David

David almost got whiplash from the sudden transition that Jiang Tiankong pushed onto the partygoers.

"I hope the gifts you've brought me will be as useful as the advice that I've given to you!"

David blinked, hard. Surely, surely someone this tasteless couldn't be a real person. The Jiang family, as expected, cheered for their young master.

Jiang Shangtian did not cheer - the beginnings of a deeply set cringe formed on his face. He looked furtively from Daoist Chan to Daoist Li to David. When he realized none of them were holding back the ridicule in their eyes, he shrank into himself. He looked even younger than twelve.

One by one, the guests walked up to the platform to present their gifts to Jiang Tiankong.

The musicians had begun to play again, but when David glanced at Alice, it was clear that her heart wasn't in the music anymore. She was looking very carefully to see if there were any cultivators - especially the large group from the Red Wind sect, that carried with them a saber with a black and white jade pommel.

David quickly realized that it would be useless to give more than a cursory glance to the crowd. The only weapons that were carried in plain sight were personal ones. Gifts of many sizes and shapes came out of bags that were larger on the inside than the outside and even rings that defied the laws of space.

Those with smaller and less valuable gifts went up hurriedly to give them away. They piled on the platform easily in little boxes of varying quality.

There was a social order here - first came the sentimental gifts of the Jiang family - well wishes and wine in artsy ceramic bottles.

Then came gifts from droves of women who were barely cultivators. They stood in gaggles and giggled constantly. Each one of them presented sentimental gifts - small pieces of jewelry and personal effects.

David supposed that Jiang Tiankong was pretty popular amongst the ladies of Ping'an. There were a few who dared to brush his hand as they passed him combs and bracelets and hopeful smiles.

One slip of a girl with a shock of light brown hair and a pretty face dared to give him a bouquet of flowers and a kiss on the cheek, leading to some catcalling from the Jiang men. She was wearing the robes of the Red Wind sect.

When the giving of gifts wound down, a new challenger approached the platform, taking out a small brocade box from his robes.

"Chan Changshou of the Clear Skies approaches Jiang Tiankong of the Red Wind!" Daoist Chan proclaimed.

He opened the box and immediately the courtyard was blanketed with a heavy medicinal aroma.

Everyone around David took a deep, appreciative sniff.

David took deep breaths in through his mouth and out through his mouth.

This was like an unholy fusion of when his mom brewed ginseng soup for 'health reasons' and when she boiled vinegar to 'make the air clean'. The cool, clean river air was overrun by the smell of rotten almonds and off-tuna, of cloves without the heady spice, of pepper without the reassuring bite.

Daoist Chan turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees, allowing the audience to view it as though it were an engagement ring.

The pill was the width of David's thumb and the color of pitch and licorice. There was a sheen to it - no oil dripped onto the bright velvet lining of the box, but David was sure that he'd never in his life tasted anything that would be as disgusting as the pill.

In fact, he was sure that if he were to consume something like that, his sweat would run brown.

"The Clear Skies sect presents a Nine Heavenly Star Meridian Pill!"

It was an absurd name for something that looked like balled up manure and smelled worse.

"This pill will mitigate the blowback from opening your first meridian and completing the ensuing breakthrough into the Nascent Soul stage!"

The oohs and aahs seemed just a little overblown. But perhaps they were justified, given the look of sheer greed on the faces of most of the surrounding cultivators.

An old adage from his neighborhood in Brooklyn came to David. When someone gives you drugs, don't say no. Say thank you, because drugs are expensive.

Chan Changshou closed the box, but the smell didn't quite go away for a minute. David took experimental breaths through his nose every few seconds in a vain hope, but it seemed as though the smell had gotten into his nostrils.

He looked over to Alice. She looked a bit green - as did the rest of the musicians and the servers, who had well plastered smiles by this point.

Daoist Chan put the box on the platform beside all the other gifts and walked back.

Daoist Li went up after and presented some kind of rare herb to much fanfare. Daoist Zhu gave Jian Tiankong an old brass bell which was so valuable that the recipient stuffed it into his robes immediately.

"Isn't it great?" Daoist Li whispered. "To come from a good family, to work your way up to Core Formation and sit at the crossroads? With a bright future, about to open your first meridian and live a thousand years longer?"

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Daoist Chan scoffed, fingering his chin as though he had a beard. "Most Core Formation experts sit at the crossroads forever," he said.

He suddenly stilled his movement and David heard the faint beating of his Song. "In my sect, forming your Core is an inevitability if you live to two hundred. But those who become namers and search for their Nascent Souls? Most of them die opening their first meridian. The tribulation is too unfair."

He looked genuinely upset.

"To walk the winding path of cultivation is to walk the tripartite road of love, death and immortality," said Daoist Zhu, who had been quiet to this point, choosing to fake laughter and glare half heartedly with the tides of the group. He looked serious as well.

Daoist Li turned to David and Shangtian, but she did not meet their eyes. Instead, she worried her nails. "If you are truthful about your age and your little sister's, then you wouldn't know. All our lives are marred by tragedy. It is the conceit of man and the vanity of woman to defy the heavens. And each and every one of us is punished unduly, unfairly. We appear young and act like we too are in our teens, but that too is a form of coping."

She sniffed delicately in Daoist Chan's direction. "At least it's an act for some of us."

