AIR Chapter 62-64

Chapter 62

But the blade never touched his skin. 

The world held still and the sun itself seemed to stop in the sky. Cai, the assassin, Xaio Wang held. It wasn’t that they were afraid of moving, merely that they couldn’t.  

“Alright, where are their heads?” A voice asked. 

Over the attacker’s shoulder was a familiar figure dragging two headless corpses. The immortal walked along, pulling the fourth-rank bodies as if they were bags of rice on sale at the market. 

Cai would smile if he could move his face. 

Thank the Dao. Thank the Dao it worked. 

His little flare of qi had seemed to be a thing of insanity to the assassin, but that was the point. To one side of them lay the Great Dessert Strip, home of the immortal, and to another was the Flowering Sword Sect’s land.

It was a gamble as the men had already lost their heads but it was the only thing Cai could do. That little threat of qi had pushed those horses toward the Desert Strip purposely. And though they were miles away from the strip, the horses could cover that within a matter of seconds if not minutes. 

The immortal looked into the distance and blurred. His grey robes rippled and then he came back into focus, carrying two heads with him this time, along with a sleeping Peng Li. 

“Chin, look after the girl will you,” the immortal spoke.

A confused farmer suddenly appeared by the immortal’s side. He carried a scythe and wore a rice hat and dirty brown clothes stained with black dirt. 

“What-” the farmer yelped. Then he looked around and glared at the immortal. Then he grumbled. 

What was his name?

Chin, Cai recalled. 

“Why am I here?” The old man asked. 

“We have a lesson today, a special one.”

The old man frowned even more. 

“First, a lesson on death. You see Chin, cultivators are more than normal people. Dying for them isn’t the same as dying for mortals.”

The immortal lifted the dead heads of the fourth-rank immortals and compared them to one another like a man comparing apples at a market. Then he chose one, put down the other, and… screwed the head back onto the corpse. 

“What exactly do we cultivate Chin?”

“The body?”

“No,” the immortal replied as he picked up the other head and began screwing that onto the other body. 

“That’s where we start. The lower dantian which is responsible for your body and health, but we don’t just stay there now, do we?” He asked the farmer. 

“Then the soul?” The farmer replied. 

The immortal finished screwing their heads back on. 

“Close but no cigar,” he replied.

“What’s a cigar?” The farmer asked.

“Focus Chin, focus.”

“The self,” Cai replied. “We cultivate the self.”

He was surprised to feel his lips move and hear his voice speak. But time seemed to loosen. The air was coming back into his lungs and he found he could move again. 

“Correct!” The immortal replied. 

“We do indeed cultivate the self. We start at the body then the spirit then the soul. The first rank is the body, the second rank is the spirit, and the third is the soul. Then we repeat the cycle to reach immortality and beyond. That’s all to say that those past the third rank are different. Dying takes time for them, the soul sticks around longer, and the heart will refuse to stop beating, even without a head. Which means if you fix the body and push a bit of qi into the nearly dead-”

Both guards awoke their eyes wide open and each taking a large gasp of air. 

“And voila, they live. Or more like they never truly died to begin with.”

The two men then immediately slumped over and slept. 

“They just need to sleep off the resurrection for a bit,” the immortal said with a shrug. 

Cai moved and Xaio Wang gasped for air but the assassin held still. 

Xaio Wang and Cai immediately kneeled. 

“Honored Master, this Cai Xuin-”

“None of that now Captain Hook,” the immortal said to him. “You and your arm really don’t get along now, do you?”

Cai kept his head down. He could feel Xaio Wang’s aura tremble in fear but he wasn’t afraid. This man was more honest than any he’d ever met before. If he wanted to kill them, they’d be dead. 

“Let’s fix that real quick,” the immortal said.  

Cai hesitated. 

“Oh?” The honored master replied. “You don’t want to fix your arm?”

Cai was silent for a moment deep in thought. 

That idea went against everything he had ever learned. To be strong was right and to be weak was wrong. The weak could only blame themselves for their suffering and the strong do as they please. 

That thought had governed his world and the people in it for as long as he could remember. His mother was awful, his grandfather was awful and his cousins were awful. They hated him for something he couldn’t control. They had hurt him for it. 

And it was all because he was weak. The moment he gained strength, political or otherwise, everyone had changed. Even his grandfather, who had talked to him less than ten times in his whole life, had started treating him differently. His mother wanted him, his cousins feared him, elders who had never spared him a glance sought to be his mentor and villains he couldn’t touch sought to kill him. 

It was all so… empty. They just wanted to take and to keep. Humanity, kindness, and empathy were all secondary to power. 

