Upon exiting Tianlan’s abode, Hei found himself facing an interesting sight.
“Tianlan…” he said with a sigh, “What’s up with the sword maidens?”
On either side of Tianlan’s walkway, there were two rows of young ladies who all sat cross-legged with swords resting on their laps. They all had their eyes closed and were seemingly in a meditative state.
Tianlan gave them a glance, causing him to remember a sequence of events that left even him lost for words.
“It started after I came back from my mission,” he said. “You see, shortly after re-entering the sect, I came across a-”
“Tianlan…”
“Hm?”
“Condensed version.”
“…”
Tianlan thought for a while, trying to find a way to summarise the story.
“They just kind of showed up one day, I guess.”
“You could say a little more than that…”
“That’s pretty much the whole story. I don’t really know why they’re here.”
“Then… Why don’t you just ask them?”
“As if I didn’t think of that. I tried talking to them, but they don’t say anything.”
“Are you serious?”
“Why would I make it up?”
Hei looked again at the young ladies, this time with an odd expression on his face.
He walked up to one of them and crouched down, reaching her eye level.
“Hello?”
She briefly opened her eyes, causing Hei to feel a sharp aura emanating from them, then closed them again, ultimately failing to respond.
“This is pretty weird, dude.”
“I know.”
“Then why don’t you kick them out? How did they even get here in the first place? Isn’t this place under lock and key?”
“Yeah, but I gave them entry permission.”
“So you just woke up one day, saw a bunch of girls practicing breathing techniques outside of your house, and decided it would be a good idea to give them all keys?”
“Mm.”
Hei spread his arms open and looked to the sky before shaking his head in bemusement.
“Why would you do that?”
“Having them around is actually pretty nice.”
“Tianlan… I knew you were a creep, but not to this extent. Why have I been cursed with such a strange brother?”
Hei wiped his eyes with his sleeves as he made sobbing sounds.
“It’s not like that, Hei! They’re-”
“I get it. You’re using them as qi sponges, right?”
“Mm. They make the environment much more comfortable.”
“I see. I guess that could be kind of useful. But it’s still creepy beyond compare.”
“Eh. It’s not that bad once you get used to it.”
***
After amusing himself with the strangeness of the sword maidens, Hei made his way out of Tianlan’s territory, only to be greeted by a group of youths.
““Welcome to the Shimmering Sword Sect, Sage Hei!””
“H-Hey! Keep it down! Don’t you know how inconsiderate you’re being?”
Hei hurriedly quieted the Fang Clan juniors who were making an inappropriate amount of noise.
They returned his chastising tone with looks of confusion.
Wasn’t he the same Sage Hei who had sent his voice rumbling throughout the sect a few hours ago?
““Greetings, Sage Hei,”” they said as they cupped their fists and bowed.
“It’s good to see you all,” Hei replied. “It looks like you’ve grown a little.”
The juniors smiled and then the scene became awkwardly silent.
“… Okay then… We’ve got somewhere to be so…”
Hei tried to walk past the juniors, but one of them, Fang Yijun, called out to him.
“Wait, Sage Hei.”
“Hm? What is it?”
“Um… We just…”
“Spit it out.”
“We’ve missed the lessons you used to teach us!”
“Eh?”
“Mm,” added Fang Hua. “There’s no one else who can teach like you!”
“But you’ve had Tianlan here this whole time.”
“Um… Sage Tianlan is a gentle instructor, and while his lessons are invaluable to us, we find that he can be a bit too lenient at times. It causes some sloppiness to remain in our techniques,” said Yijun.
The other juniors nodded in agreement as they stared at Hei with sparkly eyes.
Hei stepped back in fright.
“Y-You’re asking me to abuse you?”
“Please!”
Hei watched as the Fang Clan’s juniors bowed in front of him.
He turned to Tianlan; his face drained of colour.
“What kind of weirdos have we raised?”
“Don’t look at me. This is all you.”
“All me?! Didn’t you just hear them say you’re too gentle?!”
“That’s because you’re too harsh.”
“Harsh my left foot! I just tell it how it is!”
“Then tell it how it is, Onii-chan.”
Tianlan stepped back and watched the proceedings with a smile on his face, all the while waving his fingers at Hei.
“…”
Hei was lost for words. When did he become the source of people’s pleasurable pain?
Shaking his head, he cleared his thoughts. He then placed his hands behind his back and raised his head to the sky. As he lowered it back to a normal level, the Fang Clan Juniors felt as if the sky itself had lowered with it.
