Chapter 3- Confident is a Strong Word

The enfolding mists cooled the nerves and the senses, easing one into indifference. There was neither good nor bad, liked or disliked. Even “up” and “down” were increasingly becoming uncertain, as the plants and rocks blurred into the soft grey.
“Illusory array?” Tian murmured.
“For sure.”
“Yep.”
Burning Heaven and Liren answered almost simultaneously. Tian shook his head. The question was what the Emissary wanted to test.
“Usually, the people making the arrays don’t want you to know it’s there,” said Tian.
“It’s the entrance to a testing ground. Hard to conceal it.” Liren shook her head. He could hear the irritation in her voice.
“True.” Tian had kind of thought such an august existence could come up with something a bit more new, though.
“‘True, true.’ Do you even hear yourself?” Liren got more and more twitchy, her voice turning nasal and irritating. Tian narrowed his eyes, but kept his mouth shut. The silence stretched for a minute, then Liren turned around and looked him dead in the eyes.
“I hate that about you. I hate that someone can push you and you just take it. Sliding the grudge into your storage ring, and just carrying on. You don’t even keep all the grudges. How fucking smug do you have to be, to be so holier than thou? You forgive me? You forgave Brother Fu? What the fuck is that? Did you think about anyone else for even one second when you decided that?”
“No. Not for even one second.” Tian smiled and nodded.
“Did you spend even one second thinking about what I needed? What I need now?”
“Nope. I hoped, of course. But really, it was all about me.” Tian’s smile got even wider.
“Oh you little bitch.” Liren hauled her arm back and swung straight at Tian’s nose. His smile didn’t flicker. The fist stopped just as skin touched skin.
“Not even a flinch?” Liren asked, but it wasn’t her voice.
“She isn’t the sort to hit me.”
“Ah. How nice to see young love. I wish you well on your path together.”
“Thank you, Senior.”
“No, don’t thank me. That was me giving you a reasonably painless exit to the trial, and you didn’t take it. Now you are in for Hell.”
Liren vanished, and she was replaced with fire. He was burning. He could smell his skin charring, feel his limbs twisting, feel his nerves exploding, the water boiling out of his skin, the sizzling fat spitting droplets of him and blinding his eyes. Eyes that only survived long enough to catalog the horror being done to his body.
He could feel it all. Smell it all. Taste it all. It was real. It was really happening. He was going to be burned again. Worse this time. He would burn to death!
His body spasmed, the remaining muscles contracting with uncontrolled strength, all energy going into a desperate jump. Anything to escape being burned!
And then he paused. Every nerve screamed at him, this was real. It was all far, far too real. Except. He forced his panicking animal brain to take a single breath. Then he forced it to take another. He was in an illusion array. The fire came out of nowhere. Higher level illusions operated directly on the brain, bypassing the senses. In a sense, they were indistinguishable from reality.
His little training couldn’t possibly have taught him to resist an illusion on this level. But it did give him enough to barely gather himself. To remember that he could bury his fingers in the fur of an illusory tiger, and suffer no harm.
He was burning to death. Tian forced himself to sit down and settled into the lotus pose. The smell, the vile smell of burned flesh burrowed up his nostrils, before his sinuses were corroded and lost to the fire poison. His eyes were gone now, just holes for pain.
Tian’s ruined stumps of fingers managed to find his rosary. He exhaled, and started counting his breaths. Not bothering to chant. Just breathing, and enduring. It was an illusion. And if it was an illusion, then he was suffering no true harm, and he could endure. It was a chance to temper his mind. That was something rare.
He kept telling himself that. His nerve wavered several times, but held. Then the fire went out.
Tian gasped, his vision returning in stabs of light, even though the grey mists still filled every corner of his vision. His skin was smooth and whole, he had all the fingers he was supposed to, he could breathe without searing his lungs.
“I really wronged those kids from the Five Elements Courtyard. They were taking it easy on us. Illusions are terrifying!”
This is operating miles and miles above your level. Well done for enduring it!
“Was she reading my mind?”

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Kind of, yes, and she’s basically reading the minds of everyone here. Don’t worry, I’m protected from such superficial methods, as are memories of me. It’s… more complicated than calling it “mind reading” really captures, and it’s both more and less powerful than you would think. Still, very good job enduring it.
“She knew about the Xia. Knew I had been burned.”
Maybe? Or she picked up something she can work with. I can one-hundred-percent guarantee she doesn’t care even a tiny bit about them. If you think about it, it would be weirder if she did. Also, fear of being burned alive is really, really common. Who wants to die in a fire?
It took Tian a minute to process that one.
Grandpa was right. It was time to stop fearing others finding out his origin. Hiding who he was was something a sick child had to do. Someone afraid of hurting those close to him. But he had told Liren, told Fu, and while he wouldn’t rub it in his brothers’ noses, some day they might learn about it too. And that was fine.
He was Tian Zihao, born six years old in the West Town Dump. He had been someone else before he was born, but then, hadn’t they all?
He couldn’t help laughing. Liren turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Just thinking that Granny Meng is strict but fair. When I next drink her soup, I will have a lot of regrets! But she gave me a lot of benefits too, so it’s only right that I don’t raise a fuss.”
