The immortal woke up more tired than when he fell asleep.
It was only alright because it was not energy the immortal sought when he slept. What he wanted was change. Foolishly, simple-mindedly, instead of continuing cultivating like every immortal should, he wanted change from the humans, with all their ephemerality.
But he was expecting too much, it seemed. Because when he pried himself from the ground and forced open his eyes, the endless, perpetual snowfield was dotted with a familiar sight. A pile of snow fell off of him, forming a large mound of ice beside him. How long had he been sleeping for that to accumulate? Weeks? Months? Years? It didn’t matter. Because the world he would wake up in, and the kind of mortals he would find would be the same anyways.
The change was apparent simply because of the change of color in its snow. Instead of the cold, harsh white it always promised, it was simply a backdrop to a greater red. The immortal looked around himself, and it appeared that the inner workings of people had been exposed to the outside, both psychologically and literally. The immortal observed strewn-about pieces of torn-up intestines and trampled-on, chopped-up heads with no feeling stalking beneath his heart. It was simply a blank observation.
In the end, history was doomed to repeat.
He sighed, before composing himself back up, making great care as to not disturb the dead around him, nor the death surrounding the dead, coming to collect.
The immortal raised his head to find a child staring back at him, a hint of curiosity in her green eyes, and her black hair springing out like a sore thumb against the endless white. At least she was wearing white robes, but they looked more like spring robes than winter robes and were ill-fitting for a child. The immortal noticed the very ends of the robes were slightly burnt and charred.
“Hello, child. Do you know which era is it? And what dynasty is in power?” The immortal asked, leaning down slightly so as to meet eye-to-eye with the child. What a silly question, the immortal thought to himself. Of course, the Xia dynasty is still in power.
The child only blinked lazily back at him.
The immortal sighed. “Nevermind. Forget it.” He stood back up. “This is no place for a child. Let’s go somewhere else. To a nearby village, maybe?”
The child nodded but frowned nevertheless. “There are no villages left. The cultivators trampled our crops and set fire to our village underfoot.”
“Oh.” The immortal said passively. “Sorry for that.”
“It happens.” The child shrugged it off indifferently. “Non-cultivators don’t have any power in this country, and with the fall of the current dynasty, the thoughtlessness affects us ten-fold.” The child said, a deadpan expression in her eyes. The two sat there for a while, the silence suffocating them. The stiffness in the silence dissipated when the child quickly went to the immortal’s side and used her whole hand to clutch onto a singular finger.
“The nearest city other than mine is about 90 li away. Go, go. You’re a cultivator, right? You can fly. Fly us to the next town.” The child said, inky black eyes sparkling slightly with light. “You have to, as an apology. The cultivators massacred our village for your corpse, after all.”
The immortal paused, thinking to himself. This girl really knows how to guilt-trip. He noted, with a deadpan face. “Right, then. Get on my back.”
The girl awed at the immortal, before smiling wide. She climbed onto the immortal’s back as if he was a horse, and slapped his shoulder. “Go, go! Let’s go!”
It’s a terrible feeling, being treated as a mount. I should be kinder to my pet water dragon if it’s still alive by now. The immortal thought to himself, before kicking lightly off the ground and taking flight.
----------------------------------------
In the south, there is a famous tavern where people from many different walks of life converse with each other. It lies somewhere in the endless Sahara and is cleverly named the Martial Oasis. Recently, it became exclusive for martial artists to meet up here and talk about recent news in the Wulin.
“I heard that he massacred an entire army of Nascent Souls. He makes even the Sword Saint afraid, strong devil that he is.” A patron said to another patron over a shot of gin. “There are rumors floating about that he’s one of the remaining kinfolks of the Xia Dynasty.”
The patron nodded, before adding something else. “I heard that the Black Galespear is related to him somehow. The Black Galespear? You don’t know him? He has a cloak like the wings of a raven on him at all times. Dyed the deepest obsidian, and ripped from the clutches of a thousand people.”
