AIR Chapter 68-70

Chapter 68

Cai sat in a room with only one other person. He should have seen this coming, and he had, but he was still unprepared for this conversation. Over the past few months, his life had turned upside down and right side up. First, a fourth rank had tried to kill him, then a fifth. He had met an immortal and found a new path to power that would have carried him all the way to the fifth rank. And he had also given up that power, choosing to be weak and safe instead of strong and hunted.

But now was the strangest thing because sitting across from him was Xaio Wang. His sister. 

Cai didn’t know what that meant. He knew what family was supposed to be, but he had never experienced any of those so-called unbreakable bonds of blood. His blood had only brought him pain so far. This one might be different though. No doubt she had come here to save him and gain some form of favor, maybe she wanted to drag him to the Raging River Sect and raise him there instead. But now that he was crippled, she too would have no choice but to turn away and leave him be. 

“I did not know of your existence,” she started. “Our father is a bastard dog and one of the strongest members of our sects. He has ten wives and even then they can not contain him. He has more bastard children than we know of.”

“Well, surely he is not-”

“He is. Do not defend the man. You are not the first child he has sired within the Flowering Sword Sect, nor are you the last. He is a blight of a man, but he is strong so his baselessness is tolerated.”

She raised a teacup to her mouth and took a sip. They were in a newly built house, one that the Honored Master had put together in a matter of minutes. It was made of wood and marble and it shone with slight prestige, though the outside didn’t show that. From the outside, it looked like just another peasant’s home. 

It was where Cai would live, though he didn’t know for how long. 

“My own mother was seduced by him when she was barely of age, but she was prudent enough to know her worth and disavow the man before any ties could be born from the arrangement. And my existence, as a child with blood from two of the strongest clans within the Raging River Sect could not be so easily discarded. So she had me and raised me to manifest my talents to the best of her abilities.  What do you know of our father?”

“His name, and his reputation,” Cai replied. 

“Qiao Zheng is widely known for being a dog of the earth. But that is only one side of the coin. The Raging River Sect’s talent is inherited by blood. Our strength is tied to our parentage, but it takes a very specific breeding pair to pass down that nature to the child. Qiao Zheng acts the way he does to spread his seed and grow as much talent as possible, and he has created several new talents over the years so the Sect tolerates his actions. He is like a champion stallion that no one can tame but is allowed to run free because of his sires. If it were up to me, I would have already castrated the man.”

Cai didn’t know what to say so he nodded and mumbled an old proverb. 

“Fortune comes with no reason, merely blessings.”

“Indeed. Fortune does not choose the worthy.” Xaio Wang nodded. “But that does not matter now. What does matter is that you were not supposed to exist. We did not think that the Raging River’s bloodline technique could arise from a pairing made with a person of another blood. You’re an anomaly.”

Cai could see where she was going. She was trying to bring him with her. Since he represented something her sect did not understand, she wanted to bring him and study him. Maybe the sect could create prodigies with pure bloodlines out of bastards somehow. He was a tool, a useful idiot to use in search of a stronger bloodline. He would refuse of course. He would not entrust himself to any one of the great five sects. He would rather die in the desert as a lowly second-rank loose cultivator. 

But before Cai could voice his thoughts, Xaio Wang bowed.

“I’m sorry,” Xaio Wang spoke. “All of these are the reasons as to why I arrived so late. I had only heard of your situation when your Patriarch visited the Raging River Sect for his daughter’s wedding. Had I known sooner, I would have been here to help. I can only blame my own ignorance for your suffering. I have failed as an elder and as a sister. Please forgive this Xaio Wang.”

Cai’s mind blanked. He had been expecting a plead to follow her back to her sect or a bribe possibly, but an apology was the last thing on his mind. No one had ever done that before. No one had ever said they were sorry to him. Not his cousins or his mother. His servants had, but they had to apologize.

“You have no responsibility towards me young mistress Xaio Wang. As you said, Qiao Zheng has many bastards and I am no more relevant than the rest.”

“No,” Xaio Wang. “They do not bear the burden of his blood. We do. I have gone through what you have and as your older sibling, it is my job to protect you.”

“You ask too much of yourself,” he interrupted. 

She stood up straight.

“You ask too little,” she replied. “I’ve met your mother. I believed my father to have been the worst parent within the Five Great Sects, and yet she proved me wrong. I asked her why she didn’t bring you with her. Do you know what she said?”

Cai shook his head, but he could guess. 

“She said that she and Qiao could just make another one.”

