With an inexplicable trepidation, I stepped out into the street. Some wandering civilians turned their heads to look at me, but just as quickly turned their gaze away, because it was from the Bai manor that I had emerged, and that name alone bore stature far greater than most of them had the right to lay their eyes on.

One old man climbing up onto a carriage turned his head back to glance at me. Rather than turn away, he squinted and jumped down to the street.

"You wouldn't happen to be... Jun Bai Xue, would ya?"

"Bai Chunxue, you mean?"

"Ah, yeah, that's the one. Bai Chen Shui."

I could tell from the way he pronounced it that he did not even know who I was. But that only made the situation more confusing. "That's... me, yes. Is something wrong?"

He shook his head. "Nay, not at all. I've been running errands back and forth from City Hall all day. They told me I should give you a ride if I met you. Are you heading up to City Hall?"

"I guess I am...?"

"Aight. Hop on back. There should be enough space there."

He climbed up onto the front of the carriage, grasping the horses' reigns, and I, somewhat confused, stepped up into the carriage proper, filled more than halfway with boxes upon boxes.

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Some time later I was at City Hall. I stepped out of the carriage and bowed in thanks to the old man. Then I proceeded into the building itself, a quite majestic building considering that it was built and maintained by civilians. I did not know what to expect upon entering it, but as soon as I did, a receptionist called out to me,

"Are you Bai Chunlei?"

"No, I'm Bai Chunxue."

He turned his head down to his papers.

"Oh, it wasn't a typo*. I didn't know there was a Bai Chunxue in the family." Looking back up at me, he pointed to a staircase off to the side. "Third floor, follow the signs."

Somewhat perturbed by this string of coincidences, I climbed the stairs up to the third floor, and followed a series of makeshift signs pointing the way to the Magistrate's office. I made my way down a long hall, its sides studded with various rooms and offices, but before I could get to the double-doors at the end behind which the Magistrate's office found itself, the doors opened. Several cultivators emerged, many of them wearing traditional Long family accoutrements, shimmering dragons slinking across their robes, and in their center was—

"Senior! You're back!"

Long Bailian dashed up to me and clamped her hands on my shoulders, her steps breaking through the howling echoes of her voice. She laughed with an expression halfway between surprise and bemusement.

"Senior, things have been completely upside-down for the past month. And you just went up and disappeared! Aiya, if it hadn't been for that secret foreign cultivation manual of yours, the one you wrapped your life-thread around, I would have guessed that you had died!"

I let out a slow chuckle.

"Now that I think about it, I have no idea what's been going on for the past month. I was in secluded cultivation, and since then, this is the first time I've been outside. And yet, even though I spent almost all my time in secluded cultivation, I nearly died... four times."

Once in Avici, once more to Wujiu, once to Jing Ke, and once to Canyue. And yet, now, all of them were gone, and only I remained. Only my future remained.

"And yet you are here, and your enemies are not! They say that you scattered Wang Wujiu's ashes to the wind, so that not even enough of her remained to conduct a funeral." She laughed again and slapped my shoulder. "Thank the heavens for it! If the western provinces could be rebuilt with the force of just another arrogant cultivator, then you'd think the Wang family would have been able to do it by now. Maybe we'll finally get some real change out there. If not Wei or Ji Han, maybe the armies of Nalantuo will cross the mountains and subdue Xichuan— A'erjin-Shan is no more*, they will say!"

—Now that I thought about it, I had never really had the chance to reflect on what I had done to Wujiu. I had not really planned for it, and I was too busy thinking about Jing Ke during my secluded cultivation. And now, now that I thought about it, I could not bring myself to think much of it. Those actions of mine seemed so far away from myself that I could hardly feel any emotion emanating from them. Had it been wrong of me to kill Wujiu, considering her possible future contributions to the western provinces? I did not know, and I did not care. That was in the past. That was when I was yet mired in too many thoughts of revenge, and not enough thoughts of dreams.

"Young Master Long," called out a vaguely-familiar voice from the office, "is Bai Chunxue out there? I had asked him to come pay a visit, but I can only hope he isn't running late."

Bailian's eyebrows jumped.

"Looks like the Magistrate is looking for you. Senior, I have space in my carriage, so let's have a good chat once you're free. I'll be waiting for you outside." She skipped past me, back towards the stairs. The other Long family cultivators, following behind her, grimaced as they passed by me, but what could they say to me, here trapped between Long Bailian and Sima Rui?

I entered the office and saw, there, sitting on the other side of a long oaken desk, Sima Rui, her fan and red coat set to the side, a winged scholar's cap sitting slanted upon her head, her gaze set upon a report of some sort.

She looked up at me, then set the report down.

"Good afternoon, Bai Chunxue. Please take a seat. What do you go by now? Given the stature of the family you now head, I suppose Lord Bai would be most accurate."

I sat down, but I did not know how to respond to those words, direct as they were. The family you now head. It was the first time anyone had said that out loud.

"How... do you know?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"I sent a letter addressed to the family head, and you came. That is how I know you are the head of the family."

