Hong Fanyi

Hong and the disciple she was traveling with stood before the Linking Stone in contemplation.

The bamboo forest that shrouded the Iron Road was covered in a deep silence, so it was only appropriate that it would be shattered by conflict.

The first sign that there was something wrong was a low whistle in that absence of sound that was the Iron Road.

To use a projectile against Hong Fanyi, the inheriting disciple of the Star-Seeking Palm? What a laughable matter!

Disciple Hong was too young to have fought in the Invasion as her mentoring Peak Master had, but the loss of thousands of cultivators to the slings and arrows of the Western Continent had taught her generation to defend themselves from things that moved quickly.

I could be flying, I could be reaching for the sky.

Unlike the less practiced students of the Skybound Scripture, Disciple Hong's mantras were internal and required no vocalization.

One hand roughly shoved Disciple Ji to the ground, the other closed into a fist, then opened like a flower in early spring.

There was the sound of a gong and the beginning of an incisive pain from the center of her hand.

The object that the hand had found was circular and round. It wasn't sharp because it had been made that way, it was sharp because of speed.

Hong closed her fingers around it - the momentum whipped her wrist back and she followed it, throwing her weight not against it but with it.

She leaned into the tips of her toes and let her heels leave the floor and spun with the forward force of the little object cutting into her hand - once, twice, thrice, before the inertia of her own body, her own qi, allowed it to stop.

The object was a roughly hewn ring, made of iron. It had been a reckless maneuver. If Hong had just dodged it, the little ring would have hit the Linking Stone. More importantly, Hong knew the sort of disciple who would wear a ring like this.

"I am wounded!" Hong cried into the early evening, injecting as much mocking anger into her voice as she could. "Why would a good doctor of Bei'an, from the celebrated Iron Scripture Sect, attack me?"

"What's going on here?" asked Disciple Ji, who had pushed himself to his feet.

"Shut up and get down," Hong hissed, her voice a sharp contrast to the boast she'd called out into the night. "We're in danger."

"Indeed you are," came a voice from down the road. The words reached her ears softly at first, then loudly. It was a man's voice. When she cast her eyes down the road towards Dongjing, she found the man approaching at great speed - as quickly as his ring had flown.

Peak Master Feng had shown her the many myriad forms of the Star-Seeking Palm, but it was not his voice she'd heard in the back of her mind, because it was the grizzled old Peak Master Ling who taught disciples to fight.

"The most important thing to do is to divine your opponent's cultivation."

But she couldn’t, not right now. Hong had never been the type that was good at sensing the flow of qi currents or nonsense like that. She dealt in results, and the easiest way was to rely on cold hard martial arts.

Disciple Hong opened her hand and let the ring fall from chest height off the ground. Escaping that hand was a little drop of blood from the cut the ring had given it.

The man was just over ten li from them on the narrow and straight Iron Road. Hong knew what she was meant to do.

The ring had fallen just a thumb’s span. The blood of a cultivator fell faster than iron. The drop caught the ring and splashed onto it.

Disciple Hong dug her heels into the slate. The man was five li from them on the narrow and straight Iron Road. Disciple Hong threw a smile at Junior Ji that she knew he could not see. Fairy Guan had always said if she were to die, she must die with a smile on her face, because more than her own life rested in Hong’s hands, but the ideas of a tradition as old as time.

The bloodied ring had fallen past her stomach. She leaned forward.

These are the hands and the mind of a giver.

The hand that had been wounded raised two fingers, pointing behind her, outstretched. Her body angled forward like an arrow. There were twin cracks as her feet lifted from the slate, the smooth stone spiderwebbing outwards. Her right hand, her unwounded hand, opened in full and sought the stars.

The ring hit the floor with a clatter and the earth shook - not because of the ring, but because despite seeking the stars, Disciple Hong’s palm had found the man’s two outstretched fingers.

The man had arrived at the Linking Stone with such speed, Hong had barely moved ten paces before they had collided with a ringing so loud, like a hammer on an anvil, that Junior Ji clapped his hands to his ears instinctively.

The man ricocheted off of her palm and flipped backwards fully, twice, then landed on his feet. He bent over and retched. A little stream of blood splashed off the slate.

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Hong’s fingers found the corners of her lips. She was smiling wider than she remembered. Her grin was wet - she had also been injured.

The first to speak were neither of the combatants, but Disciple Ji. “The Five Iron Fingers!” he said, sounding far too pleasantly surprised for someone whose party had been attacked on the road.

The man turned his retching into a loose bow. “It’s me, it’s your friend Disciple Sun, of the Iron Scripture!” He wiped away a little line of blood from his chin with a grey sleeve.

Disciple Sun looked unwell. His hair was matted and dull - Hong was sure it was falling out. His nails were long and unkempt and caked with dried blood.

“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” said Disciple Ji, somewhat cheerfully. “I’ve met people from your sect before, they seem nice!” What was wrong with the boy?

Disciple Sun looked horrified. “We haven’t met?”

