Three cigarettes.

Three left, in a fine silver case which once held an even dozen or so. Five less since yesterday.

In the old days, it would be embarrassing. Sure, she wasn’t the sort of cultivator to get hung up on purity or high-minded ideas about bad habits, but the lack of control would have galled her. Five cigarettes in one day, when she could have spent that time exercising, cultivating, eating, fighting or fucking? Genuinely not worth thinking about. Shameful for how much authority she’d have lost over herself, to need any substance so consistently. No better than the wastrel noble-born brats who make it to Core Formation and spend the rest of their youth fucking around in any brothel that can withstand them.

In the old days, things were simpler.

Raika looks at the letter.

It sits there. Unopened. It stinks faintly of the blossom-rot of her smoke, which has saturated the room.

Maen was here for a while. That was nice. It was nice, associating her smell and her touch with the blossom-rot, with the fact that she can exist within it without drowning in a sea of voices and sounds and smells and tastes and fractional movements.

Then she left. She seemed worried. After the whole mess with holding her back from the contact with the Unearthly Depths Sect, that’s the last thing Raika wants to add to their dynamic. Maen shouldn’t be worried about her. She should be worrying about Maen. Duh. It’s fine if she gets hurt, but if Maen got hurt it-

A long, slow pull. The scent of blossoming mold and sweet, gentle decay fills her again, and takes with it much of the fear on the way out.

It’s a bad habit. That much is obvious. She’s running out of them, and this dependency already is a weakness she was trying to hold herself back from.

But the thought of knowing, not just by memory but by scent and taste and heartbeat that Li Shu and Qen Hou are here and they’re worried and afraid and in more danger than ever because they’re closer-

Taurus regretted killing J- killing him. She knows that. But she also knows he can do it again. He seems a nice enough fellow. He also seems colder than anyone she’s ever met. The scars of that first decision that he felt was so necessary at the time make it clear that he could do it again, just as fast, if he thought he had to, if he could find the way to motivate her with them.

He promised otherwise. Said they wouldn’t be in danger from him, that the danger might come from others after she’d rebelled.

But the thought is there. Right beside the moment where she forgot, where he took the Mask away and asked her a question. The only thing that takes it away is the smoke.

The tournament is still ongoing. Jin Nara’s is plenty clear, even dulled as her senses are. There’s been victories and losses. The woman with the pack of beasts won her fight handily, as did the Aspirant of the Cut, and a hard-fought conflict with the man wielding an axe as big as he (well over two and a half meters) apparently only just lead to his victory. Round three is up, officially, back to those “lesser” talents, and the insectile cultivator has apparently racked up another serious win.

Taran hasn’t participated, practically hibernating and back to what they acted like when she first met him. Something about “conserving energy”, he’d said. Jun Vral apparently did participate, got a win. Shapefixit and Yun Ka aren’t really the arena-fighting types, Kaena is busy, and Project 13 is-

Huh. She hasn’t thought about Project 13 in a while. Weird. She’s not sure why.

A smell almost makes it through the smoke, but it doesn’t so it doesn’t matter.

She stares down at the card.

Neither Li Shu nor Qen Hou have participated in the tournament. Late entries are penalized, sure, but there have been some. If they’ve tried to reach out… well. Raika hasn’t been easy to reach, and Pai Jin has been on higher alert. Her room has two guards against it now.

She doesn’t blame him. She’s unstable, that much is clear. Her Truth is… rattled. The aspects of flesh it controls remain consistent, but she knows there’s more to it she hasn’t discovered, hasn’t felt beyond its chafing as she’s forced to obey orders and stick to limits. Now, with her Mask acting strangely, with Taurus’ ability to influence her, it’s been rattled worse.

Is it her? Is she breaking?

Should she stop it if she is?

She swore revenge. On Feng Gui, on Taurus. But that’s it. That’s what she has. Is it worth living on, with the blood on her hands, the pain she can still bring down on those around her?

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

The old her would have said yes, immediately. The new her does too, her second Truth aching and pushing against the idea that she is static and stuck.

But the thought is there, until the smoke takes it away.

Confronting the thought of willing surrender would break her. She didn’t let it get to that point when she was crippled, and she shouldn’t let it know, she should be stronger than it-

But every time she thinks of it, she thinks of her friend dying, and Maen and Li Shu and Qen Hou dying, and of Taran and Kaena both deciding that their deaths and her pain aren’t worth their loyalty to Taurus. And those thoughts… they’re not quite all-consuming, but in the smoke, they are made quiet.

She looks at the letter.

She decided how she felt about her old sect. Basic bitch sect, never had much attention for her, but with some good people in it, here and there. Then they abandoned her, didn’t even come look, and that’s all that really mattered, wasn’t it? The people who had her back, who she killed for and who she had loved, were nowhere. They threw her away. The spite from that is a big part of what allowed her to drag herself back into existence.

