A man in robes of blue and grey strode through a town at the mouth where two mountains met. A simple place full of simple people.

“Aren’t those the colors of the Master?” whispered one to another, as if he couldn’t hear the very blood pumping through their veins. “Is that his student?”

More such whispers followed him, but he paid no mind. They were all scavengers begging for whatever scraps of grace the Master deigned to bestow. They might as well be pathless, as far as he was concerned. It was the shepherd who ascended, not the sheep.

With a leap he flew from the town, soaring between cloud-piercing stone spires that stood as gate-posts to the domain of the Master.

A great weight pressed upon him as he approached a lonely mountain of jagged stone and twisted pine. Azure bolts of lightning severed the air and smote ruin upon the rocky slope. The valley itself bent inwards, as if the surrounding ridgeline was a ribcage enclosing a heart.

The man breathed deep.

He would succeed this time. He knew it.

The clouds swirled above, grey and white and black. They glowered at him—elemental eyes issuing a challenge and offering no quarter. The Great Spirit was awake.

He darted forward, launching himself a hundred paces with the first step. Lightning screamed down to intercept him, but he pushed off the wind and spun from its course, robes fluttering in his wake.

The air howled, thunder rattling the bones of the mountain.

He didn’t have time to pause when he landed—another vaulting step saved his skin but not his robe from the next spear of light.

He dodged and spun and launched in a desperate dance up the slope. Sprays of shattered rock ripped open his flesh, drawing blood. Swords of steel couldn’t make his reforged body bleed, but these blades of stone were deadlier than any opponent he had ever faced.

With every step, the presence of the mountain and the ancient bones beneath pushed down on him with ever greater weight. Each spin and leap was slower than the last. Each stride took him shorter and shorter distances until his steps resembled those of a mere mortal.

He staggered through the barrage of lightning, bolts so close they singed his skin. Then, finally, the sky cracked open and he couldn’t dodge the death that descended upon him.

He drew his sword in the space between moments and sliced through the bolt. It split, forking out and maiming the face of the mountain as seven explosions scorched the stone. The thunderous blast rattled the very roots of the earth, tearing free huge chunks of rock and hurtling them down with force enough to break a giant tortoise’ shell.

Lungs grasping for scraps of thin ozone flavored air, tireless immortal muscles straining as they never had before, the man pushed on.

He screamed out with each step, with each ragged breath, swinging his sword in a mad flurry. This sword had split open castles, had laid low armies, had parted storms, but it could not penetrate the angry sky that swirled and roared above.

He was almost there.

The sky cracked once more, but this time the spear of lightning was too fast for his blade. He reached out as his master had done when he’d first visited the mountain, and caught the bolt directly on his palm. The pure sky Qi raged through his channels as he tried to rein in its power, but it was a dragon stampeding through his veins, and all he could do was push on it, straining to alter its trajectory within him. It roiled and seared but gave in to his efforts, skirting around his heart and up his sword arm, into the blade.

The Blade of Screaming Sky, the one he had carried for centuries, the one that was more a part of him than his hair or his breath, exploded.

He was thrown across the face of the slope, rolling and scraping across sharp rock that had drunk in the essence of the dragon whose skull rested beneath—the foundation of the mountain.

He hadn’t come to a stop yet when another bolt shot down at him.

His arm reached out once more and he wrestled the lightning into a tenuous submission, guiding it out of his leg, and using the force to propel himself up the slope once more.

He’d done it! The Storm Flows through the Body’s River.

Then another bolt descended. Faster, wilder and more full of wrath than any that had come before. It entered him, carving and burning, blackening his hand, twisting his arm, and hunting his heart.

A hand smacked his back and the violent energy retreated from his chest, backing up his arm, mending the damage as it went, and finally shooting back into the sky.

The silence that followed was deafening as the Great Spirit above balked under the rebuke of the Master.

He followed his Master the rest of the way up the slope and into the cave which led to the Master’s domain. In a blink, they reached the end of the rocky tunnel and emerged into a verdant grove which harbored a simple pagoda in its center.

He took his place in the garden to meditate as his Master returned to his meditations within the structure.

***

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“Master, why can I not break through?” The student was on his knees, head lowered, hands clasped before him.

The Master turned and looked down on his pupil.

He had memorized every detail of the man above him, and needn’t look up to know that he stood like a mountain scraping the heavens. His silver hair hung low, swaying like drifts of snow in a breeze that belonged only to him. The shadows he cast swallowed light like hungry beasts, the only force that seemed to curtail that devouring darkness was the glimmer of his hair and the glint in his eyes.

“Tell me, student, what is it you seek? What lies on the other side?” The Master’s voice was unshakeable, it was the earth churning its bones, it was the storm that tore open the sky, it was the music of water trickling in a brook under the moon. It was terrible and beautiful.

The student searched the floor of the pagoda for an answer where grass split through stone and rose up in defiance. He could not answer in haste. He could not lie.