Neither of the two were right in the head.

“Disciple Hong Fanyi, Seeking,” she bit out, irritated. “It will be the last name you hear.”

“But I haven’t introduced-”

She silenced the newly minted inner disciple with a glare.

“Your heads will fetch a great price with my master,” said Disciple Sun. “Prepare yourself.”

Just fast enough for her eye to follow, he fell forwards through the air towards her, his hand clenched into a fist - Hong noted that his fingers were laden with four rings - the one that didn’t adorn his bare thumb was undoubtedly the one she’d caught.

She batted it away easily, there didn’t seem to be any bite to the punch - nothing like his attacks from far off.

Disciple Sun careened away from her, almost drunkenly, but it was clearly a feint. His foot shot at her from an unpredictable angle, but she’d caught wind of something in the movement before. Still, it was too difficult to punish, so she skirted back. The foot clipped her elbow, throwing her to the side.

She let her own feet leave the ground and kicked into the soft of his belly - it too would be a glancing blow, but more serious than the one she’d received.

Hong sprawled towards the ground, but before she hit it, she easily picked herself up with a forward flip.

Sun ran at her, his fists flailing. Hong ducked and struck out at his unguarded chest, which he parried hastily with a forearm.

There was a crack. Her palm had sent him flying, and more than likely had broken a bone.

Hong sneered. “You fight like a fishmonger on a Bei’an wharf.”

“That’s where I was born,” he returned proudly. “And maybe that’s where I’ll dry your head, right beside the rest of the fish.” He catapulted forward in a cartwheel.

This attack was less easily met - somewhere in the pile of limbs descending on her was a fist that scored a heavy hit on her shoulder.

Her vision swam for a moment.

This palm seeks all fates, because I must fly.

He was already out of reach but it did not matter - that wasn’t how the Star-seeking Palm worked. In her mind, she had already defeated him and the world would show that result.

The soft of her hand found his ribs and they collapsed, giving way to her cultivation.

The Meridian she had Ignited was her fei - the breath, the lungs, and she knew about it far more intimately than this cultivator before her. She had survived Heaven’s lightning even as she drowned in a flood of her own qi. The world knew her name - it was Hong Fanyi. And this Disciple Sun was going to see what happened when he messed with someone more talented than him.

There was a thick squelch as he was thrown back.

They both collapsed to the ground. Her knees folded like a doe that had sustained an arrow and all her weight dropped into her thighs as she hit the ground with a thud. Her opponent was no better - he skidded down the road, so quickly that it ripped squares of dark grey slate off the ground, sending them flying into the bamboo forest surrounding them.

He stopped twenty paces from her, seated in a lotus - with crossed legs.

“The most important thing to do is to determine your opponent’s cultivation.”

She still hadn’t done so and her thoughts were askew, they were astray, she couldn’t-

Disciple Ji clicked his tongue. “He’s got more meridians open than you,” he said, matter-of-factly, as if this knowledge wouldn’t contribute to his doom.

Back in her day, inner disciples knew the proper respect to show-

“But I do think you’re stronger than him.”

Her opponent gave a long laugh, then straightened his back. His elbow dug into his knee, propping him up. “You’ve got that right, son. But your senior here and you, you, you, the pair of you, you’re part of the wrong sect.”

Disciple Sun grimaced - some of his teeth were missing. Cultivators who had formed their foundations, over time, generally tended to look more and more like the image they had of themselves. “Hurts, hurts, hurts,” he muttered. “Not more than usual,” he said, directing that at her. “But still hurts. Can’t stand. Unfortunately.”

Unfortunate was one way to put it. Clearly he had never fought someone who cultivated the Star-seeking Palm before.

Disciple Sun started to weep. “Hurts so much.”

Ji either had no danger sense, or an incredibly good one, because he didn’t react to the strange way the man presented himself at all. “What hurts?”

Sun sniffed softly and dried his tears. “Life, living, cultivating, everything,” he said. He grit his teeth.

Ji nodded, looking sympathetic.

“Don’t give me your sympathy,” the man roared. “You’re young, you’re talented,” he muttered. “Why else would you be accompanied by your better.”

Surprisingly incisive from a crazy man.

“You’re severely hurt,” said Disciple Ji. “You need to see a doctor-”

“I am a doctor!” Sun roared. “I’m a core disciple of Beggar Ri! He is the greatest doctor. I need to see a better doctor than me,” he finished, contemplatively.

“But if you needed to see a doctor, why are you fighting?” asked Disciple Ji. His tone hadn’t changed, but Hong was a cultivator, she knew nervousness in the way hands moved, in the way Ji dug at his nails.

“You should know,” said the man.

“I’m just a new inner disciple at my sect, you’ll have to forgive me for my ignorance,” said Ji. “I don’t know of any quarrels or-”

“Your heads will fetch a price that can get me healed. Your blood can give me iron.”

As quick as lightning, before Hong could move, before she could cry out, a ring left the man’s finger.