《Unseen Cultivator》


 Prologue: Last Day of the Demon War, Part I

    Itinay thrust her sword with a flick of the wrist and twist of the arm. Qi, released from the burning heart of her dantian, flashed down the perfectly aligned channels of her immortal body and wrapped in spiral formulation around the pale blue steel of the straight blade. Released in time with her motion, this energy burst outward, a bar of manifest power; sharp as a sword cut and fast as light. Extraordinary power and will, driven by centuries of refined study and profound grasp of the dao, propelled the attack forward with grim force.


    Ten meters distant, the blue light impacted against its first target and removed a head from its supporting shoulders.


    The newly dead thing resembled a human, in gross form. A person seen from far away, or perhaps abstracted in petroglyph representation. Any closer examination, whether through physical senses or the all important extension of awareness that came from the ability to sense qi ¨C a far greater perceptive capacity than sight or hearing to one of Itinay''s cultivation ¨C revealed that all similarity ended there.


    Once, the foe fallen before her had been human. It had perished as something immeasurably worse.


    Red skin, thickened to leathery consistency and pulled so tight that every muscle and bone stood out beneath it on a body wholly devoid of fat, formed the surface. A starving man dipped in crimson wax at the moment of expiration. Other aspects of the transformation told at a far deeper level than surface color.


    Though it wore no clothes, this mattered not at all. The genitals had fallen away completely, eliminated alongside every last strand of hair. Elsewhere new features grew and metamorphosed from the old. Horns and spines erupted from the skull and shoulder blades. Foot and hand bones elongated and thickened, terrible tearing claws took the place of nails. The jawbones bent and distended, revealed a wide, cheek-less mouth without teeth. Plates of razor sharp bone erupted from the gums instead.


    A demon, the size of a large man. Those who fought these monsters called them ghouls, an application lamentable in the frightful accuracy it possessed.


    The blast of sword-formed qi took the head from the first ghoul and barely slowed. Continuing on, it angled downward slightly and pierced the neck of a second. Then it cored the chest of a third, fourth, and fifth. Five more demons were ripped through the torso before the bolt of power dipped too low to deliver killing strikes to central mass. It clipped ten more, carving away thighs, knees, and one left foot before striking the earth and finally dissipating.


    Nine in one strike. Not enough, not nearly enough. Itinay pivoted, barely shifting her stance at all, and swung her sword again. This time an elongated slash cleaved through nearly fifteen ghouls at chest height. Still not enough.


    The demons, churning forth en masse, ran up the slope of the great hill by the tens of thousands. Neither an army nor a mob, they properly functioned as an endless red tide. Like anyone who had played at making a fortress on a beach, Itinay knew the tide could not be stopped no matter how high one built the walls.


    Not that this knowledge held her back or slowed her strikes.


    Qi flooded down the sword. Blow after blow lanced out, blue essence ripped across the slope multiple times per second. Demons fell by the dozens, the hundreds, as Itinay carved a broad path across the top of the ridge. Three strikes tied to every step: out, across, and back. The most basic of sword patterns.


    Every step she took was a flashing leap, a bolt of motion that carried her forward ten meters or more. Ghouls fell like grain before the scythe as blue light reaped its way across their ranks.


    In less than a minute, Itinay eliminated enemies in a number equal to the population of a good-sized town.


    It made no difference. The red wave surged ahead without heed for any losses. Ghouls crawled forward, never stopping even as limbs were obliterated by near-misses. Not even the bodies of their fallen served to impede them, for within moments of death the rust-red flesh disintegrated, sublimated away back into the perverse presence of the plague that spawned these monsters out of the men, women, and children they had once been.


    Propelled not by any impulse remaining to them, the ghouls moved driven only by the plague. Its drive to seek out and consume all human qi was all they knew. They could not be driven back in fear, nor would losses turn their horde aside. They would simply keep going until nothing remained before their hunger.


    Back and forth Itinay went, plunging again and again against the tide that sought to swamp the ridge. She fought on as the world blurred around her. The sick oily-sweet feel of the plague, its qi surrounding everything and fogging her senses, forced her to push a layer of her own reserves across her skin to prevent crippling nausea. That feeling, the very idea of sickness, ought to be banished from her immortal body, but a disease born of qi itself struck at more than flesh.


    That burden made everything harder, tiring.


    Fatigue, another trait that she ought to have largely left behind much earlier on her cultivation journey, began building throughout her limbs. The tissues of her form grew sluggish, exhausted on a fundamental level from constantly pushing qi back and forth. Weariness settled over her, a feeling that would have been unfamiliar if not for all the terrible years of war. The world blurred and meaning began to drain from her thoughts.


    Yet she dared not stop. There could be no pause nor rest. No one stood behind her.


    The whole line of hills, from horizon to horizon, was filled with the enemy. The defenders, all too few, were scattered along a thin line of peaks, ridges, and valleys, from north to south. There were no reserves, everyone had been committed long since, and the idea of reinforcements was a poor joke indeed. The enemy horde, streaming westward toward the interior of the continent, threatened every position at once. Only high peaks and raging rivers offered any break against their overwhelming numbers.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Should Itinay fall back, thousands would pour through in moments.


    Beyond her position, but fearfully close indeed, lay one of the last remaining refuges of mortal humans in the whole world. Perhaps, she feared, it was the very last. There had been no word from any other stronghold for far too long. Couriers had not been able to operate for ages, torn apart through a systematic campaign of murder. Half a million human lives, crammed together between two rivers and protected from destruction only by improvised formations manifested beneath worn and ragged flags, sheltered there.


    All that remained of the over one billion souls that had filled the earth with life before the war began.


    It hurt, so much, to remember that. The horrible failure of it all, the betrayal and devastation that had been unable to prevent, to stop, to contain. Time and again they had tried, but success ever slipped from their grasp. The grief of those losses ran deep, it had shattered daos and left otherwise hale cultivators unable to fight on. Black-eyed beings devoid of will, they became nothing more than new fodder for the plague.


    Though far from overcome by grief, Itinay could not allow distractions any purchase on her psyche, not now, in the worst moments. Battle consumed all things. It demanded every last scrap of fuel.


    Especially when ogres began to push toward the front amid the unending ranks of the ghoul horde.


    The name came from old folktales, brutish monsters that consumed the unwary on forlorn trails at night. An appropriate appellation for such monstrosities. Unlike ghouls, which were merely people remade by the touch of the plague''s demonic qi, these creatures were something more, something worse. Unlucky individuals with a fragmentary ability to draw qi into their mortal bodies ¨C a trait useless in practical terms ¨C the plague took those additional reserves and spun them out into masses of new muscle and bone.


    Hulking and oversize, an ogre stood head and shoulders above even the tallest man, and their extended arms hung down past their knees after the fashion of great jungle apes. Horns like those of water buffalo extended from their scalps as a sort of natural helmet. Their clenched fists slammed down as heavy mauls with every blow. Though outnumbered by the ghouls at least one hundred to one, these demons represented far greater challenge to Itinay''s sword. She could not swat them aside indiscriminately as gnats. Each required an instant of focused effort.


    At a time when no spare moments existed.


    Drawing qi through feet, hips, and shoulders, Itinay drew her sword back cloaked in power. Then, she snapped her right foot forward. A flash, and she appeared before the first ogre, movement so swift no unaided eye could ever follow. Thrusting with this burst, she pressed her blade through the monster''s right eye, pierced the brain, and pushed out once again through the rear of the skull. Her arm, cloaked in qi, followed this motion, tearing a ragged channel through severed flesh.


    The ogre plummeted to the ground, half its head torn away. Lifeless, its body was already beginning to dissipate.


    A second step, and she decapitated the next. The third step pulled inward, a rising cut, and ripped the broad torso open from navel to neck. Three fatal blows, three ogres in barely a full second. A proper application of power and skill vastly in excess of anything these crude plague-born monsters could ever manifest.


    Not enough. Not nearly enough. Even in that single long second the demon tide advanced. Itinay returned to the ridge in another immense lightning-streak stride. Her sword carved a path back and forth, lancing out with absolute lethality, but the short gap, brief though it had been, sufficed to let a score of demons slip over the ridge and charge down the lee slope.


    Nothing but open wilderness, a few precious kilometers of ragged early autumn brush, stood before them and the valley below where the surviving mortals huddled in desperation.


    Twenty-one ghouls. The startlingly advanced senses of one of her cultivation made it trivial to count exactly how many demons made it through even as she struck and thrust in the midst of endless battle.


    Knowing what would happen next barely required any imagination at all.


    Beneath the protection of their wind-scoured flags, fraying steadily even now, the surviving healthy mortal stood at arms. They formed a wall of spears and shields, ready to meet any ghouls that slipped past the cultivators on the hills. Thousands of soldiers, from veterans of many years to recruits facing their first battle, all prepared to throw themselves at the ultimate enemy.


    It was not, Itinay knew, entirely hopeless. Shielded from the plague, mortals could kill ghouls. If the shield wall stood fast, and if those who made it through remained strung out, taken one at a time, then ten human lives might suffice to claim that of one demon. The piteous remnant that remained of all humanity might survive a handful of intermittent failures on the part of the cultivators sworn to protect them, at great cost.


    Might. Could. Possibly.


    Too many variables. Itinay trusted none of it.


    Her cold calculation was simple and brutal. Every ghoul she let slip past represented one hundred lives lost. With so few survivors remaining, every single demon that passed over the ridge cut away a measurable sliver of humanity''s total.


    Yet she could not fail to embrace those shivering numbers. Every ogre that appeared, she diverted without hesitation to kill it. Broadhead spears and whole quivers of arrows would eventually take down a ghoul, though at the pitiable strength mortal bodies could summon it would take dozens of blows.


    No blow by mortal hands would fell an ogre. The strongest man with the sharpest spear could not even pierce the eyeball, the weakest point. Some gaps could not be overcome.


    That left nothing but the brutal trade-off, lives for each missed sword stroke. And the wish that her power, mighty though it was, could somehow grow further.


    All along the hills, cultivators fought. They numbered nearly one thousand strong. The last remainder of the once-great Orthodox Alliance. The only force capable of resisting the demon hordes left in the world. Bearers of a trust that must never be betrayed.


    For nearly three hours Itinay and her allies fought across those hills. Over ten million demons, fully one in every hundred humans who had once called the world home, perished beneath their blows. Behind them over one hundred thousand people, one fifth of all that remained of free humanity, died as fangs and claws tore them apart. Only potent but slowly collapsing formations prevented these newly dead from being added to the horde in turn.


    The demon horde thinned, its limits reached through shear geography. Less than one in ten of the initial red bodies sent upon the attack now remained. The horde now stood barely a million strong. It would take a week or more for the plague to draw in additional numbers from more distant regions.


    Yet, as the sun set beneath a smoke-filled sky, trees and brush burning beneath the explosive power unleashed by desperate cultivators using their best combat techniques, the defenders took no solace. Their qi senses, ground down to near insensibility beneath the fog of crimson-oil vileness, perked up again as they encountered sharp and potent crystallizations of horrific power.


    It was the sign that the first wave had ended. The softening-up phase was over. Now the true battle would begin.


    The demonic cultivators had arrived.

 Prologue: Last Day of the Demon War, Part II

    Humanity''s final stand was made by the nine hundred and eighty-eight surviving cultivators of the Orthodox Alliance. The enemy force brought against them had numbered approximately twelve million demons and two hundred and six demonic cultivators.


    The monstrous traitors who''d allowed the plague to corrupt their souls in exchange for the ability to share its consumptive power had begun the day with an overwhelming advantage. That the demon horde had been carved asunder without killing a single orthodox cultivator changed none of that. In exhausting the alliance the cannon fodder had served its purpose.


    One to one, the demonic cultivators were vastly greater in power than their opponents. With their strength vaulted up to great heights by draining qi from their enemies instead of undergoing the long and hard work of nurturing enlightenment, there were elders to the last. Though worthy of nothing but spite for their short-sighted choice, the strength it won them could not be denied.


    Worse, the plague would support them as the fight wore on. Every defender slain would have their qi stripped away and added to the strength of their murderer. Slaughter rejuvenated the demonic cultivators and even carried the potential to increase their layers of cultivation.


    As the sun set these monsters charged out onto the battle, fresh and ready, seeking to hunt down and consume depleted and fatigued foes.


    On the orthodox side, all those below the fifth realm, over two-thirds of their total, could contribute nothing against these enemy elders. As had been previously arranged, they fell back from the front, seeking to protect the surviving humans from the remaining demons as best they could without elder support. Their part was done. The battle would be decided by elders alone.


    Dangerous though this gambit was, it represented the first stage of the final, desperate, plan to win the day. Severed from the support of their horde, the elders on each side would do battle. In that clash the seeds of victory still existed, if they could but be nurtured.


    Hope, a forlorn and slender thread though it was, remained. Itinay knew this, and looked forward to the grim clash to come with fire in her eyes. A single, critical, aspect of the enemy offered this final chance.


    Though all demonic cultivators were tied to the plague, and driven by its singular consumptive will, they were not the mindless automatons of the disease the demons became. In this way, they lacked unity. Each demonic cultivator prioritized their own advancement above all, competing with each other to acquire the most qi and rise the fastest. Rather than fight united, each one was ultimately alone, directed entirely towards personal achievements.


    This was the seed of hope, that the enemy could be broken apart and defeated one piece at a time.


    It had already begun. Ninety-eight demonic cultivators, including the second strongest warrior and best general among their entire ranks, were absent. A valiant sacrificial lure by nine selfless immortals had drawn that second army, a full third of the enemy''s strength, to the other side of the world.


    If such a grand gesture could be duplicated on a smaller scale, victory might just be snatched away from the crushing grip of the plague. The defenders, accordingly, spread out, joined into small groups that sought to isolate and overwhelm the enemy one by one. A systematic effort to win the battle of attrition through brutally ruthless arithmetic.


    A cold and cruel strategy, one the demonic cultivators had not anticipated, for it doomed the overwhelming majority of the surviving cultivators and human population to death on the claws and fangs of the demon horde. Even if this means might achieve victory, it would carry an almost immeasurable cost. More than, perhaps, humanity could ever endure. Many of the immortals among the orthodox alliance had balked at this plan, despite no alternative being offered.


    Itinay had, in council, pushed hard for this approach. She''d spoken her mind despite being among the least of the immortals present, and perhaps, she hoped, had swayed some opinions. There had been no other plausible option, nothing more than empty prayers. If they wished for anyone to survive, they must be willing to push beyond the acceptable, beyond the reasonable, and embrace the rational.


    In the battle that unfolded now, she had been given a position of importance, as had the rest of her sisters, one tied to the superior speed of their movement technique.


    The demon horde, once unimpeded by the line of cultivators slaughtering it at every step, charged forward in a rush. High above, nearly at cloud height, the vanguard of demonic cultivators flew forth to bring devastation. Their various movement techniques allowed them to treat the air as perfectly solid and to battle freely in the vast openness of the atmosphere. The champions of the orthodox sects, weapons in hand, countermeasures unleashed, rose up to face them there.


    A between nearly one hundred immortals shook the skies. These were the strongest cultivators remaining in the world; those in the fifth, sixth, and seventh layers of the celestial ascendancy realm. Famous names all, whether hero or traitor. They were colossi who''s histories had shaped the world that was, and the doom that had come upon it. Itinay''s master, Orday, was among the champions of the orthodox side, a brilliant white sun of qi shining within the vermilion fog.


    Itinay could devote no more than a single glance to that stratospheric battle. Everything else must be given to the task at hand. Drawing qi through her bones and muscles, she channeled strength to the very limit of all that her body could hold. Even forged to immortality as her blue-skinned tissues were, she pushed hard. Then, as the strain compounded, she timed her motions with those of her allies, her sisters, and released everything in a single burst.


    Hundreds of cultivators shot forward, diving beneath the epic struggle on high and seeking out the second rank of the enemy, the lesser elder demonic cultivators, divided up, unsupported, and vulnerable.


    Light is fast, faster than anything. Cultivator movement techniques derive from many origins, many principles, and many sources. Though swift and sure daos inspired them all, light remained its absolute preeminence even in that company. All the followers of their master, the personally chosen students of Orday, knew this. When they wished to, their speed could surpass anyone''s.


    They did so now. Twelve streaks of qi, outrunning the immortal eyes of their enemies, shot across the hills. Even the great names high above could not follow. The deadly techniques they launched down in attempt to intercept struck nothing but flickering afterimages.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Faster too, than the enemy could react.


    Itinay had chosen her target long before she moved. A demonic cultivator in the sixth layer of the soul forging realm, he was weak, still partly mortal, an easy kill. He resembled a human being coated in red ash, the common distortion of appearance inflicted upon those who embraced the plague but had yet to pass the boundaries of mortality and manifest their dao. His hands held a heavy halberd forged of black steel. Jade-enameled bronze lamellar armor surrounded his torso, each plate inscribed with potent sigils. A defensive artifact of considerable potency, it suited the dead immortal from whom it had been looted, not this overly-ambitious opportunist.


    The demonic cultivator must have felt the oncoming rush of qi, but too slowly. The variance of a full greater realm of cultivation and the incomparable speed of light-inspired motion, the Stellar Flash Steps, overwhelmed his reactions. The halberd was still slowly rising up to guard position, the body in the midst of dropping into proper dueling stance, when the motion completed. Everything adjusted one critical half-step too slow.


    A gap that allowed Itinay to drive home a single free attack.


    Nine Spheres Arsenal Sword Arts. She invoked the devastating, signature first technique of her chosen weapon art. A simple strike, one direct thrust down and in, but driven with absolute speed and power and tied to a qi construct of perfectly focused fury and her full power as an immortal cultivator of the celestial ascendancy realm. First Form: Stellar Impact.


    Blue steel, sharpened to an almost invisible point, cloaked in qi narrow as a ray of light, pierced through artifact jade, qi-tempered bronze, alchemically treated leather backing, and a double layer of under-slung protective talismans as if all were vapor. The flesh beneath, butter before the heated blade, surrendered completely. Metal pierced the heart. Qi detonated; the construct collapsed.


    The demonic cultivator''s chest exploded.


    Itinay raced past, outrunning even the blast of gore unleashed by her killing move. Other targets reared up before her, and she dove toward them, desperate to even the numbers both the enemy fully understood what had been unleashed amid their ranks. Her sword flashed. Hard and fast strikes, merciless, unwilling to compromise, rained out with the full force of her immortal dao. The vulnerable, identified, were struck down before they could possibly recover.


    Demonic cultivators had betrayed the world. They delivered up a billion deaths. They stole the enlightenment of others and twisted it into alignment with a hideous dao anathema to all that was born of heaven and earth. A cold and merciless hatred lodged in Itinay''s blue-white core burned endlessly against them all. Their deaths were more than a need for survival, they were a demand laid down upon her personal path to ascension, one she would deliver without a sliver of remorse. Only absolute resolve remained.


    Twice more she pierced the bodies of her foes. Weaker enemies these, merely in the spirit tempering realm, lowest of the elder states. They were barely strong enough to endure the flares of qi falling from the incredible clash high above. When pressed by the unrestrained assault of an immortal holding nothing back they completely lacked the strength to resist.


    Monstrously dangerous, such attacks. Any coordination, any countermeasures, would have found Itinay completely open, exposed to deadly interception and riposte. But the enemy would not act to protect each other, ever.


    The assembled demonic cultivators did not form an army, a sect, or even a mob. They were simply countless different breeds of predator, gathered by the scent of wounded prey. All were driven by their own desperation to outrun the flames of mortality they feared more than all other fates. Against such maddened, degraded beings, human cunning offered a measure of equalization.


    Inevitably, the enemy resisted. Even as demonic cultivators in the spirit tempering and soul forging realms were slaughtered by the blades of orthodox cultivators in the celestial ascendancy realm or the grouped efforts of lesser alliance elders, those on the side of the demons who had attained immortality struck back.


    Seeking to reap and claim power for themselves, these enemies in the highest realm under the heavens pursued Itinay''s strategy in reverse. Even outnumbered, they sought to counter, kill, and drain their opponents, increasing their power and restoring their stamina as the plague tore away the qi of the fallen and fed it into their bodies and souls. If cornered, they would seek to break through, tearing out and healing through slaughter again and again.


    This too, the plan had anticipated. The strategy mandated the sacrifice of many orthodox elders. Gathered in small groups, the weak among them could cover each other, endure long enough to allow the celestial ascendancy immortals of their side to thin the enemy ranks until the balance of numbers changed. One by one, these men and women carried out that terrible directive. Bodies collapsed to the earth, bleeding out from hideous wounds, clinging as long as possible through defenses, pills, and talismans to keep their qi from the enemy''s grasp for critical seconds even when mortal blows were struck.


    All knew the price, one inscribed upon their very souls by a century of warfare. Hesitation was not longer acceptable. It had been burned out of all the remaining veterans. Victory or death. Either was preferable to surrender before the pestilence and its servitors.


    Itinay had finished grieving long ago. Today was a day of death and slaying. The last day of the Demon War, everyone on both sides knew it. Fittingly, it unfolded beneath the stars. So much the better for her and her sisters, followers of a path traced in stellar qi.


    The next stage was simple. The celestial ascendancy realm cultivators of the Orthodox Alliance formed strike groups of their own and fell upon their demonic opposite numbers while the foe remained engaged. Pin and kill, a tried and true tactic old as the dawn of humanity, one not even the mightiest cultivator could easily overcome.


    United into a trio, Itinay stepped forth side by side with her fellow sisters, Aekay and Iaray, who bore halberd and blade into battle respectively. Soul forged immortal bodies of soft blue-white shades, each was a similar but unique result of the melding process each cultivator endured to shed the mortal flesh. Visually, they could be seen as sisters in blood, ladies of a bizarre lineage dropped down from among the distant stars. That they had not been born as sisters meant nothing to the three. Centuries of companionship and one hundred years of warfare entwined them in a bond deeper than any mortal terms could properly describe.


    In battle that camaraderie expressed itself in devastating tandem coordination. Blows, movements, techniques, these complemented each other perfectly. Their enemies, like most cultivators, had never learned to fight together and were not inclined to support each other. Forced to defend against the combined assault of three immortals striking from all directions at once, they succumbed swiftly.


    Red Lash, a whip-using demonic cultivator famous for drinking the blood of those he slew even though qi was not conveyed in such visceral exchanges, lost his head to a cleaving blow from Iaray even as he countered strikes from sisters on his right and left.


    Aekay lopped off both legs of the Hollow Ophidian, a bizarrely serpent-aspected individual, before piercing his heart as he sought to race between pummeling sword strikes.


    The neck of Swift Dread tore open beneath the blue steel slash of Itinay as the demonic cultivator tried to shift his bone-covered form past two of the sisters only to find himself directed into the jaws of a trap laid by the third.


    Scenes of a similar nature repeated themselves across the battlefield. Small victories achieved one by one. Loses accompanied them, but slower, lesser, until they ceased as the balance shifted to overwhelm the demonic side completely.


    Hope, long thought lost, sparked anew. The prospect of triumph dared to rise in the hearts and dantians of humanity''s last defenders.


    A single thunder-burst detonation of power brought all such dreams to shattered ends.


    High in the sky the greatest warriors of the old world had done battle. Most had fallen, famous names riven from history until a mere handful remained.


    And the demonic cultivators triumphed.


    The final blow, splitting the heavens, was one Itinay felt through to her core. The hand of the enemy leader had slapped aside her master, flinging her broken body aside at terrible speed to slam into a crater of her own making far to the west. Though not slain, Orday lay on the edge of death, and the skies were quiet once more.


    Doom had come.

 Prologue: Last Day of the Demon War, Part III

    ¡°Scatter,¡± it was Iaray who shouted this command to the other sisters, decisive in the moment of crisis. ¡°Get to our master.¡±


    They did so. Twelve women ran on footsteps formed of light itself across the hills. They passed scattered demons, fallen enemies and allies, and raced down to the plains. All plans suspended in the need to reach the one all of the sisters referred to, in their private thoughts, as mother. As they dodged and weaved, devastating techniques were launched from above. Other orthodox cultivators, less swift, succumbed to these as they fled in desperation.


    Starlight speed spared the twelve sisters, but few others were so lucky. Invigorated by consumption of the qi of their fallen foes, the surviving demonic leadership rained down fire, lightning, poison, and worse from on high. Those who sought to escape were swiftly cut down, their exhausted qi reserves insufficient to evade. A bare handful managed to last long enough to find temporary reprieves, but they remained surrounded by hungry demons.


    The Twelve Sisters, seeking out their master far from the center of the fighting, lost none of their number, but neither were they able to reach their goal. Even as they descended to the edge of the wide plain and its many meandering rivers near to where the surviving mortals and lesser cultivators fought a final holding action against the remaining components of the demon horde, a silent command brought them all to an immediate halt. No words conveyed this final request, nor did any wind carry it. Instead, the resonance of their linked daos vibrated upon the pulsations of stellar qi itself.


    They all knew, without any words exchanged, what must be done. A final duty had been charged to them, one last, ultimate, effort.


    They gathered into a half-circle. Itinay, as youngest of the twelve, took up the position on the northern end, opposite Iay, the eldest, to her south. Sword in hand, she used every moment that passed to draw in the ever-present stellar qi from above. A desperate and likely futile attempt to restore her reserves to something approaching combat readiness.


    Their master, their mother, had asked her disciples, her daughters, for time.


    They would provide it, no matter the cost.


    The battle in the skies had been far from a rout. Both sides had suffered terribly, been ground down almost to nothing. The leading demonic cultivators were reduced to a mere five, all in the seventh layer of the celestial ascendancy realm. Four of these victors were content to indulge their instincts by preying upon the surviving scattered elders of the Orthodox Alliance. Only one descended to pursue the wounded Orday.


    Only one was needed.


    Twelve stood in a loose semicircle, watching as the foe descended. All gathered there knew that enemy. His name rang out across the world, the vilest of curses. The last of the seven great betrayers, the only survivor among the twisted souls whose forbidden experimentation had birthed the demon plague and begun the war.


    The others who had joined in that hideous violation had long ago been cleansed. The Entwining Blight was the only one who remained. Master of the demon plague, he was the most powerful being in the world.


    He landed before them. His impact, impelled by the considerable weight of the heavy steel-plated armor he wore and the rotten, water-logged wood-like substance that comprised his immortal body, left a small crater beneath his feet and covered everyone in dust and grass shavings. Though partly concealed beneath an elegant silk battle robe, the withered vine-like hands and the twisting driftwood contours of an otherwise immovable face gave away the true nature of this embodiment of slow decay.


    Itinay thought he resembled a corpse left in the bottom of a bog for far too long, and fervently wished to return him there.


    For weapons, the demonic cultivator carried a short spear in each hand. No forge produced those crude-seeming spikes. They were carved out from the substance of his immortal body itself. A heinous violation of the dao, only possible to one whose every blow drained qi from his enemies.


    Such blows had been numerous of late.


    Qi, hideous and reeking of the foulness of demonic distortion, exuded off the traitor in waves. Far more than even an immortal body could properly contain. Enough that he was in danger of bursting through the boundary of his very soul and shattering his cultivation through qi overload.


    Already one of the rare few who had reached the seventh layer of the celestial ascendancy realm and stood on the cusp of the heavens, the reservoir he''d drained from his fallen foes ¨C many of them matching his strength or at worst a single step below ¨C ought to propel him across that barrier with but a thought.


    The tribulation of ascension was the Entwining Blight''s for the asking. Cruel as his dao was, there would never be a more suitable moment to make the attempt, not in a million years. Yet, instead of seeking seclusion, of readying his mind for that greatest of all possible challenges, he stood before the sisters in boiling fury.


    ¡°So it''s true,¡± Itinay heard a voice interject across the silent tableau of that moment and realized, to her shock, that she had spoken aloud. ¡°The theorists were right. The plague forbids ascension.¡±


    ¡°Yes, damn you! Curse your blue eyes you wretched little star-blind worm!¡± The force of this bellowed accusation released so much excess qi it uprooted whole trees and tossed them dozens of meters through the air. ¡°My will is stolen from me, I cannot bend my qi to form an immortal cocoon. The plague refuses to leave this world, this shell! It rejects the heavens.¡± He snarled out each word. Wooden jaws cracked and creaked, a brutal cacophony of distended language. ¡°In my moment of triumph I am blocked forever. Damn you all!¡±


    ¡°The great betrayer, betrayed by his own great work,¡± the sharp voice of Artemay, the hooded sister, gathered into wild laughter. She cackled madly, peels of bitter mirth that rose to the stars. Misery transformed through her gallows humor into bravado and the resolve of the sisterhood surged to brilliant heights. ¡°Hilarious, if only the world were not the butt of the joke.¡±Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    ¡°The world is done!¡± The Entwining Blight boomed, each word cracked the sky like thunder. Trees burst apart all around him, and the undergrowth caught fire only to be put out by the next vocal detonation. ¡°If I cannot leave it behind, then I''ll kill it instead. Perhaps that will teach the heavens their folly in denying me a place among their ranks.¡± Black eyes, orbs of unrelenting darkness, seemed to look upon the sisters for the first time. ¡°Out of my way, little girls. I have unfinished business with your mother. Your fought well, cunning even. That''s enough to earn a quick death. Drop your weapons and I will gift it to you.¡±


    Twelve immortal ladies laughed in his face. They had been given a sworn charge. The very idea that any of them would forsake it was ridiculous.


    Itinay''s grip tightened about the hilt of her sword. They were, none of them, above the fourth layer of the celestial ascendancy realm, and that only Iay. Twelve on one could breach almost any gap, in ordinary times. On another day, if they''d fought together, they could have won.


    Not this day.


    Endless quantities of qi filled the Entwining Blight. Power radiated from his every pore, more than enough to render the normal rules of combat irrelevant. They could throw one hundred killing blows through his guard; that mass of qi would simply cancel them all.


    The demonic cultivator moved to spout some bitter epithet in response to their laughter, but his furious tirade was halted before it began.


    A bolt of lightning slammed down from high above. It impacted a short distance to the west. Thunder washed over them all.


    No ordinary lightning, not this. The night sky was perfectly clear, the stars shown bright to fill the empty black. A waning crescent moon hung witness in the distance.


    The bolt had not been the ordinary flash of blinding blue-white to mirror the shade of Itinay''s eyes. This retina-staining discharged encompassed a far greater spectrum. Ten thousand colors and more, all the endless furies of heaven were cast down within that singular strike.


    Heavenly lightning, the wrath that descended to punish violations of the natural order. The phenomenon summoned in response to pursuit of dao beyond the limits of the physical, of humanity. It was a judgment with only one possible origin.


    Tribulation.


    And only one entity on this field of death and desolation dared attempt such a drastic act of defiance.


    Twelve sisters felt it, observed the first stroke of heaven''s wrath as their mother dared to surmount the final step on the path of cultivation. To claim her dao for all eternity and with it a place in the heavens themselves. Behind the guard of her disciples, Orday sought to ascend.


    Everyone felt it. Most did nothing. The remaining orthodox cultivators were focused on immediate survival. The other demonic cultivators, recognizing through their instinctual link with the plague that they were viewed with disdain from above, chose to keep far away from this manifestation of heavenly wrath. Mortals and demons alike ignored these elevated powers as they struggled for immediate survival, clawing and stabbing in the muck.


    The Entwining Blight saw that bolt descend and roared out in absolute fury. ¡°No! That piteous star-spawn will not claim that which is rightfully mine!¡± His wood-like body trembled, rage spurred every portion of his being to shake, a branch in the wind. ¡°I will not let heaven spare her my wrath!¡±


    Propelled by anger, he raised a twisted wooden spear and moved to throw.


    Orday sat, wrapped in a cocoon of starlight, within a thicket of reeds beside a distant lake. She lay at the very edge of the horizon. Despite this distance, none had the least bit of doubt what would happen should the demonic cultivator''s projectile be launched.


    Hideous qi gathered around the spearhead. A hundred killing constructs filled it, slaved to the twisted will of the monster who carried it. It''s impact would pierce a great mountain; slay an entire forest.


    It could not be allowed. The twelve sisters knew this. They would not permit it.


    As one, they attacked.


    Iay, eldest among them, struck from the extreme left. Itinay, the youngest, thrust from the far right. For a single instant twelve blows fell in perfect synchronicity.


    They slammed into a barrier of impossibly dense plague qi. A wall of rusted oil solid as steel and deeper than any well. It laughed at these blows, specks before its infinity. Its champion would not be stopped, not in this moment, not at the perfect concentration of disease.


    Futility filled the air. It seeped into the dao itself. Then into immortal blood as the Entwining Blight counterattacked.


    The spear in his hand burst apart. Fragments of wood, propelled by his terrible, consuming, essence, raked the flesh of all those before him. The sisters struggled to stand, drained of strength and wracked with hideous pain transmitted by even the most superficial of scratches and pinpricks that barely penetrated through armor. Beneath their feet the ground turned black as this devastating outburst slaughtered every living thing within hundreds of meters, even the tiny minute forms that lived between the grains of soil.


    In agony, but unbowed, Itinay dropped to one knee, took a single breath to gather power within, and then threw herself forward. Her mother was depending on her.


    How could she ever falter.


    Blue steel hunted for life within the black-green monstrosity of rot and decay.


    Chaos reigned as her sisters joined in the fray. Behind them all, lightning struck again and again. Growing in ferocity with each blast, the intervals between the strikes collapsed down in tandem, until nearly nothing separated the blows. The bolts lit the night in technicolor wonder, until even immortal eyes saw nothing but blurs and stars.


    This overwhelming luminous deluge saved the sisters.


    Ten times Itinay attacked her demonic foe. Ten times her blade bounced away as it slammed against an impenetrable condensation of qi. Ten times she was cut in reply, until blue blood seeped from horrid gashes upon every limb.


    Yet she was not pierced through. Her heart and brain remained untouched, and channels of qi forged into welds holding soul, flesh, and mind as one in perfected immortal existence remained solid as ever. The injuries, though grievous, would heal, given time. Countless lethal blows the enemy might have launched were lost, stolen by the heaven-sent chaos that confounded the senses of the unstoppable demonic cultivator.


    He left the sisters bleeding and ravaged, but bereft of mortal wounds.


    Until his patience to endure confusion came to an end.


    A wave of utterly uncompromising power, all the energy stored within the reserves of a seventh layer cultivator of the celestial ascendancy realm channeled into a single omnidirectional burst, was let loose.


    It hurled the twelve to the ground, driven flat on their backs. Itinay felt a dozen bones break, and bruises sprouted across every speck of skin. Her qi reserves vanished, guttering out like a snuffed candle. All strength to even move deserted her.


    In that moment she was reduced to barely more than mortal existence, only the touch of the dao, perpetually part of her being for centuries, remained to remind her that she had not been slain. It took all the effort she could summon simply to turn her head and discover her sisters in identical states of helplessness. They had fought with all they possessed, only to be effortlessly beaten and left defenseless.


    ¡°Enough!¡± The Entwining Blight raised his arms. Spikes sprouted from the limbs, grew to meters long in moments, detached, and launched into the air. They rose up, and then turned to rain down absolute death.


    Itinay saw her end upon the hundreds of spear points.


    Even as the demonic cultivator extended his qi to draw death back down, there was a sudden final interruption.


    Ten thousand bolts of lightning descended from the heavens in one stroke.


    Time stopped completely.

 Prologue: Last Day of the Demon War, Part IV

    Within the endless, impossible, interval where time had stopped, Itinay felt the stars. Not as points in the sky that offered light in the darkness of night. Not as symbols of distant divinities. Not even as sources of the qi that powered her cultivation and had carried her from the base to near the pinnacle.


    No, in that moment of perfect clarity she felt the stars as they truly were.


    Unbelievably distant. Impossibly vast. Furnaces of endless energy of immense age who sent light screaming across the universe as the by-product of their celestial fires. The world upon which she stood, merely one of countless rocky spheres scattered across the cosmos, was nothing but leftover dust discarded by those domineering lamps.


    Their qi, each totally unique and derived from the immolation of an individualized mix of the primordial components that formed all things, was impossibly pure. Its unmistakable majesty was matched by nothing else in existence.


    The power of the heavens lay so far beyond anything she''d previously grasped that even in that moment of enlightenment it began to tumble away, a mark laid upon her soul she could not truly understand. The road to the heavens had been laid bare only to be coated in fog by an existence not yet ready to find the way. Perhaps she would solve that puzzle, as she grew stronger. If she could, Itinay knew, the path to follow her master would open one day.


    Even as this realization took hold, all things crashed back down into the present. Once again she was lying on her back atop black earth, bleeding from numerous wounds, and facing the embroiled wrath of a merciless monster. An end she could not escape.


    Only now there was a pillar of pure white light in the distance.


    The Entwining Blight''s devastating volley began its descent.


    Faster than the eye could blink, the pillar of light vanished.


    Later, when sound caught up, there would be a massive soft thump, the shock unleashed by a massive spatial transfiguration across the land to the west, but events outpaced the arrival of that detonation.


    They did not outpace the light, nor the one who had become its emanation.


    Itinay''s eyes widened as Orday, her master, appeared above them.


    The immense barrage of spines simply melted into nothing, obliterated by the shear radiance of her appearance.


    Orday appeared as her students had known her while merely immortal, as a beautiful maternal woman with long and wavy black hair, eyes burning with solar sclera, and pale blue-shaded flesh glowing softly along each gentle curve and joint.


    Only now she was more, far more. No longer bound to the physical, she was a being of manifest light. Her hair was a black, ever-collapsing nebula of voluminous dark gas. Her body a construct of luminosity wrapped around seven tiny but irrepressible stellar furnaces. Light burst from her toes and fingers as she moved, and though naked, her perfectly formed body conceded nothing but absolute mastery to any observer.


    ¡°Impossible! Impossible!¡± the Entwining Blight raged. Oily qi, crimson and ruined, dripped from his form, a cloth rung out and torn. ¡°How could you possibly ascend? Such a pathetic stargazer as-¡±


    ¡°I have little time,¡± Orday spoke. Her voice was soft as silk. Its echoes whipped clouds across the sky and stirred leaves for hundreds of kilometers, but harmed nothing. ¡°And you are worthy of none of it.¡±


    ¡°Begone.¡±


    Orday waved her hand.


    Light in every shade visible to mortal eyes and countless more beyond that radiated outward with that motion.


    The Entwining Blight simply disintegrated. The most powerful cultivator in the world, perhaps the most powerful that had ever walked its surface, simply ceased to exist.


    If there was resistance, it accomplished so little as to be completely undetected.


    Nor was this all that act accomplished. Itinay felt the celestial wave sweep across the hills. It touched all things in earth and sky between it and its return to the heavens. Every demonic cultivator; every demon; every speck and flake of plague mass in the path of that radiant radiation was erased.


    Dozens of treacherous cultivators. Hundreds of thousands of demons. They were no more.


    It went deeper than this. Itinay breathed and felt how the air that entered her lungs was completely clear of the cloying, wretched qi of the demon plague itself. Light had cleansed it from this place, opened a patch of the earth free of its festering and omnipresent corruption not covered in formation flags for the first time in decades.


    It would not last. The unseen minute forms that carried the plague to all portions of the world would soon recolonize this space, but for now it was pure. A free breath of the world as it once was.


    Nothing Itinay had encountered before could compare to this act. Such power, expressed so casually, was beyond even the greatest of cultivators should they all work in concert. This was an act far beyond immortals, the expression of true divinity.


    A moment later, the consequences of such power were laid bare. The sky bent and cracked. Huge masses of air buckled and surged about. The ground shook. Trees were toppled, rivers spilled over their banks, and landslides raced down every hill. Distant faults in the mountains, dormant for millennia, snapped together. Earthquakes tossed the hills in a hundred different directions. To the east, where the hills met the lowlands, a dozen new volcanoes kindled, fires bursting skyward. Qi flows roiled, tensed, and ruptured. Storms of unstable power raced outward across the planet in every direction, destruction to be shared globally.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    A little ball of dust. Itinay recalled her moment of clarity, the vision of the cosmos, then. Such a thing could not withstand the true attention of the heavens. Divinities, the sage masters of such forces, operated at a scale too great for their world. They could not be contained here.


    Her mother, she understood with wonder and sorrow intermingled, could not stay. She was already gone, in some sense. This glowing vision was a mere afterimage, an expression of intent left behind as she shifted to the next layer of existence.


    ¡°My daughters,¡± Orday looked down at the sisters and smiled. ¡°You have made me proud this day. The enemy, the plague, is not defeated, but you have won a victory, and through it, the preservation of the future.¡± She reached back and pointed towards the fragmented formation where the world''s surviving mortals huddled. ¡°I have used excess qi to layer a hidden land over these uplands. It will be the refuge of those who survive. Guard it well, grow strong, and await the chance to reclaim the world. In time, I am sure that all of you will join me among the stars.¡±


    Hidden lands, tiny pocket worlds sealed away, where well known creations of spatial dao, but Itinay somehow knew that this one would take shape at a far greater scale than any other before it. A true microcosm of the earth capable of harboring sufficient strength that one day they would be capable of more than simply hiding.


    A great gift, not merely salvation today, but hope for the future as well.


    ¡°I love you all, my daughters,¡± the smile faded to an expression filled with immense sorrow but not a scrap of regret. ¡°Knowing that to ascend was the only way to save you served as the truth necessary to carry me the final step over the last wall. Be happy, prosper, and grow; I know we will meet again.¡±


    Every one of the twelve had ten thousand things to say, whole lives worth of emotion, memory, and love to throw forth.


    None had the time to speak so much as a word. Orday took a single step and vanished upward. A streak of multitudinous light was the last image that passed beyond.


    No goodbyes. Their mother was gone. They were left to process this alongside the strange victory that had been torn free of doom by a single moment of unsurpassed power. Little enough time to grieve, Itinay knew it in her bones. By the time she recovered the strength to stand again her tears were dry. Other sisters, equally cognizant of their new circumstances, rose with clear faces.


    Iaray, second eldest, took up her oft-chosen role of default speaker. ¡°We must act quickly.¡± She pushed beyond mourning forcibly. ¡°Bloody Roam and his forces remain. They could be here in hours at worst.¡±


    No one knew exactly how powerful the second greatest of the demonic cultivators truly was, but his forces counted nearly one hundred immortals. Of the orthodox alliance, qi senses made it absolutely clear that the sisters were the only ones at that level to have survived the night. They were, none of them, even close to ready for battle.


    ¡°We must guide the remaining mortals, and all other still-living cultivators to this new hidden land,¡± Iaray declared the obvious simply so that it might be agreed upon directly. ¡°It is also imperative that we take whatever strength this battlefield offers.¡± They could feel this too, countless artifacts, talismans, and weapons left behind by the fallen. While all that the Entwining Blight and the others obliterated by divine action had carried was gone, those who had fallen earlier left behind a bounty of almost unprecedented potency. A war chest that the future would need.


    ¡°Lastly, painful though it is, we must set fire to all that surrounds us,¡± Iaray''s expression turned grim, though fires already burned in many regions nearby as the world struggled with the backlash of power that nearly cracked it. ¡°That way we can obscure the location of this battlefield across the largest area possible.¡±


    There was no need for debate. They had known each other for centuries. Proper task division was innate.


    Itinay spent twelve hours gathering artifacts from the dead and tossing the bodies of their fellow orthodox cultivators into the flames. This was all the time it took to guide the remaining mortals through the shimmering gateway that marked the boundary between spaces. They had to tear open the storage bands of the fallen, and their own, and haul their contents across in great nets due to the twisted spatial dao of that entry. A messy scramble indeed, rushing to leave nothing lost and no trace behind.


    They pushed the mortals further, making them walk beyond the gate until they dropped. These terrified souls complied. Lesser cultivators, though the product of a hundred sects, were happy enough to cede leadership, and its countless frustrations, to the sisters. Respect for the strong came naturally to those who walked their path.


    They named the hidden land Mother''s Gift, after Iay''s suggestion. The sect they founded beyond the gateway would be the Celestial Origin Sect, after the path their ascended master had cultivated and taught. Orday, fifth ascended sage, patron goddess of the land of mountains and rivers she herself had crafted, was known to those who came to live there as the Celestial Mother.


    Itinay did not know who was the first to use that last term, but she considered it perfect.


    ¡°We will have to endure a very long time,¡± Iaray declared what all were thinking as they shifted from emergency survival to planning the campaign to come against the plague. ¡°Not centuries, millennia. Our mother granted us this refuge, but we lack the strength to fight and win. It will take many generations of cultivators, our growth and the enemy''s decline, for that to change.¡±


    All agreed. They put their strength behind resettlement and reconstruction. Any other voices, with different plans, were persuaded to obey. In time, their noise would fall silent. Only a sect united behind the teachings of a singular goddess would remain.


    Orday had delivered the only true victory in a century of warfare. Itinay considered all objections pointless. She made countless plans, evaluated endless contingencies, and then cultivated steadily as the years turned to decades, then to centuries. The sect grew, it faced challenges, and stasis stretched out, but always she knew this to be temporary.


    Eventually, no matter how long it took, some unexpected occurrence would trigger a change. When that happened, she would be prepared. The next victory would follow her design.


    Far away, across the great oceans, surrounded by deserts and the shattered fortress of the valiant decoys who had led him a merry chase before finally surrounded and fed to the plague within, a massive man in black metal armor sat atop a shattered piled masonry and stared in recollection of the pillar of light that had burst out on the other side of the world. His qi senses, linked to the plague itself now, extended across almost the whole world.


    He knew what had unfolded. The Entwining Blight and all his forces, he felt those deaths alongside the ascension of a new sage. Their enemies vanished, either slain or hidden beyond the boundaries of space. His followers, hunting for loot in the wreckage, fumed to learn this, but they had not the strength to disobey him, a status he intended to sustain endlessly.


    Standing and flexing the full potency of his qi, Bloody Roam looked out to the horizon and found nothing to challenge him for the very first time in over five thousand years.


    Orday had made him master of the world. Content with that, he intended to hold that title forever. Anything that dared to threaten that eternity would be purged.

 Chapter One: Testing

    Two Thousand Five Hundred Years Later


    Despite clear skies and bright sunshine, the morning of New Year''s Day brought forth cold and chill. Or, rather than being truly cold, it felt cold. Truly-bone rattling temperatures were simply not a feature of this land, not even in the depths of the Sechan Mountains. Even the highest peaks rarely carried snow much past the end of winter.


    In the foothills, as far as human settlement went, it remained mild despite being the day after the solstice. Though it had frosted overnight, by the time the residents shook free the fatigue of the evening''s celebrations and roused themselves to meet the new year the air had warmed to well above freezing. The last remnants of the light snowfall from two nights past were rapidly melting away.


    Though this was common, Qing Liao felt cold regardless. The source of this unusual brisk feeling was easily discerned. He was not properly dressed. He ought to have been clad in a layered ensemble comprised of thick wool socks, fur-lined boots and trousers, with a long fur coat atop it all. Such was his usual costume, garments made by his mother using the skins and hides of animals he''d worked hard trapping and dressing alongside his father. Those would keep him warm even during the worst of the mountain winter, even on the high slopes with the wind howling, and normally he would never go without during the winter months save when sleeping deep beneath piled blankets.


    Today was not a normal day. New Year''s Day served as more than a marker of the passage of time. It was tied to obligations, ancient and absolute. Normally, this demanded a great deal of standing about throughout the late morning while the village priest related the old stories of war and the glory of the Celestial Mother. A brief interruption, ceremonial, critical, and usually swiftly concluded, served to bring the official requirements to an end and allow everyone to break for the first hot meal of the year. Roast pig took pride of place on that menu. As the most succulent meat Liao was liable to taste for months, he was practically salivating already.


    Not that he minded the flesh of bamboo rats, hares, moles, and weasels, not truly. They warmed the mouth and filled the belly just fine, but mouth-watering they were not.


    For every one of the previous turnings of the year he could recall, the pork feast dominated his memories. Not this year. Five months ago he turned fourteen years old. This switched out his role in the day''s events from bystander to participant.


    He was among those to be subjected to the annual testing.


    In the end, it was this that served to keep him cold. He had been pressed into a line behind the priest and before the remaining villagers alongside all of the other youths who''d reached their fourteenth birthday in the past year. Sixteen boys and girls, a thoroughly typical number, given the roughly eight hundred souls that called Echuantun home.


    Everyone was gathered in the temple square, before the courtyard holding the shrine of the Celestial Mother. There they waited while the priest droned on, repeating old stories everyone knew. Each of the sixteen fourteen-year-old teenagers in line had been divested of their ordinary garments and stuffed into pure white linen ensembles. Coat, trousers, socks, and even undergarments all thoroughly bleached and thin. Even the binding chords and belt were white, and the woven bamboo sandals had white wraps tied over them.


    Used each year for this purpose, none of the outfits properly fitted the young charges obligated to don them on the cold morning. Gaps and loose ties opened drafts. Combined with the command to stand straight in a fixed line rather than walk about or huddle together, all were stuck on the very edge of constant shivering.


    Several were quivering back and forth in a slow wobble that resembled an aborted dance. This failure to contain their emotions came not from the cold, but rather from anticipation.


    These overly exciting youths believed that the ceremony to come was more than a formality. In their minds it was destiny, a moment they''d waited for from the very first time they''d heard the stories or consciously witnessed the testing as children. Despite the odds, they believed that today would mark the moment when their entire lives, when everything, would change.


    Qing Liao did not share such hopes and dreams. He was a trapper''s son, accustomed to laying down many snares and retrieving prizes only rarely. His father had drilled this into him, the nature of odds, of chance spread across numerous attempts. The dreams the others held represented the very slimmest of possibilities, not worthy of considering. Pork, that was different, certain. He looked forward to that instead, and the chance to change back into proper clothes and be warm again.


    He also, privately in a space he would never admit aloud, looked forward to the arrival of their yearly guest. It could be safely assumed it would be the same one it always was, and at fourteen, such visions and voyeuristic impulses weighed heavily upon a young man''s mind, no matter how unseemly they might be.


    They were obligated to wait in line all morning because there was no way to know when their honored guest would arrive. Noon was the goal, but travel was unpredictable, and slight variances along the road meant that even if they could measure time exactly, arrival would never occur with precision. Woe betide the village that was not ready and presented when the sect''s representative arrived. The punishments for such failures were legendary.


    Nor was anticipation or scouting possible, given the speeds involved. The path up the mountain to where the houses of Echuantun clustered at the end of the road wound past the neighboring village of Suchuantun, but it was narrow and heavily forested on all sides. By the time the visitor might be spotted even by a keen-eyed observer there would be less than a minute for the villagers to act. The speeds were simply overwhelming to their capacity.


    And indeed, when the village''s lookout cried out the announcement some minutes past noon, it was no more than forty seconds before their guest stood in front of the temple monument and the whole village assembly dropped to their knees and bowed. The priest, an elderly man with bad knees who struggled to walk without paired canes, barely managed to crouch his body in proper kowtow position in time to say the essential words without offering up a delay that might give offense.


    ¡°Echuantun welcomes the honored disciple of the Celestial Origin Sect,¡± his voice cracked and scratched with the weight of many years, but he still managed to produce the proclamation with sufficient volume that all heard clearly.


    ¡°We welcome the honorable cultivator,¡± eight hundred throats, including Liao''s own, pronounced the proper response.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°The Celestial Origin Sect greats Echuantun and welcomes it into the New Year,¡± their newly arrived visitor returned. Her voice, melodious, full, and stimulating, easily projected across the small square and through packed courtyards. Seemingly without any effort at all she over-matched the vocalization of the collective assembly. Nor did she, standing calm and resolute before them, betray the least sign of fatigue from her journey despite having traveled the nearly two hundred and fifty kilometer distance from Starwall City in a single morning. ¡°People of Echuantun,¡± she intoned the ritualized question. ¡°Has this year seen any concerns that you wish to voice to the sect''s ears?¡±


    Silence answered. The words were stock, the question one of pure formality. As far as Liao knew, the village would never, no matter what happened, ask the sect for help. At least, never like this, openly and in the sight of all. He''d never heard of any village, not even those suffering famine or plague, making a New Year''s Request.


    The absence of an answer was allowed to linger sufficient long to satisfy formality, and then the cultivator waved a hand to signal that all were now allowed to stand. ¡°Then,¡± she advanced without preamble. ¡°We will proceed with the testing.¡± Not hesitating at all, she moved from the position of prominence she''d initially occupied toward the line of assembled youths. This motion made it possible for Liao to stare at her without making the action painfully obvious by twisting his neck. Several of the other boys in the lineup had failed to resist that particular temptation.


    It took no more than a single glance to reveal the reason. The cultivator was a stunning beauty.


    She wore essentially the same outfit as the fourteen-year-olds lined up and waiting, but rather than the shapeless ill-fitting mess they presented, she wore it like an empress. Her robes had been exquisitely tailored to cling to the fine curves of a lithe, athletic frame sculpted by endless exercise into refined and brilliantly defined shapes. That her outfit was woven of fine flowing silk, not baggy linen, only highlighted this variance. She was further accented by careful splashes of color. The slender belt at her waist, the ties of her socks, and the long and the slender ribbon used to tie her long black hair into a high bun were all bright emerald green, not washed-out white.


    Further blossoming was offered by the several pieces of jewelry that accessorized her outfit. Paired earrings, four rings on the left hand, twin bracelets over the right wrist, and five different glossy belt buckles adorned her outfit. Each one was cast in gold or silver and bore finely cut gemstones in complex settings. No one in the village possessed any such finery, and many had never even seen such jewels save those worn by this very woman. Clear envy filled the eyes of many who looked upon this prominent display of vast wealth.


    Though the clothes and jewels were very impressive, the woman''s face put both to shame with almost trivial ease. She had doubtless been born with a significant measure of natural beauty, visible through her narrow chin, pale complexion, fine but soft cheekbones, and large dark eyes, but as she stood before them she represented something more, something beyond the ability of any girl or woman present to match.


    She was perfection.


    Her skin displayed not a single blemish. Not one mole, scar, smear or other error of the surface marked her. With an edge that could match any formed by a razor, her eyebrows stood perfectly straight and even. Black hair grew from her scalp thickly, lush with tone, and never split or cracked along its length. Lips flushed brilliantly red, as if a ruby had been crushed upon them, framed her mouth, within which, everyone was certain, she possessed immaculate white teeth.


    Cosmetics accounted for none of this. Everyone watching could tell that no padding, paint, or powder contributed to her allure.


    It was glorious, but also more than a little frightening. The perfected image was too clean to be real, too idealized to be human. She looked as if a doll or painting had been somehow brought to life; a being descended from some heavenly plane far beyond even the dreams of simple villagers.


    Old Fan, the peddler who bought the best marten and otter pelts the Qing family acquired and took them for sale in distant Starwall City, had once told Liao that all cultivators were like that. Their progress towards ascension refined them into perfected beings, transformed beyond the boundaries of ordinary folk. Maybe it was so. The sculpted imagery of Celestial Mother Orday found in the temple portrayed her always as a being made of starlight and aurora, never flesh, even though she had been born a mortal human woman.


    So maybe it was true, maybe their visitor was nothing out of the ordinary in the sect, but it did nothing to change the simple fact that Disciple Su Yi was absolutely the most beautiful woman Qing Liao had seen in the fourteen years of his life. There could be no comparison to anyone else.


    Every man in the crowd, and more than a few of the women, stared at the cultivator. Their level of shamelessness in doing so varied. Considering that Liao, with vastly inferior senses, thought it obvious, the cultivator must have noticed this, but she did not appear resentful of such lust and envy at all. Instead, she ignored the attention completely as she moved to the end of the line of youths and stepped before the girl who waited there.


    ¡°Each of you is to be tested.¡± The announcement spared nothing for explanation as she extended her right hand.


    Qing Liao knew everyone in line, some of them closely, others more distantly. Growing up in such a small and isolated place made it impossible to avoid familiarity with all of one''s peers. Some of them, he was well aware, had spent almost their entire lives up to this point in anticipation of this day. It was a status he found, now that the moment of truth had come, regrettable. When they failed, as was almost guaranteed, the disappointment would be crushing to such young minds. Some children took years to recover and find a new path, especially those who desired, who needed, an escape from the confines of the village and their families. Chen Deng, two positions to Liao''s right, had a drunkard charcoal burner for a father. The wretched man beat his son more days than not, often to the point that the teenage boy could barely stand. If anyone deserved to succeed, he did.


    But the dantian stood between Heaven and Hell. It cared not for circumstance. Success in this test measured no virtue or vice, offered no indication of destiny, great or poor. It simply was. To succeed or fail was utterly beyond the any influence of the individual, the community, or anyone in the world, from the weakest beggar to the greatest Grand Elder.


    A roll of the bones by the cosmos, nothing more and nothing less, one conducted long before birth. The test merely read out the result, one waited very heavily against.


    Disciple Su Yi placed her hand on the navel of each youth in turn. This soft contact lasted no more than a single breath before the palm was removed and she moved on to the next. At no point did she speak or offer any visible reaction. In nine years, the totality of Liao''s memory, she never had.


    Qing Liao stood twelfth out of sixteen in the line. Upon reaching his position the cultivator reached out and touched his stomach without ceremony. Though she seemed to exert no effort at all, the strength of her touch was such that he had to brace his knees to avoid falling backward. In that moment, distracted as he tried to sustain his balance, something flowed out of the pale hand. It felt cool, but also tingly, crackling with repressed power, as a stone pulled free of the fire just before it burst might, or the air across a field in the moment before lightning descended. This strange essence, a substance without form but never lacking in presence, attempted to race free of the confines of his being. It squirmed and churned as it sought to return to the air; to disperse as dust in the wind or a drop of blood in a pond.


    But it did not.


    Something, some unconscious, unknown part of Liao reacted to that strange energy, to the essence that could only be the primordial power named by humans qi, and grabbed it. He felt his muscles tense, air caught in his lungs, and every nerve in his body quivered as his existence rippled in response to pulling back against the fragment of essence. All that he was reached out toward that droplet of qi, and with pure instinct to guide it, grabbed hold, squeezed with all the might of his will, and pushed it down into the waiting trap.


    It lodged there, fire in his gut, slowly warming up all that he was.


    Suddenly, realization struck his awareness that he was not the least bit cold anymore.


    Su Yi''s eyes widened ever so slightly.

 Chapter Two: Departure

    Without speaking, or even moving her head, Su Yi continued down the line. Her testing of the final four candidates concluded swiftly. The entire process had taken no more than a few minutes.


    When it concluded, the cultivator took a single step backward.


    Everyone gathered together, for the youths in line to the priest before her feet to the assembled hundreds of villagers expected the cultivator to simply dismiss them. That was what she did the previous year, and the year before that, and for a succession of years stretching all the way back to the end of memory for even the most elderly residents of Echuantun. When, in defiance of this seemingly eternal pattern, she raised her right hand instead, stunned silence suppressed the crowd.


    Her hand came down next, and Qing Liao discovered, to his immense shock, that Su Yi had pointed an exquisite porcelain-textured finger with nail painted emerald green directly at the space between his eyes. ¡°You,¡± she commanded in a voice that invoked the absolute, nigh-divine authority of the sect. ¡°Step forward.¡± All knew that the power of life and death rested upon that tongue. Though she stood before them unarmed, none doubted the woman''s immense power.


    Liao felt ice grip his heart. Thoughts flashed through his mind, every one of them overwhelmed by terror. He trembled at the possibility that he had, somehow and without any conscious knowledge, offended the cultivator or defied the will of the sect. It was possible, for who could know what an existence so far above his own truly considered courteous? Trepidation shattered all focus, and only blind obedience remained in its wake. He took three steps forward without any awareness of moving his legs. His vision never left the emerald-bordered digit for an instant.


    ¡°What is your name?¡± Su Yi asked. The voice of command remained unchanged, its authority lapsed for not one syllable.


    ¡°Qing Liao,¡± it took four tries to form the words, to enunciate his own name. His knees shook and his were clenched into white-knuckled fists. He wondered, nearly breaking out to ask aloud, if the next sentence would proclaim his death.


    ¡°Qing Liao,¡± Su Yi repeated simply. She directed the simplest of nods in his direction. ¡°You have formed an active dantian. You will become a cultivator.¡±


    There was a moment of absolute stillness. Totally frozen, the whole village paused, trapped between declaration and reaction. The aged priest, standing in front of the line of youths, shed a single tear. Liao watched it slide down his cheek and drop from his chin under the bright light of the noonday sun.


    Everyone in the village broke out into wild, incoherent cheering.


    They shouted, hooted, clapped, and stomped. Spontaneous hugs were thrown between neighbors whether friendly or feuding. Exuberance consumed the community. It had been a century, longer than the life of any standing there, since anyone from Echuantan had passed the test. Their village had produced a cultivator at last. The long drought was over.


    Standing still in the center of that jubilant whirlwind, Liao felt only utter numbness. He had passed, a possibility he''d never expected, never dared to consider real. Even in his dreams he''d purged that desire. Cultivation, the life of a sect member, he knew nothing of such things, living in an isolated village as he did. It was said to be a great honor and a path to grand pleasures and wonders; the life everyone secretly desired but that almost no one would receive. Maybe those stories were true, but as he stared at Su Yi it was only to find her stone-faced. The beautiful cultivator, a living doll-like masterpiece, had simply stated that he''d passed. She gave no words of congratulations, nor did she smile. Any effort to read her expression bounced away, as if seeking to find answers on the surface of a brick.


    Such emptiness left him lost, unable to decide what to think, what to feel. His mind retreated from this moment, unwilling to embrace the fervor of his fellow villagers. He could only stare at the cultivator, the woman from the sect to which he now apparently belonged, and wonder what came next.


    Su Yi allowed the crowd to indulge their vigorous release for a while. Then, abruptly, she put an end to it. ¡°Enough!¡± The vocal proclamation cracked the air with tremendous force, a detonation beyond what any human throat could naturally summon. Silence was restored at once.


    ¡°Regrettably, none of the others,¡± she gave a swift gesture encompassing the other fifteen in line. ¡°Here formed dantians. The testing is concluded. Disperse! I will speak to Qing Liao alone.¡±


    It was their village, their square, and their temple. She was an outsider. None of that made any difference. Eight hundred bodies rushed to obey. The feast would be delayed, held in abeyance so long as the cultivators remained. Su Yi walked through the open gate and into the temple courtyard. A corridor of lanterns, lit the night before to guide the journey to the next year under the stars, still smoldered and sputtered in their sheltered mounts. A single twitch of her hand sufficed to beckon Liao into following her wake.