Rather, they sought the praise of righteousness without being righteous. Good was a farce, evil was a farce, and the strong decided which was which. 

But then there was this immortal standing beside an old mortal farmer, a dichotomy of power and weakness. 

A god next to an ant. It didn’t make sense, but it felt all the more right. 

“I don’t think I’m better than him. The man toils tirelessly to feed his village and keep his people afloat. I mean, sure, if he died they could find someone to replace him. And I’m certain I’ve saved more lives than he ever has, but… it takes a certain type of lifelong dedication to do what he does. One that most people, even us cultivators lack. It’s the same with those crabs. They die to make sure their kids live. I think there’s a certain nobility there.”

Those words had stuck with him. 

Power was possibility. Power could make anything happen. 

“Then… then what would you call good if not strength?” Cai had asked him.

“Me? I’d like to think that weakness isn’t a sin and that strength isn’t a virtue. Mortals or immortals, elders or bastards, people are people. What makes a person good or virtuous, isn’t their strength, but rather their actions. The choices they make and the way they live their lives. Basic stuff really.”

But it didn’t do anything, did it? Strength for strength’s sake was nothing more than instinct. That was what animals did. That was how insects fought. 

And that was not the way Cai wanted to live. His strength would get him nothing but pain. He had faced death twice, and both times there had been some relief. He had been ready to die, eager to in the moment. Was a life like that worth living?

He might fight one day. He might become strong enough to rule his sect, but he would become strong once he found a reason. He would not waste away his life running from threats in search of vengeance or security. 

He could regret this choice. No. He would regret this choice. But it would bring him peace, at least. It would give him freedom. 

That mortal man had been right. Cai was stronger than the farmer, but his soul was empty, he had no purpose. And what was power for power’s sake? What was a blade that only served to take and cut?

An empty thing. 

It would be a wasteful effort, a prideful walk to his own demise. Was the idea of vengeance worth a lifetime of suffering? Was his arm worth the price he’d pay to keep it?

“As long as I wield a blade, I am a threat, honored master.”

“So you’d rather lose your power than fight for it?” The immortal asked him.

“Excuse my shamelessness, honored master!”

Cai’s head touched the ground in his apology. It had been a month since he’s had power. A mere month and he already had fifth-ranked enemies. It had been worse when he was weak but at least they were honest then. He knew where he stood back then and he knew his enemies.

“Nothing shameful about it kid,” the immortal replied. 

Then he produced a pill in front of him. 

“Here take this. It’ll close your wounds and heal you up, but it will prevent your arm from regrowing as well.”

Cai studied the pill, then gulped it down without a second thought. 

Instantly he felt old flesh drip from his mangled arm. Soft thumps hit the floor and his arm sizzled as the wound closed in on itself. A stump appeared right where Cai’s wrist would have been. He still had his elbow and half of his forearm, but his wrist was gone and with it his hand.  

Cai felt the stump. His stump. 

It felt strange but… it felt right.

“Weakness is not a sin and strength is not a virtue,” he spoke. 

He saw now his sister, Xaio Wang glare in silence at his actions. Where there had once been fear, now was outrage. 

A cultivator's body was everything to them, particularly in the lower stages. You built your meridians and strengthened them with lesser dantians. The path your qi would take throughout your body was traced and reinforced over and over again, making an attack from your trained limb much stronger than an attack from your untrained one. 

It was years worth of work, thrown away in a moment's choice. 

Cai could only smile. 

He regretted it already, but that was fine. 

He would be weak and he when had a reason, he would be strong.

Chapter 63

“Now, second, a lesson on Dao,” the immortal replied. 

Then the frozen assassin moved. He leaped, pushing himself back for a long distance before he stopped. 

“Hey kid,” the immortal said to him. “Let’s trade some pointers.”

To call a fifth-rank elder kid, it would be wrong in any other mouth but it held true for an immortal. 

“This one is not worthy of-”

“I won’t kill ya,” the honored master replied. “And it’s the least  you can do for starting a fight on my land, no?”

The assassin frowned. He hadn’t started a fight in the desert strip and even if the bodies of the guards had been delivered there, they were almost dead and the conflict had happened outside of the area. 

But he wouldn’t dare question that. 

This was a challenge, not a choice, at least that was the way Tai Lui perceived it. 

Cai didn’t know if Master Bill would have just let him go had he refused the fight, but it probably wouldn’t have hurt to ask. 

But of course, Tai Lui would never dare to do that. To the fifth rank, the world worked one way and one way alone. The strong commanded and the weak obeyed, and now he was the weak so he obeyed. 

