I needed time to think. Test how things worked. Plan lessons.
But needs must when the devil drives, my new disciple needed something to do. So, I mister-miyagi’ed her.
After my misadventure with the lecture, I’d been frustrated, as I wandered the grounds of the sect. I’d been leery of drawing my sword again, after I’d nearly left a dozen disciples homeless the last time I’d taken it up, but frustration and curiosity had gotten the better of me. With a single swing, I’d sliced a tree in two. No fancy storm-winds, no muscling through it with supernatural strength. Just a single clean swing, and a mid-size tree lying in two pieces before me. I hadn’t even been close enough for the length of the blade to fully sever the trunk. That apparently hadn’t mattered at all.
It was such a strange sensation. I did it, with effortless ease, but I didn’t know how. It was like reinforcing my limbs, or the movement technique I’d unconsciously performed in the plaza. A thing my body or qi did without my knowledge or understanding. I swung the sword. It cut.
I knew it was possible. But I didn’t know what it was, let alone how to teach it to another. Sword intent? Material reinforcement? A projected edge of qi? Perhaps it was even a property of my sword, and not my cultivation. I doubted it though. For lack of a better word, my sword felt normal. It wasn’t mundane, but I somehow knew that what was special about it, was that it was mine.
And so, I found myself standing with my new student in front of a tree.
“Master, I don’t have an axe.”
“You’re a cultivator. It’s a small tree.”
Su Li looked between the tree and her sword, then turned her eyes to the ground.
“I’m sorry master, but this sword, it’s all I have left of my father.” She said, refusing to meet my eyes.
“If you fear to damage it, then don’t use it. There are rocks here. You have hands. You have qi. You have a technique that doesn’t require your sword to touch the tree. Figure it out.”
“But… Why? I don’t understand. Should I not practice forms, or trade pointers with another disciple?”
“Really? You’re worried about blunting your sword against a tree, but you want to spar with another cultivator with it? This tree has no fearsome martial techniques. No urgent deadline weighs upon you. Enough Qi is present in the air for you to cycle whenever you run your dantian dry. You have a jug of water. Try. Fail. Try something else. Failure is the mother of invention and success alike. Are you so bereft of imagination that the prospect of a blank page before you terrifies you?
“Watch.” I said, and drew my sword. I swung, and the world parted. With glacial slowness, the severed trunk slid downwards, along the diagonal path I’d cut. As it fell to the ground, I noted a deep gash in the tree behind it, its crescent path continuing into a thin trench gouged deep into the earth. I’d have to watch that.
I turned to leave.
“If you truly cannot do something so simple, then go find an ax. Return to my house before this time tomorrow, with as much wood as you manage to gather.”
It was a little harsh, but it didn’t feel unreasonable. Worst case, she’d beg or borrow an axe. Best case, she’d learn something. After a moment, I paused. Su Li seemed like she might be an overachiever, and I didn’t know how much more space my storage ring had.
“Limit yourself to three trees worth at the most. I don’t actually need that much wood. Quartered logs, pieces no longer than your forearm. You can use that tree as one of your three, if you wish, no sense wasting it.”
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Su Li didn’t know what she was feeling.
She’d succeeded. An elder had acknowledged her. Said he would teach her. Elder Hu was strange, but so were all the others. She felt like she could trust him. She couldn’t say that about most of the other elders, except maybe Elder Li.
He’d made no mention of accepting her as his disciple. That was fine. She couldn’t expect his acknowledgement as a mere initiate. He would accept her when she reached foundation establishment. She knew he would. He wasn’t like the other elders, so wrapped up in their own little worlds, or venal and lascivious.
Sure, he’d told her to cut wood. It wasn’t a lesson, but initiates did all sorts of chores. Even outer disciples weren’t above them. But the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach wrestling with her joy wasn’t frustration. It was fear.
It wasn’t a chore. It was a test. Three trees, he’d said. No more than three trees. That meant no less than three trees. The first task her master set her, she would not, could not, disappoint him.
His sword qi had been so absolute, so certain, the tree had parted for him like water. No, not like water, like a dream in the face of the morning sun. It hadn't been destroyed by the weight of overwhelming power, it had been facing something that there was never any possibility of resisting in the first place.
She couldn’t do that. But if her sword couldn’t be sharp enough to make the world bleed like his, then her resolve would be unbreakable. He used a sword, and so she would as well. She had twenty four hours. The moon would rise in two.
She unwrapped her father’s ruined sword. Her eyes traced the burrs along its edge. She imagined the desperate scene, Su Han standing alone, surrounded by a hundred men, forced by the weight of the press to take blow after blow on the edge of his sword. A forest of spears, a wall of bodies. A hero dragged down into the mud by a legion of cowards who would never have dared face him alone.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Three trees. Segments the length of her forearm. Perhaps twelve full cuts across the trunk. Thirty six full cuts, and thirty six log segments to quarter. Elder Hu hadn’t mentioned the branches, she’d have to include those too. Maybe eight branches per tree to be cut to size.
Perhaps a hundred cuts? More, if she couldn’t sever the trunk with one Waxing Crescent. She could do perhaps three cuts before exhausting herself. She had one day. Could she replenish her qi fast enough to make the math work? She’d never timed it. Never had to.
It didn’t matter. She could sleep when her father was avenged. When her family was avenged. If the math didn’t work, she would make it work.
The pure unearthly white of the moon shrouded her blade, and Su Li went to work.
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One day. Twenty four hours. That was how long I had to find something that I could actually teach Su Li. I knew she used lunar qi. Her technique, or perhaps cultivation method was called the Manual of the Passing Moon. I remembered that, she mentioned it after she demonstrated that move for me. I would need to see if the repository had a copy, or a more complete version.