    Stumbling as he went, for his legs felt loose and gelatinous beneath him, he did so. There was nothing to say, events overwhelmed his curiosity. As did the prospect of posing any sort of question to such an imposing and impossible personage as the cultivator.


    Once inside the temple, the emptiness helped, a little. There were small trees and shrubs in the courtyard, carefully tended and kept green despite the season. It was not the welcoming embrace of the mountain forests he knew so well, but it offered a measure of steadiness all the same. Absent the rest of the village, the brutality of an audience, he was able to relax somewhat and find himself. Su Yi was still a ridiculous, impossible thing to address, a statue brought to life with unbelievable might gathered within, but with no one around to see it was possible to imagine sharing words with such a being just as he might whisper secrets into a hidden pool or shelter from his fears in the boughs of an ancient tree.


    He could, and had, done such things many times. Though hearing a response would rather alter the process.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Su Yi walked to the center of the courtyard before turning to face him. As she did so, her posture changed dramatically. Though her face and skin retained their unearthly perfection and she remained ridiculously gorgeous, everything about her softened. It was as if, rather than being carved from stone, she became a being molded of clay. Her dark eyes, stunningly immense, took in everything he cast in their direction, a bottomless mirror to his thoughts.


    ¡°You are not celebrating,¡± she announced; an observation rather than a question. ¡°You do not burst with joy. Instead, you are afraid.¡± She cocked her head ever-so-slightly to the left. ¡°Hardly the reaction of one who has been told all their dreams have come true.¡±


    There was no question embedded in those words, but the long pause that stretched out after they concluded gradually emerged as a gap intended to be filled by Liao''s voice. Entirely too late, he recognized that, and the embarrassment of the realization gave him sufficient brashness to speak. ¡°Not my dreams,¡± he managed to croak out the first few words, cheeks burning from how childish, how cowardly, they sounded.


    ¡°Really?¡± Perfect eyebrows rose up along a porcelain-smooth forehead. ¡°You never dreamed of smashing mountains with your fist, flying across the sky upon strands of starlight, or even of the possibility of immortality? I had thought every child dreamed of such things?¡±


    ¡°My father taught me to wish for a prize that might be found inside the trap, not the one in the tree that will never be caught.¡± The older trapper loved that proverb. Liao had been forced to memorize it almost as soon as he could speak. ¡°I dreamed of rich seasons on the lines, a pleasant house, pretty girls, and never having to be cold. Maybe, someday, if the goddess was kind, I could hunt a snow leopard.¡± The elders claimed there were still a handful left, in the least traveled sections of the highest peaks at the edge of the land.


    ¡°Remarkable,¡± Su Yi''s voice lost all pretense of cultivator perfection as it revealed genuine, recognizable surprise. Her response resounded with unexpected introspection. ¡°The day I passed the test I dreamed of fighting with a spear made of lightning, commanding the clouds themselves, and swimming in a pile of silks as high as a horse. The disciple who tested me said I was unusually unambitious.¡±


    She smiled then, a true expression of delight untouched by the mask of formality or procedure.


    It was as if a second sun had risen.


    Liao stared at her, mind blank. He could not have been more breathless had a charging ox struck him in the stomach. He did not so much as twitch when she gently put her left hand on his shoulder. He did recognize, keyed in by the motion, that somehow, Su Yi was barely taller than he was, and at fourteen he hoped for at least a handspan more of growth to come.


    This mundane but significant revelation, that the cultivator was not the oversize giant her presence projected into his mind, gave him the necessary perspective to assimilate what she said next. ¡°That you did not dream of this is different, and perhaps it will be useful to approach the dao without a path sketched out in the illusion of imagination stretching before you. Or perhaps it will not be. Only the dao itself, and perhaps the Celestial Mother, hold the answer to such things. In the end, it makes little difference. You are a cultivator now. You will find that the dao gives and the dao takes both dreams and nightmares in turn.¡±


    There was no real way for a trapper''s son to properly comprehend those words. They demanded too much thought, too much perspective he lacked.


    The radiant smile vanished. ¡°You will understand, hopefully, in time.¡± A frown followed this, very briefly evident before being erased with effort even unschooled eyes could tell was deliberate. ¡°But for now, time is constrained.¡± Su Yi raised her hands and briefly turned to stare directly at the sun. Such a move, which impeded her not at all, served to slam home the casual power of cultivators with a potency that, in its silent, effortless nature, was far more formidable than any flashy dramatic action. ¡°It is half past the twelfth hour,¡± she explained. ¡°And we must return to the sect grounds outside Starwall City before the day ends. You may have until the fifteenth hour to say your goodbyes.¡±


    This demand must have prompted a terrified expression on Liao''s face, for a quick amendment followed. ¡°It is not forever, but there will be no home visits until the summer solstice at the earliest. Here,¡± from somewhere beneath her robes she extracted a small silken drawstring bag. ¡°The clothes you are wearing belong to the sect and a suited to a new recruit. Anything else you take with you must fit in this bag.¡±


    Liao took the bag in hand. It was not large. Quite small, if anything. He suspected it would hold no more than he could stuff inside one of his boots.


    That would be more than enough.


    ¡°Make sure to eat something,¡± the cultivator added. ¡°As the journey is lengthy, but avoid the roast pig. That''s liable to come up, and badly. You do not want to arrive at the sect reeking of vomit.¡± She shook her head and chuckled, a light, airy sound. ¡°There is one every year.¡±


    Simple advice such as this was far easier to accept than mystical pronouncements. Liao thought it the most human thing she''d said so far.


    Witnessing that glimmer of a human side from the cultivator made saying goodbye to the village a little easier.


    It was still monstrously hard.


    His mother was the easiest. She cried as she hugged him, but the pride that swelled through her from inside to outside mitigated the sorrow. Her son, the village''s first cultivator in a century. That would sustain her for years at least. And if he made progress down the path, that too would please her. The promises to be careful and avoid city girls of low character were just as easily made as Liao suspected they both knew breaking them in the future would be. He found himself saying the words with great feeling regardless.


    His father, Qing Rong, was harder. The veteran trapper expressed his astonishment mostly through grunts. They shared an awkward hug after eating, dried venison jerky instead of roast pork. After that, Rong pressed an old knapped arrowhead into his son''s hands. Scars from trap and rope work marked both sets of digits. ¡°My grandfather made this,¡± he said simply, gaze wandering around watery eyes. ¡°Do not lose it.¡±


    Liao promised he would not and, rather than trusting the cultivator''s bag, tied it to the long hairs at the back of his head.


    His few friends were comparatively easy. Given to a profession that demanded long trips through the woods, he''d never been especially close to any of the other village children. They shouted ribald goodbyes at each other even as they silently made the sort of plans to quietly forget each other once out of sight that filled teenage minds when life interrupted their grand designs.


    The hardest part was his sisters. One tree above each grave. Little Hui, taken by fever at the age of three. Ting, only two years old and one morning she simply did not wake up, lips blue when mother checked. Brief lives lost before the same dao he was now called to walk the long road to reach. They''d planted gingkos over the burial plots, as was tradition. The priest said those trees could live for centuries, maybe even a full millennium.


    Liao looked at the saplings and realized that, if he managed to keep the promise his mother extracted from him to become a grand elder one day, he would outlive even these.


    Nothing in his imagination could grapple with that, he simply cried until the tears ran dry.


    ¡°Orday guide and succor us all,¡± he whispered the prayer to the Celestial Mother as he stood and walked out of the forest to meet the cultivator and leave fourteen years of life behind.


    He wondered, then, how anyone would find this day a happy one.

 Chapter Three: To the City

    Liao strapped the little bag, not full, to the belt of his borrowed uniform and walked back to the temple courtyard to meet the cultivator with at least half an hour to spare. He discovered she had relocated, but the priest graciously pointed out where she had gone in between endless repeated congratulations.


    Su Yi, her eerie perfection all the more striking when motionless, had found a large stump at the edge of the village and sat cross-legged atop it. Despite being clad in pure white and shining golden ornaments, she was strangely difficult to observe in that position. Completely still, with not even a sign of breathing to betray life, it was as if she''d dropped away into the background of the world itself.


    Lacking any better guess, Liao presumed this meant she was cultivating. It looked no different in posture from the ordinary meditation all were taught as part of weekly religious services when directing private prayers to the Celestial Mother. Not that he knew anyone who could come close to matching Su Yi''s incredibly straight posture. It made him feel sloppy simply looking at her.


    Whatever her ongoing activity, the cultivator detected his approach easily. She turned and faced him without bothering to open her eyes. ¡°You are ready to go then?¡± she asked without preamble. There would be no questions regarding the hardships of leaving home, clearly.


    ¡°Yes.¡± A lie, that statement; he was a great distance from ready and did not trust himself to speak upon the subject at all.


    ¡°Good,¡± Su Yi did not call out the falsehood. It was impossible that she should be fooled by such a bare-faced denial and therefore her choice to ignore it represented a generous courtesy.


    ¡°We must travel rapidly.¡± She said as she hopped off the stump. With a swift motion, she turned about, bent slightly, and positioned her arms low and wide. ¡°Climb up. I will need to carry you.¡±


    Liao blanched. There was no way to mistake the implication of her posture. She wanted him to climb up on her back, to be carried like a young child might be by their parents. His father had done so on many trails during his earliest years. It was ridiculous, absurd. He could not cling to a woman, a cultivator and his senior, in such a way. Worse, even ignoring such impressions, it was impossibly awkward, she was barely a finger-width taller than him. ¡°That''s...¡± he sputtered.


    It did not take much for Su Yi to pierce the fog of embarrassment clouding his thoughts. ¡°In the sect, there is no room for modesty.¡± The words came flat and hard, slammed forth with unrelenting decisiveness. ¡°Men and women train side by side, cultivate side by side, and fight and die side by side. Qi equalizes all differences of bodies, male and female, short or tall, it matters not. You will see, and your hands will touch. These things are bound to happen. It is best you start removing your provincial squeamishness now.¡±


    ¡°Yes...¡± Liao swallowed. He took a single step forward, but hesitated again when he tried to take a second.


    ¡°If you are not capable of accepting a carry, I will tie you up and haul you back to the sect in a sack,¡± Su Yi remained perfectly elegant as she said this, but something in her voice made it clear there would be no third warning.


    That lack of hesitation, more than anything, sufficed to goad him into the cultivator''s grasp. The silk, as he''d feared, was terribly sheer. He could feel contours of skin and muscle beneath it without making any movement at all. The cultivator''s body was strong, as expected, but also dangerously soft in places. Carefully, he wrapped his hands over her shoulders and resolved to keep them fixed in place no matter what happened, fingers clasped together in front to avoid temptation. There was no helping the rush of warmth that flushed through his legs as they wrapped around the slender, barely-clad arms.


    It was all frighteningly intimate, especially to a fourteen-year-old whose encounters with the feminine had been so far limited to a handful of stolen kisses with farmer''s daughters. That Su Yi gave no reaction to this contact, wholly unperturbed by his touch, helped, slightly, but he still felt itchy all over, and his mind filled with endless repeated flashes of all the very wrong things he could do from this position. The cultivator made no comment on the matter at all.


    ¡°We are separated from the sect ground by almost the entire diameter of Mother''s Gift,¡± Su Yi declared, though everyone knew this. ¡°Crossing the distance quickly requires nearly continuous use of the Stellar Flash Steps, at a high level of competency. Doing so will apply considerable stress to your body.¡± Real caution took up the melody of the perfectly pitched speech. ¡°Breathe only when there is a pause. Otherwise, you must keep you mouth firmly closed. Keep your eyes closed throughout. If you must search for stimulation, focus your attention on me. You are unlikely to have the chance to observe such prolonged invocation of the technique by anyone in the Awareness Integration realm for some time.¡±


    The label meant nothing to the young recruit. He''d never paid much attention during the priest''s lessons on cultivation and history. Other children had listened raptly, but he''d spent the time sharpening tools and stitching patches. Despite this, he suspected this was an impressive achievement. Su Yi seemed unlikely to boast about something fundamentally inconsequential.


    Close as he was to her, in constant skin to skin contact, he could feel a strange sensation. It resembled the unknown energy she''d pushed at him during the test. Now it felt faint, and distant, but at the same time strangely warm and bright; a lamp on the opposite side of a screen. This muted power emanated from the cultivator''s body, reflecting great potency.


    Liao supposed this must be some portion of her qi, though had he been asked he would have never found the words to explain why.


    ¡°We are departing,¡± Su Yi declared without further elaboration.


    Liao took a deep breath. He clenched down hard and closed his mouth with jaw tight, but entirely forget the admonition to close his eyes.


    Su Yi took a single step. As her foot rose up something vast and molten welled up deep within her. When the leg swung forward this pulse of power burst.


    A flash of brightness exploded across Liao''s awareness. Not light, it caused blindness in another place, another understanding. Power he could not explain, could not comprehend, burst across senses unnamed and left him dazed.


    Wind blasted across his face. Air ripped at his eyes and brought a sudden burst of pain. Vision instantly vanished beneath a wall of tears, everything blurred to hallucinatory shapes. Through the distortion of liquid it was just possible to recognize that their surroundings were shifted, askew and bent by the constant acquisition and loss of focus as they flickered across the landscape at impossible speeds.


    All else seemed to stand still. Faster than the deer or the wolf, was the flickering stride of Su Yi. Perhaps, Liao dared a guess, she might even outrun a hawk on the wing.


    He could not watch for long. The narrow mountain trails that wound between the foothill villages cut through thick forests and included numerous switchbacks. This forced the cultivator to switch directions constantly. Bursts of qi flowed free from the soles of her feet with every step as she darted along a course that matched no pattern known to any hunter or trapper. Liao felt the wind slap at him with every shift in direction. He was forced to duck his head, burying his face in Su Yi''s midnight black hair, and close his eyes against this erratic assault.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Observing nothing, he felt them descend in height, leaving behind the foothills as they blasted down every slope toward the distant flat and river-cut expanse of the Zhong Plains.


    Periodically, the cultivator stopped, pausing to reorient. This gave Liao just enough time to gulp down air desperately before she blasted ahead again. A struggle, grasping these moments as they came. Each time that he failed to heed the advice to fill his lungs with every pause his throat was left burning by the time the next opportunity arose. Despite this, every attempt to grab at air while in motion achieved nothing, wind flashed past too fast to be channeled inward and exited past lips cracked and tired by the effort.


    They moved very fast, but not impossibly so. Opening his eyes to catch a glimpse with every pause, he was able to gauge their progress by the string of villages that they passed. Those in the hills, on paths whose length he knew well, served to calibrate what came later on the long road to the city.


    Su Yi crossed a day''s travel distance of twenty kilometers in as many minutes. This pace, furious though it was, yielded some speed to the needs of terrain and the limited pathways. The pressure of qi that rose from her body, strengthening bones, empowering muscles, and shielding surfaces made that clear to Liao. He did not know how he knew, but he could somehow recognize that this was not the fullness of her exertion. She could go faster, wanted to run even harder.


    This truth was made manifest when they left the forests covering the lightly settled mountains with their terrace-dependent villages and dropped down into the wide plateau of the plain of many rivers that formed the core of the Mother''s Gift.


    Here Liao opened his eyes again when Su Yi made a prolonged stop, nearly a minute without moving. She was breathing heavily, the action audible for the first time, but it was a steady process; far from winded. She took the opportunity to grab a drink of water from a skin hidden against her leg somewhere, an act she managed somehow without dropping her baggage. This gave him a brief moment to observe the plains, the first in-person visit in his entire life.


    He had stood atop the high peaks and looked down at the farmland below many times, marveling at the endless lines carved into the land by the actions of his fellow humans, but had never journeyed to the lowland regions. It struck him then, a hammer blow to his persona, that in less than an hour the cultivator had carried him farther from home than he''d ever traveled in his life. A place he''d never thought to visit, for what reason had a trapper to come to a place transformed entirely to the demands of the plow?


    A second devastating realization followed the first. He was not a trapper anymore. He was a cultivator, and cultivators did not live in tiny mountain villages. They lived in sects.


    He was utterly unable to grapple with the meaning behind this revelation.


    ¡°We have entered within the bounds of the Seventh River Prefecture from this point,¡± Su Yi took the moment to offer up this information. ¡°From this point onward we will utilize proper roads.¡± She pointed ahead to the track before them. No longer a winding series of cuts and scrapes carved out by laboring cart wheels, it was a wide and level corridor of thoroughly pressed earth laid atop a base of stone. ¡°Cultivators use the sect''s lane.¡± A quick flick of a finger marked out a narrow span of road on the left edge. ¡°This method reduces the chance of deadly accidents.¡±


    Without explaining further, she blasted into a furious dash. Now, unrestrained by constant turns, their pace nearly doubled. By Liao''s best guess only the swiftest of birds would be able to keep up. Despite this, he saw more than before. With the benefit of straight and level motion he was able to steal glances even as he stole lungfuls of air. Several times he mistakenly turned his head as Su Yi turned or altered her stride in order to leap clear over dim-witted livestock crossing the road and received a bitter lash of windburn for his trouble. This did not serve to restrain his curiosity, and he accepted the burning strikes as the price to be paid for his first real glimpse of the land beyond the peaks.


    It was both more and less different than he had imagined it would be. The villages, spotted in quick blurs, were little changed. The same pressed earth walls, courtyards, and municipal structures. Barns and pens for livestock replaced drying racks and hanging rooms for game, but otherwise little stood out. People dressed much the same way, if perhaps with fewer layers, carried the same tools, and even painted similar images upon their walls. Wool and hemp robes, men working with iron implements in fields, and women carrying heavy loads strapped to back frames were all familiar sites. Even the rice paddies, dry fields, and orchards bore the signs of similar crops, though in this coldest part of the year most were fallow or sporting only covering weeds.


    Even here, patches of woodland remained, featuring the varied trees he knew well. They were small, and clustered near the villages or along the course of waterways in a reversal of the role played by crop terraces in the mountains. Rivers and swamps were similarly found surrounded by vast fields, but were otherwise little changed. Though the trapper''s youthful mind knew there must be countless differences only close examination and immersion could reveal, the rest of his understanding took comfort in finding that even in a foreign place basic patterns held strong. Mountain or plain, some things remained constant.


    Tirelessly, Su Yi ran on, invoking the Stellar Flash Steps to carry them across the road with both unbelievable swiftness and unreasonable endurance. Despite progress that would shame the best mounted courier utterly, time crawled ahead. Though their surroundings changed little, one village being not much varied from any other when viewed from without, the afternoon proceeded. Hours passed, and the sky grew dark above. It was the day after the solstice, and night came on swiftly.


    In fading twilight, coupled to such light as the recently risen moon could provide, Su Yi abruptly stopped and set Liao down. ¡°There,¡± she pointed eastward along the path they followed. ¡°We are close enough now that you can see the Starwall from here, and the city. Do not neglect the chance.¡±


    Dim though the light was, the evening was clear, and they stood atop the arc of a small bridge. Liao squinted and looked eastward. There, at the edge of perception, he saw a strange thing, an impossible thing. A flat line, straight and low, cut across the horizon. In the center of that unreasonable, ridiculous construction rested a glittering cluster of lights, sheltered beneath the shadows cast. Out along the course, stretching north and south, were a series of spikes. ¡°That is the Starwall?¡± It must be, nothing else could possibly appear in such a fashion, or dominate the landscape so far beyond the hands of masonry, but he could not be sure with only stories to go on and no details visible at such distance.


    ¡°Yes,¡± the cultivator''s voice dropped to a fearsome whisper, each word invested with importance. ¡°It stands twenty-five meters high and stretches a distance of ninety-seven kilometers, a crescent sealed against the edge of the land itself at both ends. Beyond it, sealed away behind mighty formations, lie the trap of the Killing Fields and the gateway to the Ruined Wastes that are all that remains of the world beyond. Twelve towers, one for each of the sisters, ward its ramparts. One million souls stand on this side, protected from the plague by that barrier. And atop it the sect stands guard, sustaining that wall between obliteration and survival. That is our duty, a duty that you now share.¡± Moonlight danced with silver fury in Su Yi''s eyes as she proclaimed this. Absolute commitment radiated out from her small, immaculate frame.


    ¡°It seems,¡± Liao struggled to find a word that suited, a means to describe stepping out to witness a story made real, even at great distance. ¡°Unreal.¡±


    ¡°Ah,¡± Su Yi briefly ran her right hand through her hair, a beautifully alluring action that somehow served to humanize her in a way nothing in her performance to this point had done. ¡°I suppose it would, at first. It is hard to recall what that felt like, initial arrival having never seen the city, the Starwall. For me, that was two and a half centuries ago, the memories fade.¡± She twisted rosy lips into a smiled, this time holding a layer of devious wickedness. ¡°But you will understand soon enough.¡± All sense of mirth vanished as swiftly as it had come. ¡°When you stand on the wall and see the demons. Come,¡± she dropped down to carry him again. ¡°We need to hurry. There are procedures to conclude, and morning will come all too soon.¡±


    With far less hesitation, this time, Qing Liao grasped the cultivator. His mind, reeling from the revelation of her true age and not the barely twenty years implied by her countenance, pushed modesty aside as unimportant and let her carry him to the city.

 Chapter Four: Registration

    Starwall City, the only settlement in Mother''s Gift large than a market town, lay near the base of the fortification from which it took its name, along the westernmost point. It stood in a direct line with the gateway to the world beyond, sixty kilometers further east. Along the wall, the defensive towers of Ohlay and Uzay, sixth and seventh of the Twelve Sisters, flanked the city even as they loomed over it. Built of gray stone, red-faced timber, and black tile, the city held fifty thousand souls and was illuminated at night by a nearly equal number of braziers, lamps, and lanterns. Though Su Yi and Qing Liao''s arrival did not occur until well after sundown, the city continued to teem with ceaseless activity. Braying livestock, hammering smiths, and singing entertainers all filled the air with a melange of interwoven noise that reached over the city''s modest exterior walls.


    Or, at least half the city sourced such vibrant sounds.


    Starwall City was divided into two halves, tiered one above the other. The lower, situated upon the wide plain and surrounded by farm fields, sprawled out and offered the raucous cacophony known in any place where people gathered in celebration of the New Year. The higher, raised up on a wide circle of earth and stone vast enough to utterly swallow Qing Liao''s little mountain village, was quiet. Massive buildings, circular and multistory in structure with complex internal divisions, dominated this artificial plaza. Smaller outbuildings, in the familiar series-of-courtyards design found in the homes of country estates, surrounded these vast pavilions and filled up much of the available space. Many of these stood dark and empty. Where there was light, it came from slender candles, sufficient only to illuminate isolated spaces for individual use.


    Su Yi brought them to the edge of this raised half of the city from the north, bypassing the densely inhabited region entirely. From that direction a lengthy stair wound its way up the ten meters that separated the grounds belonging to the sect from the thick soil of the plain. This path had been lined with torches in anticipation of the day''s new arrivals.


    Through some trick of cultivator capability Liao did not understand at all, those standing beacons did not burn in ordinary yellow-orange, but bore flames of a deep violet shade. They offered little light, barely discernable against the shadowy backdrop left by the looming wall behind, but generated much foreboding menace.


    Stopping before the first step, Su Yi set Liao down. She shook herself briefly, muscles rippling against the stiffness of the endless repeated motion the journey demanded. ¡°Come,¡± she declared formally. ¡°This is the final step.¡± A warning followed, voice threaded with heavy caution. ¡°At the top of this stair, one of the Grand Elders waits in review of all new recruits. Be cautious, they are greatly intimidating. Fear not, you will not be called upon to speak to them, and need only answer the questions put to you by the Head Librarian.¡±


    Looking up the steps, perfectly cut and straight with a precision level he''d not believed possible for masonry, Liao felt his stomach attempt to roll and spin at the same time. Beside the stairs there was nothing, empty open space surrounded the rise on all sides. Green grass, cropped down to almost invisible height by the actions of sheep, covered it in a perfectly uniform blanket. To ascend was the only way available.


    Lacking any other path, he borrowed such time as he dared stretching stiff legs and began the short climb. Seeking to distract his overburdened imagination, he tried to count the steps. Nerves saw this effort skip and double-count several, but he concluded that the total was a fairly mundane one hundred and twenty. Strange shadows cast by the flickers of violet flames followed him the entire way. Though the distance was in truth quite short, it felt somehow immense.


    At the top there was a simple open platform laid in perfectly flat concrete that extended outward as far as he could see. A low wooden table had been carried there, wide and expansive for writing, with a small stool behind. Upon that seat an elderly-seeming cultivator in the same white robes as Su Yi, but with a blue belt and ties, bent over a long scroll filled with names. Despite a heavily lined face framed by wispy and wild white hair, this man, who could only be the Head Librarian, had a fit form beneath his robes and dark eyes that seemed to pierce through solid stone. Witnessing the appearance of a new recruit, he took up his pen and dipped it briefly in a pool of thick black ink.


    Liao was barely aware the man existed at all. All his attention, the totality of his perceptive capabilities, gravitated to the woman who stood to the left of the desk atop the stairs.


    She was a luminous creature, an image of impossible beauty cast not in flesh, clay, or stone, but made of blue itself. Countless shades of the color melded together into a physical being that transcended the boundaries of human flesh, of the material entire, and stood instead upon the cusp of a sublime existence unbounded by the rules of the world. Her skin was primarily pale sky blue, but it glowed as light suffusing her core perpetually rose up to brighten it. Streaks of lightning-flash blue-white, searing against the retina, carved lines across it on her forehead and elsewhere, highlights of her unearthly nature. Her hair, swept up into a ponytail and then let fall down to surround both sides of her neck, featured a thousand subtle shades of midnight indigo. These served to match and augment the dark, nearly black, silk dress that seemed to float around the edges of her frame, a wave of shifting shadows interspersed but spots of twinkling starlight. Her face was narrow, and the chin tightly pointed. Soft sapphire lips, full and vibrant, waited beneath a sharp and prominent nose. Above those she possessed piercing eyes, blue-white upon blue-white, inhuman, impossible, and soul-searing to look upon.


    Where the Head Librarian might see through stone. This grand elder seemed to stare through space itself.


    Qi, even to Liao''s barely nascent senses it could be nothing else, radiated from this woman with unbelievable potency. A midnight blizzard, howling through the mountain peaks, surrounded her endlessly. This storm embedded her in the primordial pulsations of the planet''s energy even as her unearthly physical form stood perfectly still and utterly poised. A slender-bladed sword, the first such weapon he had ever seen, rested behind her left hip inside a scabbard whose veneer seemed to drink in light itself. It took only the barest brush against the edge of her qi to make it known that she could shatter hills and obliterate whole villages without ever needing to draw that terrible implement of death.


    He knew this woman''s name, of course. He had seen that blue face painted on the temple wall once a week during services for the entirety of his young life. This likeness conveyed nothing of her true presence, but it sufficed to teach recognition.


    Itinay.


    Grand Elder of the Celestial Origin Sect. Youngest of the Twelve Sisters, the original disciples of Orday, the Celestial Mother.


    Seeing her in the flesh stole the words from his mouth. He could only drop to his knees and press his head to seamless gray pavement below. To find the strength, the will, to even look directly at one so far above him, an immortal, was beyond any conception of possibility.


    Itinay watched this display without giving any reaction. Kowtowing or not, he might as well have never existed.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    ¡°You are the recruit brought by Disciple Su Yi?¡± The librarian''s voice, firm but scratchy with age, shattered the tableau. Each word spoken by the elderly cultivator sounded like papers being shuffled together. ¡°From Echuantun?¡±


    Liao did not know how the old man might know these things, he had not seen Su Yi reach the top step barely a stride behind him. He could only nod without daring to look up.


    ¡°Come here,¡± the librarian tapped the butt of his pen against the edge of the wooden desk. ¡°Record your name and that of your parents for the sect''s records.¡±


    It took every fragment of resolve Qing Liao possessed to stand up beneath the searing potency of Itinay''s gaze. Though he need take no more than a handful of steps across the pavement, they were the hardest of motions, as if an immense stone was tied to each of his knees. He dared not look toward the grand elder, or even at the librarian, and directed all his attention to the long scroll instead. Desperately, he sought to pretend there was no one to his right at all. Thankfully, his barely awakened sense of qi allowed this ruse to deceive his mind.


    The librarian proffered a brush and pointed a slender, long-nailed finger in indication of where he was to write. Haltingly, for Liao''s calligraphy had been learned from the village priest and barely sufficed for even this task, he wrote down three names and the name of the village of his birth. Nothing more was asked of him.


    He did notice, in that moment, the presence of over a dozen names, freshly inscribed, above his own. It seemed he was far from the first to arrive. He could only hope he was not the last.


    ¡°Qing Liao, you are now officially a recruit of the Celestial Origin Sect,¡± the librarian reached into a small box on the desk and passed over a small copper disk. It was marked with the most basic of symbols, zero. ¡°You are assigned to room fifteen in the recruit''s dormitory.¡± The elder turned about, a seamlessly smooth motion that belied his aged appearance, and pointed to a block-like grayish building some distance to the south. There were candles burning in the windows. It possessed no courtyard, resembling a warehouse more than any form of domicile. ¡°You will report to the First Training Hall by the seventh hour tomorrow morning. Welcome to the sect.¡±


    Liao silently repeated the room number inside his mind, holding it tight, and bowed as formally as his frayed nerves allowed. Finding a place to sleep seemed to be a more than sufficient challenge for the remainder of this day. He could face the reality of being a cultivator in the morning, hopefully.


    ¡°Hold,¡± this single word emerged from the lips of Itinay. Though barely more than the least whisper, it froze all present. Liao, Su Yi, and even the Head Librarian, an elder in his own right, stopped instantly. All was absolutely still.


    Suddenly, seemingly without ever moving at all, the grand elder stood directly before the young man. The stormy force of her being pushed down upon him. Pain spiked across his hips, back, knees, and feet. He felt snow piling up around him, higher and higher with each breath, as an unseen avalanche buried him alive.


    ¡°Show me your hand,¡± Itinay ordered. A single glowing blue digit pointed to his right palm, the one not holding the copper badge.


    Refusal was beyond any contemplation. His arm moved of its own accord as he complied.


    ¡°You are not a farmer,¡± the grand elder declared this following the barest of glances from her concentric colored eyes. ¡°Or any kind of towns dweller. What is your father''s work?¡±


    ¡°He. Is. A. Trapper. Grand Elder.¡± It took a full deep breath to press out each word, the exertion of the entire strength his body could summon against the press of Itinay''s ambient qi diffusion. The sensation of being buried in snow never lessened. Physically, the blue-skinned grand elder was not imposing, barely taller than Su Yi and of thin build, but her least actions matched the motion of mountains and rivers.


    ¡°A trapper,¡± dark blue lips twitched slightly. ¡°From the distant mountains. Unusual, but, possibly, that is a benefit.¡± These gentle musings swept all up in imagination, spun out countless fever dreams of possibility. ¡°Or it may not matter at all.¡± She dashed aside those endless dreams even as they struggled to take shape within the mists. ¡°Only the Heavens know. Find your bed swiftly, Qing Liao of Echuantun. The morning comes soon.¡±


    This was clearly a dismissal. Liao bowed, deep and rapidly as he dared, and then practically ran for the distant dormitory building. He might know nothing of the inner workings of the sect, but intuition sufficed to inform him that a recruit did not desire the attention of a grand elder. She was a snowfall, an avalanche, and if he stood in her path he could only be crushed.


    The Recruit''s Dormitory was a squat box of a building that was clearly marked by signposts along the painted paths that divided the concrete platform the sect grounds occupied. Light here came from ordinary lanterns, their yellow flames familiar and warm. Liao rushed ahead, stumbling occasionally as he fought for purchase in the poorly-fitted ceremonial sandals. He cared nothing for the image of dignity. Everything relied on putting the grand elder as far behind him as possible.


    A simple wooden fence surrounded the dormitory. Up close the building revealed itself as a two storey stack of small rooms crammed together with shared walls. These were red timber, laid down over stone floors. Rammed earth did not suffice for the needs of even the sect''s least members. A series of doors, each adjoined by a small paper-screen window, bore the painted number of its label. A privy had been placed behind the structure, just inside the edge of the fence.


    Behind the fence line, at the intersection with the main path, an attendant waited. He was a middle-aged man dressed in robes similar to Liao''s own, but made of simple linen and dyed charcoal gray. His lined face wore a weary expression that took in the copper badge with a simple glance and professional restraint. ¡°Room fifteen?¡± he questioned.


    ¡°Yes,¡± the youth nodded.


    ¡°Two from the end, on the backside.¡± The man pointed towards a distant door. ¡°There is food waiting, you may eat, or not, as you please. It is requested that you remain awake until the seamstress arrives to take you measurements. Beyond this, you have no duties until you report for instruction tomorrow.¡± This man spoke very swiftly, and he accented his words in a manner unfamiliar to Liao, making it somewhat challenging to follow.


    ¡°Thanks,¡± rather than mention this, Liao simply acknowledged the orders. Walking quickly, he found his way to the indicated room. The door, he noted, had neither lock nor bar. Not that he had anything worth stealing, but he supposed the sect had its own methods for insuring that neither members nor servants were foolish enough to dare.


    It was not a large room, nor did it contain much. There was a couch laid with bedding, a lap desk, a small empty shelf for books, and a tray laden with a wonderfully scented hot meal. A single fat candle, placed on the desk, provided light. There was no fireplace, nor had anyone placed a brazier, making the room very cold, especially for a young man in ill-fitting linen robes. Thankfully the blankets were stout wool, and thick. He felt warm again almost at once after draping one over his shoulders.


    This resumption of some semblance of normality brought with it the discovery that he was ravenously hungry, and he tore into the meal provided.


    His rate of consumption accelerated markedly after taking the first bite, for the food tasted incredible. There was no meat, and he vaguely recalled some of the legends mentioning that cultivators abstained from flesh for some unknown reason, but the bowl merged together rice, vegetables, nuts, and a spicy red sauce that more than satisfied his palate. Even the tea, which he normally did not much care for, offered a light and refreshing complement. Though the tray had held a large and heavy bowl, and Liao was not an especially built young specimen, he surpassed his initial expectations and finished every last mouthful.


    It so happened that he set his chopsticks down mere moments before the seamstress arrived.


    Being measured was not a new experience for Liao. His mother had done it every year to ensure the fur-lined garments she made from the family''s trapping take fit properly. He was well-aware that the process could be embarrassingly intimate, something a number of other boys in the village had complained about as they entered their teenage years, but after an afternoon spent clinging to Su Yi it seemed unimportant. Not that it mattered this night, for the seamstress was a hunched and thin-eyed woman at least four times his age. She had weak vision but steady hands and when finished casually made the impossible announcement that he would receive a brand new, properly fitted hanfu, trousers, undergarments, and other articles by the end of the week.


    He had no time to consider such miracles of the sect further. As soon as the woman departed exhaustion claimed him.

 Chapter Five: First Cultivation Class

    In the Celestial Origin Sect, the sixth bell was used as a clarion call to signal the true beginning of each working day. Its peals, unleashed by a heavy gong set in some high point whose location Qing Liao would not learn for many days, sounded out loud and clear. None of the preceding five bells, marking out each hour of the pre-dawn darkness, had been even one-hundredth of the volume. Nor would any of those subsequent to it, save for the twelfth bell signaling midday, approach it. The final bell of the day that he''d heard last night had done nothing more than roll him over in his sleep.


    Clearly this vibrant signal was one only a fool would ignore.


    Liao did not consider himself a fool, and regardless he''d been trained and forced to rise early all his life like most children. By the time the sixth peel finished he was upright and folding his blankets away on the wall end of the couch. He did this blindly, for it was only the second day of the year and the sun would barely have risen by the time he was set to report. Such glimmers of light that worked their way over mountain and wall alike were too weak to penetrate the screen over his window. Only after making his bed did he seek out the striker, left upon his lap desk the night before, and stumble through lighting the candle.


    At home he would not have bothered with a light on such a morning, being fully capable of dressing and washing face and hair in the dark. However, the unfamiliar folds and ties of sect robes, with their exterior hanfu, demanded visual capacity. In doing so he discovered that, at some point during the night his village-sourced version of the outfit had been replaced by a new copy of the same. This one was largely identical, and fitted little better, but it was clean and the bleaching of the whites was superior.


    This mysterious visitor, whose arrival Liao felt somewhat discomforted at having slept through, had also left a food tray. It contained a heavy bowl of mixed cooking similar to the night before, though using buckwheat and mushrooms rather than rice and nuts, complemented by dried dates and sliced oranges. He devoured it all readily, surprised by the presence of such fresh fruit during the season. The sauce chosen this morning was different, lighter and barely noticeable. He found it somewhat less pleasant, but not anywhere close to putting him off the meal.


    By the time he''d washed, dressed, and finished the platter, he discovered the sky was rapidly brightening and he had to rush to the privy before making his way to the First Training Hall; a task made significantly more complicated by his complete lack of knowledge as to its location.


    He also initially forgot his copper badge on the desk and had to run back to grab it.


    Thankfully, the attendant who welcomed the new recruits returned to his prior position in the morning and guided them towards a building only a short distance southeast. Though Liao began a little ways behind the main cluster of white-clad and white-belted cultivators, it took no more than a few moments of jogging to catch up. Running down the path in this way did not bother him, nor did any of the other youths seem to care.


    He guessed, based on a quick examination of the other recruits and the words of the grand elder the night before, which had lodged in his skull like gravel, that these were mostly the sons and daughters of farmers. After all, most of those who lived in Mother''s Gift were, perhaps nine in ten families. The formation of the dantian being triggered by dice rolled by the Heavens that not even immortals could influence or predict, such general matching was inevitable.


    This randomized distribution became especially clear as the full group of new students assembled before the training hall.


    The facility was, outwardly, extremely ordinary. A double courtyard with an open-sided hall in the center, it could have been any village estate save that the walls were stone and timber not pounded earth and mud brick. The northern square was completely open, containing nothing but a bare floor of soil, raked flat. The southern square featured a garden of mostly shrubs built around a small artificial pool with a tiny fountain, currently idle. Black roofing tiles, universal throughout the sect, gave it a somber cast compared to the thatch Liao knew well.


    Though the materials were very fine by the standard of a mountain village, that was all. He had seen larger homes, both in the mountains and during the journey of the day before. It was also very plain, completely lacking in adornment, wall art, or other embellishment. Even the plants in the garden and the braziers in the central hall were common. The series of cushions laid out of the floor there, each perfectly circular, were naught but woven woolen pads.


    He was struck, instead, by the immaculate nature of the facility. Never in his life had he occupied a space purged so completely of dust, grit, and waste. Even when the whole village worked to clean the temple on feast days they could not manage such pristine results. It made him wonder just how many of the residents of the city below worked under the sect as servants, and what special tools they might possess.


    Eighteen cushions lay on the floor of the hall, each with a lap desk beside it. These faced east, towards a wide standing wooden frame covered in a panel formed from a single piece of perfectly split slate. Liao marveled at that slightly, for while he had seen slate pieces before, never one of anything approaching such size or smoothness. Seated, he realized that they were not much beyond a long bowshot from the Starwall itself, something revealed as the first lengthy shadows of dawn made their way across the open courtyard. There were buildings, nearly the entirety of the sect, in between, but even so, it was close. The terrible Killing Fields, where the sect spent its lifeblood to protect Orday''s creation, were no more than a brief walk away.


    Liao shivered for a moment, recognizing that he was now doomed to live in proximity to that eternal struggle, and that his duty demanded he participate in it.


    One cushion for each student, the last of whom arrived with the first strike of the gong for the seventh bell. She was a short-statured girl, notable for puffy cheeks and a heavy body retaining more than a little baby fat. Childhood hunger had never touched her. It marked her out, the child of some rich artisan, perhaps, or one of the bureaucrats who maintained the sect''s laws in the city and countryside from within Starwall City. No kin to the gathered farmers'' children.


    Neither was he, but it was a far more friendly sort of variance.


    The total count was ten girls and eight boys, as close to even as one might expect from chance.


    The cushions had been placed down very deliberately, and were, everyone soon discovered, heavily weighted on the bottom to prevent idle shifts. They were far enough apart that casual conversation was functionally impossible, any attempt to speak to a neighbor would inevitably disturb someone on another side. This mechanism sufficed, on that morning, to impose a measure of silence on the gathered fourteen-year-olds. With none among them knowing any of the others, for that would have been a rare coincidence indeed, none dared speak in front of them all.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    A series of tight, nervous, looks passed among the group instead. Not one of them, Liao realized, understood what was to happen next. Legendary tales of battles with demons might reveal some idea of the capabilities of cultivators and their actions in the field, but the day to day operations of the sect remained completely opaque. Even regarding those they were sworn to protect, the Celestial Origin Sect was not inclined to present its business to the eyes of outsiders.


    The final ring of the gong cut off all speculation, for it brought with it the arrival of their instructor.


    He appeared with uncanny speed. The eye registered nothing more than a white streak from the north before a man slammed to a stop at the edge of the eaves and walked with deliberate casualness to the front of the hall.


    Stellar Flash Steps, it had to be. Liao could detect the faintest of echoes, a rapidly dissipating afterimage of the same technique Su Yi had utilized; the compression and explosive release of qi to empower motion.


    This new arrival wore the same white hanfu-topped outfit as the assembled recruits, and for that matter all of the servants, but his robe was woven out of impossibly fine lotus silk. The fabric rippled across his body as he moved, shining with every ray of light that caressed its folds. His belt was blue, and he wore jewelry sufficient to supply a village''s worth of rings, all attached to thick chains draped around his neck. While the physical refinement attached to cultivation turned Su Yi into a perfectly porcelain doll, on this man it evoked a middle aged martial empowerment with the solidity of graven stone. Truly, his square-jawed, steel-eyed, and broad-shouldered form possessed not one flake of flab or sag. He appeared as if he ought to be holding up the corner of a temple roof or standing eternal sentry beside the sect gates behind a stone lion. Not overly bulky, his physique possessed the lithe coils and tight muscles of a true warrior inside of a heavy laborer.


    He wore his black hair cut extremely short, little more than a dark fuzz atop his skull. A narrow mustache, separated in the middle, girded his upper lip like twin sword blades. This only amplified the militant nature of his visage, engraving him with the legacy of countless legendary officers of the long lost old world.


    ¡°Good morning new recruits,¡± the cultivator possessed a booming voice filled with vibrant, confident energy, an ideal match for his qi-refined image. ¡°I am Elder Yu Yong, Master of Recruits for the Celestial Origin Sect.¡± He strode through the hall, legs powering immense, high-step strides, until he stood before the black slate. ¡°All of you are my charges now, and will remain so until you manage to reach the first layer of the body refining realm and become proper initiates of the sect. That takes, in case you are wondering,¡± the fire in his dark eyes revealed he knew that all of them had immediately wished to ask this. ¡°As long as it takes. It might take a week, a month, a year, ten years, or even the rest of your lives.¡± A formidable brow narrowed and weighed upon the group. ¡°Do try to avoid trying my patience.¡±


    Eighteen youths shivered on their cushions, and not because the morning was cold.


    ¡°Now,¡± Yu Yong stood stiff as a board before the blank black panel. ¡°Eighteen this year, not bad. Welcome to the Celestial Origin Sect and welcome to your new lives. Whatever you were before, dancer, farmer, miner, judge, that is over. Forget it! You are now cultivators. You belong to the sect, to the teaching of the Celestial Mother. You will learn to channel qi, to run, to fight, and to craft. You will stand atop the Starwall and face down the demon hordes that seek to end us all. If you think that by igniting your dantians you have won some kind of prize to a life of leisure and delight, well, you are wrong.¡±


    He did not, as many expected, thunder this last. Instead, a deep, palpable sadness wrapped itself around his expression. Loss radiated outward from the military man. Somehow, that was far more intimidating.


    ¡°Of all the paths to be walked through life here in Mother''s Gift,¡± he continued in the same tragic vein. ¡°Cultivation might be the most dangerous of all. The demons are numberless, merciless, and furious. Even should you rise to such heights as to overawe those wretched creatures, this path defies the natural order of reality as devised by the Heavens. The road to immortality is marked by terrible tribulations, and failure is far more likely than success. Our sect, and the Starwall, have stood for two-thousand five hundred and thirty-one years. In all that time, only three have risen from the place you now sit to occupy the Celestial Ascendancy Realm as Grand Elders.¡±


    He paused. ¡°I shall repeat that, since young people are prone to ignoring such bold truths. Three, twenty-five hundred years, and every year fifteen new initiates enter this hall. Have any among you skill at arithmetic?¡± Dark eyes scanned the group. ¡°Can you calculate those chances?¡±


    The silence that followed stretched out interminably. Liao waited, not trying to perform the calculation. He could perform simply sums well, and quickly, but the massive numbers were simply too large for him to grapple with, at least not without scratching in the dirt. Many of the others, it appeared, were similarly hesitant to make the attempt.


    Eventually it was a slip of the girl in the rear, so thin as to be called waifish, who raised her head and spoke. ¡°One in twelve thousand five hundred.¡± Her voice trembled, the grand number vibrating with hopelessness.


    ¡°Good,¡± Yu Yung affirmed. ¡°That is close enough that you should remember it. One in twelve thousand and five hundred. Worse, far worse, than the odds of becoming a cultivator at all. Twelve times worse. But,¡± his whole demeanor shifted with jolting speed. Military vibrancy rushed back to banish all sorrows. ¡°Do not despair. Even the least cultivator shall live far longer than ordinary mortals.¡±


    A broad grin spread across the wide face. ¡°Each new layer of every realm adds to your time spent in this turn of the cycle. Reaching even the seventh layer of the first realm, body refining, will nearly double the span, to one hundred and fifty years in all. Each of you is capable of at least that much, and most among you, should you survive the battles to come, of many centuries. Further, while the sect asks much, it grants much in return. The finest food and drink, the richest clothes and jewels, beautiful art and courtesans, wondrous displays, and all the other luxuries Mother''s Gift has to offer shall be at your fingertips. Serve the sect, earn your stipend and rewards, and all this is open to you.¡±


    He took one step forward, then retreated back and slammed his knuckles against the black slate. The loud crack this released nearly jolted Liao from his perch.


    ¡°However,¡± Yu Yong folded his hands together across his chest. ¡°None of that begins until you master my lessons. Otherwise, you will spend you life as a cultivator repairing the Starwall. Everyone has a use, even those who cannot progress. Do not strive to make that one your own.¡±


    Trembling on his cushion, barely holding to his seat, Liao stared at the broad elder. Despite this terrifying introduction, so many this remained unclear to him. Demons, fighting, he had no desire to take part in this strange war poorly grasped from old stories. Rewards, the prospect of feasting every day, that was tantalizing, but hardly necessary. Life in the mountains taught one to restrain greed. To spend the rest of his life clinging to a wall and setting stones, however, that drove a spike of terror deep within. He hated confinement, hated unchanging repetition. It trapped him. Shackled to a vast wall that displayed no variation for its nearly one hundred kilometer length, that would destroy him, he knew it.


    ¡°The sect, and I,¡± Yu Yong continued, flush with enthusiasm once more. ¡°Do not wish for that. Every cultivator is valuable. We will push you to excel, to progress.¡± He raised up a meaty hand and held four fingers forward, pulling them in one by one. ¡°Cultivation progresses along four principle components, and you must master them all: breathing, motion, conflict, and artistry. All will be explained in time, but we begin with breathing and the first step on the path to command of the soul itself, through the Celestial Infusion Method.¡±

 Chapter Six: Celestial Infusion Method

    At a gesture from Yu Yong, a gray-robed attendant appeared from just beyond the edge of the all and swiftly walked through the room placing a small book on the lap desk of each recruit. When Liao opened this slender collection of pages he discovered the answer to a puzzle that had gnawed at him for much of his life. Sect law mandated that every child, even trapper''s sons in mountain villages more likely to use paper to wrap a prize than look at it, learn to read. Aside from the priest hardly anyone in his hometown ever wrote anything longer than a list or acquired more than a bill of sale. All the local signs utilized pictures, not text. Many elders, reading nothing for their entire adult lives, lost the skill in time, and had to rely upon grandchildren when the time came to compose final testaments.


    But anyone might become a cultivator when tested at fourteen, and while the breathing technique described within the booklet included diagrams and imagery, it relied primarily on a considerable amount of dense text. Following it was hard, an unanticipated challenge full of strange words and odd comparisons, but he could puzzle out at least the basics of the passages.


    ¡°The foundation of cultivation lies in breathing,¡± Elder Yu Yong paced back and forth in front of the group after distribution finished. ¡°Qi, the energy released by all life, all action in the world, surrounds everything. It is in water, and rocks, and plants, and flesh.¡± His hand snapped back and forth rapidly, pointing at examples in the garden, before finally driving straight upwards. ¡°But it is also in the air. Every breath you take draws in more air than all the water you will drink in a whole day. Therefore, air is the medium that serves as by far the greatest source of qi for all of you.¡±


    He put his hand down and raised a copy of the same book they all held. ¡°This breathing technique is the Celestial Infusion Method. Orday developed it herself. It stands as the foundation of all her accomplishments, and when you learn it will serve you just the same. Other techniques exist,¡± he tapped his knuckles loudly against the slate, jolting everyone on their cushions. ¡°As I''m sure you suspected, but you do not need any of them. The Celestial Infusion Method is superior to every other breathing technique the sect has ever encountered. It is used by all of the Twelve Sisters and every other cultivator who has ever passed through this hall. It will be the primary means through which you grow and expand your cultivation. You will use it to grow your dantians, expanding your qi reserves and invoking the transformations that culminate in the total reconstruction of your being as you change from the weak forms you hold now into a living immortal expression of your personal dao.¡±


    Yu Yong paused here, briefly, just long enough to drop his booming voice to a softer tone that, while still loud, seemed to represent this man''s version of an intimate whisper. ¡°Last night every one of you met Grand Elder Itinay. Recall her now, a cultivator in the celestial ascendancy realm, an immortal. That is where the Celestial Infusion Method can take you, and even beyond.¡± Instinctively, the elder passed his hand through the star-shaped path over his chest, invoking Orday, the Celestial Mother.


    Remembering the terrifying blue-shaded grand elder took no effort at all. Liao did not even need to close his eyes to summon that memory perfectly. It was engraved upon his mind, lucent glory and icy wrath in absolute balance. In bringing out that visage he gained the chance to recall details buried by his fear in the initial moment. He was a trapper, and even in his fourteen years had witnessed the end of small lives hundreds of times. His eyes knew the difference between the traits, the motion, of the living and the dead.


    It dawned upon him then that Itinay was neither. The elder could speak without inhaling, see without focusing, and move without exertion. The structure that formed her, some incomprehensible melding and reshaping of flesh, light, and qi, it existed beyond mere flesh and blood.


    An immortal body.


    What that a thing he desired? To live forever?


    Yes.


    The answer bubbled up from the depths of Liao''s mind unexpectedly but with great speed. Death came all too easily in the mountains. Falls, chills, diseases, and above all cold could end a life all too early. He had both suffered losses, two sisters, many other children from neighboring families, and taken lives in the form of many animals. Line, trap, or bow, from tiny frogs the size of a fingernail to deer and wolves heavier than he was, he had reaped such existences. The ease with which an ordinary life might end, the power of even a small blade or short spike to pierce through all will to survive, it haunted him on dark nights. If qi could banish that uncertainty, and at least in Itinay''s case it had, then he would walk this path willingly.


    A far better reason to pursue cultivation than simply to avoid repairing the walls.


    ¡°The text before you describes the Celestial Infusion Method using Orday''s own words,¡± Yu Yong continued after letting everyone indulge in their imagination for a spell. ¡°Which are vastly superior to my own.¡± Such deference would have sounded strange coming from such a chiseled personage as the elder, had it referred to anyone else. As it stood, no one in the audience doubted this in the least. Orday, the fifth great sage, she who ascended to become a goddess, none could match her.


    ¡°But I will offer you a general outline to point you down the right road. You must breathe in and, in so doing, find the qi the falls from the stars to illuminate all things under heaven. Isolate and grasp it, take purposeful breaths using your will, binding yourself not to air but to the celestial tides. Then draw the qi into your dantian. Over time, as your mastery of the method and connection to the infinite dao increases you will be able to draw ever increasing quantities through each inhalation. A grand elder can pull qi from an expanse of sky stretching horizon to horizon in a single breath, and more. For now, make no effort to move or manipulate this qi. Drawing it into your dantian is enough. You must fill it in order to begin binding the first meridian. That act will be your first true step as cultivators. Once you do that, forming the most basic of qi circuits within your being, you will be free of this class and this room.¡±


    Through this lengthy speech Yu Yong paced back and forth. He stopped when it concluded, an unmistakable sign. ¡°Now, begin,¡± he ordered. ¡°I will offer assistance where it is needed. Be patient, a solid but slow start is the superior approach to uncertain speed. We will work at this until the midday bell.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Eighteen sets of hands reached for the slender volume. That initial move offered up the only commonality of approach across the group. Some read slowly, some swiftly, some took notes as the servants appeared with brush and paper for any who wished it. Others pushed aside the book after a brief glance and began to mimic the postures and breathing motions displayed in the intricate diagrams. Yu Yong watched them all. The elder did not sit down, had not even provided a place for it, but neither did he move about. Standing in place for many hours, an act that would pain the knees of any large man, appeared completely effortless to the cultivator.


    No one spoke up. A silent consensus formed among the group, each youth sought to avoid asking the very first question. None dared display such seeming weakness.


    Placement is important. Study the terrain first, place your trap with care, avoid scrambling to move it later. Qing Liao had learned this lesson at his father''s side, and he held it in the forefront of his mind now. The classroom was not familiar to him, unknown terrain, and he held back cautiously, trying to find guidance in Orday''s words.


    Thankfully, Yu Yong had assessed the efficacy of those writings accurately. Orday, though ascended two and a half millennia in the past, demonstrated her searing, piercing insights through the writing left behind. Using language simultaneously simple and profound, the goddess described in flowing but partitioned prose the infinite Dao that infused all things under Heaven. She demarcated the streams of qi that flowed from the sun and stars ¨C themselves one and the same, divided only by distance ¨C the earth and other worlds lodged in the heavens, and how this flowed along the living boundaries between to fill water, air, and other spaces with endless combinations of essence.


    The core insight of the Celestial Infusion Method was simple: the quantity of qi that came from the stars was so vastly in excess of all other sources as to make its exclusive cultivation an approach of unmatched efficiency. Additionally, with the goal of all cultivators being to reach and ultimately tear a path into the Heavens, foundational alignment with the qi flowing from those cosmic strands of the dao drastically shortened the path upward both within and without. The celestial path stood above all others.


    Look to the stars. Feel their majesty, their overwhelming power. Grasp it, mirror it, make it your own. Do this, and let the universe flow through you, one breath at a time. Fundamentally it was simple. Any child who''d ever lost themselves in wonder marveling at the stars or stared upward at the sun could grasp the principle. The stars were ever there and waiting, even during the brightest day.


    In practice, aligning the body and soul to reach uniformity with the celestial dao, vast, cosmic, unmeasurable, was a challenge that stretched out to the very edge of human perceptual capacity and beyond.


    Liao read through the little book three times before attempting to meditate. Only then did he consider his understanding of posture, breathing, and mental formulations, all drawn from Orday''s instructions, sufficient to make a first attempt. He was the second to last to put the book down, with only the thin girl who''d answered first choosing to bury her nose in the text for longer.


    Seated on the cushion, legs crossed beneath his body, hands resting atop his ankles, he closed his eyes, controlled his breathing, and imagined the stars swirling overhead. Many long nights in the mountains served him well in that final visualization. He had stood on the peaks and seen it, the slow dance of lights from distance constellations. Clean, pure light dropping through ice-clear air. He remembered, could see it again. Slow radiance, an unending cascade stretched across an expanse of time and space only immortals dared to count, waltzed across the back of his eyelids.


    Darkness, night, open skies, these were illusions, limitations imposed by the weakness of the flesh, the confines of the skull. The stars, like the dao itself, were ever-present. Endlessly constant even as they were ever-changing, the torrent of celestial qi, an unending tide of nigh-limitless power, they dispatched across the universe traveled everywhere and touched everything, always.


    This spark, a single thread of insight, slammed through Liao. It drove the breath from his lungs and set every nerve aflame. He fell from his cushion, toppled boneless to the floor, lying there sprawled as a dead fish. His vision swam and his eyes twitched erratically. The time of day, the progress of shadows, he lost track of all. How long he lay there he could not have said. Only the low crash of a distant gong, the sound of the tenth bell, rumbling through the paving below, brought him back from the crushing endlessness of the universe.


    It took several long minutes before he felt enough of himself steadied to push his body up and back onto the cushion.


    As he regained his seat, every part of his body suddenly sore, he discovered Elder Yu Yong was standing behind the cushion. The dark eyes of the elder were bright. ¡°You felt something, Qing Liao?¡± The question was kindly, respectful, and reassuring, but it still demanded a complete and honest answer, nothing held back.


    ¡°I saw the celestial sea, the wheel of stars, the dance of stellar qi,¡± the words burst out in a rush, his lips unable to properly form, to enunciate, the trust he''d been able to glimpse, ever-so-briefly.


    ¡°A little flash of enlightenment,¡± the elder smiled, broad and open. ¡°That is good; a strong first step. Go again, strive to recapture that feeling, only focus on the qi alone. It will be there, in your lungs. Sensing that, finding it consistently, that is the nest step.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, elder,¡± Liao breathed. His mind still whirled from the impact of that moment of immense clarity beneath the stars.


    Yu Yong simply nodded and moved on. It swiftly became clear that other students had found themselves looking out toward similar vistas as the morning was periodically interrupted by gasps, shouts, and falls. He had been neither the first nor the last. It was a refrain that he would find repeated many times in the days to come.


    After using the initial meditative steps of the Celestial Infusion Method to center himself, Liao tried again.


    There were no more grand panoramas in the hour remaining before lunch, but he could faintly feel the essence surrounding him now, the strange energy the rained down from the sun, filled the air, and moved through him as it slipped in and out of his lungs. He could not grasp it; the first few stumbling attempts left him sprawled out on the floor, desperately gasping for air. Even failure served to slowly refine awareness, however.


    By the time the twelfth bell rang to signal midday he was confident that, given sufficient time and repetition, he''d be able to sense qi with every breath, and even, as the technique manual explained, without meditating. Eventually, Orday''s words promised, qi sense would simply be a permanent part of the means by which he interacted with the surrounding environment.


    It was like learning to hear and understand the sounds of the forest, to differentiate bird, squirrel, and insect calls. To know the signs revealed by the rustle of a falling leaf or a snapped branch, only deeper, fuller. Not the erratic, intermittent pulsation of sound, but the continual, pervasive link of deep touch. It was invigorating. Contact with the dao, with stars, the very sensation of it beckoned him upward, drew him along the path.


    The demands of this went unseen until the bell rang and Liao discovered that despite having spent his whole morning lying still upon a cushion he was unbelievably ravenous.

 Chapter Seven: Repetition

    Lunch contained more of the same sort of mixture that had characterized all the meals so far; grain, vegetables, and a supplement. In this case it was beans. The servants brought out bowls to the recruits at their cushions, complete with raised tables, encouraging everyone to eat at their seats. This served as yet another sign that while the early teaching period had many goals, inducing friendship among this newly inducted class was not among them.


    Liao did not mind that. He''d had few friends back in the village and his work had encouraged finding peace during long days alone. He missed his parents, especially his father, instead. This ache was not a grievous one, at least not yet.


    He took solace from Su Yi''s declaration that he would be unable to see them for many months. That was a long time, certainly, but it was not forever. Strength could be found in grasping that chord, at least for now.


    Other students, especially the majority who came from farming villages where group congregations were common, seemed to struggle with this silent but forcible isolation. They squirmed in their seats, leaning and shifting as if they wished to creep closer to their neighbors for conversation. One among them, a stoutly built boy with a prominent burn scar that kept the back of his head free of hair, even went so far as to broach this subject with the elder after finishing his meal. ¡°Elder, are we not meant to befriend fellow recruits in the sect?¡±


    Yu Yong did not seem the least bit offended by this question. The readiness and length of his answer made Liao suspect he''d been waiting for someone to make an inquiry of this kind. ¡°Not here,¡± the elder replied easily enough. ¡°This place, your provisional status, it is merely a threshold, one I hope you will all leave behind sooner rather than later. Once you fill your dantians and begin to refine qi through the heart meridian, then your time here is finished. After that you will go to one of the twelve pavilions. There, and in nine weapon halls, you shall forge the bonds that matter on your road toward the dao. Not here. And since you will not all be going to the same place or leaving at the same time,¡± he continued, one eyebrow raised slightly. ¡°Then there is doubly no point. If there is a prodigy among you, they may well be gone by the end of the month. Most of the rest will walk out of this hall sometime in the spring. Focus on yourselves for now, there will be plenty of time for companionship.¡±


    This answer, from the expressions on surrounding faces, did little to satisfy many of those present. Scowls were as far as it went, of course. None would dare challenge the elder on anything. His concentrated qi could be felt through every motion he unleashed. Silently, Liao processed this revelation by setting a goal for himself. He did not think himself a prodigy, nor did he need to be, but he had not desire to make a home, or to delay at all, within this little hall. Three months, the first day of the fourth month, this would be his final day. That deadline he set for himself.


    It was unlikely such an objective would achieve first place among the eighteen, or even second, but he did not care to win the undeclared race. Placing in the top half would suffice, he knew he would be content with leaving more behind than ahead.


    After lunch Yu Yong took them from their cushions and out into the leveled dirt courtyard. He proceeded to push them through one exercise after another. These were not, the elder was painfully clear, parts of any martial art. ¡°Weapons training, including the implement that is your body, begins in the third week. For now, it is my duty to ensure your bones and muscles can match the demands of those techniques when they are placed before you.¡±


    He had them run in circles about the courtyard until their chests heaved. Stretches, strange motions claimed to loosen and lengthen the body, followed. A third sequence was intended to build strength, raising, lowering, pushing, and pulling the body against itself. Then they started over from the beginning. Gray-robed attendants, always silent, provided water, tapped out the pace on a small drum, and picked out those recruits directed by the elder to rest on a couch covered in soft mats. These were, after they recovered, put through a slower, more relaxed version of the training.