"But— why did you address the letter to me in the first place?"

"Oh, that?" She waved a hand dismissively. "That was merely a guess. I guessed that it would be around that time that the Bai family's infighting would end, and I guessed as well that you would be the only one remaining."

"But the Bai family isn't just here. There are a lot of family members spread across the Great Plains. How could you possibly guess at the state of family infighting elsewhere?"

"Oh, that's right." Sima Rui smiled oddly. "In my hubris as a bureaucrat of Kangtian, I seem to have forgotten that the Bai family is larger than this city. But you have come to me, so you must know about what has happened to the Bai family members in Zhaoqing or in the Imperial Capital, even though they are far enough away that it would take several days to carry a message here, and no message of their death has yet been brought here. Of course I do not have that knowledge, but at the same time, you should not either. How strange, wouldn't you say?"

I winced. I had only asked three questions, and yet with that alone she had caught me in a logical trap. Yes, by process of elimination, I was now the head of the Bai family. But the Bai family had only been eradicated last night, and that was not enough time for information to travel from Zhaoqing or from the Imperial Capital to here. I only knew, after all, because Natsuki had told me, and she— I assumed— was not bound by such trivial laws as those of spacetime. But the Magistrate was, and so was I!

"Bai Chunxue, you overestimate me," Sima Rui sighed. "I am a civilian bureaucrat, and nothing more. The civilian government is not permitted to intervene in conflicts between cultivators. That is the first freedom that has been guaranteed to cultivators since the founding of the Xia dynasty. I have only summoned you here to ask you about the strictly civilian consequences of your actions."

The tension in my face loosened slightly. The discussion had turned from a bad topic to an unknown topic, and I could not tell if that was fortuitous or not. "Civilian consequences? I'm not sure what you mean..."

Sima Rui picked up her fan and flicked it open, so its arcing feathers hid half her face from view.

"The Bai family owns large estates across all the Great Plains, including many tens of thousands of acres of farmland, as well as many manufacturing plants for iron and some other basic materials. If you are the head of the Bai family, then I assume that much of the management for those estates is now... unhandled. If you do not fill those positions quickly, then I worry for what will happen when the fourth month of the next year comes around."

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

I had not even thought about that. What would I do with all the territory and possessions of the family, all these possessions that had now fallen into my hands? I did not know. I had no plan. Though, for my dream of becoming a scholar, it was admittedly better to have a name and a territory than to not have them. Penniless scholars could not get far in life.

But... the fourth month of the next year? I did not know of anything particularly relevant that occurred during the fourth month, and I could not help but hang on these words.

Sima Rui stopped for a moment, but seeing the lack of comprehension in my eyes, continued, "The Bai family is wealthy and influential. But that is only more reason why you must be careful with your taxes. I am merely concerned that the recent events will cause problems for your ability to pay them. As they say, of all the vicissitudes of fortune, there are but two certainties for those of us under the heavens. Even cultivators cannot escape the shackles of death and taxes."

She flicked her fan closed and placed it back down on the table.

Of course it was taxes! Now that I owned the entirety of the Bai family's holdings, I had to pay taxes on them! And I did not even know just what it was I had to pay taxes on!

I exhaled slowly, then shook my head. If she put it like that, there wasn't much more I could say. I hardly had the time or the knowledge required to correctly file the entire Bai family's taxes in less than half a year. That was a hard limit!

"To be honest, I don't know. I definitely don't think I could manage it myself. But..."

"But you don't want to give it up, because it might come in use for your future." She nodded, and pulled a few loose scrolls from a cabinet in her desk. "I thought you might say that, so I asked the Imperial Court for records on how they have historically handled such situations where families have suddenly collapsed. It is rare but not unheard of for such things to happen to cultivator families. It seems that—"

"Wait." I couldn't help but stumble over the logistics of her words. "Wouldn't it take at least three weeks to get a letter to the Capital and back? How could you have done that when I only—"

"Bai Chunxue," she interrupted with a slight frown, "It is said that you should never interrupt an enemy in the process of making a mistake. As a corollary, it should be self-evident that you should never interrupt someone in the process of helping you."

"A-ah, yes, sorry." I turned my gaze down, penitent.

"—Anyways, your best option is to put your land in trust with the imperial government. They will manage the properties, and of course they will demand a large portion of the wealth produced as offerings for the Emperor, and of course you will have to give them a much larger portion in order to build face, but if you do not think yourself capable of handling the weight of the Bai family at the moment, then they can carry that weight for you."

She opened the scrolls and laid them out in front of me. I cast my gaze over them, but only saw the letters swim before my eyes. The dull emotions yet pressing down on my mind and these futures now swirling out in front of me combined into a chilling sensation so discomforting that, as I balled up my fists, I could feel my nails biting deep into my palms.

This decision was even still... too heavy for me.

"...Can I take these back and think over it?"

"Of course."

I wrapped the scrolls up and dropped them into my lap.

Sima Rui sat there, unmoving, as if waiting for me to say something. But I had nothing in particular to say to her.

