Reflecting upon what had happened since that fateful day Xing Zheng felt that the heavens had been rather gracious towards him. Shortly after the martial tournament had ended as predicted he was determined to be useless to the clan in any of the administrative or court positions the clan needed to fill. The fated duel with his brother had determined his fate within the clan as surely as the sun rose in the sky.

Surely he was no brute, he could acquit himself in a respectable fashion as befit a son of Xing and had reasonable understandings of business, court etiquette, the various important nobles the emperor had appointed, and pretty much anything else expected of him. However adequate was not what was expected of a scion of Xing, they had to excel and he had simply only excelled in the martial ways. Truly it seemed he was destined to only walk a martial path, however, he could no longer do so in the clan due to the rules.

In light of these circumstances, the clan had decided that he would “Preserve the noble spirit of the Royal lineage by seeking the Dao of immortality”. An incredibly polite way of saying he would be sent off to a sect in some backwater territory, secluded away with the hope that his mere existence would slowly fade from all memory. Compared to the fate of those poor nobles who died at the hands of their siblings during rivalries, being able to live out your days peacefully in a sect was from some perspectives a great fortune.

However Xing Zheng was a proud son of Xing, in his heart and throughout his entire upbringing he had been taught that he was a favored son of the heavens destined to rule, how could he accept such a mundane and peaceful life? For many years Xing Zheng had been bitter about this suppression and even indignant at being sent to the Azure Rain Sword Sect of the twisting territories lesser region. At some point, Xing Zheng had even pleaded to Xing Hai calling on their kinship and bonds to ask for a low seat in the military where he would prove his merits and escape such a fate.

Although it would be against the clan rules, surely his brother could use the title of prince to petition for leeway on his behalf. A reply to his plea had never come and so Xing Zheng spent the next 20 years of his life cultivating in the bandit faction-aligned Azure Rain Sword sect. Surely it was someone's idea of a sick joke to send him to a place where the rain never ended.

It was not that the Xing family did not practice cultivation, or that indeed normal citizens of the empire did not cultivate for that matter. However, there was a distinction between those who claimed the title of cultivator and those we merely cultivated in their spare time. Those who claimed the title were focused on cultivation to the extreme and dedicated their lives to reaching immortality, often they would go into secluded cultivation for years even decades with little care for anything but breaking through.

With such a focus on cultivating immortality practitioners usually avoided the secular affairs of the mortal world entirely and many large cultivation sect’s even imposed limitations on how much their disciples could impact the secular world. As a result of this, however, it had become common for noble families to send descendants, who lacked a place within their clan, to cultivate sects to “devote their lives to seeking the eternal Dao”. The pursuit of immortality was seen as a noble one so this brought no shame on their families while getting rid of problem children that may scheme against their siblings or even parents.

As a side benefit, most people truly did not have the temperament to reach a high level of cultivation and would spend the rest of their lives as low-level members of their respective sects, usually known as the outer sect. Although many big sects and factions were split between Outer, Inner, Core, and Legacy disciples, with elders being those who reached a certain level of cultivation and led the sect along with the sect leader, many of these sects had tens if not hundreds of thousands of outer members. To them, it was no large consequence of having large numbers of noble sons and daughters peacefully living out their lives as outer sect members.

Even if the wayward scion happened to achieve high-level cultivation they would simply serve the clan interests by bringing higher honor to their family. In the worst-case since cultivation sects frequently refused to interact with the secular world, if the noble sons and daughters chose to be unfilial to their clans they could simply use them as a deterrent saying “you dare mess with us? We have such and such immortal cultivators that will kill your nine generations if you keep courting death”.

At this point, with the sects actively limiting their secular involvement, the noble clan’s never had to actually give those who achieved things on the immortal path any resources and even passively benefitted from their status. Even better in the darkest days of the clan, filial piety would tug at their hearts to make them effectively a last resort safety net against clan annihilation. In this way, it became common practice for noble clans to view their descendants sent off into the sects as akin to someone who died and had brought great honor to the clan.

Never a downpour nor a light drizzle within the sect, it was always a constant dreary rainfall that threatened to slowly dissolve away the sect and Xing Zheng’s sanity. The rain was constant, it made things miserable, nowhere could the rain be escaped. Within the countless eons of time, all things would dissolve under its constant assault nothing would be left.