    ¡°Overwork damages the body,¡± Yu Yong forestalled accusations from the first harsh glare. ¡°You began in different places, grinding down those whose childhoods were spent indoors serves no purpose. I will make all of you strong, regardless of where you started, and in time cultivation will erase all variation of physique. I will make each of you ready, for every one of you is an asset to the sect.¡±


    Mostly, such varied treatment had limited impact. Out of eighteen the majority kept to the pace Yu Yong required. Only three struggled enough to be pulled aside more than once: the pudgy merchant''s daughter, the waifish girl with the head for sums, and a short boy who walked with a limp on account of the absence of the front half of his right foot. When one of the strong farmer''s daughters scowled as she lapped the boy and murmured ''cripple'' under her breath, Yu Yong intervened instantly. ¡°Silence!¡±


    The roar halted all in place.


    ¡°Cultivation challenges the Heavens themselves. You think the limitations of the body at birth matter?¡± His rumbling declaration increased in volume with each word, until the dust on the ceiling tiles took flight. The recruits buckled, dropped to the dirt by thunderous exhortation. ¡°Grand Elder Onimray was born without eyes. Two thousand years ago she stood in this very courtyard, unable to see the walls, yet now she is an immortal, and can challenge any of the Twelve Sisters in battle, with martial skill only Grand Elder Akiray can match. The circumstances of birth stand as less than dust before the dao.¡±


    Scowls receded. Onimray of Raining Swords was known throughout the land. Her name was learned by every child, and the temple walls bore her visage, carved the same as the other Grand Elders. That face had no eyes in its head. Recollection of this truth silenced many doubts.


    For his part Liao discovered that he was the best among the class when it came to running circuits. A talent he credited to long treks along narrow trails checking traplines and tracking wounded game. This balanced out against his substandard performance in the strength exercises compared to the robust farm-shaped majority. Endless hauling, heaving, and stacking heavy loads was not something he had experienced. By the time the elder called them back to their cushions for the final session of the day his arms, shoulders, and back ached terribly.


    Thankfully, he was not asked to try and meditate in such condition. Instead the final third of the day was spent working that great slate for the first time. Yu Yong laid out swift notes and diagrams in support of his lecture on the life of a cultivator, the rhythm of days in the sect, and the overall path of cultivation. Much of this, such as the proper etiquette for address between initiates, disciples, and elders, Liao forgot as soon as it entered his ears. His hard-worked mind was in no state to absorb such minutia.


    Certain facts, however, did manage to find purchase on a chunk of consciousness, grabbing and holding against the tide flushing out his memory. He would recall from that first day that there were seven major realms of cultivation, each divided into seven layers, though the names of only the first ¨C Body Refining ¨C and the last ¨C Celestial Ascendancy ¨C stuck with him. Forty-nine stages, not counting the proto-stage he and his classmates occupied. It seemed at once surprisingly few and impossibly many.


    He also learned that, in the Celestial Origin Sect, every cultivator''s realm was marked by the color of the belt they wore. They matched the colors of the rainbow, and Elder Yu Yong promised he would give each member of the class their red belts himself once they filled their dantians and began body refining. Beyond the belts they were free to wear whatever they wished, unless an instructor mandated a class uniform. However, the sect provided only the simple white robe outfits. Everything else must be purchased using personal funds.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    Liao had not brought any money with him. His family did little business in coinage, and he''d guessed that whatever they might scrape together would amount to nothing in the city, refusing all his mother tried to press on him. No explanation was given as to how coin might be obtained, or for that matter, spent. Thankfully, in addition to the basic clothing, food, water, and housing were all supplied, as were certain basic items including combs and razors. No one had cause to complain, and when the round-cheeked girl with a rich merchant father ¨C a fact she''d made known to the entire class after being pulled out of the running line during exercise ¨C tried to act offended despite this, the elder silenced her by merely inclining his head.


    The evening meal featured noodles rather than rice, mixed with tofu and a vegetable medley heavy on onions. It tasted fine, smothered in thick peanut sauce, but four meals made an indisputable pattern, one that prompted Liao to ask his very first question as a cultivator. ¡°Elder, why is there no meat in our food?¡±


    There was, no far as he knew, no prohibition against this in the Celestial Mother''s teachings. Pork and even, when chance allowed for it, beef were served at major festivals, and even the priest partook. The Ascendancy Feast of Orday was no exception, featuring fare similar to that of the equinoxes and solstices. Nor could the sect possibly claim poverty of the sort that caused many to eat meat only on festival days. It was rich beyond his understanding, something revealed by the buildings alone. Portions had also been generous so far, and the hungry youths were allowed to ask for more as often as they desired.


    Several other recruits snickered at this remark, but the elder''s fearsome glare silenced them instantly. ¡°That is a useful question,¡± Yu Yong leaned against the wall as the class ate. ¡°It touches on an essential truth. Qi, you must recognize, is present in everything.¡± he spread his hands in an encompassing circle. ¡°Everything,¡± repetition clarified this emphasis and made everyone pay attention. Chopsticks ceased motion as heads rose. ¡°The air, the water, the soil, the stones, there is qi in all these things,¡± he continued. He did not speak loudly, and his cadence was casual compared to his hours of instruction, but all listened. Several bodies leaned forward on their cushions. ¡°In coming into contact with a substance, the nature of qi changes, is shaped. It shifts to match the nature of its receptacle, takes on the nature of those substances. You are unlikely to know it, but almost everything in this world is made of many things, varied forms combined countless ways. When qi is scattered in this way, it becomes shifted, and your body struggles to absorb it.¡±


    He moved, suddenly before the slate, and a series of quick motions filled the black space with lines of chalk. White rained down from the sky to strike the earth. ¡°The Celestial Induction Method teaches the absorption of qi radiated from the stars. Orday devised this method from two key insights. First, because this qi is supremely strong and abundant. No other source can possibly compete with it. Water? Wind? Fire? These are intermittent and limited, but light is always there, even when it seems the clouds hide it. Second, just as important, because it is pure. You can take it in and channel it through your dantian immediately, without processing.¡±


    ¡°This,¡± he raised his hands and head, looking upwards. ¡°This was the supreme insight of the Celestial Mother. This method is ten times, or even one hundred times, as efficient as prior methods. Learn it properly and you will never lack for qi. You will never need to spend endless hours purifying that which you have taken in before it can be used.¡±


    For a moment it seemed the elder would continue, his voice rising with each syllable, but he stopped unexpectedly. Swallowing once, he looked back to the bowls in the hands of the recruits before speaking again. ¡°Meat, yes,¡± it was distracted, almost mumbled, as if his lecture had veered off-course. ¡°Everything you eat and drink contains qi, and you cannot avoid taking some into you in that manner. That qi, it will need to be purified over time, lest it clog you meridians and foul your dantian. The more concentrated, more complex, the qi you consume, the greater the effort needed to do this. Qi taken in from animals is considerably more complex than that of plants. Eating the diet that has been prepared for you, long optimized by the work of the Cooking Pavilion, minimizes this need. A purification pill once each month suffices for a body refining realm cultivator. As your cultivation progresses, this will change, and you will need to be ever more cautious with regard to the intake of impure qi.¡±


    Liao became aware then of something he had noticed, but ignored.


    Elder Yu Yong did not share their meals. He had not eaten anything all day, and drank only crystal clear water. His following words confirmed this assumption. ¡°A true cultivator survives on qi alone, for it can be channeled to provide all the nourishment the body and soul requires. The Grand Elders have not touched food and drink for centuries.¡±


    ¡°We''re never going to eat meat again?¡± One of the boys, a tall and heavily muscled young man who physique suggested a great many hours spent chopping wood. ¡°No pork? No eggs? That sounds awful. I thought we were blessed?¡±


    ¡°Did you think that internalizing a dao and seizing immortality was something easy to achieve?¡± Yu Yong''s eyes narrowed. His manicured eyebrows stood out, sharp as razors. ¡°This is not the easy road, it is the hardest of hard paths. To seek the dao, to cultivate to immortality and beyond, demands a will that defies heaven itself, commitment that cannot be shaken. Food and drink will be the least sacrifices it asks of you.¡± Suddenly, his words softened, and he leaned back. ¡°But, while the way ahead may be cruel, the sect is not. Understanding, progress, the dao, these cannot be forced. Once you leave this hall, this class, you will face no commands beyond the duties given to all. You will have your own servants. If you wish alternative meals cooked, spend the funds and do so. We cannot shove you toward the stars. Should indulgence speed your cultivation, well, there are countless paths. Only the demons attempt to force one road, and that one holds only failure.¡±


    Grim anger over took the elder there, and he said nothing more. His mouth clamped shut before them all.


    After dinner they were released. Servants gathered up their things, leaving only the manuals for the students. All were sent back to their rooms at liberty. Elder Yu Yong encouraged everyone to meditate and practice the cultivation art they had been taught, but not to push beyond any limits they uncovered. ¡°Rest is necessary. Working your mind raw will accomplish nothing more than the same obsession would the body. Strength of the soul grows gradually.¡±


    Having little else to do, and not inclined to wander aimlessly about the sect, Liao did his best to follow this advice.


    Returning to his room, he lit the thick candle, sat gently cross-legged upon the couch, and tried to touch the stars.


    In this he failed, repeatedly. Eventually, after some dozen or more attempts, he grew frustrated with the method and confines of his little box. In the dark, he left the chamber and recorded several circuits of the dormitory, seeking clarity in the cold.


    Eventually, he looked up. This stopped him cold.


    Few lights burned in the sect at night, making it far darker than any village of similar size. He would later learn that few torches were lit as cultivators could see easily in near-total darkness. The lights of Starwall City, to the west, offered distraction in one direction, but to the east, above the wall, truly pure darkness reigned.


    There, the stars waited. They wheeled through the sky in air remarkably clear and clean. Thousands could be seen there, making slow twinkling circuits. Endless lights against the black, as pure a frame as he had ever seen.


    Struck by the moment, he found an empty paving stone with an unobstructed view to the Starwall and beyond and stared upwards. The distance seemed to drop down upon him, bringing the lights close enough to touch despite being so far away that he could not fathom the numbers used to mark it.


    Light passed into him, barred by nothing. He found the act of gathering it, in that singular moment of serenity, almost effortless, as if he could drink in the whole universe at a breath. Centering this essence in his dantian, he drew it in impossibly slow circles, mirroring the dance of the starlight above. He knew those paths, had first seen them as a boy on his father''s shoulders high in the mountains. Unchanging and perfect, they were so ideal, so easy, that all the hardships of complexity drained away.


    He need do nothing but stare at the stars and let their power fill him up.


    A drop of qi condensed, pure and brilliant, in the center of his dantian.


    Liao blinked once, and the vision collapsed around him in a storm of color and noise. Despite this disruption, when he closed his eyes again the image of the stars held strong in his memory. Stopping, he paused, made his mind and body go still, and tried again.


    The stars remained, as promised, and their qi, as Orday''s ancient insight revealed, was everywhere. Even when he returned to his room, it remained, though attenuated. He felt it in the candle this time, a faded echo. For what was a candle, a flame, save the reflected light of the sun?


    With this realization, Liao sent the night prayer to the Celestial Mother with greater feeling than he''d mustered in years.


    Sleep followed immediately.

 Chapter Eight: Motion

    Elder Yu Yong spent a week running his recruits through cultivation exercises. It was, for most, the longest ten days of their lives. By the end of it Liao had spent so much time seated on the weighted cushions that he could not rise or descend without pain, though such agonies were not easily differentiated from the general soreness that consumed every part of his body. The exercises had been increased each day, until it felt like stepping into the field meant insertion into a human-sized vise while the elder squeezed. There was nothing that did not hurt in some way.


    The group was worn hard, taken to the very edge of what fourteen-year-old bodies could sustain. They stuffed heaping quantities of meatless meals into their mouths, but even this could not keep them ahead of exhaustion. Rice, noodles, mushrooms, beans, and more types of fruit and vegetables than Liao had ever known existed were crammed into their bellies. It all somehow tasted fantastic and left him feeling strong at the same time. He''d never eaten so much, or so well, in his life, but even after only ten days the absence of meat certainly made itself known. Creativity with sauces could only do so much to hide the deficiency of that distinctive flavor.


    Such a lack was not new to him, life in the mountains meant one ate whatever foods the forest provided, even if that meant the same thing every day for a week, but he not expected to face such constraints in the sect.


    A single week had seen the obliteration of more than a few illusions.


    Such lost dreams had not come without commensurate progress. Liao had reached the point were he could reliably, if feebly, cultivate. The moments of effective meditation, where the stellar qi flowed into his dantian rather than drifting about and slipping from his grasp, grew longer every day. Consistently lagged, and he struggled to gather in the essence efficiently, but he could feel the difference.


    Elder Yu Yong had begun to offer personalized instruction, starting midway through the week. The veteran cultivator told him that his intuitive grasp was the best in the class, but he needed to properly refine the theory and convert it to practical action. Until then, he would continue to lose the overwhelming share of his potential gains. It sounded simple, but improvements remained stubbornly difficult to achieve.


    In the rough ranking of progress that inevitably resulted when gathering a group of teenagers together in anything even remotely resembling a competition, something keeping the students isolated on their cushions completely failed to prevent from forming, Liao found himself in fourth. He found that he was perfectly content with that position. Absent any desire to rank first, or to demonstrate some kind of intellectual or physical superiority, superlatives others were quite willing to contest, he simply continued to work on the method for itself, for the echo of that feeling of oneness with the stars.


    Nothing more was necessary.


    No one, least of all the elder, complained about this lack of cutthroat motivation. A cultivator''s efforts to discard distractions were always an accepted and encouraged part of doctrine.


    Slowly, Liao condensed drops of qi in his dantian. It was far from filled, especially as it grew its bounds with each cultivator session, however minutely. Steady progress occurred nonetheless, and by heading the directive to refine his approach over and over, more drops were added each day than the day before. He found that very satisfying. Plenty of food, a room with blankets where he was never, ever cold, and advanced upon his assigned tasks, these states combined to leave him happy. Not glamorous, but he took joy in the mundane.


    Certainly he was sufficiently satisfied to avoid borrowing the misery of those who squabbled with the elder or tried to prove themselves superior to the other recruits.


    This left him largely alone and ignored, but though he missed his family, that did not bother him much.


    In the second week, Elder Yu Yong upended the developing dynamic and hierarchy of the recruits effortlessly when, following the midday meal, he informed them exercise was canceled and ordered them back to their seats instead. ¡°Today,¡± he introduced the new topic brightly. ¡°I will begin teaching you the Stellar Flash Steps.¡±


    These words drew gasps from many.


    Yu Yong ignored such outbursts entirely. ¡°This movement technique will form the foundation of your practice as cultivators. It will be, for the rest of your lives, the primary means by which you unleash qi from your reserves. Some come here thinking weapon work or artistry predominate, but even the most dedicated warrior cannot fight all day long, and the most committed craftsman must likewise take breaks. Motion, by contrast, is fundamental to life. You will learn to use the Stellar Flash Steps always, with every stride you take, until it is an extension of your natural motion. It will become a seamless extension of your body''s activity, your every step fluid and swift as light.¡±


    As he said this, Elder Yu Yong, without giving any indication of variation, simply pacing about as he always did, appeared to vanish from one side of the hall and appear at the opposite. He gave not the least sign that anything unexpected had occurred. His stride remained completely regular. Nor did it change when he stepped back to his original position, covering dozens of meters in two strides.


    The only way the eyes could be trusted to accept this seemingly impossible motion was through the strange echo it imparted to the elder''s words.


    ¡°Much as the Celestial Infusion Method was devised by study of emanations of the stars,¡± the elder ignored the gasps that followed his darting about without warning. Bug-eyed stares would not suffice to halt his lectures. ¡°The Stellar Flash Steps draws upon a different property of light uncovered by Orday. Light,¡± he said simply. ¡°Is not still. Light moves.¡± He turned, face toward the students once more as he said this. Eyes flashing with inner fire. ¡°Observation of the sunset should suffice to make this clear. It merely appears still because it is faster than limited minds, even the minds of cultivators, can easily grasp. Even the mightiest of celestial ascendancy realm Grand Elders struggle to enhance their perception sufficiently to focus qi and grasp a fleeting glimpse of light in motion. Orday, as you may imagine, achieved this.¡±Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    Everyone nodded. None of the students, and certainly not Liao, would doubt any feat credited to the Celestial Mother. She had ascended. Anything could have been granted her memory and it would not be counted impossible.


    ¡°Light is faster than anything,¡± the explanation continued. ¡°Faster than the swiftest diving bird, than the crack of a whip, or even the stone-shattering pulse of an earthquake. To be, to move, as light is to go beyond perception.¡± There was a pause as the elder wisely pulled back. ¡°But such feats are far away in your futures. For now, each of you will learn the motions, patterns, and stances used to push your qi through the necessary channels of enhancement. Do not worry. This technique, like light itself, contains multitudes. Even within the limitations of the least recruits it can be of great use, and it will grow alongside you as you rise in cultivation, remaining an essential tool to even the greatest elders. Just as important, it is a suitable means to practice channeling and releasing qi, though none of you have quite arrived at that point.¡±


    At this point gray-robed servants began to pass out explanatory booklets. These, Liao noticed immediately, were considerably thicker than the ones that explained the Celestial Infusion Method. He did not look forward to struggling his way through so many words.


    ¡°Each of you will be given time to familiarize yourselves with the first step of the movement technique. After that we will conduct exercises. For that purpose I will break the class apart into groups according to your readiness to utilize qi actively.¡± These words carried with them audible resignation,a deliberate weariness the elder intended the recruits to recognize. It seemed Yu Yong had little patience for the sort of petty infighting this form of division would inevitably unleash.


    Nevertheless, by the time the next bell rang he moved through the hall and partitioned the eighteen without a shred of hesitation or mercy.


    Four groups were created this way, and their size was not even. The weakest group was comprised of the three students whose bodies were not yet ready to begin even after ten days of vigorous exercise and strengthening. The most advanced group was also the smallest, a single fisherman''s daughter who could swim and dive with great skill and had demonstrated such superior spatial awareness that teaching her alongside the others would apparently hold everyone back instead. The remaining two groups each had seven members, separated not based on any physical capability, but on their cumulative accumulation of qi up to this point.


    It seemed that failure to progress in lesson one incurred a debt against lesson two. Liao suspected, and from the looks that passed among the youths he was far from alone in doing so, that this gap would only widen when it came to future added topics. Little wonder then that they''d been told not to make friends.


    He was placed in the more advanced of the two groups, and from the instant of division felt stirred by a great determination to maintain that status.


    ¡°Light moves both fluidly, as water does, and in pulses, as a spark cast from a fire or a jumping grasshopper might,¡± Yu Yong walked around the all in the courtyard. ¡°The art of the Stellar Flash Steps is in adopting these two states in tandem, projecting them onto the essence of pure motion, and the terrain before you, and then shifting back and forth between them. For now we will begin by practicing the stances.¡±


    The books they''d been given specified fourteen different positions, seven each for waves and particles respectively. One by one they contorted their bodies to hold each one. The elder shouted out postural corrections, allowed them to reposition, and then repeated the sequence.


    Liao had never thought simply standing in place and holding a fixed pose would be difficult, but the Stellar Flash Steps demanded strange bends to the torso, odd directions of the feet, and twists and turns that resembled no natural human motion. Strains blossomed along muscles and tendons unused to such stresses. By the time dinner was called everything hurt, unfamiliar alien pains that arrested natural motion.


    No one else suffered any less. The class collectively crept and dragged their bodies back to their cushions, a march of the invalid.


    ¡°Difficult, is it not?¡± Yu Yong concluded for everyone. ¡°But the foundation is key. Once you have mastered posture you can begin to add motion to the sequence. Only then will you find it possible to move about unassisted. When that has been achieved you can add qi to the process, enhancing your bodies in support of your actions. All of you should have some idea of what this can achieve when synthesized.¡± His words called up memories of the journey to the sect. ¡°With this technique you can cross the land in hours, become untouchable in combat, and stride across the sky itself as a streak of light. The possibilities are boundless. Immortals can even surmount the sky itself.¡±


    He spun around them, a living blur of motion. ¡°Be patient and work hard. Continue your meditation, you will need to make progress in gathering and controlling qi before you can empower the steps properly.¡±


    Heading this advice, and also because it hurt to even stand, Liao spent his evening meditating. This kept his mind away from the endless aches of his muscles. This time he sat outside, despite the cold, for the vista of the stars above helped him focus and enhanced his progress.


    Over the next several days, as continuing exercise and instruction left them all an exhausted mess, he noticed that while it occasionally rained and even once briefly covered the courtyard in a light snow, the skies over the sect were always clear. When night came the stars were endlessly visible, obscured by nothing. Even the moon seemed to dance aside from the circle of sky above the red-timber structures.


    ¡°It''s a formation effect,¡± Yu Yong told him when he asked. ¡°And a fairly simple one. There are far more formidable defenses laid atop the walls and throughout the Killing Fields. We will cover such topics soon enough.¡± It was a simple but effective answer, one that fully satisfied Liao''s curiosity. He did not need to know how it worked, it was nice enough that the stars were always visible.


    By the time the second week came to an end he was conducting his nightly meditations seated atop the roof of the little barracks, balanced on the ceiling tiles. The view there, free of obscuring buildings, measurably improved his qi condensation. This more than compensated for the way his aching muscles protested the ascent up the slick walls.


    One of the servants caught a glimpse of him as he shimmied up the corners. The middle-aged man scowled at this, but said nothing. Apparently something as minor as climbing a wall did not suffice to allow a mortal to counter a cultivator. Liao marveled at this, the way the servants, many of them of respected aged status, were endlessly deferential. They were also remarkably silent, saying almost nothing at all when within the sect walls, not even to each other. Yet such curiosities swiftly faded into the background.


    He quickly grew used to having others prepare his meals, clean his clothes, and tidy up his little room. He could have done all these things himself, though the barracks had neither kitchen nor laundry, and the servants answered no questions as to their location. All such mundane chores were eliminated from their schedules, allowing maximum focus on cultivation.


    The elder never bothered to explain this. He would simply praise those who made the best use of their time to expend maximum effort whether they made any progress or not. Though this method was somewhat difficult to understand as it seemed to disregard results, none of the recruits could find the will to question the elder''s approach.

 Chapter Nine: Weapons

    After ten days of practice the fisherman''s daughter was the only one of the eighteen to master the Stellar Flash Steps sufficiently that Elder Yu Yong might have allowed her to practice using it. However, she had not yet accumulated sufficient qi to perform the maneuver safely and was firmly forbidden any attempted demonstrations.


    Instead, Liao found the third week dawned with considerable progress of his own in filling his dantian to the point that he was now second in the class. Only the waifish girl, who seemed to possess an education far in advance of everyone else, surpassed him, and she had been in the lead from the start. This progress astounded him, though it also provided a sense of just how far he had to go. Even if his pace continued to grow as it had been doing, weeks of meditation remained before he could even contemplate reaching out to connect the first meridian.


    Learning the movement technique had been less efficient. He was progressing with the stances, but shifting between them proved to be something of a block. He would try to switch from one position to the next, from particle to wave, only to end up horribly off-balance. Face-first falls into the hard dirt were frequent, and though that was a status he shared with most of the others, this time there had been no pulse of enlightenment to ease his progression. The elder''s diagnosis was, thankfully, succinct and to the point. ¡°You are over-committing. You are trying to shove your body from one move to the next. Stop. Imagine the sequence, find the rhythm of your steps.¡±


    Sound advice. Easy to understand. Far more difficult to implement.


    As the third week began, Elder Yu Yong changed the daily schedule once again. ¡°As we have covered most of the basic aspects of life in the sect, and as you all better prepared to devote the majority of your day to exertion by this point, lecture time will be reduced. Meditation will continue to occupy the mornings, but the afternoon will be divided between continued movement technique practice and weapons practice.¡± He reached back and drew a diagram on the slate.


    ¡°As I explained earlier,¡± Liao''s quick check of the expressions on his fellow recruits'' faces suggested he was not alone in having forgotten this particular lecture. ¡°All weapon arts used by the Celestial Origin Sect are combined into one overarching composite: the Nine Spheres Arsenal Method. This unified approach to combat training combines barehanded techniques, conflict footwork, and the use of nine different weapons. Today we will begin with the fundamentals, and throughout the rest of the week you will be introduced to each of the nine weapons the sect utilizes.¡±


    Nine little images in chalk, each easily recognizable to teenagers raised on stories of cultivators, were linked in a circle. They drew in every eye present.


    ¡°Pay attention!¡± Yu Yong suddenly thundered. ¡°While you will learn to wield and maintain all nine of the arsenal''s weapons, every cultivator inevitably specializes, finding one approach best linked to their dao. This week will include the first step upon that path, the beginning of a specialization that will follow you the rest of your life. Test yourself against each weapon, seek out the one that suits you, that resonates with everything you''ve discovered while meditating.¡± He leaned forward, face pulled tight, emphasis embedded in every syllable. ¡°It is critical that you make this choice correctly. Travel any distance down the wrong path and struggle to return to the correct one is terribly difficult, often impossible. If an obvious choice does not emerge, wait. Further guidance will not harm your progress. I will be watching carefully. If I pull you back, understand that this is my reason.¡±


    The elder had never justified himself to the students in any decision before.


    ¡°Why do we even need to learn a weapon technique at all?¡± this question came from the thin girl who led them in cultivation. Her name, Liao had eventually learned, was Zhou Hua, something he had learned third hand, for though she asked more questions of the elder than the rest of the class combined, she spoke to her classmates even less than Liao did.


    ¡°Does the dao demand we learn to fight? How could the true dao be so limited?¡± A sharp tinge of pride, the first sign that this girl was a teenager like the rest of them, emerged as she dared the elder to challenge this seemingly ironclad philosophical statement.


    Everyone in the class turned their heads towards the girl, eager to watch the imminent clash unfold. Elder Yu Yong, however, disappointed them all by simply bypassing the issue. ¡°The dao does not demand you learn to fight. The dao does not demand anything. The sect, however, gives much and demands much in return, and combat is one of those demands. We are in a war of survival!¡± His words boomed as he turned his head eastward toward the looming shadow of the Starwall. It easily dominated the horizon beyond their little hall. ¡°Beyond those walls lie the Killing Fields, where demons infiltrate every year. Past that, the Ruined Wastes have consumed the whole of the world, and demons haunt them in numbers uncounted. Demons that seek to consume the qi of every living soul in this land, from the greatest of elders to the youngest infant. The sect defends those walls, for only the sect can. Mortals cannot stand before demons and live. Every one of you will, in time, undertake that duty. You will fight the demons, and some of you will perish doing so, in order to preserve the lives of all who shelter behind you. This must be done, and if you cannot find the courage within to stand and face this threat to the existence of all, then you will never find the dao.¡±


    Zhou Hua, whatever else she might be, was very intelligent, and her reasoning encompassed recognition that this was a point upon which the elder was not to be challenged again, ever. Several others in the group took more joy in witnessing her comeuppance than the declaration that had been made, only to be silenced in their snickering by Yu Yong''s furious glare. Liao found he was possessed by a deep determination to stare directly ahead at the black slate, eyes frozen.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°You do not understand, not yet,¡± Yu Yong no longer looked at the class. The walls consumed the whole of his sight. ¡°But you will. Once you have filled your dantians and become immune to the influence of the demon plague. Then, you will walk the walls and see the true face of our enemy. For now it is my task to prepare you, to make you ready for the day that moment comes. Now, up, out to the yard. We will begin.¡±


    Anger did not dissipate swiftly in an elder cultivator. Though Yu Yong revealed nothing to external observation, his actions were not so easily smothered. Once he had taught them the simplest of the barehanded martial arts forms the class was subjected to endless cries of ''again!'' The onslaught of repetition seemed truly endless, and left all eighteen recruits destroyed upon the earth. By the time the evening meal was served Liao could barely hold his chopsticks. Unable to keep his arm steady, he was forced to hold his bowl against his chin several times during the evening meal lest he drop it to the floor.


    He did not meditate that night. Even the effort required to crawl onto his couch and pull the blankets over his body left him utterly exhausted.


    Each of the nine days to follow, though less intense, was much the same. In the morning they discovered the training yard had been filled by figures made of straw in loose imitation of the human form. These training dummies numbered eighteen, one for each recruit. A barrel full of training weapons, made of weighted wood or bundled bamboo, had been similarly placed at the corner of the space. The students were admonished to use these only as instructed. Yu Yong arrived each day with an expression suggesting that anyone who attempted to treat them as toys would be subject to the harshest discipline.


    Two boys tried anyway. They were made to run laps until they collapsed and were dragged back to their rooms by gray-robed servants. That humiliation was one capable of lingering for decades.


    As its name implied, the Nine Spheres Arsenal utilized forms for nine different weapons. The elder brought forth combat ready examples at the beginning of each day.


    The axe was first. It made a considerable impression.


    Unlike certain weapons of war, witnessed only in stories and tales, every one of the recruits was familiar with axes. All of the boys and most of the girls had spent many hours using them, chopping and splitting wood. They carried expectations of a heavy, thick, and powerful implement of devastating swings.


    That was not what was brought before them.


    Yu Yong''s axe, which he placed against the black slate to highlight every feature in contrast, was a sleek, finely ground thing with a narrow, sharply pointed head clearly intended to slice through flesh, not tree trunks. Not a tool but a weapon, these implements radiated a sense of deadliness even when passed around in blunted training form. When handled and directed through swift cuts and rapid sweeps, this impression only redoubled.


    A hatchet, smaller than a woodcutter''s axe or even these weapons of warfare, was a common tool for a trapper to carry. Liao knew it well, and had taken the lives of any number of small creatures, especially fish, with a single downward chop. Despite that familiarity, the weapon felt uncomfortable in his hands, and the moves he was directed to practice seemed to fight against his intentions. His qi did not flow through those patterns naturally, and forcing it accomplished little.


    He was not alone in such difficulties. Only one of the eighteen, a tall and slender boy from one of the southern farming villages, took to the axe. His natural aptitude and affiliation for the weapon was obvious, it danced like a living creature in his hands, hungry to embed itself in the flesh of his foes. Yu Yong made everyone watch, that they might understand and recognize such compatibility.


    Few found disappointment in moving on from axes. Axes might be useful, but they lacked for glamour and pride of place in the legends. The most prestigious of the nine weapons was the straight sword, or jian, for the Celestial Mother herself carried such a blade in battle. It was destined to be the last weapon they tested.


    Axe. Blade. Bow. Chakram. Dagger. Halberd. Mace. Spear. Sword. Each of the nine weapons of the arsenal passed through every hand. No one asked why this nine and not some other assembly of implements of death. Orday had chosen these weapons for her followers. All others were unnecessary. Invariably every new cultivator displayed a connection with at least one of the weapons.


    The spear was the most common choice. Fully eight of the eighteen adopted this unimposing but mighty option. Two each chose the sword and halberd, and one fourteen-year-old apiece adopted the final six. Part of this latter group, Liao found himself alone holding a bow at the end of the week. To stand by himself before the elder was somewhat intimidating, but he was absolutely certain he''d made the correct choice.


    Even after an unexpected complication was added to the mix.


    ¡°The bow is used at a distance,¡± Yu Yong noted the obvious. ¡°You will need to choose a secondary weapon for close in use.¡±


    ¡°Daggers,¡± the word spilled out of Liao''s mouth without hesitation or any realization that he was even making a decision. It simply was the path.


    ¡°Excellent,¡± the elder sounded satisfied by both this choice and the speed with which it was made.


    Everyone''s weapon choice was recorded, but the training blades were returned to their barrels each evening. There would be no taking them home for night practice, not yet. Only supervised practice was allowed. Safety was one reason stated for this decision, but the other was incentive. ¡°Once you progress beyond this class you will enroll in the Weapon Hall of your chosen component of the arsenal. There you will truly start your journey down the path of martial pursuits. While we are here the battle techniques of each sphere,¡± there were seven for each weapon. ¡°Will remain no more than words on a page.¡±


    The number of students meditating at night increased considerably thereafter.


    In this way their first month as cultivators came to an end. Qing Liao found it all blurred together utterly in his memory. He recalled little of the long lectures, and realized that somehow he''d spent the entirety of the month broadly confined to two small buildings. He had not traveled such little distance in a month in any time he could recall, perhaps not since he''d first learned to walk.


    He ought to have missed the forests and itched to stride down the trails. Meditating that night, he realized that he did, in fact, yearn for that. He did not want to stay in this compound, adjacent to the city, forever. He wanted to go back home. He had no wish to spend his days sitting and studying.


    Despite this, he also knew that none of that mattered, for now. It would come. He needed to draw the stars close first.

 Chapter Ten: Artistry

    On the morning of the thirty-first day following their induction into the Celestial Origin Sect, the year''s new cultivators were introduced to the final pillar of their coming lives.


    ¡°Breathing will gather qi and build the strength of body and soul,¡± Elder Yu Yong''s summary was one he''d clearly given many times. ¡°Movement will channel qi and build awareness of both surroundings and self. Martial practice will expel qi as power, producing resilience and durability. All these things are essential, and they are also complementary. The practice of cultivation is a journey through the dao, and ultimately, ascension to meet it. It is deeply personal. This portion of the path, unique to each cultivator, is fostered through devotion of mind, body, and soul to a method of creation, of craftsmanship. Qi is created by life, and to complete its circulation you too must learn to create, to infuse qi into works both transient and enduring. Though every cultivator''s path will ultimately be unique as their qi signature, the sect will support and aid you on the way as it can.¡±


    Yu Yong swept his arms wide as they stood in the garden and pointed towards the distant buildings that loomed high on the artificial plateau of the sect. ¡°The Celestial Origin Sect has organized this practice according to the Twelvefold Panoply of Arts. Each specialty has its own pavilion and utilizes hundreds of technique manuals. Over the next six days you will be introduced to the full twelve, and then we will spend the remainder of the week guiding each of you to choose the path you will follow for the rest of your journey. All other lessons are suspended. This choice is critically important, far more personal than even your weapon art. The pavilions are the heart of the sect''s internal structure. Each one is personally administered by one of the Twelve Sisters. It is in your pavilion that the friends and comrades you will join to your cultivation journey are to be found. Listen to the dao, find the path that calls out to you, surface to core.


    A heady demand to impose on a group of fourteen-year-olds.


    For the next six days, the eighteen students sat on their cushions and watched as blue-belted spirit tempering realm elders presented the approaches, possibilities, and virtues of their respective pavilions under the Twelvefold Panoply. From the beginning it was immediately clear that each of the paths on offer was exceedingly broad, and contained countless specializations within. The very first presentation came from a wizened, white-haired elder who remained a serene beauty despite having obviously reached her twilight years. Her eyes passed over the eighteen students as if they were completely irrelevant, but sparkled brilliantly when she turned to her chosen pursuit of alchemy.


    Though the production of pills, poultices, powders, and all the other sundry compounds and medicines used by cultivators was obviously critical to progress and the sect''s survival, Liao found it a struggle to stay awake as this presentation dragged on and their midday meal approached. Others, apparently, had no such trouble, finding something fascinating in the world of formulas and furnaces. This included Zhou Hua, as the bright young woman seemingly made up her mind at once by spitting out a dozen questions as fast as she could form the words from the moment the elder finished speaking. Elder Yu Yong had to call for lunch to staunch her enthusiasm, for the aged alchemist ignored the seventeen others and sought to answer every inquiry.


    Liao, glad that the lecture was finished, took the list of the twelve pavilions each recruit had been given and slashed a line through alchemy. He hoped all of the others would offer such easy decisions.


    That measure of optimism lasted until the next presentation, on armoring.


    The seemingly middle-aged elder, though it was fast becoming clear to the students that outward appearance offered little indication in that sphere, who represented the armoring pavilion looked as if he was made of steel. His demonstration spiked Liao''s interest considerably. Assembling, matching, and formulating both personal protective equipment and large fortifications filled his mind with possibility, though he began to loose focus when the explanation shifted from the theoretical to the specific. Putting together a suit of armor sounded fascinating, until the topic veered toward ring size or buckle type.


    Despite such misgivings, armoring occupied first place on his list through the next several days. He held no interest in the working of raw metal or wood as dictated by blacksmithing or carpentry. Neither producing nor preparing food according to the practices of the farming and cooking pavilions moved his interest, though a number of other students gravitated toward them. The complex art of formations relied too heavily on complex mathematics that made his head spin, and the work of husbandry demanded a companionship with animals that his trapper upbringing rebelled against. On the fifth day he similarly rejected the ecstasy of physical performance and its more sedate counterpart the faith-infused invocations of ritual communion.


    He woke up on the final day suspecting that armoring would be his chosen path, even as this thought sat ill in his stomach for some reason he could not name. The morning presentation, on the practice of shaping works through carving, pottery, engraving, calligraphy, and similar methods did nothing to change his mind.


    Last of the Twelvefold Panoply to speak was the Textiles Pavilion. Liao anticipated little from this. He had no interest in embroidery or weaving. To his surprise the young-looking elder laid out a series of samples in front of the class that included not only hemp, linen, silk, and wool, but also sheets of leather and a passel of fine furs. In addition to robes she modeled boots, gloves, hats, and wide variety of casings. ¡°The practice of textiles mastery includes many items, ranging from decorative fringes to sail canvas,¡± she declared. ¡°It employs a multitude of materials directed to numerous purposes combining aesthetics with functionality.¡±


    She continued from there, but Liao was staring at the layered furs and piled hides and lost all comprehension of her words. Though he was only fourteen, he''d been working traplines with his father for over seven years. In that time he''d handled the hides of over twenty animals, having skinned, cleaned, and tanned them all by hand. Though most days it was a bloody, smelly process that left him stained and raw through the night, he recalled it fondly anyway. He had never been allowed to keep or wear any but the worst furs, the ugly bits his mother cobbled into warm but ill-looking clothing. The best had always been sold to provide for the family''s needs. He''d often wondered what it might be like to have a proper fur coat. Now, it seemed, he could find out.


    For the first time in his journey as a cultivator, Qing Liao felt himself again.


    Doubt vanished. He knew this would be his path. It even fit his weapons. The bow would serve against demons, but it was also a hunter''s tool, and daggers would serve to skin and dress game in addition to cutting throats.


    Find a great beast beneath the stars. Step behind it in a flicker of swift motion. One arrow through the heart. Fur reclaimed from the fallen. Rendered into garments for the sect thereafter.


    A simple dream, but Liao found he suddenly wanted it more than anything. A cycle he could complete himself, matching the qi taken into his body and soul, and repeat endlessly.


    Perhaps others possessed dreams of complexity and grandeur, but he was happy with the grounded path. Whether it came from the influence of his parents or entirely from within, this sufficed. Others, he suspected, might mock this. They had heads filled with legends of the ancients. He could never match that, but neither did he wish too.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    After all, he''d never expected to become a cultivator. Why should he, whose dreams differed, conform to traditional expectations?


    He was not able to proclaim this choice immediately, for the elder took only a few questions prior to dismissing the recruits for the evening meal. Yu Yong then explained to the class that, for the remaining four days of the week, all of the elders would be present. They intended to work with interested recruits in order to discover which of the many techniques the pavilions possessed suited the first steps of their personal artistry. This, he stated, absolutely required one-on-one interaction.


    Liao found it impossible to meditate effectively that night. Sleep was only achieved after he worked himself down to exhaustion by practicing the Stellar Flash Steps, and that arrived only fitfully. He came awake instantly at the bell in the morning.


    Shortly after breakfast, he walked into a practice yard transformed. The training dummies were gone, replaced by twelve small tents, each with an elder standing behind a low table advertising their respective pavilion. The elders reclined on modest couches, goods spread before them, and idly worked on some small aspect of their craft. They appeared completely relaxed, as if ready to speak to anyone who just happened to pass by.


    It made for a somewhat amusing illusion.


    Zhou Hua shattered the tableau instantly by walking directly toward the alchemy elder as if drawn on a string. Without the slightest hesitation she dropped to her knees before the elderly-seeming woman, pressed her head to the ground, and asked for acceptance. ¡°Honored elder, it is my greatest desire to be permitted entry into the Alchemy Pavilion.¡±


    The white-haired cultivator quirked a brief smile at this. ¡°Decent manners on this one, at least,¡± she remarked, eyes laughing as she looked back toward Yu Yong. ¡°Get up girl, this is the path of kings, not beggars. Grab the mortar and pestle there,¡± she pointed a slender finger in direction. ¡°And let us see what the dao has to say upon the matter, shall we?¡±


    With trepidation dispelled in this way, the other students advanced quickly toward their chosen pavilions, only a handful hesitated, torn by last minute doubts.


    Out of the eighteen, Liao discovered he was the only one to chose textiles. This was, it quickly became apparent, unremarkable. No more than three students picked any single pavilion, farming being chosen by a trio, and aside from a handful of pairs, the remaining pavilions acquired a single new student. No one picked husbandry, and the swarthy elder with a very long mustache representing the pavilion graced the class with a glare of extreme disappointment thereafter.


    The textile pavilion''s elder sat lightly on a cushion and worked upon an embroidery piece in pale silk. Several multi-colored threads rested beneath her knees. When Liao approached she ignored his presence until her stitch was completed and the needle put aside. The thread she tied off for later resumption of the project. Only when this was done did she examine the recruit before her.


    She appeared young, this elder, and possessed the sort of perfected form that all such advanced cultivators possessed. Inevitably, Liao compared her appearance to Su Yi, and the beauty who carried him to the city won that contest. This woman displayed similarly arrested aging, with flawless skin and features, but unlike the gorgeous doll-like elegance the disciple had been refined to display, the elder was not a true beauty. Her body was willowy and thin, critical curves were missing and her back was too long to provide a truly enticing natural posture. She intimidated through the majesty of her presentation, but did not innately inflame desire.


    Her outfit, robes of incredibly thin silk almost blindingly white in their bleached shade, gave off the impression of a woman wearing finery that belonged to a much prettier younger sister.


    Not that Liao would ever give voice to such observations, for this woman''s nearly black narrow eyes instantly revealed that her outward youth was a complete lie. Though she looked no more than twenty-five, this woman had seen many centuries pass. He doubted she was significantly younger than any of the other gathered elders, several of whom wore their longevity openly upon their flesh. She achieved the impression of youth not through rapid growth but instead by the greater strength of her cultivation. Though his qi sense remained rudimentary, every droplet condensed into his dantian strengthened it. Up close, it was enough to allow a rough gauge. Seven layers in each major realm; all those gathered were blue-belted spirit tempering realm elders, but this woman was in the seventh layer, on the very cusp of the transition to the soul forging realm. She held her power back tightly, but in proximity the mask fell away, and leaked out undeniable might.


    ¡°Honored elder,¡± Liao bowed with his face pressed to the earth. ¡°It is my great desire to be permitted entry into the Textiles Paviliion.¡± Lacking any better ideas regarding formal address, he simply repeated Zhou Hua''s invocation verbatim.


    ¡°You are not a weaver, a felt-maker, a knitter, or anything similar,¡± the elder declared this as absolute truth from a single glance. She possessed a flattened face with a high forehead and narrow chin. Her jewelry, ubiquitous on elders, was worn entirely as a series of interlocking necklaces. She''d grown out her glossy black hair till it reached below her waist and held this in a single train using a complex arrangement of ribbons and knots. Liao suspected there were over one hundred such binds, and that they were far more than mere ornamentation.


    ¡°So,¡± the interrogation flipped around. ¡°What are you seeking from us?¡±


    Thinking with desperate haste, Liao pointed at the elder''s feet. Unlike all the recruits, clad in simple slippers despite the cold, the representative of the textiles pavilion wore a pair of ankle-high boots covered in gray fox fur stitched with images of dancing deer that all but laughed at the very idea of cold mornings. He was fairly certain that if he tried to purchase such boots it would cost more money than he''d ever seen in his life, and that was before applying the surely astronomical value of the qi constructs infused into them during creation. ¡°I wish to devote myself to materials of this type.¡±


    ¡°Hides and furs?¡± the elder slowly raised a single narrow, effortlessly smooth, eyebrow. ¡°They certainly have their uses, but if your interest is primarily in the functional, perhaps the armoring pavilion would suit you better.¡±


    There was no rancor added to this question, no effort to display superiority. The elder''s manner of speech was ordinary, suited to everyday conversation. Her inquiry appeared casual, and truly genuine.


    Liao had considered this, it had consumed him throughout lunch. Now, faced with the dark eyes and earnest attention of someone vastly above his own existence, he made a final effort to examine his motives. If he had missed something, anything, in his choice, he needed to discover it now.


    For some time he was silent, churning through the differences in presentations between the two pavilions, scouring his memory for the proper way to justify the decision he felt, he knew intuitively, was correct. In the end, he came back to the same answer as before. ¡°I want to produce, not simply combine,¡± he told the waiting elder at last. ¡°I do not wish to sit in a workshop handling that which others have gathered, I want to find my own components.¡±


    ¡°Reasonable,¡± a single small nod returned. ¡°Harvesting focused paths are rare, but their pedigree is ancient and unassailable. Leather and fur, even before they become garments, offer presentation all their own. I think a focus on tanning and the use of leather in other arts may be suitable for you, perhaps with an emphasis on the production of items used in ritual and formations. We shall see, four days ought to suffice, with only one student.¡±


    She reached down beneath her table and pulled free a small roll of tools, bound in leather casing and with knotted chord. Undoing this and placing it between them, she revealed a set of implements so finely made that Liao had to repeatedly swallow to avoid drooling openly in front of the elder. One glance was enough to make it clear that no ordinary smith had produced these. The echoes of the qi used into their fashioning positively wafted across precisely formed surfaces. He glanced over to stare at the blacksmithing representative without realizing it.


    ¡°Not bad, that observation,¡± the elder noted. ¡°It is called the Twelvefold Panoply for a reason. In time you will absorb the basics of all the arts, for one cannot reach the narrow heights without a broad base, but for now, focus will bring its own rewards.¡± She pulled free the first tool, a skinning knife with perfect mirror edges that gleamed as the sunlight wrapped around an edge sharper than his eye had the power to resolve, even with qi pushed into the organ. ¡°I am Elder Fu Jin. Tell me your name recruit, that we may begin.¡±


    ¡°Qing Liao,¡± he answered to a face suspended in an unreadable smile.

 Chapter Eleven: Body Refining

    Elder Fu Jin spent several days studying and assessing Qing Liao. At the end of that period she presented him with a thick manual, one easily larger than the three he''d already received combined, titled Primal Pelt Perfected Purification Practice. Despite the rather absurd title, traceable to an ancient cultivator of the old world with a terrible sense of self-promotion, it was an immensely practical treatise that described, in excruciating detail, countless methods of skinning, curing, tanning, shaping, and carving hides into endless forms and types of leather products. In addition to this central text, she plied him with an entire shelf worth of books describing tools, varieties of hide-bearing animals, salt manufacture, tanning reagents, and more. The elder made it utterly clear that she believed in a strong foundation of knowledge before advancing towards actual practice.


    She also suggested, without bothering to be gentle, that the actual production of goods was an entirely secondary result of artistry. The point of the work was to developed meditative calm and a means of opening the mind toward enlightenment through varied experiences that invoked the endless aspects of the infinite dao. Self-improvement, not manufacturing output, was the ultimate goal. ¡°A cultivator is not a laborer, they are an artist. If ten thousand failures must be torn apart to produce one masterpiece, so be it.¡±


    In the fifth week of instruction the schedule changed. New material was no longer introduced, and Yu Yong''s lectures reached their conclusion. The class was instead directed to spend their entire day pursuing mastery of the techniques they been taught. The Celestial Infusion Method was, they were instructed, to be their primary priority. They were ordered to focus on filling their dantians and to endlessly practice the channeling of qi through the will as they progressed towards breakthrough into the body refining realm proper. The art exhibition, and even weapon practice, it soon became very obvious, represented abilities something they were not truly ready to embrace. Instead, they had been given these choices as an incentive. They were being taught to delay the pursuit of immediate gratification, a preparation necessary for their lives to come in the pavilions, with its vast freedom and endless luxurious temptations.


    In theory, it was possible to break through to the first realm at any time once the dantian was filled to the brim. With this milestone passed additional qi would naturally flow to the first meridian, the heart meridian, if properly directed by the cultivator''s will. That achievement unlocked the first layer of the body refining realm, forming the simplest possible qi circuit within. Each completed layer would further increase the size of the dantian as it worked to draw in qi to supply the growing circuit. This progress would also enhance the body, bringing it up to the peak of natural human health and physical ability by degrees.


    Elder Yu Yong, perhaps trying to encourage them, implied this was not an especially challenging achievement. ¡°The body naturally wishes to find its ideal state. And the process of refining, though it produces some temporary discomfort, greatly improves health, energy, and stamina. You will feel better than ever each day, the first signs of the great elevation to come.¡±


    Everyone agreed, in silent compact, that Zhou Hua would be the first member of their class to take this step. She was as close to a genius as they possessed, and though her physical development lagged behind her spiritual, this would not hold her back in advancement at this stage. She might well leave them behind at any point during the fifth week.


    Beyond that, competition for second place was considerably fiercer, with Liao surprised to realize he might have a legitimate chance at taking the spot. This discovery incentivized him to spend even more time in meditation. Sitting on the roof for a great many dark hours, he watched the stars chart their endless motions across the sky. Progress continued to accelerate night by night. By the end of the fiftieth day, two days after Zhou Hua became the first to graduate from their class, he felt the moment within reach. His dantian felt full, a real reservoir of power swollen within his form, detectable by his nascent qi sense for the first time.


    This was not enough, however, to make him a cultivator. Qi supply was no longer the problem, he had enough. The difficulty was wielding it. The Stellar Flash Steps, intended to teach him the necessary skill, refused to yield to his efforts.


    He could not sustain the discharge of power through the interrupted path from one stance to the next. This critical first plunge continued to elude his understanding. Nothing he tried, and he engaged in one variation after another, worked. This bred frustration, especially when he inevitably compared himself to Zhou Hua, who had surpassed him despite her initial hopelessness with the movement technique.


    It was hard to ignore the differences in the mornings when the class number decreased from eighteen to seventeen.


    Day after day, Liao continued his stumbling attempts to master the foundational movement technique. More than anything else, this was the central block. Archery practice, undertaken as a break between other sessions, went far better. The methods taught by the Nine Spheres Arsenal, to draw and aim and release, differed from those he''d learned at his father''s side, but adaptation was swift and easy. It helped that everything he did using the cultivator method felt better, a more effective approach even when no qi was utilized to strengthen string or arrow. Nor did already learned methodology hold him back, for the intent of the art was entirely different. Killing demons was nothing like hunting deer. Different bow, arrows, and arrowheads; everything shifted toward this alternate purpose.


    He had to learn to shoot all over again, but that was simply pure fun.


    Similar progress attended his studies of tanning and leatherwork. Though the little courtyard where the recruits practiced offered no chance to perform any physical artistry, Liao made strides reading through the technique and stack of references Elder Fu Jin had left him. His reading speed, vocabulary, and grammar, once rudimentary, expanded considerably as he puzzled out various diagrams and instructions in the carefully labeled manuals.


    His discontent at the lack of progress with the movement technique did not grow acute until, at the end of the sixth week, a second member of their class graduated to the body refining realm. Liao had no problem with matters taking their time, that was ordinary enough. He could be patient. But to be overtaken from behind, that spurred him to anger and furious frustration. He was the hunter, not the prey. Losing ground compared to the average was one thing, being surpassed was intolerable.


    Such unsettled emotions did not assist him in obtaining progress.


    Elder Yu Yong had instructed recruits for over half a century. He had a good sense of his students and the various struggles they might face. After several days of fruitless effort in which Qing Liao achieved nothing but spinning in circles as he stumbled through the postures of the Stellar Flash Steps, he walked up beside the youth.


    ¡°It can be hard to emulate light,¡± the elder''s words came from seemingly far away, for the advanced cultivator had not turned to look at him. Liao, shocked from his consternation by this strange neglect, later realized it had been deeply deliberate. He was meant to be unsettled, moved aside from the trap of his own mind. ¡°We cannot see it move, no matter how we try, but we can feel it, even as you can feel my presence through I stand behind you beyond the reach of your sight.¡± The sudden shift in position jolted Liao so hard he practically jumped. ¡°In this way, we often deceive ourselves. You, born to mountain trails, came here knowing how to move your body through the complexity of the wild, you do not smash about like these farmers or stumble as the city-born. Your instincts tell you where you should go, even when that is not where light must carry you, this is your obstacle.¡±


    The elder held out a strip of thick black cloth. ¡°For today, bind your eyes, forget your sight and let qi alone guide you. Feel the stars without seeing them, as if on a cloudy night.¡±


    This advice offered little initial confidence. Liao put the blindfold on hesitantly, knowing that attempting this method would result in a truly endless series of bruises. Despite this, he could not possibly defy the elder, and he certainly had no better ideas. It could be endured for an afternoon.


    Perhaps it truly would help.


    Finding the softest patch of the earth remaining in the yard, a difficult task given the pounding the recruits regularly imposed upon it, he put the black barrier over his eyes. ¡°A cloudy night,¡± a mere whisper beneath his breath. The sign to begin.


    Carefully taking up the initial, basal, position of the Stellar Flash Steps, he pulled the image of the second into his mind''s eye. Feeling without sight, the strange touch of qi increased in clarity, a minor but noticeable gain compared to previous efforts. A subsonic hum along the edges of his scalp, tingling upon the skin, its presence shifted in and out of awareness, the universe pulsating. As he''d been taught, Liao extended his presence, his being, along those tendrils of energy. Gathering will and compressing muscles in readiness, he pushed.


    A streak of blinding blue light exploded across the inside of his eyes. Motion burst out through his limbs. Momentum wrapped around his body and impelled him through sudden, unbelievable, acceleration. Ten steps in one, he cascaded over the ground, landing in at another point halfway across the yard.


    Perfectly detonated qi-empowered motion.


    Quickly as it manifested, his grasp on the primordial power of the stars evaporated. Rather than accelerate to the third position or slow back into the poised readiness of the first, he completely lost control. The line of light vanished from his overwhelmed perception.


    He slammed hard into the packed earth, face full of dirt and limbs askew.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    ¡°Ugh,¡± groaning, he rolled over, clenched his teeth against the pain, and did his best to take stock of the results. Though there was damage, a quick examination suggested nothing worst than the seemingly perpetual bruising he acquired every day. Most of the students had such black-and-blue mapping across their limbs, but everyone had become used to ignoring anything less than a broken bone. That should not have been possible, normal people who suffered such battering got worse and worse as the detriments added to each other, compounding, but even as barely functional cultivators the recruits benefited from a powerful enhancement to their natural restoration rates. The act of drawing qi into their bodies offered a well of energy to empower cellular repairs.


    Liao heard snickering as he got to his knees and dusted himself off, but it was only a little and quickly faded. Mastery of the movement art had come seamlessly to only one of their number. Everyone else had ended up with a face full of earth more than once. He only wished he was the not the leader of that particular tabulation.


    To his surprise, when he raised the blindfold he found Elder Yu Yong standing beside him, face stern but patient. The instructor did not help him stand, of course, but waited contentedly until his student was upright before speaking. ¡°Good form on the first move,¡± this confirmation was a great aid in dismissing embarrassment. Ridiculous as the exercise had been, there had been results. ¡°You felt something?¡± It was not truly a question, merely a prompt to offer Liao a proper chance to explain things in his own words.


    ¡°Yes, elder,¡± he was careful not to stare at the superior cultivator''s qi-perfected form. ¡°There was a, ah, flash, a blue streak of energy. It pulled me along somehow.¡±


    ¡°A solid insight,¡± Yu Yong declared. He did not elaborate. ¡°Now, repeat the process until you can control that image. That will be your first true use of qi.¡±


    There was nothing to do but nod in agreement. It would be pointless to ask for further advice. Liao could feel the truth in the elder''s words, simply but weighty. He''d felt the exertion of his qi without truly seeing it. That was enough. Mastery depended upon repetition. Any villager ever taught their father''s skills knew this intimately.


    He walked back to his starting point, pulled the blindfold back down, and prepared for a long and painful afternoon. A controlled second step, he declared that as his silent goal. Stopping without falling. That would surely represent sufficient control for now.


    It took twelve days.


    He sprawled in the dirt, pained and ragged, hundreds of times. Every speck of his skin ached. The barracks servants sent angry glances his way after swapping out his ripped and stained white robes for new ones each morning, devastated past any easy cleaning. Liao did not care. He felt the progress grow, slow though it might be. His body could push qi through muscle and bone, release it into a burst of motion, however slowly and lacking precision.


    The feeling this brought was liberating, energy moved through his body, pulled from his lungs using the Celestial Induction Method and filling his dantian till it felt ready to burst.


    Nightly meditations compressed the reservoir to the very edge of what it could contain. At the same time as he acquired control over the basics of cultivator motion he found his understanding of the essentials rose up to match it. His dantian, that inexplicable storehouse of natural energy, could take him no further on its own. He needed to join it to the rest of him, to all that was Qing Liao. The time had come to take the first step as a cultivator, to push qi out from that pool and into the heart meridian. The first and most essential of connection points.


    Liao found this revelation, and the readiness to take the next step bound up with it, while he sat on the roof and starred at the stars. Seated there in the cold, he knew he could have begun immediately. The manual, the simple and profound words of the Celestial Mother, had already taught him how. He knew, without the slightest shadow of doubt, that it was possible. Zhou Hua had conducted her breakthrough beginning in the middle of the midday meal. Nothing held him back from pushing forward beneath the wheeling starlight.


    But the mountains taught all trappers, even young ones, caution. Haunted by the possibility that he might thrash and contort his body during the advancement process ¨C Zhou Hua had not, but the next boy had experience physical spasms sufficient to tear his cushion apart ¨C Liao waited until he was not seated atop a roof and knew the elder''s protection was watching over him before daring this critical push. It was not, perhaps, in tune with the reckless Heaven-defying spirit invoked endlessly in cultivator legend, or even the ruthless self-assurance that spoke out from within the many manuals, but he did not, try as he might, see himself that way.


    He had not sought to walk this path on the edge of maddened desperation; it, his very nature, had placed it before him. He would walk it in his own way, on his own time.


    That felt right for him, even if it meant losing strides to some. After all, those in the celestial ascendancy realm were immortal. Surely that meant the path to ascension was not a race.


    The next day began in what had become ordinary cultivator fashion. He washed, dressed, ate the provided breakfast, and then walked the short distance to the training hall. He was not the first to arrive. One of the farm boys made a point of arriving exceedingly early each morning to secure this status, but he was perfectly within the bounds of punctuality. Fifteen students remained. Three had already moved on to their pavilions.


    That was, Elder Yu Yong had made clear, considered excellent progress. Anyone who advanced in under two months was accounted swift, a gifted cultivator. Qing Liao intended to expand the group to four by the end of the day.


    As he began, taking up the usual meditative posture on his assigned cushion, he structured his breathing according to the directions of the Celestial Induction Method. After only a few carefully controlled breaths he felt qi begin to flow into him, a gentle stream of stellar essence. This energy filled his body with vitality. Morning aches and the pains of the day before vanished as he inhaled.


    Normally Liao would continue this process, drawing additional qi through his lungs and pressing it down into his dantian, but the feeling of fullness stopped him. If he did that, as he had learned the night before, compression would fail and the excess qi would simply slip away back into the ambient environment. This time he needed to add an additional step to the process.


    Finding his way to the heart meridian had been simplicity itself. It was located within the heart, and once he awakened to the ability to sense qi it was nothing more than a matter of following his own heartbeat down. Directing qi there utilized the same spiritual path, but it was slightly more complicated. Qi did not like to move from places where it rested. Simply trying to grasp and pull upon it failed completely.


    Prior training revealed the proper method. Liao imagined within himself a line of light, glowing faintly, that connected dantian to meridian. After that, it was simply a matter of drawing the droplets down that string one breath at a time, letting the vibration carry it all the way through.


    Theory, the clarion words of Orday, made it sound simple. In practice it was rather like pushing as hard as could in order to dig a hole on a lakebed while mud rushed into fill it from all sides. The effort needed was immense. Within the first three breathing cycles we was exhausted. Without meditation training and endless hours of practice to prepare the way he would have surely collapsed having barely begun. Every fragment of his focus was grasped, oriented, and directed toward this task.


    Awareness of the rest of the world vanished.


    Worse, it hurt. The heart meridian did not wish to take the qi. Unlike the dantian, it was not empty. Qi droplets did not simply fall into open space, they had to be injected, forcing open new space as they came, carve a channel through dry clay. Liao had seen medicine pressed into a man''s jaw once, treating rot in the gums. Though a heavily built woodcutter, he''d howled and wailed like a baby.


    That same pressure afflicted him now, but not in the jaw, in the heart.


    His body protested this change being inflicted upon it. The closed meridian resisted, measure by measure, until qi forced open the path, an awl of liquid cutting through his very being. He could not stop, no matter how it hurt. He had to hang on until the process finished, otherwise everything would be wasted.


    Clenching his teeth, Liao pulled every part of his body tight. He could not feel the air, the cold, could not hear any sounds. Only pain and the need to keep breathing, keep forcing the power down the glowing line.


    More and more qi passed down that rippling chord of energy, plunged into the meridian. Power flushed through him, flooded his pores. Detritus lodged in the meridian, ignored and unused, was forced out.


    A circuit slowly took shape within the map of his existence.


    He did not cry out. Focus pushed him to a place beyond awareness of pain. Instead, he crumpled, his body deflating as the effort piled heavy boulders of exhaustion upon him with each intake of air. It took everything he had to catch the next gasp. Nothing remained save qi and will, the very center of cultivation laid bare in that moment of endless, exquisite tension.


    A window to the universe, if it could ever be recalled beyond the eclipse of agony.


    Until the stream of qi broke through.


    Relief flooded Liao, though his overtaxed body, slumped lifelessly on the paving, barely managed a weak grunt. Visibly, nothing had changed. On the inside, the differences were endless, profound. A circuit not streamed within him, qi carried in an endless loop from dantian to heart meridian, sturdy and sustained. As each droplet passed through this cycle he felt it refine further, compressed beyond previous limits. Tempered in his chest, strengthened, the qi returned to his dantian and cause an almost imperceptible expansion of the receptacle with every pulse of induction.


    Instinctively, he recognized that this would grow and grow, especially as each successive meridian was opened and the circuit grew in size and complexity. Layer by layer, until the origin would be barely recognizable. Already, felt in the depths of his body, he could deduce that an immense amount of qi, flushed through seven connected meridians, would be needed to progress beyond his new state.


    This was barely the beginning. The first step on a journey of millions.