“His favorite weapon seems to be a spear, but he’ll fight with just about anything.” A passerby said to his friend, before ordering another pint of ale.
“And Xia Hui?”
“Doesn’t seem to prefer anything. Doesn’t seem to like fighting at all, even, but he has proficiency in all weapons. Hand him a pitchfork and he could still manage to kill an entire army.” The patron leaned closer, voice lowering to utter the next words. “I heard he has a sibling.”
Another trio of martial artists on the table beside converse with each other, the loudest saying; “No one’s seen his face. How are we supposed to know it’s the Black Galespear?”
“You don’t. That’s the eeriness of it. You could be drinking with him right now, and you wouldn’t be any the wiser.” Another person in the trio said, speaking in a spooky tone as if he was a traveling storyteller, telling tales in the dead of night.
“He must have gone mad. Just think, a man like that, unfocused in everything other than killing? Gives me the chills.” Another patron shivered.
Xia Hui's rebellion against the king had been a hot topic for months across the continent. Countless people spread the news under the cover of a fan, disguised as some light gossip, sometimes even relayed in code. It seems that a feral dog cannot be tamed, the voices had whispered to each other. Look, how he bites the hand that kept him alive!
In the booming tavern, there was only one person that didn't have a friend drinking with him. He sat quietly at a two-person table and drank his hot cup of tea silently by the windowsill, watching the southern desert wave with the heat. The bartender had looked at him strangely when he ordered his drink, and despite the heat, he was wearing all-black, and a large sedge hat dyed black too. A crow beckoned to his hand, and he fed it sunflower seeds with a gentler demeanor than normal.
He sat, listening about the man for quite some time from the other tavern customer’s talks. Oh, so those are the kinds of rumors that have been circulating. He thought to himself matter-of-factly, accepting his fate as a black horse in the public’s eyes. He also wondered faintly about this ‘Xia Hui’ they were talking about alongside him.
Well, all that mattered at the moment was finishing his tea. The man tuned out the countless voices and listened to the sound of the desert.
----------------------------------------
The immortal felt as though he was being taken advantage of. He had been taken advantage of, countless times; by kingdoms, kings, nobles, and mercenaries with starry, rebellious eyes. But it didn’t matter in the end, because like kingdoms and kings and mortals, they were all doomed to ruin. To death.
Not him. Not the immortal, no matter how badly he wished otherwise. So he let them take advantage, and he also let them live and let live because soon they would die, and only he would be left at the end of it.
It was an unkind, selfish thought, but the immortal didn’t want this child to die. For a moment, the immortal wished his misfortune of longevity on another, and a mortal, no less. A good mortal, a virtuous one. But godhead and divinity tended to make people rotten. He liked to think he would never wish his wickedness on a child, but now, he just did.
“I want that candy. Really bad.” The child said, initiating her puppy eyes. The immortal groaned, before buying the candy once more and placing it in the child’s hands. He closed the child’s hand into a fist to signify that it was completely hers.
“Here. Do not ask any more of me.” The immortal responded sternly, trying to put his foot down and take control before it was too late. The child nodded quietly, sullenly, before eating her candy.
Now the immortal felt bad. He looked at the child uneasily, as though he did something wrong. He assured himself; he did nothing wrong! He simply stood up for himself when he was being taken advantage of. No problem with that. He was forced to learn how to do it in the wulin world, and he was not willing to unlearn it. It was what kept him alive; even though he regretted trying so hard to survive.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
The child and the immortal walked like this for a while, going through noodle shops and clothes shops, and all the like. They searched and searched, but the child always looked unsatisfied. Fine clothes, good food, there was nothing that sated her appetite. The immortal knew the look on her face. It was one of greed.
“Hey, hey. Be my older brother.” The child blurted out suddenly, piercing through the crushing silence that beat at the immortal’s heart. She tugged impatiently on the sleeves of his robes.
The immortal froze, his eyebrows knitting together. “What?”
