SIX YEARS AGO - Feng Sai, Fourteen

It wasn’t fair.

He stripped away my entire future with a single sentence. He arrived in the dead of night like a ghost. Father had woken us from our rooms and brought us before him.

I tasted blood on my tongue from biting my lip. The floor was cold where I pressed my forehead, kowtowed. I looked up.

“There’s no way for him to advance?” Dad asked. No, the Patriarch of the Feng family asked. His eyes fell on me like the weight of the world. There was no love in them. They were cold, dark and calculating. “Keep your head down, boy. Be respectful. This Venerable has come a long way; be grateful he has shown you any attention whatsoever.”

The Patriarch’s aura fell over me like a heavy blanket. I could feel his emotions through his exerted qi. Disappointment. Failure.

“There has to be a way.” I choked out.

All my life I struggled to cultivate. I reached the peak of the First Realm at only twelve. I had been lauded as a genius. And then I had stalled there for two years.

“The way is closed for this one.” The foreign cultivator said. He hadn’t even looked at me once the entire time he had been here. Just the cold brush of his qi washing over me before he had dismissed me entirely. And now… “He cannot be a proper heir for the Feng family.”

Why did we have to listen to this man at all?

The Patriarch grunted.

“Jin, come here.” Father said.

I heard the sound of my younger brother stumble forward across the hardwood floor. He hit the ground next to me with a thump. Father’s aura receded from me.

“Yes, this one will do.” The foreign cultivator said.

“The Feng Family will serve.” My father said.

My little brother, who had not even crossed a minor stage of the First Realm, earned the acknowledgment of the foreign cultivator. And I lost everything.

Over the next year, they took away my estate, my cultivation teachers, and most of my inheritance, leaving me with only a few mortal lands to tithe. The full support of the family shifted to my younger brother, who had spent his years playing and studying useless arts.

They pushed me away from the public spotlight and lowered my seating at the banquet tables. I was no longer their honorable son.

At the time, I had thought they left me to rot and die. But those were just the childish thoughts of my teenage years. At the age of fifteen, five years ago, I started to learn that I still had more than most would ever dream of.

FIVE YEARS AGO - Feng Sai, Fifteen

I stopped wearing clothes for combat and started wearing clothes for comfort. I hosted my own banquets with just my closest servants, setting myself at the highest seat. I ate to my hearts content.

And I hired my own combat and cultivation instructors. They were nothing like what the family could afford. But they stroked my ego and assuaged my pride.

“You are truly the most noble heir of the Feng family!” One of the instructors sitting at my side said. He rested a hand on my shoulder. “That boy Jin could never compare to you.”

After a year, the dull ache of a stolen future remained. I frowned at the mention of my younger brother’s name. I was supposed to inherit this entire city and the surrounding territories. Now I would rise to nothing more than a vassal.

My teacher’s eyes widened at my frown. Only a few months ago, that would’ve put me in higher spirits.

“I no longer wish to talk about my younger brother.” I said, staring down at my plate.

My brother would reach immortality.

With only a year of focused teaching and practice, he had almost caught up to my years of cultivation. And I had made no progress.

My brother would become immortal, and I would die. I was already older than him.

The family kept him away from me. And my father didn’t even acknowledge me as his son anymore.

“How do they do it?” I asked. Then I raised my voice, speaking directly to my closest attendant. “Wen, how do the mortals live, knowing that life has an end?”

The banquet fell mostly quiet. I continued staring at my plate.

Feng Wen took a long moment to reply. He had been with me since young, one of the only attendants who wasn’t taken away from me. Attendant and body guard.

“I believe the best way to understand that is to walk among them.” Feng Wen said.

That night, I packed a train of wagons full of my favorite foods and joined the road south to head for the closest of the territories I owned. The journey was weeks over land. A cultivator of a high enough realm would have been able to cross the distance in under a day on a flying sword.

I imagined cultivators flying through the sky as I watched the horizon outside the wagon’s windows. Great canopies of trees shook beneath gray skies. Rain sprinkled the horizon and distant beasts cried out in the untamed wilderness.

Wen sat across from me in the wagon, arms folded. He was old, beard a speckled gray and head bald. A heavy beaded necklace hung from his neck over intricate, black Feng Family robes. The robes were as good as armor in a cultivator’s hands.

“Tell me about your life as a mortal, before you were adopted.” I said.

“There is little to tell you without the context. It is easier to show you.” Wen said.

