As few great masters could boast, Sun Geon had started life as a street urchin in Phoenix Fire city, capital of the Celestial Empire of the Eternal Flame. Life as an urchin was tough—few lived to adolescence. Even fewer to adulthood. Those few that did were usually installed in the brothels or taken as slaves outside the city.

Nothing in his long life since had been as hard as surviving those first ten years in the gutter. Not the lonely months spent meditating on his sect’s divine art, not the tournaments where he was pushed to his limits and beyond, not the villages he’d razed to the ground—deafening himself to the shrieks of women and children. They were all paltry compared to those nightmare years in the gutter.

The years went slow at first, then faster as he gained age. By his thirtieth birthday he’d reached the profound realm and thus would stop aging forever. A great feast was held in his honor while his fellow disciples looked on with barely-suppressed rage. They could take him in battle, if they all ganged up together. He was always aware of the possibility, even though sect code forbade such dishonorable conduct. Scheming and detecting schemes were as ingrained in him as the whip-scars on his back.

But for him the profound realm held few secrets. Then one day the master of the Driving Rain sect led him into the temple library. He began removing scrolls from a shelf and stacking them in Sun Geon’s arms. With every scroll Sun Geon felt the hours of his impending assignment increase. Did the master mean to kill him with old age and drudgery even after his advancement?

“Drop those to the ground,” the master of the Driving Rain sect said, and Sun Geon gaped at him but obeyed instantly. The master required unquestioning obedience, and Sun Geon suspected that at some point he would be able to advance no further upon only his own power. He would need to rely on the help of others for the first time in his life.

The master reached into the shelves and Sun Geon heard a click as the man twisted something in the shadows. The shelf hinged open at the side and Sun Geon followed the master into a small wooden alcove with a single scroll upon a pedestal.

“This scroll contains the divine technique of the Driving Rain sect,” the master said. “Few have looked upon it, even fewer have lived through the training. But I have a feeling about you, disciple Sun Geon.”

Sun Geon kowtowed as the master lifted the scroll and handed it down.

“It is never to leave this room.”

With trembling fingers he gently unrolled the scroll and looked upon a truly torturous technique, but in its philosophical axioms he sensed a great power: control over a single drop of water. Absolute control.

“This one does not deserve such an honor,” Sun Geon said, gaping at the scroll’s contents.

“No, you don’t,” the master said, and smiled.

It took one hundred years for Sun Geon to understand the true depths of the scroll. At the true technique only hinted at in the writing. During those hundred years he did many unsavory things for the sect, and then for the emperor. With a single drop of water he’d eradicated insubordinate villages and those who still clung to interloper worship. By the end of the missions the drop was always more blood than water. He let it fall and felt cleansed as he returned to the mountaintop.

🜛

At the age of three hundred and fifteen he received an order to travel to Phoenix Fire city once again to meet directly with the emperor. He left the sect in the hands of its council and traveled for weeks without rest before reaching the golden city of his youth. In the centuries since, it had been transformed from a festering dumpheap to a gleaming metropolis.

All for a three minute meeting with the emperor. He would have cut off his right arm had the emperor commanded it. To do less would mean instant death.

“I hear you have a spiritual beast as a disciple at your sect,” the emperor said over tea service. Sun Geon didn’t dare lift his face from the floor.

“Yes, your majesty,” Sun Geon said. “As always, your ears are sharp and hear all.”

“My spies are everywhere,” the emperor said levelly, then considered for a moment.

“Can it fly?”

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“She possesses skills no human can match,” Sun Geon said. “Flight is but one.”

Silence, then a rustle of clothing. An attendant approached Sun Geon and laid a scroll at his head. He didn’t dare look up to take it.

“A map, and a technique. There are other lands than this one, Sun Geon. Your grasshopper is to become one of my spies. She will travel thousands of li over the ocean to an alien land, and transmit all she sees back to you. You will compile and report to me about this place.”

“Yes, your majesty,” Sun Geon said. He didn’t dare moan, he didn’t dare complain. To lose Sun Lin was a hammerblow to his heart, but he could not reject the emperor’s orders. She would gain great face in becoming a part of the emperor’s spy network, but he would lose a worthy student.

🜛

Months passed before he performed the technique and received a response. Instantly it was as if he were only a half-inch tall and crawling over the ruins of some once-great city. He couldn’t help his elation.

