Chapter Text
That face, Eigong recognizes. Illuminated by eyes that once again signify the start of a trial. Statues emerge from each side of the chamber as the vents in the floor begin to glow red with heat. Her sword's hilt coming loose with a swift motion to deflect a beam of concentrated rhizomatic energy. The dissipation of energy makes her blade thrum, shakes her stance. And in a moment of confusion, a blade grazes her back. Tears through cloth, having barely broken her skin. The challenge's unceremonious end is only signified in the silence and darkness that replaces any sign of life within the mechanisms as they're reset.
…To see his face immortalized here felt like some kind of sick joke, given when the Grotto of Scripture's creation had been dated back to. The rise in devote Taoism: blind and obtrusive and cloying. She greets the statue again, prompting it to meet her gaze as it all begins anew. The same pattern as before, of course. It was always going to be the same. She would be ready this time. Meeting what previously had obstructed her with precision, directing the blade back at it's target with a satisfying thrum of energy. …Sojourner Luyan was a renegade. a disgrace to the origin era's faith. One of three 'monsters' dissatisfied with his role in ending a tyrant. Violent and wicked, her family had loved to remind her of what his choices had made him into.
Searing hot- her footing for the next laser had been inadequate. Hands pressed to blazing metal floor make the spirited attempt to keep her from further injury, but burning all the same. It stings, her injuries threaten to blister and forever damage her nerves if she does not treat it properly in ample time. Eigong knows that this isn't a luxury she has.
It had never made sense to her, for someone they deemed so irreparably evil, someone who was nothing but a stain upon their legacy, that her family had held onto his knowledge for centuries. Kept him alive in something that was to be gatekept from the wider world. The ancient texts she had discovered within their family home much to her mother's chagrin.
Quickly, she acts. A bottle of salve is produced from her coat. Created from some kind of succulent, she couldn't recall exactly what Goumang had called it in this frantic haze. Applying it, knowing full well it would do nothing more than cushion an injury she should have returned to the research institute over. There is not enough time for such a luxury.
Not once had she doubted the world's sentiment on her ancestor, but origin era Penglai simply did not accept a tool as a tool. Ascribing morality to the science and never the people behind the violence. Two blades catch her face, the chamber goes quiet once more.
Again.
Did they find pleasure in their shame? Enjoy perpetuating a history of generational trauma upon their daughter by allowing their daughter to learn of this gift from a time long passed? Was their sick joy in telling her it is her curse that she must carry and bestow upon another? Ideally to them, another of their own flesh and blood?
She fails to deflect another Rhizomatic beam; pure energy pierces her flesh. leaving a shallow tunnel through her arm. Hurting, but cauterized well enough to not be a bother too her. Nothing important had been severed.
Again.
She was to be the one to break the cycle. Show to the world that science was never the problem. Progress was never the problem. How irrational it had all been to stunt it in the name of peace when it was never what started the wars. How irrational her family had been in telling her that her dream was something that the very heavens would sneer at. A knife is firmly wedged into her leg. With how little fat she had on her body, it had all but certainly pierced muscle.
Again.
How irrationality and sentiment was something that tore sense from minds as brilliant as her own, if not more so and made them impossible to reach. So set in their ways that no amount of proving them wrong would ever reach them.
AGAIN.
She was better off without those chains. She had made her birth right her own, she had reached a great many. This is how she had positioned herself at the top of Penglai.
But there is no satisfaction to be found at the end of the world.
Eigong collapses to the ground. There's something she recognizes in her actions here, as time and time again does she fail what should be theoretically simple. Deflection is a key Fangshi art. One of the first she had mastered. The other challenges; marked with the faces of the other sojourners, did not inspire this same frustration. Resignation. Perhaps defeat. the pain after the adrenaline finally catches up to her. But funnily enough, it didn't quite sting as badly as when her student's blade had plunged into her back. Over and over again. Shifting to sit next to Luyan's towering form. Practically sulking underneath her ancestor's stone countenance was.... Humiliating. But mindlessly charging ahead had given her nothing.
As it had with a cure.
As it had with immortality.
So set on one thing that she was clearly missing everything important around her. Why do any of this? For all of her words and stubborn belief, By now, she knew she was both sentimental and irrational. She had been confronted with that fact when Yi had proposed his research plan.
Was this something she could admit to herself? Fully comprehend and accept and put out into the open? What there is an acceptance of, is that this line of thought is not something she could run from forever. Not if she wanted to move forward. But moving forward in itself was perhaps the scariest thing in all of this. A great unknown akin to the concept of death she had tried and failed to erase.