I kept running for a few minutes longer, just in case Dr. Lei decided he wanted to investigate my claims of mortality for himself. As it was, by the time I finally slowed to a walk I was well outside the hospital’s boundaries, and had made it back into the hustle and bustle, falling into the crowd as but one of hundreds of Outer Disciples, and only one of thousands of the many who called the Sect their home.
To put a name to every face here would be an impossible task; they ranged from teamsters and haulers, working together to deliver basic mortal necessities to the various shops and restaurants, to the less burly but significantly stronger Disciples who carried their own cargo of immortal necessities that would end up in the storerooms of alchemists or the stomachs of higher ranked cultivators. Here and there you would even see a few of those lofty ones, their blue or gold robes forcing the masses to part around them like sheep before the wolf. Even more rare were the few who did not part, immediately recognisable as outsiders that stood and gawked, occasionally needing to be physically pulled out of the way before they got trampled.
Not that I could blame them, considering the views. The Seven Falls sect was more than some petty gathering of so-called cultivators; it was the greatest Sect for thousands of miles, and its prestige was clear in every marble slab and mahogany awning of the illustrious buildings around us. Here, hundreds of thousands of mortals and thousands of disciples lived and breathed cultivation, with a history stretching back ten thousand years.
The only thing that could hope to match its grandiosity was the very wonder that the Sect was built upon; seven gargantuan waterfalls that were audible even through the clamour of the crowds, their unceasing flow rising in volume in those spaces in between the cliff-top islands on which the Sect was built. There, standing on top of ancient bridges carved from single pieces of silver and stone, you could look down to where the falls rushed between the islands and crashed down a mile below, splitting into vast rivers that reached towards the horizon.
I knew that if I looked, I could trace the curves of the largest river, and pretend to see the village that was once my home. If I were a more powerful cultivator I’m sure I could see it in truth; that small little farmhouse where I was raised, where my mother spoke to me of how blessed I was for being born to the First Son, the greatest of the Seven Siblings that descended from the Tzangtze.
For a young farm boy who had thought the First Son was his entire world, the Burial Fault and the Seven Falls that poured from them might as well have been the Heavens themselves. To have been chosen by the Sect’s recruiters, to be granted the opportunity to ascend those heights and join them as a Cultivator, was an opportunity like no other.
To that young boy looking out over the Sect, he saw a promise. Those gleaming palaces represented that first rung on the ladder he’d climb away from his lowly station, to become greater than the circumstances of his birth. Just as the Sect defied the roaring Falls, he would surely defy the Heavens, and become the greatest Cultivator the world had ever known!
Ten minutes later, I stood in front of my shack, and gently pulled at the decrepit door. After a small battle against rust and gravity, the poor thing fell to the ground with a loud thud that easily echoed out along the street. Other outer disciples, preoccupied with their own troubles or with performing maintenance on their own hovels, ignored the second-most common sound of the Initiate’s Alley.
Supposedly the ramshackle nature of the Alley was meant to be a challenge to the dignity of a cultivator, and force them to push themselves forward through might and grit. What actually happened was the initiate’s from rich backgrounds quickly found the yuan and sect points to upgrade to the nicer suites closer to the training grounds, and those from poor backgrounds stole the doors and beds from their now-empty huts.
And, in my absence from my own shack, someone had clearly seen me as a valid target and stolen my door, replacing it with one so old that it had probably gained a Hundred Year Spirit.
“Got hit, eh?” my neighbour asks, standing next to me.
“It’s my fault,” I replied, staring at the door now lying across the Alley. “I’ve been at the tender mercies of Doctor Lei for the past few days.”
“Now there’s some bad luck,” my neighbour clicked his tongue. “You’d think people like us would catch a break.”
“Good fortune comes to us all eventually. Your door, for example.”
And now my neighbour took a step back, eyes narrowing. “What about it?”
I glanced between my neighbour’s wary stance, and the door to his own shack; a door which I had called my own a few nights ago. “It’s as the Sect says; the only providence is one you take for yourself.”
“Ha!” Relaxed again, my fellow disciple came forward and slung an arm around my shoulder. “It’s true, y’know. Sorry, but my own had been taken by Vincent just a few blocks down, and-”
His next words were interrupted as my right hand came up to his neck, and I fixed him with the deadest look I could muster. “The Sect also says that it is the privilege of a good soul to pass on their fortune to others. So unless you feel less attached to your limbs than you do my door…”
Five minutes later, with an eyeful of daggers from my less-friendly neighbour and with my true door firmly back in place, I settled down in the middle of my shack to examine my belongings, grimacing at the results. It was clear that in the few days I’d been gone, one of the storms common to the Seven Falls had passed through. With my original door replaced with one barely fit to be called such, the rain had got in through the gaps, leaving nearly the entire floor covered in a shallow puddle.
