The Seven Falls Sect is set upon the seven waterfalls barely ten miles from the source of the Tzangtze river. This is also its end, as from here those waterfalls split off into each of their own branches, known collectively as the Seven Siblings, which continue off deep into the countryside. Truthfully, it is not particularly appropriate to call the Tzangtze a river at all. Can anything a mere ten miles long be worthy of such a thing, when its own children each outspan it by many hundreds of miles? Those foreign to these lands would almost certainly shake their heads at the absurdity.

But the alternative to calling it a river would be calling it a lake, for at its widest point the Tzangtze is eleven miles across. And this, at first, sounds like the much more sensible solution, except that no lake has waters that move as swiftly as the Tzangtze, or that reach as deeply as the Tzangtze; certainly no lake pours out in seven great waterfalls from cliffs that themselves tower half a mile over the surrounding landscape, a product of a fight between gods that is appropriately called the Burial Fault. And so, the Tzangtze River it is.

Those who set eyes upon the Tzangtze after ascending the Fault in the massive brass elevators will happily confirm that ‘River’ is as appropriate a term as any for the unfathomable flow of billions of tons of water, if they are not distracted instead by the view of the Sect itself. Because just as the Tzangtze defies any reasonable description, so too does the Seven Falls Sect defy any sensible construction, placing itself upon the islands that balance precariously on the edge of the Fault. Gigantic palaces made of jade and silver sat comfortably on those outcrops, their balconies watching out over courtyards that hung thousands of feet above the ground and rivers below.

This was the place that I had called home for the past three years, and in that time I had learnt to navigate the winding bridges, and put names to those oversized manors. Hidden behind the grandiosity was the Alley, of course, providing easy access to the entirety of the Sect if one was willing to risk an abrupt confrontation with an enthusiastic Outer Disciple looking for a fight; on the Western Isles was the Hospital, where I’d spent many an hour with my hands inside some poor bastard’s corpse, pulling out their organs at the behest of Doctor Lei; towards the Centre Isles one could find the Main Compound, which I avoided at all costs for fear of meeting a Core Disciple interested in pulling out my organs; and of course there were the Eastern Isles, where the Lifts were located, and where the flow of trade and vice entered and exited the Sect.

Today, I wasn’t sticking to the Falls, but instead walking to the North. For there was a select island that didn’t lean out over the Fault but instead punched up like a great fist through the Tzangtze, splitting it so harshly as to leave a path along the riverbed totally dry even as walls of water rushed by on either side, and leaving the massive spur to tower ominously over all those who dared approach. But for those who wished to challenge Heaven, there was no choice but to approach, for built upon the rock was the last of the great buildings of the Seven Falls Sect: its Library.

If one were to read a new scroll every hour of every day for an entire year, you would not come close to completing a fraction of the knowledge contained within the Great Library of the Seven Falls Sect. If one were to read a new scroll every minute, you would still not even be a tenth of the way through one of the greatest repositories of information in all the world.

During the first six months of my time here in the Sect, I had taken that as a challenge. Here, I lived and breathed cultivation, stalking through every one of its halls carved deep into the bedrock, poring over every cultivation manual and treatise I could. If I found a tome that had anything to do with the process of cultivation, I read it. If I stumbled across a scroll that discussed techniques and abilities one could incorporate into their arsenal, I absorbed it. I would spend twelve hours here, plumbing the very depths of this Library for the secrets of reaching the Heavens, and then I’d spend another twelve hours in the training yard, bringing my muscles to just as much exhaustion as my brain felt. Somewhere in that schedule I’d find the time to eat and sleep, but I couldn’t remember exactly when.

Those six months had been a heady time, when I truly felt like I had a chance at beating the Heavens. It was then that I had first met Doctor Lei, and decided it was worth the risk to my life and internal organs to learn the secrets of medical cultivation from a master. It was also then that I met the Head Librarian, who had guided me to the knowledge I so desperately sought. He’d insisted I call him Brother Yun, and I felt for a moment that I’d met a kindred spirit.

“Senior Librarian,” I now greeted him, the one-time familiarity now replaced with an uncomfortable, cold formality. “I hope you’ve been well.”

The massive ape behind the desk snorted, thick plumes of smoke rushing out of his nostrils as he pulled the pipe from his mouth. “Well, if it isn’t Young Ryan in the flesh. What a pleasure for such a promising disciple to make the time to see me.”

Contrary to his words, the Senior Librarian’s thick hair had raised across his body, and his lips had peeled back in a snarl to reveal a vicious set of teeth. I could see the way his hands were clenching, as if desperate for something to tear apart, that something probably being me. Really, it was impressive how one’s words could be so at odds with themselves.