This caused them to tremble with excitement, and the realisation of that nearly caused Hei to break character.
He slowly turned around, his eyes sharp and void of emotion.
“If you truly seek suffering, then who am I to deny you?”
He withdrew his left arm from behind his back and held it out in front of him, his fingers curled naturally and his palm facing the sky.
“Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu.”
***
‘Hm?’
Hei stood still as everything around him slowed to a crawl.
‘They’re actually able to trigger this?’
He was surrounded on all sides by a group of five of the Fang Clan juniors, three boys and two girls. They each used different techniques and launched their attacks with near perfect synchronicity, closing every path of escape.
Hei smiled.
“This is far from enough to deal with me!”
He spread his arms, manifesting a sphere of chains which protected his body from every angle, easily blocking the combined assault of those five juniors.
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But he wasn’t facing just five opponents.
As soon as the initial attack was blocked, another wave of juniors came in with their own attacks, this time, all with the intent of breaking Hei’s defence.
They launched piercing attacks, one at a time, alternating between the boys’ fire techniques and the girls’ ice techniques, and were able to crack the sphere after the sixth wave.
After that vulnerability was created, ten juniors stabbed through the sphere simultaneously from several angles, including three who attacked from above.
Their attack kicked up a cloud of dust, and when once of them used their qi to clear it, they were able to see the result.
Hei wasn’t there!
The ten juniors immediately stood in formation, covering each other’s backs, and were able to observe the area in all directions.
“Watch out, Little Wu! He’s right behind you!”
Fang Wu, the youngest of the juniors, heard his cousins’ warning and immediately lowered his stance, standing on all fours like a spirit beast.
Doing so allowed him to narrowly avoid the sweep of Hei’s hand, and seeing that Hei was in a vulnerable position after his attack failed, Fang Wu immediately dug his nails into the ground and scraped up a pile of dirt which he used to obscure his opponent’s vision.
“Agh!”
With the dirt covering his eyes, Hei was left open to an attack, and Fang Wu didn’t allow the opportunity to slip from his hands.
He rotated his body, still maintaining that low stance, and used all four of his limbs to launch himself up to Hei’s side where he swiped at Hei’s ribs with his extended nails which now resembled the claws of a wolf.
Clang!
Fang Wu felt massive resistance as his claws screeched across Hei’s heavily guarded torso, and as soon as his hands and feet met the ground once more, he felt a chill run down his spine.
Not even bothering to look up, he immediately retreated, joining up with his cousins.
Because of that, he narrowly avoided a web of chains which slammed into the ground where he had just been standing.
“Good job, Little Wu! We won’t let this opening go to waste!”
Fang Hua patted Fang Wu’s shoulder as she and two other girls ran toward Hei at full speed.
Just as Hei finished rubbing the dirt out of his eyes, his senses were overtaken by a freezing cold and his vision was clouded in white.
This was the work of the three girls’ combination of techniques.
One had used Tundra to cause the ground beneath them to freeze over, another had used Blizzard to kick up a snowstorm, and the last had used Frigid North to lower the surrounding air temperature.
This created an ideal environment for the other young ladies to make use of Frost Steps to traverse the icy surface at tremendous speed.
Before Hei could even blink, all of the young ladies were upon him, launching a myriad of Yin-based techniques.
“This is a little juvenile, don’t you think?”
Hei sighed in disappointment as he snapped his fingers.
That small action caused the ground to shake, and in an instant, dozens of thick chains erupted from the earth, shooting straight toward the young ladies.
“We really have grown, Sage Hei,” said Fang Hua as all of the young ladies retreated in unison.
“Hm?”
Hei watched as the chains failed to grasp their targets, and it was only then that he was able to see the meaning behind Fang Hua’s words.
Behind the retreating forms of the young ladies, the young men were all dashing forward, wielding their ordinary-looking swords.
Hei’s eyebrows twitched, and as he attempted to turn to face those young men, he realised that his feet had been frozen to the ground.
Looking up, he saw the smiling faces of the young ladies and the serious expressions of the young men.
‘Not good!’
Hei looked around him and immediately realized what was happening.
However, it was already too late.
The young men released the tightly constrained thermal energy within their swords, causing the ice surrounding Hei to melt with astonishing speed, instantly transitioning from solid, to liquid, and finally, to gas.
BOOOOM!!!!
A huge white cloud erupted from where Hei stood, causing the area to be filled with burning-hot steam.
***
“Did we get him?”
“I think we did.”
“We did?”
“We did!”
The Fang Clan juniors could hardly contain their excitement. This was the best display they had ever put on in front of Sage Hei and they couldn’t wait to hear his feedback.