So, with fear in his aura, the fifth rank walked up to the immortal and bowed. 

********

The first attack was nothing but a moving blade. It had no soul, no technique, just strength. 

Tai Lui frowned. He was afraid, but worse than that he was angry. Who was this man, this immortal to get in his way? This dying old bastard with a broken dao should stand aside and let talent like him through. 

But still, he was stronger for now so he had no choice but to raise his blade. 

Tai Lui swung again and cut through the air once more. The immortal countered. The cut dissipated and died. 

Again, Tai Lui moved. Well, if he wouldn’t die then he’d at least test his metal. How often did one get to trade blows with an immortal anyway?

He jumped, propelling himself to the side of the immortal, and cut again. This cut was meaningful and contained almost all of Tai Lui’s power. 

And yet it was beaten all the same with a wave of the hand. 

“Do remember what Dao is Chin?” The immortal asked. 

“No,” The old man that Tai Lui had paid no mind to answered. 

“Really? Not even a bit?” The immortal asked.

Tai swung again, coming from behind him this time, but the man's palms met the sword qi with disinterest. 

“Well, I remember somethings,” the mortal replied. 

Tai Lui stepped back and thought. He was of the fifth rank and though no immortal had been birthed from this region for tens of thousands of years, he had seen a few passing by. Merchants from other regions, imperial census takers, and many others have visited this region over the millennium. 

And this one was the strangest immortal he had ever met. 

He was strong but it was in a peculiar way. There was an absence to him, a lack of presence. The sects had only learned about him recently but their spies and the village folk claimed he had been here for hundreds of years.

And even now, in person, he seemed empty, lacking. 

Mortal. 

“Well, take notes this time. It’s a lot of things but for this case, it's the binding aspect of the soul. It centers a person and aligns them with a way, a path. And that path serves as a method of perseverance.”

Tai Lui cut and cut again. Once, twice, thrice. His attacks danced and curved, aiming for the immortal's vitals with every thrust. 

But the immortal moved. No, he shrugged and dodged his blade with crude movements. 

Unelgent unrifined spasms of muscle somehow move the man out of the path of attack. Tai kept striking, trying to see the technique in the movement, but there was none. No pattern, no reason, no pace, just movement, concise and small. 

Martial arts were somewhat useless to a cultivator but at a similar rank, they meant everything. 

Martial arts were methods of movement made to be graceful and fluid, a way of fighting while conserving one’s strength. You could turn back your opponent's weapon or turn their own punch against them. It was the rope through which pure power was tamed and made stronger. 

And this man had none of it. 

Tai grew angry. He wasn’t stupid enough to assume the man was uneducated in the ways of martial movement, but rather that he wouldn’t do it. After all, what use was a proper punch against an ant? What use was a strong kick against beetle?

The immortal was looking down on him. 

Disrespect.

“Dao leaks into everything you do Chin. It’s infectious like that. But by the same doctrine, it’s controlling as well.”

Tai’s attacks grew furious and their speed increased with every thrust. Soon the air roared as Tai Lui’s sword pushed faster than it could move and minor explosions came with every strike.

Tai didn’t believe he would strike the immortal. He only sought to make the man move in a graceful manner, to rip away this facade of vile movement, and to make the man act with grace. 

He wanted the immortal to dodge properly. 

“This guy for example, what do you think his dao is?” The immortal asked. 

For some reason, his voice carried over their fighting. This enraged Tai. 

Tai Lui’s blade roared. It was all out now. Every swing of his could trim summits and destroy villages. His strongest strikes could flatten out cities and his weakest cuts could crumble pavilions. 

“FIGHT ME!”  He roared. “STOP TALKING TO THAT MORTAL AND FIGHT ME!”  

Insanity, he thought. That was the only reason he would have made such an outburst. 

But that man, that damn lower being. How could he be an immortal? How could he have faced tribulation? 

Tai Lui bent space. His blade, his cut, and the immortal’s neck coalesced in the same plot of space and-

His blade shattered.

The sword made from old dragon bones and star iron shattered. 

“Well that was dumb,” the immortal spoke. 

“Yes,” Tai replied. “My apologies-”

“Arrogance,” a voice spoke. 

Tai Lui moved.

In an instant he was at the mortal’s side, his hand reaching for the old man’s throat. He’d had enough. This pest had stained his ear far longer than he deserved. He would squash the damn insect like the small thing it was-

A sharp pain came from his kidney and he flew to the side. 

“Close,” the immortal shrugged, with his one leg slightly lifted as if he had been kicking a rock into a pond.

