Jiendao was born into a family with two older sisters and one older brother, and then later acquired two more elder siblings in the form of orphaned cousins.
This was not too unusual; many families were as large as possible, either to keep rolling the dice on producing a cultivator, or simply to work as large a field as possible.
And their family of eight – stretched into the thirties if she counted all her aunts and uncles and cousins – was certainly successful, as far as the latter was concerned. She and her siblings worked themselves to the bone alongside their parents, but in exchange they were never in danger of going hungry. Some days the local holy man would stand in the village’s central road and preach about the bounty of the Greengrass Continent, and on those days she was truly thankful; living somewhere else, where the ground froze and all the plants withered and people starved for months on end, sounded terrible.
But as for the former, they were less favoured by Heaven. Jiendao was too young to remember her eldest brother’s tenth spring, but those of her two sisters and two brother-cousins stood out clearly. They each went up the path to Steadfast Heart Mountain as part of a long procession with the village’s other youths, every one of them with a determined expression on their face.
Then her and her family, and the other families with ten-year-olds, would wait patiently until sunset. The mood was contradictory, both sombre and festive, with lots of laughter covering up an anxiety that even she, a small child, could feel.
And then the children would come back down from the mountain, silver coins clutched in their hands. Almost always, it was the same number that had gone up. Their parents would pat them on the back and tell them it was alright as the mood tilted more towards sombre, while the village elders gathered up a portion of the testing payment for their own use. Then the holy man would give a short speech, pronounce that year’s group to be adults, and everyone would go home.
But on some years, not all the children came back down the mountain. On these rare occasions there would be a great celebration, with a feast even bigger than Year’s End, and everyone would cheer on the family that had produced a cultivator. Those were always good years; the sect payed handsomely for new members, a hundred times more than for failed applicants, and there was almost always new buildings or roads or something else built by the next time spring rolled around.
Four times Jiendao watched a sibling go up the mountain, and four times she watched them come down.
And then, on her tenth spring, it was her turn to climb the mountain.
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Her eyes opened to a sickeningly red light. Like blood pouring down onto her face, it tried to force its way through her pupils and into her brain.
She hated Fort Iron-Brick, with its thick walls and steaming corridors and disgustingly crimson lights. But as her head cleared and awareness filtered in, the reflexive hate was replaced by alarm.
Why was I unconscious? The battle- the battle! She almost leapt out of bed right then, only stopped by a terrible weakness in her limbs.
I’m- my chest feels- oh. Oh. Only now did she realise she was unclothed, the bare skin of her chest marred by an ugly scar left half-healed, going all the way from the peak of her left breast down to her inner thigh.
Her armour was gone, and as her head cleared completely there was enough room for more recent memory. I failed to dodge. I was… cut in two. How am I..?
Her finger traced the angry, puffy tissue. It hurt – more than it should have if she had been healed properly, but much less than if she had recovered on her own. As if I could have recovered naturally. No, this must be the product of a spell.
But no spell I know of would leave such a strange mark. She could feel it all along her back, too, the exit wound as raw and swollen as the entry. Did the natives..?
Her half-formed question was answered as something shuffled into motion in the dim light. She startled – then calmed as she recognised the figure, which appeared almost more like a pile of discarded rags that anything.
She attempted to form a Telepathic Bond, but the forms were constructed sluggishly, unfurling the moment her attention went to the next in line. And looking inward… No. Even if she could hold all the forms at once, no.
Her dantian was gone. Involuntarily, her heart quickened – a sensation she had not felt in many decades.
The figure, the healer, made a string of sounds like birdsong as she quietly panicked, and like a switch was flipped something like acceptance filled her veins, pushing the rising beat of her heart down and away.
“Apologies, honoured healer. I cannot understand your words.”
The rag-heap-man shook then, like a tree trembling in an earthquake, before sweeping out through a low doorway. She was left alone, her pulse alternating between calm and racing from one moment to the next, blood loud in her ears.
This is not the end.
The thought came to her violently, savaging through the conflicting feelings like a sword through flesh and bone. This is not the end. I am alive. I can start again.
She did not know how long she lay there, gripping the thin padded surface of the bed, only that eventually the healer returned with a human in tow.
He politely averted his eyes from her nudity, and spoke. “Senior Jiendao, I’m glad you are well. Do you feel any complications from our benefactor’s-”
“How long has it been?” Her words cut him off.
“…Two days, senior.” He glanced at her – at her face, not anywhere else – and shook his head minutely. In the dark red murk it was hard to read his expression, something she would not have struggled with before, even without her helmet. “The battle was won. The machines were pushed back without further losses.”