“Good… Very good…”
“!”
From the cloud of steam, the Fang Clan juniors could hear Sage Hei’s hoarse voice.
“To think you could push me this far…”
They started to hear footsteps and the sounds of falling metal.
“You should be proud…”
At that point, a dark silhouette could be seen from beyond the white veil.
“However…”
It continued to walk forward, and the sounds of falling metal grew more numerous.
As the silhouette reached the edge of the steam and stepped into view, it collapsed, crumbling to pieces right before them.
The juniors stepped back in shock.
Just as they had figured out what was happening, the ground beneath them transformed into a sea of squirming chains which pulled them in, leaving only their upper bodies above the surface.
In front of them, a mound formed in the sea of chains which soon split open to reveal Sage Hei’s form, completely unharmed.
“You still have a ways to go.”
***
“Were we fighting a clone the whole time?”
“It looks like it.”
“But when did he switch?”
“I think it was after he made that sphere defence. He disappeared for a moment after that.”
“That’s right! That would have been the best time to sneak underground.”
“But that means he was planning ahead the whole time… That’s terrifying.”
“Hold on. It might not be that Sage Hei predicted the flow of the battle. I think he saw that our ability level was too low to have a real fight with him, so he decided to use a clone instead. He isn’t Sage Bai, after all.”
“You’re right. That does seem to be more in Sage Bai’s domain. But still, it means Sage Hei’s control of his chains has improved to such an extent that we can’t tell between a chain clone and his true self. That’s frightening in and of itself.”
“It really is.”
***
Hei and Tianlan stood some distance away as the Fang Clan juniors reflected on the battle.
“You really have gotten better at manipulating your puppets. They move just like real people now.”
“Yeah. I recently got a chance to practice manipulating actual people. It really improved my control over my chains.”
“Oh? How did that come about?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Oh? Then I don’t want to hear it.”
“Don’t be salty, Tianlan.”
“Anyway, isn’t it about time you corrected their mistakes?”
“Sigh. So you could see them too?”
“Of course?”
“Then why didn’t you tell them?!”
Hei pulled a paper fan from his sleeve and used it to slap Tianlan’s head.
“It’s not a big deal, is it? For the most part, they’re pretty solid. Making them think about every little detail may be pushing into the realm of diminishing returns.”
“You heard their complaints yourself. They want someone to point those things out for them.”
“Yeah, but that also means they’re aware of their own issues. At least somewhat. You and I won’t always be available for them to ask questions to, right? At some point, if they want to improve further, they’ll have to recognise those areas of potential improvement on their own.”
“So you want to get them used to self-reflection?”
“Mm. They are already able to critique each other and give quality advice. It’s just that they fail to see the flaws in themselves. I’ve been thinking of a way to help them in that regard, but I haven’t found a solution yet.”
“It seems you’ve also grown a little, Tianlan.”
“Of course I have. If you would let me finish my story, you could find out just how much it is that I’ve grown.”
“Maybe later. Right now, I have some spirits to crush. Ah, speaking of, shouldn’t this commotion have triggered an investigation of some sort? Will the Disciplinary Committee be showing up soon?”
Tianlan smiled.
“Don’t worry about them. They’ve learnt not to get involved in my business.”
“Low-key, huh?”
“A…”
***
“Alright, you miserable little side-characters! In formation!”
The Fang Clan juniors quickly formed a semi-circle around Hei and stood straight as they avoided lowering their gazes to meet Hei’s. In Fang Wu’s case, he had to look up to achieve the same result.
“Let me start off by saying you’ve all gotten a lot stronger. You should be proud of yourselves.”
““Th- Thank you, Sage Hei!””
“However!”
“!”
“Fang Hua.”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Step forward.”
Fang Hua wrestled with her shaking legs, bringing them back under control and took two steps forward, leaving herself only a metre in front of Hei.
Hei stepped away and pinched a piece of soil from the ground before returning.
“Do you care to explain what this is?”
“It’s soil, Sir!”
“More specifically?”
“Um…” Fang Hua’s jaw quivered. “It’s… frozen soil…”
“What was that?”
“It’s frozen soil, Sir!”
“Frozen soil…”
Hei turned to another of the young ladies.
“Fang Li.”
“Y-Yes, Sir!”
“Where do you suppose this frozen soil came from?”
“I believe it is a result of Cousin Hua’s Frost Steps, Sir!”
“Hua’s Frost Steps. Now, why does that sound familiar?”
There was a lingering silence before Hei spoke again.
