The sun’s beams shot through the city of Edge, the easternmost city of the Moonsilver Empire, leaving no spire, tower or grand wall untouched. At the westernmost gate of the city two figures walked side by side as they exited through the large, heavy oaken gate.
One of them was a middle-aged man dressed in a ragged cloak that had seen better years, his face sporting a ragged beard and his bare feet resting in a pair of worn wooden clogs. In his mouth a long smoking pipe with strange engravings and metal adornments was lit.
The other was a small girl that appeared to be barely eight years old. However, by looking carefully at her calm face, you could find a maturity not seen even in people thrice her age sitting in those viridian eyes. She wore black training clothes that appeared simple at first glance but, if you were to feel it, you would notice the high quality of the fabric itself. However, her most striking feature was the elegant katana hanging at her side, emblazoned with a twin dragon motif that marked a work of Edge’s best swordsmith.
Kira left with her Uncle Tetsuya with mixed feelings. On one hand, she was excited to explore this world that she had only read about in history and geography books, while on the other, she knew that this wasn’t a pleasure trip. There were people who would soon be after her life or servitude, whichever was easiest, because of the blood she carried.
At the same time, she also carried with her a sadness at leaving behind everyone she knew and loved and, despite being promised that they would be fine in her absence, Kira couldn’t help feeling somewhat uneasy that something would happen to them while she was still on the path to becoming strong enough to defend them.
‘It seems there really is nothing I can do for them as I am now…’
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Right before she had left, her mother had come into her room, eyes reddened but smiling nonetheless.
“Little one, do you have a moment?”
Kira had turned to find her mother standing in her doorway.
“What is it, Mother?”
“Before you go, I have something for you.”
Her mother’s hands were empty and there weren’t any unusual bulges on her person, so Kira couldn’t guess what it could be.
“Sit down and close your eyes.”
Kira did so and, after a moment, she felt her mother’s cool fingers against her temples. Naomi’s breathing slowed as a warm blue light emanated from her fingers and filled Kira’s head. A stream of energy filled with sounds, images and words had unravelled itself within Kira’s mind and brought her an understanding of something she didn’t know before, powerful knowledge that left her stunned.
“Mother, this is…”
“Like I’ve said before, I was one of the lucky ones. I know about my heritage and survived my awakening because I grew up with an Elder from our Heavenly Flame Lily Clan. This is something that has been passed down from the founder of the clan himself. I hope you will make use of it.”
“This is priceless, Mother. I certainly will. Thank you very much.”
“No thanks needed. I’m your mother. I only want what’s best for you, even if that means we have to be separated so soon.”
Kira pulled her into a hug as she held back her own tears. It really was too short of a time. A mere few years compared to the decades that others had to spend with their parents was unfair to say the least. To her, who hadn’t known the joy of having parents, to feeling their love and compassion for the first time and now to have to let it go for who knows how long was definitely not something easy on the heart.
“Don’t forget, I will always love you, little one. No matter where you may go or what dangers you may face, I know that you will always do the right thing because your heart is capable of so much love, even though others may not see it.”
“I love you too…mom.”
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The unlikely duo, after waving to the three figures behind them, had set off into the forest to the west of Edge. Due to its dense canopy of leaves that left mottled patches of sunlight on the ground, the forest was always in a state of half-light. Due to this, it was given a name by the wanderers and merchants that passed through it, the Twilight Forest.
It hadn’t even been a few days before that small girl, Suzuki Kira, began her training with that rugged man, her uncle Tetsuya.
“152, 153, 154, 155...”
Swish…Swish…Swish…Swish…
The steady rhythm of the whistle of a sword cutting through the air became one with the ambience of the forest, the air rushing through its blood groove creating that clean, distinctive sound.
“Still not precise enough. Remember, your attacks are the strongest when the three core elements of cutting are in harmony with each other. Pay attention to the angle of your cut, the angle of your blade and the movement of your arms. Your arms should make a single smooth motion without changes to the acceleration of the blade.”