I was quite familiar with the curiosity of the Senior Librarian’s differences. He had probably been my first and only friend here in the Sect, a bond strengthened through a mutual background and mutual desire to grow stronger and surpass those who’d started off so far ahead. He was a story of success in that regard, and I saw him as a mentor, just as he likely saw me as a junior to help along.

That he inhabited the body of some species of gargantuan ape hadn’t been much of a concern after the first meeting. The one time I’d asked about it, he simply said it had been part of his own tribulations, and even as he’d grown powerful enough to revert the change he found himself quite comfortable with the once-punishment. It made it easier to navigate the sprawling halls of the library, or so he said. That, and it scared those who’d otherwise disrespect his domain and the books inside. We’d chuckled quite heartily over that, I remember.

It didn’t seem quite so funny now that I was on the other end of it. “I really do apologise, Senior Librarian Yun. The last while has been challenging for me.”

After those first six months, I’d finally run out of the initial stipend that had been given to me by the Sect. Where before I could eat from the cafeteria every day, consuming qi-enriched meats to strengthen my body and special elixirs to keep my mind sharp through long days of cultivation, I now had no money for any of those things, not without cutting into my training regime. And even as I had first raced ahead of the other new Disciples, I’d begun to fall behind those rich enough to simply call back home for all the resources they could ever desire.

I’d tried to keep up with the previous pace for a month. Even as my muscles failed me, and my mind fell into a sluggish haze. Without the fancy foods, without the cultivation aids, I’d tried to push through just through sheer determination. It didn’t matter that I’d spend hours reading the same page of a book, unable to incorporate the knowledge. I ignored it when my body screamed at me for rest as I pushed through another kata.

But in my furious advancement, I’d made enemies, and they were all too eager to remind me as I slowed to a crawl. One by one, they would find the time to ‘exchange pointers’ with me, breaking an ankle, dislocating a shoulder, and even at one point knocking out several of my teeth. It took Doctor Lei telling me that I’d exhausted my ‘free credit’ with him for me to finally realise that I had to stop.

Once I’d recovered and found myself in the dreadful position of owing the Witch Doctor one thousand yuan, I went to the Sect’s job board and got to work. And that was how I had spent the last two and near-half years; I’d become another small cog within the Sect, a courier and cook and salesperson, just one of thousands of Outer Disciples who kept their heads down and slowly, patiently cultivated.

And not once in all that time had I returned to the Library.

“So busy as to not have any time at all in the past two years and four months,” the Ape said, eyes narrowing as he leaned across the desk, towering over me even from his cross-legged position. “And what has kept you so busy, might I ask? Is it carrying sacks of rice like some common labourer? Or perhaps killing rats, like an exterminator? Are the hours of the Visitor’s information centre so inflexible as to keep you from ever setting foot in my Library? Has all that been so much more difficult than when you first arrived here, where you fought so hard for your right to challenge the heavens? Because looking at you, I can’t see what could possibly be so exacting.”

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“Yun-”

“Daring such familiarity after refusing to show your face?” The Senior Librarian snarled, leaning across the desk, the air itself bending around his form in a mirage of heat, as the rage under his dark, furred skin bubbled. “Watch your words, Ryan, and respect those who try.”

It wasn’t just anger that lurked beneath his skin. Having seen it from the other side so many times, I could detect those faintest differences in the fury directed my way. The challenge in Yun’s eyes, prompting me to respond. To lash out and defend myself, to let out all that bitterness within me. I would’ve done that, once. I had done it, to all those nobles that thought I didn’t deserve to raise my head.

Try? All I do is try! Every last moment, from dawn till dusk, is spent scraping out a miserable, pathetic existence in this gods-forsaken Sect! If there were any path to Heaven built solely on the sweat and tears poured into it, I would already be there, damn you! Instead I watch the undeserving be supported by the uncaring, and I am left to be judged by hypocritical bastards like-

I exhaled minutely, and bowed lower. “You’re right, Senior Librarian. It’s above my station to refer to you in such a manner. If you would have my apology, Senior Librarian, I will make no further bother to you. I will simply go and find the scrolls I seek.”

With my eyes firmly fixed on the floor, I only knew Yun’s response by the temperature in the air. It hovered at scalding dryness for a few seconds, but soon evaporated, leaving behind just the natural coolness of the library.

“I accept your apology, Outer Disciple,” the Ape grunted, leaning back once more and returning his pipe to its place in his mouth. “Go do whatever it is you believe is necessary, and stay out of my sight. I’m afraid that I’m busy with more important matters.”

With that, he turned his focus to the papers and scrolls scattered across his desk, and I moved on to the Library beyond, disappearing into the shelves and leaving the Senior Librarian behind. Only once I was absolutely sure I was outside of his range of hearing did I lean against one of the shelves, taking a slow, deep breath as I did my best to settle my nerves, emptying my mind of some self-righteous tirade.