“How?” I asked, without expectation. Just a dull bit of curiosity. Wen didn’t possess the kind of techniques to transfer memory.

“We’re almost to the city.” He said. “We will avoid the parade. I will show you the real lives of mortals.”

We changed into nondescript robes and jumped from the wagon train as we approached the city. We joined our guards in walking alongside the wagons. I felt my face contort as mud from the road clung to my shoes and pantlegs.

Even as we approached the blocked gate to the city, the sound of a festival roared out from the other side. There were no other wagons here in line, just rows of guards ready to greet a young master of the Feng family.

Above the wall, someone was beating a rythym on a massive drum.

“Now welcoming the second young master of the Feng Family!”

I flinched at the welcome. I had lived fourteen years as the first young master. That even the mortals knew of my fall… that even the mortals looked down on me…

As one, the guards around the caravan — including Wen — saluted fist to chest. I joined the ritual a second late.

The gate’s hinges creaked in protest as the huge metal doors began to open inward, and a roar of cheering erupted from the parade on the city streets.

I stuck close to Wen’s side as we entered. Mortal commoners threw flowers and cheered for the procession. After two streets, Wen grabbed my arm and walked into an alley away from the procession. Then he dropped the hood from his head.

“What is there to see?” I asked as we stepped into the dark alley. The streets were thankfully clear of mud. Instead, trash piled into the corners. Doors opened into the back of houses. Mortals stared from out of their windows.

“The city’s wealthiest attend the parades.” Wen said. “That is not how most of the city lives.”

He led me deeper into the alleys. The buildings were run down, patched together out of rotting wood.

A man stepped forward from an alley with a knife — Wen was on him in a second.

His arm snapped. I stared as he spent a solid minute screaming.

“You barely broke his bone. Why is he still going?” I asked. Wen stood over the man, arms folded.

“He is just a boy.” Wen said.

The boy on the ground looked the same age as me.

“What are we doing here?” I asked. We stood over the man as he slowly quieted.

“What the hell are you?” He asked Wen, staring up. He was crying. Blood leaked from his arm.

Wen leaned down beside him.

“This is the young master of the Feng family. Pay your respects.”

“Fuck you.” The man said.

Wen chuckled.

“Should we… break his other arm for that?” I asked. Normally, when a commoner disrespected the Feng family, it often resulted in an immediate execution. Many did that. Father said that commoners didn’t know what was best for them.

But this was new, uncertain territory. I didn’t know where Wen was leading me.

The young man spat on Wen, which made him chuckle harder.

“This boy has fire in his spirit. Do I have your permission to heal him?”

“Will it help me better understand how mortals live?” I asked, still staring at the defiant snarl of the boy.

“I think so.”

“Then you have my permission.”

“Hold still now, boy. I have to line your bones up or they’ll fuse improperly.”

Wen picked the boy up like he was a feral cat. The boy kicked and thrashed, but Wen ignored him, overpowering him with one hand as he lined the boys arm up, fixing the odd angle it had bent at. He fed the boy a pill which led to more screaming as his arm snapped back together.

Tears covered his face.

“Please, just don’t hurt my family.” The boy said. He was no longer angry. He was begging now.

“Take us to them.” Wen told him.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The streets turned tight as the city turned to slums. The parade was so far behind us that I couldn’t hear anymore. In a few hours, I would be expected at the city’s banquet.

“What’s your name?” Wen asked the boy. Wen gripped one of the boys arms, stopping him from running.

“I am called Fang.” He said.

“Fang.” Wen chuckled. “How auspicious.”

He led us to a tiny house. We would have to crouch to enter the doorway. He looked at us with fear.

“Please don’t hurt my family.” Fang said. His eyes were pleading.

Wen looked at me.

“We won’t.” I said.

Wen let go of Fang, who pushed the door open. It creaked.

The ground was packed earth. We stepped inside. Barely any light entered through the windows in the tiny alleys around the house.

“Mom! I’m home. I brought… guests.” Fang said. He eagerly licked his fingers and tried to rub away the dried blood on his arm.

“Guests?” A womans voice asked from another room. There was banging and a grunt as she pushed herself out of a bedroom. Her hair was a frazzled mess and she was pale as a ghost.

Fang didn’t meet her eyes.

The woman coughed.

“Little Fang, why didn’t you tell me you were bringing guests? I will make food.” She said. She looked me and Wen up and down before struggling across the room to a tiny sink full of water. “Please, sit!”

