What is fate? What is destiny? Once, we had to rely on blind faith for these ideals, but, with cultivation, we have seen it, touched it, changed it. And yet, I do not know a single cultivator that can give me a satisfactory answer. In the end, all I really know is that we must forge our own. – Elder Xin Yue of Stars Wheel Sect

* * *

Xinya narrowed her eyes at me, and I could see the thoughts spinning behind her eyes. She raised a hand and began chewing on her knuckle as she pondered my answer.

“Is that your given name or your family name?” she finally asked.

“Given,” I answered. “If you prefer, my family name is Tsuyuki, but I’m not big on formality.”

“Tsuyuki Yoru.” She closed her eyes, mulling over my answer. I wasn’t really sure what was worthy of such intense thought, but I held my tongue and patiently waited. Xinya began to idly chew on her knuckle as she did. “You have a strange name.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Miss Hanako has a strange name, too, though. She says it’s because her mother was saved by a mysterious cultivator before she was born.” Xinya sat across from me. “I guess cultivators have strange names besides Master Tenri. Maybe he’s the strange one.” I bit back laughter again and smiled at the young girl.

“I’ve never really considered it before, but cultivators come from all over,” I explained. “I’m from the north, but the Sun Queen came from south of here. She had a name a lot like yours. And the Ocean Lord came from an island south and east. His name was completely different.” Xinya’s eyes lit up with excitement.

“Aren’t those the gods in the Legend of the Darkened Moon?” she asked, the words practically tumbling out of her mouth. “The ones who worked with the Sword Saint but got their asses kicked before he had to come and save them!?”

“I…suppose?” I was a little shocked by the nine-year-old’s sudden shift in language, but she was so excited. Maybe I was just a bad adult for not chastising her, but I didn’t want to dampen her enthusiasm

Chiho quietly trilled its amusement. It was pleased with this version of the tale, but, of course, it would be. It was also a fan of the Sword Saint…and I could hardly blame neither the pin nor the girl sitting before me.

“It’s my favorite part of the festival,” Xinya was immediately on her feet. “When all hope seems lost, and the Darkened Moon is about to win the day with his magical future sight, then the Sword Saint just goes WHAM!” She drew her hands down, pantomiming a great sword strike. “And the Darkened Moon dies on the spot!”

I…didn’t know what to say to that. That was not anything like the version of events that I knew. They had festivals for this?

Xinya looked up at the sky. “I want to be in stories like that one day. I want to be a hero just like the Sword Saint.”

“Then why don’t you become a cultivator?” I asked. “I think the Saint himself started at about your age.”

“He did?” Then her excitement turned to scrutiny, and she frowned. “How would you know that, Mister?”

And there she had me. How could I tell her that I’d heard it from the Saint’s own lips? Bronze cultivators don’t just meet Ascendents, not unless they’re disciples of that Ascendent’s path, which I most certainly was not. The Saint studied the Path of the Wild Blade. I was only a passable swordsman on the best of days, something that had always irritated my sect elders.

“I said I was from the Pearlescent Valley, right?” I began nervously. “He’s from that area too! It’s just one of those things we know there.”

Xinya narrowed her eyes at me. This time, though, I don’t think she accepted my answer. She lowered her head and got a sad look in her eyes.

“It’s not nice to lie to kids, you know,” she muttered. “Only adults can cultivate. That’s what my dad says.”

Now, that was ridiculous. Anyone with a seed of qi can develop their core. In fact, in the old Sun Queen’s lands, noble children were expected to reach Bronze by the age of 6.

However, in a region where there weren’t many cultivators to begin with, it probably wasn’t wise to give a child the power to break their elders in half with a tantrum. But, that didn’t stop me from wondering why there weren’t more cultivators here in the first place. If there were so much work for them that Tenri couldn’t keep up, why not encourage more young adults to take up a Path of their own? I filed away those questions for later.

“Where’d you get that flower, mister?” Xinya’s eyes were pinned on the purple striped Heaven’s Lily I’d tucked into my belt. I pulled it out and studied it.

“A nice lady gave it to me in the forest last night,” I explained. It was the truth. Despite Tenri’s claims, the Flower Maiden hadn’t actually hurt me. So far as I could tell, I was suffering no ill effects from meeting her, either.

“Oh! You know her, too!” Xinya exclaimed. “When my dad goes out for night fishing, I sometimes go into the forest and play with her. She’s really nice.”

“Oh?” I leaned in closer. “What do you know about her?”

Xinya shrugged. “Not much. She doesn’t talk much. But some of the adults say that she’s the shade of one of the Darkened Moon’s subordinates and that she kills people to make her special flowers.” She snorted in amusement. “But that’s ridiculous because she has so many of them that they just pop out of the ground on their own! And, she’s really nice to us kids. Lots of us have played with her. She likes the company.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The more I heard, the more I regretted closing my eyes when we met. A shade who was said to be one of my subordinates? That was extremely unlikely, but if there was any chance that they were real…

“Where do you find her when you want to play?” I asked, unable to contain my eagerness. Xinya frowned at me.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I just want to talk to her.”

“Well, I ain’t no snitch,” she answered with a scowl.

I sighed in mock defeat. Maybe one of the other kids would be more likely to tell me. If as many of them went to play with her as Xinya said, maybe…

“No one else’ll tell you either.” Well, there went that plan.

“Alright, alright, what will it take to convince you of my good intentions?” I asked as innocently as I could. A wicked gleam danced in those green eyes.

“Let’s play a game!”

“A game?”

Xinya was already pulling out a small pouch and dumping its contents on the ground between us. There were black stones, bits of coral, bits of bone, and silver stones.