“I need a replacement. Lost mine. Come on.” The child said, dragging out the on at the end of the sentence; whining obnoxiously as a result. Something flashed in her eyes for just a moment, but the immortal didn’t miss it. Something wicked, something gnarled, something that reeked of immortality, and something that would turn malevolent if unchecked. “You won’t regret it. I’m a great younger sister. I can take a good beating, and I’m a fast learner. My name is Han Xifeng. If that’s not an auspicious name, I don’t know what is. Come on, mister immortal.”
The immortal paused for a little while, before picking the girl up like a baby. Han Xifeng, was it? But the tentativeness in his eyes stayed veiled. He would keep this child in check for as long as he could. Perhaps sate and reform the malice brewing beneath her heart. “Fine. I’ll take you back home, and teach you how to fight. After that, leave. Okay?”
The child nodded, her eyes sparkling like uncut obsidian against the morning sun. Who would ever think, mortal and god alike, that such a porcelain face, as pure as the driven snow, the immortal thought to himself, would have a viper wearing it?
----------------------------------------
Xie Qi felt as though something was missing. Not the usual sort of ‘missing,’ because he always felt as though there was something missing inside of himself, something that refused to work properly, or something that was absent completely— no, not that kind of missing.
It was something missing in his martial technique. Perhaps it was time to look at new ones, and use them as supplements to enhance his art. Xie Qi wished silently that he could pry himself open and do the same with the thing that was missing inside him. He went to the library and began filing through the bookcases once more. Nobody questioned his strange manner in getting to the library — which was duckwalking, since the man had trained like this many times before.
He knocked a few books off of a nearby bookcase at random and quickly read them.
Arts of Worldly Misfortune, Cold Arts of Ice and Snow, Xie Qi shook his head at these. They were too overpowering and would swallow his technique whole like how the ocean swallowed countless amounts of sailors that navigated its broadness.
He knocked a few books off of the bookshelves once more.
Heavenly Arts of The Wind and Gale, Trigrams of Tianxuan, Xie Qi read.
He continued in this manner for hours, days, perhaps. He didn’t count, for all the sharpness his mind had. He was lost in the books, and the books were lost in him. He had spent days among the bookcases, manuals, techniques, arts, textbooks, nothing. He put the meager amount of books he deemed fit in an organized row, each title being visible.
The Arts of The Spear Devil, The Arts of The Sword Saint, The Twin Primordial Arts.
The first two were so complex that they had many components to nitpick and add to his own art. Even though Xie Qi preferred the spear, he wouldn’t mind comprehending it with a sword first and modifying the arts to fit a spear. The Twin Primordial Arts, on the contrary, was quite simple in nature. It had only two moves, each honed to the extremity, but not quite honed to balance. Xie Qi read it for a while and knew that these two moves were meant to be combined. He could adopt some new arts, but only the ones that were necessary.
He felt uneasy, uneasier than usual. He looked for the source and found a presence creeping behind him. Turning around abruptly, he sheathed his wooden spear at simply the shuffle of their feet. All that lay on the opposite side of it was a grinning sage ghost, one of many.
‘Hey, hey! So you’ve decided to train in other arts too, huh? Lemme see.’ Xia Yingjie boomed enthusiastically, bending unnaturally forwards to see the manuals Xie Qi collected. His eyes widened at the result. ‘Ah, you chose these dusty old things? Haven’t seen these cracked open in years. The current Sword Saint might not even recognize the contents of this book.’
Xie Qi glared at Xia Yingjie for a while, his brows twisting with unease. “The current Sword Saint? We took these from some other clan?”
‘ ‘Course we did. You wouldn’t know, since you’re still 7, but we took a lot of things from other dynasties, sects, clans, the like. Not our fault they were too weak to go up against us. But can you believe it, they all ganged up on us in unison!’ Xia Yingjie said, voice filling with both indignance at the other clans and pride talking about their Xia Dynasty’s achievements. ‘Cowards.’ He added childishly at the end of his statement.