    Despite such soaring realizations, this single stride''s important was not lost on him. Qing Liao stood up, his pain suddenly completely forgotten, and with a simple exertion of his newly mobile qi, took the deepest lung-filling breath of his entire life. He felt as if he could run forever, and only barely held back from putting that assertion to the test.


    He was not, after all, alone. Elder Yu Yong stood before him. The stern-faced cultivator had adopted a wide smile. He held a bright red belt stretched between his hands, palms upwards. ¡°Congratulations, Qing Liao, you are now a full-fledged initiate of the Celestial Origin Sect. Your time in my class has come to an end. You are now an honored member of the Aesthetic Society of Exquisite Threadweavers,¡± he used the full name of the textiles pavilion, reserved for formal occasions. There could hardly be a more suitable one.


    ¡°I shall not see you again for some time, I expect, but it is my hope that you recall this class with fondness and that its lessons serve your well.¡± He passed over the belt, waiting patiently as Liao pulled free the white one and tied the new, crimson, marker in place. ¡°Return to your room and gather your possessions. A representative of your pavilion will be along shortly to take you to your new accommodations.¡±


    There was nothing else. No goodbyes. The morning activities of the remaining fourteen recruits were not even paused. Several continued meditating through the entire process. No one else would follow him to the textiles pavilion, not until at least next year. It made Qing Liao glad he had not made friends, there was no one to leave behind.


    In the future, he hoped, that would change. He had come to his proper place as a cultivator at last. Though he had made his self-imposed deadline, it felt as it if it had taken too long all the same.

 Chapter Twelve: Killing Fields

    Elder Fu Jin, slender and eerily pretty in her ominous power, was the one who came to pick Qing Liao up. She also gave him a different version of the red belt that marked him as a body refining cultivator, one she claimed was ''appropriately suited'' to a member of the textiles pavilion. Where the belt provided by Yu Yong had been little more than a cleverly dyed chord, this slender sash was silk, soft and smooth. It felt perfectly refined beneath his fingertips, and instantly took up position as the finest garment he''d ever owned.


    He swapped the belts right away.


    ¡°Come with me,¡± Fu Jin did not waste time. Liao fell in behind her at once, matching his pace to the tall elder''s long stride. This would have been something of a challenge mere hours before, but now he found that qi naturally flowed through his frame and allowed him to keep up with the lengthy steps without any extra effort.


    To his surprise, he discovered that their path did not head towards the Textiles Pavilion, at least not immediately. Though he had yet to visit any of the great compounds, they represented the largest buildings on sect grounds by a significant margin, and it was possible to recognize where each one roughly lay. Liao had a good sense of direction, he did not make basic orientation mistakes easily. Instead, he recognized that they had another destination in mind, one found at the very edge of the sect''s control.


    The seventh tower of the Starwall, the private domain of Grand Elder Uzay.


    Something in Liao''s cadence must have betrayed his trepidation, for Fu Jin spoke before he could voice any words of concern. ¡°We will get you to your new quarters soon enough,¡± she spoke mildly, almost amused, though the power coiled up within her was such that she intimidated merely by default, no vocal modulation necessary. ¡°But you are a proper initiate of the sect now. It is time for you to learn what that truly means, and the truths central to the sect lie along the Starwall.¡±


    The barrier was certainly one that could not be missed. Not only did it tower above sect and city alike, its ramparts higher than any building in the entire hidden land, it stood apart in manner of construction. Starwall City mostly gave off earthen shades, a reflection of the earth and wood from which it had been fashioned. The sect grounds, by contrast, had a reddish tinge, sourced to the distinctive, tightly grained wood of the conifers used to form the walls and the clay sourced to form its bricks. The wall stood a single, monochrome shade of charcoal gray, completely without variation along its immense length. The primary masonry, access stairwells, soaring towers, and defensive crenelations all shared this pattern-less coloration, to the point that in dim light the outline blurred in lurid manner. A nearly black stone, cut, leveled, and mortared into place surrounding a strengthened from of alchemist-treated steel formed its structure.


    A man wielding a spade could carve a hole in a city wall in minutes. One with a saw or axe could do much the same in the sect, if not quite so swiftly. Nothing could damage the Starwall in that way. Even a strong man wielding hammer in chisel could work for hours and fail to strike so much as a chip from that stone, though he would surely ruin his tools in the effort. To overcome the least of it required the strength of a cultivator.


    Nor did the stone stand guard alone. Colored flags, perfectly oriented and organized according to abstract mathematical principles, indicated the presence of numerous overlapping defensive formations. Constructs of channeled qi, they were invisible to the eye, but no less potent for that limitation. Liao knew that one of those formations was so powerful that its forbiddance applied even to Grand Elders, barring all from flying over the wall and within the Killing Fields. Birds, notably, gave the barrier a wide berth.


    Beyond that, the other protections were secret, capable of unleashing devastation he could only guess at.


    Cultivators patrolled the wall with weapons bare. They were widely dispersed, for the enclosure was lengthy and their numbers few, but the presence of any visitor would be both felt and observed. Some of those dictated to patrol wore everyday robes, flashes of white against the dark background. Others wore blood red battle armor of various designs. None appeared happy to fulfill the duty of standing that post.


    ¡°As a body refining realm initiate you will be expected to patrol the wall for one week in every ten,¡± Fu Jin explained. She did not look back to gauge the reaction of her newest student. ¡°You are not expected to fight any stray demons, but to keep watch and sound the alarm if the enemy is sighted. Should a horde arise you, like every other member of the sect, will take you place upon the Starwall in battle.¡±


    These words offered a measure of relief. Liao was good with the bow, but only in the accounting of everyday village life. His rudimentary practice of the bow arts of the Nine Spheres Arsenal offered little potency in a cultivator''s battle. There was a great deal of study and training remaining before he could even consider himself capable according to his new rank. Rather than question the declared duties, he simply remained silent.


    Fu Jin pointed to the nearest set of access stairs. ¡°Come, and mind your footsteps. The steps can be slick on cold mornings.¡±


    He obeyed. All too soon they strode up that short, narrow ascent and laid their eyes upon a vista bared from the eyes of the million souls protected by the Starwall. Under their feet lay a construct of immense power, designed to guard a fragment of humanity from one of far greater devastation. Beyond it lay the Killing Fields, the portion of Mother''s Gift sacrificed that the demons might never penetrate past the critical defensive barrier.


    The top of the wall was narrow, designed facilitate cultivator battles, not the clash of armies. It would hold no more than two people walking abreast. Fighting here would be confined, favoring sharp weapons over grand techniques. Regular crenelations with arrow slits and murder holes broke the outer face apart at steady intervals. Arrows, stones, pitch, and other tools of defense were laid beside these blocks, kept in endless readiness against the inevitable arrival of a demon horde.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    Wind blew over the wall, brisk and chill with the winter morning. This stirred puddles of water atop the stones, slick and cold. Not even cultivators could keep such a vast barrier perfectly level for twenty-five hundred years.


    These thoughts flashed through Liao''s mind, rapidly, only to vanish when Fu Jin pushed him against the ramparts and bade him stare outward.


    Beyond the wall lay an expanse like nothing the young man had ever seen.


    It was a cleared landscape, covered in short grass. Though not a farmer, he knew it must have been deliberately planted and regularly grazed by sheep to produce such cleanly clipped stubble. It was even possible to observe a handful of the blob-like gray grazers in the distance. All resemblance to ordinary fields ended there.


    No trees, no a one, were allowed to grow on that surface. Nor was the land laid out in orderly shapes with clean lines in the manner of any farm or pasture. A hideous assembly of ditches scarred the space, cut in jagged and overlapping fashion, as if the land itself had been savaged by a giant child wielding an equally massive rake. Many were laced by rows of sharpened stakes and filled with rank stagnant water.


    Walls of sharpened logs, or low stones topped with edge-facing slate fragments, divided up this ditch-devastated expanse. Raised platforms were scattered about, mounds of stone and earth a meter or two high and girded by stout palisades. Short towers were also found in equally pattern-less distribution, many linked by long spans of taught rope creaking in the absent wind. Piles of brush, dried and ready to burn, blocked every lane and channel.


    Though his eyes searched with the seasoned instincts of a bushwhacker, Liao could not find a single open stretch that allowed one to walk more than a half-dozen strides in a straight line.


    Aside from the base blanket of grass and the woolen mowers that maintained that state, the landscape was entirely lifeless. Forbidden flight by the unseen formation, there were no birds. A strange scent clung to the air, not sensed with the nose, but on the edge of qi perception. This lingering sensation took some moments to recognize, but no one who''d lived village life could truly forget the smell of blood. These fields were rank with it, stained down to the very bedrock until the very qi bore the mark of iron-rich liquid. The energy flow of the land itself bathed in warm crimson.


    ¡°Behold the Killing Fields,¡± Fu Jin whispered from behind Liao''s left ear. ¡°The landscape of battle, where the demons are met when they come, and thrown back at a price too dear every time.¡±


    There were no demons on the field that day. In the distance, to the east, the air was clear. This sufficed to allow eyes to catch the blurry boundary, a place where it seemed fractured crystals clouded the horizon and the grass rippled and contorted. The passage to the Ruined Wastes of the rest of the world.


    Liao realized, automatically gauging distance from that height, that it was not far at all. Less than a day''s walk, even without use of his new movement technique, and he could cross that labyrinth of death and reach the barrier. Beyond lay a whole world, one a thousand times greater in all ways than this tiny bounded gift of ascendant divinity.


    A world he''d never seen. His knowledge came from stories only, the legends of the old world. The world lost to the demons.


    He wondered what it was like. This question came upon him suddenly, in reflection of the silence atop the Starwall. Not the old world that was lost, but the world beyond as it was now. Stories could not be trusted, only rare scouts ventured through the boundary, and those not far. Even within the sect, it seemed there were lies told of mountaintops that split the clouds, canyons deeper than the sky, and bodies of water ten thousand times the size of any lake. Whatever might be real in the Ruined Wastes, only the sight of one''s own eyes could be trusted. Nothing else could be relayed beyond the wall of mist and the passage of millennia.


    Liao wanted to know. It struck him suddenly. These Killing Fields were a barrier. They kept the land and people safe, a claim he firmly believed. The effort to maintain these fortifications was far from minimal. It was not done idly. Nor would cultivators spend a tenth of their lives atop walls if the posting was not essential, absolutely necessary. Despite this, he could see with the vision of new eyes and recognized that the wall worked in both directions. It kept the demons out, but confined the humans within. It was a rabbit hutch, this land crafted by the Celestial Mother. The Grand Elders taught that it had saved humanity, and he believed that.


    But now he wondered at the cost.


    Such thoughts, he recognized even through the limits of youthful ignorance, were best left unspoken. Instead, he offered an alternative inquiry to dispel the churning silence. ¡°Why alter the land like this?¡± He swept his hand outward to in the devastation of the Killing Fields. ¡°Is the wall not strong enough?¡±


    Fu Jin slowly and audibly took in a breath. ¡°Demons are strong. Stronger than any human without the aid of qi. They are equally solid, built like brick. Ordinary weapons wielded by mortal arms do not suffice. That is why we must be the ones to fight these battles. However,¡± the preternaturally serene face twisted into a dark frown. ¡°Demons lose much through the transformation of the plague. They are bestial things. They know neither fear nor hesitation. If left to run at a single barrier they will flood it. One to one, even a weak body refining realm cultivator such as you can defeat the least of demons, but against great numbers even elders are vulnerable. It is,¡± she paused, eyes rising upwards in thought. ¡°Have you ever watched ants as they raid?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Great mound-dwelling red-backed colonies were common in the higher slopes. He understood the intent immediately.


    ¡°All you see before you is designed to break apart a horde, to disperse the demons and disrupt their tidal wave attack in order to arrange favorable engagements. It works,¡± her expression was suddenly stone hard. ¡°Though there is a price.¡± She turned dark eyes upon him. ¡°As a new initiate, the wall is your station should a horde come. Hope that it does not. That is how most young cultivators are lost.¡±


    Elder Yu Yong''s lectures had contained the same warning, mingled with much discussion of a strange study known only to cultivators: warfare. Life in the villages and towns was not without violence. Drunkards fought amid their cups. Desperate souls sometimes attacked travelers on the roads. The jealous and vengeful took up knives against those they hated in the dark. Even animal attacks were not unknown. One of Liao''s cousins had been mauled by a bear when he was young.


    But mass conflict, men gathered in numbers and formed into ranks to set weapons upon each other, this was a lost thing, an aspect of the old world thoroughly slain by the plague, and rare even then. The sect ruled here, and if ordinary people came into conflict, cultivators settled it. Their power could not be challenged.


    Liao attempted to imagine hundreds, thousands, of monsters attacking the wall, swarming across the fields, and failed. It simply did not feature in his mind. ¡°Will a horde come? Soon?¡± He could think of nothing else to ask.


    ¡°It cannot be known,¡± the elder shook her head. ¡°Eventually, it is inevitable, but these things are unpredictable. Only traitors can comprehend the ways of the plague. All that can be done in preparation is to grow strong.¡±


    This instruction, simple and succinct though it was, did not satisfy. It was not in Liao to wait until the trap was closing around him before acting. Snares were his to spring, not to snap. It had been his whole life, and two months as a cultivator had not sufficed to strip that away.


    Fu Jin did not wait for an answer. ¡°Come, there is one more lesson you must learn.¡±

 Chapter Thirteen: Demons

    Fu Jin led them into Uzay''s tower. The door there was built of heavy planks faced with iron and backed by stout bars. Though the aperture was narrow, barely wide enough to admit a single human, Liao still believed he''d be unable to easily open that barrier, even unbarred. The elder''s slightest touch sufficed to pull it loose with ease. A casual demonstration of the power of qi and the easy mastery attached to higher realms.


    Once inside, they went down a spiral staircase shrouded in shadow. The only light available entered through narrow arrow slits or from strange chemical lanterns burning with eerie violet light. The stone steps were damp and slick, and Liao was forced to mind his footing with care. He doubted anyone lived in this part of the tower, not even servants, and recognized the difficulties attached to the steps as yet another layer of defense.


    They stepped off the stairs and entered a small rectangular room. It held no furnishings save the three wall-mounted sconces used for light. These, unlike those above, generated a soft white daylight shade that restored vision to its true color. Three of the walls in the room were of stout stone, but the fourth, the one he quickly realized faced east beyond the wall and toward the Killing Fields, was barred by an iron grating and backed by a series of wooden panels. These, fastened together by thick ropes, could be raised upwards into the ceiling in the manner of a city gate.


    Liao had no idea what the purpose of such a contraption might be, lodged deep inside a building.


    ¡°It is time for you to learn the true face of the enemy of all humans, and cultivators especially,¡± Fu Jin spoke these words with funerary seriousness. ¡°Stand here in the center,¡± she pointed to a spot on the floor marked in red. ¡°This exercise will test your qi senses. I will leave the room to make that possible.¡± This was absolutely necessary, for in the realm of energy and essence the elder shone like a bonfire. Standing next to her, any attempt to sense less powerful energies, including Liao''s own, was utterly overwhelmed.


    ¡°Do not worry, you are in no danger.¡± She briefly tapped the metal grating with a ring. It rang out with a strange sound, unlike any metal on metal contact familiar to Liao. ¡°This is a relic of the lost past, one even I would struggle to breakthrough swiftly.¡± As she turned and headed back up the stairs, Fu Jin smiled wistfully, her eyes unreadable.


    As the elder''s presence receded from his perception of qi, Liao stood in place. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes to increase his focus and extended his simplistic qi sense. It was a strange sensation, one he still struggled to properly process, as if hearing through the touch of his mind. Ambient energy surrounded him, as always, the soft and warm power that radiated down from the stars above. In the stones beneath his sandals he could also feel a fading echo of the rumbling and hot qi that bubbled up from the earth below, though he stood high enough off the ground that it was difficult to perceive.


    The tower itself held considerable qi, gathered in bands hard as steel, flowing through a complex assembly pattern layered atop the masonry. Attempting to so much as glance at them hurt, and Liao quickly pulled his senses back from those bars. Defensive formations, he supposed, the power bound up into this place by endless efforts from the sect. Above him, several rooms away and shielded by a considerable layer of stone, Fu Jin''s presence was still a bright light. Much further off, at the top of the tower, there was a molten spike of power, one that practically burned to brush against. That could only be Grand Elder Uzay, conducting her own daily meditations.


    These things, potent as they were, carried no surprises. Long proximity to Elder Yu Yong during the recruit class had accustomed him to the presence of elders, and any time he extended his feelings outward during nightly meditation he bounced back from the brilliant beacons of those Grand Elders working within the sect grounds. Formations too, ran throughout the elevated plateau, those within the tower were merely sharped and more defined.


    As he recognized and filed all these things away as ordinary, a single presence intruded against his perception. Something entirely different from everything, anything, he''d sensed before. A feeling that could never be described as normal.


    It fell into his qi sense as a hideous ball of burning rot. A trash fire of dead and discarded innards billowing smoke directly into his nose. Instinct pushed him to shake his head, to reject that awful, twisted wrongness, and he obeyed the impulse. That helped, slightly. The sensation grew more manageable as he examined it with the mental equivalent of a cloth over his face. It felt, somehow, reddish, though qi was beyond properties such as color, as if the natural energy contained within had somehow spoiled and been converted to decay.


    How the discordant source of such deviation, such disintegration, held together Liao could not understand, and his mind refused to even contemplate such possibilities. It made him want to vomit, just feeling this thing, for it was as if he''d been plunged into a barrel of excrement. He should not be there, should not be in contact with this wrongness. It needed to be cut away and burned, disposed of in the same manner as meat lost to gangrene.


    A slow rumbling noise distracted him and banished his growing nausea. The wooden wall panels were rising, hauled upwards by some mechanism tugging on the ropes. As they pulled away, it became possible to see the space beyond the metal grating, an opposite half of the chamber roughly identical to the one where Liao himself stood.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    His first hint was a bit of reddish tinge, reflected from a tiny puddle of water left standing on the floor. Then, as the process continued, he gained far greater clarity. The wood panels, impelled by devious mechanisms backed by inhumanly vast cultivator strength, slipped into the ceiling in a pair of heartbeats. The other side of the room was fully unmasked with great speed.


    Including its sole occupant.


    It resembled a human, in the broadest sense. Two arms, two legs, large head, narrow waist, and knees designed to walk upright across the ground rather than swing through the trees like a monkey. That gross outline was as far as the resemblance sustained. The thing''s skin was blood red, as if it had been flayed, but held its lithe muscles tightly wound to a body of strong build and deadly potential. The feet were over-sized, splayed wide with elongated broad toes that ended in grasping claws. This distended setup repeated itself across the hands, which were gigantic compared to the arms and equipped with knife-length cutting claws in place of nails. Even the arms were elongated, hanging down all the way to the center of the knees.


    At its waist the monster, and Liao now recognized that this thing was a ghoul, a member of the least class of demon, possessed nothing but a knot of bone. Whatever had once served to bring forth a new generation had ceased to operate and decayed.


    The face was jarringly human-like. A man missing their entire nose, with teeth filed to awl-points and lips ruined and savaged by the same. Oversize jaw muscles flanked bony growths that extended down from the scalp. This, combined with significant addition bone atop the plate of the skull, gave the impression that the demon, otherwise completely naked, was wearing a helmet.


    Clothes appeared unnecessary to the monster. The red skin was perfect, free of scars and blemishes, a state that Liao recognized with abject horror came from the thing''s need to feed on qi rather than meat. It held no tools in its hands, nor did the small chamber contain any. What had once been human had degenerated into a feral monster controlled by the power and influence of twisted, alien, plague qi.


    The demon stood idle in the center of the cell where it had been placed. It did not pace or shuffle, but seemed content, rather like a horse or cow in a stall, to remain standing still indefinitely. Subtle differences in bone and muscle compared to those of a human or monkey, visible due to the impossibly tight skin, suggested this to Liao from the way the thing held itself.


    It was not looking at him. It stared eastward, eyes seeming to bore through the wall beyond and toward the Ruined Wastes that lay far away there. As Liao watched the thing, studying the monster and comparing it to everything he''d seen in graven images and heard in old stories, it appeared completely unaware of him.


    This lasted perhaps half a minute until, in an effort to get a better look at the thing''s clawed hands, Liao took a single step forward.


    The rubbing contact of his sandal upon the smooth stone made little sound, but in that otherwise silent space it could be heard easily by both occupants.


    Reacting to the noise, the demon turned about. Initially, the motion was casual, unhurried, and distracted. The action of an animal stumbling through its instincts in the face of the unfamiliar. When the demon''s eyes, shockingly human in structure despite their red-on-red coloration, rotated about far enough to catch a glimpse of Liao this changed completely.


    Demons do not act as humans do. It did not reason or consider. Nor did it hesitate. It reacted purely based on the signal, in the manner of simple animals living lives crawling about within the light-less earth.


    It lunged.


    The red-shifted body hurled itself forward, straight at Liao.


    A hideous splattering noise split the air, muscle and bone connecting with unyielding metal at high speed. Cracks and crunches followed as the demon smacked against the floor. Despite the horrid audio accompaniment, this impact did the reinforced flesh of the thing nothing beyond superficial injury. It rose with shocking speed and threw its claws violently against the bars. Again and again the long arms struck the metal barricade, achieving nothing but shattered claw tips.


    Groans and guttural moans, cries of base emotion without any semblance of language or even animal communication, ripped free from the throat as the ghoul raged. Pain, fury, and desire all merged together, pulsing through the thing''s hideous mockery of proper qi. Nothing but the need to ravage the human before it motivated the demon.


    It took Liao no time at all to realize this thing desired to tear him apart and consume him. Not for his flesh, no such material nourishment powered this thing, its gut had atrophied away, leaving the skin nearly pushed against the spine above the waist, but for the qi in his dantian. Only through consumption of that power, the innate energy of the world not distorted by the plague powering this monster, could it assuage the terrible hunger that forced it to move, to strike, and to consume. That desire, and that alone, drove the ghoul.


    It was not a person. It was not even an animal. It was a weapon made of flesh, a destructive arrow of qi consumption launched by those who betrayed the world long ago.


    He wanted to put an arrow through the terrible red eyes. If his bow were at hand, he imagined that he would have done so, no matter than it would surely ruin the elders'' carefully assembled test. This thing, it radiated wrongness. Its existence was a stain upon the world. A violation he did not know how to properly name.


    Qing Liao had never been overly concerned with higher truths or great causes. A trapper''s son who expected to become a trapper, he mouthed the words directed during weekly services commemorating the Celestial Mother''s gift of salvation from the demon hordes without any real contemplation. It had all been so long ago, he''d never thought it would matter to him, never considered what it had truly meant.


    He did so now, at last, facing the thing before him. The conclusion the raging ghoul offered was simple and clear. ¡°This is my enemy,¡± he said to the maddened red face. ¡°I am a cultivator. This is my cause. It is righteous.¡±


    He added nothing more. It was not necessary.

 Chapter Fourteen: Anomaly

    Out of the twelve towers that guarded the Starwall, the northernmost and southernmost were by far the most isolated. The stood sentinel at the very boundary of the hidden land, with the curving mirror effect that framed the edge of the enclosed space visible from their bases. Land curved away from these outposts beyond the end of the wall, leaving no nearby communities that might offer a link to the rest of Mother''s Gift. Surrounded only by wilderness and forestry plots, they stood isolated from all other human construction.


    Few ever came to such points. Cultivators on patrol marched past and turned about smartly, eager to have reached the conclusion of one leg of their duty. They walked by in confidence that demons would find their way towards points with greater concentrations of natural qi. Defense was largely left to the resident grand elders, a state that suited both of them just fine.


    The northernmost tower, number twelve in the counting, was a stark thing. It entirely lacked any form of accommodation or welcome. Structurally, it was wholly devoted to defensive operations. A most formidable assembly of fortification. High-step stairs, narrow corridors, shrunken apertures, and thick doors all made access by any attacker nearly impossible to sustain. Demons seeking to climb the exterior faces were met by a truly extraordinary barrage of deadly spikes. Row after row, they coated the masonry with a density that would impress most cacti.


    A single interior room within the tower was used for accommodation, and this too barely served to meet that need. It featured a small sleeping couch without blanket or covering, a lap desk for reading and composition, and nothing more. Books lined high shelves, storage chests were shoved against walls covered in tapestries. Thick carpets coated the stone floor to several layers deep.


    The extensive decorations presented a unified theme. All featured extended abstract, mathematical imagery utilizing the starfield as a backdrop. Stars and planets danced in stillness across those pictographs according to complex numeric relationships sighting without thread a sequence of orbits and intersections charted thousands of years forward. A cunning observer could deduce the distant future from those images, assuming they could see them at all. The room was dark as night, no lights utilized at any time.


    It was only occasionally occupied, the tower''s mistress preferred to spend her time on the roof, where she kept her loom.


    Such was the domain of Itinay, twelfth of the Twelve Sisters, youngest of Orday''s disciples. She lived alone in her stony fortress. Some of her sisters kept bright halls, numerous servants, and even allowed chosen students to lodge with them. They held banquets and offered food in company.


    Not her. It did not fit her dao. Why keep food about when you had not eaten in millennia? Or waste fuel on bright light when blessed with the capacity to see perfectly in total darkness? Such things were distractions, frivolity. The true face of the universe was dark and cold. She refused to flinch from it. Instead, she it gathered close around her, attached it to the very presentation of her being.


    On the rare occasions when she desired company, warmth, or the presence of beautiful things she would journey to the Textiles Pavilion. It had them in abundance. The Sword Hall, endlessly ready to work her blade, offered a different sort of interruption. At such speed as she could command, the journey was a matter of moments. Nor was it as if she faced any strain upon her time.


    Instead she waited on the rooftop, watching and weaving. In this way she kept the vigil that her duty demanded without compromising her work. Deep within her mind she advanced countless complex calculations, in depth study of patterns and light conducted upon the canvas of an advanced cultivator''s mental projection. Contemplation of the long and narrow path toward ascension.


    Without the complete absence of distraction arranged through closed door cultivation she made minimal progress at best, but Itinay strove to assemble the endless fragments of the truth that skated across the night sky into coherent formulae that she might later seek to delve them for the enlightenment and realization they contained. An imperfect process, but at this stage no guides existed. Each path to the heavens was unique, and the skies treacherous.


    In such a state interruptions were unexpected, and usually unwelcome. Such messages as were necessary to allow her supervision of the pavilion and her sections of the sect could be sent on paper and answered the same. Few sought out a grand elder simply to bring them good news unanticipated.


    With the remarkable sensitivity of the second layer of the celestial ascendancy realm, and the absence of any other living forms nearby to offer any difficulty in differentiation, Itinay sensed the new arrival while she was still kilometers distant. Not that this provided much warning in terms of time. An elder on the edge of Soul Forging possessed immense command of the Stellar Flash Steps, and even simply walking along the wall unhurried could have outrun the best sprint of a mountain wolf. Early warning provided barely enough time to even begin speculating as to why Fu Jin might have come out to see Itinay in person.


    Private consultation, perhaps. The younger cultivator had long been a student subjected to more of Itinay''s personal attention than most. She was talented, and her progress on the path had been swift and sure. She stood on the cusp of the second great tribulation, the moment when the fully tempered spirit was used in the ultimate exercise of will: grabbing hold of the soul itself and slamming it into place to begin forging it into perfect fusion with the mind and body and the immortal existence that waited upon completion.


    A very dangerous process. No heavenly tribulation was anything other than severe. Itinay could recall her own, nearly three thousand years in the past, with perfect clarity. Most cultivators did not survive the attempt.


    Plausible, but the grand elder did not think the careful woman, who stood second in the reckoning of the Textile Pavilion, not counting Itinay herself, would have appeared unannounced to conduct personal business. Nor was it likely to be a matter of the lineage of cats they both charted across the centuries. Both could have been handled during one of her regular visits to the pavilion.


    Intuition, a sense any cultivator who''d reached the heights where Itinay walked learned to trust, suggested something truly unexpected had occurred. An incident the spirit tempering realm elder determined required the personal attention of a Grand Elder. No one had sounded one of the Starwall''s many alarms, so it was not an immediate crisis. Itinay trained her students too carefully for any of them to try and hide an emergency that imperiled the safety of the hidden land merely for the sake of pride.


    Unable to discern an obvious answer, she found herself genuinely curious; a very rare state indeed for one in her position. It would have been a welcome sensation, if not for the foreboding that walked in tandem alongside all such impulses. They did not live in a world of welcome surprises, not since the great betrayal. Otherwise, they would not be living behind a wall inside a mirror.


    Rather than force Fu Jin to navigate the maze that formed the tower''s interior, Itinay stood up upon her junior''s arrival. Moving to the edge of the roof, she leaned over and called out. ¡°Come directly to the top.¡± She did not shout, or raise her voice at all. The other cultivator could hear the words quite easily without such augmentation.


    Fu Jin obeyed the invitation. Unleashing the least exertion of her qi, the slender cultivator bent her knees and vaulted upward, carried in an arc tens of meters through the air. She landed with perfect poise atop a pale blue ring painted around the edge of the tower''s roof. The willowy cultivator''s hair whipped about briefly, stirred by this motion, before her will stilled it. Fu Jin bowed low upon arrival, pressing her hands together and bending at the waist.


    Itinay ignored the formal gesture. They might serve a function in the halls of the sect, but she found such affectations pointless in the confines of her private space. ¡°Welcome, come inside,¡± she opened the hatch door that offered access to her private room. There was no ladder, the five meter drop simply yawned in the darkness, but no one allowed to enter this place would have need of such aids. Fu Jin dropped down behind the grand elder without the least bit of difficulty.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    With a simple flick of her qi, Itinay projected a soft glowing light out from the tapestry attached to the ceiling. This bathed the room in soft orange light. The surrounding tapestries and carpets reflected back a thousand shades of blue. Taking up a seat on her couch, she offered a cushion to her guest. It was a simple thing, unadorned, but it had been made by the grand elder''s own hand. The blue-dyed wool on the surface was impossibly fine and smooth. The down within arranged in a perfectly supporting pattern achieved through layering each feather within a lattice of self-reinforcing qi. Sitting atop it was akin to perching on a bed of clouds. Such an object would never find its way to mortal hands, not at any price, but to the grand elder it was a mere idle practice piece.


    ¡°What brings you to see me?¡± she dispensed with all pleasantries the moment they both sat down.


    Fu Jin took a deep breath, her hesitation visible in both physical motion and the qi flowing through her nearly perfected spiritual presence. Such lack of confidence was rare. Though she appeared no more than thirty, the tall and slender woman was nearly four hundred years old. Despite this, Itinay recalled her as a fourteen-year-old girl, newly inducted into the Textiles Pavilion. Some barriers were only ever fully surpassed upon reaching even footing. Regrettably, for immortals that was terribly rare.


    Itinay did not especially enjoy the role of stern taskmaster, for all that in came easily to her, and waited for the younger woman to speak in her own time.


    ¡°There has been a...¡± Fu Jin paused, visibly choosing her words with great care. ¡°An anomalous development with regard to the newest member of our pavilion.¡±


    Itinay had been informed, of course, that a single member of the current crop of recruits had declared his intention to pursue the textile arts. She even recalled the youth, the trapper''s son from the mountains she''d met on New Year''s Day. The outcome had surprised her, a little. Most of those who entered into her oversight were young women from market towns or the sons of shepherds. She had briefly contemplated the possibilities attached to the acquisition of a dedicated leatherworker, something the pavilion had lacked for some time, but it would be decades at the earliest before his skills were able to stand on their own. ¡°What is this anomalous development?¡± She did not enjoy unnecessary ambiguity. ¡°Explain.¡±


    Recognizing her superior''s displeasure, Fu Jin swallowed. ¡°Something...strange happened during his demonic exposure.¡± She hurried ahead before any intermittent interval allowed speculation. ¡°Normally, the demon detects the initiate''s qi shortly after the elder departs and attacks at once. It always slams itself against the panels while they are still rising, clawing at everything. This time, that...did not occur. The demon completely ignored Qing Liao and continued facing towards the Ruined Wastes. It did not even move until he stepped forward and it heard him. Only then did it attack.¡±


    Itinay blinked. For a being of her extraordinary longevity, genuine surprises were rare indeed. Even battles and wars, notoriously chaotic, mostly unfolded as variations on well-established themes. This, by contrast, represented something genuinely unexpected.


    She did not, however, take this declaration on faith. ¡°You confirmed this?¡± she questioned, perhaps a little too sharply.


    ¡°Yes, elder,¡± Fu Jin, thankfully for her, had come prepared. ¡°I repeated the test two additional times, and during the third event ordered Qing Liao to stand perfectly still and cultivate. The demon completely ignored him for almost an hour, until a drop of water fell and caused it to turn around. After that it attacked at once.¡± The tall woman raised her head and met Itinay''s gaze, dark eyes like razors in the pale illumination. ¡°Impossible as it seems, I believe the demon cannot detect his qi.¡±


    Before responding, Itinay rested in silence for a long moment, thinking carefully. Wheels spun at a furious pace in her mind, considering, planning, and plotting. Each thought unlocked new ones, triggered a cascade of anticipation, of excitement, greater than anything she''d felt in decades, maybe centuries. Adrenalin rushed through dark veins. ¡°It is not impossible,¡± she replied quietly, contradicting her subordinate''s doubts. ¡°Highly unlikely, yes, but it has been two thousand five hundred years. The sect has raised almost forty thousand cultivators. Perhaps this was inevitable.¡±


    ¡°I...I don''t understand elder, apologies.¡± The request for an explanation was left unsaid, a binding of the strictures of rank and realm.


    Itinay found it irritating.


    ¡°The demons are part of the plague,¡± she offered the answer without further preparation. ¡°That is the best comparison, a disease that infiltrates mortal bodies and converts their qi to its consumptive horror.¡± This was a vastly simplified explanation, but she was a weaver, not an alchemist, ritualist, or formation master. It sufficed for her purposes. ¡°And like any disease, there are always some who are immune.¡±


    This drew a sharp nod beneath eyes wide in shock. Outbreaks of plague within Mother''s Gift were uncommon, and usually swiftly contained, but they did occur. They aggregated around years with poor harvests, when the people took to eating rats. Having lived for several centuries, Fu Jin had witnessed her fair share of containment measures.


    ¡°Following the Great Betrayal, as the plague spread like wildfire and the Demon War began to take shape,¡± Itinay grimaced, her memories of those terrible days were among the least pleasant in a very long record. ¡°Forces of the Orthodox Alliance, leading counterattacks, occasionally came across mortal survivors in provinces that had succumbed to mass conversion. Most of these were simply corpses, torn apart by demons unable to consume their qi.¡± Behind her eyes, she saw it all again, those terrible days. Endless villages, towns, and cities laid waste. Every man, woman, and child transformed into monsters, throwing their bodies at the homes of every cultivator they could find.


    ¡°But,¡± she also recalled those rare deviations. ¡°A lucky few were able to hide out, far beyond the reach of sight, and the demons did not know them.¡± She had observed a single case in person, a little boy, locked inside a cellar by his parents, unable to get out, pulled free on the very edge of starving to death. One of the rare few mortals to die of old age during the decades of warfare. ¡°Perhaps one in ten thousand possess this immunity, demonic qi slides past them, never truly touching, pushed aside from contact by some inherent property of their own. It seems we''ve finally discovered a cultivator with this trait. That it is all.¡±


    ¡°But, elder, would there not have been such cultivators during the Demon War?¡± Fu Jin''s response resounded with confusion. No doubt she imagined such persons as invincible weapons against the plague.


    If only.


    ¡°Yes,¡± Itinay had no evidence, but she spoke with clear authority. At the height of the old world, mere weeks before the Great Betrayal, a census of the sects counted one million cultivators. Statistically, some would surely have been immune. ¡°But how to detect such a power? The demons cannot sense Qing Liao''s qi, but they can still see and hear him. We fought against hordes tens of millions strong.¡± Those memories erupted without any need for summoning. She banished them furiously, rushing them from her sight with iron will. It was not time for such laments.


    ¡°And tens of thousands of demonic cultivators.¡± Nearly one in ten of those able to channel qi had joined the traitors. Even though that reckoning counted none of her sisters, it still stung no matter how much time had passed. ¡°The enemy discerned such things first, and by the time the alliance recognized the potential of such weapons, all were dead.¡± The war had been long, in mortal reckoning, but considering its scale, the immortals found it incredibly rapid.


    That limitation no longer applied. Itinay''s mind whirled through whole constellations of concepts. The possibilities, now, were nearly endless. A true opportunity to alter the flow of events had arisen at last.


    Such things required acknowledgment. ¡°You were right to bring this to my attention,¡± she told Fu Jin. ¡°Have you told anyone else about this? What does Qing Liao know?¡±


    ¡°I have told no one,¡± Confirmation came swiftly. ¡°And though I am certain Qing Liao suspects something strange occurred, he does not seem to recognize why.¡± This caveat was swiftly applied, but was of little consequence. Anyone ordered to stand and meditate in front a a demon, even just one ghoul, would surely suspect some scheme. Had they not, it would have been deeply concerning on its own.


    Itinay did not consider a little suspicion from a newly minted initiate of any consequence. ¡°How did he react to the demon?¡± She questioned instead, a far more pertinent inquiry. New cultivators were little more than children, taken from the confines of a peaceful world. They were neither inherently brave nor driven. This anomaly would offer little utility is he could not be shaped into a weapon.


    ¡°With calm readiness to take up arms,¡± Fu Jin''s answer cause a spontaneous smile, the first in decades, to break out across Itinay''s pale blue face.


    ¡°Excellent,¡± it seemed fate had deigned to move in accordance with her desires for once. ¡°Treat the initiate no different from any other, for now. We will need to confirm the traits of his qi before proceeding. That requires a complete analysis. I will speak to Iay myself to arrange it.¡± Her eldest sister might well be the best ritualist in the world, and such a task as this required no less than absolute certainty.


    Fu Jin nodded, her task completed as the wheels of immortal schemes began to turn.

 Chapter Fifteen: Immortal Debate

    The Hall of Elders of the Celestial Origin Sect was a grand structure featuring a massive central audience hall with towering pillars, vaulted roofing, mosaic tile flooring, windows cast in stained glass, ubiquitous wall murals, and enough precious metal gilding to buy a small city. It was comfortably large enough for the sect''s roughly one hundred elders to assemble in full, with plenty of additional room for servants, guests, supplicants, criminals, or anyone else whose actions demanded such imperious attention. Few could enter such an immense chamber and not be overawed by the majesty and power of the sect.


    Today, as on most days, the audience hall remained dim and cold; lit only by a handful of candles and used only by a pair of servants slowly cleaning the windowpanes one by one. Instead, the sect''s true decision makers gathered without ceremony in a small and unimposing annex. This little room with small windows and ordinary features was, in official records, used as furniture storage between major ceremonies that filled the audience hall. Those wooden artifacts, many of them prime examples of masterwork carpentry, were pushed up against the walls and carefully stacked today. In the open space thus obtained were fifteen cushions of simple woven matting, laid out in a circle.


    Only eight of these places were occupied, as expected. At any given time nearly half of the sect''s leadership remained in closed door cultivation, cut off from the world as they sought the advancement of their daos. For anything short of an overwhelming crisis, eight immortals remained the limit available. Such had been arranged long ago, and the roster changed only every twelve years. It would be another nine before the group assembled today underwent any variation.


    Itinay knew each of the other seven intimately. Five were her sisters of old, others of the twelve disciples of Orday who had followed the dao of their master and mother for over three thousand years. She, as the twelfth disciple, was the youngest of their sisterhood.


    The remaining two were comparative youths, two of the three souls born within Mother''s Gift who had managed to achieve the Celestial Ascension realm in the twenty-five hundred years of its existence. The first of the pair, Eculay the Stellar Muse, was a genuine immortal, nearly twenty-two hundred years old. She was the first great success of the Celestial Origin Sect. The second, Onimray the Eyeless, was much younger. The most recent to breakthrough to the seventh realm, she was a mere nine hundred years old. As it had taken just over five centuries to reach her present status, this made her the rare immortal whose mortal years still outnumbered those since her transformation. Compared to many of those in this room, and the overall historical record, the blind woman''s rise had been positively meteoric.


    Eight votes, one apiece, all equal on those mats. Five votes needed to win support, with all ties deferred until the composition of active elders changed. The configuration to come nine years hence was known, and Itinay did not consider it more favorable than the current one. Worse, the present moment was critical. The first stage of the body refining realm set many processes upon inexorable routes, there would be no changing them later. To bring about her scheme she must win support now. A difficult task indeed, as it was intended to be. The sect could not afford to recklessly indulge the whims of any member, immortals least of all.


    It was not, of course, a matter of persuading eight, or even five, of those assembled. They were ancient beings set in their ways and absolutely tied to the daos manifest in their immortal forms. Many reactions were easily predicted. Many votes could be counted well in advance. Itinay had her own, of course, but could also count on Akiray and Onimray for certain. The wild, red-haired battlemaster would pursue any plan to craft a new and potent weapon, and a scheme to maximize the unique ability of an unusual cultivator would surely appeal to the blind grand elder.


    She suspected a fourth vote in support was also likely, that of Uzay. Mercurial though the woman with hair of ever-shifting flames certainly was, her desire to support change over stagnation would align her with this plan more than any objection would place her against it. Itinay had clashed with her fiery sister many times, however, and their relationship had many tensions binding it. She would need to carefully minimize the personal role she intended to play in shaping Qing Liao in order to avoid poisoning the subject beneath a pall of personal rivalry.


    Four in support, as a starting point, but equally severe obstacles existed. Neither the deeply serene Eculay nor the green-blue and vine-cloaked Neay would support this plan. Disruption of the status quo did not suit their own goals. Of the two, Itinay sympathized with Neay most. Out of all twelve sisters she stood closest to the day to day operations of the sect and of Mother''s Gift''s mortal population. Any plot that might jeopardize all she had worked to grow would be rejected outright.


    Ohlay, beautiful and motherly with brilliant waves of golden hair and skin that shifted through every shade of olive across countless angles of reflection, was only slightly more persuadable than the other two nay votes. Most motherly of the sisters, she would consider what Itinay intended a violation of promised independent to new cultivators. She considered it a sacred charge that all be allowed to formulate their own dao.


    Four in support, three against. Only one voice possessed the true power to unleash Itinay''s plans and change the course of the sect''s history. Inevitably, or so she believed, the choice would ultimately be left in Iay''s hands.


    The first disciple of Orday; the eldest of the Twelve Sisters; the most powerful and farthest seeing of them all. There were fifteen cultivators in the celestial ascension realm in the sect, marking time in centuries and working toward the day far in the future when they would challenge the heavens for a place among the stars. Of that fifteen only one, Iay, stood in the seventh layer of that realm as a being at the edge of ascension.


    White-haired, white-eyed, with pale blue skin and shrouded in robes of light-less black, she kept her own counsel. Even after thousands of years at her side, none of the other sisters could be said to truly know the mind of the eldest.


    Iay''s support, if it could be obtained, counted heavily indeed. It would surely convince Uzay to support them. Without it, Ohlay''s opinion would harden to steel and make any attempt to earn her assistance pointless. Even if she had not been the most powerful among them, as the eldest she earned incredible deference in cultivator society, something only magnified by her status as a master ritualist with incredible insight and far-seeing wisdom.


    Itinay looked across the circle of pillows, met the white eyes of her eldest sister, and marshaled herself as she not since the arrival of the last demon horde. Her sister''s examination of a drop of blood confirmed Qing Liao truly was immune and invisible to demonic qi. She refused to let this chance, one that might not come again for five thousand years, to pass by.


    ¡°You called us, sister, and we came.¡± Unsurprisingly, it was Uzay who broke the silence first. Though she had, as any immortal must, conquered impatience centuries before, it was still her preference to move quickly through any meeting. ¡°Let''s hear your scheme for this new initiate.¡±


    They all knew who Qing Liao was, of course, and had learned of the unique trait he possessed. The summons to conclave had contained a message with all the relevant details. One did not stir a nest of immortals without explaining why.


    The brashness of the fiery dancer had been anticipated. Itinay was, in truth, grateful for the swift advancement of the matter. Her reply, carefully tailored the night before, was simple. ¡°We should make a weapon for the sect.¡±


    No one offered the slightest indication of surprise, whether on their faces or through their qi. They were all far too controlled for that. Besides, all knew her well, and anticipated such an obvious plot. Qing Liao''s talent would only reveal its true value if directed down certain carefully chosen paths.


    ¡°Sure,¡± Uzay tossed her head slightly. Hair with a medley of yellow, orange, and red strands caused light to pulse strangely across the little room, reflecting off her vibrant presentation. ¡°But can you achieve that? And does the sect even need an assassin?¡±


    ¡°We do,¡± Itinay ignored the former question for the moment. It was not yet time to reveal that point. ¡°But not a mere assassin, a true operative. An agent able to access the Ruined Wastes freely. Our scouting capability is minimal, and filled with risks. This would change that. We could conduct offensive operations, or retrievals.¡±Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    The old world had left many ruins behind, and they were not devoid of treasures. The demonic cultivators had not plundered anywhere near all of them. These women knew better than most the value remaining in the wild.


    ¡°Scouting carries risks, as you say,¡± Neay raised the first objection, one they all knew, out loud. ¡°This move would greatly magnify them.¡± She spoke simply, as if casual, but her qi vibrated with tension. ¡°You will utilize fail-safes, are prepared to list them at length, but nothing is certain. Any potential profit must be weighed against the risks, and as matters stand the risk here is far too great.¡± Unexpectedly, in a move that drew many eyes to her green-blue face, she did not end there. ¡°But, change is not inherently a risk, and circumstances alter as time passes, according to the earth even if all else is still. I see no reason not to forge this weapon, so long as it is kept in the sheath.¡±


    Surprise rippled through seven pillars of qi. Itinay reconsidered rapidly, struggling to calculate whether or not this mattered. The offer was genuine, in this company deception could never stand, but it was not necessarily the support she required. Seeking to buy time to learn more, she offered provisional acceptance. ¡°I have no intention of sending one in the body refining realm into the wastes. Rushing is pointless, but so is concocting grand schemes only to watch heavenly lightning burn them away.¡±


    ¡°If we can survive the additional centuries to that day without needing to take such a risk, so much the better.¡± The green-haired immortal did not budge on this point, and the ripple of unexpected possibility faded away as swiftly as it emerged.


    Despite this disappointing result, Itinay filed away the small revelation all the same. It seemed Neay''s devotion to the development of the sect ran both deeper and broader than she''d believed. Openness to a greater range of possibilities was worthy. It might be important, on another day.


    ¡°How, exactly, do you mean to train up an assassin?¡± Uzay swiftly reasserted her position at the front of the debate, as everyone expected and allowed. ¡°We might have old manuals describing such things, but there are no hidden killers here.¡±


    Of course there were not. It had been a path barely pursued even during the height of the old world''s intrigues. Rituals and formations to obscure and disperse qi signatures existed, the scouts made great use of them, but nothing could reduce a cultivator''s presence to nothing. To creep up on a rival, especially one strong enough that there was no hope of victory in open combat, was essentially impossible. Surprise, when sought, came instead from blasting in open a storm of fury faster than the opponent could react. For Orday''s disciples, blessed with a movement technique of unsurpassed speed, that had always been their chosen approach.


    Qing Liao, if kept on his current path, would become a formidable archer, in time, but while that would make him useful on the walls, it would only be marginally more so than any of his peers. The true potential of his unique qi would never be tapped. It would never serve for expeditions into the wastes.


    ¡°We have to depart from traditional methods for this, reach outside the sect,¡± Itinay was sure that, despite the lack of notice, they had all expected some version of the plan she now outlined. ¡°And provide a teacher with different origins. The stars are with us, for the resource needed is already available.¡±


    ¡°Remnant souls cannot be trusted.¡± That Ohlay would be the one to object first, and even her exact response, matched Itinay''s predictions perfectly. Everyone else had anticipated the same.


    None of that stopped her from making the announcement or lessened its import.


    Itinay would never sigh aloud when speaking in such a critical debate, but in that moment she wanted to.


    Essential but trite as the remark was, Neay used it as a springboard to surprise her sisters for the second time in one day. ¡°I have every confidence in Sayaana''s loyalty to the orthodox cause. She has lost as much to the demons as any of us, perhaps more. Nor is her ability to teach the skills of survival in the wastes in doubt. Truthfully, it is long past time to add her techniques to our library.¡±


    Silence reigned between the eight as this remark, and more importantly the implications it carried, were digested by immortal minds.


    Even as Itinay considered how to work forward using this basis, Uzay preempted her deliberations. ¡°I like that idea too,¡± she smirked a little. ¡°And I want to see if it will work. Let''s do that, train up this initiate as a wild assassin. We can decide whether or not to use him after we know it works. I say vote on it now.¡±


    That vote would pass, the flash calculation was made instantly, but Itinay was absolutely certain. A partial victory, but with six votes behind it, enough of one to accept. Qing Liao would not be ready for decades at the earliest. The composition of the council then would be very different. The initiate was a member of her pavilion, no matter what the others wished, that alone secured her critical influence over his development. ¡°Agreed.¡±


    She looked directly at Neay, silently indicating that they would struggle over the remainder when the time came. Delay would serve them both. They knew each other well enough to accept this compromise.


    Even as others aligned for or against the proposal in silence, a pulse of qi rippled outward and washed over them all. Every silent shifted stopped completely. Seven heads turned to meet Iay''s white gaze.


    The eldest of their number did not speak. As part of her devotion to ritual purification she hardly ever utilized words any longer. It was not necessary. With absolute control over the fluctuations of her surface qi she could make her meaning clear simply by manipulating the silence.


    Delay now, and they would only delay again in the future, a perpetual failure to determine the true outcome. This realization was dispatched to the seven. The council, being assembled on this day, must make a complete choice. It was not to be deferred.


    Neay''s face, beautiful as a forest in full flush, took on a rotten cast. Uzay, too, scowled. Those who had, to this point, remained silent, now sheltered in the inaudible cloak. None wished to be called out further on their hesitancy by their eldest sister.


    Itinay raced through a mental scramble, trying desperately to determine whether or not this forcing of a vote favored her or not.


    She reached out, studying the others both physically and through the emanations of their qi, struggling to gauge where matters stood. Others did the same.


    It did not take a great deal of effort to conduct the count. Three votes, Akiray, Onimray, and herself, still solid. Two votes, Eculay and Ohlay, equally firm on the opposite side. Neay and Uzay wavering, qi unsettled as they found their preferred partial position cut away from beneath their feet. Iay, as always, utterly unreadable.


    There was no hope of persuading the eldest, or at least, of doing so with any confirmation. Instead of making such an effort, Itinay sought a means to mollify the concerns of the two vacillating sisters. The choice she chose to offer displeased her, for it lacked logic, lacked cleanliness, but she calculated it held a substantially greater chance than any other. Her greatest regret was how much control it required her to relinquish. ¡°In order to properly produce an operative, Qing Liao and Sayaana must both agree. Their bond must be rock solid. I propose we proceed, contingent upon their agreement.¡±


    A second nudge flowed from Iay. There would be no more words, either in opposition or support. They would vote on this latest proposal at once.


    It took mere seconds after that.


    The result was five to three, in favor. Unexpectedly, compared to the initial expectation, Neay voted for and Uzay against, but Iay cast the deciding vote as had been determined from the very beginning. No one generated the least discontent at this. If their eldest considered the gains to outweigh the risks, all trusted in her judgment.


    Leaving such a decision to a fourteen-year-old, a boy barely out of infancy, struck all assembled as strange. Save one, they had all seen more centuries than he had years. And, there was the essential fact that he was male, and none of those who had voted were. That trait was essential, the scheme of using Sayaana would be far too dangerous otherwise, with a woman as the host, but it left all of them feeling strange.


    They were a sisterhood, twelve disaster orphans chosen by their Celestial Mother to follow her to the stars. Eculay and Onimray had adapted to the ways of their fellowship, even changing names and forms in similar fashion upon obtaining immortality. Phantom Flare, the only male to reach the seventh realm and become a grand elder in the sect''s twenty-five hundred year history, though courteous to the others, remained a being apart.


    Itinay was glad he was presently in closed door cultivation. His viewpoint, alien as it was in the sisterhood, represented a complication she struggled to predict. No doubt he would have strong views on this matter, triggering an inevitable confrontation. She hoped it lay many decades in the future, with matters too far along to be truly halted.


    ¡°As the relevant pavilion elder, I will make the arrangements,¡± Itinay told her sisters when it was decided. No objections were expected, none were received.


    There were no other matters before the conclave, and the meeting concluded there. All filtered out swiftly, leaving Itinay, by ancient tradition, to put the furniture back in place. They did not linger for idle talk. All such subjects had been exhausted ages past.


    Only Neay slowed her departure, waiting just long enough to grab her sister''s attention at the last.


    Grateful for the unexpected support the green-blue immortal had provided, she turned to listen with clear and open respect.


    ¡°Be cautious sister,¡± Neay whispered. ¡°You are launching an arrow, not forging a sword. Once in flight none of us will be able to control what the wind wills.¡±


    A sound reminder, though Itinay did not feel it necessary. Change, no matter how deliberately arranged, carried risk. At the present, she simply believed that staying still had accumulated more.

 Chapter Sixteen: Expectations

    Life in the Textiles Pavilion was nothing like Qing Liao expected. The pavilion was more than a single vast building. That represented merely central workshop, library space, and storage section. The remainder was a sprawling series of courtyards serving as housing for the member cultivators and their live-in servants. Wide roads split these structures, allowing for deliveries of essential working materials in addition to food and other sundries.


    Every member of the pavilion, of which there were currently seventy-one, was assigned a private residence. These varied in size, with larger and more luxurious housing offered to those cultivators of higher realms. A number of the courtyards remained vacant, plans laid down for a larger sect that had never materialized.


    Liao, as the newest and weakest member of the pavilion, had a single courtyard unit. It contained a hall for his personal use, a small side dormitory space for servants, and an open air space covered by tarps in the event he wished to continue outside activities when it rained. There were thirty-five such units currently occupied, with six empty ones. There was no particular organization to the choices, and his nearest neighbor was an elderly-seeming woman who''d been in the body refining realm for half a century or more.


    Several of those nearby were much younger, representing the pool in which he was expected to find friends and long term companions. This task was one Liao approached with considerable hesitation. He found settling in difficult. His assigned hall, though small, was very fine. His couch was master crafted, the pillow a piece of carved art in the shape of bear, and his blankets were silk-covered down so soft he barely felt as if they touched him at all in the night. He had additional silk cushions for guests, screens painted with elegant hunting screens, and a massive carpet occupying most of his floor that depicted the night sky. Even compared to his recruit quarters, these luxuries were overwhelming.


    He was also, for the first time in his life, living with someone other than a family member. Though the pavilion possessed a number of communal staff who organized the workshops, delivered food and materials, cleaned the grounds, and completed similar tasks, proper cultivators were also allowed and expected to keep personal servants. He''d been assigned a young woman named Chen Chao as his personal maid, and been told that to dismiss her would not only be a great insult, it would simply mean a similar replacement arrived the same day. There were obligatory minimums that each member of the sect must maintain.


    The woman, it would be ridiculous to call her a girl when she was several months older than he was, had been born in Starwall City to one of the many families of functionally hereditary servants there. She was competent, courteous, and disturbingly pretty. Liao was quite certain the latter was not an accident. Though her official duties mostly consisted of cleaning, removing daily waste and delivering the occasional message he recorded for supplies or a loan of special tools, the bright-eyed young woman made it explicitly clear that she would be happy to share his blankets during the night if he so much as asked. She even went so far as to bring hot water and a razor to shave his limited stubble each morning, a blatantly intimate affectation.


    At fourteen and a half, Liao was full of emergent desire for intimate encounters with the opposite sex. This ardor was matched entirely by his lack of experience and his general awkwardness regarding his new status. Mindful of the possibility that anyone might become a cultivator at fourteen, betrothals were forbidden for those who had not yet been tested. Children below that edge might have recorded a handful of stolen kisses and perhaps a few quick touches in passing, but that was as far as things went.


    Sudden exposure to the possibility of having nearly any intimate fantasy turned into reality, without the least bit of emotional connection, left Liao greatly confused. There was, of course, nothing unusual about taking a servant to bed. Merchants were notorious for such practices, and Liao was fairly certain he''d witnessed the larger caravans that visited the mountains carry such relationships out. Having just moved in, however, the whole affair felt far too abrupt.


    This did not make having a compact, spritely, and dangerously pretty woman in close proximity any easier to handle. Though Liao avoided spending the night with her from the start, he had a feeling that resistance would not sustain for long.


    One of his neighbors, a nineteen-year-old name Jie Guo, whom he eventually dared to broach the subject with, explained why the servant families encouraged such liaisons. ¡°By city standards the stipend of even a body refining realm cultivator is very generous. If you father a child with your maid, or anyone else outside the sect, a portion of it will be set aside to care for him. Besides, are you cruel enough to dismiss the mother of your child from your service? Probably you''ll keep her on for many years, and purchase a fine house for her when she grows old. Such security is highly valued among the servants.¡±


    ¡°And the sect encourages this?¡± Liao found it shocking. He''d expected to be assigned an old man as a servant specifically to avoid such things.


    ¡°Lineage is a tie that binds,¡± the older teen shrugged. ¡°At least that''s what the elders say. Can you understand living for centuries until you do it? I''ll stick to rope, rope doesn''t play games.¡± Such bindings were his own artistic focus, to the point of absolute obsession. The young man''s courtyard looked like some giant spider had made its home there.


    Other aspects of his new life, thankfully, were easier to fit together with his natural inclinations. Elder Fu Jin explained that as a member of the sect he had two primary duties. The first was defense. As a body refining realm cultivator that meant periodic patrols of the Starwall, ten days out of every hundred. He was strongly encouraged, though not mandated, to continue with regular weapons practice to maintain readiness in addition to advancing his cultivation. That was an easy thing to schedule, and Liao took to daily archery practice in the mid-morning, after his initial post-breakfast meditation.


    The daily journey to and from the archery hall also offered a chance to utilize the Stellar Flash Steps. The weapons hall was a calm, careful place full of fletching stands, target courses, and straw bales. The elders there demanded nothing of the new arrival save that he shoot and conduct maintenance of his own weapons. They were not a talkative group, a distinction from many of the other weapons. He assumed greater attention would come in time, for several of the elders observed his initial sessions, but for now practicing the basic forms of the Nine Spheres Arsenal he''d been taught by the manual sufficed.


    The second duty was production. The sect maintained commitment to both self-sufficiency and to generate a usable surplus sold to the population of Mother''s Gift above that. The people of the hidden land paid their taxes primarily in kind, not coin, and the cultivators turned these levies into goods for use or sale. ¡°Work guides your hands and mind toward the dao,¡± Fu Jin directed. ¡°While also having practical benefits.¡±If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Liao swiftly realized that these sales contributed to the bulk of his stipend. The upper classes of Starwall City, the market towns, and even large farms paid a premium for cultivator-made goods. He also learned that the meals he''d been eating were prepared by his fellow sect members in the Cooking Pavilion, where the body refining realm members churned out a huge quantity of daily meals in bulk. Servants in the small local kitchens completed only final presentation and reheating.


    This served to explain how meals devoid of meat continued to taste appealing no matter how many days they appeared.


    His own duties were integrated into this setup readily enough. Of the seventy-one members of the pavilion, most were focused on traditional woven textiles. They made all kinds of clothing, from robes to gloves, and also padding including blankets, cushions, carpets, and tapestries. Countless accessories were fashioned in addition to such simple offerings, and they even produced the base layers used by the armoring pavilion. Other aspects of the production of garments and coverings were handled either as secondary dressing, which meant lesser effort and attention, or by a small group of roughly a dozen cultivators focused of more obscure aspects of the dao of adornment. Jie Guo, dedicated to chords, ropes, and bindings, was one member of this sub-group, and Liao soon found himself appended to this modest association.


    The little group was led by Yang Xun, one of the pavilion''s five Spirit Tempering realm elders. A wizened, white-haired man in his eighth century of life, he stood heavy with the weight of years in a manner Liao had not before seen on any other cultivator. Sensing this confusion after a few days, Jie Guo provided an explanation. ¡°His cultivation progress stalled out long ago. He''ll never attempt the next tribulation and is likely to reach the end of his years in mere decades.¡±


    Many in the pavilion seemed to consider this status, though not at all uncommon, a sign of fundamental weakness and sought to avoid the elder''s direct instruction, working around him as much as possible. Liao, innocent of such prejudices, simply thought the circumstance sad, and listened to such wisdom as the old man had to offer without complaint. Though the heavy narrow eyes with wild brows held little interest in furs, the elder was a master of buckles, ties, hooks, and all the other sundry bits used to hold complex outfits together. As many of these components were cut and bound from leather, he was the closest thing to a master of the craft the pavilion possessed.


    ¡°Start at the beginning,¡± Yang Xun instructed, sagely working to bind together the fringe of several decorative pillows as spoke out from amid the cluttered shelves of his private workspace. So many crates surrounded them that no one else could possibly overhear. ¡°Take one animal source and learn every part, every stage of the process, from skinning to curing to tanning all the way to finishing. Only by going from beginning to end, skipping nothing, can you gain the vast knowledge needed to obtain mastery of a material. I suggest beginning with pigs, they are sufficiently abundant in supply to conduct such a project without incurring any strain upon your stipend.¡±


    That was true enough. Out of all the lands in Mother''s Gift, those within the shadow of the walls were owned outright by the sect, for the common people were terrified to set foot upon them. A trait the sect encouraged so as to avoid foolish young boys attempting to climb the Starwall. Save in the very extremes of the north and south it was never left idle.


    Members of the Farming Pavilion turned most of this land to crop production, and though the cultivators consumed no flesh, they had no qualms against raising it for use by others. With pork highly in demand in Starwall City, the sect raised many fat hogs on the edges of their fields and orchards. In return for assistance with the slaughter, the pavilion was happy enough to allow Liao to keep the hides he needed.


    Qing Liao''s first kill as a cultivator was an aging sow, no longer able to bear additional litters. Several of his neighbors mocked this as an inauspicious beginning, saying that anything less than a demon was a sign of weakness. Liao grimaced at this, a little, but held his tongue. Demons might infiltrate the Killing Fields in a steady but irregular stream, but few in the body refining realm had the chance to strike at them. The elders did for the monsters as soon as a sighting was reported.


    He could only expect to kill demons if a horde arose, and that was nothing to wish for, ever. Such events scared the sect, brutally. Only the youngest of cultivators had not lost friends to red claws and filed teeth. Each pavilion contained a memorial plinth to the fallen, covered in thousands of tiny names.