I quickly got to work, pulling the soaked straw bed outside to dry in the sun. My spare set of robes that had been left atop it were damp, but that didn’t concern me. What was more important were the few papers wrapped within, the rough paper slightly crumpled and ever so slightly wet with water. With some careful extraction, I was able to hang them up from some loose twine stretched across the glassless windows of my shack, hung like a delicate set of sun-shades, light bleeding through the yellowed parchment and illuminating the crudely-written characters upon them.
None of those letters were particularly long, nor were they particularly detailed; they spoke of simple lives led in a small village along the banks of the First Son. In crude letters made with charcoal and oil, they detailed the simple lives of a few mortals, who did their best with what little they had.
I stood there for a moment, staring out through the window of my little shack, wondering what those mortals would think of their son now. Whether they’d be shocked at my living conditions, a hovel even worse than the small one room house we had all lived in. Whether they would be proud of all the work I had put in, all the blood and sweat I’d shed to push myself as a cultivator. Whether they’d be sympathetic that I had become just another unfortunate casualty of an Inner Disciple.
That, at least, was still a shared experience between me and my parents; no matter how my life had changed in the years since I’d joined the sect, we were still all ants compared to those cultivators. What did it matter that we struggled, when our efforts were so far beneath them? And if by some miracle our efforts were enough to attract their attention, then what else would one do when confronted with an insect?
I didn’t even notice the ruffling of cloth at first, so light was the touch against my own robes. I kept my head down and walked onwards, focusing instead on the eight hours of manning the Sect’s information office in mind-
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“Beloved! Did you not see that? Did you not notice the piece of trash who dared disturb you?”
At this, I froze, and looked back at the voice shouting after me, blood already freezing in my veins. Had I drawn the attention of one of the more powerful Outer Disciples? There was a reason I’d stayed away from the sparring grounds, now that I could no longer afford to match their development.
“Look at the scum now, how his only concern is that he’s been caught.”
But when I turned fully, what I saw weren’t grey robes trimmed with the silver leaf to identify those who’d caught the favour of the Outer Guardians. Their clothes were instead a pale blue, like the mist that hung above the Falls in the early morning. I felt pure confusion at the sight. What were Inner Disciples doing here in the common areas?
“And now he stares at us with dumb eyes. Does he not know he stares at his betters?”
Pure fear returned to my heart. Whether or not Inner Disciples should be here, I would not survive explaining that to them. But even as my cultivation waned, I still possessed abilities that would leave any other Outer Disciple in awe. I knew exactly how to handle these Cultivators who towered above me.
I immediately fell to the ground, pressing my forehead against the cool wooden path, hands at either side. “This lowly disciple apologises for his insolence! Please forgive me!”
Already, I could feel the technique working its magic. The other blue-robed disciples put me out of their minds, an ant so far below their consideration that I’d become invisible to their eyes. Even the one who I’d brushed against let out a considering hum at my words.
But it seemed I’d made a convenient target of myself today, for the woman who’d called me out wasn’t done yet. “He grovels, but a worthless toad should know better than to disturb a member of the Wenhua Clan. Beloved, perhaps an exchange of pointers would teach him a lesson.”
I’d finally been stepped on.
And standing there in my shack, with two sets of threadbare robes and a door that was already starting to fall off its hinges, staring at letters from a family who I hadn’t seen in three years, I wondered whether I would ever reach the heavens.
I’d already made great sacrifices to be here, and more sacrifices after that to simply hold on for as long as I could, like a drowning man hanging on to a piece of driftwood. Was it worth the struggle, if it could all end so ingloriously? I could let go, and simply lie back, taking in my last breaths as I stared at the sky above.
A yellow sky, with characters written upon it like a great constellation.
Gingerly, I pulled one of the letters off the string, allowing the unfiltered light of the day to pass through the open window once more. With most of the water dried off by the sun, I carefully coaxed the crumpled page open, careful not to smudge the cheap ink that had begun to run from the moisture.
Ryan,
The sheep are well. We were blessed with two lambs, though one was given back to the Cycle.