“Someone remind me. Where have I heard that before?”
Fang Li immediately spoke up.
“You’ve told her about this before, Sir! Multiple times!”
Hei dropped his fist into his palm.
“Ah. That’s it. I’ve told you about this before, haven’t I, Hua? And multiple times at that.”
“Y… Yes, sir…”
Fang Hua made herself small as anticipated the consequences.
“THEN WHY AM I SAYING IT AGAIN?!”
She jolted.
“Sir, I… I just think it looks cooler when the footsteps are visible! It doesn’t use up much qi or mental energy to leave them there either!”
“Sage Hei!” shouted Fang Yijun, “I tried to tell her about this, we all did, but she wouldn’t listen!”
“Ah. So the doorman wants to speak up?”
“N… No, sir…”
“Now, Hua, you know what this means, don’t you?”
Fang Hua dropped her head down in shame.
“I know…”
“Then…”
Hei raised his right arm and reached into his left sleeve, removing a blunt weapon from his storage space. He then brought his right arm up high and held it there for a moment.
“Fool!”
He swung it down viciously, landing a devastating blow on Fang Hua’s head.
Fang Hua tried her best to hold back her tears as she covered the impact area with her hands.
“Back in formation!”
“Y…yes, sir,” she said with a pout.
“Doorman Yijun, since you’re so eager to speak, why don’t you come next?”
***
“So being the Fang Clan’s doorman has gotten to your head, has it? You think of yourself as some kind of leader? Do you know that you don’t even qualify to sweep the floors of my Shao Clan?!”
***
“You call that swordsmanship? How shameless can you get? You can see sharper strokes when my mother combs her hair!”
***
“If you had only turned your foot in a little further, couldn’t you have increased your striking force by another two percent? What? Do you think these are trivial gains? That’s why you’ll never achieve greatness!”
***
“Li, Li, Li. Is ratting out your family all you’re good for? To think you dare to call yourself the most perceptive. If anyone, it should have been you who saw through my ruse. You disappoint me, Li!”
***
These rounds of punishment continued one after another until there was only one junior remaining: the youngest among them, Fang Wu.
“Step forward, Wu.”
“Sir!”
Hei looked down at Fang Wu. The intensity of his glare caused young Wu to fidget.
He raised his right arm up, shocking the others.
“He’s not even giving any criticism? Was Little Wu’s performance that bad?”
“I thought he did pretty well, myself…”
When he saw Hei’s arm go up, Fang Wu tightly closed his eyes and prepared for the impact.
When he felt the gentle touch atop his head, he cautiously opened his eyes and raised his head to see a smiling Sage Hei.
“You’ve improved a lot, Wu. Well done.”
Wu’s eyes sparkled.
“Do you mean it?”
“Mm. You did good, kid.”
Hei gave Wu a smile and a thumbs up.
***
““What?!?!””
“That’s… Is that praise…?”
“Impossible!”
“No, seriously. Is Wu getting praised?”
“I... I think he is...”
“Heavens! Wu’s getting praised!”
“How is that fair?!”
“I thought he did pretty well, myself...”
“You already said that.”
“Praise, huh… I didn’t think it was possible, coming from Sage Hei…”
“I wonder how it feels…”
The other juniors all let out sighs.
They rubbed the tops of their heads and looked at Hei as if he had wronged them in some way.
***
After things were settled, the Fang Clan juniors accompanied Hei and Tianlan to the sect’s entrance.
““Have a safe trip,”” they said as they waved goodbye.
As Hei and Tianlan stepped on top of one of Hei’s chain dragons which began to flap its wings, taking to the sunset sky, Hei turned back to the Fang Clan juniors.
“Before we go, there’s something else that I need to check, don’t you think?”
“?”
Hei looked down to the bright-eyed youths, bathed in the golden rays of the sun, and raised his voice.
“To seek glory!”
It took a moment for them to catch on, but when they did, they all raised their smiling faces to the sky and shouted in unison.
“IS FOR FOOLS!”
Those words brought a smile to Hei’s face.
He nodded his head and continued.
“To seek honour!”
“IS FOR FOOLS!”
“To seek treasure!”
“IS FOR FOOLS!”
“What are we?”
“WE ARE WISE!”
Hei took a moment to observe the juniors who were all waving goodbye. At this moment, he was experiencing something new. A feeling he had never felt before.
“You all make me very proud.”
He said it quietly, so quietly that even Tianlan standing next to him didn’t hear it. But to the juniors who looked up to the fading figures of their childish sages, the message was heard loud and clear.