Cai Xuin laughed. Xaio Wang did not. 

“I’m sorry,” she replied. 

There was guilt there, but also pity. Pity was more than what Cai had ever gotten. 

“It’s not your fault. You knew nothing of my existence.”

“You are my brother,” she replied. 

“Only by blood. We were not raised together. It means nothing-”

“It means everything,” she interrupted. “We are blood kin. Just because your parents failed to recognize the importance of that, it doesn’t mean you should.”

Cai stopped talking. 

“My mother has already started sending out agents to monitor the other bastards of Qiao Zheng. Most of them are well, if not for the lack of a father. And none of them show no aptitude for the power of the Raging River Sect.”

She said the last part with relief in her voice. 

“I see,” Cai replied. 

“That means we need not worry about their safety. They will be well-kept and raised with good care. And I hear your mother is already pregnant with a second child. It’s a shame she’d be allowed to have one, but fortune comes with no reason, merely blessings.”

Cai nodded, still in a daze of emotional confusion. 

“It’s a shame we met under these conditions, but I hope to be a good sibling and reliable pillar for you, brother Cai.”

That one hit him like Tai Lui’s blade. 

Brother. 

He smiled. He still didn’t trust her. The only person he had trusted had been the Honored Master, and that was because a person that powerful had no reason to lie to him. 

Brother. 

The word sat strangely in his chest. 

“I thank you for your consideration… Sister-”

“Do not force yourself. My words cannot prove my intentions but my actions will. Be at peace younger brother, Xaio Wang is a fine name to be called.”

“I thank you for your consideration, Xaio Wang.”

“Please, I do as I should. Nothing less.”

Cai nodded and sipped on his own tea in silence. 

“The child will probably be fine,” he said after a minute. “They’ll be trained in the Raging River’s technique and well looked after. Mother will look after them like a shiny piece of jewelry. They’ll be a symbol of her and Qiao’s marriage as well, something that she’ll forever cherish.”

“Something that she’ll cherish?” 

“Something that she’ll cherish,” Cai reiterated. “She’s like a child that one, hoping from one toy to the next. She took care of me for a while when I was a child but when I failed to do anything notable, she stopped looking after me. As long as her new child has some talent, she’ll care for them for a good while longer, I think.”

His sister scrunched in anger, then it turned to sadness. 

“Do you hate her?” She asked. 

“No,” Cai replied, somewhat surprised by his certainty. 

“Why?” Xaio asked. 

“It’s…” he took a moment to formulate his thoughts. “The pain from a loved one isn’t so simple. The way you see our father is not the way I see my mother. I suffered from her neglect and apathy, yes. But I also know her love. I don’t know if it was love in truth, but she cared for me. She raised me, fed me, hugged me to sleep, and sang for me. And I loved her. I still do in some ways. Whatever disdain I feel now will forever be poisoned by that love.”

Xaio Wang’s frown slowly left her face and she took another sip of her tea. 

“I see,” she replied.

“Do you think that’s foolish?”

“No,” she replied. “I think that’s human.”

Chapter 69

Gai Jin punched the air. There was no qi within his fists, no power, only technique. His muscles though were refined over and over again, each limb could break hillsides and his full set of martial arts could flatten mountains, without qi. 

With qi, he could shatter valleys. And though his strikes hit nothing but air, the impact was still tangible. He moved with such speed that the world seemed to pause as he struck.  

In reality, his whole technique had been executed in less than a tenth of a second. Ten thousand strikes within the span of a blink. 

He had moved himself to the Desert Mountains at the peak of the Great Desert Strip. These mountains were thin and tall, reaching a hundred miles into the sky. He now stood at the summit, a small plot of land about a mile wide. 

Even that was too small for the entirety of his skill. This was where he had practiced back when he was just a young monk. He’d make pilgrimages here beyond his master’s eyes. 

Anger flared and qi moved into his leg. Gai turned and struck the air and the wind howled in agony. 

Anger was a constant companion of his. Sometimes there was sadness, rarely pity, but always anger. Always.

He stood still and breathed. A facade of calmness took over his soul. It was the calm of an unsheathed sword and the burn of an unlit pyre. It would only take one movement, one thought, one spark to light it again. 

He carried himself and let his skin soak up the sun. How long had it been since he had felt this? A century, maybe two? 

He had been locked away, buried deep beneath the earth with all those demonic creatures. 

Bugs, animals, plants, and people who had fed from the corpses of the demons that hid below. Monks, they called themselves monks and yet they allowed such a hell beneath their lands. 

