XJ-V watched the young Feng’s face take on a pallid shade of crimson the likes of which he’d never seen before.

Before Ori’un could say a thing, the boy was already on the verge of frenzy.

“When did they depart?” he asked the aged Elder – voice colder than the blizzard blaring outside.

The old man blinked his soulless, dead eyes. “L…last night,” he moaned like a grim specter. “If you make…make haste, young warrior…you shall still be able to…catch them.”

Ori’un stirred, about to take charge, when Feng-Lung stood and bowed to the old man, cupping his balled fist to his hand in a gesture of devotion from the Eternal Dragon.

“I swear to you,” he said. “I shall find these beasts and slay them to the very last.”

He turned tail and stormed out of the room, leaving Ori’un to thank the Elder quietly and take his leave, following the brash boy outside to the coldest winter to ever grace the wasteland.

“Feng-Lung!”

The boy was not for hearing the words of the Planeswalker. Instead, he trudged towards the graveyard, inspecting the broken iron fencing and looking out into the pale skies beset by the snowstorm raging across the world, scrabbling around to look for tracks.

When Ori’un caught up to him, he saw nothing but a boy flailing around in the snow.

“Feng…”

“I will find them and kill them,” the youth said without looking back at the hulking man whose shadow draped itself across him. “I will find them and kill them before –“

“Feng!”

The boy stopped abruptly, enticed, no doubt, by the power of the Qi-enhanced voice that emanated from the Planeswalker’s throat.

“This mission has become too dangerous. A pack of Aoyin nibbling on snacks in a graveyard is one thing, but the activity the Elder reports suggests a horde probably drawn from across the Taila Badlands, where their kind are legion…I know Warlord Seneka has conscripted soldiers from the villages on the border of her fiefdom. But I did not know Marsul had become involved. If this is true, then the caravan will be hounded by more Aoyin than you have ever seen, young Disciple.”

“I do not care!” the boy yelled, throwing snow across the graves as he searched for an indication – any sign – of the exact trajectory the evil spirits took as they headed East. “I will not leave my home undefended.”

“You will do your family no good if you freeze to death out here, either.”

“I’ll do them no good if I return to Ramor-Tai!”

Both Cultivators stared down the other while the villagers of Narsis looked on with growing trepidation. Most of them had ceased their praying at this point and simply bolted their doors and windows shut tight. If two Sect Cultivators of the Eternal Dragon were about to make their village into their battle ground, praying to the Dao would be less than useless.

“Feng,” Ori’un said, kneeling to look the boy in his furious, yet sorrow-stricken eyes. “As the Administrator of this test, I must tell you again that I cannot intervene in your progress. I can neither provide aid, nor hinder you. If you decide to continue on this quest, then I shall not impede you. But you have the choice, right now, to return to Ramor-Tai and let another, more experienced Cultivator handle this problem. And you have my word,” Ori’un added quickly. “The problem will be handled.”

Feng dropped his gaze, falling to his knees in the snow he had blasted with Dragon Tooth strikes by way of excavation till his hands had gone numb.

“They will be dead by then,” the youth said. “I’m sure of it. My brothers, my mother, the cats…everyone will be gone. I have studied the ways of the Aoyin, Planeswalker Ori’un. I know that if they ever feel they have the advantage of numbers, they shall steal away the living and sequester them in a cold, dank place, waiting for them to die before feasting on their corpse. In a blizzard like this, waiting for such a death to take place would not take long.”

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

Ori’un was forced to admit that the boy was right. XJ-V could again feel his pride in the youth grow as he looked through the eyes of the Planeswalker’s past self.

“Is this what you choose, Feng-Lung of the Dragon?” Ori’un asked. “The defense of your home over your life at Ramor-Tai, even if it was your mother who wished you to remain there?”

Feng balked at this, but the hesitation was only momentary. XJ-V could see that, for the youth, there was only one answer.

“The wisdom of Prophet Aun’El says that sometimes the hatchling must protect its mother,” he replied. “Even against her will. I do what any son must, Planeswalker. For I am my mother’s son before I am a Cultivator of Ramor-Tai.”

