Don’t die. That’s my advice. You can’t protect anyone if you die, so don’t. –Mountain Lord Han Szu to an aspiring disciple

* * *

Hanako held back her sobs as her precious Lin stopped moving. His sword was broken, his glasses were shattered, and a hundred grains of rice lay in dejected piles where they’d fallen after Lin’s last attack. He hadn’t gotten the chance to make another…

As that monster Shen stalked away, every eye turned to Hanako, who stood on the edge of the circle of people. She just stared at Lin, her feet frozen to the ground. How had things gone so wrong? The stars hadn’t whispered anything about this. They’d said today would be an auspicious day, one that would lead to great prosperity…not…this.

“Hanako?” It was Cousin Zumi, Lin’s cousin. He edged closer, as if approaching a tiger, but Hanako didn’t pay him any attention. The boxed lunch Lin had left by accident fell from her grasp.

Instead, she forced one foot forward, then another. Lin needed help. She needed to get him to the clinic, or to home…which one? What was she supposed to do? How many times had she been faced with victims of spirit beasts or mundane accidents around town? She was the daughter of the medicine man. She should be doing something, anything, and yet…

She couldn’t focus on anything but Lin’s broken nose, the blood on his lips, the bone poking from his crushed arm. All those people she’d helped, they weren’t Lin… He had always been fine, the untouchable cultivator among mortals. Sometimes he came home with minor cuts and bruises, but nothing like this.

“Someone get Zhao Jaili!” Zumi ordered. “Quickly! He might still be alive!”

No one moved. Why would they? Lin had been sentenced to death by a more powerful cultivator. How could any of them go against someone who’d so soundly defeated their protector? In the end, after an awkward moment looking around and fidgeting, it was Zumi himself who sprinted away.

Hanako knelt next to Lin, her fingers trembled as she felt for a pulse. Blood roared in her ears as she searched for it, waiting for the simple swelling of his veins that would indicate there was still hope.

It came in a tiny, uneven beat, but that was all it took. Hanako shook off the shock and began to straighten out his body as best she could without hurting him. Once Jaili arrived, the two women moved in practiced harmony.

“We’ll take him to your home,” Jaili whispered. “Fewer eyes to report back to Shen if he survives.” Then, with blood-stained hands, she reached up and put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “We’ll do everything we can, Hanako. You have my word.”

* * *

“Is that all you’ve got?” the voice reached through the fog, drawing Tenri back from the brink. The weight of his own failure hung heavy, like chains dragging him down into the grave, and yet the voice made it lighter, like the tiniest rope pulling upward, balancing out the weight. “Are you just going to give up here?”

“I lost,” Tenri said, his voice cracking with despair.

“So, try again.”

Tenri’s voice was filled with bitterness. “I’m sorry to break this to you, but your eyesight is shot in your old age,” he said, though he wasn’t quite sure how he knew the voice was elderly. It was slightly gravelly, like a young elder’s might be, but it held the strength and confidence of a youth. When it laughed, it was whole and hearty.

“Yours isn’t much better,” it answered. “Maybe when you reach Iron, your sight will finally be corrected. Glasses are quite the hazard during battle, you know.”

“It’s not like I have a choice.”

Then Tenri paused. What did the voice mean by “when you reach Iron?” He wouldn’t be reaching Iron. He would be lucky if he survived the night after the beating he’d received. He’d lost track of the number of times Shen had kicked his ribs and stomped on his chest. If his insides weren’t thoroughly crushed into a fine puree, he’d be shocked.

Shen was Iron, after all. No way a little Bronze like Tenri could beat him. The gap in their cultivation ranks was too great.

“And yet, Yoru managed it,” the voice said.

“Yeah, with the help of a small miracle.” Tenri’s frustration was great. He was tired of being polite. Politeness, manners, respect…those were useful to the living. He did not see how they would help him as he stood upon the precipice of death.

Even now, he could feel the Four-Fingered Death searching for him. The cold mists of the Death Ascendent were everywhere, scouring the world and taking the souls of the departed. It came for him. He was sure of it.

“No miracles helped Yoru defeat the Iron, only knowledge and skill,” the voice continued. “Those skills were forged from centuries of training and practice.”

“Well, I don’t have centuries.”

“You could, if you defeat Shen Yaoxan.”

Realization slammed into Tenri like a shockwave. He could have centuries…that sort of lifespan was the result of cultivation, powerful cultivation. If he lived, could he become a cultivator like that?

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“I admire Master Tsuyuki,” Tenri admitted. “His courage and strength are beyond anything I’ve ever seen.”

The voice laughed again. “I quite agree. He’s exceptional, but even he had to start as a seed.”

Tenri suddenly found himself imagining a younger Tsuyuki, one just starting to tame the light of the moon. He surely was a child prodigy, to become an Ascendent bound to the very moon itself. Tenri pictured that small child with a tiny jade pin in his hair, focusing on creating a tiny mote of light, only for it to flicker and fail.

Then he shook his head. It was almost too ridiculous, even to imagine. Somehow, he didn’t think Tsuyuki had ever been such a wide-eyed child.

“It doesn’t matter,” he ultimately said. “I’m going to die here. There’s nothing they can do to save me.”

“The Path to Heaven has many barriers, Tenri Lin.” The voice was starting to sound more and more like his grandfather’s to Tenri’s ear. Had he reached out from beyond the grave to help him? “Train your focus. Fight through the pain. Cling to life, and the Four-Fingered Death will have a harder time finding you.”

“To what end?”