Liren just blinked at that, then turned back around.
“Sis Liren, is Brother Zihao okay?” Burning Heaven asked.
“Yes. Amazingly. I’m suddenly wondering if I’m okay.”
Tian laughed even harder at that, but didn’t explain further.
They flew through the mist for an hour, then two, then three. Their sense of time and distance was clearly being manipulated, but what could they do, except endure?
Tian reached up to stroke his chin, only to watch in horror as his fingers fell off. Eaten by the thousands of rats suddenly crawling all over him.
Tian was ambushed, repeatedly, by sudden noises, sudden lights, diving eagles coming for his face, urgent news that Brother Fu suffered a qi deviation and was on the border of life and death. He could no more resist the illusions than he could topple the mountain. What could a little daoist do, in the face of the Heavenly Realm? He closed his eyes and counted his breaths on his rosary. He wondered how Liren was managing.
At one point, a woman danced next to him on the back of Burning Heaven. There seemed to be some difficulty with her clothes- they kept sliding off but she managed to catch them before they got too far, every time.
“Do you need a pin? I have some pins.”
“No need, they aren’t real clothes any more than this is a real body. Would it work better if it was your little lover? I can tell you are both virgins.” The voice was different this time, no longer pretending to be Liren.
Tian thought it over. “I wouldn’t like that. I don’t have the words for it, but it feels wrong. Like she and I would both be violated, somehow.”
“Would it make you angry?”
“Yes, but not enough to do something stupid like jumping off Burning Heaven’s back.”
“That’s not really what I’m trying to do, though.” The illusory woman sat down, her ethereal silks floating around her.
“What are you trying to do? Other than test us, of course.”
The illusion rolled her eyes, the red flower mark between her brows catching his interest. “You say that too casually. Do you know- no, you don’t, you aren’t even at the Heavenly Realm. I haven’t bothered trying to lure you with treasures, natural or otherwise. Seriously, ascetics are a pain in my tail. At least your companions are struggling with more than fear and pain.”
“Are they?”
“Yes. Which actually puts them ahead of you in the scoring.”
Tian nodded. “Resolution, focus, dao heart, all tested comprehensively.”
“That kind of thing. You aren’t struggling about those kinds of things, so you aren’t really being tested. The pain and fear illusions have largely lost their effectiveness too. Hence trying the lust angle.”
“My resistance isn’t impressive?”
“For your age and cultivation? It’s not bad. It’s just not what I’m looking for.” The illusion shook her head. Liren groaned. “See? She’s suffering now. Just awful things. Not horrors, exactly, but I’m aiming straight for all the cracks in her heart and prying. I’m offering her a dream of the power to make things as right as she can, to stop kids from ever growing up like her. She knows it’s an illusion, but she can’t just ignore it the way you are. She confronts challenges head on.”
Tian slowly closed his eyes, the illusion’s words sinking like long needles into his heart. “Then she will temper herself, and emerge stronger.”
“And if she can’t? You have seen that not all broken hearts can be mended. Are you ready to follow her into the dark and have that cup of soup?”
“I’m not ready.” He kept his eyes closed. “I’m not reconciled. So I will have to cheat.”
“I am very curious about how you think you can cheat on my test.”
“I’m just going to have faith in her, and myself.”
The illusion chuckled. “You aren’t the first to say that. Will you still be able to endure as she groans, and sweats, and screams? Can you endure the knowledge that she will be haunted by what she saw in the illusion for the rest of her life?”
“I will hate it. I will probably start hating you. But yes. I will endure it.”
The illusion sounded like she was smiling as she spoke. “Because you can’t tell the difference between illusion and reality, so you assume it’s all illusion! This conversation, your companion’s suffering, all mere delusions. But then how will you know what is real? When will you know you have woken from your illusion?”
Tian shook his head. “I really don’t know. Maybe when we are back at the entrance to the valley.”
The illusion laughed fit to burst. “Oh you little idiot, why do you think that you aren’t the delusion, and all those maimed and murdered images weren’t the real Tian Zihao, living their brief life over and over and over? Can’t you see that you are their fantasy? Strong, whole, healthy, and loved? Growing in strength and honor as you soar on the back of an immortal crane, how are you not the dream of a drowning boy?”
The illusion crouched next to him, the warmth of her breath kissing the edges of his ear.
“Loved by a beautiful woman who you love with your whole heart- that must be the dream of the boy dragged into the dark room by the eunuchs. The boy who didn’t survive the three days of agony. Living in a clean, warm and dry home- that’s the child who died buried under the sliding garbage heaps in the rainy season, seeing heaven as his eyes dim forever. How can you not be a fragment of the blessed insanity of a child burning in his bed, or the child beaten to death by his narcotic-slave father, or poisoned by his hateful aunt, or rotting with gangrene? You have lived for ten thousand lifetimes, each brief and full of suffering. Delusion is the only joy you have ever known, and ever will.”
Tian forced his breathing to be steady and slow. Refusing to gasp and shake as the ideas wormed their way into his mind. “I assume I’m disqualified?”
There was no reply. There was no one there. As though he had been talking to himself the whole time.