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This must be the researcher’s idea of a cruel joke, Jing Yuan mused as he stared down the form of his lieutenant in front of him.
Yanqing’s eyes were steely and determined, the gaze of a soldier looking to take down his foe. His swords hovered in the air behind him as he floated just off of the ground. Icy wind whipped around him in a frozen warning. He stared blankly forward, not even acknowledging Jing Yuan’s arrival to the final level of this Simulated Universe world.
Jing Yuan approached, his guandao weighing heavily in his hand. Unbidden, the image of his master as he had last seen her sprung into his mind, her eyes blazing red as insanity drove her every strike.
There was no avoiding that fight, Jing Yuan reminded himself as emotion threatened to tighten his throat.
Nor will there be avoiding the fight between your own self and Yanqing when you become stricken with Mara, a voice whispered in the back of his mind.
Jing Yuan’s grip tightened on his guandao. Not for a long time yet, he asserted.
“I am sorry,” Jing Yuan said aloud to the facsimile of his lieutenant and student.
Yanqing’s face remained impassive. His swords floated unwaveringly behind him.
Jing Yuan swung his guandao towards Yanqing, silent apologies ringing in his mind.
Yanqing’s eyes snapped to meet Jing Yuan’s. Yanqing’s swords angled forward, moving to block the guandao’s blade. His eyes burned with cold fire, his mouth curling with a snarl.
Jing Yuan gracefully stepped back and avoided the first few strikes with practiced readiness. One of Yanqing’s blades clipped the back of Jing Yuan’s calf as it soared behind him, drawing a hiss of pain from the general. He spun his guandao to gain momentum and sliced forward, electricity arcing along his blade.
Yanqing raised his sword faster than the glare of sunlight glancing off the wing of a passing cycrane. His other swords whirled in the air around the pair, poised to strike at a moment’s notice.
The blades clashed in a shower of frost and electricity. The electricity flared out and struck every sword. Two of the swords disappeared in a puff of smoke. Yanqing didn’t even acknowledge the loss, continuing his assault without so much as a hitch in his breath.
Their blades met time and time again, surging together and springing apart as though it were a well-rehearsed dance. Frost and electricity filled the air.
With every strike he landed, with every surprised cry of pain from Yanqing, Jing Yuan’s heart ached. Even as the energy that coursed through his veins, begging to be released, Jing Yuan held tight to his resolve.
Even if this Yanqing wasn’t real, Jing Yuan couldn’t bear to fight him. He couldn’t bear to strike down his student, the closest thing that he had to family.
Yanqing leapt into the air as Jing Yuan swept low with his guandao, the boy slicing high with his own sword.
Jing Yuan faltered as he recoiled.
His resolve slipped.
Jing Yuan felt it as the golden energy bled from his veins and melted away from him, towering behind with its own guandao raised to attack. Electricity crackled as the Lightning Lord’s ethereal guandao struck true.
Yanqing yelped in pain.
Jing Yuan’s heart ached.
Yanqing flew back from the impact, landing roughly on the ground. He pushed himself up with arms shaking from the exertion, glaring at Jing Yuan through sweaty strands of blond hair that had escaped from where it had been tied back.
Jing Yuan lowered his blade, watching as Yanqing struggled back to his feet. In the snowflakes that fell from Yanqing’s blade, he was again reminded of Jingliu. How the carefully neutral look in her eyes had been replaced by rage. How the hands that had firmly but gently corrected his forms had been encrusted with rough shards of ice.
How the hands that had wiped away his tears when the horrors of battle crept forth unbidden during his rest had become hands dripped with blood.
Yanqing shouted an indiscernible battle cry, raising his sword and lunging forward towards Jing Yuan.
Steel clashed as their blades crossed once more.
Yanqing deftly pushed off of Jing Yuan’s blade, darting backwards to avoid the general’s follow-through. Yanqing raised his left hand over his head. His swords drew in around him in a circle, floating in place.
“Swords, descend!” Yanqing yelled, slamming his hand downward.
The swords spun in a circle around him before flying towards Jing Yuan, and Jing Yuan raised his guandao to meet them. The blades sang in the symphony of war, the clashing steel laying the foundation of drums and cymbals as the swords were destroyed one by one, bursting apart into clouds of frost-kissed fog.
Jing Yuan whirled, slicing his guandao across the last of the swords. It disappeared, and the battlefield fell silent.
Jing Yuan took a slow breath, listening for any sign of Yanqing. He was met with silence.
Yanqing burst through the fog.
Jing Yuan’s eyes widened.
Yanqing’s sword was raised, leveled forward at Jing Yuan without hesitation.
Jing Yuan’s breath was punched from him as the blade slid between his ribs like an ax through a rotted tree. Ice spread from where the sword met the skin of his chest and crept outward, locking the blade in place. Yanqing merely looked up at his mentor, a self-satisfied look on his face as he twisted the blade.
“So this is how she felt…” Jing Yuan whispered, feeling the sword shift in his chest as his breath hitched.