“It’s pride. He could have killed Cai with the first swing, but he didn’t. Instead, he beheaded his guards and let Cai flee for a bit. Even as an assassin, he couldn’t help but flare his power. And even now, all it took was some disrespect for him to lose his composure.”

Tai Lui opened his mouth and spat out blood. 

“He reminds me of that annoying monk,” the immortal added. 

“The one that wanted you to kill him?” 

“Yeah, that guy. Actually, he reminds me of him too much,” the immortal answered. 

Then he walked over to Tai Lui and pulled. 

For a faint second, Tai Lui thought he saw a string, an ethereal thread floating off and into the distance. And when the immortal pulled at it, he felt the end of the string pulling on him as well. It was like something was tugging at his very existence, at his very soul. 

“Oh wow, look at that. Birds of a feather I guess,” the immortal mumbled. 

Tai Lui stood, propelling himself to his feet and pulling out his second blade. 

“What’s with that monk anyway? You two planning something?” 

Tai swung, ignoring the immortal’s comment. 

This time he used the Flowering Sword Lotus Form, weaving each strand of sword qi into a binding web of interconnected strength. The FloweringSword worked by giving one attack the strength of multiple. Each sword swing weaved with the others, the sword qi piling up in the metaphysical webs. 

And with each strike, the strength grew. There was no wasted qi, any sword qi that wasn’t punishing the opponent would be absorbed back into the Lotus formation. It was one of the strongest techniques of the Flowering Sword Sect and when used by an elder, it was beyond deadly. 

Mountains would crumble to dust and valleys would become canyons if they were even grazed by this attack. 

This was his strength, his power, and Tai Lui poured it all into the blade. He could not win. He could not even hope to wound this man, it was stupid to even dream of it. But that was not what he needed. He needed courtesy. He needed to see the man fight. 

Not once had the immortal used qi. Not once had the immortal used a technique. Up till now, it had been nothing but crude movement. It wasn’t a fight, no man would call this a fight. 

This had no respect, no honor, no pride.

Tai couldn’t feel the immortals’ aura but he knew what the immortal felt nonetheless. 

Disdain.

He talked to the mortal like they were equals but to Tai Lui he had barely spared a word. He talked to the crippled bastard with kindness but to Tai Lui, he had no such emotions. Not even hate, just apathy. 

Tai Lui refused this. 

“LOOK AT ME!” The fifth rank yelled, sending all he had and all he was into his blade, fighting for his pride. 

Chapter 64

The sword held still. One instant it was full of more strength than most fifth ranks could expend in a full fight and the next, nothing. The blade met the immortal’s hand- no finger and all that energy disappeared.

No Tai realized. Not disappeared but devoured. 

The man hadn’t dodged the attack nor had he dissipated it. He had merely taken it head-on. His qi has disappeared like a drop of water in an ocean. 

Pride.

“You are wrong,” the fifth rank whispered. “All this power and all this ability and yet so simple. You are wrong!”

Insane. He was going insane. No, he wasn’t. This man wouldn’t kill him for this. A man who walked around with mortals wouldn’t dare-

“Calm down kid,” the immortal said. 

And Tai did. The world snapped back into its proper place. The shapes returned to everything. 

“See Chin, that’s the problem with Daos. This specifically is called a narrowing Dao, a path that forces its cultivator to walk down one way and only wield one perspective. A dao exists to serve the cultivator and to eventually become a part of him. No two daos are exactly the same and no two people are exactly the same. Focusing on a concept or a truth you’ve observed in the universe can be a good starting point, but you should use that truth to build yourself. Not use yourself to prove that truth? Got it?”

“No,” the mortal replied. 

“See Chin, that’s the problem with Daos. This specifically is called-”

“Alright, alright,” the old man grumbled. “I heard ya.”

Tai Lui listened. 

“It's sort of like domesticating a plant or an animal. You should gather the food and only replant the seeds that hold the trait you desire the most. A dao must be learned and it must also be made. A dao that takes over the cultivator makes them less able to grow and change.”

“But what’s wrong with pride?” Tai spoke. “Shouldn’t we who break the heavens and fight for our presence be proud? Shouldn’t we who bring down mountains and strive for eternity bend the world to our wants? You are strange, but the world works as it does and the strong will always rule the weak. Pride isn’t the byproduct of my power but the reason I searched for it in the first place. Power serves pride. Strength serves pride. Pride is power recognized and it is the thing that makes people move to serve you. Why shouldn’t I be proud?”

The immortal turned to him. 