Fang led us to a table of splintered wood, surrounded by mismatched, creaking chairs that sat unevenly. There were enough seats for three.

Wen stood beside us, staring at the woman as she pulled out chicken bones and struggled to start a fire to cook them.

“Your furniture looks like you collected it from a dump.” I told Fang. His mother slumped over in the corner.

“We take what we can get. Do you know how expensive furniture is?” Fang asked.

“No.” I said.

Wen walked across the room and put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. She flinched.

“Allow me to cook for you.” He said.

“We — ”

“Allow me.” He said. She startled. Wen guided her across the room, sitting her down in the chair across from us.

She coughed again before looking between me and Fang.

Her eyes analyzed me.

I had never had a mom. I stared back.

“I am called Lin.” She said, doing her best attempt at a smile. Many of her teeth were missing. Her face was gaunter up close.

To the side, I heard Wen summon pots and pans from his storage ring, banging them together.

“I am Fe — ” I stopped, not using my family name. “Apologies. I am called Sai.” I said, trying my best to smile earnestly back.

Lin’s eyes narrowed, then her eyes flashed between me and Wen’s back. He was pulling out an entire kitchen — including tables. Half of the space filled up. Fang also stared dumbly at the display.

“I hope my boy didn’t give you too much trouble.” She said. She turned to look at Fang, examining him more closely, and she paled at the sight of dried blood on his arm.

Fang continued staring at the table.

“He’s in good health.” I said, unsure of what else to say. “We… he broke his arm, and we healed it.”

“Oh. Oh!” Lin said, smiling.

“What is your family name?” I asked. She frowned.

“We have no family name.” She said.

“You weren’t given one? Why don’t you pick one?” I asked, confused.

Lin laughed, then coughed. Fang continued staring at the table.

“We have no need for anything that fancy.” She smiled cynically at herself. “Fang, have you thanked this nice boy for healing you?”

Fang looked up, locking eyes with me. His face hardened, then softened.

“Thank you.” He said.

“You’re welcome.” I replied earnestly. We hadn’t executed him. That was more than mortals deserved.

Lin repeatedly swallowed, making a chewing motion as Wen cooked and the house filled with spices. He brought plates to the table — Feng Family plates, complete with the character for our family name on the bottom — and we ate.

Fang and Lin ate with their hands, throwing the food back as fast as they could.

“Could I trouble you for another round?” Lin asked.

I smiled.

“I love food.” I said. “This noodle dish features meat we imported from the Ice Mountain Sect. They say it comes from a great spirit beast. Wen, shall we have a second round?”

Wen hadn’t put the kitchen away, but he shook his head no.

“It’s a bad idea to eat too much while starving. You could go into shock.” He said.

Lin’s face dropped, her expression going hollow.

“Starving?” I asked.

Fang slapped the table, rising to his feet. His expression turned angry.

“I told you to eat first. Have you not been eating? Where has all the money I’ve been bringing home been going?”

“Little Fang… I can’t use blood money.” Lin said. Her hands were shaking on the table. I could seen the veins in them.

“It’s not — I haven’t killed anyone!” Fang shouted.

“You think I don’t know! You think your mother doesn’t know! Who raised you to rob people?!” She said, raising her own voice. Then she quieted, turning to me and Wen, and bowing over a clasped fist salute. “Sorry for yelling in your presence, young master.”

Fang’s face shifted from anger to his mom to horror as he realized.

“You… you’re Feng Sai.” Fang said. His expression turned back to anger. “Fuck you! And your entire family!”

Lin went pale as a ghost as Fang stomped around the table and to the door.

“Should I stop him, young master?”

“Let him go.” I said as he stomped out into the alley. As he opened the door, a man leered inside.

“Lin?” He asked. “What is that smell?”

There was a mob in the alley. The smell of spirit beast meat and spice was beyond pungeant; dozens of people had lined up.

“Come inside.” Wen said with authority. The man stepped in. Wen dragged Fang’s seat around to be near the door and invited the man to sit, putting a plate in front of him.

“This… what is the price?” The man asked. There was fear in his eyes.

“Just answer a few of this young man’s questions.” Wen said.

I leaned forward.

“Are you starving?” I asked.

“And don’t lie.” Wen said.

We spent two hours interviewing and feeding the people on the street.

“Why don’t you just buy more food?” I asked.

