The 3rd ring is in upheaval, and all across the eastern side of it, chaos reigns. Every sect is consolidating power, dragging as much of their authority and strength as possible inward rather than out. Villages send out requests for aid constantly, but less and less all the time as casualties begin to pile up- only the cities closest to the sect plateaus remain relatively stable.
Paleblossom city is one of those pockets. Further to the north, they’re a ways away from the mess, but closer than anyone is comfortable with. The pale flowers and light blue and white colors the city is known for have become dull, flags left up just a little too long as the stress of the situation gets to people. Most are doing their best to keep up some degree of normalcy, and there are certain necessities of day to day life that go on no matter the crisis- preparing food, ensuring that the buildings are safe against the cold of winter, so on and forth.
Atop the peaks of the plateaus, things are different. Atop the peaks, the hungry turn their gazes upon each other.
Once upon a time, there were three sects in Paleblossom city, each of them to one side of the Imperial Palace.
Now there is only one.
The prodigal son of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect has earned their sect great renown. Tales of his downfall and surprising rise back to the peak of the Nascent Soul realm ring throughout the Empire, and the story of how Shin Ren stood at the breach of the broken Wall has resonated through the city. Already there are songs of his exploits and children who pretend to be him in mock battles in the streets. And now, with his ascent into the Warrior realm nearly guaranteed, none can doubt the prestige of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect.
And with prestige comes honor. With honor, comes the right to do as one wills.
Once upon a time, there were three sects in Paleblossom city.
The Drifting Silence sect and the Endless Blooming Flowers sect both stood proud, but Shin Ren was always a prodigy, and his home sect has been on the rise for years due to this fact. Sixteen honor duels after tales of his new heights arrived, and the shame of the Drifting Silence sect was great enough for their elders to try and make a move.
It was the excuse that was needed.
Shen Go, patriarch of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect, kept in close contact with the Imperial Scion of Paleblossom city. When the sect of a prominent young champion of the Academies was threatened, using such overt violence, he maneuvered it into a masterstroke, gaining permission for an all-out attack against those who “impugned the honor of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect”.
Never mind that they were the ones who instigated, or that the battle tore through large swathes of the city. Such is the wisdom of the patriarch and the elders. Through their forward thinking and daring, the masters of the sect conquered the city, and with a single arranged marriage, made the Endless Blooming flowers sect into a subservient organization, one that is considered a branch family at best now. The patriarch, in his wisdom, even had their plateau lowered, the great pillar breaking in pieces and falling to vibrant purple flame until it partially collapsed, lowered beautifully until they bowed below the heights of the true sect of the city.
It has taken months to rebuild since then, but the lives lost and the damage done was done in good faith and along the proper channels. What is there to punish? The powerful and the clever prevailed over their lessers, as is only right- what else is there but to celebrate?
Lu Feren looks up at the peak of the plateau above him and takes another drink.
Four years since his exile. Since the cripple shamed him with a lack of victory.
He takes another drink.
He remains in the Foundational realm, even without the resources of his sect. He is still proud, still righteous still true. He is still a cultivator worthy of pride.
He spits out the grime that has settled on his teeth. He has not washed out his mouth in a few days, and the taste of the rice wine in the back of his throat makes him feel sick. It is swill, made in a rush, and poorly at that.
It is what he can afford.
He failed. He lost everything. He challenged a thing, a creature far beneath him in every way, and in his arrogance, he failed to do what he should have done- kill her outright. He took pity and acted arrogantly, allowing the cripple to set the terms, wherein it most certainly cheated. He should have killed it the moment that he saw it, shaming him and the entire sect by working in the kitchens of his honorable home.
His former home.
The home he now stares up at.
He stirs up from the shadow he sits in. At this time of day, the sun has crawled far enough to the south that the spot beneath the tree he likes to sit on has gone dark. It is where he spends most of his days, and where he drowns his shame in cheap swill.