“Sun Lin, can you hear me?”

“Yes, master. This one is relieved that she successfully performed the technique.”

“What have you found, Sun Lin,” Sun Geon asked, and picked up the brush and scroll he kept ready at such attempts.

“A land of decay. Their people are little more than poor dirt farmers. Some hole themselves up in walled cities besieged by the weakest of spiritual beasts. But I have heard rumors of a land to the east where research is being performed. They seek to create their own spiritual beasts.”

“Seek out this place at once, Sun Lin,” Sun Geon ordered. “And find out their designs. Such research could hold great interest for the emperor.”

She accepted the mission, but he heard the disgust in her voice before he broke the connection. Artificial spiritual beasts? What crass alchemy were these foreigners performing?

🜛

Sun Geon spent nearly all of his time in the small room atop the sect’s highest tower receiving Sun Lin’s transmissions. Ever since the decree from the emperor had come back highlighting this Andrew Yates’ research as of highest consequence, he spent every moment looking through Sun Lin’s eyes and recording his visions in mountains of scrolls.

Now, Yates’ research would be put to the test: outsiders had arrived in a vast theater and Yates’ project had been exposed. The creature appeared to be a normal young woman with a silver collar around her neck, like so many spiritual beasts of this so-called city. Had he made a human into one?

Months of linguistic study allowed him to understand their shouted insults, the veiled threats, and then the inevitable activation of the project. Andrew Yates stabbed the young woman in the back and ripped an artifact off her neck. Even through Sun Lin’s vision he could feel the explosion of qi erupt from the woman. She was truly the most dangerous thing this foreign land had produced thus far.

He needed to arrive, and soon, to contain it.

🜛

His attack had… missed? Willow had disappeared from where his hand sliced cleanly through the air and she was suddenly bouncing off one of the spiritual beast guards which surrounded them. Interesting.

He had thought to preserve her dignity as a monarch by severing her head cleanly. If he’d used his full force, her body would have simply disintegrated at the blow. After all they’d been through—fighting the Celestial Empire of the Eternal Flame’s enemy for them—he thought she deserved that much.

He’d been mistaken. Willow got to her feet and the ring of guards turned inward, bows drawn and aimed at his heart. A brief activation of his technique destroyed all but one in the vicinity: her lover. Of course he would have some sort of protection as well.

Sun Geon locked eyes with Willow and smiled. This would be their last bout, no pointers given. To the death as they said, but the conclusion was foregone. He’d tested her in their practice skirmishes, barely exerting himself while she dodged and attacked like her life depended on it. Such resolution was admirable in an opponent—she just had several centuries too little experience.

“You son of a bitch,” her lover screamed, and shot toward Sun Geon, only to be intercepted by a kick from Sun Lin which sent him hurtling out of the circle of carnage toward the mouth of one of the giant portals. She hopped toward him.

“You dare attack my master while his back is turned,” Sun Lin seethed. “You will suffer a thousand deaths.”

“End him quickly,” Sun Geon said, never taking his eyes off Willow.

“Yes, master.”

“So it is finally come,” Willow said.

“I regret to say I have misled you these weeks,” Sun Geon said. “Though through omission, the lie still sits distasteful in my mouth. If we are to do battle, I would have it rectified.

“This one is Sun Geon, master of the Driving Rain sect and third general in his majesty’s Celestial Empire of the Eternal Flame.”

“I’m still just Willow,” Willow said, her teeth gritted. The storm of qi above her head contorted strangely, twisting in ways he hadn’t seen before. He wondered if it was from fear.

“Well, Wraith Willow, as you said, the time has come. A duel between yourself and a sect master is perhaps something you could never have imagined, living where you do. I will make it quick and attempt to leave something behind for your subjects to bury. I am an honorable cultivator, after all.”

The roiling qi suddenly swept down, but not toward Sun Geon. It seeped into Willow’s body, suffusing every cell. A flicker of qi activated a technique pill he hadn’t seen before, and its multiple effects washed over Willow like the rushing tide. She swept a foot back and adopted the beginner’s stance he’d taught her.

“No,” she said, a fire in her eyes. But it wasn’t just her eyes that glowed, it was her entire body that gave off the faint light of concentrated qi. “Just Willow.”

“Very well, let’s begin,” he said, and raised a single hand.