With a flick of his pipe, the smoke surged forward in hazy strands, thickening as they wrapped around my limbs and pulled me off the ground; there was nothing I could do as the smoke carried me up until I was just about level with Senior Librarian Yun’s face. I didn’t dare to move a muscle even as I felt the smoke sting at my skin, the air around me growing hotter and hotter as I beheld the Ape, who returned my gaze with an intense calm. The Librarian lifted his pipe once more to his lips, the bowl burning white-hot as he took another deep pull of whatever drug laid within.
And, with a deep exhale, Yun spoke. “You’ve made yourself into a real nuisance, Disciple.”
I said nothing, keeping my breathing as even as possible, ignoring the awful burning sensation of the fumes as they hit the back of my own throat.
“It’s been a long time coming.” Yun only took my silence as permission to continue, gesturing towards the steel cable that laid discarded on the floor. “Can you imagine how I felt when I came across this pitiful attempt at circumventing the Library’s security? As if the wards would not call out to their master to come and inspect whatever damage an unruly Disciple had committed. That holds for the walls of this place just as much as the scrolls, Ryan.”
“But the violation of this Library was not all!” Yun continued, swinging his arms wide open, trails of ash following his fingers. “No, for now you’ve done more to shake the Sect than you have in the two and a half years hence. Plenty of others saw your face as you made your great escape, and it hardly takes a great mind to connect your hasty exit with the disappearance of the Hospital’s reserves of our finest Sovereign Remedy.”
Yun reached out with his free hand, and I held back a flinch as he poked a thick nail against my flesh. “And with that, you’ve made enemies of not just the Doctors of the Sect, but the Wenhua Clan itself; one of the great pillars that allows the Seven Falls Sect to stand head and shoulders over all others. And the other pillars will have no issue lending their support in hunting down someone like you.”
The strands of smoke tightened further. “Do you understand, Ryan? You’ve made an enemy of the entire Sect, and they won’t stop at having your head; they’ll work tirelessly to get their investment back, use your very corpse to remake their medicine if they must. Do you truly think you stand a chance against them?”
I didn’t have a way out. Yun had simply bound me too tightly, and even with the Sovereign Remedy there wasn’t a chance I could escape without simply killing myself again. I was entirely at the more powerful cultivator’s mercy. Every excuse, every reason shuffled through my mind as I did my best to think of a way out of this.
It was a mistake, an accident! I didn’t mean to consume the pills, they were forced down my throat by Death herself. Yes, the actual representation of Death itself. That’s the reason I can’t die! Please, Yun, for whatever utterly unfathomably small amount of care you still have for me, can you please, please help-
I exhaled minutely. “Respectfully, Senior Librarian, go fuck yourself.”
The hallway was dead silent. Behind the mammoth ape’s body, I could see the newly-appeared Death blinking at me, dumbfounded by my words. That makes two of us.
And for Yun…
It started as a tremor. I could feel it through the strands of smoke that bound me, an erratic twitching that only grew stronger by the second. The temperature spiked upwards, leaving me panting for breath even as the air seared my mouth.The light-scripts along the walls began to flicker, as the very foundation of the Library began to shake, as if it those thousands of tons of rock above were about to fall and crush us beneath their weight.
“At long, LONG LAST! HA HA HA!”
That was what it was like to listen to a Cultivator on the Fifth Step laugh.
“I had truly given up all hope! I had believed that you’d consigned yourself to oblivion, to barely surviving through the day! Your last words just as well as confirmed that you somehow thought that accepting the boot upon your neck was going to see you through to the Third Step. But I was wrong, because you see it too-” Yun’s lips pulled back in a wide smile. “-that you must challenge the very World around you, before you can ever be fit to challenge the Heavens.”
The temperature of the air immediately fell to a pleasant, balmy warmth, and I was dropped to the floor without any ceremony, thankfully able to land on my feet without falling over. Yun had already turned, walking back down the corridor. “I’ve got some questions!” I called, hurrying after him, passing by Death and pulling her by her free hand, dragging her out of whatever surprise she still seemed to be in.
“And I have answers,” he replied, not even glancing back as he led me deeper into the Library, pipe stuck between his lips. “I’m assuming you came here because you felt there was some scroll you felt would aid you? I must warn you, if you plan to learn some technique, then consider that your time here may be limited, and depleting your qi reserves at a moment like this would be ill-advised.”
With the Sovereign Remedy, perhaps that wouldn’t be so much of a concern- I shook my head, shuffling off that possibility. I already had a goal in mind. “Not a technique. I wanted to look at whatever the Library had on the Third Step.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Yun stopped in place, hunching over slightly and coughing, before turning to look at me with his pipe hanging low in his mouth. “There’s challenging the Heavens and there’s suicide,” Yun began, pulling the pipe from his mouth and pointing it in my direction. “Just because you have been too cautious previously is no excuse to over-correct in the other direction. You are not ready for the Third Step, Ryan.”