For a minute she could only bite her tongue. Yet again she volleyed between panic and rage and calm and terror; it was not only the strength of her body and soul that had fled, but her mind’s cultivation as well. She felt like a small child again, yet to ascend the mountain and become a woman.
“That’s good.” Her mouth felt like it was moving too slowly one moment and too quickly the next, but somehow the words came out steady. “You are… scholar Lan, correct?”
He might not be someone she had had any notable interactions with, but with such a small group it was easy to at least know each person’s name and face.
“I am honoured you recognise me, senior. It’s good there were no…” He gave the Metal Bite clansman a side-eye. “Unintended consequences to your treatment. If we weren’t so completely destitute in terms of replenishment pills…”
His eyes turned to the floor as he trailed off. She didn’t need to hear the rest anyway; she knew the situation as well as anyone else.
“Did my suit survive, at least?”
A slow shake of the head, his empty spectacles sliding down his nose beneath his faceplate. “No, I’m afraid it was quite unrecoverable. The remaining bits and pieces were salvageable, though, so we’ll be able to repair one or two others at least.”
She breathed in, then out. The air seemed somehow even hotter and wetter than usual, as though she was taking a steam bath. Her scar throbbed, not in sync with her heart as she would have assumed, but rather to its own completely separate rhythm.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“…Alright.” Pushing with her arms, she rose shakily to sit on the edge of the bed. One bare foot braced against where the plastic furniture met the stone floor, the other extended further to catch her weight, which seemed to have quintupled as far as her mortal muscles were concerned.
She stood. Then, as though she was looking up at a great mountain that touched the sky, she took one step, then another.
The scholar averted his eyes again as she passed. “Perhaps I’ll fetch you some robes, senior sister?”
Another step. She felt something shaped like a smile pull at her face. “Give me yours. I want to see my raidgroup right away, without delay.”
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Mortality was both easier and harder than she remembered. Her thoughts and motions were clumsy, yes, but as the days passed she found herself less diminished than she would have thought. She could still slide through the forms of her martial katas, her muscle memory not diminished one bit, and even spar lightly with her sect siblings.
She did not win, not once, did not even draw close, but two centuries of diligent practise did not disappear along with her dantian.
Lan and another scholar named Han Shiba walked her through forming a ‘ki circuit,’ and within a month she was able to return to the field.
Third realm spells paled in comparison to the eighth realm arts she was used to, but they could still tear through machinery with the proper application.
And then, after a particularly gruelling day of monotonous combat, Lan approached her yet again. He stepped into her quarters, politely averting his eyes from her sweat-soaked body.
“Senior sister, greetings.” He looked exactly the same as the last time she had seen him – unlike herself, with her wildly growing hair and nails, the shape of her face seeming to change every time she glanced at a mirror.
“Junior brother.” It was somehow endearing, the way people – him specifically, really – continued to treat her as a core disciple despite her mortality. It made everything just slightly more bearable, the reminder that they wouldn’t be here forever, that the sect would rescue them eventually.
“I see you are doing well for yourself. I hope I’m not intruding.”
“You aren’t.”
His hand went up to brush his faceplate, as though to reach through the glass and push his spectacles up, before going back down to clasp in front of his chest. “I hope not. I…”
He hesitated, and she held back a smile. Has he finally gotten up the courage? I thought I expressed my interest quite clearly last time we met, but I suppose he’s the sort to act skittish in these sorts of matters.
“…I thought I might make you aware of something.” His eyes hardened. “This isn’t something we understand, not at all – but there might be a way for you to cultivate. Or rather, to practice consumption.”
Even with months of effort, she still wasn’t very good at controlling her body language; her eyebrows climbed to the top of her head and her lips parted. Her heart beat in her chest like a wild animal, its echo tingling in her scar. That wasn’t a confession… but I suppose this is even better. “Like a local?”
He nodded. Between breaths his demeanour had changed as it sometimes did, his spine straightening and an edge appearing on his face. “We only have a sample size of one. The original breacher, Lu from the outer sect.”
She nodded back, recognising the name from the reports.
“I don’t know what the result will be – but I think it would be a criminal waste of talent not to try. I can only describe what he did, but…”
She stepped forward, until their faces were as close as they could be with the layer of glass in the way. “Tell me.”
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Jiendao was not very good at learning languages, it seemed. As the Metal Bite warrior twittered on, answering her question as relayed through Lan, she caught maybe one word in ten despite over half a year’s effort to learn the damned unspeakable babble.
“[I see, I see. Thank you, honoured benefactor.]” Lan bowed, then turned to her with a smile as the thing scuttled off on all fours, its body buried under layers of ragged cloth and steel plates.
