69- Sunrise

Krahllak was still laughing, struggling to catch his breath and speak properly. "Isn’t it beautiful? Even at my full power, I would be unable to attack Ta-Lo, the Tao Gods’ homeland, so freeing me does not represent any danger to them. So he would rather free me and offer me the souls of your people than potentially lose a few peaches. Doesn’t that infuriate you? Don’t you feel powerless? The Gods can just decide the fate of millions with an indifferent thought, and the Sorcerers are the only real obstacle to us demons. What about you Martial Artists? You are the strongest your kind has ever produced, and here you are, reduced to watching. Even if you lowered yourself to your knees and begged, you would not make a difference. How is that, little hammer? Actually, you know what? Don’t tell me. I want to keep the surprise for when I take your soul, and slowly torture it out of you. Don’t spoil my fun, alright, little hammer?"

As Krahllak finished speaking, the shimmering of the air intensified, spreading out over the immediate area as a faint outline of a door appeared in the middle of the valley. It was only a vague shape at first, with distorted lines that blurred between existence and non-existence, or as Mason suspected, between this dimension and that of the Eighth City.

But the door was rapidly anchoring itself to this world, its shape being the first thing that settled down, followed by the details.

The door was hovering just a few centimeters above the ground, with so little distance that a casual glance would not be enough to see it. Mason thought it was red at first, but then realized it was made of seven colors instead. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Colors of the rainbow.

There was no visible handle or keyhole to this door, but deep grooves shaped like the seven Immortal Beasts, all connected together by thin lines. The layout gave Mason a faint feeling of familiarity, although he could not tell why in the moment. The door was also quite large, easily six to seven meters tall.

The illusory Immortal Beasts reappeared, their chains linking them to the door. Their dance was no more, replaced entirely by frantic struggle, but it did nothing to help as they were slowly but persistently dragged over to the door.

Their forms shrunk the closer they got to the door, until they fit perfectly into their respective grooves. As they did, the colors associated with them lit up like beacons, momentarily eclipsing the light of the sun.

Only the central groove, that of the one belonging to Shou-Lao, remained empty, the dragon having stopped just a few meters away from the door. It was of no will of it, however, as a single pull would drag it into the door and open it.

But Krahllak still stopped there, teasing joyfully, "Here’s your last chance to stop me. Come on, I don’t want people saying I pulled a fast one over you. You know the ritual. You were there when it was designed, Tao Gods. I’m sure you know it too, Sorcerer Supreme. As for you, little hammer, I don’t think you need convincing."

No one said anything, so Krahllak continued, "Really, I swear on my soul, if you start the ritual. I swear it on my true name, Krahllak the Beast, as well as on the souls of every soul that belongs to me."

All looked toward the Jade Emperor, but his visage remained as still as jade, watching everything like it was beneath him. Yao was no longer smiling, but she did not look disappointed either. She had expected this.

As for Mason… looking up at the so-called gods and the shadowed sun above them, he muttered, "Master… I think I got it."

Izo was confused, asking, "Got what? That gods are uppity, vain people whose ego is as fragile as glass and more pliable than hot butter?"

Mason smiled. "Yeah. I’m killing him one day. Once I’m done with Krahllak."

He ignored the puzzled reactions from his master and the nearby Monkey King, walking towards the door. His white haori billowed in the strong mountain wind as Krahllak chuckled, "Oh? What are you doing now, little hammer?"

Mason clasped his hands behind his back, asserting, "You can try to open the door now." As he spoke, every step towards the door caused the Chi within him to churn, the effect becoming stronger with every step. It quickly snowballed into affecting his Divine Sense and Spiritual Energy too.

Krahllak remained as happy as before, although his voice was now also tinged with a hint of curiosity. "You want me to open it? What’s that, you’re aiming for some semblance of control before your inevitable doom? Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle with your soul."

"I can promise you I won’t be gentle."

Everyone around him paused, the gods staring at him like he was a fool, though Yao, Izo, and Sun Wukong looked interested. As for Krahllak, after that short pause, he burst into laughter, "That’s your solution? Come in before I come out? That’s so cute, you’re really a hammer."

Mason looked at the door, then at the Jade Emperor, still smiling as he declared, "You don’t understand. None of you do. You call yourself the ruler of heaven, yet you play along the whims of a demon. You have pride, but you let it paralyze you. You are a slave, nothing more. I may be nothing more than a lowly human, but I am free."

He looked down at the door again, casting the Jade Emperor and his divine retinue out of his mind as he commanded, "Open the door. Now."

Krahllak's hesitation was replaced by some cautiousness, the paranoia of a demon billions of years old telling him there was something wrong, but no matter how he spun it in his mind, he had won, so he ended up grinning from inside his cage, "As you wish."

Shou-Lao’s chain gave a final tug, and the mighty dragon was turned into pure, bright red energy. With the final beast slotted in, all the colors entered into a special synergy, the colors merging into a blinding white light, the door finally becoming fully physical.