Kira’s brows knitted in concentration as Tetsuya corrected her. She had long since learned these things in her previous life but being forced to execute it with the same level of skill in this young and undeveloped body was trying her patience, not to mention tiring.
When Kira started the drill, Tetsuya was surprised at the confident and controlled manner in which she handled her sword, as if she had been training with it all her life, or certainly longer than her current age should allow. He knew that, as a relative stranger, he couldn’t expect her to tell him anything personal. At the same time, it was also foolish to try and teach her from the very basics. So instead, lighting his pipe, he decided he needed to try a different approach.
“Okay, that’s enough for now, kiddo. You can take a breather.”
Kira finished her final cut before flicking imaginary blood off her blade and resheathing it, her breathing laboured.
“While you’re resting, I suppose I need to ask, what are your current cultivation levels? I need to get a good grasp on your current strength.”
Lighting his pipe, her uncle leaned against a tree trunk while he waited for a reply. Kira hesitated a moment before replying. You usually don’t reveal your strength to strangers who may become your enemy unless you have complete certainty in defeating them. However, those with a strong Soul Sense can usually perceive at least the Soul Energy rank of others.
“I’ve recently broken through to the Soul Core realm but my Life Energy is still at the Skin Tempering stage. I’m not sure exactly how close I am to breaking through but I feel as if I am approaching the peak.”
Inwardly, Tetsuya’s jaw dropped. Even amongst those large and powerful sects who have all the resources to nurture their younger generation, none that he knew of had reached Soul Core rank at such a young age.
“Jeez, you’re quite the monster aren’t you? Come over here quick.”
Kira nodded slowly and stepped over to him. He turned her around and placed his palm on her back while closing his eyes.
Kira felt a gentle warmth enter her back. As she looked inside herself, a dark blue energy tendril lightly prodded at her internal organs and Soul Paths as if observing them. When it approached her glowing marble-like Core, when it drew within 5cm of it, her Core lashed out violently with a stream of pure Soul Energy, forcing the tendril away and incinerating its tips.
“Ah! Whoops, my bad. I forgot how aggressive a Burning Soul user’s Core can be.”
“My Core is…different?”
“Yeah. That really pure, temporary energy Burning Soul creates is usually used up immediately in battle or goes away on its own, but tiny remnants of it is absorbed into the user’s Core. I’m not sure exactly what effect it has in large quantities but, from what I’ve seen, at the very least, it gives the Core a sense of self-preservation. Pretty weird, huh?”
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“I agree.”
“Alright, back to business. I’m not gonna sugar-coat it. Your cultivation route is crap.”
“I kno-”
“What? You knew and you didn’t take a better one?”
“I learned the one that would give me the fastest growth while remaining stable.”
“Ah jeez, kids these days, always in a rush. Listen, always, always, always, try and find the best cultivation route for your rank. Quality, in this case, gives you quantity. Just because you have our fancy bloodline technique that gives you all that ridiculously pure energy doesn’t mean you can neglect your own base strength.”
“Uncle, I understand and I had my reasons. I had intended to search for a better cultivation route once I broke through to Core rank, but haven’t had the chance.”
“You know what switching routes means for your body right?”
“I will have to replace all the Soul Energy in my body, I know. As my rank gets higher, the process is more difficult.”
“Not just that. For us, or you and your mom at least, switching routes means losing your remnant energy from Burning Soul. I’m not too sure what exactly the cost is but I know that when my sis, your mom, switched all those years ago, she…changed. It was as if she had lost something important to her. It was a few months before she returned to normal. She was almost at the Soul Spirit rank at that point so maybe her new route had some requirements, but to change that late still ain’t the best idea.”
Tetsuya took a pull on his ornate pipe before continuing as Kira listened attentively.
“My point is, best case, yet unrealistic, scenario, we need to get you a cultivation route that is strong enough that you never have to switch again.”
“Excuse me, Uncle, I don’t think that will be necessary.”
