Cai Xiun ran along the hot sand at a breakneck pace. The Great Desert Strip was a chore to traverse alone, even for a cultivator of his caliber. The desert, being twenty thousand miles long, was the major dividing line between the Five Great Sects. On the left side were The Hollow Echo and The Bloody Fist, and on the right were The Flowering Sword and The Raging River, with The Hidden Viper’s territory resting just underneath the desert’s end. And while there were merchants, both mortal and cultivators that crossed the desert, they at least had the logic of doing it during the rainy season and plotting out ample cool routes for their journey.

The temperatures here could get high enough to boil water during the day and cold enough to freeze it at night. Of course, the sects didn’t cross this place on foot. If the sects sought something they could just transfer and negotiate through teleportation or flying swords. No, the issue of trade through this heat-ridden land was a mortal concern, and they solved it.

The desert wasn’t a place suited for any form of natural life, except for a few sparse qi beasts and plants around the oasis, but there were mortals. There were mortals everywhere. They were like cockroaches and could be found in the most dangerous of places. Even if cultivators themselves would never settle there, mortals would.

It was a strange phenomenon. Cai would think the strong would tolerate more than the weak, merely because they were strong. But it was always the opposite. The strong had choices, and the weak didn’t. So while mortals struggled to carve out a place for themselves in this world, pushing and pressing just to survive, cultivators would meditate on carpets made out of lion's mane.

Though Cai wouldn’t call them lazy. Cai himself knew how hard cultivators worked for their power, but there was a difference between struggling to get stronger and struggling to live. One seemed much more terrifying than the other.

The mortal merchants had figured out how to map cool routes, knowing when the heat would rise and fall in certain areas. He had originally traveled through one of these mapped areas, but now after being charged with delivering the news of a new sect, he was heading directly to the Flowering Sword Sect and running without a map, a decision he was now coming to regret.

His original mission was to scout out the middle region of the strip and see if anything had changed. But they hadn’t expected him to find anything. No, the mission was just a trial for him, a punishment for his existence.

His father was the son of the Raging River’s patriarch and had laid with his mother in a drunken stupor. And his mother being the daughter of the Flowering Sword’s patriarch, had made their union to be one of tension and chaos between the two sects. Higher-up members of the Flowering Sword wanted his mother to declare their union to be nonconsensual, and members of the Raging River wanted his father to accuse his mother of seducing him as a scarlet whore, but neither did so. His mother, while she claimed to have regretted their entanglement, had never once accused the man of being forceful. And his father, from what Cai had heard, had considered his mother to be one of his conquests.

And so the sect elders, filled with anger and lacking an outlet for their rage, had turned their malice towards him. He was repeatedly punished, both in small ways and in large ones. He would be given the worst resources. He would have the strictest teachers. He was given tiring tasks and told to complete them under the guise of honor and strength, while his cousins lavished around barely lifting their fingers.

His mother had protected him at first, but once the initial joys of motherhood had died out, so had her love for him. One day he came home bloody and bruised and complained to his mother about his older cousins and their brutal attacks under the guise of sparring. His mother had only laughed at his complaints.

"Oh, don’t you know Cai, they’re merely trading pointers with you. You know that a man must be capable, lest he becomes frail and weak. You must grow upright and strong, Cai, do not bring dishonor towards me again."

Cai had been six when she told him that, and his older cousins had been fourteen. He hadn’t even started down the path of cultivation yet. He was just a child with no strength and his mother had chastised him for it.

It wasn’t malice. Her actions weren’t from a conscious hatred she had of him, she didn’t care enough to hate him. It was more of a sick mixture of stupidity and selfishness that made the woman who she was. She was willfully ignorant. She sat there, spoiled rotten, in a position of power and a list of faults so long that if he wrote them out they would trail the length of the Desert Strip.

And now, after years of never talking to her, the absent man that called himself his father had asked for her hand in marriage. And though the sect had refused the proposal, she had run away on her own to embrace the man. And all the sect elder’s fury had multiplied and had once again turned to him.

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"This has disgraced our Flowering Sword Sect’s face!"

"What do we look like, bowing to the Raging River’s brat?"

"Shame has been brought to the head family of the Flowering Sword Sect!"

Words had been thrown around, most of them insinuating one thing or another, but none had dared to insult her out loud. Most people had been angry, some had been furious, but no one ever spoke about his mother. Cai wished they had, but they knew better than to draw his grandfather’s wrath by insulting the woman. Cai himself had been given a scar on the left side of his chest for that very thing.