All things would disappear and wear into nothingness and only the rain would be left. It was from within the misery and the feeling of losing oneself to the rain that Xing Zheng had found inspiration. Like the rain, he would wash away all the impurities of bitterness and his past, when all this shame had cleansed him he would be like the rain. For how could the rain weather away itself?

Along the grand Dao multitudes of time had passed and would pass. Xing Zheng simply needed to become like the rain and weather all away until eventually only the rain, only he would remain. Under this enlightenment, Xing Zheng, who had been stuck in the second-grade martial artist realm for 10 years and spent three days meditating in the rain, finally broke through to the first-grade martial artist realm.

After breaking through Xing Zheng had been given a mental technique as a reward, this technique was one of the three core techniques of the sect’s style. Although the technique was hard to cultivate at this stage the foundation for it could still be made starting in the first-grade realm. Under the Guidance of the “rain reflecting 10,000 visions” mental technique, he began sitting in the rain for days calming himself. Counting the raindrops as they fell on his skin, continuously straining his limited mental energy to separate and feel each raindrop’s impact.

At first, it was very few, only 10-20 raindrops could be distinguished every hour, he could feel many raindrops pouring down on him but the mental exercise called for focusing and only counting the impacts he could separate and observe as distinct events. It took two full years to double the number of raindrops he could perceive in an hour to 40. During the second year, the amount increased again to 60. After the third year, he could perceive 80.

Finally, after five years he could perceive 100 raindrops in an hour of meditation, at this point many fellow disciples recommended accompanying techniques that would be easier to progress with his strengthened mental energy and allow him to breakthrough much faster. After 100 raindrops in an hour, the rain reflecting 10,000 visions technique becomes much harder to progress so many recommended to only cultivate it during free time as small completion was the requirement to learn more practical martial sect techniques. Thus many of his outer sect peers chose to move on to cultivating techniques that would raise their immediate strength thereby allowing them to take on more sect missions to earn cultivation rewards through merit.

Xing Zheng however had persisted, stubbornly claiming a scion of Xing would not abandon a path once started. Each day he would wake up, eat and then go to the same spot on the same peak had always meditated on. To progress further Xing Zheng needed to decrease the amount of time needed to sense 100 raindrop impacts from one hour to one second, only then would he reach the initial success stage and truly start to comprehend the technique.

Days turned into weeks as the rain seemed to blur all of Xing Zheng’s life together. Soon months started passing by as devoted himself to nothing but the pursuit of the rain reflecting 10,000 visions technique. One day he noticed that a year had passed, but he paid this no mind.

The next three years had passed, disciples he had known had been on missions adventuring in the outside world, Xing Zheng stayed the course cultivating his technique meticulously. After five years had passed he was brought news of a disciple he had been quite close to, it was the man who had welcomed him to the sect. Although at the time Xing Zheng had not paid much mind to the man he ended up being one of the few people who cared little for the family Xing Zheng had come from.

With this, a friendship developed and they would often converse over a shared interest in the fine intricacies of expensive wines and calligraphy pieces. News was brought that he had died exploring the ruin of a long-forgotten sect that fell to ruin. Xing Zheng was shaken however, he did not allow his Dao heart to be swayed and continued to cultivate the technique. After ten years the disciples stopped bringing news to him, perhaps all of his friends had died or forgotten he existed.

At this time Xing Zheng felt the rains had finally won, washing him away into the stream of time to be forever obscured and forgotten. Finally, it came that he had spent 15 years sharpening his basic sword skills and cultivating the mental exercise.

During these arduous 15 years of cultivation Xing Zheng only managed to decrease the time to 30 minutes. Frustrated and feeling confined Xing Zheng had accepted a dangerous sect mission to suppress a beast group that had been attacking a local village that was under the sect’s protection. After a 10 day journey, the group of disciples had arrived at the den of the beast group, sect scouts had reported the group to be a pack of wind wolves.

Upon arriving the stench in the air was revolting and several of the 10 disciples threw up on the spot adding their bile stench to the mix. The vista that greeted them was one straight out of a grisly nightmare, wolf corpses were strewn about with large cyst-like growths swelling from some of them. Blood covered the ground all over and the air seemed to hum with a malevolent rhythm.