“Will I be in some sort of trouble if I show these arts in public?” Xie Qi asked incredulously.
‘Won’t be if you’re strong enough even to beat the current sword saint, that old devil.’ Xia Yingjie only remarked. Xie Qi groaned. For such an old ghost, he was much too youthful and unserious.
Xie Qi scoffed, before looking back at the manuals. “Can you and the other sage ghosts help me with my martial arts? Does that not go against the rules?”
‘Didn’t have to even ask. I and the other ghosts were already thinking about it before you asked yourself.’ Xia Yingjie laughed, grinning warmly. Then he promptly picked up Xie Qi by the collar of his robe and dragged him to the training grounds. Xie Qi felt that he had made the wrong decision in asking him.
----------------------------------------
Han Xifeng didn’t think anything of the house other than it was old. They had walked all the way here to the endless forest, but the place she was supposed to live in now was crumbling before she could even live in it. It seemed to be crumbling away at the very framework, and hives settled in its joints. A dark, dusted red was the only thing reminiscent of its former glory.
“Uh, mister immortal.” She began to ask. The immortal hummed in response, allowing her to speak. “Is this house meant to be... lived in?”
The immortal made a choking sound as if he was stabbed in his heart. He commanded Xifeng to close her eyes, and she did so. She heard, faint, distant clanking and drilling noises.
“Open your eyes, now.” The immortal said as if he was performing a magic trick.
Han Xifeng opened her eyes. Before her, a house that looked entirely new lay in front of her, a house with vibrant red framework, gold etchings, and grand deep green tile roofing the house. A small courtyard that had a large imperial bonsai lay in the middle, with a pond that had a few small koi flying around in it.
----------------------------------------
“So what? You gonna teach me how to cultivate, how to refine ki, stuff like that?” Xifeng asked, her eyes sparkling once more with excitement. The something that usually uncomfortably stirred within her twisted with ungodliness at her words.
Do not trust the immortal… It rasped, like the sound of a dying man denied of water. He seeks to vanquish us, to change us.
She tried her best to ignore it as the immortal started talking.
“I will, but keep in mind that superficial things like that are bad for you. Cultivation stages are in no way estimates of strength, simply stages to measure how well and how much ki circulates in your body. What matters is the martial arts you train, and how to utilize that ki that always flows through you.” The immortal lectured slowly and softly, as though he was talking to a toddler. And he supposed he was, with how the girl looked to be 6 or 7.
“What matters more is your level of enlightenment in your art. By applying this, you can do something like this–” The immortal stopped, and cut the butterfly hovering around him in perfect halves.
Xifeng was awed at the sight, and let the two bloody halves of the butterfly float into her hands. Something writhed within her once more, not giving her a moment of peace as it always did; The butterfly was cut just like how your brother was. Perhaps, does the immortal know? Was he awake, and watching?
As she observed the butterfly, cut in half, tears began to drip down her cheeks.
The immortal froze, and quickly took the butterfly from her hands and healed it. He fused the parts together, in some sort of a panic. He forgot sometimes that children were just children, and their gentleness could make the world rip them apart at times. “Here. It’s alright now.” He said.
The butterfly wearily flapped its wings once more and went away from Xifeng’s hand.
“It’s okay. It’s alright.” He awkwardly comforted, patting the sobbing child’s back. He felt oddly guilty, in a way he never had before; or perhaps haven’t had in a long time. “Your training will start tomorrow, alright? For the time being, let’s go and eat dinner.”
Han Xifeng tearfully nodded, lifting her head slightly to observe the immortal coldly, before putting her head back down and retreating to the dining room with the immortal.
----------------------------------------
Xia Hui noticed at a very young age that rivers brought change. Water flowed and carved paths, and made way for animals, for life to spring. With life, change was imminent. Time was similar, in this sense. A year had already passed, and he still hadn’t remembered where he last put his brother.
