Tai Kanhu

The day before the Autumn Festival, the red door opened twice.

The first time the door opened, a real princess walked in.

In the slums of Minghai, they knew Tai Kanhu as the King of Games. He was the prince of a dead kingdom - the Kingdom of Yi, and his sister was a dead princess. Of course, these were just the things he said when people asked who he was and where he came from. An escape from reality.

But this girl was nothing like Tai Kanhu. She was Zhu Feiyan and her family ruled most of the known world.

In her bright brown eyes glowed the light of Foundation Establishment, the same as him. Kanhu was playing Great Men and Great Scriptures with Leng Qitai when she appeared. She wore a white hanfu worth more than all his worldly possessions and pearls in her hair worth more than the island his slum was built on.

Great Men and Great Scriptures? A game for cultivators, a game of the masses played between two contenders.

Leng Qitai? An unworthy opponent. He held cards carved on stone, proof that he was from a well-off family. Kanhu's cards were painted bamboo.

Zhu Feiyan smiled at him first when she introduced herself. Kanhu was accustomed to this, because he had a handsome face. But when he introduced himself as a prince, she grew cold.

She stared at the board state and his cards, then sneered. "Play your last pathetic cards. You've lost for sure."

The object of the game is to ascend - or stop your opponent from doing so.

"My sister's deck has no pathetic cards," Kanhu promised. And he was right, because he hadn't ever lost a game.

Before she had died, his sister's favorite game was Great Men and Great Scriptures. Neither of them had been cultivators, so they were always prey when it came to games played on the street for money.

But it was in conflict that he had awoken - when the threat of violence was just a touch too unfair.

Before she had died, his sister had made him promise to go north, to join the greatest sect in the world. He was to take a ship to Bei’an and go east, to Tianbei Valley.

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Sixty cards to a deck, some representing sources of qi from the five elements, some representing venerates of note and some representing their scriptures, sutras and mantras.

Today, a real princess had walked into his life. And even though she had pointed to the cards he held in his hand, he knew that word she used was for him - pathetic.

But at least she did not regard Leng Qitai with any respect either.

The Zhu Princess tried to make conversation with the Inner Disciple who sat in vigil, in the corner, but she was hard at work studying the Skybound Scripture. Without anything better to do, Zhu Feiyan set out to convince him that the cards she had at home were far better than his.

Array a different source of qi on the field of battle every turn and, with this qi, call upon your immortals and their arts.

The second time the door opened, a pair of real cultivators walked in.

Some venerates will defend your life, allowing you to ascend with the help of their scriptures. Others will kill your opponent for you.

They were not like Tai Kanhu - they were in core formation. The girl stepped into the room like it was owed to her, like the whole world would be hers someday. The boy walked in like it already was.

Kanhu had been crushing Leng Qitai in their game, to the princess's displeasure.

Victory? Too many wounds and you will succumb to your death before your tribulation. Enough violence and your enemies could never succeed.

Leng Qitai? He conceded again, scooping up his cards in disgust.

The pair stared at the game in interest, and then introduced themselves.

Chow Mulan and Ji Kang already knew the princess. They wore robes of another sect, but carried the clothing of the Ascending Sky under their arms. When Kanhu fed them the same story he'd told the Zhu princess, the cultivators gasped in delight.

"We, too, are from the Kingdom of Yi! Are you our long lost prince?"

"Prove it," demanded Kanhu, who had seen that look in the girl's eye before - from the tricksters of Minghai and in his own reflection in pools. Tai Kanhu was no fool.

In response, the girl unpacked the guqin from the cloth case on her back and sat cross legged on the floor.

Her hazel eyes sparkled as she began to speak, like the musicians of old. "I am Chow, fifty-ninth of my line. If I can claim a master, it is the river. Today, I will play for you The Dance of the Yi People."

The boy, Ji Kang, looked heavenwards as the first notes sounded, bringing a stillness to the room.

The guqin was an instrument played by both emperors and the dregs of society, but the music of a real cultivator was enough to lift even the Inner Disciple from her meditation.

Kanhu wasn’t sure how he knew the song until the cultivator played the melodic line. It was something his sister would hum through the night, working the market stalls.

His cards? They slipped from his nerveless fingers onto the table. The depiction of his favorite venerate showed his face - the Shark.

Create your own cards and dunk them in a qi spring. If you were to falsify an immortal or a scripture, your card would sink into the spring and cease to exist. But should the card be true, it will float face-up to the top, because the truth shall always rise.