The Second Floor
When the first snow of winter fell, Ning Buhui had just turned seven.
Spirit City rarely saw such heavy snow. It fluttered down from night until daybreak, blanketing the training ground's bluestone paving. When Ning Buhui pushed open his window, the world outside was a sea of white. Even the golden roof of the Pope Hall wore a white cap. He sniffed as the cold air rushed in, as though someone had sprinkled a handful of mint into his lungs.
He dressed and, as usual, went to run laps to build up his stamina. The snow was soft and crunched beneath his feet. He ran more slowly than usual, not because he was afraid of slipping, but because he wanted to listen to the sound a little longer. He was seven, and in the seven years since he had come to this world, this was the first time he had been at leisure to stop and watch the snow fall.
After morning training, he went to the cafeteria for a meal. As soon as he entered, he spotted Hu Liena, Yan and Xie Yue gathered around a table. Hu Liena saw him first and waved him over, then pulled a package wrapped in oiled paper from beneath the table and pushed it toward him.
"Here, a gift from your senior sister."
Ning Buhui took it and opened it. Inside were several pieces of osmanthus cake, packed tightly together and still a little warm. He paused and looked up at Hu Liena. She rested her chin in her hand, a meaningful smile on her face. "It's your seventh birthday. You should at least have something sweet."
"Nana insisted on dragging us here to celebrate your birthday or whatever," Yan mumbled through a mouthful of food. "What's the big deal? Why would a kid celebrate his birthday?"
"Then don't eat the braised pork I bought." Hu Liena rolled her eyes at him.
Xie Yue said nothing. He simply pulled something from inside his robes and set it on the table. It was a short blade the length of a forearm, its edge wrapped in old cloth and its exposed hilt dark and dull. Ning Buhui picked it up and tested its weight. It fit his hand perfectly, as though it had been made especially for a half-grown child.
"It's for you to use," Xie Yue said.
"He's a support-type. What's the point of giving him a blade?" As Yan spoke, he took a small, bulging cloth pouch from his pocket and handed it over. Ning Buhui opened it and found a little wooden figure inside. The carving was not particularly fine, but he could just make out a person holding up a pagoda.
"I carved it. Don't look down on it." Yan turned his head away. "Later, I'll have Nana get you a safety charm to make a set."
Ning Buhui put the gifts away one by one. He said nothing, only smiled. The group sat around the table, teasing one another back and forth. Outside, snowflakes drifted down at an angle, while the cafeteria was warm and cozy. It really did feel a little like everyday life.
That evening, Ning Buhui sat cross-legged on his bed and set the little wooden figure on the windowsill. Moonlight shone on the snow and reflected back, filling the room with a clear glow. The figure's shadow slanted across the wall like another version of himself, holding up a pagoda, small but steady.
He watched it for a while, then suddenly said out of the blue, "Seven is good. I like it."
A seven-year-old Soul Grandmaster at rank twenty-eight, with two thousand-year purple Soul Rings and a twenty-thousand-year Soul Bone-the news would shake the entire continent three times over. But Ning Buhui felt little pride. He knew better than anyone that, from the ages of three to six, he had endured all the hardships of this life in advance. What he had now was still far from enough to let him sleep soundly.
On the fourth day after the snow stopped, Ning Buhui began exploring the second floor of the Nine Hell Soul-Suppressing Pagoda.
In fact, the second floor had unlocked as soon as he finished absorbing the Soul-Binding Vine Soul Ring. But his foundation had been unstable then, and the Soul Power in his body had yet to settle. On top of that, he had thrown all his effort into his Self-Created Soul Skills and refining his strength, so he had put it off until now. His Soul Power was finally stable, and it was time to resume cultivating it. This was the perfect opportunity to explore what the second floor could do.
That night, he entered the pagoda as usual and first settled himself on the first floor, regulating his breathing. Then he looked up at the newly appeared rotating light formation at the back of the first floor and walked over. He stepped onto it, and with a thought, the gray mist before his eyes surged upward. By the time it dispersed, he had arrived on the second floor in the blink of an eye.
The second floor was about the same size as the first. Its four walls were still shrouded in gray, and beneath his feet was a translucent black floor polished enough to reflect his face. The mist overhead was thicker, yet not oppressive. He walked a few steps and sensed that the Soul Power here was noticeably denser than on the first floor. By his rough estimate, it was at least five times as dense as in the outside world.
"Five times." He grinned. "Each floor is better than the last. Once I've unlocked all nine, I wonder just how outrageous it'll get."
Grinning aside, he wasted no time. He sat cross-legged, carefully focused his mind and began the day's meditation. Mist-like Soul Power surged toward him in great waves, like water held back by a dam for years that had suddenly found a breach.
From then on, his cultivation schedule grew relentless once more. He trained his stamina early in the morning, practiced physical techniques and refined his Soul Skills in the morning, and shortened his afternoon visits to the library to leave more time for cultivating Soul Power. Going from rank twenty-eight to twenty-nine required several times as much Soul Power as going from nineteen to twenty. Although the second floor helped his Soul Power grow rapidly, at this rate, breaking through to rank thirty would still take at least half a year to a year. Even so, he did not squeeze out any more time to cultivate Soul Power, continuing to devote half his efforts to Heart Separation Control and those few Self-Created Soul Skills.
One evening, he came across an extremely old notebook in the library. Its pages had yellowed and turned brittle, but what was written on them made his eyes light up. It was a set of cultivation notes left by a rank-seventy Soul Saint, describing how Soul Masters who were not spiritual types could train their spiritual power to project outward before reaching the Soul Saint realm. It said that those with Tool Martial Souls did not necessarily have to wait until they became Soul Saints to project their spiritual power. As long as they reached the Soul Ancestor or Soul King realm, had sufficiently condensed spiritual power, possessed some means of spiritual attack and trained regularly on the spiritual level, they could gradually use that method to send their "intent" outward.
The more Ning Buhui read, the more he felt it matched the path he had been following in his practice of Soul-Suppressing God-Devouring these past few days. He copied those pages down with great care, then returned to the quiet room and pondered them over and over. That night, he sat in meditation inside the pagoda. Since he was inside it, what he summoned was only an illusory image of the Nine Hell Soul-Suppressing Pagoda. He slowed its vibrations as much as he could and made them as faint as possible. Then, instead of exerting force through the whole pagoda, he sent it outward from the single point of its tip. Once, twice, three times-on the twenty-third attempt, an extremely fine, faint ripple, invisible to the naked eye, finally spread from the tip. It dissipated before it had traveled half a meter, but the mist of Soul Power there had indeed been scattered a little.
Ning Buhui's eyes flew open. He had done it.
Although his spiritual power was already stronger than that of other Soul Masters at the same rank, it still could not compare with a Soul Ancestor's or Soul King's. As a result, the attack was pitifully weak and could spread less than half a meter. But it was far more controllable than that chaotic group ripple from before, and he could reliably execute it every time. So delighted was he that he paced around the pagoda three times before finally falling onto his back, face to the ceiling, and gasping for breath.
If he kept working at it like this, Soul-Suppressing God-Devouring would succeed sooner or later, as long as his spiritual power reached the required level. When that happened, he would no longer have to rely solely on getting close to frighten people.
Outside the window, snow began to fall again. Flakes like goose feathers drifted down one after another, settling on rooftops, on treetops, over all of Spirit City. Wrapped in his quilt, Ning Buhui watched the snow through a crack in the window.
Fall, he thought. Fall harder. Once the snow stops, the road will be clearer.