Deep within the Planeswalker’s breast, XJ-V felt a sad, heavy burden suddenly fall.

I knew then that he would fail, the present-day spirit of Ori’un told the Cog. He was too attached to his home. To his family. He had no objectivity about him. I mean, of course he didn’t – he was a boy. Longhua had taken him too young, convinced that he could mould the boy from a young age to become as unfeeling as the old Dragon himself is. When it comes down to it, a boy of sixteen is never going to forsake his past – especially not one that Feng has always clung to with such strength.

In essence, XJ-V replied. You are saying he is too human.

Har! Ori’un of the present laughed. Coming from a Cog, that’s just perfect.

XJ-V then watched as Ori’un’s past self again patted the head of young Feng affectionately.

“Alright,” he said. “Though I can’t give you physical aid, or direct your path, I can – under the circumstances – give you a steer in the right direction.”

“I can do this on my own,” Feng-Lung replied. “I must.”

“Boy, that’s what we all think when the time of our destiny comes upon us,” the Planeswalker said with a gruff cough. “It’s the biggest load of hogwash we tell ourselves.”

He bent low and gathered some snow in his hands – snow blackened by Feng-Lung’s fires.

“Cool yourself,” he said. “And enter the Dao. Feel the ice beneath your feet and search for signs of life that once passed through here. Seek out the tracks of the spirits not on this earth, but in the plane beyond.”

Feng listened. He obeyed. He crouched and closed his eyes shut, even though it probably pained him to, and he listened. Watching him through the Planeswalker’s eyes, XJ-V could not intuit exactly what he saw within his mind’s eye as he walked the Dao, though he would have loved to know it, but what he could tell was that the boy had found what he sought after only ten minutes meditation – his eyes moving behind the closed skin of his lids as he traced a path through the snow in spirit-form.

When he opened his eyes again, he drew a deep breath and centered himself.

“I have seen their steps,” he said. “It will be a four-hour journey to the East from here.”

Ori’un smiled down at the Disciple, despite it all.

“Summon a Dragon Tooth beneath your feet and we’ll make it two,” he said.

…

They arrived in approximately two hours just as Ori’un had guessed, their feet trailing ribbons of flame like comet trails behind them. XJ-V almost laughed within the mind-prison of Ori’un to see it: two Cultivators flying through the snowcapped wastes like a pair of rocket-ships from the height of Qing’s Dynasty.

It’s a little-known trick you might like to try yourself from time to time, the Planeswalker of the present murmured. Though it is taxing, and can only be done for short periods when one’s Qi is firmly gathered at the feet. If bandits came upon us, we would had been unprepared to defend ourselves. Probably a trick best saved for a rainy day, eh?

Both men lowered themselves down to touch the snow once more, seeing the rickety gateway of Marsul appear before them through a dense mist that obscured its buildings from sight. Slowly, both Cultivators trudged up passed the village outskirts, seeing empty farmland long abandoned in the cold and the distinctive wheel prints of a carriage at the entrance to the village proper.

Before they entered, Ori’un put a firm hand on young Feng’s shoulder.

He could feel the youth was shaking. And it had nothing to do with the cold.

“I shall ask you one more time,” he said. “Feng-Lung of the Dragon, do you commit yourself to slaying this Aoyin brood?”

And with only a moment’s hesitation, the youth looked up at the Planeswalker who towered over him, and gave his answer.

“I do,” he said. “May the Dao take me if I lie.”

Or if you fail, Ori’un of the present whispered, and by the way he said this it felt more like he was trying to speak to Feng-Lung’s young form out there in the snowcapped wastes – like he was extending an arm he had not the will to extend at the time.

XJ-V could feel the swirling energies of malevolent pockets of Qi even through the dream-vision. Everything in his systems, and in his soul, told him that entering the village would be a suicidal venture at his level.

So when Feng-Lung and Ori’un of the past took their first steps over Marsul’s frozen threshold, the Cog tensed up as he felt the hands of death rise to meet them.

###

If you are enjoying Cog Cultivator, consider supporting the story on Patreon to read + 10 advanced chapters