And then I began looking for information on Death. My path into the stacks had taken me down my usual route, in the direction of the cultivation aides, but that wasn’t my target for today. Instead, I turned my foot towards…I paused. Where would one find information on Death?

I would have once asked Yun, but that wasn’t an option now. And considering how broad the topic was, I might be better served by asking each of my questions first, and figuring out where to go from there. And so I walked in the direction of the mythology and folklore section, with my very first question in mind:

What exactly is Death?

Death was as I’d always known it to be; the end to all mortal things upon this plane. Few of the books were able to offer up any more information than what a village midwife or a shepherd could easily confirm. The only truly novel information I learnt came from a quick walk over to medicine and biology, where some exhaustive tomes just confirmed that some particular beast could in fact die if one applied sufficient force.

I was also able to confirm another thing I’d been certain of there; Cultivators couldn’t die, not easily. For someone who was far enough along in their path, it would take the complete and utter destruction of their body to kill them. If one failed to do this, then the Cultivator’s body would just get back up again. Without a conscious mind to guide it, it would then become a monster of one kind or another. The Sect had been very clear on educating every new Disciple on the consequences of fighting other Cultivators and not finishing the job, which they insisted required the immediate and vigorous application of fire.

Of course, if one were to find the body and take it before it became an Abomination, then naturally the corpse would be filled to the brim with whatever power the latent Cultivator had possessed. This was very pointedly not in any of the books I picked up, but a piece of cursed knowledge that Doctor Lei had left in my head. I was sure any of the books with that information would be behind lock and key, like Doctor Lei should have been. I cleared my head once more, and moved on.

Why didn’t Death take me?

The next of my questions took me away from biology and towards early cultivation instead. There was a particular moment in one’s Cultivation where the soul was so anchored to the body that things like decapitations became nuisances rather than endings. The aptly-named Soul Anchoring phase was also appropriately where the bar for being a ‘true’ Cultivator was set, and as I had known already, I was nowhere near that bar. So, no matter the preparations I had put into refining my body and soul, the connection between the two were still sufficiently mortal enough that they broke under the shock of the Inner Disciple turning the bones in my ribcage into festival confetti.

Again, all of this confirmed the things I’d already known. And in what scrolls I could find that explored the existence of this connection, few went into deeper detail on what it meant to have that section so thoroughly severed. Some discussed how near-fatal strikes could strengthen that bond, but I had the word of Doctor Lei that I hadn’t even had a single point left where my soul should have connected to my body.

For this question, there were no answers. There was no existence that could survive without a soul driving its body. Abominations did still possess a soul, they merely had no mind driving them. Beings of pure soul existed, such as spirits, but they manifested through the bodies of others, or were intimately connected with such things as rivers and mountains; they still possessed that link to the mortal world.

My continued existence had become an enigma. Nothing in the texts before me could explain how I was able to read them. Several discussed the possibility that I was simply living out the fevered dream of a mind that was already dead. Others suggested that I had maybe lived a virtuous enough life that I’d already reached the Heavens. One said I should stop personalising text so much and get on with answering my questions.

I listened to that last one, and considered the last, and strangest of the mysteries that circled around in my head.

Why is Death a farm girl?

The first few books that I pulled out about farm girls were immediately returned to their shelves, where they’d hopefully never see the light of day ever again.

The ones after that, carefully screened and selected by virtue of not having art of half-dressed peasant women within their covers, were less invigorating but still far from enlightening. The forms in which Death appeared was a much-discussed topic, but only because the writers seemed to believe it was more a matter of opinion or personal experience than cold hard fact. The only tomes that made a definitive stance on the appearance of Death were all religious in some manner, and their depiction of the Reaper of Souls fell towards black robes and white bones rather than beige work-shirt and tanned skin.

Scrolls, tapestries, paintings, pottery; so many hundreds of thousands of ways to represent mortality, and none of them were right. Perhaps it was some growing insanity within me that forced me to reject all the other options out of hand, but what else could I do? I had seen her, been so close as to touch her if my body hadn’t been in the process of dying. She had stood right above me, scythe ready to cleave forth and take my soul away, and she had stopped.

Why? Why was Death a farm girl? Why had she been there for my duel? Why had she sounded so angry about cultivators? Why hadn’t she finished the job? Why didn’t Death take me?

…

The questions revolved around in my mind. Again and again, spinning by so fast, spinning out new threads, new thoughts, new tangents that all demanded my attention. And at the centre of it all, something moved.

Well…

It was an idea. It formed amid that storm of thought, nestled in between a few questions for just a moment before it was cast off to bounce with the others. Questions connected to it, stuck to the idea for just a few moments before releasing it once again. As the idea bounced, the storm began to slow; that idea had begun to drink from the questions, quelling their frenzy and taking that energy unto itself. As the questions finally settled, I was left alone in my head for the first time in days.

With just one thing to consider.

…

Why couldn’t I just ask her?