The ice spread. It filled his lungs, his heart, and his mind froze on the thought of how Jingliu had felt when his lightning had coursed through her veins, when her curse had been terminated. For a moment he was back on that battlefield, watching with wide eyes as she tipped her head back, the fear on her face easing into relief before she was obscured by the Lightning Lord’s strike.
The world began to fade around Jing Yuan, fuzzing around the edges as the simulation realized he had lost.
“You’ve… you’ve done well,” Jing Yuan ground out with the remaining strength that he had, raising a trembling hand to rest it on Yanqing’s shoulder. “You’ve done… so well. ” A single tear traced down the side of Jing Yuan’s face.
Yanqing’s face remained impassive. His grip on the sword that ran through Jing Yuan’s chest didn’t waver.
“You’ve…” Jing Yuan’s voice trailed off as his eyes fell shut. There was a tugging sensation around his midsection. “I’m proud…”
All sensation melted away, leaving only the lingering cold of the sword through his chest.
___
“He was doing so well, what happened?” Herta’s nonplussed voice mused.
Jing Yuan jolted forward and ripped the immersion helmet off of his head, eyes snapping open to see the newly-familiar walls of Herta Space Station. He sucked in a sharp breath, hands flying to his chest, halfway expecting the hilt of a familiar sword to still be there.
“General!” Yanqing’s equally-as-familiar voice yelled, tone dripping with concern. Footsteps slammed against the ground as the boy rushed to Jing Yuan’s side. “Are you okay?”
Jing Yuan took a deep breath, schooling his expression with the grace and skill he had acquired over his years of work as the general of the Luofu. He offered Yanqing what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’m alright, don’t worry about me.” He swung his legs over the side of the raised bench that he had laid on during his foray into the Simulated Universe.
Yanqing didn’t seem convinced. “You were saying things, General. You… you sounded scared .” Yanqing’s voice was uncharacteristically small, his posture oddly uncertain.
Jing Yuan took Yanqing’s hand between his own hands in an attempt to quell the tremble he felt rising through his body. As usual, Yanqing’s hands were cold due to the frost that encrusted his blades, but the boy seemed more focused on clinging to his mentor than on any lingering feelings of cold.
“I’m alright, Yanqing,” Jing Yuan reassured him. “It was a bit frightening near the end, but I am alright.” He ignored the thrumming of his still-racing heart, the old fear that still caused his mind to fog, the wayward thoughts that still struggled to turn towards his old master.
Yanqing still seemed uncertain.
Jing Yuan let go of Yanqing’s hand. Before the boy could protest, Jing Yuan opened his arms in an offer for an embrace. “If you don’t believe me, you can always just–”
He was cut off by Yanqing lurching forward and hugging Jing Yuan tightly around the middle. Yanqing nestled his head against Jing Yuan’s shoulder in an uncommon show of just how unsettled he had become.
Jing Yuan softly chuckled, wrapping his arms around the boy and resting his head atop Yanqing’s. “I’m right here,” he assured Yanqing. He didn’t want to admit that this embrace was equal parts to reassure himself as it was to reassure Yanqing. “I’m alright.”
“Is… he okay?” Herta asked, audibly uncomfortable by the sudden expression of affection from the previously stoic general.
“Can you show me the world you put him in?” Stelle asked.
A few moments passed in silence. Jing Yuan gently rubbed his thumb across Yanqing’s trembling shoulder, not having the heart to release the boy just yet.
“ Herta!” Stelle suddenly hissed, vitriol clear in her voice. “You– why? ”
“He said he wanted to see the worlds based on the Xianzhou,” Herta said plainly.
“But not–” Stelle began.
“I am alright,” Jing Yuan interrupted. “Just a bit surprised, is all. But…” He raised his head, looking at Stelle. “You did mention that this… experience, it came from your memories as Trailblazers, yes?”
“Yeah…” Stelle grimaced. “I’m so sorry, Jing Yuan, I didn’t think that Herta would put you in that scenario–”
“What scenario?” Yanqing asked, finally pulling away from Jing Yuan.
“Just something that I hadn’t heard about,” Jing Yuan assured Yanqing. “Nothing that you need to worry about.”
Yanqing raised his eyebrow skeptically. “If you say so…”
“Does Yanqing want to try a run?” Stelle asked. She briefly met Jing Yuan’s gaze over Yanqing’s head.
Yanqing lit up, his unease more likely brushed away than merely forgotten, but the feeling had clearly abated. He glanced back at Jing Yuan for confirmation.
Jing Yuan stood and nodded once.
“Yes please!” Yanqing said.
Jing Yuan watched as Herta guided Yanqing to sit on the table where Jing Yuan had been moments before. The helmet was fitted over Yanqing’s head, hiding his face from view.
“Do you think you’re ever gonna tell Yanqing what happened?” Stelle asked softly, jostling Jing Yuan from his thoughts.
“Someday,” Jing Yuan began. “Someday, whether it’s centuries hence or just a few years, I will need to prepare him for my final lesson. He will be taught and prepared for it in the way that I wish I had been.”
Jing Yuan watched the number on the screen in front of Herta climb higher and higher, indicating Yanqing’s success in simulated battles.
“But not for a long time yet,” Jing Yuan finished. “Not for a long time yet.”