“What game is this?”

“Moon Tear’s Match,” Xinya explained. “Nobody else wants to play with me because I’m so good. The goal is to defeat your opponent’s spirit. I’ll draw four bits from the bag, then you’ll draw four. We’ll arrange our pieces, and depending on the combination of bits, you win, or you lose.”

Xinya then went into detail on what each kind of piece was used for. Apparently, the black stones were for building defenses against bone while the coral pieces defended against the silver stones. The ideal spirit had enough offense and defense to survive attacks and strike back. She also said something about the orientation of the stones being important, but that all went way over my head.

We started our first round. I reached into the bag and pulled out two black stones, a coral, and a silver stone. Though I didn’t quite understand what made a good orientation for the stones, it made sense to me that the defensive pieces should be in front of the offensive one. So, I put my black pieces in front, with the coral piece between them. Behind it was the silver piece.

“Oh, a solid defense,” Xinya mused. She had pulled two coral pieces, a bone piece, and a silver stone. “Arranged like this, my bone breaks one of your river stones. Your moon tear breaks my coral, but my moon tear takes your moon tear and I win!”

I stared at the two configurations. By my tally, we should have been evenly matched. She struck my black piece, I struck her coral, she struck with her silver…but I had a coral to defend?

“The orientation doesn’t protect your key pieces,” she explained. She turned the coral by ninety degrees. “This would have blocked me. But I win, so I get to ask a question!”

I didn’t understand, but that was fine. It was my first match, and it’s not like she would ask anything that I needed to keep secret. Xinya thought hard about the question she wanted to ask, so I took the opportunity to finish my rice ball.

“You’re a cultivator from far away! Do you have any magic weapons? I heard real cultivators put magic in everything!” she said.

“Not a weapon, perse,” I mused. Responding to my thoughts, Chiho withdrew from my hair and zipped around the little girl’s head. “This is Chiho. It doesn’t really like being a weapon, so mostly it just keeps my hair looking nice.”

Chiho zipped around Xinya’s head several times before landing in her hand. Her eyes were big as the full moon as she studied the hairpin. Chiho preened at the attention. Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a proud peacock hairpin instead of a crane…

“Is this real jade?!”

I nodded. “Jade often has a high capacity for qi and is versatile enough to store most forms. Lots of spiritual devices are made using it as a base.”

“I’ve never seen real jade before,” she said, running a gentle finger along Chiho’s feathers. “We just have moon tears and coral.”

“Why are they called moon tears?”

“It’s part of the story,” she explained. “When the Sword Saint struck the Darkened Moon, the moon itself wept tears of silver which fell to the earth. High quality ones glow, and that’s what powers most of our lanterns.”

Xinya offered me the bag for another round. I reached in. This time, I pulled out three of the silver moon tears and a black stone. Not the most defensive formation. I was relying heavily on luck to get out of this one. I arranged them on the ground, trying to show them the way Xinya said last round. When we were ready, she revealed a similarly lopsided spirit. She’d pulled three river stones and a bone piece.

“Good job! You won!” she said, clapping her hands. “You completely block my bone, then retaliate with a moon tear! I have no defense!” I couldn’t help but smile. Her enthusiasm was infectious.

I thought about what question to ask. I desperately wanted to know where the Flower Maiden could be found, but she’d already proven defensive of that question. She could easily give me a useless answer if I went straight to that. Better to wait and ask that another time. I was patient, after all.

“You seem knowledgeable about shades. What shades do you know of in the area?” I asked. If I was lucky, I’d get two answers for a single question.

Xinya began counting on her fingers. “Well, there are the Four Spirits of the Shore. The Flower Maiden is one, but there’s also the Chain-Bound Fury, the Blood-Soaked Bride, and the Two-faced Serpent. They’re considered the big news around here. I’ve only met the Flower Maiden, but I saw someone dress up as the Chain-Bound Fury to scare people once. Not a very convincing disguise, though.” Then she thought about it. “Then, I guess there’s the shade in the lighthouse. Nobody really knows what it is, but I bet it’s an old keeper who died horrifically. Otherwise, why would they bother with a dumb old lighthouse?”

So, even she didn’t know anything about the shade in the lighthouse. That was fortuitous. If she was sure that it wasn’t one of the Four Spirits, then it probably wasn’t crazy powerful. I could handle that.

We drew our stones and cast our lots again. This time, I had an even spread, one of each kind of token. I placed my defensive pieces up front and put the offensive ones behind.

“You still turned them the wrong way.” Xinya pointed to the black and coral pieces.

I squinted at the stones. They didn’t seem wrong to me…in fact, it was exactly the way she had told me to place them a few rounds ago. In the end, that meant I lost again, and she got to ask another question.

“Do you get to see your family often? As a cultivator, I mean,” she asked softly.

I didn’t answer. How could I? My family were all dead…

“Your silence speaks volumes,” Xinya answered finally. “I don’t want to leave my dad alone.” I reached out and put a hand on the little girl’s shoulder.

“You don’t have to. You have a few years before you should start, then you can do the whole Manifestation Realm right here at home. After that, then you can decide where your path will take you.”

Her violet eyes looked up into mine, and I saw hope twinkle in her gaze. She wanted to be like the heroes in the stories, but girls in small fishing villages rarely became heroes. I’m sure she’d been told by no few adults that her dreams were out of reach.

“Tell you what,” I began. “I learned from one of the best sects in Pearlescent Valley. So, if you wanted, when you’re grown up enough, find me and I’ll teach you what I know to get started.”