“Well?” She was impatient, a novel reversal of the usual situation. Normally it was Lan urging her forward while she held back, wary of taking a miss-step which destroyed her future. Whether because he was a dedicated scholar or because of concern for her, this seemed to be the one area where he wasn’t content to let her forge her own path – they had even had arguments over it.
Or maybe it would be better to say I’ve argued with myself over it, with him in the room. Even at his most heated, Lan was a very passive person.
“Sir Cold thinks it will work.” A pause. “Well, he said it wouldn’t not work. Not how I would phrase things, but…”
Even after carefully considering it for nearly half a year, she still felt nervousness arc up and down her spine. “I’ll try it today, then.”
“You’re absolutely certain?”
The two of them had been going slowly, in terms of physical intimacy. Though it wouldn’t be dangerous for him to remove his suit for a few minutes at a time – arts to separate out the foreign energy from one’s dantian were steadily rising in efficiency as the need for them became more urgent – she did not even want to consider having a child in this place. And she was self-aware enough to know that she wouldn’t stop if things got serious.
So when she reached forward and gently tugged his helmet up, he was stunned for a moment. Then the latch opened, the clear material ceasing to bar them from one another, and her lips met his.
It was the need for air, yet another reminder of her mortality, that forced her away. But she played it off as deliberate, giving a cocky smile as she backed up.
“Wish me luck, junior.” She turned, and walked with as steady a pace as she could manage back to her rooms.
She donned the heavy metal armour that the locals were so fond of, and then made her way to the roof.
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No Path had revealed itself to her in the inner realm, as it did for some lucky few. Nor did it come with her ascension to the core realm, as with the bulk of those smiled on by Heaven.
No, even nearing her third century of life Jiendao had only the barest idea of what a Path even was. Sometimes she felt something flickering like a dying ember in the centre of her spirit, far away despite being so very close, but that was the extent of it. No, she was not someone who found that aspect of cultivation easy. The road to the elder realm would be a hard slog, one that would more likely than not see her dead before she reached the end.
The mountain was not built to be climbed.
But still, she wanted to reach the top. So if she could choose what alien Path to walk, she would make it something miraculous.
That idea was tested almost before she even began.
This is so, so stupid, she thought, her sweaty palms threatening to slide on the ridged metal.
Fort Iron-Brick was an ugly mound of steel and rock, something so unpleasant to live in that she struggled to understand the minds that had built it. But it did have certain features that were recognisable – most relevant to her current plans, a spattering of weather veins dotting the roof of it.
In a human dwelling, the weather vein would be an inconspicuous trident of metal affixed to one corner of the structure. The Salt version – or maybe just the Fort Iron-Brick version; it wasn’t as though she had seen any other structures since she got here – was instead more of a tower all its own. Each rose over twenty metres into the air, built from twisting rods of black iron like the gnarled branches of an evil tree. She was dangling from one of those branches, cursing her own hubris, the forms she was holding in her mind threatening to unravel.
Stupid, stupid. I should have at least brought a rope- ack!
Her hand slipped, and she wildly flailed to catch it again. The iron bars were actually incredibly easy to hold, their surface textured and the bars themselves narrow enough to fit in her grip, but the intense winds and slight sway of the structure were conspiring to dislodge her.
Her grip tightened again, and she let out a shaky breath. No, no, don’t give up now. Falling won’t kill you, even if you fail to cast anything. The forms for the first realm version of Lightning Palm settled back in her mind as if carved from stone.
As a spell it was borderline unusable, too qi-hungry for the short range and paltry damage to be worth it, but as a foundation for a lightning-focused consumption?
It would have to do. Should have been enough, according to Lan, except it wasn’t. Even saturating each cell of her stomach with the enchantment hadn’t formed the self-sustaining structure he described.
So they turned to Metal Tooth, who advised saturating her in a matching environment. They had workshopped ideas for a time, refined things, and admittedly she had been dragging her feet a little bit…
But eventually it had led her here, trying her damned best to get struck by lightning. Salt – this part at least – didn’t have rainstorms, but it did have lightning. A lot of lightning, sometimes, mainly concentrated in a hundred-day stretch called the bright season. Lightning that didn’t behave quite like Earth lightning, meaning that this wasn’t an elaborate suicide method – even if struck full-on, she was very unlikely to die.
So she held on to both the enchantment in her mind, and the iron bars in her hands. She rattled in the winds like a leaf, and waited.
For long minutes, she waited. Ancient people used to think that being struck by lightning was a test from Heaven. Her grip grew even tighter, the incredibly conductive armour wrapped around her body clinking against the vein. Let’s prove them right.
With a flash, a tribulation descended.