“I’m not trying to get myself killed,” I easily agreed, ignoring the sound of choking at my side. “But there’s something about the Step that I need to know.” I did my best not to look at Death, only tightening my hand around hers. For some reason that just prompted her to start wriggling and pulling at my own hand, but I kept my expression neutral as I locked eyes with Yun, trying my best to convey how serious I was. “Do me this favour, Yun.”
Yun lifted his pipe back to his mouth, chewing at the stem for a few moments as he considered me. Eventually, he sighed deeply. “If only…very well. We’ll need to head further down, then.”
With that, he turned forward once more, continuing along the corridor. I finally peeked at Death, who had resorted to using some strange technique to free herself, her hand phasing right through my own as she extracted it from my grip. She shot me a look as she cradled that still-transparent hand against her chest. “Not tryin’ to get himself killed he says,” she muttered, stretching out her fingers. “As if he hadn’t just told some big shot to go fuck himself.”
Well, what’s life if you aren’t willing to live it? I shot her a winning smile, before following on after Yun. After a small harrumph from behind, I heard Death begin to follow after, her shorter legs having to speed up slightly to keep up with the pace that Yun set. And I think…I’d forgotten that Yun was always like this. He wasn’t always a big shot.
“Does it even matter? A cultivator is a cultivator, at the end of the day,” Death said, gesturing with her scythe to the Ape in front of us. “Imagine what he had to do to end up like that.”
Wasn’t his choice, actually, I explained, looking over Yun’s body, the oversized robes doing nothing to hide the fur that covered the librarian’s body from head to weirdly dexterous toes. It was a curse of some sort. Don’t know how he got it, but he said he got used to it at some point and doesn’t want to change back.
“Cultivators are fucking weird.”
On that, we agree. Our conversation closed just as we all arrived back in the central atrium of the Library. Yun ignored the main desk, instead swinging an arm out towards the Library’s doors which swung shut with a tremoring thud. Next, he gestured towards the open space of marble and jade behind the desk. It was from here that most visitors to the library could stop for just a moment, looking up towards the stained glass sky, loomed over by shelves filled with countless scrolls, and feel at peace for just a moment.
Or maybe that was just me, I thought, spinning a coin on my necklace. Ever since I’d first arrived at the Sect and found my way to this building it had felt like the only place close to home. Certainly not for any physical resemblance, for any one of these strange, foreign scrolls was surely worth more than my family’s life work. But it had been under Yun’s stern instruction that I’d learnt to slowly decode and understand the contents of these scrolls and the characters written upon them, and I couldn’t help but feel a small reminder of my life before with every sharp correction and every satisfied nod.
But Yun ignored the shelves as well, instead pointing directly at the floor. After a moment, the circular expanse of marble and jade began to shake, and slowly the tiles began to descend, starting from just behind the desk. The process only sped up as we watched on, the outer perimeter of the atrium forming itself into a staircase that spiralled down into the ground, quickly disappearing around the central marble pillar that remained at the centre.
“Usually, the Council of Elders will meet once a month to determine which Disciples show the most promise, and have proven themselves ready for the challenge of undertaking the Third Step,” Yun muttered, moving to settle into his chair by the desk, the overbuilt piece of furniture squeaking softly as he got comfortable. Looking to the closed door, the Ape grunted. “In this scenario, I think we’ll avoid unduly bothering them.”
I bowed at the waist in the Senior Librarian’s direction, perhaps for the first time genuinely meaning it. “Thank you, Yun.”
“Don’t mention it,” I straightened to see Yun waving the thanks away, before he fixed me with a deadly look. “I’ll have to kill you if you do. Now get going.”
He’s probably joking. I bowed once more, ignoring the Ape’s displeased grunt, before jumping down into the stairwell, taking each step two at a time. Death followed right after, and with her steps following just behind mine, we left the high atrium behind, soon replaced by the endless light-scripts that hugged the spiraling ceiling above. Their soft glow guided us both as we descended deeper into the Library than I ever had before. It took over five minutes of constant descent before we finally arrived at the end, the spiral straightening out to lead down a few last steps, into…
Surprisingly small, I thought, as I looked around the room. Several plush chairs surrounded a low marble table, with light scripts standing on adjustable stands around them. The shelves were also much smaller than the massive stone constructs that sat above, each one only bearing a few dozen volumes in their cubbies. I walked over to one of the shelves, pulling one scroll free and releasing it from its case, scanning across the title quickly. “Considerations on Foundation Preparation before the Immortal Step,” I read out loud, looking at Death behind me. “I think this is going to take a while.”
“Then we have no time to waste,” Death declared, tossing her scythe onto one of the chairs before walking over to a shelf, pulling out several scrolls at once and tossing them onto the table. I had to hold back from screaming as one sailed right over the table to hit the ground, the case coming undone and the parchment unrolling itself on the ground. Watching as Death proceeded to walk over it to sit in one of the free chairs with another scroll loosely held in hand, I turned back to the treatise in front of me, biting my lip and ignoring the awful crimes against literature occurring behind my back.
Gods, forgive me for this, I thought, carefully unfurling the rest of the scroll.
“Forgiven! Now get to it!”