It took Tetsuya a few seconds before he reacted to Kira’s statement, at which point he spluttered as he choked on his own pipe smoke. After a few coughs, he managed to speak again.
“Wait, are you telling me you found a cultivation route like that? Something that powerful is at least a Unique-ranked treasure, if not Heavenly-ranked. Where is it? You shouldn’t have something like that where other people can see it.”
In truth, from all his wandering across the Bladeworks Continent, Tetsuya himself had never once seen a Heavenly-ranked treasure. Even Unique-ranked items were usually selfishly hidden by their owners even though they at least claimed to have them. While he had heard of Heavenly-ranked items, no one was willing to own up to having one. It was common sense that doing so would put a target on your back.
Now he had a young niece who had the guts to admit to having a Heavenly-ranked treasure, he was naturally extremely curious to see just what such a rare cultivation route scroll looked like and to examine it, even if he wasn’t intending to use it himself.
Kira stepped backward a few paces before tapping the side of her head with two fingers.
“It’s up here.”
Tetsuya’s face fell. In just three words, his hopes were dashed. The heavens were just too cruel.
“Mother gave me the knowledge directly. I may not have seen as many cultivation routes as Uncle has, but I can feel that this one is very…strange.”
“Have you carefully examined it yet? If not, I suggest you do now. Then I can sort out any prep work you need for switching over tomorrow.”
“Understood.”
Kira sat down against a particularly large tree trunk and closed her eyes, searching within her head for that mass of blue energy that stored the information she needed. After a minute or two she found it. She hadn’t lied to her uncle. While she hadn’t closely inspected the knowledge when her mother gave it her, she was sure it was a cultivation route even though she only caught a feeling from the contents. Moreover, it was a cultivation route made solely for Burning Soul inheritors!
As she pried into the glowing knowledge-storing energy, it exploded outwards and orange-gold light filled her entire mental-vision, a brilliant warmth surrounding her. As she refocused, the light coalesced into multiple streams of an elegant, yet strangely illegible, script, that zipped quickly around her. While Kira felt sure that she should be able to read it, the fact that she was unable to started to chip away her patience. Coupled with the speed that the lines of words were moving, her hopes of learning this cultivation route were starting to dry up.
However, was Kira the kind of person to give up after just this much? Of course not. She’d faced death multiple times now so how could something that couldn’t even hurt her be anything more than an annoyance.
‘Think! This is a cultivation route intended for Burning Soul inheritors. There has to be some way to prove to it what my identity is.’
Kira’s first thought was to use her blood but there was no way to bring it into this mind-space. With that out of the question, there was only one other option.
‘Why? Dear gods why does it always come to this? Is this some form of punishment?’
The only remaining option, of course, was to use Burning Soul. As an inherited ability, is there anything else that would be a better seal for secret knowledge? Her Heavenly Flame Lily ancestors certainly didn’t seem to think so.
While Kira’s fear in using it had diminished somewhat, she still bore a great reluctance to use it in a situation like this where her life wasn’t in any danger. However, the more she thought about it, the faster she came to realise that not having a top-tier cultivation route would definitely be life threatening as worse ones wouldn’t give her the strength she needed to stand on her own.
Steeling her resolve, Kira drew together two rough strands of her Twin Energies and twined them together, fusing them into Quintessence. As she coated her internal organs and Soul Paths, her body began to, once more, emit that golden glow. Her eyelids flickered, briefly revealing gold-and-green lotus eyes that shimmered with a majestic radiance.
“Whoa, kiddo, what are you doing? Are you crazy?”
Tetsuya on the side noticed that Kira’s energy had begun to fluctuate and recognised that familiar void of energy being drawn away that was the clear indicator of Burning Soul being used. He was right to be worried. The previous two times he’d seen Kira in the backlash of Burning Soul, she’d been completely incapacitated, her internal systems severly damaged.
Kira didn’t hear him cry out as she was too focused on the task at hand, unlocking the secrets of her clan’s cultivation route passed on to her by her mother.