    Bloody and messy as learning to process pig leather was, filled with lime, salts, and extractions of bark that stained his hands, Liao did not mind it comprising his primary afternoon activity. The work kept his hands busy without clouding his thoughts. He worked, and watched, and slowly absorbed the subtleties of each step, gaining new knowledge each time.


    ¡°From true mastery of a single facet, one shall know the gem entire,¡± so Orday had written in the manual of the Twelvefold Panoply of Arts. As ever, her insight was shattering in its accuracy. By starting with the basics, and grinding their knowledge deep into his bones, he gained a flickering understanding of a far greater principle.


    Perhaps more importantly, by spending endless hours in the beamhouse and curing room, he discovered that no other member of the sect presently had any real interest in the process. Much of the essential work of preparation was done not by cultivators, but by carefully trained mortal servants hired? ? by Yang Xun, occasionally supplemented by the elder himself. The sect had great demand for finished leather, ready to be cut and shaped to the needs of many pavilions, from blacksmithing to performance, but few who worked to fulfill those orders. Exotic orders, requiring hides from unusual animals or complicated tanning specifications, arrived with some regularity as well, and none but the elder was able to supply them.


    If the elder''s life was truly to reach its end soon, Liao supposed he would not mind stepping into the vacant space. At least, not for a while. Neither blood, foul odors, nor strange stains bothered him much. He''d already learned to handle those as a boy.


    In the evenings he studied the manuals of leatherworking the library possessed, or meditated under the stars. Day by day, he stretched the flow of qi through his heart meridian. Each cycle increased the volume of his dantian by a minuscule amount. A single step on the seemingly infinite staircase leading to the heavens.


    He made a point of taking the evening meal at Yang Xun''s table in the workshop. Most of the cultivators in their little gathering of cast-offs ate together, and their nightly discussions were wide-ranging. Liao spoke little, letting others gossip on sect or city affairs. In time, he supposed, he''d learn enough to add something to such undercurrents of social talk.


    There was no rush, even body refining cultivators measured advancement progress in many months, if not years. Every elder he met cautioned him to take his time and be careful building his foundation before pressing for further advancement. Reaching the second layer in two years, the goal he set for himself, felt both ambitious and reasonable at the same time. Only one other young cultivator in the textile pavilion had been faster, and everyone agreed she was a rare talent.


    Given such relaxed approaches and steady scheduling, the summons from Elder Fu Jin after no more than a week had passed living in the pavilion came as an absolute shock. Fear spilled through Liao from the moment he read the missive, coupled with an inescapable determination that he''d made a terrible error of some kind. It made him want to run, an impulse only blocked by recalling that the sect made use of even the most worthless cultivators. Being reassigned to wall maintenance would be a terrible fate, but more survivable than somehow trying to escape.


    Liao only wished he could understand what he''d done. Quiet and capable obedience had seemed only appropriate, what all the elders wanted. Every parent taught their children to act accordingly. He''d simply done his best to match himself against such expectations. He thought he''d succeeded. Whatever error he''d made, he could not recognize it.


    The walk to the elder hall felt like the march of a condemned man, and only pride kept him upright along the way. He expected reassignment to the torment of endless masonry, and passed through the door only by actively holding back tears.


    He never expected to find Grand Elder Itinay waiting for him.

 Chapter Seventeen: An Unexpected Offer

    Radiant blue and white whorls in an ice blue face granted Liao a single glance before he plunged to the floor in front of Grand Elder Itinay. Surrounded by the grand opulence of the Hall of Elder''s, he saw nothing but the tiles in front of his nose.


    The grand elder, looking down at him, offered a single pronouncement. ¡°You are terrified.¡±


    Liao gave no reaction to these words. There was nothing to say. It was the absolute truth. The Grand Elder was an immortal, a being one step below the heavens themselves. She had the power to destroy him with no more than a gesture, perhaps a mere thought. Awakening his qi sense only made the overwhelming disparity in power truly clear, measurable beyond what the eyes could see. The pale blue form she possessed was revealed as not something cosmetic, but an expression of her dao unleashed through the full forging of her soul by will alone.


    ¡°You should be terrified,¡± Itinay''s strange, oddly echoing voice, suggested a form of amusement that sourced to some place beyond his limited understanding. ¡°But your reasoning is faulty. You are not being disciplined, Qing Liao of the Textiles Pavilion.¡±


    Carefully, she moved to sit on a low couch, tucked away in a corner of the hall, behind a towering pillar. This motion obligated Liao to shuffle about on his knees in order to face her as respect demanded. Throughout this relocation he kept his gaze firmly to the floor. The polished tiles were perfectly smooth. They did not hurt his flesh. His knees would have complained mightily at his posture, were he not a cultivator. Even new as he was the use of qi reinforcement, acting to strengthen his bones and defray that pain was already instinctive.


    Upon hearing he was not to be punished his composure stabilized, somewhat. Despite his recent arrival within the sect, he knew he had no business meeting with a grand elder under any circumstances. Certainly not in private. Without any means to understand why he had been summoned, for if not to be punished he could not imagine any business Itinay might have that concerned a newly minted initiate, he remained imprisoned by trepidation.


    ¡°Do you recall your demon test?¡± Itinay asked without preamble. Her ferocious eyes hunted down his own with formidable skill, clamped his attention on those blue-white-blue-white whorls.


    Liao swallow. Of course he did. The image of the ghoulish red-skinned monster remained seared into his brain. Such wrongness, a violation of everything he''d learned of the world growing up, he would never forget it. A single nod indicated his acknowledgment.


    ¡°Fu Jin put you through the test three times,¡± Itinay continued. She did not sound as if this interested her. ¡°That never happens. She told you there was a problem with the restraint formation; that you were used to calibrate it.¡± The elder''s tongue clicked, very fast. It sounded as bone cracking against ice. ¡°That was a lie, a deception presented to silence speculation while we, your elders, debated.¡±


    Liao blanched, and returned his gaze to the floor. The idea of the elders lying to him, it was horrifying. Not as a matter of deception, of course they had countless secrets, but because it implied that there was some truth he could have grasped that might have harmed them, harmed the whole sect. He did not want to know such things.


    He did not ask what they had debated. It was not his place to speak. That chance, if it came at all, would be made abundantly clear. Drawn in inviolable layers of qi, the hierarchy of the sect possessed a clarity beyond that of any other human organization. Regardless, it took all his will to clamp down in fear in the face of the revelations passing across the dark blue lips.


    ¡°We debated what to do with you, Qing Liao,¡± Itinay smiled slightly. Her indigo lips bent in a just barely visible rise. A terrifying expression, as if an avalanche were amused by that which it was about to bury. ¡°Because you, it so happens, are just a little bit special.¡±


    Hearing those words, Liao never wanted anything more than he, in that moment, wished to be perfectly ordinary. The warning given to him by Su Yi, that cultivation was the not glorious gift so many children thought it was, were now revealed as cruelly accurate prophecy. The sect already demanded much, he''d never been busier in all the days of his short life than he was now. He was absolutely certain that, whatever followed, it was going to require a great deal more. Refusal was not to be attempted.


    He could only pray that Orday gave him the strength to meet such expectations.


    ¡°During the test,¡± Itinay laid the circumstances bare. ¡°The demon did not sense you. It reacted only when its eyes and ears informed it. Afterwards, my sister Iay measured the resonance of you qi, extracted from a drop of blood.¡±


    Liao recalled the pinprick, one Fu Jin said was used to check for disease.


    ¡°She confirmed the truth,¡± blue lips hardened to stone. ¡°You, your qi, Qing Liao, cannot be detected by demon qi. Across the expanse of the primordial, you are invisible to our enemies.¡±


    It was a simple statement, but one filled with profound power. Taught to hunt in the mountains, Liao knew the essential use of tricks to obscure the senses of prey. Camouflage, false scents, blinds, mimicked calls, all of these necessary to fool the sharp eyes of hawks, the cunning noses of wolves, the brilliant hearing of deer. Qi was, ultimately, no different, it was simply an additional sense, one his burgeoning awareness suggested loomed as potent as all the other five combined.


    Unable to detect his presence, demons were no longer enemies to be fought. They were prey to be hunted.


    The elimination of demons from the world was a cause with absolute moral clarity. He knew this; it had been drilled into him every week during temple services. He''d seen it, in the monstrous wrongness of the imprisoned ghoul. He''d felt it when he''d stood on the and glimpsed the barriers that sealed off the rest of the world. When Fu Jin told him defense was the first duty, he''d simply nodded. It was obvious.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Now, the grand elder was calling upon him to take up the fight in a new way. That much he discerned with absolute clarity, even as everything else became obscured. All thoughts, plans, of the future vanished. Blue-white shrouds buried them all.


    ¡°The grand elders have met, and decided to make use of your talents,¡± the litany of revelations continued. ¡°A plan exists, suited to develop your abilities in line with efficacy and need, but,¡± Itinay hesitated for the very first time. A noticeable pause interrupted her normal blizzard of intonation. ¡°It departs from the sect''s traditional methods. The is uncertainty and risk attached. It was decided that you are to make the choice whether or not to pursue this course yourself.¡±


    Young though he was, Liao could sense that this was not the whole truth. Beyond that, however, he did not have any idea what might be happening. He might have formed doubts, finding gaps in those declarations, but they remained amorphous, impossible to articulate. ¡°What am I to choose?¡± He asked helplessly, recognizing that the ensuing gap was one he was meant to fill.


    Itinay reached back and pulled out a small object from beneath a silk towel.


    It was a headband. The base layer was stout horse leather, but the outer surface was covered in finely layered silver and gold brocade and dotted with star-shaped beads of perfectly clear quartz crystal. In the front, perfectly oriented in the center, was a wide disk, a silver plate setting that held a single piece of turquoise. A complex interplay of blue and green shades, this gem was wide enough to fill a circle made between Liao''s thumb and forefinger and thicker than the red belt he tied about his waist. Exquisitely polished, it was laced with streaks of black, silver, and gold struck through the gemstone matrix.


    He''d never seen such an impressive gem in his life, not even among the jewelry the elders habitually wore. This piece could match any portion of Itinay''s private panoply with ease.


    ¡°Reaching the celestial ascendancy realm requires fully forging the soul, a process that transcends the boundaries of mortality.¡± Itinay unleashed this incomprehensible statement regarding elite cultivation as if it was nothing but a breakfast recipe. ¡°The previously joined body and mind are made as one with the soul, forming not only an immortal body, but a core that cannot easily be dissipated. Simply striking down the immortal body does not suffice to truly slay an immortal. Should the soul find its way to a suitable receptacle, it may persist indefinitely.¡±


    Liao stared at the circlet with eyes wide and mouth open.


    ¡°This is rare,¡± the grand elder continued. ¡°If able to slay an immortal in battle, the victor usually swiftly crushes the soul with the next strike, but it can happen. The result,¡± she lifted up the headband and pushed it towards the youth''s face. ¡°Is known as a remnant soul. This artifact houses one such, Sayaana, last survivor of the Infinite Spines Sect. She fell in battle against the Scourging Wheel mere moments before Akiray and Artemay arrived and struck down that particular pestilence. Three hundred and thirty-two years have passed since that day. Now, the time has come to make use of that legacy.¡±


    Though he was unable to grasp the specifics of this scheme, the outline of the request was comparatively simple for Liao to understand. There was a mighty cultivator, an immortal, trapped inside the circlet. She had been chosen to teach him, to properly utilize this strange qi he''d been granted by Orday''s blessing. From there, he could project what followed, the path that emerged from within Itinay''s terrible frozen star eyes.


    Demon hunter.


    It took no additional reasoning to recognize the cost. He would share more than just lessons with the soul trapped in that brilliant turquoise. She would become an inextricable part of his life, joined closer than anyone else.


    That would set him apart, isolate him from the sect. He would have to walk this road with only the remnant, a woman he''d never met. He would be dedicated to the war against demons, forever, whether or not he wanted it.


    Whether or not that dao could carry him to immortality and ascension.


    Qing Liao was fourteen. He had been a cultivator for less than one hundred days. Such distant goals, things millennia in the future, where simply impossible to properly consider. His mind could not extend far enough to grapple with them. In their absence, he turned to the only source of authority available. ¡°Why do you think I should do this, elder?¡± he dared to ask Itinay.


    This time, the smile that bent the indigo lips was deep and genuine, reaching all the way up the icy face. ¡°Opportunity.¡± When this single word simply washed across Liao''s head without penetrating, she elaborated. ¡°It has been two-thousand, five hundred, and twenty-two years since the Demon War ended. We have lived in Mother''s Gift that whole time, unable to send anyone into the Ruined Wastes for more than a few hours at a time, and that tentatively. Twenty-five centuries in hiding. In that entire time, we have had one strategy, one alone. To outlast the demonic cultivators. We can grow our numbers. They cannot. We reproduce. They do not.¡± The multi-layered eyes flashed hard with reflected light as she bent closer. ¡°It is a sound strategy, but a weak one.¡±


    Her smile transformed into a sour, blue-tinted frown. ¡°But there were no others. Until now. You are an opportunity. You can move through the wastes unseen. You represent the first step in finally taking the fight to the enemy rather than hiding behind mirrors and walls.¡±


    It took a moment, but Liao soon realized that she was offering him the world. The entirety of the Ruined Wastes, a vastness hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times the size of Mother''s Gift, his to roam. For a boy from the mountains used to long journeys, still only fourteen years old, that boundless freedom held extraordinary allure. He would be able to go where no one else could.


    ¡°What do I do then?¡± He asked, agreement granted.


    A pale hand, almost translucent and softly glowing with inner light, passed the gem-bearing headband in Liao''s grasp. ¡°When you place this on your brow, you will be able to see and speak to the remnant soul of Sayaana. This requires qi. I have placed enough in the gem to allow a conversation, but to walk this path you must forge an agreement. That will bind the remnant to you, allow her to draw on your qi. That carries serious risks. The bond flows both ways. She might use it to try and seize your body for herself. You will need to decide whether or not to trust her. Such a move is unlikely, it would violate her dao in the extreme, ruin any chance of future advancement, but it has happened in the past. Demonic cultivators certainly never hesitate.¡± The grand elder''s conclusion struck a distinctly sour note.


    ¡°Is there no hope of restoration, for her?¡± Liao knew it was the question of an ignorant child, but he asked anyway. He did not want to carry around doom forever.


    ¡°A slim hope,¡± the pale blue face offered truth, however merciless. ¡°Should you rise to complete the tribulation of celestial ascendancy, then forming two immortal bodies instead of one is trivial, but few reach that far, or succeed in the attempt. Eldest sister Iay scoured the records from before the war, but found only two cases of success.¡±


    Rare was not hopeless, not to a fourteen-year-old. In that moment, Liao was unwilling to bow to the cruel burden of numeracy. Not with an elder transformed beyond mortality seated before him, speaking to him as, not an equal, but someone worthy of making his own choices. To refuse, in the face of that, had never been possible. ¡°I will do it,¡± Liao said firmly, though the words contained far more bravado than he''d ever admit aloud.


    He grasped the circlet tightly, feeling its varied composition, metal, leather, and gems. It was cool to the touch, and somehow strangely supple. Qi pulsed through it, a mirror to grand elder''s icy presentation.


    He placed it on his head.

 Chapter Eighteen: Sayaana

    From the moment the circlet settled onto his head, a woman appeared before Qing Liao''s eyes. She stood behind Itinay, slightly to the right of the grand elder. In the clear and yellow illumination offered by the Elder Hall''s many lamps, she could be seen with perfectly clarity. He knew she must be Sayaana, a lost cultivator from far away and long ago, even before his eyes focused on the new presence.


    The differences from every other cultivator he knew manifested instantly.


    Sayaana possessed a mystic, inhuman nature flooding out from every part of her being, the impact of the immortal body shared by all cultivators in the celestial ascendancy realm. She was monochrome, presented entirely in endless shades of green. The verdant color absolutely ruled her being. Her hair, divided into three braided strands, one in the back and two in the front over the shoulders, was the vibrant, soft green of fiddle-head ferns. The skin of the face framed by those tresses was the dark, deep green of an old forest pine. Line and diamond patterns, as if she''d been painted by countless overlapping needles and scales from endless varied conifer leaves, marked that surface. Against this deep growth emerald tone, her eyes shown bright. They were a triple ring, three different shades. Pale turquoise in place of the white, then bright grass blade green in the outer iris and an inner ring of sharp, yellow-green of sun-kissed floral gleam beyond. Her lips were dusted emerald sunrises pinched together.


    Other differences, detected through careful examination as Liao stared blatantly at the woman, were also present. Sayaana''s face had features possessed by no one in Mother''s Gift. Her face was broad, with a narrow chin and high, flat cheeks. This, combined with a soft and sunken nose with slightly upturned nostrils, gave her a broad, immensely open face. It was more naturally welcoming than that of anyone he''d met in his whole life. Exotic, with prominent ears and a high forehead, she possessed a natural beauty only refined by cultivation until she easily put Itinay''s icy perfection to shame.


    Her form of dress was the final obvious divergence. She did not wear robes, but battle armor, and not in any style the Celestial Origin Sect used. It was formed entirely of boiled leather plates layered together. These were intricately molded, carved, and embossed, with an outer layer of decorative metal gilding poured into complex vegetation motifs. It appeared as if she was wearing a silver and green forest. Fur, exceedingly dark and dense, with a thickness greater than that of any animal Liao had ever encountered, wrapped about both shoulders, her waist, the wrists, and the top of her boots.


    ¡°A young man who appreciates the fine things the forest offers,¡± green lips twisted in a sly smile, eyes full of weasel cunning. Sayaana spoke with a bright, strong voice. She lacked the whispery restraint the sect''s grand elders always adopted when speaking to their cultivation inferiors. The emphasis she placed throughout each word varied from those Liao knew, forming an exotic accent, unlike anything he''d ever heard. It made it absolutely clear that this woman was a foreigner, a word that had, in all Liao''s experience been something that existed only in stories. ¡°Perhaps this can work.¡±


    Liao struggled to find his voice. His first few attempts to speak ended only in sputtering. ¡°I am Qing Liao,¡± he managed at last, hesitant even in giving his own name. ¡°I am grateful for the chance to meet you, honored elder.¡±


    ¡°Stop that,¡± Sayaana interjected immediately. Her words carried force, and her face bent into a furious, angry scowl as they came, a forcible expressiveness that would never appear on the crystalline ice image that was Itinay.


    ¡°No one else can see or hear me,¡± the remnant soul continued. She demonstrated this by walking in front of Itinay and waving her hand back and forth in front of the pale blue face. ¡°They can''t sense my qi either, it''s inside of you. Makes formality stupid. This setup, it means I live inside your head. If this is going to work we need to be open to each other, casual, friendly.¡±


    ¡°That is, ah, elder, it would be...¡± Liao stumbled. He could not find anywhere to begin. The green-clad woman might be a remnant soul, but she was still the legacy of an immortal. She stood triply separated from him; age, origin, and power all kept them in different worlds. To speak before her without retreating into the protection of formality left him naked and helpless before her centuries of existence.


    Matters only worsened from there. ¡°It seems you made contact,¡± Itinay''s remark stabbed through the cocoon of privacy the circlet pretended to offer, but did not in truth provide. ¡°As listening to half a conversation is pointless, I will leave you two to conduct an accord. Remain in the elder hall, no one it presently using it. I will return by the nineteenth bell.¡±


    Without further comment, she rose from the couch and departed. It took mere steps before she vanished through the door and left Liao bereft of either protection or advice. He was alone with a woman one hundred times his senior and a task that demanded he somehow face her as an equal. Madness, an absolute impossibility. He did not understand how the grand elder proposed it, or how he could ever have agreed.


    ¡°They say that the dark space between the stars is colder than even the ice sheets at the poles of the world,¡± Sayaana commented as Itinay left them behind without looking back. ¡°That one certainly makes it sound true.¡±


    Liao blanched. Such a remark, such open commentary directed against one of the Twelve Sisters, he could hardly conceive of it. No one would dare to voice such thoughts without being at least an elder, and it was unwise to even think them, lest they leek out involuntarily. Worse, he found he could not agree, not truly. ¡°Grand Elder Itinay has been attentive and respectful,¡± this was a weak counter, for one could be cold as ice and be both those things, but it took all of Liao''s will to muster even such meager truths in the face of the green immortal visage.


    ¡°Because she''s using you,¡± Sayaana''s words were sour, but somehow without any anger. ¡°Just like she''s using me. The Twelve Sisters, they are stuck in an ancient war, fighting the longest siege in history. Every weapon, every tool, they bend it all to their grand plan, to their memory of their master. Nothing is spared, certainly not their own, or themselves. It''s very sad.¡±


    ¡°The Celestial Mother saved us all!¡± Some things were not to be disparaged. In faith, a foundation built not merely on weekly services, but on countless invocations, prayers, and stories throughout his life, Liao found a reservoir of defiance. One that gave him the voice to cry out across boundaries of station and cultivation. ¡°And the sisters have protected us for twenty-five hundred years.¡±


    ¡°Well, you have at least a little spirit,¡± emerald lips twisted once more into a sly smile. ¡°And that''s true, they have,¡± Sayaana admitted this with a quick toss of her head, as if it made no difference. ¡°But you''re still stuck here, in this little land of river plains between the mountains. One million souls living out their lives, one generation after another, stuck in this farmer''s pen of a land.¡±


    Crude and cruel as those words were, Liao could not find any way in which they were truly false. His father had brought him deep into the mountains once, to the very edge of the hidden land. He could recall that place in the forest where the sky warped and a step forward somehow, in a process that defied all orientation, became a step back. Rather than contest the assertion, he fell back into curiosity. ¡°How do you know that?¡± He reached up and tapped the gemstone now strapped to his forehead. ¡°Are you not trapped inside this jewel?¡±


    ¡°They do talk to me you know, the sisters, from time to time,¡± Sayaana shrugged. She spun about lightly and moved to lean against the nearest wall. Liao was somewhat surprised when she did not pass through it. ¡°And the blind one, she wore the circlet, for almost a century, so I could explain the contours of the land beyond hearing. Once she''d memorized the position of every hill, mountain, and structure, she took it off. She did that for the same reason I can understand this place. Hidden lands don''t change, they can''t. A knot of qi holds this place together, try to shift it too much, and it snaps.¡±


    The creation and maintenance of hidden lands lay at the very pinnacle of the formation arts. Liao knew nothing about them. Sayaana might be wrong, but her casual confidence seemed unlikely to be deceptive. Rather than pursue the concept, which would merely induce a headache, he moved back a step in their conversation. Hopefully it would help explain what the green woman sought. ¡°So, you think we should leave then?¡±


    ¡°No!¡± The snort indicated that he''d managed to surprise the remnant soul. Carefully, Sayaana moved to Itinay''s couch. She laid down stomach first, so her face was no more than a forearm''s length away from his own. It was a languid, eerily foreign approach, one that he had to forcibly swallow to avoid stepping back from. Her plated leather armor flowed around her form as she moved, emphasizing a figure with a muscular core and modest but deeply enticing curves.


    It was a scandalous approach, barely mitigated by the stiff outline of the battle armor, if anyone had been able to see. It occurred to Liao, very briefly before he banished the thought with all the fervor he could manage, that the green woman could strip naked and no one else would ever know.


    ¡°You are so young,¡± green skin aside, Sayaana''s appearance was of a woman who''d barely entered her twenties. Her vibrant and youthful beauty made this remark feel bizarre, a grandmother''s thoughts broadcast through a child''s mouth. ¡°And know so little. I suppose I''m the one who has to do something about that.¡±


    She sighed, and rolled back and forth across the couch. The springy wooden platform made no sound at this, nor did it shift and bend from her weight. A reminder that the remnant was a projection, not physically present. She sighed a second time, low and long, shaking her head as she came to a stop. ¡°Three hundred and thirty years ago, a demonic cultivator, the Scouring Wheel, slammed his wind and fire wheels through my chest. On that day, I was nine hundred and twenty-four years old and in my fourth century as an immortal. I reached the celestial ascendancy realm in my sixth century, which is considered a very swift pace, but I was and am young for an immortal.¡± She tossed her head again, braided hair twitching, and looked toward the door. ¡°That cold star, Itinay, is near to thirty-five hundred. Iay, the eldest sister, might have passed five millennia and is still younger than your Celestial Mother was on the day of her ascension by a good thousand years.¡±


    To live for thousands of years. It sounded absurd, but Itinay was no myth, she had spoken to Liao not an hour previous. He''d seen her image carved onto temple stones that were said to be as old as Mother''s Gift, and had the scouring of endless snows worked atop their surfaces as proof. Immortals were real, creatures both stepped out of legend and perfectly contemporary. Even Elder Fu Jin, who had just started to teach him to weave, claiming it was an essential skill for all pavilion members, had lived nearly five centuries.


    Someday, far in the future, Liao hoped he could properly understand such immense spans of time. Today, he doubted he could manage to grapple with them.


    ¡°Even if I count living and remnant years together, which is a cheat,¡± Sayaana smiled wickedly. ¡°My lifespan reaches only halfway back to the demon war.¡± A slow and wistful sadness began to roam through the remnant''s words, a sense of loss so profound it could never be fully articulated, beyond language''s grip. It made her diction difficult to grasp, but the emotions bled through with perfect clarity.


    Liao found himself leaning forward, terribly close to the green face, in order to hear better.


    ¡°I was born in Endless Needles Land, far from here, north. A small place, compared to this one, no more than twenty thousand souls. Scattered through the forest they lived, and our sole grand elder ran our little sect. I lived there seven hundred and thirty-nine years. Evergreen forest, my whole world.¡± Her expression grew grim, and bright green eyes turned away from him, stared upwards at the distant ceiling. ¡°Ragged Edge shattered it all in an afternoon.¡± Her body shook, hands trembling, leaves in a terrible wind. ¡°He was sloppy, advanced too far ahead of the demon horde. Our grand elder died at his hand, but the demonic cultivator was not uninjured. Five of us, soul forging realm all, fell upon him. Three from my home, two from foreign places he''d laid waste who''d sacrificed everything in pursuit. We tore the rotten monster apart.¡±Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    The grim satisfaction in her words did little to mitigate the pain they contained. ¡°That battle, it carried me up and through my tribulation, but Ragged Edge''s death blow shattered the boundary. The barrier fell and the plague rushed in.¡± She shook her head, tears blinked away at the edge of her green eyes. ¡°My first deed as one in the celestial ascendancy realm; kill the demons my people had become.¡±


    ¡°Rot,¡± Liao whispered, unable to stop himself. It was ridiculously sad. Thousands of lives ended at a stroke because of the actions of one madman. The callousness, the senselessness, of it left him hollow. The motives of demonic cultivators lay utterly beyond his understanding.


    ¡°Demons and their cultivator masters must drain qi to grow,¡± Sayaana shrugged, but the words were bitten out through clenched teeth. ¡°So they come for us. Why do you think they destroyed the old world? Food, nothing more, nothing less. I know, I wandered for centuries. I saw what was left behind. Whole cities still exist, in the deserts, cloaked in sand but untouched and lifeless.¡±


    Slowly, she turned to look at him. ¡°You wonder how I survived?¡± She answered the unspoken question locked upon his face. ¡°Motion, constant motion. Less than one hundred demonic cultivators in the celestial ascendancy realm survived the demon war. Many have died since, and all their subordinates have succumbed to the cold grasp of aging. They can see far, but the world is truly vast. You have no idea how massive it truly is. Demonic cultivators, they claim ranges as their prey. Move from one to another, and they do not follow unless they are willing to fight each other. I stayed one step ahead, for a time. Foolish,¡± she swallowed, a sour expression on her face. ¡°Two centuries until I was caught. Not very long at all.¡±


    Suddenly, sorrow vanished from her voice as her brilliant eyes focused on him once more. ¡°But you''re different.¡± The force of her attention lacked the massive qi backing of Itinay or other immortals, remnant that she was, but Sayaana still retained the furiously formidable focus of one who had achieved the highest state beneath the heavens. It was more than enough to freeze him in place. ¡°You won''t have to run away. You could hide. If you grow strong, you could even strike back. You know that''s what Itinay wants don''t you? A demon hunter, a silent killer to trim away the ranks of the demons until the world is cleansed, no matter how long it takes.¡±


    ¡°That sounds worthy,¡± the comment slipped out unbidden, but Liao found it felt real and true. He had learned the titles of a number of demonic cultivators. They were listed on the memorial plinths recalling the names of all those who''d fallen in battle with the leaders of the many hordes crushed before the Starwall. Those living horrors were imaged in nightmarish art, creatures barely more human in shape than the demons themselves. To remove them from all things under heaven seemed only right and just.


    ¡°So young,¡± Sayaana smiled. She sounded both happy and sad at once. ¡°This is where I''m supposed to say that to slay even one of those old monsters would be a worthy legacy for any cultivator to leave behind, but I won''t.¡± Her smile vanished. Her green face shifted into a startlingly serious expression, a crystalline emerald, sharp and unchanging. It felt as if a whole forest was staring at him. ¡°You get only one life, one dao. Live it for yourself. You''ll never get far trying to live someone else''s dream. I won''t go with you to hunt demons, but if you want to see the world, I''ll happily be your guide.¡±


    The offer could not have been more clear, or more unexpected. Liao thought the remnant soul would press far harder, demand some sort of contract, perhaps even beg if rebuffed. He could not imagine anyone willingly agreeing to stay trapped within a gemstone if any alternative existed. Maybe nine hundred years provided a person with a different definition of patience. Regardless, he felt no effort to coerce him from Sayaana. Perhaps, he worried, it was simply pity. He was an adult in the eyes of the world and the sect, but he knew he was only fourteen. Compared to this woman he was a bleating whelp, not worth pressing.


    Instead of demands, he was faced once more with the question that seemed to arise again and again since he''d become a cultivator. What did he want? What was his path to find it? The dao, mysterious and infinite, was always the goal, the unknowable glorious existence that lay beyond ascension.


    As ever, Liao felt inadequate to even ask such questions. A boy with ordinary dreams, such inquiries demanded too much of him. That should not be true. The old lore, and Orday''s own words, claimed the dao lay closest to the simplest of tasks, to everyday living. It was so nonetheless. A paradox he had not yet fully understood.


    Perhaps he never would.


    The Twelve Sisters laid out one path before him. Itinay had pressed the circlet into his hands herself. They were wise and experienced. They believed he should take this road. It was impossible to discount that, to not consider it a powerful reason to agree. Sayaana herself, though she professed otherwise, exuded similar pressure. She was trapped in a stone. He could carry her outward. Failing to do so felt cruel, spiteful.


    Hunting demons would protect Mother''s Gift. His village, his parents, even his fellow cultivators. An honorable duty, one worthy even if he ultimately achieved little. The addition of a road filled with violence made the celestial ascendancy realm only marginally less likely. The chances were already poor, he would defy them, or not, one way or the other.


    All the practical arguments, these and others, indicated he should, he must, agree.


    But that was not enough.


    He might have only taken the very first step, but he''d felt that much in doing so. It was impossibly clear, hidden in the stars behind his eyes. A cultivator could walk only their own path. The dao, the heavens, they were not reached upon a road laid down by another.


    It was a strange revelation to grasp when considering binding oneself to another soul.


    Liao fixed his vision upon Sayaana, put everything in the blatant stare. That was, in the end, the only true question. This woman, this remnant soul, and a bond that would carry until death or immortality. He could follow Orday''s teachings on his own. Or he could join himself to what he saw beneath those threefold green eyes, the endless forest of the world.


    The demons, the threat, that was a distraction. The duty was important, that lay beyond all doubt, but it stood apart from the path to ascension.


    She said she''d traveled the world for over two centuries. Turning that claim over in his mind, Liao found himself infused with sudden vigor. He examined it deeply, unpacking its meaning. She''d been in the celestial ascendancy realm at the time, possessed of a movement technique of great power. Even if it lacked the efficacy of the Stellar Flash Steps, it surely carried her across the land faster than Su Yi had carried him a few months previous. At such a pace, faster than an eagle''s flight, surely she would have found a place of refuge in a few years at most. She could have stopped there, returned to waiting out the demons.


    Instead, Sayaana kept going.


    ¡°Is this land really a farmer''s pen?¡± he asked, trying to measure the truth by invoking that terrible insult once again.


    ¡°Yes,¡± agreement was offered without rancor. The green face was somber, not wicked. ¡°This is a fine land, if you''re a farmer. Fertile land beside rivers that endlessly provide the water farmers treasure, with a little ring of forest-covered mountains to buffer it. It''s nice, but it''s small, and it''s simple. That''s what farmers want, but it''s not the world. The whole world, the real face of it, is wide, complex, and messy. It has things you''ve never seen. Endless forests, trackless steppe, blasted desert, and more strangeness than I ever imagined. You, you''ve never even seen the ocean.¡±


    The last statement, though perhaps the simplest of them all, struck deepest. Liao had a vague idea of what the ocean was. The sect library contained a globe with the diameter of a wagon wheel that claimed to show a map of the old world entire, and it was mostly painted in blue. Old stories spoke of ships that sailed for weeks at a time, so far from shore they could not see it, and of immense creatures the size of houses that lived beneath the waves. It all could be real, the details were too bizarre to use as deception, for who would believe such outlandish lies, but only the Twelve Sisters had ever witnessed any of it.


    Suddenly, Liao realized just how terribly sad that was. A million souls within Mother''s Gift, and of them only twelve ¨C he stopped and amended this to thirteen, for Sayaana surely counted ¨C had ever seen the sea.


    Orday''s creation was invaluable. It protected humanity from the demon plague and its treacherous champions. Without it, they would never have survived. It was even comfortable, as much as any place could be, but no fragment could ever contain the wonders of an entire world.


    ''Opportunity'' Itinay had declared. She meant to destroy the demons, but Liao realized it carried another meaning. Defeating their foe would at the same time reclaim the world. Sayaana, at least, was willing to try, no matter how slim the chances might be.


    That path, that journey, was one Qing Liao realized he wished to take. Knowing he was trapped in a pen, he refused to stay there when another showed him the way out. ¡°Then let''s see the world, together,¡± he told the remnant soul. Tapping the circlet with one finger as hesitation dissipated like morning dew beneath the light of his new resolve, he asked the final question. ¡°What do I do?¡±


    Green lips smiled, equally swift in their acceptance. ¡°Extend you qi from your dantian up to the stone, as if bringing a new meridian into your circuit. That will touch the core of my essence that remains. After that, keep it steady, no more. I will handle the rest.¡±


    ¡°Will it hurt?¡± Liao did not fear a few moments of pain, but by being forewarned he might avoid jerking back out of instinct.


    ¡°Shouldn''t,¡± Sayaana spread her hands around his skull. ¡°But it''s probably going to feel really strange.¡±


    Liao noticed, in that moment, that she wore remarkable gloves, made from a very fine hide unknown to him and dyed a green shade he''d never seen before.


    Grasping his qi, unwilling to wait any longer, Liao pushed, hard. There was a brief wash through his senses, cool and fresh, as the energy brushed up against the natural qi of the turquoise. Then, suddenly, he felt something warm press against him from the other side of that barrier. Dual contact brought it down without effort. Connection followed instantly. Later, older, he would compare the sensation to the moment of insertion during intercourse, an interlocking of will rather than flesh, but otherwise similar. Crass as the comparison sounded when voiced, there was no more accurate way to convey this joining of souls through the touch of qi.


    Afterwards, as Sayaana merged her essence into the circuit of his qi, an eighth meridian, with the swift manipulation of an immortal, Liao felt strangely heavy. The stone on his brow weighed not simply upon the bones of his skull, but on his dantian. After a moment, qi sense directed inward, he realized this came from the measure of energy being drawn out of his being and assembled into the visual and audio construction that was the remnant soul''s projected existence. The next breath supplied recognition that his body was drawing in more qi now, his dantian expanding rapidly to compensate. Whatever impoverishment he currently felt would swiftly abate.


    ¡°This,¡± he murmured, wondering at the peculiar adjustment. ¡°Will this make me grow stronger faster?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± Sayaana stood up from the couch and shook her head. She did not look different, but her presence had acquired new substance. Now, in addition to sight and sound, she could be felt. The nature of her qi, greenish, verdant, and deep, was laid bare. It struck Liao dumb, so different from any member of the Celestial Origin Sect. ¡°There are no shortcuts to the dao,¡± she scowled, an act of pure reflex. ¡°The rotting demonic cultivators thought they''d found one and destroyed the old world, but not one ever even tried to ascend. As you grow in strength, so too will what I draw, it evens out perfectly. But,¡± she added with a quirk of her lips. ¡°It will make it easier for me to act as a second set of senses, and to guide your qi when teaching, so you benefit beyond just my company.¡± Her teasing manner saw her dance lightly around his still form.


    Another pair of eyes would be the difference between salvation and doom in the wilderness. It explained much as to why Itinay had encouraged such a strange scheme. One body invisible to demon qi, but two minds, two people. He knew enough of the wilderness to esteem this value, and welcomed it.


    ¡°I see,¡± Liao agreed. Contentment followed, his body felt warm, his qi flowed peacefully. The choice, once made, fostered no regrets. Certainly that would have been pointless. There was no going back. Even as basic as his cultivation was, he knew that trying to detach Sayaana from him would tear his cultivation, and possibly his entire soul, apart. ¡°What is the next step?¡±


    ¡°You train yourself,¡± these words, carried across the length of the elder hall via its perfect acoustics, came from Itinay''s mouth. The chilly blue grand elder strode over the floor tiles with her full power unfurled. It was as if a frozen star had descended upon them. ¡°And you prepare for battle with the enemy. You are weak. Only when you grow strong will you be able to fulfill the promises you have just made.¡±


    ¡°She''s right,¡± Sayaana chimed in, though she moved to stand at Liao''s right, letting them both face the grand elder together. ¡°The Ruined Wastes is a terrible thing to call the world, but it does get the dangerous part across.¡±


    A simple directive. Liao liked that. He enjoyed simple goals, though he suspected having an immortal living in his head would make for endless complications.


    Itinay confirmed the remnant soul''s statement at once. ¡°For this day forward, your path diverges from that of all of members of the sect. I will give you until tomorrow morning to prepare. Be ready when dawn comes.¡±

 Chapter Nineteen: Camouflage

    Qing Liao walked along the riverbank in silence. His eyes followed the patterns of reeds and shrub growth that marked the contouring of the water''s edge as he moved. The mud beneath his feet, the slow rushing sound of the riffles over gravel, and even the chirping and quaking of birds all served to inform his senses. Even as his mind processed all of this through dense subconscious filtration, he remained in constant motion. Long, light strides propelled him from one point to the next, a steady but seemingly pulsing progression. Qi shifted through his frame with each motion, not expended in bursts of speed but processed and coated along exterior surfaces to calm impacts and cloak footfalls.


    He slid along the riverbank like a ghost, a thing unnoticed by the native wildlife. Every effort was expended to hide his presence so well that not even the dragonflies, able to see in every direction at once, took note of his passage. A mistake, when made, manifested in sudden silence by the countless tiny birds roosting amid the thick shrub layer.


    That sudden stillness lasted only seconds, for Liao froze instantly upon the loss of those chirps. Despite such swift recovery, the failure was not lost upon his own awareness, nor that of his ever-present companion.


    ¡°You snagged a fallen branch with the edge of your right boot,¡± Sayaana''s observation confirmed the result Liao had already guessed. He''d felt the movement, his leg extending too far, even as he took the step. Not that he said anything in response, speech would shatter the silent progression, ruin the exercise that remained far from finished. The remnant soul, inaudible outside his own thoughts, could continue to criticize freely. Her presence did not manifest as a full-body projection, but rested behind his eyes, sharing senses at the point of maximum fidelity. ¡°Keep moving,¡± she instructed. ¡°Full speed now.¡±


    The Stellar Flash Steps were not designed for stealth, or for movement that left the surrounding terrain unperturbed. Light, by its nature, touched everything it passed. The Eternal Verdant Stride utilized by the Endless Needles Sect was far more suited to unseen motion beneath the canopy, but it had numerous limitations. It was slow; it required considerably greater qi expenditure; and in the absence of vegetation, a problem in many environments, it was severely hobbled. Sayaana''s demonstration of the technique''s capabilities had been a revelation not in the power of diverse learning, but in the truly incredible capability of Orday''s creations.


    This should not have come as a surprise, had he paid attention to history. Orday was the fifth sage, only the fifth confirmed ascension in all the history of the old world, and the techniques of the first three were largely lost. Having revealed every secret of her power to her daughters in the hopes that doing so might allow them to survive the demon war, she was also the exceedingly rare cultivator who''d not held her best skills back for personal use alone.


    Sayaana recognized this too, with less bitterness than might be expected. Rather than attempt to turn him to her own inferior technique, she''d resolved to find a way that would allow Liao to use the Stellar Flash Steps according to the demands of stealth. Grand Elder Itinay backed that plan fully. She suggested that he could, with practice, shift as light from one dark point to the next, forever unseen.


    Sound though this theory might be, and with immortal skill to supply instruction, Liao was still the one who had to conduct the ten thousand tries needed to turn a scheme into reality.


    It was anything but easy. Sayaana favored the use of water as a means of blocking concealed motion. This inflicted endless unanticipated plunges into frigid liquid on Liao''s part.


    As occurred this day, when his full speed motion rapidly brought him up to a sharp oxbow and he failed to fully control his qi when attempting the tight turn. Qi caught in the path from left foot to right while he tried to reorient between steps. The movement technique collapsed between footfalls.


    Waterlogged robes and a face full of mud were his rewards.


    ¡°If you cannot make that turn at speed, you should stop, gather yourself, and then accelerate again,¡± Sayaana admonished. Her accented speech ground away inside his skull.


    ¡°You said full speed,¡± he worked swiftly to wring out excess water from his pack and bow case. They could endure a dunking, but prolonged soaking would damage them.


    This feeble protest failed to appease the remnant soul. ¡°I did, but you have to adapt. Changing the move and succeeding is better than continuing in one line and failing. Tell me, how else could you have made it through, while staying dry?¡±


    Schooled by many weeks of similar training, it took only a moment''s thought to supply an answer. ¡°I could have jumped,¡± he could not jump endlessly, pushing his foot off with full force against the air itself, not yet, for the amount of qi needed to perform such a maneuver exceeded his body refining realm capacity, but he could still jump very high. High enough to clear the banks, orient his body against the wind, and land smoothly amid the rushes on the other side of the oxbow''s narrow neck.


    ¡°Yes, and every farmer for a kilometer or more would have seen you take flight,¡± the remnant soul scoffed. ¡°Maybe, if you''re very lucky, they''d confuse you for a heron, but I doubt it. Humans always look awkward in midair, even those who can fly properly. Right idea, wrong move,¡± she cautioned. ¡°Instead, you could have run up the bank and across, no foolish jumping.¡±


    Liao looked at the riverbank, a nearly vertical wall of loose mud and ragged burrows almost three meters tall ravaged by erosion as the river slowly worked to cut its way back onto a straight path eastward. He knew that if he put his leg to that and let it take his weight, he''d sink in up to his knee. Any attempt to dash up that wall would simply dump him back down into the river itself, covered in muck.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    ¡°Stop thinking like a mortal,¡± the rebuke, following his path of sight, cut through such plans. Itinay had stated, flatly, that the bond allowed only for shared senses, not thoughts or feelings. However, qi was also a sense, one that revealed more than all the others, and Sayaana possessed the insight of one who''d reached the celestial ascendancy realm. In that way, it might as well allow her to read his mind.


    ¡°You have the ability to do that.¡± She paused. ¡°In fact, do it.¡± The order emerged sharply. ¡°Do it right now. Flash up that wall.¡±


    He did it.


    It was almost shockingly easy. So much so that Liao ended up vaulting into the air and descending hard in the middle of the stand of bamboo planted atop the peninsula of the oxbow. It took a series of contortionist motions upon landing to avoid crushing the valuable grass as he flopped down.


    ¡°I pushed off too hard at the crest,¡± he made the diagnosis himself. It was perfectly obvious. ¡°I''ll do it again.¡±


    ¡°I do enjoy it when you told as you''re told,¡± Sayaana smirked from inside his skull.


    He did it ten times, each time picking a different spot along the bank. The goal was to sense the necessary reinforcement at the moment of contact, not to achieve success through pure trial and error. Every elder, every lesson, stretched that reflection and improvement must be constant. Rote repetition was useless on the path to ascension, each new attempt must provide learning.


    They all had favored metaphors to describe this process. Liao like Fu Jin''s the best. ¡°You must weave a ladder to the heavens, with only yourself for thread.¡±


    ¡°Progress,¡± his guide granted when they were done, and took the opportunity to materialize in his vision at the same moment. ¡°We''ll keep at this. Your father taught you bushwhacking, and that''s good, the instincts are useful, but you have to channel them properly. You''re light slicing through the leaves, not a human walking the trails. Remember?¡±


    A quick nod. It was obvious, even though it wasn''t. Just hearing the words, internalizing the reasoning, that was not enough. He had to work the understanding through muscle and bone, beat it down through his meridians to his core. There would be, Liao knew, many more soakings to come.


    ¡°We''ll go back full speed,¡± this order was delivered with perfect command impartiality. All friendly teasing removed. Sayaana shifted moods often when conducting instruction, as if testing different methods of relationship. The wind seemed to carry her across endless perspectives. ¡°But this time, carry your bow ready to shoot. The farmers say no shooting the ducks,¡± The farming pavilion was extremely territorial regarding the lands in the shadow of the Starwall, which they managed directly as mortal farmers had been taught to fear those looming shades. ¡°And demons don''t fly anyway. I want you to shoot me instead, each time I appear.¡±


    ¡°That''s...¡± something in Liao revolted at this command. He fought hard, searching for a means to express the profound surge of discomfort that flooded him upon hearing this request. ¡°I''ll know when you appear,¡± he countered weakly. It was true enough, he could feel the slight pulling on his qi, a tension at the edge of his eyelids, when Sayaana materialized his apparition.


    ¡°Good,¡± this did nothing to forestall the scheme. ¡°Your qi sense would detect a demon too, so it is useful. Besides,¡± gold-green eyes flashed against the reflected light of the water as she walked atop the river without touching the surface. ¡°You can''t harm me. Even when I was alive you couldn''t have. My qi would simply cancel out the blow the moment it touched my flesh. It would take a hundred or more body refining realm archers, all shooting the same spot, to have any impact at all.¡±


    This statement provided no reassurance at all. ¡°I will not shoot at my friends.¡± Somehow, Liao found absolute certainly backing these words, drawn from some impossible to locate place within himself. ¡°I just won''t.¡± He discovered that he didn''t need a reason, it was simply a truth he held. ¡°Find another way.¡± He hated saying it that way, for it sounded like the pointless defiance of a child, but he meant them all the same and would not take them back.


    The bow within the tanned leather case was no hunting tool, and the broadhead arrows in his quiver were shaped to rip through and lodge between the ribs of demons. A killing tool, fashioned by cultivator hands. It was not a thing to be unleashed idly. Liao made no move to release it from the treated cocoon.


    A curious expression drew across the green face, the rare puzzlement of an immortal faced with something unexpected. ¡°Fine,¡± Sayaana did not push back in the slightest. Without further comment she simply accepted this assertion and moved ahead, leaving Liao stunned. ¡°I will call out trees for you to hit instead, and it will be harder.¡±


    ¡°I understand.¡± The increased difficulty, punishment or otherwise, made no difference. He had never, not in his whole life, shoot an arrow toward a human being, and he had no intention of starting now, regardless of whether or not Sayaana''s body had any physical presence. Perhaps the day would come. Even discarding demonic cultivators, Mother''s Gift was not a land free of violence. The sect was required to patrol and keep the peace.


    He would face that challenge on that day. A cheat to make an exercise more effective did not suffice as a reason.


    ¡°Then begin,¡± the remnant soul behind his eyes commanded.


    It was harder, much harder. Liao completely failed to hit a single one of the trees Sayaana indicated and managed to get himself, his bow, and a pair of angry geese all thoroughly soaked. That last led to an impromptu demonstration of melee combat and a cutting review of his use of the empty hand arts of the Nine Spheres Arsenal. Dutifully, Liao acknowledged he needed to practice those more.


    Supposing that defeating angry animals without killing them was a worthy goal, and perhaps that was, sometimes, though Liao was of the opinion that geese were not on any such list, it offered a motive.


    He said absolutely nothing in protest of this, regardless. In silence, he dragged his tired and soaked body up and along the Starwall to endure the long walk back to the sect. He''d be able to bathe once returning there, a privilege he''d never thought important until his daily routine became filled with repeated immersion in the thick scum of farmland rivers, a truly messy thing compared to the clean flow of mountain streams. It felt like twenty different oils clung to his skin and hair.


    ¡°You are getting better,¡± Sayaana insisted that he practice the Stellar Flash Steps even on the exhausted walk back. She claimed, and he could not refute, that the wilderness would never care how tired he was. ¡°Perhaps, in the future, we can arrange for a servant to put out targets. That way we''ll-¡±


    She stopped mid-sentence.


    In the distance a great gong rang out atop the wall. It did not signal the hour, and it did not stop. The clangs resounded over each other upon repeat, a steady three-part pattern.


    That signals had only one meaning. One everyone in Mother''s Gift knew.


    Demons.

 Chapter Twenty: Gathering Hordes

    The phenomenon of hidden lands was at least as old as cultivation itself, perhaps as old as the world, for they could form without any human activity at all. Such natural hidden lands took shape through knotting and splitting in the immense flows of qi that naturally moved across the planet in accordance with climate, tectonics, and other mighty unseen forces. How this caused a copy of a space to mold itself on top of an existing one required extensive understanding of qi flows and innate formation structure, but the evidence could simply be walked through. Most who were not advanced theorists thought of hidden lands as a bubble atop a pond, touching at one point, just before release to the sky. Like bubbles, most naturally occurring lands would dissipate and vanish in time, but human intervention could stabilize them.


    Extending this metaphor, in a manner that tended to terrify those who lived within the confines of hidden lands, the bubbles could also be popped.


    It did not happen often. Demonic cultivators had little interest in destroying their prize before it could be drained of every scrap of qi it contained, but those who defended them sometimes invoked fail-safes to rob the blood-hunting hordes of exactly that prize. This was especially common in those hidden lands created during the Demon War, and many of those precious bubbles had been popped in the intervening centuries. Nothing remained but snarled qi to mark where they had once been.


    Created through the act of an ascended cultivator, Mother''s Gift possessed durability and defenses many other hidden lands lacked. A series of carefully arranged formations obscured the convoluted qi flows that allowed it to exist. Ritual inscriptions scattered throughout the bordering mountains utilized bindings and signals to confuse demonic senses and send the ghouls wandering elsewhere. There were even memory traps designed to confuse demonic cultivators as to their location in reference to the rest of the world when in proximity to the access point.


    Scouts cloaked under veils able to absorb all qi released by their bodies maintained these formations and patrolled near the entrance regularly. The vigil was kept constant, a duty never neglected.


    All these measures and more, including layers of esoteric protections known only to the grand elders, served to keep Mother''s Gift hidden from the demon-dominated world beyond.


    But the demon plague was an extremely insidious thing. Its tiny flakes rode the wind, sensing qi as they coated all things in the Ruined Waste beneath a thin, almost imperceptible, crimson film. Ordinary qi flows, drawn from all ambient sources, sustained them, but only greater strength, gathered and condensed by conscious effort, could serve as fuel for the plague''s growth. Primitive but potent senses, unconscious and bio-mechanical while still attuned to the essential essence of cultivation, detected such concentrations. If the plague could reach them simply by shifting through the ambient environment using wind, water, or earth, so much the better. During the war, it had consumed the world that way, all exposed space long ago discovered and infiltrated.


    The remaining concentrations were blocked, separated by the twisted qi of hidden lands and locked by ironclad formation walls that prevented the access of tiny microbes propelled by malformed essence drive.


    The swarm could, however, release a signal demonstrating its frustration upon sensing food it could not reach. That pheromone diffused across the world and slowly drew in the plague''s greater limbs, the demons. A path to break through walls that blocked the films. Far worse, the shifts in motion of the demon multitude alerted demonic cultivators to the presence of an undetected prize. Efforts to disrupt such coordination might succeed, for a time, but the steady release of signal by the plague itself would, over many decades or even centuries, inevitably call forth a horde.


    A mindless horde could threaten a small sect, for even if elders could not be overcome they could slay only so many demons at once, leaving lesser cultivators and mortals unprotected, but those that acquired the support of demonic cultivators were infinitely more dangerous. These were the forces that destroyed hidden lands and extended the slow march of the world toward nothing but red-tinged wilderness devoid of conscious thought.


    It had been over a century since Mother''s Gift faced such a threat, when the Ember Whip, once a student of the Scourging Wheel who slew Sayaana, dared to lead an assault upon the Starwall. Having reached only the first level of the celestial ascendancy realm, and without any subordinates to aid her, she was sliced in twain by Aorkay''s axe after a struggle measured in mere seconds.


    Despite this, the damage inflicted by the over three hundred thousand demons she''d led into the Killing Fields had been immense. Nearly two hundred cultivators fell in battle, numbers only recently restored in full. That a horde once again threatened the land after just passing this milestone might be called fate by some, a truth buried in the infinite complexities of the dao no earthly mind, not even an immortal''s could ever truly grasp.


    The demons came mostly from the east. They were thick upon the lower plains where one of the heartlands of the old world had existed, before the war. Following the rivers, they made their way through the circuitous paths of the high valleys and narrow gorges that were unremarkable save for their visually stunning geology. The slow gathering, witnessed from above, of the red forms, was rather like a swarm of ants stutter-stepping their way to encircle a carcass. The red forms appeared tiny, and were scattered widely, spread out across a space of hundreds, thousands, of square kilometers. They often advanced forward no more than a few meters each day.


    But they still advanced, for the plague signal, an unmistakable gradient of qi concentration, led them on without room for doubt.


    As the demons moved, thousands strong and growing in number day by day, a pair of ashen gray eyes looked down upon them from a high mountain perch. Though distant from the nearest demon by many kilometers, all were observed with precision. The slender and lanky man-sized ghouls, over-sized ape-like ogres, and lumbering elephantine giants; three common states occasionally augmented by some mutant intermediate form, all yielded to that piercing vision. The degraded and feral minds could not resist the signal given by their master disease. Less than animals, they were nothing but fleshy puppets of a thing that worked in chemicals and qi, devoid of words and reason.


    The observer knew these truths intimately. She also knew she was different. As far as she was concerned the plague served her, not the reverse. The blight was a tool, a living artifact of almost impossible complexity and power, but still a creation of cultivator hands and minds. A self-deception that, but one crushed down so deep in her core an admission of the true state of affairs would tear apart consciousness and dantian alike.


    She watched the horde gather from on high, face veiled and skull hidden beneath a wraparound helm of dark metal that obscured everything but almond-shaped ash-laced eyes. Those orbs lacked division, presenting instead a constant swirling storm of many-shaded smoke descending perpetually across their surface. A vision of decay falling from above. Armor forged in blue-gray metal cloaked her body, padded with layers of dark silks and bound in place by a blood red sash wrapped about her waist. Charcoal metal gauntlets secured the hands that grasped a long, slender, single-edge blade of glowing golden alloy she carried bare to the sky.


    No part of her skin was visible, nothing but the swirling, smoke-cloud eyes. At least two layers, usually cloth and metal in tandem, covered every other speck of flesh. Millennia ago, the soul within that cloaked presentation had been born under the name of Sok Chan, but that woman had ceased to be when, after her cultivation growth stalled out completely and death approached, she''d chosen betrayal and demonic allegiance. Now, with her immortal body achieved through plague-aided soul forging hidden from the world for reasons she never revealed, only Scoria Scorn remained.


    Her elevated perch afforded excellent visibility. Holding it, she''d stood in place for weeks, never moving. All the better to watch as the demons slowly made their way westward and upward from the plains. This still state was no burden. The mind of a celestial ascendancy realm cultivator could find fascination in any process, no matter how slow. Distractions would not overwhelm her, and there were few enough of those. The demon plague sustained her entirely. She needed neither food nor drink, and even air need not fill her lungs so long as qi was present. Even the normally ceaseless burden of cultivators, the need to circulate and compress their qi that strength might be maintained; the plague had eliminated that difficulty by binding her circuits to its own.


    One of the unexpected fortuitous benefits of the decision she''d made, long ago.


    Despite such capabilities, she was not, and had never been, a creature of endless patience in the manner of some immortals. The demons were taking a long time to come together, too long in her estimation. When driven by the full force of the plague''s influence they could move at great speed, for like her they required nothing by the disease''s presence to sustain them. However, this horde was spread wide, dispersed across a distance that stressed the signal''s gradient to its very limits. What should have been, had once been, a matter of weeks, would now take many months, almost a full year.


    From her position on high, observing a vast swath of narrow river valleys, Scoria Scorn could take all this in at an empowered glance. Matching her sight against the perspective provided by two and a half millennia of following such hordes, she was able to perform the mental arithmetic and derive a most unwelcome conclusion. It produced a realization that troubled her profoundly.


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    The demons were running out.


    It seemed inconceivable, at first. When the Demon War began the world had contained over one billion mortal souls. She knew this well, for she had conducted long-distance trading in her prior life.


    The plague had taken almost all of them. No more than a few million, not even one in one hundred, had escaped the plague''s touch and the transformation that followed; the reconfiguration of flesh that followed the replacement of fundamental qi with a new source. The decades of the war had claimed many of them, of course, but those numbers had been replenished by feasting on those newly born during the conflict and the populations torn out of hidden lands cracked apart.


    After the war ended and resistance across the face of the world ceased, the plague triumphant from sea to sea across seven continents, the demonic population had been no less than five hundred million. Surely that sufficed to crush the several score hidden realms left behind by those who fled. There were more than a million demons per realm, at the very least. Far more than necessary.


    Or so they''d thought in those heady days of victory. A hideously short-sighted oversight, one that a group of immortals ought to have been above making. Of course, they were a biased group, Scoria Scorn was not blind to that. Impatience, frustration, desperation, madness, these reasons led them to the demonic path. They had not been the great sages of the day. Two and a half millennia sufficed to provide enough self-awareness to admit this.


    Sometimes that was helpful. Other times, such as the present moment, it simply left her grumpy.


    Demons could not reproduce. That was, fundamentally, the core problem. The plague could feast on qi and make more endless crimson film, but new demons only came to be when additional humans were converted. The remaining supply of mortals was tiny, scattered, and protected by the might of many potent cultivators. Every assault, even those that succeeded completely, depleted the total demon population, often by many tens of thousands.


    But those losses had been anticipated, calculated, and every aspect of the battle record accorded with the ancient estimates. In some cases, such as battles led by especially aggressive cultivators, the ratios were even superior to expectations. They had predicted human resistance with, if not perfection, at least more than suitable competence.


    What they had forgotten was more fundamental. The world was not a place of constancy. Time brought about change, and change could kill. Kill in ways no one had expected.


    Demons did not need to eat, drink, or breathe. The plague, their contact with its globe-spanning qi network, sustained them. Beyond that, they were strong but far from invulnerable. Immortal cultivators, able to step across mountain ranges in moments, tended to forget the might of natural forces simply by only ever witnessing them from afar. They had not considered those in their calculations.


    And no one had ever realized just how much nature raged and scourged over the course of twenty-five hundred years.


    Demons died buried beneath sandstorms, severed from the sustenance of the plague. Hurricanes picked them up and smashed them against the shore, battering their bodies to mush. Tornadoes simply torn them apart outright. Earthquakes crushed them beneath huge walls of rock. Worst of all were fires, and their greater cousins volcanoes. The moving walls of heat and smoke could wash over areas of truly immense size, and claim demon lives by the hundreds of thousands in one inferno.


    Lacking a reason to recognize natural phenomena as a threat until the flames flicked against their skin, demons did not evade the flames as animals did, and by the time they moved it was always too late. Many would not run even then, for as the smoke burned away the film-based connection to the plague they would simply lie down in place and burn away, mindless.


    The world''s small islands, once choice positions for sect headquarters and often left swarming beneath bloated hordes, were now all cleansed of the demons. Stripped away of red forms by the mercurial but inevitable wrath of the sea. Huge swaths of grassland, where fire came again and again in lengthy but measurable cycles, had been similarly emptied. In the arctic regions, glaciers ¨C not slow-moving when taken on a scale of centuries ¨C had reduced demon hordes to naught but lines of mashed gore. Though other regions had performed better, the situation remained a problem, one that could not be easily overcome.


    Scoria Scorn suspected, based on careful calculation, that less than one hundred million demons remained. Perhaps no more than seventy-five. Barely enough to provide every remaining demonic cultivator with a million-strong horde of their own.


    Though that was still a very large number it no longer felt like enough.


    The slowed rate of assembly was a manifestation of these low numbers. One that presented a new sort of tactical problem, something she''d realized after spending many days staring down from on high. Her vigil, originally begun out of anticipatory curiosity, was gradually revealed to be of immense importance.


    Extending her senses to their fullest extent, feeling the resonance of plague-bent qi within her dantian, she could detect demons, especially the rare and powerful giants, from hundreds of kilometers distant. A far greater range than that across which even the most powerful cultivator could detect another. This was a weapon the demonic cultivators had been using since the war began.


    Ultimately, the problem was one of mathematics and mobility. The strongest giant could defeat, one on one, a weak thought weaving realm cultivator. A horde, with thousands of demons, could overwhelm even awareness integration disciples easily and potentially trap and slay spirit tempering elders should they exhaust their qi. Against those in the soul forging realm, however, demons were little more than wheat before the scythe.


    A single celestial ascendancy realm immortal, given a century or so and no cultivator opposition, could plausibly eliminate every remaining demon from the planet.


    Not that such a thing would ever happen, while Scoria Scorn and her fellows existed. After all, the entire point of the demons was to serve as battle fodder for their cultivator superiors. A tool to drive their enemies into inferior positions where they could be trapped, overwhelmed, and harvested of their precious qi. That had been the scheme from the very beginning. She knew this better than most, having been in the second layer of the thought weaving realm when the war began. Few indeed had ever matched such a meteoric ascent, and no other among those survived.


    The resource that was living cultivators was not to be wasted.


    During the war there had been demonic cultivators of all realms and layers. More than enough to keep the orthodox fools honest and reinforce the weaknesses of the demon horde.