And now there’s a letter that might say otherwise. And she’s not sure what that would do to her.

So she smokes.

And, eventually, she is herself enough to tell herself to quit being such a whiny fucking loser and read the fucking card.

She picks it up and tears it open in a single fluid motion.

It smells even more like him beneath it.

It’s agony, to have every sense so muted and even still feel overwhelmed by them, but Hisheng was- he was the first one that mattered. She’d had lovers before him, had experienced intimacy and physicality and even joy, but he had been the first to make her give a shit. He was the first one who convinced her to stay and be held afterwards, and he was the first time she felt safe and loved while being touched since she’d left her home. He had been… soft, in a way she still can’t entirely articulate.

She still isn’t sure if she loved him back, really. If he mattered enough to her, or if she’d been capable of that sort of emotion, that sort of introspection and depth. Maybe if they’d met earlier, or later, things might have meshed easier. It wasn’t love that made her think of him, made her reflect on the fact that he wasn’t there after she was crippled, but it was as close as she’d ever gotten at the time.

Maen is close, too, but in a different way, a new way. Every love is unique, perhaps, just as its people are. Or maybe there’s something different missing. She doesn’t know, and has not let herself think about it, like with so many things she does not think about and which now drown under blue fog.

To Raika, greatest pugilist of the-

She has to put the letter down.

She inhales, almost done with this latest cigarette. Almost burnt down to ash.

She picks it back up.

To Raika, greatest pugilist of the Hungering Roots Sect,

I know, by now, that it has been some time, but if it is you reading this letter, then my junior sister Shao Ni has found you, and has managed to deliver this to you. Please apologize to her on my behalf. She is a loyal friend and a hard worker, and eager to participate in the tournament we have heard of, and it is with great worry and hope that I gave her directions and a spatial ring to pursue her own path beneath the Heavens. She may claim otherwise, but I have a great debt to her for this service.

Three years is not long for cultivators, it is said. Perhaps this was more true in the time of our forefathers, before roads connected so many cities and cultivation was only for the few and the unique. You would have done fine, I’m sure, but I am not so exceptional, and so I am glad for this age, where three years is a long time. It is a long time to go thinking someone I love is dead. Perhaps, in older times, enlightenment and inner peace were the only ways to cultivate, and again, if so, I am glad that a new age has come, such that I do not need these to cultivate, for I have known neither since you went to Paleblossom city’s tournament.

I don’t know what to say. I started writing this letter the hour I heard your name, now The Unbroken, tied to a tournament once again. The news of it came to our Sect, as such news tends to, and I was not alone in my shock to hear your name spoken. Even still, having spent so long writing this, I do not know what to say. Perhaps had I studied a Dao, plumbed the hidden mysteries of reality, I might know better how to say what I need to, but I was never so special. And so I struggle on to try and find the words.

You were hurt, and I was not there. You were alone, and I was not there. I do not know, in truth, what you thought of me, of us, but someone that I care for was left for dead, and I was not there.

There are no words to describe the regret I have for this.

I do not know what I can offer now, so late and so beyond what could be allowed. I have grieved you, and I am certain you have hated me, or at least as certain of that as I am that you enjoyed our time together. You are grander now than ever, risen from something I cannot imagine to a height I cannot fathom. I am as proud as I am haunted that you had to do so alone.

I hope you found others whose loyalties were not as weak as mine. I hope your growth has been fruitful and that your path beneath the Heavens is… well, not peaceful, but as kind to you as you would choose it to be. I hope you know that I am deeply, truly sorry I was not there, and that had I known, I would have come to help as soon as I could. The Silver Song family put your name amongst the dead in their tournament’s records, and no one I could reach could say how or why.

My master has placed me in solitary cultivation for now. Cultivation is a marvel, it would seem, for there is an Imperial doctor coming who it is said can remove one’s heart demons. Perhaps I should keep one, until I am certain I have repaid you. I do not know. I don’t even know if you care, or if you’re the same person who would know me as you did.

I am so sorry. I am so happy you’re alive. I’m really fucking proud of you.

Finally got me to curse.

May your journey be spared from Heaven’s gaze, and your growth rise to match it.

So long as I live and breathe, all you need is to ask, and I will carve a place for you to rest.

With sorrow, and joy,

Hisheng, Inner Sect Disciple of the Hungering Roots Sect

Raika breathes. Slowly, once, long enough that the cigarette burns to ash and scorches her lips.

She lights another one.

Two cigarettes.

The Mask is here again, and takes the stress of movement from her. It makes it easier to just enjoy the smoke, and let all the rest be buried.