Ascension Is a Hook - Chapter 4
Three days later, the Xuanwei Sect held another ascension ceremony.
This time, Lu Xingzhou was to ascend.
News of it shook the entire cultivation world.
Barely a hundred days had passed since Master’s ascension, and another member of the Xuanwei Sect was about to join the immortals.
Two ascensions from one sect.
Unprecedented in all history.
Sect leaders came from far and wide. Mortal emperors sent envoys. The slopes below were crowded with kneeling commoners.
Banners snapped over Heavenwatch Terrace. Bells and drums rang together.
Dressed in white, Lu Xingzhou stood at the center of the raised platform.
He wore no sword.
At the moment of ascension, he had said, a sword would be useless.
I stood at the edge of the crowd, Master’s fish scale hidden in my sleeve.
Qinghe had come too. He mingled with the servants, head lowered over his broom, as though the grand ceremony had nothing to do with him.
The sect leader occupied the highest seat. Today he wore purple-and-gold Daoist robes and a jade crown, with a very gentle smile on his face.
Watching him, I suddenly thought he looked less like a sect leader than a man rearing fish.
At a quarter to noon, the sky abruptly darkened.
The clouds split to either side.
The crowd erupted.
“The gate!”
“The gate of immortality has opened again!”
I looked up.
The hook had returned.
Golden bait hung from its point.
The instant its light flared, every cultivator on Heavenwatch Terrace changed expression.
The sect leaders breathed faster. The elders swallowed. The young disciples stared with fixed eyes.
Even I, a useless Qi Refining cultivator, took an involuntary step forward.
It smelled so good.
Not like any ordinary fragrance.
Like the thing you had wanted most when you were young.
Like praise that had come too late.
Like success and renown.
Like something lost returned to you.
Like someone dead standing in the doorway, saying:
“You’re finally here.”
I bit the tip of my tongue hard enough to draw blood, forcing myself awake.
The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.
Heavenwatch Terrace changed before my eyes.
The stone beneath us became transparent as water.
Below it lay a pool of black water.
Full of fish.
Some wore Daoist robes. Some had Golden Cores formed in their bellies. Others had Nascent Souls curled inside them.
Some had grown human hands and feet, yet their faces still bore the eyes of fish.
I staggered backward into someone.
The sect leader.
At some point, he had come to stand behind me.
“You see it?” he asked.
I went rigid.
His gaze remained gentle.
“Those eyes of yours really are like Qinghe’s.”
I stared at him.
“You knew all along.”
“Some of it.”
“And you still let them cultivate?”
He sighed softly.
“Jiang Zhao, people need something to hope for.”
“Being eaten?”
“Without ascension, what would a cultivator have to live for?”
I looked at him in disbelief.
He turned toward Lu Xingzhou on the platform.
“Most fish would rather believe the sky lies above the water.”
“You have no right to deceive them.”
“I haven’t,” he said mildly. “I simply haven’t told them everything.”
“What actually comes after ascension?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, and you still send them up?”
At last he turned back to me.
His eyes held no compassion now. Only a clarity that was almost cruel.
“Jiang Zhao, do you think the mortals down there aren’t fish?”
He pointed below the mountain.
“Some wear their lives away for a few ounces of silver. Some smash their heads bloody for an official post. Some burn themselves to ashes so their children and grandchildren can succeed.”
“Merchants chase wealth and status. Emperors chase eternal dynasties. Scholars chase a name in history. Lovers chase devotion beyond death.”
“Everyone takes the bait.”
“Honors are bait. Riches are bait. Love is bait.”
“So is everlasting life.”
His voice dropped.
“I merely gave them the most dignified bait of all.”
My throat tightened.
He regarded me with something almost like pity.
“Don’t assume that being awake makes you noble, Jiang Zhao.”
“Sometimes, not seeing the hook is a blessing.”
Just then, the first bolt of heavenly lightning struck.
Lu Xingzhou’s tribulation had begun.
The bolt hit him. Blood instantly stained his white robes.
He did not retreat.
The second.
The third.
The ninth.
The eighty-first.
When the thunderclouds dispersed, almost every bone in his body was shattered. Yet he remained standing.
Deep in the clouds, the hook descended lower.
The scent of bait filled heaven and earth.
Countless cultivators prostrated themselves on Heavenwatch Terrace and sobbed.
“A chance at immortality!”
“This is a chance at immortality!”
“Senior Brother Lu is going to become immortal!”
Lu Xingzhou looked up.
I saw his eyes begin to lose focus.
The bait smelled too good.
Good enough to make you bite even knowing it meant death.
Suddenly, he turned toward me.
His lips moved.
I understood.
*Watch the line.*
I forced my gaze away, past the hook, toward the far end of that line.
Beyond the clouds lay darkness.
Something in that darkness was holding it.
I cannot describe the thing.
It was too big. Too big for my eyes to take in its full shape.
All I could see were several things curved like mountain ranges, pinching that slender line.
Beyond them stretched a wet expanse of white.
Like a fish’s belly.
Like the far side of the moon.
Like a piece of flesh that no one had ever named.
It looked down at the mortal world.
As a person looks at a fishpond.
One glance, and my eyes began to bleed.
On the platform, Lu Xingzhou smiled.
He walked toward the hook.
The instant its point pierced his throat, he flung out his hands and seized the line.
“Jiang Zhao!” he roared hoarsely. “Write it down!”
“Let them know!”
Then he was hauled into the air.
Cheers swept the mountain.
“He’s ascending!”
“Senior Brother Lu is ascending!”
Only I could see his hands gripping the fishing line, the bones of his fingers splitting, flesh torn into bloody ruin.
He did not let go.
He was climbing.
Like a fish that had bitten the hook but refused its fate, trying to drag the angler into the water.
A faint expression of surprise came from the clouds.
It was not a sound.
Yet it shook the whole of Mount Xuanwei.
Blood covered Lu Xingzhou’s face. And he laughed.
“So you can be afraid too!”
He climbed inch by inch.
For the first time, the thing behind the clouds seemed to look at him seriously.
Then it released the line.
Lu Xingzhou stopped in midair.
A second line dropped.
A third.
A tenth.
A hundredth.
The sky was full of hooks.
Golden bait hung from every one.
The cultivators on Heavenwatch Terrace went mad.
They no longer knelt in worship.
They craned their necks and hurled themselves skyward, each desperate to be first.
“That chance is mine!”
“I want to ascend too!”
“I can smell it! I can smell the Great Dao!”
The sect leader’s face changed sharply.
“Get back!”
No one listened.
The elders, usually so serene and otherworldly, were now a shoal of starving fish, mouths open as they leaped into the air.
Hooks fell one after another.
Into throats.
Into chests.
Into the space between the brows.
Cultivator after cultivator was lifted into the sky.
There were no screams.
They were all smiling.
Only when they reached the edge of the clouds did some finally see what waited above.
Their smiles became terror.
But it was too late.
The whole mountain blazed with radiant light.
The whole mountain stank of fish.
The whole mountain was ascending.