Could I teach her anything I knew about swordsmanship? I knew people used bamboo and pool noodles to practice cutting with proper edge alignment. That might buy me a few hours. Even if I was confident in my own ability to teach sword forms, which I certainly wasn’t, I still wasn’t sure I could even swing a sword without breaking something now. I’d need to find a wooden sword eventually and test that too.
What were my priorities? Bamboo first. I’d passed groves, I knew it was a real training exercise, and what good performance looked like. I could lend her a sword whose edge didn’t have a thousand notches on it, my storage ring had plenty of spare blades, despite lacking a single bokken or stave for practice.
Cultivation second. I didn’t know anything, but she would expect me to. I could at least try to find a copy of her manual, and some reference materials related to lunar qi. Anything else would have to wait. Even if I found a wooden sword somewhere, or grabbed a stick, I didn’t have any formal training to impart. If I ran out of material, I’d just have to set her some physical exercises, or work grappling forms with her. That subject at least, I was confident enough of my skill to teach. Perhaps agreeing to teach her on impulse had been a mistake.
Normally, I would have said no. By nature, I'd always been a planner. I didn’t let others take advantage of me, I only moved after considering every potential outcome. But the way she’d ended her plea. She would not live under the same sky as the man who’d killed her father. She would kill herself, if she couldn't kill him. Not by her own hand, but she’d take her shot, even if it was futile.
I was pretty sure I needed a student-beard, to at least present a fig leaf that I was contributing something to this sect. She definitely needed a better teacher than me, but if I was her last hope, I couldn’t do worse than offer her nothing.
As I opened my door to go gather bamboo, I found yet another disciple waiting for me.
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Liang Tao felt sweat bead under his arms as he stood in front of the door to Elder Hu's dwelling. He'd thought that he had left underarm sweat behind when he'd taken his first steps towards Body Reformation. This week had proved him so very wrong.
He'd underestimated Master Liang's dislike for Elder Hu. Using him to deliver an invitation, it was tantamount to admitting that he was the one who informed her of his reading material. It was yet another reminder that he couldn’t trust his master not to throw him to the wolves on a whim. Even Elder Hu couldn’t just kill him, that would be stealing from Master Liang’s oh so precious hoard, her fangs would come out for that. But if the man beat him, under the guise of offering him pointers? There was nothing he could do to defend himself, nothing his master would do to avenge his injury, so long as his face and cultivation were not permanently damaged. He couldn’t even fault the man for it, after his princely gift, he’d immediately ran to betray his confidence. But there had been nothing for it, Liang Ai had no use for a tool that served two masters.
He’d knocked, but gotten no answer. Master Liang had not deigned to give him a physical invitation, and Elder Hu had no servants or disciples, so all he could do was wait. It was noon, for all that meant within the Pathless Night. He was an inner disciple, and it seemed like all he was good for these days was waiting at the whim of his betters. He almost envied the outer disciples. At least their labors were productive, yielding food or other necessities of life. At least this time he could cultivate, the first plaza was the administrative seat of the outer sect, and with the proximity of so many elders, its qi was more than thick enough for him to make use of.
Seven hundred and sixty four times, he cycled his cultivation according to the Scripture of the Hollow Sky, before the door opened.
Elder Hu was not a large man. He was of average height for a mortal man, which left him slightly on the shorter side for a cultivator. He was powerfully muscled, but not to the extent of a dedicated body cultivator, or even one of Elder Wang's disciples. His face was not ugly, but it was more stern than handsome, and nothing compared to the beauty of his master, or Elder Xin. Yet, there was something about his presence, an edge to it, terrifying, even for an elder.
It wasn’t the weight of his cultivation, he didn’t throw it around like Elder Liang did, claiming the very air around him. It was the nature of his qi, the feeling it evoked. It sung of slaughter, sharp and wet and warm, but so did many of his sect brothers. A man did not grow up in a demonic sect and somehow end up unfamiliar with slaughter or sword cultivators. There was something else there, buried beneath, that he couldn’t place. Something that lent his presence a weight those swaggering fools lacked. He pushed deeper, trying to pin it down. His skin felt slick and warm, clenched fists remembered their purpose. Legions roared and the sky wept. Great wheels ground swords to ash. And through it all, a man laughed.
“What?” Elder Hu asked bluntly, startling Liang Tao out of his stupefaction. He felt his face flush, then pale. He’d gotten so distracted he completely forgotten where he was. He’d inspected an Elder’s qi deeply. He’d inspected Elder Hu’s qi deeply.
Empty night, he was a dead man. He could kill him for this, and even Master Liang wouldn’t save him.
“Honored Elder Hu, Elder Liang wishes this small one to convey to you an invitation to join her and a small gathering of your peers for tea.”
Elder Hu just stared at him, no doubt deciding how to kill him. Perhaps if he was lucky, he would simply demand compensation from Master Liang in exchange for sparing him. He’d be demoted, certainly. If not worse.
The son of an Elder, an outer disciple. He’d be the laughingstock of the sect. At least he’d get to stop interacting with old monsters regularly. He could do his mother’s laundry instead. His siblings too, he supposed. Maybe the whole household. It was just laundry, how long could one person’s worth take, a few hours? He waited for the blade to fall, it was all he could do not to close his eyes.
“Where and when?”
Wait, what?
“At her dwelling upon the first plaza, at a time of your choosing.” Liang Tao responded mechanically.
“The day after tomorrow then, at dawn. I need to arrange some things for my student.” Elder Hu said, as he walked away.
Dawn? Who had a tea ceremony at dawn in this sect? Why wasn’t he dead? Elder Hu had a student? Liang Tao shivered. Why did Elder Hu keep telling him things he was honor bound to pass onto his master? Nothing good could come of getting between those two ancient rivals.