The three dead demons lay beneath all of the five regions. The snake, the bat, and the man. The bat had been claimed by those blind bastards who mixed its blood with their own, and the snake’s poison had been studied and harnessed by the Hidden Vipper Sect, though they were wise enough to separate themselves from the demon’s essence. 

And the Bloody Fist Sect had been built above the demonic man. It was their job to wear away and destroy the evil qi that built up from that specific corpse. But they hadn’t. No, instead they had started to harvest the evil festering beneath the earth, mining the qi vain that was born of demonic blood. 

It was wrong. They should have been constantly destroying the qi from such a monstrosity, but instead, they let it grow and in their greed, they gave way to monsters. 

Those demonic beasts beneath the pit. They had tossed him there when rebelled. 

They thought he would die. 

He hadn’t. 

For centuries he fought through their mistakes, killing hundreds of thousands of those creatures. In truth, he could have left that hell beneath the ground earlier, but he had stayed. 

He couldn’t let those demonic creatures burst into the surface. If they did then millions would die. The monks knew this. Gai Lu knew this. Yet he had let his greed consume him and risk the growth of these creatures for the spirit stones their ambient qi could produce. 

As men of the virtuous path, theirs was the burden of the weak. It was their duty to protect the weak. 

And even in anger, even in undying hatred, he could not let that burden go. 

Gai Jin struck the air once more, breaking it with his hands. 

The Bloody Fist was his technique. It was a body refining technique, one meant to destroy and build one’s fists. It was strength and beauty, but it was also misunderstood. 

Gai found that every technique had two aspects. One was the physical aspect, the laws and meridian pathways qi had to follow to become p[ower. That was the fuel of the fire and the heat of it. That was the impact. 

But the purpose was just as important. That was the man the fire warmed. And to the Bloody Fist, that purpose was perseverance. The fist was bloody because no matter the evil, it would not stop punching. 

That was the way of the monk and the core of the technique. For goodness to triumph evil must be defeated. 

So he had fought. His vengeance halted for the sake of his dao, his strength resolute, his furry unwavering.

He had eaten demonic meat to live, unable to find any plants within that deep abyss. 

That was his path. 

But now he was free, having sealed the corpse and killed all the demonic beings beneath the earth. And his anger burned brightly. 

Gai Jin moved, with qi this time. All the elders within the five regions could sense him now. Let them. They could not beat him.

The mountain trembled beneath his feet. 

How long had it been here? A thousand years? Ten thousand years? It wasn’t natural. A thing like this must have been the product of some technique or ancient battle. 

The whole of the region was. From here he could see out into the wild and abandoned land beyond. 

The Great Desert Strip was a scar upon the land. It was a great deep gash that cut through all qi and presence, reaching far beyond the region and into the lands beyond. It must have been made by someone far beyond the immortal realm. 

It had been here before the demons were felled and it would outlast them yet. The Broken Isles of the Flowering Sword Sect were visible from here as well. The technique of their predecessors scarred their land beautifully and the dao of their technique. To anyone below the fifth rank, it would look like nothing more than a mess of islands but to someone of his sense, it was like a blooming field of flowers in the distance. 

Closer to him on the same side of the Great Desert was the Raging River’s territory. There was Spring Mountain City. It was the most robust city within the region, being the place immortals and powerful out-of-region elders would rest, should they choose to come here. 

With his eyes, he could see the buildings, even from thousands of miles away. He’d been there once, and strangely enough, very little had changed. He had been imprisoned when he was young. 

But that was hundreds of years ago. All the mortal settlements had shifted and changed from where they once were, but the dwelling of cultivators seemed to stay the same. 

Gai Jin struck again. The air screamed. 

He was a dark-colored man, unlike his sister he had always been naturally tan and as he had aged, it seemed to be a persistent trait of his skin. But the skin on his limbs was different. 

Traditionally the Bloody Fist technique was used only on the hands, but during his fight with those beasts he had learned to use it on his legs, his knees, his elbows, and even his feet. 

His limbs were scarred and strong. The demons beneath his land were dead. The old man’s demonic corpse was sealed. 

Now all that awaited was vengeance. 

Gai Jin struck. His fists flowed with qi and clouds fled from the mountain peak with every move. 

Once more thunder echoes for a hundred miles. Animals fled the mountain, from the smallest insects to the largest beasts. Gai waited, letting them all leave the land before finally, doing one strike to his strength. 

