There are many things with a complex history in our world. Natural treasures in their forms most of all. Many think the rare plants or minerals we seek to aid in cultivation are produced by the land, but how natural are they really when our sects and ascendants have shaped the very land itself over millennia? In fact, I’d bet that only a minority of our plants are natural at all and that most escaped from ancient gardens like those of the Half-Moon Manor. – Scholar Zi Zhu of the Earthspark Steel Sect

* * *

“Tsuyuki!” Tenri’s voice broke me out of my stupor staring at the Heaven’s Lily still wrapped around Chiho. Pounding footsteps soon followed and I turned to see him run back up the path towards me. When he stopped, he frowned, pushed his glasses up his nose, and looked at me with suspicion. “What the hell is wrong with you!?”

I blinked at him in shock. Had I done something strange? I’d gone back for Chiho. Was there anything wrong with that?

“Do you have a death wish? You’re not an Ascendent anymore! You can actually die, you know! What were you thinking?” He exhaled his fury as soon as he’d done speaking before pinning me with a scathing glare. I just shrugged and smiled…which only seemed to make him more irritated.

“I’m perfectly aware of my mortality, thank you,” I answered. “But Chiho is very dear to me.”

“It’s a hairpin! It can be replaced!”

Chiho squirmed in my grasp. Fortunately, it was still twisted up with a flower stem, and, thus, couldn’t escape to heckle Tenri. As much as I loved the pin, I couldn’t allow it to lessen the venom of my words with its antics.

“Chiho is not just a hairpin,” I hissed. “It is a treasure, and it’s older than your ancestors. It is irreplaceable and I will not let you suggest otherwise, Tenri Lin!”

I brushed past him and stalked away. As I walked, I unwrapped Chiho from its flower shackle. It lifted itself carefully off my palm before hanging near my head, the perfect image of a kicked puppy.

“Don’t listen to him, Chiho,” I muttered to the pin, pulling it close. It hugged my cheek, and I leaned into the gesture. “He’s just jealous because he doesn’t have you to make his hair look stunning.” Chiho vibrated and trilled its happiness. Its feelings were delicate, but complimenting it always cheered it up.

* * *

As much as I would have loved to leave Tenri and never speak to him again for the insult he gave to my best and only friend, I had nowhere else to go. His wife still had my usual robes, and I didn’t exactly have the funds to buy more. However, that didn’t stop me from being petty.

As such, I stayed out late, wandering through the lantern-lit streets of Saikan. I convinced myself it was just good form to know the layout of the town, and I rarely slept during the night in the old days anyway. What better time to get a peaceful view of the town at night?

That said, the town itself was fairly unremarkable. There were residences, shops, and shacks, all with beautiful roofs painted in vibrant colors and lit by paper lanterns. It was like dozens of towns I’d been to. No matter what age you’re in, towns are towns.

However, what truly held my attention was the docks and the reef beyond. I’d expected to see nothing but dark waters and the reflection of the near-full moon overhead, but beneath the surface, a thousand lights lit up the colorful reef from below. I had never seen anything like it. It was as if the moon itself had reached into the waves and illuminated the reds, pinks, and blues of the coral. Even the most magnificent painter wouldn’t be able to recreate that perfect view.

I sat down at the end of the docks and stared, trying to figure out what sort of phenomena was creating the little lights. Even after two hours of staring, I didn’t have any answers. The tiny pinpricks of light were largely hidden by the coral. Short of actually swimming down and retrieving one myself, I didn’t think I’d find out on my own.

Still, there was a certain tranquility in that view. Chiho had gotten bored and was resting under my hat, meaning it was just me, the sea, and the moon. I loved the sea, but I’d never learned to swim. In an age long past, I’d quarreled with an Ascendent called the Ocean Lord. Though I didn’t remember much of the details now, I did remember that I’d found a way to mess with the tides as a way to irritate him, and he’d dragged me underwater as payback. I would have drowned in his waters if not for the help of a very close friend. I’d avoided actually going near the sea since then, preferring to admire its beauty from a distance instead.

I wonder what happened to the Ocean Lord? I doubted he was still around. A long time had passed, and, even if Ascendents were immune to the rigors of time, any number of accidents or conflicts could have done him in after all these years. In fact, I was sure that everyone I’d once known was dead, good or bad.

I thumbed the flower in my hand. Someone had to have created it. I wanted to do more research on these Four Spirits of the Shore. Perhaps one of them remembered something from their life before death.

The moon was descending in the sky by the time I made my way back to Tenri’s house. I’d been out long enough that I probably wouldn’t have to bow my head in shame on entry to his home. If I was lucky, no one would be awake, and I could slip in without a sound.

I crept past the koi pond I’d fallen into that morning before quietly opening the door and creeping inside. Hanako had left a candle out for me, but otherwise not a soul was in sight. Quietly, I padded to the small room off the first floor. Hanako had also left my other clothes, all washed and folded, in a neat pile at the end of my mat. I quickly changed back into them, and curled up on the mat to sleep, my hat over my head to block the coming sun.

* * *

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My dreams were about the same as the night before, but at least this time, I maintained my senses when I woke. It was several minutes before the whispers had faded from my ears and I felt aware enough to sit up. I pulled my hair into its usual knot, pulling the front hairs out of my face and leaving the rest to hang down my back. Chiho then slid into place and trilled a “good morning” to me.

I stepped out to find Hanako in the kitchen, but it seemed Tenri had already gone to work. Even his parents weren’t in sight.

“Good morning, Master Tsuyuki,” Hanako greeted when she noticed I was up.

“Good morning, is Tenri already at work?”

She nodded. “Yes, he said you might want a day off after helping with my cousins yesterday. I’m extremely grateful to you. Mina and Suyi are very close cousins with Jaili and me.” She placed a bowl of rice and a fresh set of chopsticks before me.

