grabbed my hair and slammed my head into the floor. A crunch. Oh, come on, not again. I didn’t feel the next blow as everything went black.