No one will take him now. Even if he could have convinced the other sects, back when Paleblossom city had true rivals amidst its great powers, now only one remains, and it is directly subservient to those who cast him.
In the depths of his heart, he sometimes hates the elders. Shiru Hei, honored be her name, saved his life, and kept the cripple from tearing his throat free, and when he gets too deep into his cups, he hates her for it. If he had died, then he wouldn’t have to sit here now, like some mortal or lesser cultivator staring up at the peak, drinking away the taste of his pain with vinegar and rotten rice.
What little pride he still has lives in the way the mortals look at him. Their pity is chased away by fear at the weight of his cultivation, well into the foundational realm. For mortals like these, they couldn’t reach such a peak even if they trained and worked all their lives in their little towns.
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Even if it’s likely as high as he’ll ever go, now.
He takes a drink from his gourd, only to find it empty.
Another drink, then. As useful a plan as anything.
Lu Feren walks through the ruins, out towards the actual city proper.
He steps past dozens of mortals working in tandem, pulling wooden beams and hammering materials together, sweating to repair the damage of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect’s righteous victory. He ignores them, even as a series of Qi-gathering level weaklings nearly trips into his path. He snarls at them, and as is only right, the fear he instills in them is enough to motivate them to stand up properly.
He can feel them looking at him as he walks towards the undamaged parts of the city, leaving his tree, his empty gourds, and the debris all around him.
As he walks, he changes his pace, hunching a bit and rearranging the simple robes he wears. He is no longer privileged to wear the sect colors, garbed in simple grey and brown cloth instead, and if he keeps himself quiet and shuffles, there is a much better chance of avoiding the attention of the things that stalk the streets.
He emerges past a corner, through the workers and into a common populace, and immediately catches sight of the beast.
An Imperial. It glows with gold and jade circuitry, the lapdogs of the Division of War that call themselves the Guard walking amidst the people. They debase themselves by standing so close to the mortals, even as he can sense the weight of their cultivation- not a one of them is below the Core Formation realm, far beyond his grasp. However, the shamefulness of choosing to be shepherds, as if it’s some honor to police the masses, is not why he avoids them like the plague they are.
If they identify him, there is a chance they will take him.
They are the Guard. Agents of the Empire, and the state which grows from it and oppresses the sects, they are empowered to do whatever they so please, so long as it serve their masters. Not like noble sects, who work together for grand purpose, no- these are cretins, abusers of power, and worse, they will infringe on his freedoms.
He has little left. The freedom to exert his force over others, to live his life unbothered by the pettiness of mortals for as long as he can, is what he has left. But now, with the Wall breached and the Blades taking their sweet fucking time to clean it up, the Guard is more than willing to snatch up loose cultivators of passing strength and use them for their war machine.
It’s not fair. It’s not fair. He’s better than these people, and he shouldn’t have to give his power for the will of a being he’s never met, just because someone else failed to stop a bunch of beasts.
If it hadn’t been for the cripple… if he’d been more confident, struck immediately and refused to bow to the words of someone beneath him, he’d still be there. Atop the peak. Above the world.
It’s not fair.
He turns a corner, entering a side-alley stall that sprang up a few weeks prior. Their swill is cheap, cheaper than anything in the true markets of the city, and poorly made enough to be nearly a poison. It dulls the senses and the mind faster than any regular alcohol- after all, he is a cultivator, of the Foundational realm, and it takes far more than a mere mortal’s liquor to get him quickly drunk.
Without a word, hunched into his robes, he drops a silver coin on the stand.
The man behind it, incredibly scrawny and missing more than a few teeth, smiles wide. The stench of his stomach wafts out of his throat, and it takes all of Lu Feren’s willpower not to burn him to ashes for daring such behavior.
A moment later the bottle is before him, and the thought has left.
One silver for six bottles. In theory, he could haggle the price down, find someplace that offers six “drinks” for that silver- but he does not want cups, or wines. He wants this. He wants to forget.