Mason looked towards Izo and said, "You don’t understand either. Not you, not any other cultivator. You cultivate without understanding what you are doing, and that is why you remain stuck. So allow me to brighten your lantern. Humans are innately limited, our Essence, Breath, and Spirit are never meant to reach beyond the Body Strengthening Realm. Gods are nothing more than beings with a higher natural limit. Sorcerers are crafty, they stay within their limits but use external forces with higher limits than their own, exercising power far beyond their station. But us martial artists? Our nature is that of transgressors. Gods are born strong. Sorcerers borrow powers from the strong. But at the end of the day, both of them follow the natural order of the world. We don’t. We were born stunted by the world, so we steal what we were deprived of. We fool the world by entering into a communion with it, but our true nature is to take what we’re owed."

An imperceptible, never-before-seen change started taking place within Mason, starting from his Chi. He reached a hand towards the sky, seemingly in the direction of the Taoist Gods, but it became obvious after a moment that he was not reaching for them, but for the sun behind them instead.

A single ray from the sun shone down from the sky, eclipsing even the door to the Eighth City as it fell upon Mason. He basked in the ray of sunlight and yanked his hand. Visibly, nothing seemed to change, but Mason felt it. What was once borrowed was now becoming his.

Flames started flickering around Mason’s body, and the snow around him had patches that were flattened to the ground, while others started floating up. His Essence, the first of the Three Treasures, was undergoing momentous changes under the influence of the Dao. It was not the Dao of Fire, or even the Dao of Gravity, but a new one. One that merged the two and some more. The Dao of the Sun.

"A mere mortal. A human. A hammer. You think of these as insults, and fail to understand that it is my strength. I must thank you for this opportunity, Krahllak. Mere meditation would have never been enough to understand the Dao of the Sun, because a sun that shines upon an empty land becomes nothing more than one star among billions in the sky. The sun might not be the largest or the hottest star in the universe, but it is the one source of life for our entire planet."

The door started moving, Krahllak’s voice no longer so confident behind it, "You think grabbing for more power makes any difference? You remain nothing but an ant before any of us. Without the Jade Emperor, you cannot stop my emergence!"

Mason laughed at Krahllak’s frantic words and beamed, "I am the mighty sun in the sky, the one light that guides civilization, the arbiter of life, the ultimate power of destruction, the one body around which all revolves. Fall, and you may look up to me. Find yourself lost, and you may seek my guidance. Lose faith, and you may abandon yourself to me. I am the sun, and this is my Dao. I am the Honored One, and this is my title. I am the defier, and this is my nature."

The Chi within his Essence worked like a black hole, sucking in everything within his immediate surroundings. Within a moment, his reserves were restored. Within the next moment, they went beyond the limit, forcing his Essence to become larger.

But even this was not enough, and as the concentration of yellow, gaseous Chi became too high, it started condensing into a liquid form.

From there, the changes to Mason’s Essence also brought changes to his Breath and Spirit, bringing similar changes to them. The body, housing them all, also saw its limits being altered, becoming stronger, becoming imbued with the Dao of the Sun.

Under the eyes of everyone present, Mason became a second embodiment of the sun, but one that stood on the same Earth as they did. And under all this power, Mason grabbed for the door to the Eighth City.

This prompted Krahllak to scream, seemingly in delight yet still unable to hide the trepidation in its voice, "You fool, the door is not something you can actually grab! You’re just going to get yourself shredded by the Spacetime Continuum!"

Mason ignored the warning. Calling upon the few drops of liquid Chi in his Essence, Mason sent it to both of his hands. The ease with which he manipulated it surprised him, but it made sense. He had been grabbing at gas, at smoke, before, while he was moving a liquid now.

Mason’s hands immediately glowed with a bright but dark golden light. Gone was the murky yellow; his hands looked like they had been plated with dark gold. The Chi even manifested outside of his body, forming the same amorphous mass around his fist that used to be his ultimate technique. It had become the new norm, he understood.

And so, Mason grabbed the door. What should have been intangible was held down between his very physical hands, and the slow opening was stopped.

"Impossible," Krahllak screamed, to no avail.

Sun Wukong muttered in awe, "And here I thought I was tough for stealing a few peaches. I suppose this is what a true transgressor looks like."

Beside him, Izo offered a real smile, feeling lighter than he had in hundreds of years as he added, "Stupid enough to try the impossible. Bright enough to succeed either way."

Unbeknownst to them, throughout the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven, martial artists knelt and kowtowed by the thousand, all calling out, "We greet the Honored One."

Their voice remained unheard, yet they spoke with all the devotion their hearts could offer.

Holding the door to the Eighth City to a momentary stop, Mason asked over his shoulder, "Yao! I’m going in to solve the problem permanently. Can you handle the situation outside?"

Yao smiled, holding back the warning she wanted to give as she nodded, "I can. Good luck in there."

"The sun needs no luck." With a heave, Mason pulled the door open, entered, and closed it behind him.