I looked at her, but could not manage to look past the surface of her eyes, impenetrable as they were, impenetrable like stone.

"Magistrate... is it true that you're a Foundation Establishment cultivator?"

Her gaze remained impenetrable.

"I assume your actual question is of why I left the jianghu, or conversely, why I entered it in the first place. Well, I think you ought to know. You are not unlike me, in only some respects."

She flicked open her fan.

"Cultivation grants great powers, of which one is the power to change oneself. You see, I had some qualms with my own appearance well back in the day. So I broke through to Foundation Establishment studying the Law of Self-Creation, and I used that power to rewrite my own body. And after that— well, I found out that the sects were not very interested in changing the world with all their power, but I was, so I joined the imperial bureaucracy. I wished to wield the power to change the world. That is why I am here, and that is why I will go west— not as a cultivator, but as a civilian."

The power to change the world. Everyone wished for such power, but one could only wield such power when serving the law granting that power. And all such laws are ultimately derivatives of the World-Law, the rules of nature, fate itself. Then, was it even possible to change the world wielding the power to change the world?

"Do you, uh, think that it's better to use the power of cultivation or civilian power for something like changing the world? I've heard that if you borrow the power of the heavens, it's difficult to use it for anything that doesn't accord with the will of the heavens."

Sima Rui nodded. "That is true in many ways. In a very literal sense, Core Formation cultivators and above will receive punishment from the heavens if they defy the Heavenly Law. And in a less literal sense, every stage of cultivation is a step towards becoming less human. In Foundation Establishment, you lose your ability to identify yourself as human. In Core Formation, you lose empathy for the world around you. In Spirit Severing, you must sever facets of your own humanity from your soul. And if you step into the True Dao realm, you lose respect for life and death, even your own. Those who cultivate lose both their will and their ability to change the world. If you wish to change the world, then, you must do it from a state of powerlessness. As a simple, powerless civilian."

"So does that go for the Emperor too? Is it a good thing, actually, that the Emperor got crippled back into Qi Condensation?"

Sima Rui winced.

"Bai Chunxue, if you wish to become a scholar, you must be careful with your words. A scholar lives and dies by their words. What you just said could very easily get you killed. Let me rephrase that for you." Fanning her fan, Sima Rui looked off to the side. "In the Huainanzi, one reads that when Old Man Sai lost his horse, it was difficult to judge whether it was an event fortuitous or not. Should we say that it is fortuitous that the Emperor now feels such unbounded empathy for the common man, in a way that the sick-minded cultivation sects cannot? And of course, the answer is yes."

"Oh— oh." I frowned. "I see." I had never really felt the omnipresence of the Emperor the way I assumed the city-dwellers of Kangtian did, so I could not feel the weight of my words. But, with some prompted reasoning, I could guess at their ponderous mass. "In that case... it really is a good thing for me to become a scholar, I guess."

"Let me offer you some words." Sima Rui flicked her fan close, then back open, and somehow the ink painting on its surface seemed to have changed. "The fundamental law of the world is destruction— flesh to ashes and stone to dust. It is no more difficult to destroy than it is to float down a river. If you really wish to challenge the world, to prove that you are something more than a cog in the cycle of the natural laws, you must create. Like the carp that leaps up the Yellow River and makes of itself a dragon, you must build nations from mobs and cities from rubble. When I was younger I wished to change the world in order to make it a better place. Now, with my soul poisoned by the price of becoming a cultivator, I can only wish to change the world in order to challenge the laws of nature, to prove my supremacy over the heavens in a way that no other cultivator can. But I still wish it. And that is enough to accomplish it."

To create. Yes. That was my dream. To become a scholar and change the world. Yes, that was what I wanted to do. It was what I had always wanted to do, even if I'd never had much of an idea of how exactly I wished to change the world, other than that vague ideal of the powerless— "to make it a better place".

Perhaps, then, it was a good thing that I no longer had any power, that I was now no more than a normal person. In this position, I had more freedom than anyone else. More freedom, and more potential. Just as I had always had, but for this short dream of half a year's time.

I felt the heavy uncertainty over my heart whittle away, by the least of measures.

Carrying the scrolls in my hands, I stood and bowed.

"Thank you for your advice, Magistrate. If there's nothing else, I won't impose any longer."

Nodding, she tapped close her fan on the table. Somehow, the doors behind me opened. So I turned, and began to leave. But just before I could cross the threshold—

"Bai Chunxue."

I turned back to face her, and she pointed her fan to the ceiling.

"Do you know this proverb? In the heavens above and upon the earth below..."

"I alone am supreme," I finished at her prompting.

"Exactly." She shook her head. "That is incorrect. The correct translation is humanity alone is supreme. These are, after all, the words of the Shakyamuni Buddha. However, it is quite difficult for people of power, whether that be cultivation power or political power, to weigh humanity above their own ego. If you wish to become a scholar, then I hope you may live in accordance with the correct reading of this proverb. I hope you may always remember what it is like to be powerless. Only then will the world change for you."

I smiled, despite the dark clouds hanging over my mind. "I will."