“I seek wisdom-”

“An empty platitude,” the Master said, interrupting him. “What is wisdom, but a word used by those in love with their own minds? Wisdom is a lie when it is so named. Wisdom cannot be earned through avarice. And what are we cultivators but the most avaricious of all that breathe? We who claim the power of the River of Creation itself for our own self-satisfaction. We who seek to claim the heavens!” The Master turned his back on his pupil once more, and the weaker man could breathe again.

The truth was uglier and emptier than the student wanted to admit. He looked deep and long into himself. Replaying his life. Replaying his victories. Replaying even those young, mortal years filled with loss. And weakness.

“Master, what I seek on the other side is power.” He closed his eyes and waited for his judgment.

“Yes,” said the Master. His voice was softer this time, lighter, more human. “And that quest has brought you this far, hasn’t it? Farther than any of my other students.”

The Master raised his hand then, and lightning fell from the heavens. The bolt shattered the ceiling and collected into a little ball in his upraised palm. Even as the roof began to crumble, the Master’s eye twitched and all was as it had been before, save the crackling ball of pure sky Qi in his hand.

“Tell me, student, what happens when a sheep cultivates?”

The pupil raised his head, unable to shake the awe from his face after the casual display of his Master’s power.

“It gets stronger, and wis- more intelligent.” He answered, correcting his mistake as the word his Master had spit upon tried to escape his mouth.

“And then what?” asked the Master, turning to face his pupil once more.

The student thought hard. “Then, it will be eaten, an even more appealing meal.”

“Very good, keep going.”

Keep going? The sheep was already dead. But there must be something he wasn’t seeing. Then it came to him. “The wolf inherits the power of the sheep and becomes more powerful.”

The Master merely raised an eyebrow, inviting him to continue.

“The wolf will rise to become the ruler of its territory.”

The Master still just stood there so the student decided to keep going until he either couldn’t or he was stopped.

“The wolf will evolve into an Aether Beast. Most likely, the beast will cause great havoc and be hunted down by cultivators and used to make them more powerful.”

The Master gestured with his hand, telling him to wrap things up.

“Eventually the power will be returned to the River.”

“Hmmmm, I wonder.” The Master stroked his perfectly smooth chin. “Let me teach you something, pupil. While what you said is not wrong, it is not the whole truth either.

“We humans raise plants and animals to eat. We cultivate the earth, and if we are cultivators ourselves, we seek out plants and animals that have cultivated—as more worthy sustenance for growing our power. But humans are not the top of the food chain. There are the dragons, and the demons, and the fey, and many spirits above humanity. But are they truly the top of the food chain? No, those who call themselves gods tend to us all as plants in a garden. But even the power of gods is limited. And this is when the cycle returns. And this is where you were right. For none that travel the currents of the River do not return to it.”

The Master started pacing across the room as he spoke and his pupil noticed how the shoots of grass and wildflowers withered and bloomed with each step.

“I saw it once, pupil,” the Master continued. “At the end of the endless river, the end that is also the beginning, there is the source. And just as the river is not actually a river, this source is not actually an endless ocean, but what else could I call it, for it nearly shattered my mind.”

The pupil, once again, couldn’t breathe. This happened whenever his Master lost control of his emotions.

“This ocean of infinity carries the essence of all things that are, and all things that are not. This realm we live in, this existence, it is but a faded reflection of the light that shimmers from the smallest of waves.

“We are nothing, and yet, when I saw it, I knew that it was Truth. It was me. It was you. It was everything, and more and less, and…

“No. Now is not the time. But the point is that all power is insignificant compared to that source. That is the true purpose of life, of the river, of cultivation.”

The master took a step away from the student and reality bent with him, folding space and reason. The next moment the student found himself walking through the cave again, beside his master.

“The quest for self satisfaction, even through the virtues, is limited. For it is only when we abandon all we know—all we are—that we can truly drink from that ocean. In this way, power is actually a distraction, for a cobbler of fine leather shoes can attain a taste as easily as a Master of the wind.”

The student doubted this. It went against everything he had learned, but he kept silent.

“Your problem, my disciple, is that you are too attached to your small goals, to your power. It is only through losing what you have come to value that you can move forward.”

They were nearing the mouth of the cave.

“Do you wish to receive my lesson?” The Master stopped. Even the breeze that always played with his hair stilled. All that moved was the crackling, sparking ball of lightning that had gone from blue to white to so bright that it no longer had a color.

The student quaked under his Master’s power. Mortals had become like ants to him hundreds of years ago, but his bones rattled with terror. What was he to do? Had he come far enough? Was this the end of his journey? How could he give up all that he’d fought for?

His Master might sneer at the word, but it was honor that guided him to the next step.

“I gave my oath to follow you,” he said, unable to clench the trembling from his voice. “Tell me what I must do.”

The Master smiled. There was real warmth there, and the student felt it like the sun hugging his bones. There was also sadness, a deep, bottomless thing, and the tear that trailed down his Master’s perfect face sparkled like a star cast from the heavens.

“I name you Osai. You will wander as a mortal. Stay no longer than six months in any city. Follow the threads that weave us all. Let the world be your teacher. May we meet on the shores of eternity.”

Then the Master thrust the crackling energy into his pupil and the pain was so bright it was pitch black.