There wasn’t enough for everyone. It cost too much.

“Why don’t you just work?” I asked.

They had kids to raise. Illnesses to overcome.

“Doesn’t the governer offer work?”

The mining sapped their lives. They paid a cost in years that they didn’t earn back in coin.

“Can’t you cultivate?”

Laughter. Realization. He was serious. Cultivation is unreachable to mortals.

“Don’t you hate the feeling of being powerless to change your destiny?”

We all are powerless to change our destiny.

And on and on and on.

Two hours later, we attended the governer’s banquet.

This was my city. I owned it. Every cultivator owned hundreds of territories, given to us like investments in our youth, our spending money coming directly from their taxes and exports. I owned a dozen territories like this one that I had never visited.

The local business and land owners laughed and celebrated my presence at the banquet. I stared at the furniture. Fine wood, hand carved and imported. Rugs that cost more than Lin’s house. Half eaten plates of food.

They wasted more food than Lin’s family would ever see.

I couldn’t enjoy the banquets anymore.

We spent a month in the city.

“Can’t we feed them all?” I asked Wen.

“We can. We can afford to feed them in every city under your control. But that won’t fix the underlying problems.”

I had enough money. And my cultivation was barely advancing. I didn’t need to invest in so much spirit stone if I couldn’t even use all of it.

“But we can start there.” I said. “Feed them all. And find a better candidate for governor.”

FOUR YEARS AGO - Feng Sai, Sixteen

Cultivator’s didn’t care about their people. Just the resources they extracted. Rock by rock and grain by grain.

Our Feng Family’s had built an empire atop the spirit stone mines that were rich throughout our country, but our family was uninterested in the geology that enabled them. A few months ago, a mining foreman who had risen through the recently implemented exam system pleaded for an audience.

He offered incomplete maps of the spirit stone veins throughout our territory. And the maps displayed half of a pattern. The spirit stones all emanated from a single region in our territory.

We agreed to his request, collecting data from the dozen territories to build a complete picture. Dead in the center of the land I controlled, and in the center of the spirit veins that ran through our entire country was a stretch of desert, lifeless land filled with ruins and abandoned to the wild.

“It doesn’t make any sense.” I said.

Fang sat across from me, scratching his head.

“Maybe the spirit stones here are deeper underground here?” He said.

“We need to build an expedition, Wen.” I said, staring at the map. “We will need to import enough food for the laborers. Can we borrow cultivator labor to build some quick residences for the first wave of people?”

“You’re planning on digging out the desert, young master?” Wen asked.

I chuckled.

“Kai is the leading… what did they call their school?”

“Geolojist.” Fang said.

“Geologist.” I said. “The leading geologist. If nothing else, we might learn something to help us in the existing mines. Dedicate a year to it. If nothing comes of it, then that’s fine too.”

THREE YEARS AGO - Feng Sai, Seventeen

“I’m sorry.” I said, putting a hand on Fang’s shoulder.

“Isn’t there something we could’ve done? Anything?” Fang asked. Tears streamed down his face.

Hundreds of people gathered for his mother’s funeral.

“She was sick.” Wen said.

I stared at the giant painting of her above a shrine of offerings. It was… exaggerated in her features. But I wasn’t going to comment on it. I had learned better than that.

“This is the fate of all mortals.” I said, crossing my arms.

“It can’t be.” Fang said. “This can’t just be it. We’ve done so much. Fixed the slums. Fed hundreds of people. And she dies for what! Because she grew up poor!?” Fang was shouting.

“Only cultivators can deny mortality.” I replied.

“Then let’s do that!” Fang said. People were staring. Wen placed a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s become immortal.”

There was a sonic boom above us. A cultivator descended on a flying sword.

“Greetings to the honorable second master Feng Sai.” The cultivator said, clapping his fist but still hovering a few feet off the ground.

“What is it?” I asked, irritated that such a somber occasion had been interrupted.

“News from Sandgrave. A spirit stone vein has been discovered at your newly founded territory. The Patriarch has sent you a letter.”

TODAY - Feng Sai, Twenty

I strolled the wall of our desert compound. The center of the city was a vast quarry, a hole ripped into the very earth. Great furnaces turned spirit-sand into spirit-glass, pouring smoke into the sky. Constant import and export filled the streets with wagons and the bazaars with goods. Buildings lined one side of the great quarry into the ground.

Ruins rose from the bottom, illuminated in the night by torchlight.

