Li Qingshui

On the road by which the cities were paired, the girl peered into iron set long ago and saw for herself the face of the world unchained. Crowned by the light of the setting sun, she carried the words of her faith to those born under a different sky.

Li Qingshui, the only named disciple of the Mendicant Beggar, cried out for iron and the forest whispered-

"What?"

Li scowled.

Alice took advantage of Li's moment of silent displeasure to elaborate. "You were saying that since the beginning of the previous dynasty, your sect believed that there wasn't anything wrong with the scripture, but with the people in it. What do you mean, you need iron?"

"I meant what I said,'' said Li, who was annoyed at the veiled accusation in her words. There was nothing wrong with her. If someone read Alice's mind at every turn and then came to conclusions about her one-of-a-kind inheritance before she did, Alice would also assume that they knew what she was thinking. Li glared.

David and Alice saw the sudden annoyance and adjusted their expressions into some blend of detached and polite.

"Are you alright?" David asked, after none of them had spoken for a few long seconds.

"I need iron," Li repeated. How spiteful! They'd helped her through her problems with cultivation just so they could ruin her moment of triumph. Wasn't it obvious? She'd had a breakthrough.

"Well, then we should start walking," said David, as politely as he could. "You did say your sect was once an iron mine. I imagine it'd be quite easy for the inheriting disciple to get a bit of iron from the Iron Scripture sect."

Alice nodded happily. "We'll be there in a few hours, right?"

Did these children think that breakthroughs in cultivation grew on trees?

"I need it now," Li said, gritting her teeth. "Master says the best time to advance your cultivation is when the revelations are fresh."

He hadn’t, truthfully. But in the same way her master had never needed to tell her not to recite long lost cultivation manuals in casual conversation, he'd never needed to tell her to cultivate after reaching a breakthrough.

David raised his eyebrows. "Why does that matter? It's not like you're just going to forget it or something, right?"

Li decided that she hated the pair more than she hated Chan Changshou. What was she even supposed to say when he framed it in such a twisted manner? If she said yes, wouldn't that mean she was forgetful and stupid? Would he give her that look of pity? Would Alice offer help?

Before she could figure out how to respond to this blatant attack, Alice slapped her own forehead - a gesture Li assumed was a quirk of where she was from. "We're idiots. Of course she's afraid she's going to forget it. Didn't we just figure out that people are basically cursed to forget the contents of it?"

"Oh, right," said David, the only person who had remembered anything of the Iron Scripture. He grinned sheepishly, shrugging. This boy was the sort of earnest that deserved a beating. In fact, when Li solidified her foundations, the first thing she'd do would be to punch his stupid-

David interrupted her train of thought. "Wouldn't going to Bei’an be the quickest way to get iron?"

Li tried to hold back a scream. "The iron is in the forest!" She failed. Li was unable to believe that she needed to say something so obvious. The Iron Road in the modern day had no travelers who weren't also cultivators, but even as recently as her master's lifetime it had seen many wars. The sides of the road had been picked clean, but many treasures were too well buried - waiting for their fated partners to arrive.

David, who'd admittedly tolerated the excesses of her personality with more grace than any of her peers, folded his arms. "Now, forgive me if I'm completely mistaken," he said, with a touch of derision, "But I've always believed that iron was mined from rocks and not from bamboo trees."

David and Alice were more fun to be around when they were being overly clever about people who weren't Li. She reminded herself that she had more important things to think about at the moment instead of taking the bait.

"There's something out there," she said, pointing at the forest. "Something for me, I can hear it. And I think if I walk away, I'm going to lose it forever. This breakthrough will have come to nothing and I might as well have cultivated any other scripture. I need to enter the forest."

"Well, why didn't you say that to begin with?"

"Isn’t that worse than a losing battle?"

David and Alice had spoken at the same time and then turned on each other, a rare occasion that Li would cherish dearly. They both looked surprised at the other's reaction.

"I have a bad feeling about this," said Alice. Li understood why Alice was worried about her. She was probably opposed to this because of that saber. It couldn't be helped. Cultivators were selfish people. "Isn't it a bit strange that the forest is only dangerous when you step off the path, but we've not noticed any qi whatsoever?"

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Li opened her mouth to explain why that was, but David was pointing at one of the corners of the square plates of grey rock which paved the road. That was where each slab of slate had been connected to the array with carefully chiseled symbols. They were also invisible to the naked eye.

Alice put it together immediately. "I thought it sounded far more quiet than it should have been. We haven't even seen an insect on the path."

She leaned over and examined the pavement, then straightened to look at Daoist Li. "Were you a part of this?" Alice pointed at the formation.

The array which comprised all of these formations had been scratched onto the stone plates which made up the road many generations ago - but every inner disciple had, at different points, given their qi to help maintain it.

"How'd you know?" asked Li, alarmed. Her qi was undoubtedly still present, due to its nature, but this was absurd.

Alice shrugged. "I just assumed your sect made this?"

"Oh," said Li. Alice had just been asking. She hadn’t felt her qi in the stone. "I did contribute to it, yes. Every inner disciple does, every few years. Usually only cultivators use the Iron Path, but it's pretty important to maintain. It's the only way through the mountains that divide the continent."