    Such glorious demonic armies were long gone, slain by time. The plague made demons immortal, but not those who fought to retain their reason even as they stole its power. Just like their orthodox opponents, those who failed to forge their souls and manifest immortal bodies would eventually perish. Two and a half millennia had done for even the most durable of those; their decayed corpses crumbled to feed the plague. Now the immortals led the demons without any cultivator subordinates.


    No mortals left in the world save the populations of hidden lands trained to hate and fear the plague from birth who suicided rather than take the plague into themselves. Scoria Scorn, like most of her comrades, no longer even attempted to conduct conversions. She had no desire to split the remaining drops of qi between additional dantians. Normally it did not matter. Their power was more than sufficient to overcome any resistance.


    But the world was vast, and a few score immortals could not be everywhere at once. Coverage would be severely limited even if they acted in perfect concert, an idea so laughable it remained never proposed even as an ever-increasing number of demonic cultivators made the same calculations Scoria Scorn had and recognized their seemingly infinite hordes were displaying a distinct weakness in numbers.


    As such, she knew she had to keep watch over the assembling horde, it was the inevitable conclusion. Otherwise, the intervention of an outside force might slip past the eyes of the plague and the demonic cultivators alike. An immortal could set the assault back by months in minutes, but none appeared. There were no sudden deaths of hundreds of demons. No blasts of untainted qi exploded across the wilderness. The gathering of an immense force, nearly five hundred thousand demons, gathered into a vast mass, its edges tightened by considerable cajoling, and slowly spiraled inward towards the hidden entrance of the concealed lair of a new group of survivors.


    Visual discovery of that entrance was impossible, of course. Even if it was not buried beneath a layer of concealing formations as it surely was, this landscape of river-carved plains surrounded by sharp ravines and ridges was a chaotic mess of impenetrable vegetation. Cultivator eyes were little better at seeing through trees than mortal ones.


    The region had been a fertile land once, a valuable province on the western edge of a small inland sect alliance. Long ago the ground had probably been cleared and covered in farms, but time had erased such things. Even once mighty stone and concrete structures could no longer easily be found. Buried beneath new growth, they were reduced to little more than irregular mounds. Surviving ruins, and there were surely many, for cultivator-laid masonry could resist far more than burial by dirt, were hidden beneath the earth, in caves, or in secluded places where plants could not take hold.


    Scoria Scorn had explored many such left-behind monuments. She bore artifacts liberated from a dozen of them, and had plundered more only to find nothing worth keeping. Troubling work, peeling back the dangerous formations left to prevent exactly such pillaging. Some were even powerful enough to endanger her.


    She no longer conducted such searches. Protections were claimed by time the same as everything else, leaving the prizes ripe for the taking. Let the others risk themselves. Some, fools all, had even died that way.


    Whatever formations protected the entrance to the hidden land the demons sensed were strong, thoroughly maintained. The complete lack of any qi fluctuations deep within the earth was evidence enough of that. Even in a few daring, darting, jolts to the forefront of the horde, something empowered by the extraordinary swiftness of her Earth Veins Magnetic Spin technique, she discovered nothing. Whoever lay on the other side was formidable, thorough, and careful. They had left no opening, not even deep below the ground, a space many cultivators forgot to consider as a path.


    History suggested as much. Scoria Scorn was new to this region. It had been unclaimed, opened by death not so long ago. That had happened many times, removing even notable names from the roll. She recalled them carefully, and with no small amount of worry, for they included those with cultivation distinctly superior to her own.


    Insufficient demons, formidable protections, past losses, all these things and more mixed together, forming a potent joined river of malaise in her meditative coordination. She was not simply nervous, jittery before a major attack, this was a real, legitimate concern. Half a million demons was formidable, but she''d only feel comfortable with twice that. It would not happen, she recognized that too. The ghouls were simply too scattered. It had been an accomplishment to bring this many together.


    Instead, altering the balance required an appeal not to the plague, but to her peers. Not any sort of discussion she desired, given the nature of those beings, but she had not survived twenty-five hundred years in the wastes without developing a surplus of a caution and a willingness to undertake the unpleasant.


    The gathering was not finished yet, there was still time, and she was not without leverage in making a final appeal. It was time to make the first real move of the campaign.

 Chapter Twenty-One: The Fuming Shade

    Among cultivators in the body refining realm the difference between one layer and the next was noticeable, but small. Winning a duel against an opponent one or two layers above one''s own was merely uncommon, easily explained by variance in weapon skill or combat experience. Three layer breaches were rare, but still recognized, especially in the case of weapon or movement technique prodigies. Even battles where four layers of variance were overcome were recorded, though such events were spectacular outcomes that even at the height of the old world had occurred no more than once per century.


    With each rise in realm, however, the distance between the layers increased, and in a multiplicative fashion. Those who had reached the heights of the celestial ascendancy realm stood seven times further apart with each layer, and though their vast reserves of qi, complex panoplies of artifacts, and numerous secondary techniques meant that those of lower layers could drag out cross-layer combats for potentially a very long time indeed, in a one on one battle overcoming an opponent even one layer higher represented a legendary achievement.


    This extreme certainty of cultivation, something everyone in this realm could feel instantly upon encountering another immortal, meant that the hierarchy of layers was enforced with extraordinary force.


    Scoria Scorn stood in the fourth layer of the celestial ascendancy realm, very close to reaching the fifth. One, or at most two, immortals, or a dozen or two soul forging realm elders, and she''d breakthrough that boundary. This was a potency in which she felt great pride. Among the surviving demonic cultivators there were only twelve stronger than her, and another eighteen others in the fourth realm who might conceivably challenge her. Her strength was more than sufficient to lead a horde in an assault on a hidden land by herself.


    She had never done so. Leadership meant going in first, and she considered that a move suited to fools. Preferably more powerful fools suited to clearing out any problems that could potentially injure her. She much preferred to coordinate from behind and reap the benefits of a successful operation with minimal risk. That this reduced the rewards was a minor consequence. Advancement was necessary, but rushing was not.


    It had taken many centuries to find a suitable partner, one with the strength to lead but who was neither ludicrously reckless nor utterly irredeemable scum.


    Even the current arrangement, though it had served them both well for centuries, was not ideal. When Scoria Scorn reached the fifth layer it was unlikely to survive the change in power dynamics. Even so, seven hundred years of joint operations had forged a partnership with durability and even a measure of trust, a very rare commodity among demonic cultivators. Many of the deaths since the war had not come from orthodox survivors. In this case, she could trust in the maturity of their relationship enough to voice her concerns in person without fear of retribution.


    A direct meeting required that she abandon her observation of the horde, however briefly, but that was a necessary risk. Slicing along the sky, pulled at supersonic speeds by the power of magnetic currents both high in the atmosphere and deep beneath the earth, she covered vast distances very rapidly, crossing hundreds of kilometers in a few handfuls of minutes. Mountains and valleys flashed by as she passed southeastward. A great river began its formation there, and the immense gorge it carved across the land served as passage from the now empty lowlands to the sheltered mountain region for much of their horde.


    There, upon the edge of the waters, the Fuming Shade blasted across the valleys planting formation beacons in order to draw the horde upwards and westward. A tedious task, one that suited the abilities of a mid-layer disciple, but since no such agents remained he was obligated to direct the forces himself. The need to face the enemy with no ranks between general and conscript was a deep concern, limiting in operational capacity as it was. A horde was not an army, and Scoria Scorn very much wished she possessed the latter instead.


    Her erstwhile commander detected her approach from afar, of course, and he put down his flags and flew up on pillars of furious smoke and flame to take up oversight upon a high ridge. He stared down at the river, watching demons slowly stride their way past through the mud and marsh of the banks. Their progress was stumbling and sluggish, far worse than any soldiers on a road.


    Grand roads had run across the length of the continent, once, but they''d been destroyed in the war specifically to slow the hordes. Now the demons were stuck stumbling through the growth of centuries. Thankfully, though their progress was not rapid, it was steady. The demons could, and would, walk all day and all night, never taking breaks. Eventually, they would be gathered in the necessary critical mass.


    Through their shared surrounding of demonic qi, she felt the frustration of her fellow demonic cultivator at this pace. He looked up as she approached, and with a short hop moved to a large exposed boulder, a point with enough space they could stand face to face. A single stride carried Scoria Scorn from the edge of mortal vision to side by side her superior.


    ¡°What news?¡± The Fuming Shade''s voice was, even for an immortal, deeply inhuman. He spoke through billowing smoke and crackling clouds, a furious furnace given the power of speech as it scorched its way through curtains, walls, and beams. No mouth could be observed beneath his crimson, horned crown and the thick wall of constantly twisting black hair that endlessly expanded to shroud his head in a ring of black smoke. Something dark red and metallic, vaguely structured in the shape of a mouth, if one extended that to cover those of terrifying deep sea beasts, existed where his lips would be. It lay below the furious coals that burned in his head in place of eyes. Nothing more of the face could ever be seen, perhaps did not exist at all.


    As to what lay beneath the black silk hanfu, golden brocade battle robe, and layered bronze plates fastened above both, no one knew. Scoria Scorn had journeyed with him for seven hundred years and never seen any flesh.


    The demonic cultivator¡¯s hands shifted and twisted as he moved. They lacked solidity, seemingly condensed from black smoke and ash. His touch, stone solid despite its immaterial source, tended to strike sparks out against anything he grasped tightly. Being near him, it was immediately obvious that he radiated out heat, burning constantly at the temperature of a working kiln.


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    Few immortals, demonic or orthodox, so fully abandoned the trappings of their humanity upon completion of soul forging. Many refused to associate with the Fuming Shade as a result, considering him disgusting. Scoria Scorn welcomed such deviance. Behind the commonality of theme in their techniques, which allowed for useful combination effects, the inhuman nature of her superior¡¯s biology likely explained why he''d never raped her despite being in the sixth layer and completely free to treat her as he wished.


    The absence of such crude violations, all too common otherwise, did much to sustain the illusion of camaraderie.


    ¡°I believe our gathered strength is insufficient for the coming assault,¡± she did not mince words with this man. He did not require flattery. He measured all choices according to utility and destructive efficacy. His wrath was only too easily roused if he felt his time was wasted.


    ¡°Unlikely,¡± the dark furnace grunted, and the air temperature increased markedly. ¡°We are strong. If we cannot win, then we retreat. There is no enemy strong enough to pin us with the horde behind us, not even Bloody Roam.¡± Few lesser in power than the Fuming Shade would dare to speak that name aloud for any reason. Few wished to draw the attention of the only remaining cultivator in the seventh layer of the celestial ascendancy realm, a being on the edge of ascension. ¡°No hidden land has that level of strength, not that exists still.¡±


    It was not an assessment shared between them. In the absence of targets, consumptive growth stalled. Spiritual growth did not, though enlightenment was surely hard to find trapped within the limited confines of a hidden land. Nevertheless, though Scoria Scorn considered her superior''s view faulty, she dared not contest that point directly.


    Thankfully, alternative approaches remained, and with earth surrounding her on all sides, she felt confident enough to push, slightly. ¡°And if there are few dozen in the soul forging realm present? Our demonic buffer is rather thin. A massed counterattack could be problematic.¡±


    ¡°True,¡± the furnace grunted a second time. ¡°A formation trap is possible.¡± It was not exactly agreement, but acknowledgment of a different danger sufficed to make the point clear. The shadow-fringed core of the demonic cultivator grew hotter still. The outpouring increase sufficiently fast that it saturated his surroundings. Nearby leaves began to blacken and char.


    ¡°There are no more demons to be had,¡± he growled. ¡°If I pushed the distance further, others would call it poaching.¡± This truth, baldly stated, infuriated them both. A greater horde would insure victory, but it would draw many competitors. They were already forcing the horde to grow beyond natural size, and further manipulation would surely be noticed, and contested. The Fuming Shade had few rivals, but few was not none.


    ¡°A third would provide insurance for out side,¡± it was the simplest counteroffer, but also the most dangerous. Scoria Scorn had considered very carefully before daring to suggest it. They had an arrangement, one that benefited them both, but nothing more. They were not friends. Their kind knew not such jovial and generous associations. While internecine struggle was broadly pointless, for as agents of the plague they could not absorb each others¡¯ qi, and the strong had long since claimed any artifacts they wished from the hands of the weak, this made little difference at times.


    They had all grown comfortable with slaughter long ago. Millions had died at the hands of every demonic cultivator. What was one of their own against such numbers? Bloody Roam might claim feuding was pointless, and be respected for his strength, but he had killed more of their kind than any enemy. Most wished to husband their strength and preserve their numbers, but such motives could never compare to the power of hatred, nor the fury raised against one suspected of stealing the only prize that remained, the qi of human prey.


    A point the Fuming Shade did not hesitate to raise. ¡°And further splits the spoils.¡± Burning eyes searched the her veiled face. ¡°You are close. Does it not matter to you?¡±


    ¡°It is not worth the risk,¡± she stood firm now, willing for a moment to reveal a small fraction of her true feelings before that mask. She did not elaborate as to why, knowing it would spark face-melting rage. Even so, the thought surfaced within. The never-to-be-spoken revelation that all demonic cultivators knew to be true, even though most eternally denied it.


    They could not ascend.


    It was not that they could not succeed, or that by becoming demonic cultivators the already miserable chances of success were reduced even further. That would have been wretched enough, but the truth was somehow worse. They could not even attempt to challenge the heavens. They were tied to the plague, and the plague would not let them. For all its immense power, the demonic contagion was a thing wholly manifested of terrestrial dao. It had no tie to the heavens and no ability to push past the world. Ascension meant nothing to the disease, and had therefore been discarded.


    The plague, of course, neither knew this nor cared. It was not aware any more than consumption or flu, but the demonic cultivators knew. They might try to deny it, loudly, but they knew. They could use their red-tinted benefactor to reach and grasp immortality, but the celestial ascendancy realm was as far as they would ever go. Any attempt to approach that boundary only made the chains ever-more clear. The final step forward could not be taken.


    Most still denied it, but it had been twenty-five hundred years, and every effort to solve the problem had failed. All who endured knew the truth, admitted or not.


    Scoria Scorn found it distressing how few of them were willing to adjust their behavior in response to this reality. Too many of her fellows remained utterly dedicated to the relentless pursuit of growth, ignoring the risks, as if working toward ascension still mattered, as if it remained the reason, the goal, to push ever onward it did for the orthodox. She knew them all, including the man who stood before her, to be fools unable to move past childhood motives.


    They were immortals bound to this world. Survival was the only prize remaining to be claimed. Given the chance, she would grow her power, for strength insured greater chances of survival, but risk herself? Never. Death stood outside her spectrum of acceptable possibilities. The strange difficulty the others had in recognizing this priority confused her, such folly, but their blindness rebounded to her gain.


    When they failed, and perished, this was generally beneficial. It removed potentially threatening pieces from the board. So long as they did not all perish, depriving her of forces, she encouraged them in their idiocy.


    ¡°If we bring in a third I will forfeit claim to anyone in soul forging or above, and ask only a third of the lessers.¡± She chose to make the offer almost absurd in its generosity, reducing her share to nearly nothing.


    ¡°So be it,¡± The Fuming Shade accepted at once. He knew her well enough to understand the ploy, the gamble. If the enemy was strong, as she guessed they might be, it was possible one of the three would fall in battle. That victory would demand a new negotiation. ¡°I will go north,¡± he proclaimed. ¡°Black Howl is near the ice. Once contacted, he will agree.¡±


    At this, the veiled woman nodded. It was as good a choice as any. Black Howl was also in the fourth layer, and legendarily hungry for violence. He was always open to mercenary endeavors, being too impatient to bother herding demons for many months. A weakness, in the eyes of many, but he had made much of it. Savage though he might be, with that addition of strength they would surely triumph.

 Chapter Twenty-Two: Preparations for Battle

    ¡°The outer sentry formations have detected an assembling demon horde at least five hundred thousand strong, perhaps with as much as fifty thousand more to complement that.¡± Eculay sat on her cushion in the council chamber with a glowing sphere crouched in her grasp. Eerie chromatic pulses passed through the strange creation of metallic glass, each touching the surface at different points and triggering secondary bursts of color. This visualization represented an aesthetic compliment to the bursts of qi transmitted from countless formations scattered beyond the exterior of Mother''s Gift. With many-colored, translucent skin, she possessed hair that extended in a vast wave below her ankles and cloaked her entire petite form. With Aekay in closed door cultivation, she stood as interim head of the formations pavilion, and master of the fixed defenses.


    Itinay, looking upon the shifting rainbow countenance, wished her sister was present to handle the briefing. It was not a matter of competence. Her fellow grand elder was extremely accomplished in her chosen sphere. Instead, preference and personal trust carried the emotional response.


    ¡°At least one demonic cultivator in the celestial ascendancy realm is present,¡± the slow, steady words delivered in a perpetually quiet and preternaturally calm tone continued. ¡°As many as four are possible.¡±


    ¡°The array can''t do better?¡± Red-haired Akiray had brought her mighty spear to the council meeting, a sign of battles to come. She positively radiated eagerness to join in combat. The anticipation, tied to her dao deep down, shown through her qi. The Nine Spheres Arsenal revealed through its greatest living expression.


    ¡°I can identify only the one nearest to the front, herding the demons, with certainty.¡± Eculay shook her head, sending waves through her lengthy tresses, slowly. The rest of her body did not move one iota. Though she outwardly appeared to be made of stained glass, she was as indomitable as the hardest diamond. ¡°However, given the steady watch kept over this horde throughout its assembly, and the corresponding large size, a second presence is a near certainty. A third is probable, though their cultivation cannot be discerned.¡± She delivered this amendment without pause. ¡°It is possible that they are not in the celestial ascendancy realm, but merely the seventh layer of the soul forging realm.¡±


    Itinay doubted matters were so generous. She did not think any demonic cultivators survived who had failed to obtain immortality by now. Such a person would have needed to be converted within the most recent millennium, many centuries after the remaining demonic immortals gave up bothering with such efforts. This unidentified presence was either unusually weak for their realm or, far more likely, very cagey in terms of qi management.


    ¡°Three,¡± green-faced Neay''s lips squeezed into a hard line, and her normally gentle face stiffened to teak. ¡°Three is very dangerous.¡± Her eyes moved around the room. ¡°There will be many sacrifices in the days to come.¡±


    Silently, Itinay rejected the regret infused into those words, despite the complete sincerity that summoned them. Such fatalism, she found herself despising it. Eight against three; even if the layers of the foe remained unknown. Most likely they held among their own a match for each, or, equally probable, exceeded them. Half a million demons, though numerous, was a pittance compared to the power that could be focused upon the Killing Fields. Once the demonic cultivators perished, the horde could be annihilated using little more than defensive formations.


    They ought to laugh at this attack, and crush it like the paltry effort it was. She would enjoy nothing more than to watch such a swift and final victory unfold. Overconfident enemies laid waste as their assault was swept aside and the strength of the plague permanently diminished.


    She knew it was not possible. Survival demanded secrecy, and secrecy demanded sacrifices.


    The calculus was simple enough. If the location of Mother''s Gift, and its true strength, were revealed, then the enemy would rally a vast coalition to destroy it, an aggregated force far beyond their power to resist. Dozens of demonic cultivators, tens of millions of demons; nothing any strategy or valor could overcome.


    Anyone who breached the boundary must be annihilated. Escape could not be permitted. Anything less was not a victory. It was simple, the reasoning irrefutable. Their enemies, seeking to protect themselves and their immortality, worked similarly, letting the horde charge forth and die in droves before committing.


    But the plague''s servitors sacrificed mindless demons, not precious sect members. She refused to consider that an acceptable trade.


    ¡°The plans for a fighting withdrawal through the Killing Fields remain sound,¡± Ohlay sounded outwardly calm, but they all knew she felt the losses keener than any of them. Inside her sunlit skin, her qi seethed. ¡°Whether it is two or three, Akiray can serve as the lure regardless. Her skill will serve to mitigate much damage.¡±


    ¡°Sounds good,¡± Akiray agreed to the scheme at once, never hesitating as a smile burst across red-tinged lips. No one else even bothered to blink in response to this. It was preordained.


    Standing in the fifth layer and recognized as a genius battlemaster, Akiray could annihilate any opponent at the same or lesser cultivation as her own, and even a sixth layer foe would require many passes to overcome her. To put her forth as a target was among the best cards the sisters possessed. They had done so many times, she was ill-suited to act as a reserve.


    Itinay supported this move, but so did all the others. No debate was raised on the point.


    Despite such a solid beginning to their plans, she felt tight, held down. Any other options, proposed deployments and maneuvers, she tallied them up and considered everything marginal. The right choice might save a handful of disciples, the wrong one doom a dozen, but none could possibly deliver the crushing victory she desired. It shackled her, stilled her connection to the dao.


    They were strong, the heirs of the Fifth Sage. That they should argue such meager, limited, choices felt, no, was, inadequate. She wanted, needed, a solution that produced more than another episode of grinding survival setting the sect back decades or more.


    She needed a real victory.


    It was an old ache, one she''d forced down again and again as the centuries rolled past. This time, however, was not the same. Circumstances had delivered into her hands the possibility she''d desired for so very long. Even as the others moved to offer marginal adjustments, she contemplated the moment and method to present a case that would upend it all.


    Even such a simple scheme as this, hesitation rather than true deception, crumpled before immortal relationships measured in millennia. ¡°Itinay, youngest sister, you''re plotting something,¡± Uzay spoke up suddenly, cutting through the simmering cauldron of immortal contemplation. ¡°Won''t you hurry up and tell us what it is?¡±


    The blue-faced cultivator bit back a hiss, discovered and suddenly facing seven sets of eyes of many more than seven colors. It had been folly to think she could choose her moment among this company. Cycling qi through her immortal body to purchase a moment of chilling and uncompromising insight borrowed from the power of the vast embers far above, she offered up her proposed deviation.


    ¡°What would you all do if we could monitor the lure perfectly, know the exact moment the enemy passed beyond the reach of escape?¡±


    There was a prolonged silence. The words hung in the air as if frozen. No one made a move to speak first. Immortal minds calculated instead, thousands of possibilities considered and discarded in the space of seconds.


    Only at length did Eculay, wrapped around her skittering orb, break the icy tableau. ¡°You intend to utilize the member of your pavilion, Qing Liao?¡±


    No one answered. They all knew that was what she meant. Itinay was equally aware of how her sisters, with their minds open to the possibility, recognized the way scheme would work; alarm and signal. Each would conceive of specifics according to their personal viewpoints, but all would find the core possibility viable.


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    ¡°He is too young,¡± Eculay, realizing that by speaking first she had taken up the obligatory role of opposition, spoke the first obvious objection. The second followed on its heels. ¡°He is only fifteen. He reached the second layer of the body refining realm only a week previous.¡±


    Itinay held back a smile. The others proclaimed disinterest in her project, but they monitored it carefully all the same. The boy advanced rapidly. The second layer in just over a year was excellent, and Sayaana''s instruction had advanced his movement technique capacity well above standard.


    ¡°He is not ready. You wish to place him in the middle of the Killing Fields, surrounded by a demon horde? Though they will not be able to sense his qi, that is still a million eyes.¡± This objection, though unchanging in tone or meter, carried considerably greater force. ¡°Even a master of stealth, if such a thing exists, could not move through a horde unseen. He will simply be spotted and torn apart.¡±


    This time Itinay smiled openly. It was perfectly framed. She wanted to thank Eculay for being so reasonable. ¡°I do not propose to sneak him through the horde,¡± she counted. ¡°Not at all. The horde is irrelevant. Once the cultivators are slain, we will obliterate it. Qing Liao''s purpose is simple. All he needs to do is inform us when the enemy cultivators have passed the point of no return. It is as simple as pulling a string when they pass overhead.¡±


    ¡°Bury him underground?¡± Uzay laughed, a sound of birds flapping upon the summer wind. ¡°That''s so like you sister, but,¡± she laughed a second time, much lower, an eagle''s flight. ¡°It could work.¡±


    ¡°It could, but it could also destroy him,¡± Ohlay''s assessment was considerably more restrained. ¡°When faced with the overwhelming mass of qi produced by a demon horde, those in the body refining realm struggle to even hold their positions on the wall. Your scheme not only requires immersing this boy within the tide, but exposes him directly to the qi of demonic cultivators in the celestial ascendancy realm. He could very easily perish. Worse, with the remnant soul attached to him, merely wavering might cause her to attack his spirit out of instinct.¡±


    These were, Itinay regretfully accepted, strong points. Qing Liao was possessed of all the unfortunate limitations tied to flesh, and his weakness imposed serious restrictions on his utility. If pushed too hard, he would break. That much she was willing to concede, though not out loud.


    ¡°If that''s the only question left,¡± as the youngest of the sisters had hoped, Uzay picked up the weave from there. ¡°Then let us test him and see. I''ll do it myself.¡± She offered readily, another piece falling into place as expected.


    ¡°Is that wise?¡± Eculay presented one final doubt. ¡°There are good reasons supporting our tendency to avoid meddling with cultivators in initiate status. If this youth is constantly pulled back and forth by furious winds he will never find his dao.¡±


    ¡°Sister, we put a remnant soul inside his head,¡± Itinay took this moment to cut for herself, sharp as possible. She reveled in it, just a little. ¡°That light has been launched.¡±


    ¡°Granted,¡± the serene, many-colored face never changed, but qi emanations revealed this remark had struck hard. ¡°But we must minimize the contamination of this maneuver. This young man, he has been separated from the ordinary paths laid down by the sect, paths long refined and charted to key lines. I believe it is essential that this circle of deviation not expand further. No matter how useful the abilities of a single individual, the sect must not warp itself to support them alone.¡±


    ¡°Agreed.¡± This was true, a danger both long acknowledged and planned for from the very beginning. ¡°He has already been split apart from the operations of the archery hall,¡± Sayaana had handled that most capably. ¡°And his personal artistic path has served to self-isolate him within the Textiles Pavilion, something I have subtly reinforced through my subordinates.¡± Fu Jin was already part of this, and therefore an ideal agent to carry out such commands. Liao''s own choice to specialize in leatherwork had greatly facilitated this course. A fortuitous occurrence that; it seemed the dao favored this course. Perhaps, Itinay mused, it had finally had enough of demonic interference. Doubtful, more likely the time had simply come for things to change, as they always did.


    ¡°Are any of those in his artistic circle suited to guide him through the Killing Fields?¡± Eculay questioned, pursuing the heart of the matter diligently.


    Blue-white eyes narrow involuntarily. There was a scheme here, one Itinay had not anticipated. That was unusual. At the same time, it meant that the chance to forestall it had come and gone. She felt a slice against her dao, being anticipated in this way. Nothing remained but to push ahead. ¡°No,¡± she admitted defeat with this single simple word. Rather than attempt to fight blind, she would acquire what information she might prior to planning out a counterattack. Pity that the little group of outcasts operating at the edge of her pavilion that worked with various odds and ends on the margins of the textile arts lacked cultivation capacity and martial focus. ¡°But this is not a matter of wilderness. I believe Qing Liao can find his way.¡±


    ¡°The horde is coming,¡± Eculay countered. ¡°And it is sizable. Lead elements are already beginning to slide across the gateway.¡± All knew this statement to be true. Assembled by organic processes, the horde moved in swarm fashion rather than imperial march. A scattered vanguard would always lead well ahead of the balance of forces. ¡°If we are to take a great risk betting on the capabilities of a single initiate, then there must be no mistakes while putting that asset in place.¡±


    The shape of the ploy revealed itself. Her multi-colored sister was making a move to gain influence over the sect''s new weapon, to lay her authority against Itinay''s own. Silently, she assessed that serene face with care. What was the ultimate intent? Did they intend to torpedo her plans obliquely, or to simply co-opt her success? She could easily imagine a plethora of reasons to take both paths.


    Rather than pursue countless mental possibilities, she chose to cut through the veil and simply ask in the open. ¡°Did you have someone in mind?¡±


    ¡°Qing Liao''s initial testing was conducted by Disciple Su Yi. She is a most promising disciple, a formidable fighter and an expert in the defenses of the Killing Fields. She seems to be the ideal candidate for this task.¡± Eculay''s face never moved, but her qi warmed with sweet satisfaction.


    The Celestial Origin Sect possessed exactly ninety-eight disciples in the awareness integration realm. Most of them had occupied that cultivation stage for over a century. Granted the enhanced mental capabilities of their own advanced cultivation, the grand elders could name and recognize them all without effort. Su Yi was indeed, in Itinay''s private estimation, a promising one. She could very well advance to the spirit tempering realm within a decade or two. A sound fighter who had worked to strengthen the defenses laid over the Killing Fields for many years, she knew the area better than most in her realm. From a purely logical perspective her choice made perfect sense.


    She was also a member of the Formation Pavilion and a notable beauty.


    It seemed co-opting was the order of the day.


    Anger spilled through Itinay, a sudden surge of fury traced to this daring act of usurpation. This was her plan, and she was not inclined to share control or credit over it. Such blatant pressure, especially from one of the only grand elders younger than herself, was a slap to the face.


    Rage did not sustain. Hers was the dao of distant, frigid starlight, the endless persistence of the slowly cooling against the coming dark. Fiery emotions found no purchase in her, slicked off the icy surface of her core being. The uncompromising dao of the immortal transformed them instead, forming instruments sharp and piercing. She would not react, would not indulge in emotional expression, but neither would she forget.


    They were immortals. There was no need to level the scales this day. All would be measured out in due course.


    Something known to both women, a realization that prompted secondary reflections.


    Eculay was not simply being manipulative for its own sake, for all that she was capable of such and enjoyed traps more than most. She was sincere. She, who valued the traditions of the sect and its continuity above all, had recognized that Qing Liao''s immense potential justified this deviation. She''d chosen, against all expectation, to align herself with new possibilities.


    This, following on Neay''s unexpected support previously, made two. A pattern was forming.


    Scanning the group, feeling out qi and faces alike, Itinay realized that a deep-wrought change was taking place. They were, amazingly, united. Even Ohlay, once immensely opposed to all things involving the new initiate, supported this plan. Opposition to Itinay herself, her role, her methods, these things remained, same as they ever were, but the eight gathered together were all behind the plan, a unanimous intention to form and spring this trap.


    Such an unbelievable reversal of immortal opinion demanded explanation.


    It came to Itinay almost instantly. Grief. That was the answer. They were the leaders of the sect, the masters of the pavilions. Long past maintenance of bonds to any mortal or mortal society, their ties belonged only to their fellow cultivators. If they faced this horde as they always had, twenty-three times in the past, there would be hideous casualties. Hundreds of their treasured subordinates, some known for centuries, would perish.


    But if the plan worked, if Qing Liao managed to send the signal at the first chance, that could be averted. Casualties would drop to a minimum, friends, comrades, and lovers would survive. This dream, simple but filled with immense power, rose high enough to shift the desires even of immortals.


    ¡°If Su Yi is willing, then by all means, I have no objections,¡± Itinay conceded with as much grace as she could muster. Eculay''s sincerity demanded that much.


    She turned to Uzay next. ¡°Be thorough in your testing sister, you are right to be concerned.¡± It seemed Qing Liao truly was a catalyst. She would have to see whether or not events to come shaped him in turn, or if they simply shattered him. Though putting matters to the test so soon was an aggravation, they lived in a merciless age. Some damage was inevitable.

 Chapter Twenty-Three: The Dancers Test

    Qing Liao, now at the second layer of the body refining realm after incorporating the stomach meridian into the circulation of his qi, had managed to reach acceptance of his status as a cultivator. He recognized his path, or at least the steps available in the present interval, and worked with the best diligence he could muster to pursue them. Basic cultivation, the incorporation of qi and expansion and saturation of his dantian, was easy. Meditation had simply slotted into place in his daily schedule, one more part of the day; a time to reflect, consolidate, and increase his self.


    Leatherworking, likewise, was simply enjoyable. Messy and odorous curing and tanning hides might be, to say nothing of all the hunting and skinning he''d begun to incorporate into his practice, but he did not balk at such difficulties and found that he possessed a genuine love for this art. Crafting even simple coverings, belts, and fastening strips brought him real satisfaction. His sense of accomplishment radiated out across smooth surfaces, sharp stitching, and elegantly carved edging. Though a single glance around the pavilion''s shared workshop revealed his skills as those of a base novice, that was meaningless. He was still young. Learning and working were more important than achievement. Elder Yang Xun claimed that enlightenment would unlock itself in time, and Liao considered that sufficient.


    Practicing the Stellar Flash Steps and his archery lacked this natural ease. His body retained no desire to move in accordance with flickering, impossible-to-observe dictates. Nor did his heart readily summon the desire to unleash qi-strengthened arrows upon nonliving targets or helpless animals. Sayaana, who refused to allow him to relent, pushed him all the harder for his hesitation. ¡°You''re still thinking of yourself as a hunter, not a warrior,¡± she explained. Her green face soured each time she repeated this, sometimes many times per day. ¡°I was born that way. I know this struggle, but you have to discard both titles. You are a cultivator. Violence is part of the universe, part of the dao. You cannot reach the heavens purely through meditation. Martial practice is always necessary.¡±


    She was right, of course. Liao did not have any doubts as to the truth of that principle, but such truth did not suffice to convince him, however ridiculous that sounded even within his own head. Meditation sharpened the contrast, revealed a deep barrier to acceptance of such truths, no matter how openly he recognized them. Practice improved his body, his technique, and his control of qi, but it was all mechanical. The dao tied to the path of martial achievement, of blood and death, did not readily yield to his insight.


    To argue with Sayaana on the matter was pointless. Remnant or not, she had achieved immortality in the past. Her experience so vastly overshadowed his own that any objection Liao might offer melted away beneath the green gaze long before words were ever necessary. He, weak as he was, dared not object to such an august personage. He lacked the very vocabulary necessary to question her understanding.


    Unfortunately, this made matters worse, not better. It was easy to know that insights from high above exceeded the ability of his naive comprehension to grasp. To take any action that changed this truth, to grow his own enlightenment, could not simply be commanded to occur.


    It was a brutal lesson in the absence of shortcuts upon the cultivator''s journey.


    Yet, when Uzay appeared in the middle of his movement practice one day, Liao very much wished there were.


    The arrival of the flame-haired grand elder marked the third celestial ascendancy realm cultivator to take an interest in him. A frightful thing to accept when he''d been a member of the sect for barely a year. It was deeply inappropriate, a violation of ordinary protocol and hierarchy, and ultimately very dangerous. Elder Yang Xun, in a quiet moment, had explained why these barriers were normally ironclad. ¡°Immortals possess a vast, nearly immeasurable, reservoir of qi. Their presence necessarily overawes all far below them, suppresses reason and replaces it with instinctual responses. Worse, it drives students toward imitation, but you cannot rise through imitation alone.¡± A tinge of bitterness had inflected this statement by the elder, the hint of a long-ago failure that limited his own attainment.


    Liao had not asked for details, of course. Desire did not excuse impertinence.


    Uzay was a vast contrast with both Itinay and Sayaana, though the fundamental force of immortality blasted out from her as ever, continual evidence of the transcendent achievement of her realm. Overwhelming as this presence was, Liao still managed to draw a point of commonality through the two sisters, hidden unity radiated through their shared techniques and stellar-aligned dao. Lives blossomed in his vision, visualizations of the links forged by the dao across many mortal generations, the influence of Orday, the indomitable legacy and its limitations laid bare for a single, sudden instant.


    Inspirational, that discovery, but also intimidating. For all the other members of the sect possessed a simple task. They need only find their own path to alignment with that great sage and the cosmic illumination that guided her to the heavens. This would carry them as it had so many others, as far as their own enlightenment would take them.


    He was not blessed with such clarity. Between him and the shining night sky of infinite lights stood an equally endless canopy of thickly-needled trees.


    Opportunity and loss, always these came together when the consequences of his strange nature made itself manifest. He''d begun to form a slow-growing grievance regarding this strange and muddled fate, the blessing and curse of his strange qi. He knew that it was foolish, and that it could not be helped. Such realizations offered little consolation. It simply reminded him of personal weakness, of his powerlessness before the choices of immortals.


    Uzay offered up a most significant reminder of all such affairs.


    She was tall, significantly outgrowing Itinay, and slender, but possessed a set of carefully emphasized curves that provided an ideal, athletic, physique. Her hair, orange, yellow, and gold, wafted around her head in constant motion, a raging fire shifting in forgotten winds. These motions caught the light, fractured it, and bathed her body in an ever-shifting blaze of color. Her narrow face with a sharp and prominent chin, framed eyes of multitudinous shades of yellow surrounding a burning orange center. Her eyelashes stood out in her narrow face, a shadowy mahogany shade. They possessed a spectacular, sloping, impact.


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    Her outfit was a sleek high-necked dress that bared no skin save gold-encrusted hands, but clung to the body with incredible tightness. It presented an absolutely scandalous fashion, revealing absolutely every contour of the immortal''s form to any who dared to gaze upon her. If the restrictions of mortal morality had applied to her, the city guard would have screamed upon seeing her. Made of greenish velvet silk, shifting and twisting as it spread a play of light, darkness, and shadow across its surface, it was festooned with countless tiny gems. Color and shadow cascaded across that malleable exterior, never retaining constancy for long.


    Liao imagined it as it she''d taken the surface of a pond, illuminated beneath the swirling stars, and made of it a gown. Gold jewelry forged into complex geometric designs, was welded into that fabric, and she wore eight fang-shaped implements in her hair formed out of a black gemstone that sparkled with rainbow-colored expressions of inner fire.


    Impossibly alluring, Uzay made Liao''s young heart race from the instant he glanced upon her. Such luscious, crude, thoughts triggered an internal backlash of absolute terror as the possibility that when they were detected ¨C for there was no possibility of denying such lusts ¨C they might somehow deliver offense.


    Or, even worse, interest.


    Sayaana vanished from his sight as the grand elder appeared. The remnant woman disliked speaking when others were present. She had stated it made her feel ghostly and disconnected, talking with those before her who could neither see nor hear. Though he had denied this aloud, Liao was grateful for the absence, not wishing to serve as translator between two immortals. He was certain she knew as much. It was perhaps a selfish thing to desire, but she''d surely recognized it all the same.


    The respect she offered him in this way was something he continued to receive with immense gratitude.


    He tried to use this shift to avoid thinking about the rest. Some things were best suppressed, especially for teenagers.


    ¡°Your modifications to the Nine Spheres Arsenal are amusing,¡± Uzay began. Her voice warbled, chimes before a hot wind. ¡°But do keep them to yourself.¡± Vaguely, memory supplied Liao with the recognition that this flame-kissed woman was the only one of the Twelve Sisters to use the bow as her primary weapon. At a thought, the refined stance of a master archer revealed itself to the observer through the least fragmentary motion, poised to draw and shoot with unyielding deadliness.


    ¡°Of course, elder,¡± Liao immediately dropped to his knees, ignoring the fact that he was standing on half-submerged sandbar and in doing so immediately soaked everything up to his waist. Some things were more important than comfort, the respect due an immortal certainly among them.


    Though perhaps agreement was not universal.


    Smoldering eyes looked down upon him. ¡°Stand up,¡± Uzay remarked offhandedly. She sounded annoyed, and more than a little disappointed. ¡°Muddy is stupid.¡±


    ¡°Yes, grand elder, as you say,¡± Liao lurched back upright, now dripping steadily. He did not understand what he''d done wrong, and trembled in fear at the prospect of Uzay''s unleashed wrath. The rules of the sect forbade such final actions as killing and maiming, but everyone knew that extraordinary punishments were possible without departing from such constraints.


    Uzay was famously mercurial. Every story said she was immensely fond of setting those who displeased her on fire. The same tales claimed, perhaps more unbelievably, that this could be done without inducing any permanent damage to the flesh while leaving wounds to the psyche that lasted a lifetime.


    Unexpectedly, the grand elder demurred. The sharp expression simply melted away as she turned to look at him. ¡°So young. A little boy from a mountain village. The rare one who comes to us without a head full of dreams, and Itinay drowns you in shadows and hands you nightmares. So much you do not know,¡± She tossed her head and spun about. Brilliant hair flashed in the afternoon sun.


    A brief burst of qi, barely detectable, washed out from beneath her fingernails. Nearly instantaneous, this pulse of power, but it rendered him utterly dry, to the point of stealing away even the spit from his tongue and tears from his eyes.


    Liao was left gasping, blinking and coughing as he struggled to restore his membranes.


    ¡°Follow,¡± Uzay ordered. With a step she left the stream where they stood and strode across the riverbank to the fields beyond. It was as if she was simply strolling about idly, but her stride varied with her will. One step might carry her no more than half a meter, the next hundreds of times that.


    It took everything Qing Liao could summon to dart across the narrow span of water, run up the steep embankment, and charge through the knee-high wheat without falling upon his face. This effort exhausted much of his control and wasted huge quantities of qi in overcompensation as he hurled his body forward. Even then, to simply keep up with the grand elder''s casual walk he had to sprint across the lanes.


    That was immensely disrespectful, but he retained absolute certainty that this both did not matter, and that if he fell behind doom would snatch his heels.


    ¡°So, you can grasp the essentials,¡± these words reached Liao''s ears with perfect clarity, though Uzay was at least one hundred meters ahead and had not turned back to so much as look at him. ¡°A lesson then. Ceremony, formality, these things are a performance. They exist for a purpose, and like any art, are bound to time and place. Fail to adjust, to compensate for environment, for context, it perverts their intent. Such efforts are less than useless.¡±


    ¡°Yes, grand elder, thank you,¡± Liao gasped out the words as he managed to catch up at last. He did not understand, not truly. Surely the rules were not entirely aesthetics? They could not be as malleable as the placement of a painting. But Uzay was master of the performance pavilion, she must know much he did not. He could only resolve to contemplate this later, and ask Sayaana for perspective, if he had time. The current moment made it clear that other matters had greater demand upon his schedule.


    Fields of green growth spread out all around them. Here and there mortal farmers in gray robes, the contracted servants of the farming pavilion, worked to remove weeds and insect pests from the crops. At the edge of his perception a white-robed cultivator of the pavilion, a middle-aged man Liao did not know, was doing something inexplicable regarding a large mound of dirt and a pile of tree roots. Never taught more than the rudiments of tilling the land, he found many aspects of the practice utterly opaque. They must have some purpose, but it was less explicable than the esoteric practices of cultivation.


    Liao did know that whatever it was the farming pavilion did, it worked. The wheat grew swiftly and abundantly. Though it was the earliest part of autumn, this was the third crop these fields would bring to harvest this year, and each one a bounty no mortal-tended field could match. The noodles served in the sect, even when he cooked them plain himself, tasted better than those sourced to any other fields.


    Uzay led them to an isolated spot, one with black soil at the surface as a result of the cutting, clearing, and burning of a timber stand some months ago. No one was nearby. Only weeds and insects observed their meeting. They stood together, surrounded by black soil, for a long, silent interval.


    ¡°There is a demon horde coming,¡± the grand elder revealed unprompted. Though Liao already knew there was trouble with demons, this revelation struck heavy.


    Without waiting for the young man to process through this, the grand elder dropped a further stone into the perturbed pond. ¡°The sect has a stratagem in mind, but it depends on you. So, we are going to find out if you are capable. Right now.¡±

 Chapter Twenty-Four: Flames of Inspiration

    ¡°A demon horde?¡± Qing Liao coughed. Strange feelings, full of confusion, fear, and disorientation mingled together. He''d known there were demons. The gongs had tolled several times in the past week, but the creatures had been swiftly dispatched and he''d thought that the end of it.


    A horde was different from a handful of wandering demons. It was a story, in Liao''s understanding, the attacks by demon hordes part of a series of linked tales. Twenty-three battles between the sect''s champions and demonic cultivators. Mother''s Gift had little else to mark its eras of history.


    Despite this, Liao, like most, knew very little of such battles. The great conflicts were fought on the far side of the Starwall, in the Killing Fields. Mortal eyes never observed anything of those battles. Though cultivators of the performance pavilion worked to immortalize these events, the versions told by mortal storytellers and traveling shows were pale imitations of those works. Their truths and exaggerations all muddled together.


    It had never mattered before. Mortals did not fight demons. Could not, if the sect was to be believed, and Liao had no reason to doubt that. Even the most dedicated members of the hereditary serving families only worked in support, repairing the walls, bringing provisions, and storing weapons against future need. An ancient law existed by which the sect could call for the general assembly of a popular militia, but it had never been so much as practiced.


    None of the mortal residents of Mother''s Gift''s had ever even experienced a horde before. The last one had been over a century ago. Only the cultivators remembered.


    Lack of comprehension must have shown on his face, for the flame-edge interrogatory glare of the grand elder shifted from harsh to cautious. ¡°Youth,¡± she murmured, shaking her head slowly. ¡°It makes you ignorant. I am not used to it.¡± Her eyes moved in a slow circle, focus elsewhere. ¡°Twenty-three times a proper horde, over one hundred thousand demons with traitors of the old world at its head, has attacked has attacked us here. In time, if you survive, you get used to it.¡± She even smiled then.


    ¡°Normally, one in the body refining realm like yourself would face this attack from the ramparts of the walls,¡± she checked this off as if it were perfectly simple and fully explanatory. ¡°But normal is not your fate, as it seems you know.¡±


    Liao''s fingers had involuntarily reached up and grasped the circlet resting on his brow, absolute evidence of the truth behind those words.


    ¡°This horde, it''s a big one,¡± Uzay continued without pause. ¡°Half a million demons. Probably three demonic cultivators. Messy and deadly. Itinay thinks you can help save lives, maybe she''s right, but I''m not sure. So, now we get to find out if you can handle it.¡±


    Though mathematics was far from Liao''s strongest field, simple arithmetic was well within the young cultivator''s grasp. ¡°How can three be a threat to fifteen?¡± That made no sense to him, especially if the twenty-eight elders in the soul forging realm were added to the order of battle. The idea that he could play any role at all in such a conflict, a battle between immortals, seemed preposterous.


    Even standing on the wall shooting arrows until his shoulder tore, which he supposed would be the normal posting, seemed pointless considering the overwhelming power of the grand elders. Uzay, standing before him now, was the master of the Bow Hall. He''d seen her practice, once. She could launch hundreds of arrows, perhaps thousands, to his one, and every shot many times more potent. It was as if the sky turned to screaming flame when she released her thumb ring.


    The grand elder sighed, visible annoyance spread across her gorgeous features. ¡°A simpleton''s objection,¡± she spoke with real rancor for the first time. ¡°Secrecy, that''s why. Sayaana, explain the rest to him, since you clearly haven''t already.¡± She practically spat out her exasperation.


    ¡°Once a demonic cultivator learns the location of a hidden land, they must die,¡± the voice that resonated through the bones of Liao''s skull was infinitely more patient, but also equally more grief-stricken. ¡°Should they escape, they could rally dozens of immortal allies, overwhelming any defense. The sect must hide its strength, its own immortals, until the enemy advances far enough to envelop and entrap all enemy cultivators. Otherwise, even victory is simply a slow doom.¡±


    From these words Liao learned two truths. One was the nature of battle in the post-plague age. The other revealed the fate of the Endless Needles Land.


    Looking back to Uzay, he met those burning, many-layered eyes. ¡°How can I possibly help?¡±


    ¡°Simple, you get to be a living alarm.¡± Orange lips offered up a dangerously predatory smile.


    It took a moment for these words, tumbling through the tempest within the youth''s mind, to make any sense whatsoever. Conceptually, it was not complex, and he made the connection soon as he was able to reason properly. If the demons truly could not sense him, and he had no reason to doubt the tests conducted by the grand elders, then he could signal from within their ranks, a role similar to that of a fisherman''s float on the line.


    Hardly a glamorous role suited to a teenager''s dreams of their first battle, but faced with Uzay''s domineering presence, the very idea of challenging the elder''s plans vanished from his head. Besides, he understood enough of the Killing Fields to recognize that his invisibility to demonic qi would be useless atop the Starwall, with thousands of eyes upon him. A different role, if not this one, made much sense.


    ¡°You will not be risked, physically,¡± Uzay continued. The predatory gleam expanded out from her eyes to encompass her entire lithe frame. ¡°But placing you in the center will strain your mind. So, a test instead. Do try to stay still.¡±


    Without further warning, the grand elder took a single step.


    Fire shot out from her heels. It burst into a wide circle, forming a ring of towering flames that locked them within. The dark soil blackened further, the dust of previous days vaporized in an instant. Strange music, the sound of cascading bells, began to ring out low and barely audible in the background, a metallic murmur. At first barely audible, it grew louder over time, becoming as peels of thunder. Haze shifted the air and all the sky above. Color blurred and reformed, an impossible surreal palette that belonged not to the waking world but instead the province of dreams and nightmares.


    A second step. The flames rose high, whirling and furious as they screamed in flares to treetop height. Lashing and coiling in nonexistent wind, those tongues whipped and scourged the ground on all sides. Black whipcord marks stained the dark soil with ashy char.


    Liao''s eyes watered, his skin broiled, and he struggled to stay upright. Dizziness threatened to overwhelm him completely.


    Three steps. Then four.


    More and more followed as Uzay moved with impossible speed. The elder''s footfalls blurred. Her body transformed into a whirling green serpent wrapped in coils of liquid fire endlessly swirling around her shifting form. Wordless song, a carol of terrible bells, spilled from her lips. The ornaments in her hair took flight, spinning about her head and bathing the world in lurid false color glows as they slashed back and forth across burning tresses.


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    Charcoal scents choked the air. Heat radiated across Liao''s skin, sparking sweetly only to strip away the flesh in pulses of repeating chill. Chaos overtook all as the furious dance of fire and flow came to encompass all that was, all that had ever been, and all that would ever be.


    The Flame-Kissed Art of Passionate Invocation, that was the name of Uzay''s artistic path. Once an obscure method of dance developed for dark nights around the bonfire, she had made of it an illusory world of fire and fury capable of cleansing doubt, heralding possibility, and scourging away all hypocrisy. A bright star on the edge of transformation to expansive redder days, she revealed all through the reflection of the ending that flames bring.


    Fire swallowed awareness of the real world and cast Liao into the tableau formed out of the dancer''s flames. Utterly seamless, it matched all he knew perfectly. Sensations streamed into his mind with perfection to surpass any memory or dream.


    All of them bathed in fire, with everything that entailed.


    Liao returned to his village only to watch it burn. Fire, caused by an errant bolt of lightning in the forest, consumed home, hearth, and health. Lives were lost, the houses and terraces obliterated, and a line of melted and scarred faces took the place of the images of everyone he''d known in boyhood. He raised pyres for his family, the elderly priest, and all those who''d stood beside him to be tested at New Year''s while watching white-gray flakes rain down slowly through a gray sky.


    Next, he stood the walls as demons stormed across the ramparts. Turning back, toward sect and city, as the gongs sounded the call to retreat, he watched the last great urban settlement of humanity immolate within chaos born of panic. Bodies spilled into the streets still alight. Desperate screams came from beneath collapsed and smoldering buildings. Animal cries joined the cacophony of human pain.


    He turned to act, to offer aid, a simple, primal impulse to fight the flames, all to no avail. He could not touch, could not help, could only watch as the fires burned on and on, until all of Mother''s Gift was consumed. His hands passed uselessly through everything, a ghost of one lost in the futile defense of the Starwall.


    The sect burned. Demons ravaged the countryside. Every person they found was ripped apart by red claws and teeth, blood stained the ground as the monsters drank in the qi of a million souls. The sky turned black with smoke and the vitality of the land faded away as the living qi needed to sustain it collapsed and the red film of the plague coated all surfaces. Plants browned, helplessly twitching insects fell to coat the ground, streams dried up, and then the flames flashed across the landscape one final time as the sky cracked open.


    Even the demons, all that remained, perished as Mother''s Gift was consumed entirely and ceased to be.


    Red, orange, and yellow, this was the world. Burning, charred, and ravaged, over and over, until nothing but black remained.


    ¡°Why are you doing this? Why is this happening?¡± Liao screamed. ¡°This is not the world! It can''t be!¡± Some base instinct denied this possibility, refused to accept this vision of a world on fire. Yet it could not be denied, not truly. No other evidence, no other sensation, existed.


    The burning air was all. It filled the eyes, scorched the lungs, and ripped away the skin.


    The flames took vision, touch, smell, and even taste, until in the end nothing but their crackling emanation, the only sound left, remained to his senses. Endless, that slow sputtering symphony, all attached to the memories of scourging rain. All his mind knew and all he contained. A blurred wheel of wrath and obliteration, the destruction of the world, unending. Inexorable, inevitable, it was pointless to resist, to defy. The flame had been there before it all. It would remain when all of this was done. Surrender, forget, accept that nothing stood in the face of that fiery oblivion.


    Such was the message of the final cacophony that burst before all guttered out.


    Liao crumpled before this. The pointlessness of it all. He felt ruined, devastated, and drained. His dreams shattered, reduced to nothing beneath this unstoppable force. It made mockery of all that he was, all he intended, all he desired. Nothing mattered, nothing but the flames, and he was not of them. Merely an irrelevancy, doomed to be consumed and forgotten.


    Thrash and rage, dive into the flames and let go; the crackling sounds whispered these things into his thoughts. Nothing will stop the end. There is no point to resistance. Eventual immolation is the destiny of all things.


    He was trapped. He knew it. There was no escape from the flames. Nothing to reach beyond them. All that remained was to dash through that burning embrace, accept the ultimate cost. Simple, logical, inescapable.


    Throw yourself against the burning wheel. The final step, demanded now.


    Something held him back.


    Something buried deep in recollection, deep, subsumed beyond, below, flame and ash. It recalled an earlier time, one he no longer understood, no longer recognized as truly real. But even as a dream, a phantom, it remained invested with import. A simple thing, barely more than an image.


    A small creature, fuzzy and brown, trapped in a wire snare.


    It tore and pulled and fought that binding, this animal. Eye mad with pain and loss as it struggled. The end had already come for it, doom certain, no matter how long the struggle might last, minutes of hours. Even should the wire be cut, the mortal wound had been dealt prior, no recovery would follow.


    In that moment, Liao recognized that little animal in himself.


    Trapped. He was trapped. The flames bound him, a burning wire, without escape.


    But, at the same time, there was a difference. He was unharmed. His end had not been declared. The flames still asked it of him, all the proof necessary.


    At this thought, this instinctual realization, something unlocked in his mind. ¡°I am a trapper.¡± He heard the words without ever realizing he''d said them. ¡°I will not thrash and kick. I will have patience.¡±


    Black ash fell from his eyes. Light streamed in and all the horrors vanished, flushed from the body in a rush of thumping heartbeats. Swiftly, a fevered nightmare come to sudden end in waking. As the dawn breaks, it was all gone.


    By the time vision cleared and Liao looked up at the face of Uzay, for he had somehow ended up sprawled on his back in the dirt, all that remained were flashes, images of strange colors and distant burning.


    Such obscuration was welcome, but it did little to remove the overall recognition that grim horrors had been inflicted upon him. Fade though they might, he could not help but cringe back when the grand elder approached. Decorum forgotten, he even scrambled back several steps at he advance, finding desperate strength to impel stiff limbs into motion.


    ¡°Stop,¡± Sayaana appeared before him, her green-tinted form offered a momentary source of succor. Familiar, welcome, and diametrically opposed to Uzay''s eternal flame, she served to root his mind back to his body. ¡°I do not know what illusion she crafted in the dance of flames,¡± though the remnant soul shared his perceptions, they did not perceive all things in precisely the same way, a soft sensory barrier that apparently shielded her from this assault. ¡°But it was never more than that, and it''s done now. Forget it. It never happened. Make that your truth.¡±


    Sound advice, and so far as the remnant soul''s intent could be read, offered fully in genuine support. That did not make it easy to enact. Liao looked away from the grand elder as he struggled to stand. Stiffness afflicted every limb, rendering even this simple action slow and difficult. The unfamiliar nature of the feeling compounded his lurching, irregular motions. He did not get stiff and sore, not from anything short of extreme training, not anymore. It was part of being a cultivator, of the constant circulation of qi through his body.


    A state that had lapsed while enraptured by the horrific fascination of Uzay''s dance.


    ¡°It seems you will suffice,¡± Uzay muttered after Liao managed to pull his body upright and offer an apologetic bow. ¡°I will tell my sister to proceed.¡± She did not sound pleased, but neither was she openly angry. The grand elder walked away with easy contentment, as if she was assessing a pot just removed from the kiln. Without further word she took a step on beams of light and was gone. Her flame-kissed form vanished toward the horizon in a blink.


    ¡°Nothing,¡± Liao found he was whispering the word over and over. ¡°Nothing, nothing, she showed me everything gone, everything destroyed, and then says nothing at all. Why? Why did she do this?¡±


    ¡°Because they deemed it necessary,¡± Sayaana moved from the edge of his vision to stand before him, her exotic face was grim. ¡°And, I cannot say she was wrong to do it.¡± A green finger pointed upwards, arrow-straight. ¡°The path to the heavens strips out gentleness. You have been pulled up, before you should have been, and they have forgotten how fragile young people are, physically and otherwise.¡±


    These words, gentle though they were, offered small comfort. ¡°And you?¡± He knew Sayaana was little different, despite her varied origin compared to the Twelve Sisters.


    ¡°I am tied to you,¡± green lips offered up a gentle, reassuring smile. ¡°It reminds me of what I used to be. Now, let''s go back. It''s time to store some sleep again the future to come.¡±

 Chapter Twenty-Five: Into the Killing Fields

    Even pressed into full battle armor, Su Yi remained possibly the most gorgeous women Qing Liao had ever encountered. Such thoughts were a ridiculous thing to focus on considering what they were about to attempt, but he could not help the way he found her utterly stunning while they worked their way through final preparations atop the Starwall. Nor would his mind halt at simply admiring the doll-like cultivator''s exquisite and libido-straining image. Seeking distraction, he turned toward introspection, trying to discover precisely why he found this woman, out of numerous female sect members including impossibly perfect immortals, so triggering to his lusts.


    Objectively, every one of the grand elders was a peerless beauty. Sayaana, foreign, exotic, and earthy, placed above all of the Twelve Sisters in his estimation, which was perhaps a small clue, but while his mind appreciated those immortals, his body and its base instincts found itself unmoved by such beings. There was something about cultivators in the celestial ascendancy realm that rendered them alien, unapproachable.


    They were beautiful the way the stars were beautiful, wondrous, impossible, and immaculate. It was something more than human, a perfect vision of a dao beyond the constraints of ordinary existence, including brutish impulses like mating. Itinay, an icy blue star. Uzay, a brilliant, dying vermilion. Both were distant lights in the sky, not something he could ever touch, or even look upon for long. Sayaana, an eternal forest, might be considered somewhat more approachable and attainable, but the vastness of taiga and tundra remained an expanse far beyond the grasp of a youthful trapper. Her residence inside his head also endowed her with an intimately familial quality, making her more like an elder sister or aunt than a viable target for desire.


    Other elders, such as Fu Jin, might be outwardly lovely, but they combined a degree of cultivation-realm-based isolation with a failure to fully transcend the divisive impacts of their great age. Looking at the honored administrator of the Textiles Pavilion always left Liao feeling as if he was staring at a portrait of his great-grandmother as a young girl. It felt strangely mismatched.


    Su Yi was over two hundred years old, but somehow, through some combination of vibrancy, vigor, and vitality, ameliorated that sense of timeless division. She remained utterly out of reach, of course. A senior disciple, soon to achieve elder status, was barely a suitable friend for a newly graduated initiate. The idea of an intimate relationship was absurd, but bridging this gap, acquiring the status necessary to pursue her, that was not beyond imagination.


    The variation in desire was so substantial and blatant Liao dared to openly ask Sayaana about it, one of the hardest things he''d ever voiced to the remnant soul, even if their conversation was explicitly private in the dark shadows of his hall. ¡°Why does she feel so different from the elders? So much more like a person?¡±


    ¡°Because she has not crossed the first great wall,¡± the remnant soul spoke through the bonded circuit of their joined qi. Not even an immortal could overhear her words, cast straight to Liao''s thoughts. ¡°Those in the awareness integration realm are still fully mortal. They have not blended mind and body into a unified spirit and opened the ability to touch the soul that comes when that barrier shatters. Why do you think that''s the first tribulation? It''s the first step beyond mortal existence. Most never make that jump,¡± a tinge of sadness bled through the distant-seeming voice. ¡°It is not easy to stand against the will of the universe.¡±


    It made sense, after a fashion. Su Yi, standing on the edge of that tribulation, was the most human, the most woman, anyone could possibly be. Any further and she would transform into something else, something more. Something lacking in resonance with the base denizens of those bound to mortality.


    Of course, all of this philosophy held little weight. In truth Liao could barely look past the fact that she was simply almost ridiculously pretty. Some people were simply blessed in this way.


    Having switched from white robes to battle garb did little to alter this impression.


    The armor she wore was exquisite, a design almost capable of matching the beauty of its wearer. Its base was form-fitting under-robe of black silk, treated with potent alchemical processes in addition to the strength built into the inhumanly tight weave of the fabric itself. A series of interlocking armor plates, designed to slide and shift against each other for flexibility and movement, sat atop this. Each had a linen base, splints of forged steel as the stout core, and boiled and treated leather on the surface to provide security and uniformity. This outer layer was stained deep maroon and then painted in golden symbols imbued with qi, a final addition to the armorer''s arts serving to dampen direct blows even as it made the complete arrangement far stronger than any individual piece through integration of the components'' qi. An open-faced helmet with sideguards and a red tassel of painted horsehair completed the ensemble.


    Precisely fitted, this protective outfit gave Su Yi a vibrant martial character. The suit was far from unique, being nothing more than a personalized version of the standard battle dress arranged for sect disciples. While a specially ordered and precisely-fitted set could be commissioned, few who were not elders did so. The standard form possessed two and a half millennia of refinement and optimization for the needs of battle against demons, and the armoring pavilion could make them with matchless experience. Even for an advanced disciple there were few better choices, and none so economical.


    The adaptations of the armor to facilitate the Stellar Flash Steps and the central stances common to the Nine Spheres Arsenal were similarly refined. While some members of the sect departed from that approach and focused on their artistry in combat method, as Grand Elder Uzay did, this apparently did not apply to Su Yi. Itinay had informed Liao that she was a remarkably orthodox combatant.


    The icy grand elder seemed to considered this a matter of great pride.


    Liao''s own costume was much simpler. ¡°You are not strong enough to wear typical battle attire,¡± Su Yi had taken him to the armory herself, wielding a pass Itinay provided. ¡°And we cannot use any piece that draws or releases qi from its own stores, as that would render this whole plan pointless. Frustrating, and a problem I have to solve for you.¡± She had smiled as she said this, lightly teasing. Though not an armorer, she appeared to take a disturbingly feminine delight in using him as her personal doll for the afternoon.