He leaves the alleyway by a different route than he came in, sticking to the shadows wherever he can, like a furtive rat.
Is this all he is now?
The thought runs through him like an electric shock, and it is all he can do to keep the bottles steady as he pries the lid off the first one and takes a drink.
And then staggers as the taste hits him.
It’s not wine. It’s vitriol. It’s agony. It lights him up from the inside, the pleasant burn of acid replaced by something that makes his throat close up and his body clench.
Almost as soon as he stops, staggering, dropping the other bottles to the floor with a crash, he understands what’s happened.
Poison.
The smell rises from the other bottles, acrid and violent, the sting of alcohol mixed with something far more caustic. He chokes out a sound, a garbled cry, and falls against the nearest wall, the wood of the home barely supporting him as he staggers.
He needs to run. The-
The Guard. They’ll do something to stop this. Loyal soldiers of the Empire, meant to protect its citizens from predation and chaos.
He tries to take a step forward-
Something sharp sticks him in the ribs.
He turns, his eyes wide, his face turning blue from lack of oxygen, to see the mangled smile of the man he just sold his silver to.
He says something nasty, but his voice is a droning buzz- it enters into Lu Feren’s mind and leaves no impact. Everything is oxygen depravation and exhaustion, pain and fear, adrenaline burning through him almost as violently as the poison.
He goes to fight back, pulling at his Qi- and the man stabs him once more. Again. Again.
And then Lu Feren’s panic reaches a crescendo, and he flails everything that still responds to his will wildly.
A burst of awkward quasi-purple flares from him, its edges tinted brown and far flimsier than he remembers it being.
No. No. He is in the Foundational realm, and-
The traitorous merchant has sidestepped the flame, but there is surprise in his eyes, hints of fear. He didn’t expect it, and this is it, his opportunity. If he can just-
The man steps in close again, overcoming hesitation to bring the filthy, jagged knife back into cutting range-
And then there is a burst of gold and heat, and his head is just missing.
Lu Feren falls over, unable to stay upright. His torso feels hot, and he distantly realizes it’s because of the blood running from him. And then he feels very cold.
He turns to look at his savior, and-
There he is. A Guard.
Noble beings, burdened with wisdom and grace. He should never have doubted them, even in his mind. The sects are brutes, and only such nobility could restrict them, could keep him from dying here in the dark, in the city that his sect has abandoned him to-
He sees the Guard’s mouth move beneath its visor. Sees another burst of gold as a second one arrives, tilting its head to see the aftermath of the mad scrabble of violence in the alley.
The second one asks something that doesn’t quite land in Lu Feren’s mind. The first one replies, equally alien.
They’re here. They stopped the fight. They are peacekeepers. Shepherds. Agents of the Empire, surely here to help, to heal him-
He feels the first one turn him over with its boot, tossing him to one side carelessly.
No. Please, no-
Somehow, the jingle of his coin-purse comes through clearer than the words, than the laughter, than the complete disregard that radiates through his being from the thing looking down on him.
He hears it jingle as it is pulled away. Jingle as it is vanishes into a spatial ring. Hears a sigh, and is not sure if it comes from his throat or the towering stranger of gold and jade standing above him.
And then… it walks away.
No.
No, they- they can’t.
They have healing relics. Herbs. He’s seen it. He’s sensed it with his cultivator’s acumen. He knows they could save him. They stopped the fight, so they must be here to help, the bastards, the fucks, the oppressors of the sects, the damnable beasts of the state, the…
He’s so tired.
It’s cold now.
Lu Feren goes quiet, the last thought in his mind the sounds of armored boots leaving the alley, unhurried.
The Guard, uncaring of the cooling bodies behind them, march back into the city. Not much longer- the sects of this little place are starving it for their own hungers, and soon the chaos will have festered long enough that they will be allowed to press them into use.
It is only expected that some worthless mortals are too weak to last that long. A shame.