“Thank you for the meal,” I said politely. “Are you and Zhao Jaili related?”

“Yes, she’s my younger sister.”

Interesting. I had seen the resemblance, but Hanako’s name was from a completely different region of the world…or at least the world I knew once upon a time. I would have expected her to have been born further north like I was or in the eastern lands, but perhaps the world had grown smaller in my time locked away.

“Don’t push yourself too hard, Master Tsuyuki,” Hanako said. “Tenri will be conducting inspections today in order to appease his rat of a cousin. If you’re still planning on remaining nearby, then maybe take the time to get to know the town?”

I nodded. “I think I’ll do just that.”

* * *

By my recollection, there were still two jobs on Tenri’s docket that would require a cultivator’s power to deal with: crabs in the reef, and a shade in the lighthouse. One of those would almost certainly require someone to swim out and deal with the problem, thus putting it outside of my capabilities, but the other seemed like something I could handle. Shades were creatures of death, but they hated light. As such, I’d fought a fair few of the creatures during my rise to Ascendence.

However, since I didn’t even know where this lighthouse was, and under no circumstances would I ask Tenri’s “rat of a cousin” as his wife so delicately put it, I needed to gather information the hard way. I wandered through town, greeting people, introducing myself, and asking my questions.

As it turned out, the lighthouse wasn’t far away, just an hour or so to the north. It was normally manned by a single family whose sole duty was to maintain the lighthouse during the night and stormy weather. However, about three months ago, the lighthouse had gone dark. Those who went to investigate, found the keeper and his wife dead and a strange howling had come from the upper reaches of the tower. Thus, Tenri had been called in as the resident cultivator. The townsfolk didn’t know what he’d done there, but ultimately, he’d sealed the door and declared that no fishing boats could go out after dark or when there were storms on the horizon.

Though the fishermen in question seemed to have some rather colorful opinions on Tenri’s decision not to deal with it, I suspected there was some logic there. His techniques revolved around plant manipulation. Inside a building, he’d be at a disadvantage. I, however, had no such hinderances.

Ideally, though, I wanted to have some information on what kind of shade I was dealing with. Who the person was, what did they want, that sort of thing. This didn’t seem like a shade like the one I’d encountered the night before, which meant that it was being kept by an intense emotion. By placating it, it might be easily dispersed without violence. The only problem with that plan was that no one seemed to know anything about the shade itself. The consensus was that if anyone knew, it would be Tenri.

Frankly, I was still holding a small grudge, and didn’t want to ask him for any help. Even at Bronze, I was perfectly capable of handling the situation on my own. I’d show him just how strong I was, even without my Ascendence. Maybe then, he might actually trust me to be on my own without getting myself or the entire continent killed.

I decided to take a rest a little after midday. I was exhausted from a lack of good sleep, having slept in not nearly as much as I would have hoped, and what sleep I did get was fitful. Luckily for me, there were plenty of nooks and alleyways between buildings where I could sit and eat the rice ball that Zhao Mina had gifted to me the day before. I’d only taken three bites of the delicious rice ball when a small voice called to me.

“Are you a god?”

I practically choked on my rice. Next to me had appeared a young girl…maybe nine years old…who was looking at me with the most inquisitive expression. She was dressed simply, clearly from a fishing family like most of the town, but her eyes were a bright and curious violet.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked once I had stopped choking.

“Are you a god?” she repeated. “All the festival plays show gods dressing in red and gold, but I’ve been watching you and your clothes don’t get dirty, even here.” She gestured to the alleyway around her. “So, how do you do that if you’re not a god?”

Honest truth? I’d forgotten about one of my lowest techniques. It’s unbecoming of a ruler to get dirty, so I’d long perfected a low-level moon technique to rewrite any reality where dirt got on me and replace it with one where I didn’t. I’d forgotten about it entirely, assuming that I would be incapable of reality alteration at Bronze. This must have been so trivial, that even now I could do it…

But how do I explain that without mentioning my lunar affinity?! And to a child perceptive enough to notice the ability in the first place!?

As far as she was concerned, I was a god. A wicked god from the darkest depths of legend, but one all the same. She’d likely never see anyone more than silver in her entire life, let alone someone who’d made it to Ascendent.

“I…uh…I’m a cultivator?” My mind swam, trying to find a better answer for the curiosity burning in those eyes.

“Master Tenri is a cultivator, too, but he gets dirty,” she answered. “Is it because he has such bad eyesight that he gets dirty? I heard he was nearly blind before he reached Bronze.” There was no other way he could still have glasses, even after the qi enhancements already made to his body. Some things would take more than one advancement to correct.

“Not quite,” I answered, scratching my head. “You see, I’m a practitioner of void arts, so I naturally destroy dirt?” It was the best answer I was going to come up with on such short notice.

I waited, cold sweat dripping down my neck, as she frowned, trying to decide if my answer was reasonable. In the end, she smiled and accepted it with a nod.

“I guess that makes sense!” Then, she sat down across from me. “Where are you from? I wish I could go somewhere else. Saikan is so small and boring, and the only thing we have to eat here is fish.”

“Oh? I don’t think it’s so bad, I’m from the Pearlescent Valley up north,” I explained. “We have nothing but rice and vegetables. I like having the fish.”

“You’re strange.”

I laughed. “You think so?” She nodded adamantly.

“You don’t get dirty, and you like fish.”

The simplistic, yet practical view of a child. What a magnificent thing? I dearly tried to hold back my laughter, but I couldn’t. It was refreshing to find someone so straight forward.

“What’s your name, Meimei?” I asked, brushing a tear from my eye.

“I’m Xinya,” she introduced. “Lang Xinya.”

“Nice to meet you, Xinya. I’m Yoru.”