Qi traversed through his body, from his three dantians to his fists. His minor dantians blossomed with strength and energy burst from his very being. Strength from the lower dantian, spirit from the middle dantian, and purpose from the upper dantian. 

His fist struck the ground. 

It was a silent strike, the sound of a small sack hitting the floor. 

And the world turned silent for a second. 

Then, the ancient mountain crumbled. 

Gai Jin screamed. His sister was dead. His sister was dead and that bastard had killed her. 

Fury overwhelmed his soul and the world of dust beneath him could do nothing to calm it down. 

Chapter 70

Barlo Hew was a stranger in a strange land. 

Well, not truly. The mortals changed and varied, but the cultivators stayed the same. Fashion changed in some places, but that also stayed the same. Cultivators, for all their power, were copycats. 

The lower ranks copied the immortals, the immortals copied the gods, and the gods copied whatever bastard ruled above them.

The rich copied the cultivators and the poor did the same. There were variances here in there, but the soul of the sentiment was there.

Face, politics, power. It was all treated the same way.

That was why he was beyond shocked to find two fifth ranks talking in a small village on the outskirts of the region. 

Barlo was new to this region. Normally, traversing this far out into the wilds was something only immortals would dare to do. The beasts out here were weak but many. The sparse qi in this area, along with the already established human region and demonic stench kept the people of the region safe. 

It was one of many foothold regions that served as rest spots for some of the larger region nations even further away. There was low-quality

qi here, a lack of strength or treasures, and an egregious lack of talent. 

Even the Void Blade Empire only taxed the region as a formal action. No resource born of this place could be worth the waste of an immortal’s time to come gather it. 

And Barlo himself was at the cusp of the fourth rank. It was nothing grand outside of this region but something worth noting for anyone within it.

So Barlo had treasures, some he bought and some he took. One of the more important treasurers he wore at all times, was the Spectacles of Dark Deception. They were a pair of reading spectacles with a dark tint on the glass. A tint so dark people would have thought Barlo blind at first glance.

The spectacles were circular and cut off the sides of his eyes as well, limiting his vision. They gave him an air of strangeness and a foreign aura. But most importantly they gave him the ability to go undetected by anyone below the immortal rank. 

That was the reason he had been able to run through the wilds unbothered. Even the spirit beasts within the wilds couldn’t detect his presence. And their more important secondary feature heightened his senses beyond limits. 

And while he looked like a forgettable man sitting in a restaurant in the middle of a mortal village, slowly chipping away at his bread and meat. He was anything but. 

“He let you live,” the older man commented. “That is one mercy.”

“It was an insult,” the younger-looking man replied. “A reminder of my weakness. It was his way of saying he sees me as such a nonfactor that my death would be more trouble than its worth.”

Barlo kept eating. The fifth ranks had done well to hide their aura, but there were other things that spoke of their power. The precision of their limbs for one. Mortals were clumsy and inefficient. They didn't control their muscles to this degree. The posture, the eyes, and the way they carried themselves spoke of centuries of power and practice. 

Cultivators fought with their bodies, and controlling it even out of combat was second nature.

Barlo himself was at the fourth rank. If they were at or below that level, he’d know, no matter how well they tried to hide it. And if they were an immortal, well then they wouldn’t be here. 

He could run, but that would be stupid. They’d notice that right away. Someone of their rank could sense almost a hundred miles out, and even further than that with practice. 

No, Barlo had been in this situation before, with both beasts and not men. 

He knew what he had to do. 

Just sit still and eat his soup. Silence was his friend here. 

“That damn bastard. What a waste of a man, what an empty thing to be, an immortal with no pride.”

They whispered this, talking hushedly in a room full of mortals, but Barlo heard them as if they were right next to his ear. 

An immortal? Here?  

Barlo frowned. 

He didn’t like immortals. They were too prissy. Too fussy. 

“He came with a mortal. An old man.”

“How strange,” the older man replied. 

“And he mentioned you.”

Their food was untouched, but had they been eating, the older man would have choked.

“Me? What? How? If you spoke of my-”

“I said nothing.”

Barlo also said nothing. But he wanted to say a lot. Why bother him? Why meet in a restaurant? There were tens of thousands of square miles of unmonitored wilderness for them to use. Why gather here to talk of such private and important business?

He had no desire to hear it. 

But Barlo knew why. To them, this was the wilderness. To be among mortals was to be among insects, and no one cared if an ant heard their secrets. This was a setting, they preferred over trees and rocks. 

And they trusted their own power too much to ever doubt their abilities. 