Quickly Xing Zheng had realized the vibration in the air was no resonance of energy but was the humming of thousands of wings, before he could shout a warning to his fellow disciples a scream broke the silence. Steel rang as all the disciples unsheathed their swords forming a defensive circle around their downed ally as the leader of the group, a senior disciple at the peak of the first-grade martial artist realm, quickly cut down the 20 blood flies that had ripped hundreds of small cuts across the junior disciple's body. After applying a medical elixir to the wounded to stabilize the wounded disciple the leading disciple joined the defensive ring and the desperate struggle began

Swords flicked in the darkness as a few of the disciples held the remaining torches they had left to try to fend off the swarm. Tens of thousands of blood flies had been killed and smashed but more kept coming, they formed an impenetrable mist of death the group could not hope to break out of. It had been hours since the initial struggle had begun and the insect group showed no signs of thinning. Bitterness swelled in Xing Zheng’s heart at this point, a scion of Xing would die here today to mere flies. The irony was that they hadn’t even needed to come here, now that the blood flies had wiped out the wolves there was no beast group to suppress.

Although this swarm would need to be dealt with, surely some more powerful senior would be tasked to do this safely instead of sending them to their deaths. As the hours dragged on the disciples slowly closed the circle tighter and tighter so that those that were exhausted could rotate in and out to take brief moments of respite. After 5 hours the first disciple died, his limp body dragged into the black mist only briefly coloring red before being shredded apart. Morale sharply fell after this and within the next 3 hours 3 more fell.

Xing Zheng started to lose himself in the killing, his wrist cuts flowed without fail his mental exercise drilled into his body allowing him to distinguish each fly he bisected not wasting any movement. Minutes seemed to turn into hours, hours into days, and before Xing Zheng knew it only he and the Senior leader were remaining back to back. Both had no idea how long it had been. It felt like an eternity but surely at least it had been a day, surely the sect would send help when they didn’t report in?

None of that mattered at the moment, the only thing that mattered was the movement of his sword and the mental energy straining to identify the next target for his wrath. Xing Zheng was proud of few things but his swordplay was surely one of them, he would not fall while his hand could still hold this sword. Following another eternity Xing Zheng heard the dull, distant thud of his final ally hitting the ground and with him, the last remaining torch fell into the blood drenching the ground snuffing out the light, only the cold night remained.

That moment stretched on as the swarm seemed to form a perimeter circle feeling out his reaction and ready to pounce. In a moment of madness, Xing Zheng laughed loudly at this of all moments the clearest sound in his head was not of loved ones or his bitterness, it was the simple soft patter of rain that rang true in his mind.

At that moment Xing Zheng felt something, he felt himself become the storm. He was the clouds, the lightning, the thunder, each raindrop individually yet all the raindrops simultaneously. For the briefest moment Xing Zheng touched all of existence and then his sword moved, in that instant, he felt 100 flies and felled them all.

The next second 100 more and then 100 more, his sword fell like the rain. Fluid and deliberate after a few seconds his hand fell limply to the side, his body unable to maintain such an onslaught of techniques, but that did not matter for he could see. Xing Zheng could see each tiny fly as it pounced on him. Like this with his perception growing by exactly 100 every second in the last moments he had finally tasted it, the true vastness of the Eternal Dao.

Prepared for death Xing Zheng could only stare wide-eyed as the heavens themselves condensed into thin clouds and the storm quelled to a soft drizzle that fell from the sky. To Xing Zheng, each drop that fell from those clouds was infinitely more vast and fierce than any storm he had ever glimpsed, where each one passed hundreds of thousands of blood flies simply seemed to melt away. It was as if 10,000 years of raining and weathering had descended on the swarm at once.

Less than a second had passed before each and every fly was dead, as the rain ended the fly corpses fell to the ground as one revealed each one to be bisected cleanly in two as if the heavens had simply willed them to split. Suddenly in front of Xing Zheng appeared the silhouette of a man whose eyes seemed to contain all of the rain that would ever fall.

“Young man, what is your name?” the man had asked him

“Xing…. Xing Zheng” he had replied barely able to speak through his exhaustion

This was the last thing he had remembered before blackness had taken him…