Your mother misses you. She hopes you are eating enough. You can’t reach the heavens on an empty stomach.
The River has been good, and the fishers needed every hand. Spend it wisely.
I could see the fishers now, throwing out massive nets into the First Son and wrestling against the current, pulling in a bounty of salmon and trout. I could see my father among them, sweating under the boiling sun as he hauled in a harvest of fish and gutted and scaled them in their hundreds. He would work from sunrise to sunset, and when he returned home with his pay in hand he would set every single coin but one into an envelope, with the last saved for the merchant who would eventually deliver it into my hands.
With one hand, I ran my fingers alongside my necklace. In total, it amounted to one thousand four hundred and twenty yuan, a fortune for a mortal. And for all of my father’s efforts, I could afford twenty bowls of rice from the Sect’s cafeteria, three pounds of spiritually enriched meat from the Sect’s butchers, or one cultivation pill from the Sect’s alchemists.
To waste the money so frivolously would be an insult to my father’s only request of me. To not spend it at all would be its own betrayal. So instead it sat around my neck, growing heavier and heavier.
I sighed, leaning against the wall as I watched the letters slowly dry, listening to the gentle clink of the coins against each other as I fiddled with the necklace. A few days ago, trying my best to eke out an existence here and agonising over whether it was worth spending my family’s money would have been the greatest of my concerns, with actually reaching the heavens being a distant second.
Funny how quickly death can change your perspective on life, because now none of those things seem to matter at all. Instead, thoughts of that strange girl filled my mind, that stranger who’d stood out from the masses of cultivators who had come to witness my execution. The one who remained long after the rest of them had left, her scythe in hand ready to return me to the Cycle.
So why didn’t Death take me?
Death was the end of all mortal things. When one’s soul is severed from their body, Death was meant to arrive to carry that soul away, so that it could reincarnate in a new body. And yet, for reasons that not even the gods could know, she’d hesitated, even as her scythe had hung above me to deliver me onwards to the next life. The mystery of that rattled around in my head, on why she had stopped at the very last moment. And, of all those questions that filled my mind, it was the simplest one of all that was loudest:
Why was Death a farm girl?
The myths had always said that Death used a scythe to collect souls. Perhaps the answer was as obvious as, who else was more qualified to use a scythe? But one would think then that the Harbinger of the End would at least appear wrapped in a deep cloak to cover either an excess of muscle or an absolute lack thereof. Instead she…was a she. And for some reason, that fact had caught my mind in a trap.
Why did it even matter?
I was alive. I was healthy, even. The potions that the Inner Disciple had foisted upon my corpse had put me in the best physical state I’d been in months. With such a blessing, I should simply return to my normal existence of doing jobs and scraping by as a cultivator. Would that not be the reasonable thing to do?
I looked around my hovel, at the letters that had mostly dried in the time I’d spent thinking. I stared at the pile of robes that sat in a sodden heap upon the floor, a reflection of my own existence here at the Sect; too worn, too miserable, only holding together through the barest sense of determination that was more akin to a simple inertia of purpose, lacking any other reason for continuing on. Was that really a life? Could I even consider my existence living? I ate, I slept, I trained diligently and I worked away for the Sect, as my dreams faded to dust.
And again and again, my fingers traced the rough edges of the coins around my neck. Maybe Death was just a reflection of my own longing. My thoughts in that last moment had drifted home, and so the Harbinger appeared in that form to make the passage easier. It would’ve been a small mercy, but still greater than any I’d received here in this Sect. I was ready to go.
…
But even if I wasn’t meant to be a cultivator, I still had a bit more time upon this world. And if Death had seen fit to grant me a reprieve, I’d find a way to put it to use. There were unanswered questions about that girl and her scythe, and I wanted to find out their answers.
I shook my head, and carefully gathered up the rest of the letters, making sure that they were all dry before folding them and placing them inside my robes against my chest; it wasn’t worth leaving them in the shack just to get wet again. I hung my robes in the window next, where they would hopefully still be there by the next time I returned.
And without a glance to my straw bed or my door I left my shack behind, ignoring the most common sound of the Alley breaking out behind me as my neighbours converged upon my hovel like a pack of piranhas. Instead, I turned my focus to the next challenge, on how I would get the answers I sought on the mysteries of Death itself.
And how I would survive that process, I thought grimly, as I began making my way towards the Great Library of the Seven Falls Sect.