And so, the malice flowed to him. His mother faced no consequences and his grandfather merely watched as he was treated like a walking sin.

He sighed, pushing the matter off his mind and spreading his eyes to find an oasis. The heat was affecting his mood, and an angry heart would not help him survive this experience.

He put the thoughts of vengeance aside. There was nothing that he could do, not truly. He didn’t consider his parental abandonment to be worth it. In his mind, they hadn’t harmed him but rather refused to help him. It was wrong, but not a grievance he would take up with the blade.

Beads of sweat fell from Cai’s brows and onto the sandy floor and evaporated instantly.

He looked out once more into the sandscaped hell. His eyes squinted as he pushed qi into them and analyzed what appeared before him. A small tear of blue shimmered in the distance.

"Finally," he muttered. He wasn’t following the cool routes on the map, but he was heading towards one of the oases it had marked down.

He pushed, propelling his qi through his legs. The sand burst into a dust cloud behind him, as he rushed towards the oasis. Cai Xiun jumped, his body landing in the cold water.

The coolness was welcoming, and for a while, he stayed there. The heat in this place was excruciating and there weren’t any permanent settlements in the whole strip aside from that small valley. There weren’t even any cultivators here, the place was far too lacking in qi density to even be considered a hiding place for a cultivator. So the only enemy he knew of in this place was the one above the sky, burning down so heavily.

It was a blessing then, that his instincts didn’t rely on knowledge but experience and reacted to the attack before he even knew it had happened. His body leapt, moving itself out of the water and pulling out his blade to parry the incoming attack. The attack pushed him out of the water and onto the sand.

"Cai Xiun?" His attacker asked.

"Who are-" The question hadn’t even left Cai’s lips before the figure swung its blade.

There was a long tingling noise that came with the attack and Cai’s legs moved, pushing him to the right and dodging the wave of sound qi. Cai assessed his opponent. If the man’s attacks hadn’t identified his sect then his face would have. He lacked earlobes, and where his eyes should have been was a neat line of wrinkled flesh that wrapped all the way to his neck. A member of the Hollow Echo Sect.

His opponent raised his sword and swung again releasing a wave of sound qi at Cai and again Cai dodged. He breathed. Dodging sound qi was taxing on the body. It required a cultivator to move with high acceleration, propelling the body to supersonic speeds just to avoid the attack. This wasn’t something he could keep up, especially in this thirsty and tired state.

Cai released his own attack before the man could strike. A flurry of sword qi arranged in a flowering pattern flew off of Cai’s blade and traveled to his attacker. The man just sneered, waving his sword qi and eliminating the attack before it reached him.

"Who are you?" Cai asked.

"Are the questions of the dead worth an answer from the living?" The man replied, running at him with his sword drawn.

They crossed blades again, both swords swinging against each other in rapid strikes. The enemy kept up with Cai, his blade countering in tandem with Cai’s attacks. Cai pushed, forcing raw qi into his strike as he aimed for the man’s throat. Qi circulated in both of their blades in one final clash as flower met sound.

Both of them were pushed back by the collision, creating a small gap between their bodies. The fight was taxing. His opponent was at the peak of the second realm, which was three minor realms ahead of Cai. His strength and qi density verified that. If they kept going like this for much longer then it would only be a matter of time before Cai lost. He had to end this fight quickly. Cai looked at his opponent and the man grinned as if he could read Cai’s thoughts.

Cai readied his sword and started on his pattern of attack.

The Ten Thousand Petals flew out from his blade, and the large flower of sword strikes flew toward his enemy with speed. Qi shaped itself into a flurrying network of sword cuts that whistled through the air toward his opponent.

His enemy countered by letting out a mind-rocking shriek that propelled him backwards and let him avoid Cai’s attack. Cai released another pattern, aiming to hit the man before he landed.

His attacker braced and swung, letting out a wave of sound qi, and attempted to cancel out the Ten Thousand Petals Art that was coming for him. The two attacks collided and the pattern slightly changed its direction, barely grazing his opponent’s arm. But with the Flowering Sword Style, a graze was just enough. The pattern collapsed and all the qi sank into that one abrasion and into the opponent's arm.

The man let out a multilayered scream that sounded like the cries of a thousand children. Vibrations burst throughout the sand, causing a circle of golden earth to erupt around the man and the area surrounding his opponent turned into a shifting pool of liquid.