Barlo ate. At least the noodles here weren’t bad. Many villages had their own cuisine and this one was no different. The noodles were boiled in a mixture of bone broth and local herbs and spices and it was worth his time more than the ramblings of two backwater cultivators. 

“He’s arrogant,” the younger one spoke. “He appears out of nowhere then he declares the whole of the Great Desert Strip to be his? And those rules, those inane useless rules. To fight is the way of the cultivator, to strip us of that right is an insult.”

“How did he know then?” The older man asked. “How could he know about us?”

“I don’t quite know, some divination technique, I assume. I felt it touching my soul.”

Two lovers denied their right to be with each other? How interesting, Barlo thought. 

“Does he know of our plans? I cannot have him interfere any more than he already has.” 

Plotting power-hungry bastards. How boring.

Barlo sighed and put his spoon into the soup. They wouldn’t come after him, not unless they could see through his treasures effect, and there were no chances of that happening. He just hated having his meal spoiled by some prissy pissy bastards. 

He slurped. At least the soup was good.

“And what of the Great Desert Strip?” The older man asked. “Is it true what they say about it being guarded?”

The younger man nodded. 

“It is guarded. He says no violence is allowed within the place. I couldn’t sense anything, but his senses must be covering the whole strip.”

Now that was interesting. 

“Why did the crippled bastard choose to settle here of all places,” the younger man said.

“Who knows,” the older man replied. “He probably wanted to find a place where no one would bother him.”

“What do you suppose his dao is anyway? I’ve never heard of a dao breaking beyond the immortal rank.” 

“It’s a rare thing but it does happen. We have some old records within the sect, but not an immortal breaking their dao. It frightens me that such a thing is even possible.”

“Do you think Gai Jin broke his dao?” The younger man replied. 

“No. He’s still a monk, I’m sure of it.”

“You’re that certain?”

“He has immense talent.”

There was a moment of silence as the two men contemplated something. 

“Do you think he’s let it go by now? It seems trivial to fight over such a mortal. Surely a price can be paid to settle the debt?”

“He’s a monk of virtue,” the old man replied. “He will not forget the misdeed so easily.”

“And you are not?” The younger man replied. 

“I am. And I’ve come to regret my choice over the years… but she was a whore. She was spoiling the boy. A person of such talent should not be raised by such a woman.”

The younger other man snorted. 

“So you killed her because she was unseemingly?”

“She was an impurity on a bright and clear jade. If it wasn’t for the other one…”

“Is that why you let her flee?” 

“Yes. Gai Jin was already rebelling back then. She had already ruined him.”

“Why not kill her still?”

“It would be unseemingly,” the monk replied. 

“Is face truly the only thing you care for?”

“Virtue shines among sins. My actions and nature reflect myself and my sect. If I, the pinnacle of the Bloody Fist Sect am not seen as virtuous, then who can be?”

Barlo almost laughed at the conversation. What a strange pair. Face and Ego. Pride worn on the outside and in. 

But what interested him even more was this immortal. 

An immortal with a broken dao? Now that was rare. Daos could break for many reasons, but the most common reason was a refusal to execute. If your dao was justice and your actions were not, then either your dao would break or it would change. But even then, daos were like people constantly changing and filtering as a person did. Unless you violated the very fundamentals of your dao very quickly then breaking it was near impossible. 

And even then. Good could turn to evil, and evil could turn to good. You could rebuild or rediscover what you were. Barlo’s dao was greatness. He was great, this was undeniable. 

But if he were to one day suffer and break his dao, he could rebuild it. A dao, a way of life was not a singular thing. It was made out of many things. Your understanding of the world, the truths of life and nature, all you knew, and all you wanted were a part of it. 

Unless you discarded your very self or gave up a core part of yourself, then you would not break your dao.

But someone else could. That was much more common. 

And yet, this immortal spoke of rules and actions, even interfering in people’s affairs. Would a man with a broken dao do that? Barlo did not know. 

But he wanted to. 

The two kept speaking. They talked of plots and betrayal. They talked of demons and wars. 

But mostly they spoke of power and how to obtain it. 

They were two foolish men who wanted nothing but power and greatness. 

Two things that would come naturally to Barlo Hew. 

Eventually, he left and feigned sleep in one of the rooms above. Their sense would reach his private room. He waited till they left, then left the village, heading for another place about thirty miles from this one. 

Once there, he rested and after a bit of thought, made way for the Great Desert Strip. It had a strange immortal there, after all, surely it would be worth his time.