“To advance, of course, and challenge the heavens.”

* * *

Five people traversed the woods to the Zhao farm, carrying a stretcher between them. Hanako held her husband’s hand, hoping desperately that he could feel her presence. They’d been friends since childhood and betrothed for even longer. If there was anyone who knew Lin’s inner spirit, she liked to think it was her. Of all people, it was her who’d helped him when he’d found his grandfather’s old cultivation manuals hidden in the attic. It was her who’d encouraged him to stand up to the old administrator, and it was her who’d thrown a sandal at his head when he said he’d never reach Bronze.

Lin was strong and compassionate, but he never believed in his own ability. To see him stand up to Shen Yaoxan as he’d done, it was like watching a late flower finally bursting into bloom. She’d never been so proud of him.

After the battle, though, his condition only got worse. Hanako and Jaili had plumbed the depths of the medicinal stores for every painkiller and qi restorative mixture they could find. They’d even combed through the old records from their great grandmother’s and their great great grandfather’s days in Saikan. Any records of cultivators passing through with injuries or qi deficiencies were considered, and all of them said the same thing: given time, even a Bronze could heal most injuries if their qi was flowing properly. That Lin’s injuries had not healed meant that something was wrong with his spirit, and there was little they could do to cure that.

It had been Xi Qian, who’d visited to pay his respects to his one remaining savior, who’d come up with the idea to ask an expert. Unfortunately, Hanako and Jaili were the experts in all manner of pills, herbal mixtures, and remedies for mortals and cultivators alike.

If they didn’t know, Shen Yaoxan was the next closest “expert” as a cultivator, and under no circumstances was Hanako going to ask him for help. The man made her stomach churn with anger entirely unbefitting a good and dutiful wife. In fact, she had dreamed just the other night that she’d attached knives to her sandals before hurling them straight into Shen Yaoxan’s head. She’d woken up smiling that morning, content that she’d avenged her husband…if only in fantasy.

Tsuyuki would know, she thought to herself. He’s ancient as the moon itself. He must know a way to save Lin…

But the Darkened Moon, bright and cheerful as he was, was not here. She didn’t know where he was, nor did anyone else…which was a good thing, by Hanako’s figuring. Shen had invoked the Lunar Hunt, a relentless manhunt that would wash over the Shore like a wildfire until Tsuyuki and that poor Lang Xinya were found and brought to “justice.” Hanako prayed that the Hunt would not find them, but she had faith in Tsuyuki, as well. One does not make it to Ascendent without being exceptionally smart and aware of their surroundings. If he didn’t wish to be found, he wouldn’t be. She was certain.

So, who was even left to help Lin? The answer had come to her in the dead of night, and she’d run across the entire town in her house clothes to assemble the group who walked alongside her now. The Guildmaster and Xi Qian carried the stretcher while Zumi scurried alongside. They’d been the only ones willing and able to help Jaili and Hanako transport the near-dead man all the way to their cousins’ farm.

After all, who else would be an expert in wood cultivation other than a tree?

* * *

Tenri walked beside verdant green trees, the likes of which he’d never seen before. To his left, a ridge dropped into a deep valley that stretched for miles. To his right, the forest stood dark and foreboding. Overhead, the moon shone whole and clear of the great chasm that marred its surface in Tenri’s memories.

That was how he knew he was in a dream. After all, there was only one person he knew of who had seen the moon whole, and it certainly wasn’t Tenri. Still, he thought it looked pretty this way. It still had its craters that formed into the rough shape of a rabbit, but it was a peaceful one, rather than one that had been cut in half.

He strode along the ridge, taking in the sounds of the wind through the trees. A soft melody drifted on the breeze, the sound of a flute. He didn’t know the song, nor who might be playing it, but it filled him with a sense of calm all the same. After a while, he even found himself humming along, despite having no knowledge of the notes. It was as if he knew it instinctively, which he could only assume was because his mind had created this dreamscape and provided him the necessary details.

A river blocked his path after several minutes of walking. The water tumbled down the ridge to crash into a pool below, and all along the banks were flowers. They were blue and silver, just like yuyang blossoms, a weed-like flower that grew on the Moon-Soaked Shore. They were pretty flowers, but so plentiful and invasive that even he couldn’t afford to keep them in his garden. They fed on moon qi, which made them a particularly troublesome flower on the Shore, constantly digging into gardens and disrupting the balance of nature.

But, looking closely at these flowers, Tenri couldn’t help but notice that these were slightly different from the yuyang he knew. He sat on the shore, pondering the blooms with great focus. This place didn’t look like the Moon-Soaked Shore with its abundance of moon qi, and the little flowers didn’t seem to be disrupting the landscape around them, either.

“Nothing is ever built to survive,” a deep voice, completely different from the one before, said. “All things must adapt if they are to live in this world.”

Tenri pondered the wisdom carefully.

All things must adapt…he knew that well already. Becoming a cultivator, adjusting to the needs of the town, pushing himself to take care of everyone…he’d become what they needed him to be.

Now, they needed a defender, someone to protect them from the tyranny of Shen Yaoxan and his wicked father, Shen Tori, but could he really be that person? He stood against Shen Yaoxan, and he’d been broken like a twig.

But…

Twigs are dead things. Living branches don’t break so easily. Instead, they bend. They adapt to the challenges they face and grow from them. A sunflower grows towards the sunlight, a tree stands tall in fearsome gales, seaweed bends in swift currents. They adapt.

He needed to adapt. He would reach Iron. He would become what the people of the Shore needed.