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    The worst part was how she constantly asked Sayaana for her opinion, something that amused the remnant soul and forced Liao to relay words back and forth.


    He did not enjoy serving as the messenger between two ladies.


    Ultimately, she placed him in trousers and a shirt of light brown linen topped by a double-layer knee-length tunic. The garment was forest green, a color both women said suited him well. The inner layer of the armor was ramie, a rare fabric compared to linen, mostly used to wrap goods for storage in cellars. The outer layer was marten fur, stretched together and pelted, with the hairs mostly cut down so that the fluff was only obvious along the edges and at the shoulders. He was further gifted a very fine pair of boots made using otter skins and said to be absolutely waterproof. The leather vambraces he wore on both forearms ¨C for Sayaana had mandated he learn to shoot equally using both hands ¨C came from the stout hide of bulls. Strangely, at least to his limited understand of combat, Su Yi had forgone a helmet but instead provided him with a wide conical hat of lacquered bamboo.


    All of these items were expertly made, but none were infused with the qi of their creators or bore formations, rituals, or other innate powers.


    ¡°This is going to present an interesting problem for the future,¡± Sayaana noted when they''d finished. ¡°I have some ideas, but it''s going to mean doing a lot of work by yourself.¡±


    Liao did not find that encouraging.


    The weapons options were likewise simplified, though this was mostly a matter of his low cultivation status. He simply could not draw a bow made for a more powerful individual or wield qi-forged daggers with the skill necessary to avoid harming himself. The armory supplied simple trial pieces, adorned steel prioritizing functionality, made during the test runs by the blacksmiths and carpenters. The hundreds of sect members in the body refining realm were similarly equipped, all to stand their defensive posts on the walls.


    In contrast to Liao''s simple weapons, Su Yi procured a spear of master craftsmanship with a leaf-bladed head of golden-shaded alloy that radiated audible qi through the blade with each thrust.


    Only one item provided to Liao had any real power, a thumb ring gifted to him by Elder Yang Xun. Carefully bonded from strips of leather culled from the skins of falcons, it held no inherent qi, but the intent worked into the implement carried the promise to speed arrows on their way nonetheless. ¡°Eventually you''ll have a whole armory of special tools for yourself,¡± Sayaana suggested, sounding slightly envious.


    Su Yi packed nothing but battle gear, but Qing Liao was obligated to heft a pack carrying food and water. No medicines, as these might give him away, but enough resources to insure he remained hale throughout the sojourn to come. ¡°You may be underground for over a week,¡± the disciple reviewed the plan final time as they stood atop the Starwall. ¡°Meditate as much as you can. It will be very grim, otherwise.¡± Her perfect teardrop eyes hardened. ¡°Fail to remain concealed, and you will perish. The grand elders have said there will be no rescue attempts.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± Itinay''s explanation had made that very clear. She had even given him an opportunity to refuse the offer, one Liao might have been tempted to take had Sayaana not told him that standing atop the wall was almost certainly far more likely to result in his death.


    Itinay had also told him, and he could only assume it was the truth, that this plan could save hundreds of lives. That list included his classmates, the members of his pavilion, and even the woman presently serving as his escort. They were all, he knew, risking their lives as well. No sect member sat out a demon horde. Given the overwhelming scale of the obligation, it had never really been possible to refuse.


    He did not look forward to a week stuffed into a dark box, but it could hardly be worse than battle. It had to be hoped that what Uzay had done had prepared him for the struggle to come.


    ¡°The next part is the hard bit,¡± Su Yi continued. Using her spear for emphasis, she pointed out beyond the wall. ¡°The horde is most likely to attack the day after tomorrow, but it could come earlier.¡± All around them, the balance of the sect labored through their final preparations. They stood in a tiny eye at the center of a much larger storm. ¡°But the demon vanguard has already begun to enter the fields. There are thousands of demons out there now.¡±


    That, everyone knew. From atop the towers, where visibility was greatest, the handful of spirit tempering elders who specialized in archery were firing off arrows every few seconds, systematically sniping any demons who moved into a clear line of sight. Unfortunately, the animalistic monsters were still cunning enough to avoid recklessly exposing themselves.


    ¡°We have to get to the chosen point and dump you in unnoticed,¡± Su Yi concluded. ¡°Now, tell me your job.¡±


    ¡°Follow you, keep moving.¡± He could repeat the phrase exactly, having had it drilled into him over one hundred times since breakfast. ¡°Don''t engage unless forced.¡± They were simple instructions, and sensible. Liao knew well what a deer chased by wolves looked like.


    ¡°Even with the limits of your mastery, the Stellar Flash Steps should keep you ahead of the ghouls,¡± Su Yi repeated her justification anyway. Her beautiful face remained steady even as she grew increasingly grim in tone. ¡°But they are faster than you think. Even a moment, spent frozen, is enough for them to drag you down. Do not fight, trust me to keep the path clear. Follow. If we divert, in order to avoid ogres or giants, there will be no time to signal. You must pay strict attention.¡±


    Though the briefing was perfectly professional, something deeply personal bled out in the process, subtle, indicated through shifts in gaze and perturbations in qi; sad and miserable. It reminded him that, while this was his first time standing the walls in combat, this was Su Yi''s third horde. She would charge into battle surrounded by ghosts. The legions of the fallen that must trail the elders, Liao suddenly realized, were beyond counting.


    ¡°I will follow.¡± Inspired by that horror, he put all the conviction he could muster behind the words. There were many things to inspire seriousness in that moment. Hour by hour, the cloud of demonic qi massing beyond the Starwall''s embedded protections grew in density. Diffuse though it remained for now, its overwhelming malice had become a constant pressure at the edge of the awareness of every assembled cultivator.


    ¡°When we leave the wall, you''ll feel the full force of the demon plague for the first time,¡± Su Yi made note of the plan''s last complication. ¡°Grand Elder Itinay claims it won''t affect you, but we''ll take a three breath pause all the same.¡±


    Flags and symbols carved into the crenelations and masonry of the Starwall, with several layers of movable flags and banners for deployment in case of a crack or breach, were visible everywhere. Liao had been told, many times, that these were critical. Not for the cultivators of the sect, whose innate channeling of qi would block the plague from touching them unless slain, but for the mortal population who lived bereft of such protection. Should those formations fail and the demons pour past the Starwall, the plague would race ahead of their red mass and claim the million souls who called Mother''s Gift home in a matter of days.


    He refused to even imagine that happening. Some things would never be permitted under the eyes of the Celestial Mother.


    ¡°Then let''s go,¡± Su Yi ordered.


    Together, they jumped down off the wall and into the war that had never truly ended.

 Chapter Twenty-Six: First Battle

    Despite his increased understanding of the Stellar Flash Steps and deployment of qi to reinforce his limbs, the drop off the Starwall sufficed to spike pain through feet and knees upon landing. Had the demon plague washed over him them, Liao suspected he might well have collapsed to his knees, but as Itinay had said, it failed to touch him at all. Vast malice surrounded him, but it was without direction, unable to notice the little mouse dropped within its vast cavern.


    The grand elder''s analysis passed its first and most important test.


    Though the plague, unable to identify Qing Liao as a target, ignored him, that did not leave him immune to its presence entirely. He might be immune to its touch, but the presence of the plague, its impact, that remained. The removal of the protective barrier of the Starwall unveiled the fullness of that monstrous cloud in all its hideous glory.


    He suppressed a new and powerful urge to vomit. The plague, everything he saw and felt, it was utterly disgusting. It was life, for there was qi so this must be true, but life stripped away of all that made it beautiful and wonderful. A pure, wholly consumptive construction, one derived not from the vast history of being that tied all things together, but born from the mind of the deranged betrayals of the ancient past.


    Contact. Connect. Consume. The plague did nothing else. It could only take, never create. Absent reproduction, it was reductive, a force that only lessened the world by tearing away everything it touched and leaving nothing but additional copies of itself in its wake.


    All this could be felt through the least contact with the disgusting ambient qi given off by the plague. It felt sticky, cloying, and wet. Entering the space where it reigned, Liao felt as if his whole body had been dipped in lard and then left to decay. The omnipresent reddish emanation imposed a barrier of effort on all actions. Movement, sensing, even thought, all of these were burdened by the plague''s existence around them.


    He wanted nothing more than to turn around and race back to the blissfully untainted air behind the wall.


    But the three breaths allotted by Su Yi had already been used up.


    With a jolt, the disciple''s shining spear shot ahead, and Liao could only follow that beacon.


    He was left gasping in seconds. Holding back though the awareness integration realm cultivator might be, she nevertheless roared forward with astonishing speed. A red-armored blur streaking across the landscape as an arrow in flight. Without pause she would pivot, dash, and blitz from one direction to the next, lightning carving its way not through the sky, but over the ground.


    Liao hauled on his reserves of qi and slammed from one position to the next. His heart and lungs screamed with effort, legs churned through stomping lunges, and his vision blurred as he desperately sought to hold to the cruel pace set by Su Yi. Had the land not been cleared of vegetation it would have been impossible, in seconds he would have lost her completely. Each obstruction, placed in complex defensive patterns to redirect and channel the horde away from straight lines, forced them to make a twisted, ever-shifting scramble across the raked and rippling landscape. As the red-tinged vise imposed by burning lungs and strained muscles took hold of Liao''s senses and compressed his awareness down to little more than a single line, he was idly struck by the thought that the Killing Fields reminded him of the lines dictating the movement of pieces across a game board.


    They jumped palisades, skimmed across raised defensive platforms, sprinted through muddy ditches, and vaulted over heavy boulders, never stopping, never slowing. Guided by streaks of light discerned and copied through the power of channeled qi, they blasted forward at mind-shattering speed. Liao pulled out energy stores embedded in his dantian, burning it faster than ever before. He kept his eyes directed toward the shining spearpoint projected before the disciple''s streaking form.


    A sole anchor and perfect guide, until the gold suddenly turned bloody and stained.


    Liao blinked. He had not even seen the ghoul before Su Yi deflected her path by a critical few degrees and thrust her qi-empowered weapon clean through the creature''s chest. Impact made a great hole, then tore and ripped free, taking the chest apart through the force of motion. The core of the demon simply disintegrated, torn to pieces and thrown aside as the follow-through carried the cultivator onward without the least hesitation. Chunks of shattered red flesh slammed into the ground, unrecognizable, and immediately began sublimating back into the plague itself.


    The only thing in the trapper''s mind that contextualized this image was the impact of a full-sized broadhead arrow on the body of a tiny sparrow. Nothing recognizable was left behind in the scattered remains. Within seconds there was nothing at all, for the demon''s body was taken back by the plague, all vestiges of its being absorbed to empower its true master even further.


    ¡°Keep moving!¡± Su Yi screamed, turning her head for a single look back.


    Liao discovered he''d frozen in place. Even as he lurched back into motion, his perception spiked with dozens of additional presences. All crystallized the endless consumptive qi of the plague, the unmistakable mark of demons. Eyes shifting as he moved, he glimpsed one, scrambling up out of a trench on his right. Claws out, it charged towards him. The thing moved in a loping, long-limbed run that could match the pace of a galloping horse.


    Fear provided the impetus for speed. Liao clenched, and then pushed his legs through the essential footwork. Luminous pathways appeared in his mind''s eye, and he blasted down them, streaking forward in an attempt to follow Su Yi''s rapidly receding form. Stumbling and careening across the ground, he lurched towards her as fast as he could move without falling flat.


    Almost fast enough. ¡°Go!¡± The disciple pointed northward, and then, in a maneuver that left Liao slack-jawed, took a single flash step that carried her through the nearest demon, complete with simultaneous spear-tip slash ripping the through half the thing''s neck to leave it dissipating away on the earth. Without even slowing, she pivoted and bolted back, ignoring the momentum shift that would have torn any bird that attempted such a rapid reversal in half.


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    The stroke had been perfectly smooth, a mechanical marvel of precision and timing.


    It was equally unrestrained. Black blood had burst from the demon''s severed arteries and coated the beautiful cultivator beneath a violent spray of gore. She ignored this completely, plowed through the horrid liquid without wasting the time and energy necessary to shield her skin using qi. Instead, she pushed everything down to maximize her speed.


    Doing his very best, mind reeling and eyes twitching, Liao followed the directions pointed by the blood-soaked spearhead. Despite this desperate scramble, his best effort bought him only a few meters before the blinding streak of motion that was the disciple once again dashed out ahead. ¡°We do not stop!¡± She called as the wake of her passage scrambled his footing even as it pulled him forward. ¡°Run on!¡±


    Lacking the air to offer even a grunt in reply, and without any bright shining alloy to follow visually, Liao focused instead on the sharp white light of Su Yi''s exerted stellar qi and hurled his body after it. All around them the full nightmare of the Killing Fields made itself known as demons thrashed and converged upon the interlopers among them. Reddish shapes gathered and surged, only to be driven to the earth in vain as the elders on overwatch riddled them with arrows, and experienced disciples moved to the forward platforms to slaughter those who advanced too early.


    Already the loose vanguard of overly curious demons had taken losses numbering in the hundreds. Crimson stains marked the spots where their bodies fell, steaming away to feed the unseen film that impelled them forward. Arrows, chakrams, and javelins filled the sky, sending more and more monsters back to that melding by the minute. Despite this, the horde''s numbers were only increasing. In less than a full day a terrible battle would rage across the scarred terrain and human blood would join with the black liquid given off by the monsters.


    A battle Qing Liao would miss, but he no longer felt this was any form of cowardice. His ability to contribute was minimal when compared even to disciples, never mind elders. This other scheme, if it delivered anything at all, was surely a far more important task than shooting his bow until he could raise his arm no more. He began to believe in the plan Itinay described. Instead of the one life he might save wielding his bow, he started to dream that he could spare dozens.


    Such thoughts, such dreams, provided the necessary resolve to keep up as the energy in his dantian flagged and his muscles burned. Duty drove him onward, clinging to the beacon that was Su Yi. Nothing spared for deviation.


    Six times Su Yi led them through ghouls, crashing devastation without pause. Each of the demons was left shattered upon the ground in a single blow. Overwhelming swift thrusts slammed through demon flesh with fury and precision. She barely broke stride as she devastated each enemy, revealed her mastery of the full power of an awareness integration realm cultivator.


    Despite this, Liao''s mind somehow watched and categorized the conflict, discovering to his terror that it was far less one-sided than it seemed. The demons were fast, strong, and durable. Precision timing was essential to guide the shining spear past each pair of grasping claws. Similarly, only the incredible power of devastating blows unleashed through tremendous explosions of tightly controlled qi allowed them to pierce through with the force necessary to slay in one strike. Had it been his hands on the spear, the ghouls would be staggered at best, and then reach forward and rip him apart in counterstroke.


    Power combined with experience. Veteran capabilities and the unerring skill necessary to perform such swift strikes. One in the body refining realm could not fight this way. For Liao a battle with a ghoul would be a complex struggle, thrust and riposte, one he was not eager to conduct dagger to claw at all. Without the wall for protection, the conclusion was far from certain.


    As they closed on the target point, the sounds of battle grew louder across the Killing Fields. Su Yi slowed slightly at this auditory signal, reduced to the swiftest sprint of a mortal. They had been told to anticipate this move.


    All along the Starwall, the sect made it''s first true move to open the battle.


    Skirmishers leapt off the wall, slaughtering their way forward with spear and halberd. Charging forward, they cleared ground of demons en masse. A wave of cultivators followed them, moving up to take forward positions on platforms and towers. The advance vanguard of the horde was slaughtered, thousands falling as the sect pushed the defensive line from the Starwall to the very edge of Mother''s Gift and the shimmering access point to the Ruined Wastes beyond.


    It was a simple tactic, and standard, but this burst of activity, and the qi release accompanying it, drew the eyes of the demons. They surged in the direction of the sect''s fighters, offering a critical opportunity to hide Liao away unseen. Su Yi, amazingly, had maintained awareness to time this with near perfection. Even as the gongs rang out to signal the assault, the labyrinth of detritus scattered out and securing the buried hatch to the prepared hole they targeted came into view.


    However, no amount of precision could overcome the randomness inherent in mass conflict. In this hour, those fluctuations turned against them.


    While the gongs still resounded in their ears, another sound penetrated the pair. It was felt not simply across their eardrums, but through their feet and bones as well. A deep, rumbling thump, heavy weights slamming down, one after another, in steady cadence.


    Strides. The sound of something truly immense in motion. Liao knew the pattern, a four-legged gait, but not its weight. This was not the swift clop of a hoofed beast or the soft and swift padded lope of a stalking predator. It was the furious, thrashing ramble of something heavy, angry, and able to make the terrain yield to its motions rather than the reverse.


    A ridiculous, monstrous thing, one revealed by the concentration of its qi before that ground-shaking amble carried its immense body into view. Smashing free of dust and glare it crashed out before them astride the very point of their objective.


    A giant.


    Throughout their sprinted charge Su Yi had diverted around every one of the three-meter tall ogres she sensed, not daring to pause to engage such brutes. This thing was many times larger, a living creature the size of a building. It''s shear immensity overawed the mind in a primal manner that left Liao shaking, animal instincts telling him to run, to escape before it crushed him without thought.


    The giant had arms far longer than the stubby legs, but all four limbs were immense pillars of flesh and bone, necessary to hold up the thing''s gargantuan bulk. The body was short, with the flesh pulled tight over the bones. Ridiculously thick skin cloaked it, giving the creature the impression of a skeletal beast wrapped in vines and plates made of fish scale. Five meters high at the shoulder, with a bestial face, tearing double sets of fangs, and horns that swept back from its brow like a bull''s for a full two meter length, it''s true nature was betrayed by its eyes. Though enlarged, bloodshot, and twisted to red by the plague, they revealed the introspective gaze no animal possessed.


    This thing had once been human.


    Some bizarre, barely detectable, variation in qi composition had, when confronted with the demon plague, twisted a once mortal existence into that of a bestial monster so overburdened it required four points of contact to walk. The sight made Liao sick, an abomination against the living world, a thing that obviously belonged nowhere and served no purpose save death. Full of pain, the giant''s eyes suggested it knew its perverse nature well, and in the cultivators before it had discovered a way to share its agony if only for a moment.


    Rearing upright, this most powerful of demon forms hurled its enlarged body into the assault.

 Chapter Twenty-Seven

    As the giant reared, it launched an ear-splitting roar. The body pivoted on the stumpy limbs, anchoring weight over the back legs. This freed the great and terrible pillar-arms to whip about with stony speed, extruding fingers like roofing poles to gouge through the earth and smash flat all they touched. Rippling ridges of iron-hard skin laced those appendages, forming edged gauntlets threatening to rip and tear human flesh if even the least glancing blow landed. In the aftermath of each furious impact the air crackled and the ground split.


    ¡°Pits,¡± Su Yi hissed as the giant charged towards them. She raised her spear to guard even as the immense bulk of the demon rose up and towered above her petite frame. Her entire body tensed, and qi flushed to the surface of her skin, as she truly committed to full battle for the first time in Liao''s presence. ¡°I''ll kill it!¡± She shouted hurriedly. There was no time for any sort of elaborate plan. ¡°Keep the ghouls back! Go for the legs!¡±


    Even as these words reached his ears, Liao discovered his bow was already in his hands. A swift glance revealed that while the giant had lurched forward into melee range through the gap alone, the ghouls scattered about nearby had heard the sound and caught the qi traces of battle. They converged now, largely ignoring him to charge at Su Yi.


    A single claw swipe, interrupting her motions, would be enough to allow the giant to land a blow that even the senior disciple could not withstand. Liao understood the command he''d been given. An arrow moved to his bowstring and he joined a true cultivator''s battle for the first time.


    Su Yi began a flying leap and launched herself upward at the monster trying to pound her flat.


    Tearing his eyes away from that tableau, Liao turned instead to locate the nearest of the blood-shaded and gaunt smaller demons. Gathering strength in his muscles and qi in his core, he let fly.


    The ghoul jumped over the first arrow. The terrible feral cunning that made the plague''s altered minions so deadly was on full display. As it landed, clawed feet dug into the ground with cat-like grace. The monster spun about and careened forward, instantly adopting a rapid, serpentine motion pattern.


    Liao blinked, stunned by this deviation, and his fingers twitched against the shaft of his next arrow.


    ¡°Focus!¡± Sayaana''s voice echoed through the bones of his skull. The remnant''s words carried a cold fury he''d never heard her unleash before. ¡°It''s a dead thing! A wrath puppet! Nothing more! You are one who has touched the dao. Gather the light and strike it down!¡±


    For a single, infinitesimal and yet endless instant, Liao snapped his eyes closed. Awareness dipped down, drawn entirely into his dantian. Down, and through. Beyond the bottom, on the opposite side of the world, the other side of himself, the stars waited, and in their endless power they burned across all distances. He felt it there, always, power older than humanity, older than the world itself, the primordial energy of the first reaction to bring forth light.


    Power granted as his to wield through the incredible brilliance and endless kindness of the Celestial Mother.


    ¡°Nine Spheres Arsenal Bow Arts,¡± he did not speak the words aloud, but loosed them through his dao. Pure star-born qi spiraled out from his dantian, danced sluggishly across still quiescent meridians, and wrapped about the muscles of his arm, back, and shoulders. ¡°First Form: Starlight Barb.¡± Gathered by will, the power wrapped about his bow.


    Then it burst free.


    The arrow released from the snapping string was not made merely of wood, steel, and feather, but also light itself. A furious channeled pulsation invigorating every particle of the projectile with energy. Heat saw it glow and smolder, until demon eyes burned to look up at it. Momentum gave it air-snapping speed that seared a scarring line across its tracery through the sky and scattered dust-grain shrapnel along its trajectory. Force stretched its structure, causing energy to crash forward and through, end to end.


    When the arrow struck it neither embedded nor deflected. It pierced. Then it burst.


    A yellow streak, red-shifted in the air, slashed through the ghoul''s head and then blew it apart, leaving behind nothing but a rain of pulpy mist.


    Liao exhaled. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. His nerves tingled and stung as the feedback of this attack, never fully invoked before, not even in practice, rebounded through his flesh.


    ¡°Not bad,¡± Sayaana''s remnant voice offered two scant words of praise before she pulled him back to the needs of the moment. ¡°But try that again and you''ll collapse. Just shoot!¡±


    Another arrow. A second ghoul. This one approached from the west.


    Somehow, this time it was easy. The teachings of ancient manuals, the corrections by disciples in the archery hall, Sayaana''s masterful guidance; all these things melded together to unleash smooth, repeated movements guided by the least infusion of qi and dedicated to the objective given by his beautiful and brave senior.


    Not victory, no, that was not the need this day. Merely delay, the restriction of the ghouls to prevent flanking maneuvers. Just enough to allow Su Yi to fight her battle unhindered. For this field, this moment, that was enough.


    A task he was equal to.


    Thirty-five arrows shot. Sixteen ghouls driven to the ground. Only the first truly slain, but though the remaining demons crawled and thrashed they would play no part in this fight. With his last arrow in hand, Liao dared to turn his aim to the true threat before him.


    The giant''s form was no less towering and terrifying than before.


    Shaded as if ocher and obsidian were mashed together and then dipped in a pool of blood, the horned demon dripped black ichor from two dozen wounds. Puddles made from sloughed skin and sliced muscle churned the mud amid the craters formed by its relentless pummeling strikes. Collapsed trench works lay in its wake and gouges scourged by the absurd horns laced the ground. Wounded, furious, and pained, its terrible plague-born strength remained undiminished.


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    It would not stop until rent asunder.


    Su Yi stood before the monster unharmed. She had not been struck, though her armor bore slight streaks from the flying impact of wood splinters and stone shards that had blasted past. Never stopping, she danced before the monster as it whirled its arms in looping circular attack patterns. Pillar-like limbs swung back and forth, spinning and warding, preventing the shining spear from reaching past to strike the vitals.


    If the cultivator danced back into the space needed for a piercing strike through that wall of flesh and bone, the giant, driven by bestial cunning and endless hunger, charged forward. The hulking form heedlessly crashed through palisades and easily surmounted ditches. Any obstacle Su Yi might have utilized was thereby rendered utterly useless.


    Nor did she dare any strike that would leave her vulnerable in the aftermath, not with the ghouls swarming about.


    Glimpsing this balance, Liao came to understand the full measure of the horde''s deadly power for the first time. One against one, Su Yi would eventually triumph. Even if it took one thousand cuts, she would ultimately bleed the giant out, always one step ahead of the monster.


    The surrounding demons made this impossible. Time and space compressed against her through the means of red flesh and left her combat potential terribly constrained. The mindless mass restrained her simply by existing, a burden caused by shear quantity.


    At the same time, Liao realized that he could, by opening a gap, flip the scale. One single arrow remained. The mass of downed ghouls bought a moment to act.


    He did so.


    A simple shot, nothing complicated, launched from the bow and aimed at the giant''s right eye. Though protected by the heavy brows anchoring the curving horns, the orb was swollen by the immense bulk of the monster to almost the size of a dinner plate. An easy target for an archer with qi pulsing through his veins.


    The giant''s oversize orb took in this move, and it deflected the barb dispatched by the little human before it by the simple means of shaking its head. The arrow clattered uselessly against the base of the right horn and failed to penetrate any more than it would have a stone wall. The steel broadhead knocked loose a finger-sized chunk of hardened keratin, but no more. In the flow of a great battle it would have passed totally unnoticed.


    But, for the interval of a single step, just long enough to bend its neck, the giant stopped moving forward.


    And one step was more than sufficient space for Su Yi.


    She pushed her right foot back to anchor her body, gathered strength across bone and sinew, and leveled the spear for and upward rising lunge at the same instant as qi burst out from every speck of surface across her small form. The motion that followed unfolded too fast for Liao to follow, even with his cultivator''s enhanced senses. He could only feel it, the surge of power, concentrated over and over to a single point as the disciple released her strike. ¡°Nine Spheres Arsenal Spear Arts; First Form: Impact Thrust.¡±


    Spear leading, she launched her body upwards in an arc that would have brushed treetops had there been any at hand. At the apex of her flight, she channeled her body through the motions of the Stellar Flash Steps to reorient completely in midair and pushed off the sky itself to descend with double the power and speed. Coiled energy, wrapped around her long spear, channeled every bit of gathered momentum down the weapon to the singular point of contact.


    The demon tried to block, but its massive form was too slow. It could not raise a great arm high enough in time.


    Su Yi slammed down, and the tip of her spear pierced the giant''s shoulder just behind the collarbone. There, her technique detonated. Every last newton of force, physical and qi-derived in tandem, transferred from the golden spearhead to the demon''s flesh.


    All aspects of her motion completely ceased, all ongoing forces nullified. She was left, for the briefest of instants, suspended in the air.


    Energy, channeled successfully, passed through flesh and then found its own way free. Light, sound, heat, pressure and other exotic forms of discharge all exerted themselves against demon tissue from within. More power, far more, than any living form, no matter how large or strong, could ever possibly withstand.


    The left arm of the giant blew clean off. Its twisted flesh rolled across the bloodstained earth, a mangled ruin. Black ruin poured out of the creatures neck and head from a thousand cavities. It was already dead, but the immense body slowly crumpled to the ground as veins emptied their contents to drench the soil and grass beneath. It slammed down horns first, giving no final cry, and settled into a motionless lump.


    Su Yi rolled free of the giant''s death throes covered in gore but unharmed. A flick of her spear, enough to knock loose the demon''s blood, was all the time she spared for sentiment. ¡°I''ll kill the ghouls,¡± she ordered. ¡°Hide yourself now, this pause won''t last.¡±


    These calm commands, directed by a battle goddess descended, snapped Liao free of post-combat shock. With a lurch, he stumbled forward and then, gathering his body behind his thoughts, broke into a run. Following the sign of the single slender flag used to mark the hidden hatch door that was their target, he made his final push.


    Even as he came upon the buried access point and wrenched it free of dirt and sod, the disciple darted about behind him. The ghouls he''d pinned were slaughtered in seconds, and others that began to converge lasted little longer. All perished in silence, unable to resist this relentless reaping.


    After opening the hatch Liao pulled out the marker flag and dragged with him the netting used to conceal this buried door. He took the bright blue symbol with him down below, but tossed the mat so it would land atop the gap as he pulled the hatch closed above his head. Dropping into darkness, he passed into the chamber below.


    Not far, the first platform was barely a meter below the surface, not enough room for him to stand. A second shaft, invisible from the point of the first opening, yawned in the darkness and offered passage further down.


    Before taking that step, he drew on his lungs and called out to Su Yi. ¡°I''m in!¡± Even barely beneath the surface the thick soil swallow up most of the sound. ¡°Go!¡±


    She did not shout back. The sharp-edged footfalls characteristic of the Stellar Flash Steps were the only sign that she had managed to retreat alive. That and the dissipation of her qi signature from the range of Liao''s senses.


    ¡°She''s a professional, that one,¡± Sayaana''s voice whispered through his skull. ¡°I do hope she survives.¡±


    Liao merely grunted, unwilling to express how much that mattered to him as well. He focused instead on descending a series of three further ladders and platforms in order to reach the tiny black space where he was to wait and watch. He was over twenty meters below the surface, the very limit of his qi sense with such thick earth above. The demon qi, however, remained present everywhere. Detecting enemy cultivators would not be difficult.


    The dark space was almost totally empty, though someone had kindly supplied a cushion. Seated, Liao stared at the pipe lodged into the wall, and the taught string it contained. That signal, a transmission engineered to work without any use of qi, made this whole half-burial worthwhile.


    He did not intend to miss the mark.


    Laying out his supplies, he settled in to wait. Demon qi seethed all around him, but compared to Uzay''s flames, it was nothing, easily submerged beneath the mountainous importance of the duty laid upon him now.


    When the moment came, he intended to be ready.

 Chapter Twenty-Eight

    Black Howl, as might be imagined given his chosen moniker, wore armor fashioned entirely of jet black wolf skins. They were not sourced from wolves naturally black of fur, but had been taken instead from the great white beasts of the far north and then stained an impossibly pure black through prolonged immersion in demon blood. An impressive demonstration of the dyer''s art, truthfully, given the rapid dissipation of demons upon death. He''d made the wretched ensemble himself, including the many hours of carefully bleeding captive demons by the hundreds demanded by the process.


    A wolfskin helmet of the same shade completed the outfit and gave him an openly ferocious countenance. That the skin of his face was itself black gave him a terrifying monochrome first impression, one made all the more ferocious when he revealed the perfectly white, massively oversize mouthful of fangs his completed soul forging had appended to his immortal body. His hands and toes were similarly transformed into claws, hardened so that he had no need to bother with boots or gloves even when faced with the brutally rough terrain of the arctic tundra.


    The man found underneath that predatory mien was exactly as might be expected from without. After all, as an immortal cultivator of the celestial ascendancy realm, the very nature of his soul was exposed through his appearance, and Black Howl was far less complex than most who had reached such heights. Those who wished to conceal the nature of their being covered it, using the vast options available to armor to fashion a presentation revealing exactly what they wished.


    Few were as open as Black Howl. The Fuming Shade, whose costume let slip only hints of the charred and smoke-like being he truly was, offered a much more typical example. Scoria Scorn, for her part, stood on the opposite end of the spectrum. She considered it folly to allow any aspect of her nature to stand out for enemy examination, and habitually concealed everything.


    She knew Black Howl was a brute of a being, pure predator from start to finish. That did not, as many had believed before he tore them asunder, make him a fool. Fools did not reach the rare status they had achieved. The wolf-clad man might have simple wants and needs, but simplicity was not idiocy. He was cunning, and also distinctly willing to avoid complications through swift application of violence. He embraced the glory and violence of his dao fully, and this bound him to the plague most firmly. An endless drive to tear apart and feast upon the qi of his opponents tied to the feral cunning of a born predator that knows to fight only when the moment serves that need, these things made him a poor strategist but an almost ideal auxiliary.


    It was a truth he both knew and embraced, and he had reached great heights as a result.


    Scoria Scorn recognized that these aspects made the man useful. It was why she had not objected to the suggestion that he be their third. They did not, however, make him pleasant company.


    Thankfully, she was under no obligation to endure his presence for very long. By the time the black-clad stalker arrived from the north and the Fuming Shade returned the horde had swollen to its maximum size and advanced to the point where she was relying heavily on formation flags to hold the attack back rather than the reverse. The gateway stood before her, and the monsters were already beginning to trickling through. Holding back the flood became more difficult hour by hour.


    Some scouts advancing to trigger defenses and traps had their uses, but the horde must not be dispersed. The hammer had to strike in a single blow, a series of smaller assaults would inevitably fail. Like a mob, it could only serve its purpose when acting as one frenzied mass.


    Black Howl took a single moment to assess the horde''s size and grunted in satisfaction. He agreed to the proposed division of spoils, one weighted heavily in his favor, with equal swiftness. ¡°I will lead the attack,¡± the blood-soaked cultivator offered. He sounded eager, even by his wolfish standards.


    Had the choice been hers, Scoria Scorn would have agreed at once, but the Fuming Shade overruled this option. ¡°No.¡± His ashen voice crashed and stormed. ¡°We will enter together. This realm has survived for a long time, and likely claimed the lives of more than one of our number. There will be powerful defenses and numerous surprises waiting. I expect multiple defensive formations to slam against us beginning the moment we are through.¡±


    ¡°What formation could possibly harm any of us?¡± Black Howl countered. It sounded boastful, but was truthfully very reasonable. Static defenses were usually no more than an irritant unless prepared by a formation master a full realm higher than the target. Since that was impossible when targeting an immortal, such things were usually of little consequence.


    Standing at the peak of the pyramid came with very real advantages.


    ¡°I do not wish to stumble blind into the worst trap a formation master blessed with centuries of preparation might unleash,¡± the Fuming Shade stood unmoved. ¡°Not without support. We go in together, in the middle of the horde.¡±


    A standard deployment, one proven over the centuries. Scoria Scorn did not consider her partner an especially creative man, but the plague was not designed for complexity or originality. Ruthless efficiency playing to its strengths would more than suffice.


    Turning to her, the ashen mass asked a final preparatory question. ¡°Your assessment?¡±


    ¡°The land beyond the gate is very large,¡± she could feel that much, her qi had probed along the edges of the twisting construct for many days. ¡°And the demon vanguard has suffered heavy casualties already, though I do not believe any formations have been unleashed.¡± That was impressive. Thousands of demons did not simply roll over and die. Lower-ranked cultivators could not dispatch them with such ease or speed. ¡°Or the action of any elders.¡± Doubly unexpected. ¡°I suspect the defenders are numerous and have many strong defensive positions. The zone comprising a prepared battlefield may be city-sized.¡±


    Despite these caveats, Scoria Scorn privately admitted that she thought Black Howl was probably correct. ¡°Formations are likely to be unleashed upon our entry, but I do not believe they will harm us.¡± Even should a formation master lead this land, something unlikely, for they were rare and their deaths had been prioritized during the war, the resources and coordination necessary to truly threaten immortals were simply beyond the power of any hidden land. ¡°But I suspect demon losses will be very high.¡±


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    Black Howl grunted at this, softly disparaging the horde''s contribution. Beneath his mask the Fuming Shade''s qi shifted and twisted. The smoke monster was far less sanguine regarding demon deaths. Standing as close as they did now, in a tiny gap opened amid the horde''s vast red mass, it was impossible not to feel his unease. The connection of the plague carried echoes of their qi between each one.


    Scoria Scorn was continually engaging in the restructuring of her surface emanations in order to project perfect self-mastery. Nothing must be revealed through happenstance or proximity. She was confident nothing would leak through. Centuries of practice were of great value.


    ¡°You suspect a large number in the soul forging realm?¡± the masked demonic cultivator questioned. Smoke swirled about his form, coating the cuffs of his armor.


    ¡°Yes,¡± Scoria Scorn agreed quickly. ¡°And numerous in the spirit tempering realm, perhaps enough to present a threat if they possess a combination technique.¡± That implied at least two dozen, which would be a very high number indeed, more than she''d ever heard of in a single hidden land, but it was not impossible in a land of such great size.


    The portal itself, a vast section of mountainside turned hazy and constantly shifting through terrain types that resembled what might happen if someone scattered a mirror made of trees across a rockslide, seemed to imply this. It was huge. Rather than allowing perhaps a dozen individuals to shunt through, the demons were passing inward hundreds at a time.


    ¡°Then we will strike hard and fast, before the horde is slaughtered to the point of uselessness,¡± the senior demonic cultivator decided with dark finality. ¡°I will strike the center and destroy their leading immortal isfthey possess the courage to fight.¡± Often orthodox immortals did not, something the demonic cultivators all knew well and relished greatly. Lands led by cowards who had chosen to hide when the war began to turn were easily overcome. ¡°Black Howl will take the left. Scoria Scorn the right.¡±


    ¡°And if there is more than one enemy able to match our cultivation?¡± This was the great fear, and the primary reason Scoria Scorn had requested support at all.


    ¡°Then they are Black Howl''s prey,¡± the Fuming Shade declared this with absolute authority. The mercenary growled in pleasure at the offer of this key reward. ¡°But all subordinates must die first. I have no intention of playing games dodging combination techniques or sacrificial arrays. Kill the elders and we can take what is ours while the demons handle the rest.¡±


    No one chose to mentioned what would happen if there were three enemy immortals. If that happened, it would simply be a matter of which of them was the slowest. Among this trio that was Black Howl, though Scoria Scorn was at pains to insure he did not know this for certain. The mercenary probably suspected, they had worked together before and even a brute could be highly insightful, but he no doubt thought the risk minimal. It had been over a thousand years since any hidden land with three resident immortals was encountered.


    Almost, Scoria Scorn hoped this would be the one to defy the odds. She''d lose a prize, of course, but the devastation that would follow when they returned in force would be an experience worthy of witnessing in full. Certainly, she would not miss Black Howl if this day saw his end.


    A sentiment he surely returned. There were no friends among their kind.


    ¡°Ready yourselves,¡± the Fuming Shade commanded. ¡°We will push the horde forward in an hour.¡±


    This meant attacking exactly at sunset, which was not merely poetic. Scoria Scorn knew her companion''s abilities were aligned with darkness and Black Howl, wolf to the core, preferred to fight by moonlight. Orthodox cultivators, by contrast, were far more likely to have daos attuned to day and brightness. Night attacks offered a tiny measure of advantage. It would probably make no difference, but she appreciated her nominal overlord''s commitment to the small things.


    They spent the final minutes performing mundane tasks. Armor was double-checked for loose scales and straps. Weapons were oiled and given a final sharpening. Talismans and artifacts arranged and aligned for maximum potency. Qi reserves, drawn from the inestimably vast well that was the plague, were topped off. The foe knew they were coming. Both sides would meet at full strength.


    Taking up position in the center of a mighty swarm of surging demons, each of the three demonic cultivators unlimbered their weapons. They would advance with blades bare.


    The Fuming Shade, at the front of their little triangle, carried an unusual weapon. He wielded a war pick forged of black metal. Its lightly curved and pointed spike glittered in the dimming light, coated in a strange ashen dust ground from diamonds and able to tear through any defense. The heavy weapon rested loosely in his left hand, though Scoria Scorn knew he could effortlessly switch back and forth according to the dictates of his Winged Bill Method during battle.


    Black Howl''s weapons were considerably gaudier. The mercenary savage carried a war axe in each hand. The weapons were gigantic, suited to his inhuman strength, and carved to resemble stylized red wolf heads. Painted black and red, they appeared to already be dripped with gore despite their perfectly clean state. Flakes of obsidian were attached to the blades of each axe, intended to break and shatter in inside the flesh of any foe they struck. Forged out of black titanium, the set was original named the Black Wolf''s Fangs. Famously, they had been crafted during the height of the demon war specifically for the purpose of slaying the man who now carried them. The thuggish cultivator took a perverse pride in using this stolen prize as his chosen implement of death.


    No less a weapon than either of her allies did Scoria Scorn carry into battle. Her bandage-wrapped fingers extended around the hilt of a golden-bronze single-edged blade of great length. Narrow and straight rather than broad and curved, it was an uncommon weapon in these regions, but she''d never found finer. All who knew the name and origins of this curious greatsword were dead, and its origins were lost. Formed of a unique combination of many metals, proof against all forms of heat and breakage, Scoria Scorn called it nothing more than Alloy.


    The overly simple name offended many, which was why she loved it.


    Amid the red horde of demons, the trio resembled three coins dropped into a pool of blood. Nothing perturbed them. The demons ignored them, drawn instead by the pull of living qi, the target of the plague unconquerable hunger. Its servants, feral beasts and calculating cultivators both, united in common purpose.


    And why not? Once, long ago, both had been human.


    At the appointed time, the Fuming Shade sent forth a pulse of qi. Drawing on the plague, the essence, films, and cells that surrounded all and permeated every part of the world, it crafted a simple resonant signal.


    The qi ahead was reflected, echoed, and amplified. What had moments earlier been a lure to draw demons to the scent was now a blinding beacon, utterly irresistible, calling the demons forward with all their strength.


    The horde charged, and the demonic cultivators ran with the ghouls.


    The trio struck the gateway in the middle of the slope, upon the very edge of the mountains. High plains, crisscrossed by rivers and coated in forests, bamboo, and scattered grassy patches, covered the land beyond in a carpet of green. Once, long ago, this had been a vital land ruled by a sect operating at the edge of one of the world''s strongest martial coalitions. Now it was a wilderness with scattered ruins where monkeys roosted. Elephants, exterminated in these lands long ago due to the needs of human farmers, had even begun to return to the warmest sections of the riverine forests.


    Black Howl, on the journey down, had killed one to keep its tusks for use in scrimshaw.


    The horde charged toward this seemingly empty territory, and then hit the shifting, fractured gap torn across reality by manipulation of the foundational spatial dao. The cultivators passed through alongside their minions.


    It was time to reap and consume qi, an opportunity long awaited, long delayed.


    Scoria Scorn knew the fight was ultimately pointless, but she relished it all the same.

 Chapter Twenty-Nine: Forward the Horde

    The difference in qi between even the strongest of giants and a cultivator in the celestial ascendancy realm was that of a little pond before the ocean. Such vast deviations were more than sufficient to allow the simple ritual triggers built into the defensive formations laid atop the Killing Fields to operate only upon the arrival of true powers. The moment the trio of demonic cultivators entered into Mother''s Gift, three overlapping formations detected them and activated. Unleashed in rapid series, they launched massive devastation across a vast area.


    The first attack was a rain of stones from on high. Fist-sized rocks dropped from the very boundary of the hidden land, manifested out of the spatial distortions that made its separate existence possible. Heated the by the furious formation that empowered their formation and accelerated downward by the static ban on flight laid over the entire area, they dropped a rain of fire upon the horde. Many exploded in midair, unleashing a terrible blast of razor-sharp shards as they fell. Others slammed through demon flesh, smashing bone, skin, and muscle to pieces and then spattering against the earth to blast out blobs of super-heated mud that burned and scourged. Red skinned monsters collapsed in droves, ripped apart by those stony knives.


    Several such meteors, collectively massing as much as a full grown human, streaked down directly toward the Fuming Shade. Though even an attack such as this, which would reduce an elephant to torn ruins, had no chance to penetrate his armor, he saw no reason to endure such indignities. Raising his war pick, he cloaked the weapon in qi, projected power outward, and swung a single time.


    A bolt of black smoke blasted from the point of the spike, rose upwards, and reduced the meteor barrage to dust at the moment of contact. Its power far from spent, this attack carved a red-orange streak across the sky, setting fire to the air until finally dissipated by the spatial distortion at the edge of Mother''s Gift itself. Wreckage splattered about beside him, nearby demons succumbing to the attack, but a handful of swift sidesteps served to evade such debris.


    Even as the meteor swarm ceased its short but devastating barrage, lights materialized in the sky. Beams of white-hot power descended from the stars above, projecting luminous obliteration across the ground in black marks and melted clay. Anything the light touched ignited instantly, burning with terrible blue flames that ripped flesh and bone alike apart.


    The beams lasted only moments, and each one covered only a few short meters of ground in their arcs, but they numbered in the thousands. Rippling through an overlapping pattern at the heart of the densely packed horde, they destroyed countless demons. The grass at the edge of their touch ignited secondary fires from the overwhelming heat, briefly cloaking the entirety of the killing fields in prairie fire.


    The third attack compounded upon the second, for it came in the form of a howling, relentless wind, cold beyond all natural measure. Fires ripped away in a brief surge of heat, replaced by endless ice shards that ripped and tore into skin cracked and blistered by the flame; a tandem of destruction that redoubled the injuries beyond what even demon flesh could sustain. Blood sprouted across the surface of thousands of red-shaded bodies only to freeze solid and be ripped free, feeding additional jagged projectiles to the wind''s brutal lash.


    A single blast, strong enough to knock ghouls flat, and then it was gone.


    Everything was suddenly still, leaving the damage apparent.


    The Fuming Shade dodged the carving lights through a single stride of his Formless Smoke Steps. Coating his armor in a layer of qi-infused ash served to render the wind naught but empty noise. These attacks, broad and destructive as they were, offered no challenge to one of his strength and skill.


    Nevertheless, he was impressed. The evasion of these static traps cost him considerably more qi expenditure than he''d anticipated. More importantly, the assault had not been targeted at him at all, it had been designed to deal maximum damage to the horde, a strategic choice representing dangerous confidence on the part of the defenders.


    And the damage had been immense.


    He tapped a talisman attached to the inside of his palm, one that transmitted words upon the wind and dispatched them to specific recipients regardless of distance. Such simple implements of battlefield communication were ordinary for conflicts like this, but remained essential. ¡°How many did we lose?¡± He demanded.


    ¡°Upwards of one hundred thousand,¡± Scoria Scorn''s voice never changed. She spoke as if someone had granted a stone the power of speech. Circumstances did not influence her, ever. ¡°At least half as many more have injuries that will slow them.¡± Creations of the plague, demons were not bound by the limitations of ordinary organisms. In time, they would restore themselves to full function, a restructuring rather than healing. Useful, but these things took time. Lost limbs, especially, might take days to regrow, rendering legless demons useless in the interim.


    Over a quarter of the horde, lost in a single opening stroke. A most formidable attack by any estimation. Indeed, the Fuming Shade was rather surprised there was no immediate follow up. Additional formations, embedded deep in the surrounding soil, stone, and air, abounded. He could feel them, oil layers upon the smoky membrane that passed for his skin. They pressed against him, restricting his actions in subtle but profound ways. To fly, to burrow in the earth, or even to jump to a great height ¨C though that was a foolish action in a cultivator battle ¨C was banned. Doing so would require expending the immense quantity of qi necessary to break the formation. Similarly, his sensory range, normally measured in tens of kilometers, come to a complete halt at the ramparts of a vast dark stone wall that fully encircled the gateway.


    It seemed that Scoria Scorn was correct. This whole section of the hidden land had been prepared as a deadly gatehouse.


    Dangerous, such preparations, and backed by numbers. There were many cultivators attached to this trap, gathered together on that grim wall, on watchtowers, and on spike-girded fighting platforms. Over four hundred defenders, and while many were weaklings, a very significant number were powerful disciples. They would rip through the horde, and swiftly at that.


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    A singular beacon of qi, a blinding red light across his senses, nearly drowned out all these observations. A celestial ascendancy realm cultivator, and not a weak one, not at all. Long years of raiding hidden lands had refined his ability to estimate the power of his foes to a precision implement. This one was in the fifth layer, a mighty wall of qi auguring the presence of a foe stronger than any he''d faced in seven centuries.


    And the prize whose defeat would unlock his rise to the seventh layer.


    Briefly, following the initial bombardment, he''d considered retreat. Such numerous foes and well-prepared fortifications suggested an enemy more dangerous than he''d prepared to oppose. No longer. An incalculable prize lay before him, one he refused to let slip from his grasp.


    Among all demonic cultivators the Fuming Shade acknowledged only one as his true superior. If he consumed this enemy that obstacle would be removed, he would stand unbowed at last, free upon his own path. It would take much more qi to stabilize that achievement, but with as many mortals as this realm must contain, he would find strength in abundance.


    He knew Scoria Scorn believed they could not ascend. He disagreed, vehemently, but even if she was correct it made it all the more important to be the strongest one of all as the last vestiges of the old world were slowly and inevitably swept away.


    He had bowed for centuries in the old world. He would not bow in the one to come.


    Seizing on this motive, a dream deferred for almost three thousand years, the Fuming Shade charged forward.


    The demon horde, diminished but still hundreds of thousands strong, followed.


    Though its leader charged forward in a perfect line, the red legion spread wide behind its herald. It moved to reach the wall at every point, but quickly fell behind as cohesion collapsed. Channeled by ditches, blocked by spiked fences, divided by towers, and under attack from all sides, the demon horde broke apart. It wrapped about strong points and splashed against the closest edges of the walls, but could not advance with the tsunami strength the plague desired to bring forth. Scattered apart, its ability to overwhelm weakened precipitously.


    Early though it was, with a bare handful of cultivators skirmishing at spearpoint and arrows streaking through the sky in high arcs rather than the short strikes toward the base of the wall, the Fuming Shade knew the demons were likely doomed. Even without immortal intervention, the great dark wall, strengthened by deeply entwined formations, would not be overcome. The giants might, if they managed to unite, force a breach or two, and many of the defenders would fall, perhaps most, but the barrier would stand no matter what the horde accomplished.


    Regretfully, he had to acknowledge that Scoria Scorn''s initial judgment proved correct. Their mindless minions lacked the necessary quantity to achieve an easy victory.


    Instantly, the Fuming Shade acknowledged this new reality. The demonic cultivators would need to slay all defending elders and then purge this place down to the last cultivator themselves. Beneath his mask, the faceless mass below formed into a smile. That was fine. None of the trio assembled would balk at such grunt work. Black Howl lusted for blood, and Scoria Scorn had long ago discarded any sense of morality as inefficient. As for him, well, he simply enjoyed the expression on the faces of the doomed as he tore the qi from their souls. There was something simply delightful about it.


    Nor was he the type to jeopardize victory by toying with dangerous opponents. The elder would be struck down, and swiftly. A quick victory was vastly superior. Pleasure could be taken by stretching out the looting to come.


    The enemy sect leader, for so he presumed the powerful fifth-layer immortal must be, did not wait upon the walls. Unusually courageous, but welcome given that delay was presently detrimental. She, for this foe was a tall and sinuous woman with a long-limbed frame, advanced to an empty platform raised up in the center of the battlefield.


    Twenty meters on each side and forged out of great paving stones two meters on a side cut and bonded perfectly level, it offered a most suitable arena. The invitation to engage was clear. The Fuming Shade did not refuse.


    Foolish, for though the foe wielded a spear of extraordinary craftsmanship and a battle gown woven of endlessly shifting colors no simple blade would ever pierce that he found himself immediately envious of, the tyranny of cultivation was nothing a modest superiority in artifacts could overcome. He knew this, and knew how to fight accordingly. Time would wear down talisman and tendon alike. Victory was inevitable, so long as the fight remained between the two alone.


    Upon running up to join his foe upon the platform, he realized that his foe''s plan acknowledged this truth. Sense strengthened by a moment of stillness, he detected two other concentrations of qi initially concealed by distance and the barrier of the mighty wall. One, to his far right, represented a diffuse but numerous group of elders in the soul forging realm. The other, to his left, represented the most dangerous variable. A second defender in the celestial ascendancy realm. Weak, the first layer and no more, but no immortal could be discounted.


    The intention was clear. Attacks would be lobbed from long range upon each side in the intent to pin his movement long enough for the spearwoman to pierce him fatally. A simple, but highly effective strategy. Had he been alone, and had the woman before him been willing to launch a strike that laid her open to mortal riposte, it was almost guaranteed success.


    He was, in that moment, distinctly grateful for the extreme caution of Scoria Scorn.


    It had supplied him with more than sufficient means to counter this scheme. ¡°Black Howl, the prize on the left is yours,¡± he sent the message immediately via communication talisman. ¡°Scoria Scorn, eliminate those elders on the right.¡± Orders sent, he grasped the haft of his weapon tight and raised it high. A powerful and capable foe lay before him. He intended to enjoy stripping her qi away and taking it for his own.


    To his immense surprise, the woman before him displayed not even a shred of fear. Her exotic appearance featured orange and red hair in a long raised ponytail, and counter-shaded skin across her face, a deep soft red shade above her eyes that faded to milky pale pink beneath them. An inner glow, seeming to rise up from within her flesh, illuminated every surface of her body, as if someone had lit a candle within her. The shifting, constantly altering, multi-shaded battle robe, pattern rippling and reflecting with every move, was truly astonishing. A dark toned contrast to her pale skin, it made her appear a true light in the darkness. As expected, her face was beautiful, with a refined oval shape, broad lips, and brilliant eyes of orange and brown that sparkled with deep fire. Those orbs conveyed true eagerness, the vibrancy of youth, delighted to have the enemy before her.


    ¡°You cannot win,¡± the Fuming Shade announced. He allowed the full potency of his ashen presence to billow out from beneath his armor. The difference in layers could not be missed. Clouds of cold ash flowered around his body, still in the air even as battle raged on all sides. ¡°Do you not fear death?¡±


    Pale red lips the color of rose wine bent into a bright smile. ¡°No one around here uses a war pick,¡± her voice was light and breezy, but each word snapped out with increasing energy, as if she was a pot about to boil over. ¡°This is going to be fun.¡± The spear rose up into a classic guard position, and her body fell seamlessly into an opening attack stance. Qi, bright white and astonishingly pure, flushed through every movement. Her body held its posture with utterly perfect poise.


    Affronted by such daring bravery, all willingness to indulge idle curiosities dissipated. The Fuming Shade took two strides forward and attacked. His pick swung forth with earth-shattering force, the full strength of his cultivation exerted behind a classic opening, a horizontal sweep at full power.

 Chapter Thirty: Akiray, Mistress of the Spear

    Feet swept across the smooth surface of the tiles. The spear shaft pivoted in the milk-skinned grip. The gray metal point shifted, snapped over, rolled down, and then through a short figure eight. It dove beneath the oncoming blow and launched into an abrupt thrust toward the weekly armored knee joint even as the weapon''s wielder sidestepped just enough to slide beyond the reach of the deadly strike. The tip of the pick passed beyond the edge of the battle robe no more than a hair''s breadth distant from the outer fibers.


    Against this move the Fuming Shade was forced, unbelievably, to dodge back. Ember eyes widened beneath his mask. Rage kindled in his breath. That should not, could not, have happened.


    Conceding nothing, he attacked again, this time with a series of sharp jab strikes alternating height and angle even as he shifted left in an effort to flank past his opponent¡¯s guard using the unmatched swiftness provided by his strength and fluid form.


    For the second time, a perfect pirouette and counter-thrust disrupted his maneuver. He jerked the war pick back lest the spearpoint find his fingers. In the same moment he thrust his right hand out, palm up, and unleashed a blast of billowing ash summoned from the depths of his core.


    The orange-haired cultivator bent with grace that would have shamed a masterful ballet dancer and allowed the wave of burning flakes to skim across her sleeve. It did no more than lightly mar the weave of her brilliant gown. Never stopping, she launched a brilliantly swift tip slash with her spear even as she limbered upright, preventing any follow up and regaining the initiative.


    Gritting his teeth, the Fuming Shade launched into a multitude of attacks. He drove forth blow upon blow, seeking over and over to break through this woman''s seemingly effortlessly impregnable guard. Paving stoners shattered. Huge chunks of sod were launched into the air from the shockwaves. Entrenched formations in the distant wall strained and cracked as stones buckled beneath impacts of overflowing blasts. Countless ghouls and one unlucky cultivator in the body refining realm suffered shattered bones as the echoes ripped through their bodies.


    The spear never flinched. The smile never faded. No strike broke through the perfectly presented guard.


    Surprise, a true revelation to reach the Fuming Shade for the first time in many, many years, blossomed inside his mind. He was stronger. He was faster. He could project more qi and had more to draw upon. Nor was his mastery of his weapon, as was inevitable in one who reached such heights of cultivation, in any way lacking.


    But he could not seize any advantage.


    This woman, though a layer weaker, held mastery of her technique vastly in excess of his own. She was a true genius of the spear.


    Yet this was not the only reason for his failure to breakthrough. As the exchange stretched out from dozens of passes to scores and then to hundreds, he came to recognize something else. The basis of her technique, her weapon art, was fundamentally superior to his own.


    That, he knew, should not be. He was a master of the Winged Bill Method, an ancient technique developed and refined during the old world and inherited from an immortal master. He knew the records, and had proved it personally during the war. This was a first-rank technique. A marginally advantageous opposition was possible, but this fundamental superiority should not exist.


    Amazingly, the same thing was true of her movement technique. Her silent, shifting style was immeasurably swift, fast as lightning itself. It left him no way to take advantage of his greater base speed, no opening through which to unleash an attack of true power that the superiority of his cultivation would make impossible to resist.


    With a shock so deep that it nearly caused him to lose his grip on his weapon, the Fuming Shade realized that if this woman had been able to match his cultivation she would have lethally skewered him inside of a dozen moves.


    Even as he came to recognize this, the ashen ruin of his face assembled its flakes and shards into a rictus grin. He was not in the fifth layer, but the sixth. His reserves of endurance swamped those of this woman, and for all her miraculous precision and technique superiority, she had never managed to reach past the defensive. Gradually, her armor acquired ever more smoldering patches while his remained untouched. Slowly, her qi reserves dwindled. His remained steady.


    Seven hundred rounds, he determined as he slammed his war pick down yet again. That was how long it would take for the inevitability he calculated to play out. Nor did he fear that any outsider might interrupt his slow, grinding victory. The unleashed storm of burning light and swirling ash that swirled around them would utterly slaughter any below the soul forging realm who dared to approach. Any below the spirit tempering realm seriously risked blindness simply by looking at the fight. The great wall, though over a kilometer behind the platform they were slowly shredding, was beginning to give way from nothing but the shockwaves.


    This destruction pleased the Fuming Shade. He would take down his foe and cause a breach at the same time. Then he would march through carrying his enemy''s head mounted on the spike of his war pick.


    His foe must know this as well, but she did not despair. Her reaction was entirely the opposite. Her smile grew ever broader as the fight continued and their exchanged prolonged, acquired ever more layers. A true child of battle, she immersed herself in the dao of conflict with joyous abandon, skill rising to greater heights even as her immortal body drained out its reserves down to near nothing. It seemed entirely likely that even when the last blow fell it would strike through a skull upon the edge of ecstasy.


    Infuriating.


    ¡°You will die well,¡± he hissed out the words, venting such frustration as the battle allowed even as he reached for the least scrap of advantage. ¡°Tell me your technique. I will remember the name when this is finished.¡±


    ¡°You will remember?¡± The orange-haired spearwoman, amazingly, laughed in his face as she knocked aside the pick for the sixth hundredth time. ¡°Akiray, wielding the Nine Spheres Arsenal, does not end this duel in death this day.¡±


    Hidden behind his mask, the Fuming Shade awakened to sudden, trembling, fear.


    He knew that name. He knew that technique of nine integrated weapon styles fashioned into one peerless combat form. And he knew the name of the one who developed it. In so doing, he recognized exactly why he fought from a stance of inferiority.


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    His technique had been devised by an immortal in the seventh layer of the celestial ascendancy realm. His opponent''s was the design of one who''d surpassed that barrier and become a true divinity.


    Orday. The Celestial Mother. The Fifth Sage.


    This was her hidden land, born from the end of the demon war.


    Recalling that truth, unlocking that knowledge, dropped upon him a mountain of overwhelming doom.


    He stepped back and tapped the hidden communication talisman. A desperate message dispatched to the others. The connection, the truth, had made everything clear, all assumptions reversed.


    ¡°Retreat! We are deceived! Trapped!¡±


    This maneuver cost him. A scoring glance slammed against his left breast. The spearhead drew a long and jagged scar across the pristine metal there. It marked the first strike to pierce his guard in nearly a millennium.


    Even as he moved to disengage it was already too late.


    To his left Black Howl had reached the wall, brawling across the ramparts in battle with the weaker immortal and a group of spirit tempering realm elders who sought to juggle blows between them.


    To the right Scoria Scorn, ever cautious, was hurling long ranged attacks that battered down her soul forging realm opponents one by one.


    Far behind them, the horde had advanced. All of the demons had moved up past a seemingly innocuous point in the Killing Fields. They passed over a small, buried door stuck in the ground. The tide of demonic qi they carried with them moved past, allowing the clear essence of Mother''s Gift to assert itself again.


    Beneath that hidden gate, Qing Liao, locked and darkness and buffeted by the horrors of the plague for four straight days, recognized that opening. The clear qi betrayed a signal precious signal.


    The sky beyond was free of demonic cultivators.


    Though his mind was fogged and he struggled to form coherent thoughts beneath the crushing presence of the horde above, the mission had been inscribed clearly into his mind.


    And all he had to do was pull a string.


    One little tug, and the signal passed down the underground pipeline to reach a point buried at the base of Itinay''s northernmost tower. The grand elder, concealed there beneath a truly impressive set of overlapping concealment arrays, watched as it pulled back the striker on a tiny bell.


    With a single motion she launched out from beneath her qi-dampening blankets, drew her sword, and shouted a command so loud that all within the Killing Fields could hear it. One word only from the frozen throat.


    ¡°Counterattack!¡±


    At this signal hundreds of cultivators snapped into motion. Gongs rang out, and the slavering rage of tens of thousands of demons was suddenly quiet.


    The Fuming Shade heard that call even as he dodged away from a perfect spear thrust backed by a smile that had shifted from exultant to predatory. Concealment collapsed. Qi signatures burst into being along the wall, a flood of power like nothing he''d sensed since the great battles of the demon war. The number of immortals defending this realm swelled from two to eight at a stroke.


    From the moment he felt this he knew his death had come.


    Had he charged, thrown himself forward in a suicidal assault upon Akiray''s spear, he might have driven the defenders back for a moment, forced them to shift strategy and overwhelm him with additional forces. Such a move offered the chance, the barest sliver of opportunity, for Scoria Scorn, who turned and ran at full speed following his very first word of warning, to fight free before the ring closed about them all.


    The Fuming Shade knew this well. He also knew that if even one of them managed to escape they would bring Bloody Roam at the head of such overwhelming force that this hidden land and the legacy of the goddess would be utterly erased.


    He made no attempt to do so.