----------------------------------------
Xie Qi was oddly weak for a Xia. At least, that was what the ghosts claimed. He had fainted multiple times during training, and Xia Yingjie was getting sick and tired of it. He was forced to become committed to stamina training. The mountain training was only the beginning, Xia Yingjie claimed.
Gradually, the days became harder and harder under the supervision of the ghosts. Xia Cheng taught him how to use his spiritual eye and other basic skills. But additionally, Xia Tai put him under constant mental strain, to train his mind and fortuity. Daily, Xia Tai taught him movement and stealth techniques but increasingly used his Soul Terror technique at night, causing Xia Song to have bad dreams after bad dreams, nightmares increasing in severity.
The only thing Xia Song was thankful for was that Xia Tai couldn’t see the contents of his nightmares, which consisted of constant lab experiments and social rejection.
Before, Xia Yingjie gave him a set of iron bracers for each limb. Then, each ghost made it heavier, and some amplified the spiritual pressure on him, so he couldn’t use his ki to enhance his strength artificially. Today, on his birthday, his bracers would be enhanced to 45kg. Xie Qi could feel himself gradually losing the will to live. It was enhanced by 15kg every 4 months. He was reduced to a mess of sweat after each stamina training session.
Xia Yingjie smiled as he stopped at the appropriate weight for Xie Qi’s bracers. The light wrapped around his fingers— ki, began to dim as he patted Xie Qi on the back warmly. ‘Let’s work hard today, Xie Qi.’
Work hard today my f@$#%$ @$#!! Xie Qi thought silently to himself, letting the rage burn his muscles with enough energy to make it through today’s suffering. Xie Qi couldn’t even utter a word in rebuke before he was pushed down the mountain himself.
It was good that they had a stone staircase, but sometimes Xie Qi thought it made it harder for him to climb up and down. Xie Qi could feel his heavy limbs once more repeating their daily routine, climbing up and down and up and down. He was to repeat this one more time after this round. He just let himself run automatically as he steadied his breathing since it would take much too much energy to remain focused.
He made his way down the stairs, feeling his shoulder brush against something. He shrugged it off in his mind and continued walking. This was life for humans, he observed, ignoring the little things and letting the fade and pass in his mind.
But someone would not let him just walk idly by. He felt his wrist being grabbed, and a presence soon became apparent to him. Someone was probing his cultivation level. He quickly took his wrist from them, slapping their hand away in panic, and squared himself up for action.
The person beside him was now in front of him, and Xie Qi let himself analyze them carefully— for any weak spots, any shortcomings, anything. But he found nothing. And he let himself look more, and he found a child. The same age as his body, yes, but it was still simply a child. The unease that initially gripped Xie Qi didn’t lessen anymore by this realization.
Well-dressed. Quite possibly the child of a noble family, a rich clan. Or part of an immortal sect, but that was unlikely. And, lightly tanned. It was not possible in the north, in a snow climate like this one. Xie Qi looked to the far side of town, where the endless forest lay. It was most likely they came from here. Xie Qi stared into the child’s eyes. Even in a place like this, where the sun encompassed the sky more than other places, their eyes caught no light.
The world had already ripped this child apart, Xie Qi thought, unfeelingly. It didn’t change anything. A threat was a threat. His eyes flitted to the child’s limbs— they were wearing bracers too.
The child stared at him, seemingly analyzing everything in Xie Qi’s body as well, from his spiritual root to his meridians, to his cultivation level, to the very type of ki that ran through Xie Qi’s body. Xie Qi quietly realized his unease. For the first time, he was being seen. Somebody really sat there and looked at him.
Xie Qi felt a strange warmth in his heart at the thought, but the uneasiness did not go away.
The child breathed a shaky breath, as though they didn’t see another person in months. And then they straightened their back, and posture, and greeted Xie Qi politely. Letting their hands fall to their sides as they greeted him, they grinned.
“Hey. Fight me.”