‘There, is that enough proof that I’m worthy to inherit this knowledge?’
Kira shouted out in her head, somewhat angrily, at the twisting words flying around her.
‘Yes, I think that’s more than enough.’
‘Wha…’
Kira didn’t honestly expect to hear a reply. After all, this mental space was her own sacred sanctuary that no one could invade. Hearing the deep, resonant voice ring out unnerved her slightly but she kept focused.
‘What…Who are you?’
‘Me? I’m nothing more than a wisp of a memory of a person who lived long before your time. If I had to give you my name, I think that people used to call me Zachary Sol.’
Kira's words stuck in her proverbial throat. If the voice was to be believed, she was speaking with the Founder of the Sunstrike Empire, one of the legendary Wandering Sun and Moon!
‘That can’t be. You died centuries ago.’
‘Like I said, I’m not important. However, you, the descendant of Little Sun, are. Little Sun was the youngest of my disciples and, despite my disciplining, he would always get bullied even though he was potentially the strongest of them all. I wanted to help him, so together we developed this cultivation route that could only be used by him and his descendants, to help them unlock their true power.’
‘I understand that this cultivation route is unique to us but what makes it so special? What I mean to say is, all cultivation routes follow the same progression but with different levels of effectiveness. What makes this one any different?’
‘Ah young one, you will discover the secrets of this cultivation route, the Flame Blossom Trail, when it chooses to show them to you. Now, though, I need to go, to wait for the next inheritor to awaken me.’
‘Wait! That’s it? You’re not going to guide me through the switchover?’
‘Remain calm, young one. Everything you need to know is within the text. Also, why would I take the trouble of custom-making a cultivation route if there had to be reading involved? Ugh, she would spend more time reading than anything else. I could never understand it…’
As Zachary’s last cryptic words faded from Kira’s mind, those streams of illegible text suddenly accelerated rapidly around Kira like a maelstrom before shooting violently into her forehead. With every character that entered her head, Kira could feel the knowledge contained within being imprinted onto her mind. Like a jigsaw puzzle, each piece didn’t make sense on its own but, when all the pieces were fitted together, a feeling of understanding rose in her as the raw knowledge became useful information.
She found that she understood how to go about replacing her old cultivation route with this Flame Blossom Trail as well as some of the irregularities of the cultivation route which made her sit and ponder over it for a good half an hour after she fully assimilated everything.
Kira finally opened her eyes completely to see her Uncle Tetsuya staring worriedly at her. Realising that using Burning Soul on a whim like that wasn’t the smartest thing to do, Kira inspected herself to find that she was, surprisingly, unharmed. What she did find was that a soft orange light, left over from the knowledge-filled energy, had enveloped her internal organs and Soul Paths, keeping them from scorching.
Kira’s eyes widened.
‘Maybe, just maybe, by cultivating using this route I might be able to create this light again. If it’s possible, I never have to worry about injuring myself during Burning Soul again!’
Elation filled her as she quickly shut her eyes once again.
“Uncle, I’m going to change over to this Flame Blossom Trail right now. Please do not disturb me until I am finished.”
“No probs, kiddo. Do what you need to do.”
‘Not like I have anything better to do.’
Tetsuya thought to himself. He had always been a drifter. Ever since he finally managed to leave home without any binding ties, he’d travelled the continent while raising his strength. He’d been face to face with death many times but nothing brought more of an uneasy feeling to him as being almost commanded by Kira to do something, as if she was the master and he was the student.
‘What am I thinking? She’s just a kid. Sure she’s talented but I’ve been at this game longer than her. I’ve seen things she can’t even imagine yet, things I’d prefer her not to see if I’m being honest. For now, just gotta keep her alive and make sure she gets stronger.’
Despite reassuring himself and seeing the meagre extent of Kira’s power for himself as she fought the purple-hooded man , Tetsuya couldn’t quite shake the feeling that this girl had a strength that she couldn’t, or just wasn’t willing to, show.