Daoist Chan looked angry but David heard the sound of his song - an uncertain, mournful thing, and saw that the light in his eyes had an emptiness to it that he disliked, like someone who was so tired and would never not be tired.

But he looked at Daoist Li with some sort of fondness - for playing his game, for letting him fall into his fantasies.

The moment passed.

The man who stood at the edge of their group - Daoist Gong, if David's memory could be trusted, also offered a pill but it appeared to be less impressive than Daoist Chan's. It was named something ridiculous as well. He didn't show it off like Daoist Chan had but there was a heavy trace of envy on, of all people, Jiang Shangtian's face.

One by one, gifts flooded into the hands of Jiang Tiankong from the cultivators of many cities and sects. When it seemed as though the event was drawing to a close, the group of Red Wind Sect disciples who kept mostly to themselves walked up together.

"Kun Jiayou of the Red Wind Sect greets Senior Sect Uncle and presents a gift from the juniors of the Red Wind Sect!"

David and Alice looked at one another, hoping to see a familiar weapon gifted.

Daoist Kun was yet another vaguely handsome cultivator. He dressed himself in the same robes as all the rest and wore the same style of jade hair clip. He looked to be their age, which, David had realized, meant nothing.

His age was impossible to divine. David supposed some things were incredibly different from home and some things were the same. The thought brought a smile to his lips.

The representative of the red wind juniors withdrew a bladed weapon in a leather scabbard but it was immediately a disappointment.

"Four months ago, Disciple Chu retrieved this four thousand year old Mountain Cutting Sword from Flower Mountain in the Western Continent. Reforged with the combined efforts of your juniors in Lone Tree Peak and Forge Master Shi, we present the gift of a companion for you to carry as you lay siege to the gates of Heaven."

It was a stately weapon, with a clean jade pommel. But when Daoist Kun unsheathed it by an inch and the morning sun reflected off the clear steel of the blade, their hopes were quashed without the shadow of a doubt. It was not the saber.

Daoist Kun looked at Jiang Tiankong hopefully. No, not at Jiang Tiankong - at the sword already on his belt.

"Many thanks, juniors," said Tiankong. He removed his sword with the enormous ruby pommel and stared at it fondly.

"When I return to the sect and greet shifu, I will entrust this sword that I have carried for half a century to him. Only he has the judgment to bestow such a sentimental object."

Tiankong replaced his weapon with the newly forged Mountain Cutting Sword on his hip. The juniors of the Red Wind sect retreated without a word of complaint, but the moment his back was turned, David could see an ugly vexation on their representative's face.

There was an awkward tension only worsened by the relaxed high pitched notes of an erhu and little tinkling guqin chords. It was wholly inappropriate for the sudden shift in atmosphere. Alice had an almost vindictive smile on her face. The other musicians didn't seem as excited as she was.

After a minute of light coughing and rising whispers, David realized that everyone was waiting patiently. He turned to ask Shangtian why Tiankong looked nervous all of a sudden, but the question of what they were expecting became obvious immediately.

An old woman, wearing the colors of red and white but not the bib, approached Jiang Tiankong.

Rather than allowing the old woman to address him, Tiankong got off the raised wooden platform. He knelt onto the smooth stone of the courtyard and let his head hit the floor three times.

"Elder Shu," he muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear. The musicians quit playing at the frantic waving of Alice's fingers. Even some of the guests looked relieved.

David thought he might have been the only person to appreciate Alice's musical humor.

"This worthless grandson greets the Ancestors of his family and wishes for long life for Elder Shu, for Elder Qing, for Elder Su and for Elder Ma."

David glanced over to the handful of elders who were on the far edge of the courtyard. They were as far from the musicians as could be, in the shade of a willow tree.

Elder Shu nodded slightly. "Rise, Jiang Tiankong. You have always been a filial grandson. You have always cultivated diligently. Today, you have surpassed all living members of our family."

Shangtian started to draw in his breath sharply but the silence was so overwhelming he knew to cut himself off. He glanced at the stone pillar behind the musicians, blanching.

Elder Shu took a deep breath. David noted her delicate white hair, the countless lines on her face and her straight back as Tiankong rose to her beckoning hand.

"The Jiang family is not a clan of the Greater Realms," she began. "It is not a Palace in the Starfields with innumerable treasures, uncounted sutras and women who bring disaster."

David was confused; until he remembered all the sayings about how beautiful women were sure to cause the fall of their families, and even their dynasties. It seemed that Elder Shu had a bit of a chip on her shoulder.

Frankly, she was just as melodramatic as her inheriting grandson.

"The Elders of the line of Jiang have no Fate," said Elder Shu, sneering at the sky.

"We have no Inheritance," she said, casting watery eyes on the pillar of stone.

"But we do have a Gift," she finished. Elder Shu drew from her robes pieces of bamboo strung together with some invisible force and brown with age.

"This is the second half of the Scripture of Mulberry Tree. The First Grandson noted these forms to the best of his ability sixteen thousand years ago when the Patriarch practiced in this courtyard. Only those who have formed a Core would dare to read this scripture."

Despite the clear blue sky, David thought he heard the echo of thunder when Jiang Tiankong took the scripture. Looking around, it seemed he was the only one who had. But he was distracted by the low, frantic whispers of the boy next to him - speaking only to himself.

"Stolen," Jiang Shangtian realized. "Stolen and incomplete."