David looked around.

"You'll see them when we come out on the other side," Li said. Night had fallen. They'd been standing on this spot in the road for a long time, contemplating the Iron Scripture together. Yes, that sounded far nicer than "betraying the secrets of the sect".

They'd gotten distracted again. "Look," said Daoist Li. "Just stay here, I'll be fine."

"You want to split up?" asked Alice, flatly, like it was the dumbest thing she'd ever heard in her life.

"Master says that some parts of the journey on the Path must be shared and some must be taken alone." That was something he had actually said.

"Sounds like he just wanted a bit of a break from dealing with you," said Alice, smirking.

Daoist Li was going to snap, kill this girl, and then tell whoever came to avenge her all the things Alice had said to her and they were going to agree with her. David was looking down the road, with his face turned away from her, which meant he was laughing. He was going to get it, too.

"I've got ways to get out of bad situations," Li said, pretending Alice hadn't said anything at all. Alice rolled her eyes. They always forgot she was, in fact, the inheriting disciple of the Iron Scripture, one of the very best sects on the continent - and the Middle Continent was known to have the most powerful cultivators in the world. Li had the right to all sorts of lifesaving treasures.

"What sort of ways?" asked Alice.

"All sorts of lifesaving treasures," Li snapped.

"Alright," said Alice.

Li reached into her robes and pulled out a small piece of jade - a bright white that almost glowed in the moonlight. It was too old to be of any recognizable shape. "Like this."

David examined it from several different angles. "What does it do?"

Li pressed it into his hand. "It’s my sect token. If I'm gone for too long, keep walking up the road to Bei'an. It doesn't matter who you show this to. If they live in Bei'an, they'll know what it is. They'll take you to the sect master."

Alice looked stricken. "Do you intend to die?"

What was wrong with this girl? "Don't say unlucky things. It’s a common practice to carry a Path Friend’s token to their master if they encounter trouble."

With that, she turned to the edge of the Iron Road and tried to divine which gap in the bamboo trees held the most promise. She hadn't heard the forest since she'd asked for iron the first time. She hoped she didn't imagine it.

"Wait," said David. "Do you really not have anything that can help if you run into trouble?"

Li turned back around, an angry growl building in her throat. She pulled out a brocade pouch just wider than her palm from within the folds of her robes which contained miscellaneous junk she'd stashed over the years. "What are you, an unscrupulous elder rifling through his disciple's bags?"

"Yes, junior. If you don't empty out the contents of your spatial ring, do not blame us for being impolite," said Alice, as she stroked an imaginary beard.

Li threw the pouch onto the ground with a huff. Alice wasn't as funny as she thought she was. There was the echo of loose taels flying around inside, undoubtedly crushing pills she'd forgotten she had into powder.

Li wished she hadn't declared once upon a time that the talismans and trinkets the other disciples hoarded were 'crutches for cultivators with no talent'.

"It's literally just garbage I haven't sorted in years," she said, as David picked it up and peered inside. As his face grew more and more disgusted, Li blushed. "I keep meaning to clean it out," she muttered.

"Let me," said Alice, who sensed that David was at his limit. He handed the pouch to Alice wordlessly, who immediately started digging around.

"If you're hungry, there's half a bowl of rice in there," said David. "Couldn't find any spoons, though."

"There's valuable pills hidden in that," squeaked Daoist Li.

Alice looked up from the pouch, tilting her head to the side.

Li didn't meet her eyes.

After another minute or so, Alice saw something that was at least interesting, judging by the look on her face. She looked up at Daoist Li, back into the bag, then back up, then back into the bag. She nodded, grinning, and then stuck her arm shoulder deep into the bag.

"I can't reach it," Alice complained, precariously balanced.

"What?" Li asked, confused. "Have you never used a bag before, princess? Push the bottom up."

"How am I supposed to push-"

"From the outside, of course, why else would I say push?"

David found the path really interesting again. Alice, who was even more vain than Daoist Li, aimed a half hearted kick in the general direction of his shins, with her arm still more than halfway in the bag. She missed. This time, David laughed at Alice openly.

Alice pouted, and then slowly withdrew what looked to be clothing at first - white and silken.

"I'm not going to ask why you have a rope long enough to tie every person in a small village to their own tree," said Alice, who drew it out. "But I've got a pretty good idea for what we can try to- why is it wet?"

She finished pulling the rest of the rope out from the bag, then took a whiff of the rope, which miraculously hadn’t tangled.

"I think there's a broken bottle in there. Baijiu," said Alice.

"I haven't had wine by the bottle in nearly twenty years," said Li, with her hands on her hips.

Alice’s nose twitched. "I can believe it." She closed the pouch and handed it back. "Tie one end of the rope to your wrist and we'll keep the rest of it here. That way, after you've found your iron, you'll be able to find your way back here."

In the moonlight the rope of white silk looked unreliable, but as Li knotted it three times and pulled it taut against her wrist, she found it to be comforting.

She stepped off the road.