    Instead, he turned about and ran. What value was vengeance? The triumph of a plague that could not even reason? To preserve his own life, that was all the demonic cultivator valued in extremis.


    Even as he turned, before he took a single step, he was forced to defend. Akiray stepped forth against his guard, and her lightspeed movement technique easily suppressed his own inferior motive capabilities. This held him back long enough for two women to come over the wall and dash down to join their sister in an enveloping triangle. One was a dancing flame with a bow baring sunlight barbs in her hand. The other was a green-white formulation of caustic rain turning a jade halberd through her fingers with the swiftness of a striking snake.


    ¡°Nine Spheres Arsenal Bow Arts,¡± the perfectly pitched voice of Uzat carried forth above demon screams and clashing blades as she drew back her bow. ¡°Fifth Form: Shattering Comet!¡±


    The arrow flashed out at blinding speed. It struck not at the Fuming Shade, not even attempting to hit him. The target, instead, was the ground before his feet. With incredible force the arrow penetrated, fletchings disappearing into the hole it dug upon impact.


    Then the ground exploded.


    Ten million stone shards, razor sharp and locking in killing expression of a merciless dao dreaming up heaven''s wrath, burst forth. They filled the air with a wall of screaming spikes, sparks cascaded away as they slammed? together and produced further iterating danger.


    Unable to dodge that icy and metallic cascade, the Fuming Shade could only halt and sweep his war pick forth in a wash intended to clear a path.


    The back hook of a halberd, blue-green and carved in the shape of a lightning bolt, grabbed his weapon before he could make this move. Neay stood to the demonic cultivator''s left, face grim with righteous hatred. ¡°End,¡± she proclaimed. Her voice delivered the reaper''s scythe.


    She was only in the fourth layer, and the dancing archer only the second. Individually, each could be overcome, and easily at that, but numbers changed the dynamic absolutely. A twist of the pick, full strength exerted, and the Fuming Shade tore his weapon free in a stroke that drew blood from the pale green cultivator even through the protection of her cloudvine-shaped armor.


    In the same moment an arrow of burning light slammed through the back of his knee.


    A spearhead pierced his back, its force sufficient to penetrate his gilded armor and shatter every protective talisman he possessed.


    Desperately, he turned and caught it in his right hand.


    The ashen limb disintegrated and reformed in an instant, preventing the devastating damage of Akiray''s perfectly executed twist of her spearhead that followed. Despite this creative invocation of the properties of his immortal body, he was still frozen in place for a critical moment, and the weapons of his foes were never idle.


    A second arrow claimed his other knee. The halberd crashed down, seeking to sever his grip from his war pick. Rather than lose everything below the left wrist he was forced to sacrifice the precious weapon, dropping it to the ground.


    Desperate, the Fuming Shade took a terrible step. He disintegrated entirely, his body crumbling to the incoherent core at the center of his ash and dust conception of existence. He sought to blow away completely, flakes upon the wind, but though he might hide his body, the shadows of his qi were not so easily concealed.


    ¡°Nine Spheres Arsenal Halberd Arts,¡± Neay''s halberd rose up behind him, colder than any ice he''d ever known. ¡°Fifth Form: Anticyclonic Storm!¡±


    A whirlwind formed of channeled qi leaped out from between the blades of the long weapon, stronger and colder than anything the atmosphere of Earth could ever form or sustain. A storm crafted of howling winds the size of entire worlds and pressures equal to that of ocean bottoms. It shredded the ash down to base particles, leaving nothing but drifting gas and ice fragments behind of the cultivator that had once been the Fuming Shade. Thirty-four centuries of life shattered before this one overwhelmingly ferocious phenomenon.


    In the same moment Akiray stabbed outward, blasting pure stellar qi into the storm, a white hot barb of cleansing force that scourged not the body, but the spirit. It ripped apart the soul of their enemy, erasing all echoes of qi and ensuring his final end. There would be no preservation in gemstones, no return through the capture of another cultivator''s body.


    A single cracking groan marked the last sign of one who had nearly reached the zenith of existence within the bounds of their world. An ignominious end indeed, but far from the first inflicted by the Twelve Sisters within their Killing Fields.


    Nor, the three grand elders hoped desperately as they extended their senses to battles waged by their sisters, the last to come this day.

 Chapter Thirty-One: The Star Beats

    Compared to the original twelve sisters, Eculay was a callow youth. She''d only recently reached the two thousand year milestone. As a cultivator in the first layer of the celestial ascendancy realm she was also weaker than any of her seniors. To make up for this difference she had long since adopted an approach of absolute perfection with regard to her techniques. She matched every aspect and motion to that of Orday''s original diagrams with uncompromising fidelity, an idealized emulation that magnified the impact beyond the traditional limits of her cultivation. Though such hyper-idealized methodology had limited application in the chaotic struggle of life-or-death conflict, it had certain utility when given the chance to strike with surprise.


    Black Howl had been drawn into battle against the youngest of Mother''s Gift''s immortals, the blind battle mistress Onimray. Wielding a thin sword in each hand and a dozen more suspended in the air upon lines of qi, the whirling storm of blades she possessed covered all approaches at once. This barrage, though no match for the fury of the lupine demonic cultivator, served well to delay and de-fang his assault while waiting to spring the trap.


    Though she''d turned many dozens of attacks from the horrid axes aside, paying a price in blood each time, the blind woman still stood strong when the gongs rang out and the tide turned.


    Ohlay, golden, glowing, and grand, wielded her thick sword with a combination of delicate grace and shocking power. As a fourth layer immortal she had the power to match Black Howl blow for blow. Forced to race between that formidable singular threat and the wall of floating blades built by one whose sight without eyes cut faster than any other, he chose to tear free by main force.


    This move, a bursting lunge with axes out to both sides that carried him past the sword-wielding ladies, generated an opening Eculay had anticipated and exploited fully.


    ¡°Nice Spheres Arsenal,¡± she spoke the words aloud, slow and carefully dictated. All to invoke supreme focus and to allow this blighted enemy to know the doom that descended upon him. ¡°Mace Arts: Seventh Form,¡± she raised her weapon, a narrow-hafted design topped by a many-color sphere formed of composite diamond, above her head upon a single extended arm. Her qi flowed out from her dantian and into the weapon according to a pattern that was ancient, simple, and utterly overwhelming. ¡°Unyielding Gravity.¡±


    The spherical head of the mace expanded ten thousand times and more, forged into a qi construct the size of a fortress. A single motion, flick of Eculay''s arm, and it dropped down onto the foe. Unstoppable, propelled forth by the primordial force of the cosmos that binds all things together, it was drawn unerringly into Black Howl through crushing, cosmic, acceleration.


    Tiny beneath that blow, the wolfskin-cloaked form of the demonic cultivator vanished completely under the strike.


    Unable to dodge, Black Howl raised his clawed hand and tried to simply catch the blow as it came. A pointless effort. The energy within could smash a mountain flat. It pressed down his hands, collapsed across his shoulders, and slammed his body to the earth. A vast crater, large enough to swallow up an entire pavilion, radiated out beneath his crumpled body. Stones and dirt thrown out from the contact slammed into the Starwall hard enough to leave them embedded in the construct, bound to the masonry by molten mortar.


    Though this represented the strongest attack available within the mace arts, and possessed almost immeasurable destructive power, it did not suffice to slay Black Howl. Injured, blood pooling beneath him, the wolf-like monster howled in pain and sought to stand. No single attack by one in the first layer, no matter how idealized, could slay one in the fourth layer outright. It was simply impossible to channel such a vast quantity of qi at once.


    So Eculay repeated the process. A second, and finally a third, sphere of destruction crashed down, slamming the demonic cultivator further until he was tens of meters buried beneath the earth. All attempts at flight were blocked by flashing swords that pinned his arms in a defensive crouch. Curled up and forced to endure, he could not possibly evade.


    Three strikes. They took every fragment of control Eculay possessed, and drained her qi down to nothing. When the third blow fell she dropped prone, unable to even grip her mace and barely clinging to consciousness. Qi depletion surged through her body, damage that would take months to properly restore.


    But Eculay was among her sisters. If she collapsed it meant nothing. She was cared for, protected.


    Black Howl could not say the same.


    By the time Ohlay''s sword slashed apart the cowl-shaped remnant soul of the demonic cultivator as he tried to escape the destruction of his body by crawling away through the shadows, the Killing Fields had acquired a crater over one hundred and fifty meters in depth. The smeared remains of the once mighty mercenary, pulped and mashed beyond all recognition, dissipated away into the muck as the plague reclaimed its own.


    A surge of triumph ran through Itinay as the second demonic cultivator''s qi vanished from her senses, a polluted drop of oil burned free of the world. The trap, her plan, had succeeded. The enemy attack, powered by three extremely dangerous foes, had been wholly thwarted. Loses to this point were minimal.


    She herself stood before the gateway, the only point of exit from their land, ready to complete the sweep. The weapon she had devised had won the day, and its utility had barely begun to be tapped.


    Everything was glorious, save for one small, slight deviation from expectations. A problem that now screamed straight toward her.


    The first two demonic cultivators had conformed perfectly to expectations. Faced with a trap, they had sought to fight their way out, abandoning all allies to their fate. This allowed them to be surrounded, pinned, and destroyed in a manner that minimized risk to the sisters through proper leverage of their numeric superiority.


    The third broke from this trend. She had advanced slowly, engaged from a distance, and fled instantly when the trap was sprung. The totality of her considerable cultivation and an unexpectedly impressive movement technique were dedicated to her escape. None of the other sisters expected a demonic cultivator to flee with such open cowardice.


    How could they discard the pride and predatory nature that had brought them this far so easily? Demonic cultivators were singularly dedicated to consumption, to predation, to the seizure of the strength of others. They had aggressive, hungry daos that did not easily turn away from conflict. With victory their only path to advancement, the avoidance of battle was always their last choice.


    Except this one was somehow the exception.


    It had fallen to Itinay to find out what that meant. She had taken the failsafe position for herself, a bargain struck as part of the implementation of her plan. The deployment had been meant to remove her from any glory to be gained, a price she was fully willing to pay. A duel had not been part of her plan for this day.


    Nevertheless, the sword in her hand, thin and glowing with the same soft blue shade as her skin, stood ready to face this enemy. Not eager, never that when faced with an opponent two layers above her own cultivation, but steadfast. Ice did not yield the pond swiftly in the coming of spring. Nor did the soft blue star surrender readily to the inevitable dark end.


    Her enemy sliced her way across the terrain of the Killing Fields at impressive velocity. Each step traced out an erratic, razor-edged path of shifting angles structured along a complex and hidden pattern. She moved as an arcflash, sparking from one point to the next. The expenditure of her qi in this manner left behind a distinctive scent of ozone, flaring hard as she pushed to the utmost in her retreat.


    The golden blade in her hand carved through all obstacles, whether they be boulders, fences, or her allied demons.


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    Upon approach, Itinay channeled a line of icy stellar qi down her blade and launched a sharp thrust of blazing white light out before her opponent''s path.


    The demonic cultivator blocked it with trivial effort and surged forward with heavy, molten qi burning free of her every pore. This rampaging, liquid heat sought to cut loose the sister''s life, but elder minds worked swiftly and even the tiny pause purchased as the bronze-clad demonic cultivator caught her momentum and shifted into charging battle stance provided ample time to take the measure of this inexplicable enemy.


    Armored and with weapon bare, the woman kept the rest of her existence utterly concealed. She? ? wore wraps layered over her hands, and a thick veil covered her face where her helmet did not serve to opaque all. Every scrap of skin was coated in at least two, and often more, layers of textile. Her eyes, darkly grayish and lightly metallic, were shaded by the overhang of her helmet. A bizarre affectation, especially from a cultivator in the celestial ascendancy realm whose body was their dao made manifest.


    Soul Forging required melding body, mind, and soul into a singular immortal entity ready to challenge the boundaries of reality itself. This always resulted in an idealized version of the self, manifest through individualized paths. Though the plague twisted demonic cultivators such that their selves were unerringly aligned towards destructive and consumptive paths that spurred revulsion, the ones who made the choice to follow that abominable course usually reveled in this.


    Black Howl, feral, wolf-like, and cruel, had loved walking the world as a personification of a deadly predator. The Fuming Shade, a being Itinay knew from the long-ago days of the Demon War, was somewhat more subtle, but his death mask visage only served to emphasize the crumbling, ashen, countenance whose facelessness disturbed even many of his own kind.


    This woman chose to hide herself instead. Doubly puzzling given how pointless the gesture ultimately was. Qi signatures were unique to every cultivator. Only a rise in realm could alter them, and that marginally at most. A thousand years from now, if Itinay ever met this woman again, she would be able to recognize her perfectly, sight unseen. The choice to deny this truth through dress was absolutely fascinating, especially to one with a weaver''s heart. A puzzle of such profound import that it almost distracted her from the golden blade that sought, with silent ferocity, to remove her head from her shoulders.


    Holding nothing back, the demonic cultivator attacked with cold, unrelenting fury. The blade''s edge descended in one attack after another, fast and heavy at once. Blow after blow drove out toward her opponent without pause. A simple, but hideously efficient, effort to rend the enemy asunder.


    Itinay flowed away from those blows, constantly shifting, sidestepping, and scrambling. She held back her sword, sustained the threat of devastating riposte as a brake upon the onslaught. A tried and true measure honed in the fires of the demon war, where she''d survived those more than her match many times. Few were more experienced in drawing out an imbalanced fight in order to delay defeat from an unbeatable opponent.


    Many would call this cowardly. Itinay did not care. She valued survival above such petty needs. Alive, she would endure beyond any criticisms of how she chose to fight. A desperate, pointless, effort to strike beyond her capacity would achieve nothing but her own swift death.


    Delay, and she could endure, preventing the escape of this shifty and cunning foe.


    Her body paid the price for this tortoise-like engagement method. Shuffling avoidance, last-second shifts, deflection to armor and weak edge alignment; these methods might spare her a fatal wound, but they did not allow her to remain unscathed.


    Blood leaked from a dozen cuts. Bruises multiplied from hard blows lashed across her armor. Vision blurred following a strike to the temple by sharpened knuckles. Dizziness threatened to rip her defense apart, even as compounding pain rendered the grip on her blade progressively looser and looser.


    She measured survival one second at a time. Desperate block after lurching parry, everything given just to stay upright, to keep the shining blade from her vitals. Qi roared through her veins, channeled to the point of bursting just to keep her alive and in front of her opponent. Never stop, never retreat, those were not options. A million lives, perhaps all that remained of humanity, depended upon her holding for just a few critical seconds.


    Against this devastating enemy even a minute of delay was impossible. To survive for even half that would demand everything she possessed. The veiled foe spared no mercy, played no games, did not even announce her own name. To that masked demon the sister was not even a person, just one more obstacle to remove in the pursuit of her own survival.


    It was a sentiment Itinay would have admired, if it had not been in service of the greatest depravity in all of history.


    Itinay could not have survived for one minute. Even thirty seconds had a greater than even chance of bringing about her end. Each tick of the time, each heartbeat, was purchased in blood and agony, the each harder than the last.


    Only twenty-two were necessary.


    Nothing is faster than light. At the fullest expression of the Stellar Flash Steps the limitations on speed came not from the technique itself, but the need to avoid setting the body aflame by blasting through the air at such incredible velocities. The stronger the shroud of qi that could cloak the corporeal form, the faster any distance might be crossed.


    At the zenith of strength beneath the heavens, that was truly a mind-bending rate indeed.


    Itinay exchanged hundreds of blows over twenty-two seconds, but in that seemingly minute, impossibly compressed interval, light crossed the distance between the gateway and the Starwall tens of thousands of times over. More than enough to carry a single immortal across without ripping the fabric of Mother''s Gift apart from the shockwave.


    Iay descended from the west as a white-edged bolt of absolute power. Shockwaves blasted apart the Killing Fields in her wake. Unable to keep pace, they roared across the landscape tearing apart grass and shattering the closest ghouls simply through the force of her passage.


    ¡°Impossible,¡± the demonic cultivator spoke the first words from beneath her veil since the beginning of the battle. Absolute astonishment, a palpable disbelief, filled every syllable. ¡°It can''t be! No one has that strength!¡±


    The look granted in response spoke the bare truth, that only a demon would be so foolish as to deny the evidence of their qi, without any need for words. The white-haired immortal raised her arms, and a pair of razor sharp chakrams, one black and one white, appeared in her hands. ¡°If your kind is granted the next life,¡± the words that came from the throat of one who rarely spoke were soft, calm, and devoid of malice. ¡°Reflect upon this.¡±


    The metallic rings began to spin. ¡°Scoria Scorn, this life ends this day.¡± How Iay knew the demonic cultivator¡¯s identity was never said, but the revelation shook the veiled woman to her core, a spoken blow far greater than any Itinay had landed with her sword.


    Sheer panic seized the armored woman. She bolted, accelerating to full speed as she made a beeline for the gateway and egress from Mother''s Gift. All defenses were abandoned, sacrificed to pure motile effort.


    Despite her injuries and exhaustion, Itinay was an immortal too, and she retained the presence of mind to strike. Her blue sword thrust forward, all her remaining strength placed behind the formidable burst.


    Scoria Scorn did not defend, did not pause her rush. She simply bent her body and threw her right arm in front of the blow.


    Sapphire-shaded edge contacted the bronze plating, sliced through, and took bones, tendons, and vessels as well, piercing the shoulder clean. The limb tore to pieces, falling free and leaving naught but ruin above the elbow. Gray-brown blood oozed out, coating all directions.


    A crippling wound, one that could well slay even an immortal if left untreated, but by accepting this devastating blow and its horrific consequences, Scoria Scorn successfully passed beyond Itinay''s reach in the race to escape.


    Not swift enough.


    Iay''s arms snapped forward. The chakrams flew through the air, spiraling around each other in flight. Afterimages formed as they passed, arrayed into a cylindrical lens many meters in length lodged in midair. Power crackled across the edges of each shimmering ring. An immense mass of qi concentrated, channeled, woven, and, at the perfect moment when all things reached alignment, unleashed.


    ¡°Nine Spheres Arsenal Chakram Arts; Seventh Form: Pulsar.¡±


    A blast of pure qi, invisible to the unaided eye, detonated down the spiral lens. The full, unbridled energy of a star, directed into a perfectly oriented beam for a single fragmentation fraction of time, crossed the gap to slam straight into Scoria Scorn''s chest.


    Unleashed at the speed of light, the demonic cultivator was not even aware the attack had begun when it hit.


    Armor disintegrated. Over two dozen protective talismans evaporated. The flesh beneath simply fell apart. All bonds holding its constituent atoms together were utterly overwhelmed and shattered. A single strike, and she simply ceased to exist.


    In the aftermath the air ignited in a perfect firestorm. The backlash of displacement hurled Itinay to the ground hard enough to fracture six bones and burn the skin off every exposed surface on her left side. Overwhelmed entirely, she briefly lost consciousness for the first time in a millennium.


    When she awoke, no more than a few seconds later, Iay had stuffed three healing pills down her throat. Their soft warmth filled her body, repairing damage and bringing out the familiar itch of regeneration. Nerves calmed and her vision gradually returned to its proper inhuman acuity. ¡°Thank you, sister.¡±


    Quietly, she exulted. Victory. Achieved in full! Her design, her moment of triumph.


    Glory sustained for a single sheltered breath, until her white-eyed elder sister''s expression proclaimed a new and terrible truth.


    The remnant soul of Scoria Scorn had escaped destruction.


    Itinay rolled over, leaned on her still good side, and vomited.

 Chapter Thirty-One: Aftermath

    Elimination of the remaining demon horde, still hundreds of thousands strong, took the rest of the night and the entirety of the next day. Much of this work was conducted by the sect''s many elders, who systematically exterminated the giants and ogres, while the grand elders stood upon the walls and kept them clear to minimize disciple and initiate losses. Once the more powerful demons were eliminated, a sector by sector purge of all surviving ghouls was conducted using the sect''s full force.


    It was only when the next morning came at last that a fully tally could be made. Casualties were, as Itinay had hoped, almost miraculously light. That did not mean they were zero.


    One hundred and three cultivators of the Celestial Origin Sect fell against the demon horde of the Fuming Shade. Most were initiates in the body refining realm, slain by rocks thrown by giants or the shockwaves unleashed by the battles of immortals. An equal number, including many vitality annealing realm initiates and many disciples, had suffered severe injuries that would require months of convalescence.


    The heart of engagement, which unleashed Black Howl''s sonic assaults and the Fuming Shade¡¯s clouds of toxic, burning ash upon the Starwall, had taken no more than a few short minutes. These attacks claimed one in ten of all the sects members in that brief interval of carnage.


    Losses had been especially severe among the sect''s newest members, who lacked any experience of battle. Unable to properly secure their bodies beneath defensive protections to block such immense blows and the poisons and toxins they left behind, they were swept away by the devastation at a ruinous rate. A day ago Qing Liao''s recruit clash had provided the sect with eighteen members. Now it was nine.


    Mourning seized many throughout the initiate sections of the twelve pavilions. Wailing filled the air as those stricken reckoned with the cruelty of the cultivator''s fate for the first time. Lives changed in those hours, and terrible oaths were sworn. The demons made enemies of the survivors at great speed.


    Others took solace in labor. Alchemists churned out medicinal pills to aid the wounded and speed recovery. Armorers and blacksmiths worked long hours to repair and replace damaged implements. Carpenters churned out arrows by the tens of thousands to fill the void now occupying the sect''s supply. Others worked to repair the devastated walls, field fortifications, and embedded formation protections.


    All were grateful that the plague reclaimed its own. Those who had fallen beyond the walls were recovered swiftly and carefully. The demons left behind only bloodstains.


    Sorrow warred with triumph among the sect''s combat veterans. Those who studied history knew this blow had fallen lightly. Casualties were barely a third of the average major attack, and only a single elder had fallen. Significant achievements had similarly been registered.


    The Fuming Shade was slain. That name surfaced many times in the Annals of the Demon War, a text all cultivators studied. A potent warlord who had laid waste to whole sects and left nothing but wastelands in the wake of his ashen tide, he had even once faced Grand Elder Iaray in battle. Having risen two whole layers since the war ended, he was counted one of the most powerful old monsters still remaining in the enemy''s ranks.


    Eight grand elders, gathered in their quiet room, knew all of this. They had tabulated it immediately, long before the last ghoul fell. Many thoughts hung over them, and they varied just as they did among their juniors.


    Several bore physical reminders. Akiray had burn marks dabbed across most of her arms and legs, and she coughed regularly. Eculay had suffered from severe qi depletion and would be unable to so much as stand for over a month. Itinay, feeling the assessing gaze of her sisters, had taken the worst of it. Healing pills repaired the most grievous cuts and stabs, but this drew immensely upon her reserves. Pain accompanied her every move, and she could only lurch about slowly. It would take weeks of intense cultivation to fully erase the marks of the golden blade, and months to reach fighting strength again. Even attending the meeting relied upon alchemical extracts to dull the pain and stabilize her rattled senses.


    Recognizing that her damaged state projected weakness, she avoided intense participation in the discussions that followed. Though her regrets were mountainous, there was nothing to be done about them, not immediately. This meeting was not, truly, necessary, but they were a council. Deliberation offered solace, steadiness.


    ¡°Of the three demonic cultivators, two were destroyed utterly. I have studied the qi flowing through the base of Mother''s Gift and confirmed this,¡± Neay asserted herself by taking control of the conversation from the outset. ¡°The third, a female cultivator in the fourth layer the celestial ascension realm named Scoria Scorn, suffered physical death, but was able to thrust her remnant soul beyond the gateway and into the Ruined Wastes.


    No one said anything. All had learned this truth while they were busy slaughtering demons. The ability of a demonic cultivator to manage such a feat was impressive and rare, but far from unknown.


    Iay, however, revealed additional permutations. She had pursued the remnant, and though even the most powerful concealment talismans allowed her to move beyond the gateway for now more than a few seconds that ought to have been enough. Had the soul fled overland a swift attack would have ended the threat forever.


    Instead, Scoria Scorn fled downward, bodiless, following strange paths through stone and metal to places deep below the earth that not even Iay could attack freely. The white eyes displayed intense curiosity, triggered by this strange action. Novelty was very rare indeed to one who''d lived so long and seen so much.


    ¡°Reckless,¡± Neay noted, her green-tinged expression grim. ¡°Demon souls usually don''t last, the plague subsumes them,¡± she continued to repeat what they all knew. Remnants had escaped before. They never lasted long enough to matter.


    ¡°Maybe,¡± Uzay''s energetic presence inserted alongside a shake of her fiery hair. ¡°But the deep stone spaces are strange, and filled with deadly forces. The qi fluctuations there are able to tear a remnant soul apart just as the stellar flares will one that tries to fly away to space.¡±


    Itinay had never attempted to travel beneath the mountains or below the sea, but her sisters had. She could not confirm those words, but she trusted in their assessment. It was a hopeful possibility to consider. She certainly knew the truth of the latter, as they all did, intimately. Their mother had bathed them all in the stellar winds, ages ago.


    ¡°Is it possible that a suitable host exists? Somewhere in the depths?¡± Eculay interjected from where she lay wrapped about her orb, fingers tapping erratically as she struggled to control her depleted form. That sphere had itself been drawn up from far down below, taken out of a crack of incredible depth. ¡°That is a risk, if so, but minor. A stored body left in such a place is unlikely to ever be found, not before isolation drives the remnant insane.¡±


    Seven heads nodded at this. Immortals they might be, with minds tuned to endure the lengthy isolation of closed door cultivation, but this only meant they understood all the more fully the true terror of confronting the infinity of the dao alone and unaided. No one could endure that state forever. All who had tried, and there had been many who attempted to force ascension by staring at the sun for too long, broke their minds. The journey to the heavens could not be made in a single step.


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    Itinay rather hoped this was the ending the remnant faced. It seemed appropriate for one who so readily abandoned her allies.


    ¡°An artifact might bring about the same result,¡± Neay returned to her summary. None objected to this measured grandstanding. Someone had to guide the conversation. Their sister''s willingness to take the reins was welcome, not regretted. A settled role all had accepted long ago. ¡°Most suitable receptacles are found in the lost vaults of the great sects or the tombs of ancient monarchs. No one has touched them for millennia. Lying in the dark within a crown or scepter is likely to bring about the same result.¡±


    Considering this, Itinay felt somewhat relieved. She had known it, but it was beneficial to hear the words from someone else. The unsaid piece aided considerably in restoring her to equilibrium. A remnant soul could not pass through the gateway to a hidden land unhoused. All contained ritual protections embedded in their very structure that barred access to bodiless spirits. The ancient records revealed that such protections had been invoked from the first for that very purpose, a defense necessary in a time when powerful ghosts were a persistent problem.


    Few indeed were the receptacles capable of securing the soul of an immortal out in the Ruined Wastes. Most had long since been looted and turned to martial purpose anchoring formations and rituals. Those that remained were lost beyond all knowledge. Should Scoria Scorn chance upon one such gemstone she might well survive, but it would be only to face a slow, lingering expiration. The chances of ever being discovered were remote.


    But it was not zero, and they all knew that as well. It was, after all, the impetus behind this rushed assembly.


    Ohlay, speaking for the first time, drew them back to that purpose. ¡°Unlikely as her survival may be, we must consider our options in the event she does emerge.¡±


    ¡°Do any even exist?¡± Uzay''s rapid objection burst with her furious energy. ¡°She tells Bloody Roam, thirty or more of the enemy descend upon us and hope dies. We can''t change that.¡±


    ¡°That presumes she can find her way back,¡± Neay cautioned. This time she emphasized a detail the others had disregarded. ¡°She went into the ground. It is possible that she emerges on the other side of the world. Land changes over time. As the centuries pass and the rivers drift, will she find us easily?''


    ¡°She might, but only if she tries,¡± Akiray spoke for the first time. Her voice was weakened by injury, but the vibrant rose core stood untouched. ¡°Scoria Scorn, cautious to the point of cowardice, betrayer of a greater master. Does she have the courage to tell Bloody Roam, knowing he''ll kill her for her failure? He''ll take that much, in the Fuming Shade''s name, he has to. A fourth layer can''t outlive a sixth. She ran, and ran fast. Would she really choose vengeance at such cost?¡±


    Six sets of eyes turned to Itinay, a motion she felt without needing to look up. The essential thoughts, the cold calculation, churned through her consciousness as she reasoned out from the initial prompt. Akiray''s insight, her assessment of the demonic cultivator, she agreed with entirely. All twelve of the initial sisterhood had witnessed Bloody Roam at least once. He was a deeply strange being, contradictory and confounding, but he utterly lacked mercy and had no acceptance for failure. The one who brought him such news would indeed face obliteration, if only because the other demonic cultivators would believe they deserved it.


    Scoria Scorn had sacrificed her arm in order to escape. She had taken the strike, a wound that must have been absolute agony to endure, without the least hesitation. That moment, that decision, that was the key. Itinay did not understand the strange, masked, demonic cultivator, how could anyone understand those who had chosen disease over humanity, but she found clarity in reflecting upon that move.


    Survival. The veiled foe elevated that above all, regardless of the costs. A bizarre priority for a demonic cultivator, but one not in opposition to their plague''s central nature. ¡°She would never choose death, ever.¡± Solemn words, and brief, but filled with conviction. ¡°And she will never reveal our position, use that bargaining chip, unless she feels secure, restored to an immortal body at the least.¡±


    Slow silence enclosed the room as this declaration filtered through the thoughts of the eight immortals. Itinay, reflection upon it, felt only growing certainty in her deduction. Such a self-centered and simultaneously cautious dao would permit nothing less. Revenge might not even matter. Scoria Scorn would seek the destruction of the Celestial Origin Sect because it represented a threat to her, as a sworn foe of all demonic cultivators. She might not consider the personal aspect important at all.


    ¡°Recovering a body is not impossible, but many times less likely than simple survival,¡± Neay solidly confirmed what they all knew. It was something they had all studied recently, having reviewed all existing scholarship prior to placing Sayaana on the brow of Qing Liao. A remnant soul could seize the body of one bound to them, if the gulf between their cultivation was wide enough, but it required the flesh be compatible with both their self-image and their dao.


    A demonic cultivator, with their dao bound to the plague, would only be able to subsume one of their own kind. Attempts to do otherwise had been tried, and failed, many times during the war.


    Given that low realm demonic cultivators were extinct, this made any possible restoration very unlikely indeed.


    ¡°Even if that should occur,¡± Neay continued, growing in confidence. ¡°It would take many centuries for her cultivation to recover to the point at which she is once again a threat, if there are even sufficient targets at all.¡±


    It was indeed, Itinay knew, highly improbable. Demonic cultivators required the qi of living humans to grow in power, and there were precious few left that any without the strength of an immortal could possibly seize. Without that, time would do the work they all desired. Scoria Scorn might well restore herself to flesh only to perish of old age.


    An ironic fate for an immortal, but a perfectly possible one.


    ¡°Then, do we intend to simply ignore this?¡± Eculay advanced the critical question.


    It was the default option. All of them calculated out the probabilities and while they came up with eight different numbers, they were universally tiny. Against this they knew any sort of action, any attempt to exert influence in the Ruined Wastes, carried significant risks, potentially far worse. Despite this, such a blithe approach was not the natural inclination of meddling immortals.


    Everyone looked to Iay, but their eldest sister, as usual, said nothing.


    Itinay sensed, in this lack of direction, a moment she had suspected might come had finally arrived. ¡°One thing has changed. We now have an agent able to act beyond this land''s boundaries at negligible risk. I propose fostering and using this asset to remove any remaining risk of Scoria Scorn.¡±


    ¡°He is a long ways from ready, however laudable his performance on his assigned task during this incursion,¡± Ohlay cautioned with great swiftness.


    It was not really an objection. They all knew that much. ¡°We have centuries, at least.¡± Itinay conceded deftly. ¡°But I believe this path suffices to secure against future risks.¡±


    To her surprise, Neay, otherwise deeply supportive of Qing Liao, shook her head firmly. ¡°Until he surpasses the first tribulation, that young man is nothing more than a tool. He is not a proper resource of the sect.¡±


    Though Itinay did not agree with this statement, she acknowledge that an initiate was too weak to achieve much. As a disciple he would be capable. She could wait until then to push for the proper utilize of the young man his peculiar gifts. It would be decades at least, perhaps a century or two. The shape of the council would be different then. She found no need to press the issue at all. Having already laid the path out, she could wait to convince the others to walk it. ¡°You have other measures in mind?¡± she questioned instead.


    The answer, in a convenient accommodation of her desires, moved away from the question of Qing Liao entirely. ¡°Three demonic cultivators, but only a half million demons,¡± her sister pivoted easily. ¡°The lowest ratio so far, and following long-recognized trends. I believe the old predictions are correct, and time has finally turned to our advantage, the enemy''s numbers have begun to fall precipitously. This victory, additionally, with its low casualties, means the sect will face the next attack with great numbers than ever. I believe that we can, and should, reorient and restructure the defensive arrays accordingly.¡±


    It was a good suggestion, and one that could make real differences upon the margins. Itinay was only too happy to have the discussion drift to such spaces. She let her sisters debate resource allocation, prioritization, and targeting. Her belief in the ability of such small tweaks to effect change eroded down to nothing long ago.


    Instead, she considered very carefully the young man whose actions had won them this great, if flawed, victory. He remained an incompletely solved puzzle. No certainty existed as to whether or not he would offer all she hoped for, all that was necessary. It worried her, those doubts, especially at the moment.


    Itinay''s initial impression regarding the escape of Scoria Scorn had been clear; a great disaster upon them. The dao rarely offered such clear omens, and she had learned to trust them in her long life. The only one who could avert that agent, in lands far beyond the boundaries of Mother''s Gift, was Qing Liao.


    She could only trust in the youth, a gamble she despised.

 Chapter Thirty-Two: Convalescence

    Su Yi''s courtyard adjacent to the formation pavilion was, to Qing Liao''s surprise, not all that much larger than his own. It resembled, in many ways, the training ground he''d occupied during recruit training. Half garden and half practice yard, with an open hall in-between. Paired halls on the north and south side of the gardens housing for the elderly couple who worked as her servants and storage for the truly immense rack of formation flags used by the disciple in her artistry.


    There were no further adornments. Su Yi slept and cultivated on a small couch in the open air of her hall, protected from the elements by nothing more than curtains. Heat or cold were broadly meaningless to one of her level of cultivation.


    The garden featured a fairly ordinary lily pond and carefully arranged climbing vines on a series of trellises, all oriented and grown according to a complex mathematical pattern that mirrored some foundational principle of formation arts in the green of vegetation. By contrast, the training ground featured a wide variety of smashed art pieces, ranging from baskets to paintings to tapestries to vases, all bearing the telltale marks of blows formed from pure qi discharge.


    Liao''s host clearly anticipated his puzzlement, for her first words upon drawing back the curtains of her couch addressed the unspoken question. ¡°Gifts from admirers.¡± Her doll-like face maintained a perfectly stern expression during this declaration.


    ¡°Ah, um, ah,¡± Liao stammered. He tried to look anywhere but at that pale face, currently positively ghostly after losing a tremendous amount of blood as a result of taking an ogre''s horn to the gut during the thickest fighting. Though his ignorance of intimate affairs was no longer the totality it had been prior to joining the sect ¨C he''d given into teenage desires and taken his unreasonably pretty maid to bed some months ago ¨C but the concept of flirtation and seduction remained more a matter of fantasy than reality.


    Entirely too many of those fantasies featured the woman now reclining on her side before him in a disturbingly shear, single-layer robe.


    Isolated though he was from sect matters, he knew that this fascination was far from uncommon. Out of the nine hundred initiates and disciples in the sect prior to the demon horde''s attack, there had been six woman labeled as once-in-a-century beauties. Su Yi did not make that list, but the unscrupulous rumor-mongering of the back-channels run by the mortal servants suggested she was right on the edge, excluded with far less than unanimity.


    Cultivators were far from immune for such obsessions. One of the beauties, a disciple in the thought weaving realm, had been immolated by the burning attacks of the Fuming Shade. Her portrait now featured prominently wherever mourners assembled, male and female alike.


    ¡°Sit,¡± Su Yi patted a space on the couch beside her form before Liao could properly find his voice. She leaned back lightly on a generous pile of cushions, wincing only slightly at the motion. ¡°Don''t worry, I''m not going to use you for open hand practice, of any kind,¡± the final appended phrase, spoken low and sultry, served both as deliberate teasing and clear signal that it was to go no further. The shift of pale and elevated qi told him to bury any carnal ideas.


    Sayaana laughed lightly, behind the eyes, a rare emotional indulgence on the part of the remnant soul.


    ¡°Thank you for the invitation.¡± Lacking any way to regain equilibrium when caught between the two women, for all that one was inside his head, formality and protocol offered the only refuge Liao could find amid sudden desperation.


    With an exaggerated extra lean, Su Yi sighed from amid her piled downy assemblage. ¡°It was obligatory,¡± she murmured. Eyes rose to carefully examine the ceiling. ¡°It seems I am to be your link to the rest of the sect,¡± the dark orbs suddenly dropped down and met his gaze, hard as black diamonds. ¡°The only one you''re going to get.¡±


    ¡°I warned you,¡± Sayaana''s voice filled his thoughts even as Liao drove both fists into the fabric upholstery of the couch. The sentence she''d anticipated had been passed.


    It was something he''d expected. Four days in the dark, surrounded by demon qi, alone save for the company of a foreign immortal''s ghost, had made that clear. Others fought on the walls, and while they suffered ¨C the bandages on Su Yi''s torso made that abundantly clear ¨C they were united. He, placed elsewhere, apart, was not, would never be. The invisible lost all value when revealed.


    ¡°Thank your for you clarity,¡± he told the disciple. It took a great deal of control to look away, to bury the feelings that surged through him. They were unworthy, those thoughts, and Su Yi was not one deserving of such dark recriminations. She had done nothing but fight. The choices had been made by others, those who did not, could not, care for his feelings.


    Nor should they. He was an ant before the immortals. What use had they for his feelings?


    ¡°It is the elders'' plan,¡± Su Yi spoke from beside him. Her sculpted voice sounded far away. ¡°But it is not wrong.¡± She raised a perfectly manicured fingernail up and pointed toward the Starwall where its bulk rose up and laid shadows upon them. ¡°The last time a horde came, one with only three hundred thousand demons and a single demonic cultivator weaker than any of the three we just faced, there were three hundred and six deaths. You,¡± she looked over at him, dark eyes displaying something Liao could not face, forced him to turn away. ¡°Your power, it saved hundreds of lives, and it will make the sect stronger than it has ever been. You already have a place in the history of the Celestial Origin Sect. Few in the body refining realm could say the same. Pulling you apart from everyone else, when placed on the scales, it cannot even make the rest twitch.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± of course he did. How many times had Sayaana shouted at him to think of those same precious lives, the comrades and innocents on the wall, while he sat in the dark and red ruin assaulted his very soul from all sides. The memory of those days, locked in seamless horror, slipped away swiftly, a bad nightmare banished by the returning brightness, but it would never fully fade.


    Certainly not the three spikes of demonic qi that passed overhead. Three true monsters: unrelenting predation, ashen ruin, and discarded disdain. Nexus negativity, the antithesis of everything he''d ever loved and cherished. Three unseen impressions that he''d be able to recall perfectly all the rest of his days.


    Opposition to such monsters had already crystallized in his dao, though the form such resistance would take remained undefined.


    ¡°I know,¡± he repeated. ¡°But it''s still not easy.¡± The woman at his side was thirty times his age. He was going to spend centuries isolated, an existence known to a bare handful; all of whom, save for this woman, were beautiful and terrible grand elders, formulations of a world, a dao, he could not understand until the time came to stand among them. Even to a fifteen year old it was obvious. The sect, the structure of the halls and pavilions, it was designed to prevent this sort of thing, but the sect was not for him.


    ¡°True,¡± Su Yi sighed again. She laid back down, gingerly moving cushions about to mitigate her pain. ¡°Gains, losses, these things aren''t fair. Your path has been severed from mine, from the rest of the sect, from this whole land, and all because of an accident of birth. But,¡± she looked up at him and smiled. ¡°I happen to know that it was the same accident of birth that opened that path in the first place. You might not have wanted it, but it is here. Make the best of it.¡±


    Stolen story; please report.


    ¡°To do that, I need to know what I want,¡± Liao sputtered. ¡°All I know is that I can''t wait out a battle by sitting in a box again.¡± It might have been valuable. It might even have saved hundreds of lives, but it had been humiliating and horrible all at once. A living alarm, nothing more, that was what Itinay had made of him. A tool more than a person, a weapon in the hands of the elders.


    He couldn''t keep doing it.


    ¡°You are fifteen,¡± Su Yi chuckled lightly, a sound like rose petals crumpling. ¡°And in the second layer of the body refining realm. You don''t know what you want.¡± She looked, for an instant, like an immortal cultivator then. That flick of presence, of enlightenment, silenced all objection.


    ¡°I don''t want to be in a box, kept like a monkey and trotted out to perform the demon-killing trick,¡± Liao almost growled. He would not be kept trapped. He refused to accept it. It was the reverse mirror. He was the trapper.


    ¡°Do you know,¡± Su Yi''s head moved in a slow circle. ¡°That with the right formation arrangements even a cultivator in the body refining realm can direct a flow of power as great as that summoned by one in the soul forging realm?¡± As Liao''s eyes widened in confusion she kept going unabated. ¡°It is never allowed, of course, because flooding qi into a soul?that is not ready, even if the formation insulates the dantian from backlash, fills the mind with hunger it cannot fulfill and cripples future advancement. During the Demon War every last cultivator who experienced such boosts of power turned to the plague.¡±


    She looked at him again. Deep sadness infected her eyes. ¡°Your body, it has done something like that to you, it provides a lever that extends your reach beyond your grasp. To overcome that, only the dao can provide. Become strong, regain balance, then no one will lock you in a box, you''ll be more valuable outside of it.¡±


    Simple though this statement was, it was not easily absorbed. Even as Liao struggled with it, he blinked in surprise as Sayaana materialized before his eyes standing beside the injured disciple. ¡°I like this one,¡± the green-tinged remnant smiled. ¡°But you should ask if that was coached.¡±


    Control failed Liao, hearing that. The accusation simply spilled out. ¡°Did Grand Elder Itinay tell you to say that?¡±


    ¡°She told you to ask that, didn''t she,¡± Su Yi smiled softly. ¡°The remnant soul?¡± She did not wait for confirmation, easily reading it off his face. ¡°How attentive. And yes, some of that was directed, but that does not make it untrue. For now, everyone is using you. It is not malevolence. It is simply the imbalance at work, the inevitable nature of interactions between mortal and immortal. Whether it is Itinay, the other sisters, or the remnant soul in that headdress, it''s all the same. You are not strong enough to be anything other than a tool to them.¡± The soft smile deepened. ¡°I am not strong enough, but the goal, it is enough that we all have to accept this. The demon plague uses everyone far worse, down to destruction.¡±


    ¡°The celestial ascension realm is a long ways off,¡± Liao countered. He did not, could not, disagree, not exactly, but the truth did little to mitigate the pain. He''d checked the records. Even if he advanced at record-matching speed, something he thought unlikely, it would still be centuries before he became an elder, and half a millennium at least before he could possibly reach for immortality.


    Far too long. Who would he even be by then?


    This time, Su Yi brightened, and a few of her teeth crept past curled lips. ¡°You don''t have to get that far, not to gain back control. You just need to get strong enough that they let you out past the gateway to travel the Ruined Wastes. Out there, nothing can touch you. Besides, it''s what they really want you for anyway.¡±


    ¡°Why would they want that?¡± He asked this question while trying to cover his complete failure to consider that scenario. Beyond the boundaries of Mother''s Gift he would not be free of all constraints, duty bound mortals, cultivators, and immortals alike no matter where they stood on the earth, but we would be free to act as he wished. To do things his way, to roam about as he willed.


    He did not know what he willed, not yet, but it hardly mattered. Nothing did, compared to the chance to see the world.


    ¡°There are countless old world treasures yet to be recovered,¡± Su Yi answered the question as asked. ¡°The demonic cultivators haven''t found them all.¡± The eminently material reason, easiest to understand, was given first. ¡°And they crave news. Detection arrays and short, furtive scouting missions report little. We don''t even know how many demonic cultivators remain.¡± This need, strategically obvious even to his limited knowledge, was comprehended with equal swiftness. ¡°Beyond that, you might even be able to prevent a horde from forming,¡±


    These last words did not come by way of Itinay, Liao realized. Some unnamed insight assigned them as Su Yi''s own. A deduction made by the disciple''s own enlightenment. ¡°The mathematics support it. Imagine how strong the sect would grow if our numbers were not periodically pruned. It might be possible, even, to significantly increase the mortal population of Mother''s Gift.¡±


    This final point was well chosen, for Qing Liao was not long removed from mortal life and still recalled its many burdens viscerally. The sect imposed rules regarding how much land could be cultivated, how many children families were permitted per village, and more. Such dictates played an outsize role in village life. If he could catalyze a change in such rules it would not benefit him, but his village, and any family he might retain down across the generations, they would feel that shift.


    ¡°How strong to I have to be to go outside?¡± All effort to hide his eagerness failed utterly.


    Grand Elder Itinay told me you need to be able to defeat a giant,¡± Su Yi revealed the criterion, one shockingly straightforward.


    ¡°Not a bad choice,¡± Sayaana agreed from her perch. ¡°I would have said the same.¡±


    As an awareness integration realm cultivator in the seventh layer Su Yi could defeat a giant with relative ease. In a single blow if she took it by surprise, more slowly if forced to bleed it dry. Her battle during the horde had been hindered by the presence of other demons, her full potential restrained. The requirement could be met with a greatly reduced cultivation, probably one only in the upper layers of the thought weaving realm. There were combat manuals describing such victorious encounters.


    Even that goal would take an entire mortal lifetime to reach. Though immense, Liao still held onto hope in the face of it. He could imagine working for decades to reach the necessary heights, not centuries.


    ¡°Until then, I will try to be your friend,¡± the beautiful cultivator declared. She sounded very tired, but kind. ¡°Combined with the woman in that gemstone on your head, that should give you two. That ought to be enough. Plenty have sought the dao with less.¡±


    Liao nodded. He had seen that, even only months into his tenure as a cultivator. Socialization within the sect was limited. Many cultivators spent more idle time at meals or after bathing speaking to their mortal servants than any of their fellows. Even fellow pavilion members rarely associated outside of active projects. The roads and courtyards of the sect were remarkable for their silence.


    The road to the heavens was lonely indeed, more than even Elder Yu Yong, who''d tried to prepare the recruits, had been properly able to convey. ¡°Thank you,¡± he bowed down low in gratitude. He''d expected Su Yi to resent being assigned as his minder, an unfair burden acquired purely by chance. Her willingness to embrace this twist of fate happily astonished him instead.


    The warm residue it left behind would be something he clung far into the future.


    Daring to hope he might find a way to pay back that regard somehow, Liao offered up a small secret, only that violated the spirit of Itinay''s orders. ¡°Maybe I can give you an extra friend in return. I think Sayaana is fond of you. You cannot speak to her, but you could send messages.¡±


    ¡°Amusing,¡± Su Yi chuckled again. ¡°It might be nice, but you would have to see any message I sent, and I do not let young men read my private correspondence.¡± She lightly punched one of her cushions, amused but at once deadly serious.


    ¡°If there is a book in your sect''s library describing the Chulmyk language, she can write to me in that,¡± Sayaana looked at Su Yi as she spoke. Her green, fey, face held an openly wistful expression that spoke to frightful vulnerability on the visage of an immortal. ¡°They are all gone now, so I have no reason to teach it to you.¡± She had begun to teach Liao the language of her own people, Sakanai. But like most immortals, had once known dozens.


    Liao relayed this to Su Yi and received a tight nod in return. This gesture earned him a simple but pivotal piece of advice, one connection balanced against another. ¡°It is almost the equinox. Go home and see your parents. There are no duties preventing this.¡±


    He would always be grateful that she''d told him to do that.

 Chapter Thirty-Three: Home and Away

    Qing Liao dressed and skinned the deer very slowly, with much deliberation and extremely careful knife movements. This would, he hoped, offer sufficient delay before coming back down the mountain that he could avoid questions about how he''d stalked, found, and killed the animal in mere minutes.


    Luck had played a part, admittedly. A stag, even a young buck such as this one, would rarely come so close to the village. But where other hunters had failed to notice the cagey and skittish animal''s presence, Liao''s enhanced senses had detected it practically from the moment he stepped within the boughs. His speed, the natural application of qi reinforcement into his legs even without the use of the Stellar Flash Steps, made catching up to the deer nearly effortless despite the dense canopy and thick undergrowth. The shot, taken from a range that a year ago he would have called impossible, was stunningly easy. It claimed the life of the target with equally trivial exertion.


    He''d thought using a borrowed bow, for he''d deliberately left all his sect gear save his robes behind, would offer an increased challenge.


    This ploy had failed completely. Everything was far too easy. Even the least, reflective use of his skills left all the other villagers impossibly far behind.


    The little village of Echuantun still felt familiar. The small cabin where his parents lived had lost none of the warmth that childhood memories supplied. Old labors in support of hunting and trapping filled his drained spirit back up just as they filled the stomach and strengthened the body. The truths of his previous life had not become falsehoods in his absence. That would never be the lesson of home.


    Instead, he was left with the swift recognition that the lessons he''d learned here had become like the clothes of a year past. They were now too small. This life, a little one tucked into the mountains, could no longer hold the being he''d become.


    Perfected dressing methods might buy time enough to fool his father, but never Sayaana. Certainly not after she''d taught him the skills her sect possessed for processing game, a rare space in which her native talents surpassed those available to the Celestial Origin Sect. ¡°It only takes one step,¡± she appeared seated on a fallen log, green form looking down appreciatively at the clean and cold carcass. Her body blended perfectly into the mountain foliage, a backdrop that suited her in a way the red and gray walls of the sect never could.


    She did not say the rest. There was no need. Doing so would simply have hurt him, and while she could be harsh, Liao had learned she was never cruel.


    Nor did he answer. He could feel the truth of it now. It was enough to still hold tight to the love he had for his parents. To continue to visit and be the dutiful son they deserved. That reason, among others, remained to keep him coming back to the village.


    Even if it was no longer, and could never be, his home.


    The sect''s isolation, a platform constructed away and above the city, made sense now. The strange and often hereditary families of gray-robed servants as well. Schooled from birth to recognize and adapt to the predilections of cultivators, they provided a perspective ordinary people could not.


    Instead of dwelling on the changes in the place where he''d been born, changes entirely within him, Liao looked to Sayaana. ¡°Was it like this where you were born?¡± he asked instead. The remnant soul rarely spoke on such matters, but in this moment he dared to try and push over that wall.


    ¡°It was,¡± she nodded lightly. Her remnant visage stood and put a hand on a nearby tree, one of the scattered conifers that grew more and more abundant the higher one proceeded towards the summits of the low mountains. ¡°In the Endless Needles Land everything was covered in trees like this,¡± she whispered. ¡°A vast forest of conifers broken up only by marshes and grasslands born of fire. The villages were small, scattered, and always on the edge of starvation no matter how hard the people labored. It was cold there, a chill you''ve never experienced and can''t understand.¡±


    She turned to him, emerald eyes stone. ¡°You think your little village is isolated, and by the standards of this farmer''s pen that''s true, but this is Mother''s Gift. Orday gave her daughters an easy home, with fertile soil, pleasant weather, and kind mountains. Your sect collects taxes to build its wall and forge its weapons, but otherwise ignores the mortals and they are happy. We took nothing but those capable of cultivation, for they had nothing else to give. Everything we had we provided for ourselves, and when the demons came they swept the forests and so many of the mortals died. Over and over, every time. The wild is not easy.¡±


    ¡°I would have like to have visited.¡± It was a kind thing to say, in the face of the open grief on the green face, but Liao found that he meant it.


    ¡°The forests, the grasslands, the swamps, those things are all still there, covering the north,¡± Sayaana''s answer surprised him. Grief, overwhelming for a moment, faded instantly, pushed away to some place beyond his sight. ¡°As I traveled, I saw many places. We should visit them all, when you are ready.¡±


    A tired refrain, that last, but coming home had helped him to understand it. The village, his place of birth, was too small for him now. He was still too small for the Ruined Wastes beyond the gate. ¡°Balance,¡± he understood now.


    ¡°This hidden land is larger than most, maybe any other,¡± Sayaana addressed his regrets at once. ¡°Rivers, lakes, fields, forests, mountains, and wide valleys. Great variety here, even given over to farms as it is. Master all of it; hunt, trap, skin, and cure. Every animal here, all the birds, all the fish, all the scaled and fur-bearing creatures. Make that the goal for now.¡±


    He had spent months working entirely with pigskin. His father had taught him the forms of dozens of other fur-bearing animals, nearly one hundred birds, and an equal number of fish. All that, just in one corner of the mountains. ¡°That could take centuries,¡± he whispered, struck by sudden awe.


    The pure smile those words unlocked on Sayaana''s face granted surpassing understanding.


    Of course the path could not, would not, be swift. The dao laid upon the earth encompassed ten thousand things and more. Surely that, vast though it was, represented a mere fragment of the greater celestial dao, to say nothing of the all-encompassing infinities beyond even that.


    His blade sped up. There was no point in wasting time.


    The rest of the day was devoted to trapping squirrels, mice, and voles. Such tiny creatures were usually ignored with regard to skins and furs, but a cultivator''s eyes and hands allowed Liao to work upon a small scale with precision mortal dexterity could not match. Liao, in studying such trembling forms, developed the first seeds of an idea. Very thin leather straps, tiny fringes of fur woven together into composite coverings and decorative badges that might, with research, even be used to anchor fist-sized formations. Pointless perhaps, for it had no pedigree or reference and did nothing that linen squares could not accomplish, but it opened an avenue research he could call his own, one without competition and an abundant untapped supply.


    He did not bring these little furs, stretched on tiny, hand-woven frames Sayaana had shown him how to construct, back to his family. The deer was gift enough. The village, his parents, they took pride that a cultivator walked among them, but only with hesitation. It was impossible to avoid noticing how fear and curiosity mingled on the faces of all save the youngest children.


    The rhythms of village life flowed away and around him. His motions disrupted all activity simply by walking past. A rock dropped into a small pond.


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    It would get worse, Liao knew. He was barely more than mortal now. Ordinary blows and weapons remained a threat. Hunting the deer had been easy but still require still at stalking and archery. Su Yi could have simply run the stag down and taken its life with a punch to the neck, effortlessly. Grand Elder Itinay could have killed it by shouting.


    The power he would gain, the strength he needed to acquire balance, it would draw him further and further from the village, from his origins.


    He would never have seen that if he''d not come back. Going to the city was not the same. The people of Starwall City lived a life of obfuscation through service. They molded themselves to the needs of cultivators in a way that made him feel strange and disgusted Sayaana.


    ¡°That one step, it''s a big one, isn''t it?¡± He told Sayaana as he sat on the roof of his parent''s home in the middle of the night. He''d tried meditating under the stars, for sleep would not come. It was not simply that he''d grown used to the exceedingly comfortable blankets of his couch.


    ¡°Yes,¡± the remnant soul agreed. She sat beside him, her green form sad and drawn inward. ¡°So much that I forgot this, these ordinary ways. You are two steps on the path of immortality. I made it forty-three. That far and mortal life becomes a foreign thing, full of needs, of mess, that no longer touch you. I would not have survived without that separation, wandering for centuries is easier when you don''t eat, but seeing you like this, it reminds me of how big those steps are.¡±


    She turned her neck and looked upright. ¡°Ascension, the path to the heavens. We only know one way. Defy nature, defy heaven, dare everything on a terrible gamble. A bad deal, by some lights, but it calls out, more and more, the closer you get. Maybe, I''ve dreamed, there might be another way, but if so, it''s not for cultivators. The great betrayers, they tried to make a new path, and look what happened. The short and narrow path to enlightenment is brutal, but perhaps we have to accept that.¡±


    Introspection beckoned further reflection. There, under the stars, Liao found the courage to ask a question that had festered in his mind from his earliest lessons. ¡°If the heavens are kind and the Sages watch over us, why did they permit the plague to occur?¡±


    ¡°I have lived a century to each of your years,¡± the green-shaded lady of needles and scale replied with unexpected swiftness and terrifying confidence. ¡°And could not find the answer no matter how far I wandered. When I came here, shattered as I was, I put it to the Twelve Sisters, desperate to hear the secret from those who had known the Fifth Sage as plain flesh. Surely the goddess told her daughters the truth?¡±


    Green eyes turned to the stars in forlorn desperation, then shifted back down to look upon Liao. Something horrible waited there, a truth at the very edge of despair. ¡°And I was right, they did know. Iay explained it to me herself.¡±


    Liao had met the eldest of the Twelve Sisters but once. Those terrifying white eyes that pierced through all things and measured their deepest core were something he hoped to evade for centuries to come.


    ¡°If you think you can bear the burden of that answer, ask Itinay,¡± Sayaana sighed heavily. ¡°I think that blue one would tell you, she lacks mercy. I won''t relay it secondhand.¡±


    With a surge of impetuousness he was unlikely to ever match, and guided by the insights recalled from his early life due to geographic proximity, Liao grasped a possibility and dared, under the stars, to venture it aloud. ¡°Is it that they can''t open the trap without breaking it and crushing everything within?¡±


    Sayaana said nothing, but her green eyes widened. When dealing with one who lived inside his own perception, that was more than confirmation enough.


    ¡°I saw it happen, once,¡± he told her by way of explanation. ¡°There was a moose fawn caught in a heavy snare. Her mother found her, tried to drag her free, but killed the fawn in the effort.¡± He had seen it, afterwards, one of the most terrible days of his childhood. The cow moose had gone mad, afterward, tearing at the entire forest in a rage. The village''s hunters had made the collective decision to put her down, no matter how ill it was to kill fertile females that way.


    A second thought extended out from this revelation. ¡°But if they can''t touch the world, how can they dispatch heavenly lightning during tribulations?¡± He''d seen that too, from far away. Everyone had. There had been one five years past, and Mother''s Gift was not so big that it was not visible everywhere. A week long mandatory mourning period had been declared afterward, for the elder did not survive.


    ¡°Cultivation violates natural law,¡± Sayaana''s answer was swift, but full of profound sorrow. ¡°Human lives are not meant to last centuries, take control of the soul, or gain the power to transform the landscape at a gesture. It takes effort, enlightenment, and luck to impose one''s dao against that of the whole world. You must be willing to claim a place where no one was ever meant to walk. So many try, only to fail. We do not know why cultivation exists, or what calls the lightning. I do not think it truly part of the heavens, just a fragment of the dao trying to balance things out.¡±


    It made sense, in a way. Perhaps it was right, and the tribulations were not any kind of wrath from on high, but simply a reaction of the world itself. The equivalent of trying to shake off a flea.


    Sayaana did not stop there, though she looked away, and Liao saw that tears descended down the green cheeks. ¡°The plague,¡± she returned to the original question. ¡°Is different. It does not go against the natural order. No, it is an expression of it, just not the order as it exists now, with humans and cultivators. The plague takes all that away, the same way it robs demonic cultivators of ascension. They can borrow its strength, but never surpass its limits. Eventually, they''ll all be gone, and only the demons will remain, siphoning away a portion of the world''s qi. That seems to satisfy the heavens. What do they care if humanity dies in the process?¡±


    Though he heard those words, Liao did not fully understand them, not then. He knew he would need to understand more of the nature of qi, and the dao, if it were ever to properly make sense. He resolved instead to ask again, far in the future, at a time when he could do more than simply listen in silence.


    In the end, everything came back to power. Though he hated that answer, it was clear. The balance of the world only shifted upon the movement of heavy weights. For now, he was nothing more than a feather on that scale.


    Still unable to sleep, he spent the rest of the night on the roof, meditating. The stars seemed closer, somehow, in the mountains. This was probably an illusion, he could feel, through the nature of the qi entering his dantian, that proximity had not changed. One day, he hoped, he would understand how that too worked, the structure of the spinning heavens. That, and countless other mysteries that Sayaana occasionally let slip, filled the world beyond Mother''s Gift.


    A world he was not ready to reach.


    It made for a long night, gathering and compressing qi to fill his dantian, knowing that. The path to the next meridian was clear, but it was going to be a long walk. Far further than the simple one his feet would take back to the sect. Without sleep, he would be tired along the way, but it made little difference. Itinay''s manipulations had not only severed him from the friendships of his peers, they''d removed him from the regular duty schedule. He was not required to stand watches on the wall at any point. If he spent an extra night sleeping in a hayloft it was of no consequence.


    He took the morning meal the next day with his parents. They spoke only of ordinary things, weather, crops, births and deaths in the nearby villages. Silently, everyone sensed that it would not be well to touch upon weighty matters.


    Against the natural order, Sayaana called cultivation that. The books and elders echoed that sentiment. Sitting there eating rice mixed with bits of leftover venison strips, he caught a glimpse of this truth. There was no animosity stretched between him and his family, and they had been apart a mere nine months to the day. Youths sometimes left the village for years, pursuing some apprenticeship, only to be welcomed back with open arms as if they''d never left upon their return.


    Not him, not Qing Liao. Not this time, and never again.


    The life of a mountain trapper he''d once thought he wanted more than anything, it no longer belonged to him and he no longer regretted losing it. He''d stepped outside the boundaries of village life in a way he could not even fully describe, and there was no going back.


    The sect lived apart. The servants born in Starwall City learned to move among them without living among them, a refined skill whose inestimable value he was only beginning to recognize. They visited each village only once per year, to test to new recruits. Other interactions were left to trained administrators. Any more than that would strain the invisible separation necessary to allow the villagers the independence of their own lives.


    One life in every one thousand. Severed from ordinary humanity to pursue the path of ascension. Qing Liao suspected he''d never know why, not until he made it all the way tot he end of that road.


    He promised his father he would visit every year. A promise he intended to keep. He also made the offer that his parents could come and visit him at the sect, if they wished, knowing it was nothing but empty air. They would never make that journey. Even the families of those born in the city, who could reach their children and siblings in under and hour, never did.


    ¡°I did not want to be a cultivator,¡± he told Sayaana as he left the village, wondering briefly on what might have been. ¡°I still believe I do not want this. But, seeing as it is all that remains, I will do it properly.¡±


    The ghostly woman projected at his side said nothing. Her enigmatic smile stayed in place all day long.