Feng Fang, now adopted to the family, walked beside me. He was the youngest to ever be appointed to governor. He had accomplished two lesser stages of the First Realm — an impressive accomplishment for any mortal. Then he had realized how hard cultivating actually was. That feat took him the last three years before he realized the wall he faced.

He focused on making a better world for the people today instead.

“Feng Jin’s coming of age ceremony will come soon. We will have to start the trek north a few months early.” He said.

“We?” I asked, chuckling.

“Of course I’m coming with you. I can’t let you hang around that jackass alone.”

“And who will run the city in our absence?” I asked.

Below us, a network of intricate tunnels had been discovered. The spirit stone veins that ran through our entire country roamed outward through it. Tunneling mine shafts beneath the sand split off into a dozen directions. Sandgrave, the city in the qi deprived deadlands, thrived at night.

The city had taken the name from the first shift of workers sent there to build housing. They all thought they would die there. It wasn’t uncommon for cultivators to simply grow bored of their projects and forget about the mortals there.

Instead, this was now my largest territory by trade volume. That wasn’t even enough for other cultivators to covet it.

We offered guaranteed work and food and imported laborers from across the country, even reaching into my brother’s territories.

Hundreds arrived. Even now, more housing was being built out of brick as the city continued to grow. We would need a second wall soon. A disruption came through the streets below. Dozens of men with lamps above their heads shouted in the street, running up from the quarry.

“Foreman! Get the foreman now! Everyone! There’s been a discovery in the ruins!” They shouted, inciting a wave of people moving outward.

“What’s this?” Fang said, staring over the edge into the town. He crouched at the wall. “Looks like they’re looking for me.”

“You really need to delegate that role.” I said.

“Nah. I like this part of the job.” Fang said, waving me away, before continuing, “I’d rather delegate out all the tax parts and paperwork.”

“Those are the important parts.” I tsked.

It was still a mystery how the desert could be so rich in spirit stone and so devoid of qi to everyone’s senses.

My eyes flicked up as I heard a thudding noise.

Wen jumped from roof-top to roof-top, landing beside us in only a moment. His cultivation realm was much higher than mine.

He grunted as he landed.

“What the hell did they find?” Fang asked.

“The second young master should attend in person.” Wen said.

We descended the wall and the quarry. The crowds parted as we passed, deeper and deeper into the ruins. There were entire structures here, so ancient that they had turned into spirit rock. We preserved most of them instead of tearing them down and selling them.

The veins of spirit stone filled the tunnels of the buildings, having to be excavated away to reach deeper into the labyrinthine depths beneath Sandgrave.

“What is that?” I asked, stopping suddenly only a few tunnels in. Guards on either side of us held spirit-stone powered lamps.

“You sense it?” Wen asked gravely. “That’s what’s been found.”

“What is it?” Fang asked.

“All the qi in the air is being sucked away.” I replied, hurrying down the tunnels. I grabbed a lamp from one of the guards and rushed ahead. Fang barely kept up as I followed the pull to a newly excavated tunnel.

At the end of the hall, an opened doorway was revealed between sections of spirit-stone mined out of the wall. I leapt over the rubble, stepping inside. The room looked like a ritual room. There wasn’t a speck of dust on it. Intricate patterns were carved through the stone all around the room. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, disrupting the line work carved into the room.

The qi in the air was being pulled so fiercely that it released a howling gale, streaks of power visible as they all sunk down into a translucent sphere atop a raised dais. The spirit stone around it was beginning to dim.

“Wen, what is this thing?” I asked.

“We don’t know. Neither do the geologists. Only that it’s destroying all the spirit-stone around it for hundreds of miles. What are your orders?” Wen asked.

“It’s destroying the entire mine!” Fang said, spinning around the room. “The walls are completely dim!”

Charged spirit stone had a slight glow to it.

“Is it dangerous?” I asked, walking up to the stone. I was shouting to be heard over the vacuum in the center of the room.

“We don’t know.” Wen said. “I don’t recommend touching it — ”

I slapped a hand down on the stone, intending to pick it up.

[Authority Recognized. New user detected: Feng Sai. Language integrated.]

The door behind us slammed shut. The lines and patterns on the ceiling flared to life, white light blindingly bright. The stalactites fell to the floor, shattering.

[System integrating to user. Please do not interrupt installation.]

[Feng Sai, use my legacy to steal the power of the gods who have dethroned me and take revenge in my place!]