“You can be,” he replied. “But look what happened here, kid. Your dao consumed you and were I not a strange fellow, you would have died a thousand times over, and were you not consumed by your pride you would have killed the boy with only one swing of your blade.”

The immortal called him a kid and treated him like he was nothing more than a child. He was five hundred years old. He had seen the five sects and had even left the region a few times to see even beyond there. He was old and yet in front of this man he had barely left the womb.

“The world isn’t so simple kid. Just because it worked the way you believed it should up to now, doesn’t mean you’ve observed a fundamental truth, merely a common occurrence. Pride is not a law but a trait. There are beings stronger than me who are also kinder than me. And there are beings weaker than me but still all the more prideful.”

Something clicked within Tai’s mind. A truth had been spoken and he had felt it. 

“I see. My apologies.” 

His soul fluttered and mixed, and then it calmed down. 

“Now, it’s my turn” the immortal spoke. He picked up the broken blade that Tai Lui had thrown down.

“Third and final lesson Chin, technique. Techniques, much like daos, need to be held and shaped to fit one’s strengths and abilities. They were made for one purpose in the beginning and a lot of them were made with only one person in mind, most of them anyway.”

The man twirled the broken blade, more like a child with a stick rather than a cultivator. 

“Most Sacred Techniques that are passed down in the sects or clans were originally made for one person but as the person grows and develops, so does the technique. Then those that come after them tread the very path they made to grow in power.”

The sword hummed. 

“It’s a good way to grow stronger, but there’s a problem there. Do you know what it is, Chin?”

“No.”

“Guess.”

The mortal let out an annoyed sigh.

“Is it the same problem as the dao?” The old man guessed. 

“Close but no cigar,” the immortal replied. 

“What’s a cigar-”

“See,” the immortal interrupted. “Techniques, like daos, are a path to power in the physical sense. Daos give your soul strength and laws give your body presence, but techniques are where the two marry. They are an expression, a release of both of these things and more. They are the materialization of your impact and the legacy of your being. People spend countless decades, centuries, and millennia carving out these techniques from nothing. They are the understanding of your laws, the expression of your dao. They are your memoir and your tombstones and the strongest techniques will persist long after you leave the realm. It’s why so many old masters leave their legacies lying around, just in case they pass away they can leave a mark on the world declaring their presence.”

Then he cut. 

“Pride, presence, the urge to not be forgotten, and the need to let your fellow man know that you were here, that you existed. It’s another form of immortality in its own way.”

Tai did not move and even if he tried to dodge, the cut would have reached before he could move muscle. A small gash appeared on his left cheek. Strangely enough, the cut had only cut his flesh and not the mask he was wearing, which had remained undamaged this whole fight. 

“It's an important thing, pride. Anything worth doing is worth taking pride in. But like all things, it’s best in moderation.”

Then his blade started to move in a familiar pattern. 

“The Flowering Sword technique, for example. You look at it and say what a graceful beautiful technique. Power through elegance and efficiencies, beauty in technique and dominance, no?”

Tai nodded. 

“But the maker of the technique didn’t care for that at all. You let your pride, your understanding of the world, and inner desire blind you.”

The blade moved faster. Each stroke weaving with the others. Tai Lui’s senses stretched but he couldn’t feel an ounce of qi from the attack. 

“This technique for example. It isn’t about beauty or strength or ability. It’s about efficiency. It was created by a weak man with very little qi reserves trying his best to conserve his energy.”

A simple lotus form shone, holding at the immortal’s blade. Clearly, it was qi but still, Tai Lui could sense nothing. 

“It’s simple, true, contained. The flower is not a denotation of deliberate beauty or greatness but rather the beauty of efficiency. The Flower is not beautiful for beauty’s sake but for its own survival. It’s bright and bold so the bees and birds can know it. It smells fragrant so that the insects will come to it. It is beautiful to survive and that is the core of this technique.”

The folds aligned. The sword qi weaved and became one. It held together like an ethereal lotus, pure and beautiful, and not a single drop of qi was left to waste.

“The Flower is weak and frail and dead within the season. So it has to be beautiful, it has to bloom to survive. There is no pride within this technique, only desperation and need. It blooms like the flower because the warrior had no qi to waste. It cuts a thousand times in one because the warrior could not cut a thousand times.”

Then the cut left the blade and Tai Lui watched in awe as it came to him. He raised his blade to meet it. He held it up in defense, and yet it was not enough. 

His sword shattered once more and a thousand cuts scarred his hand. The immortal had held back, but the attack had cut something more than his skin. 

His pride, his dao, his very being had fallen into question. 

“Well that’s enough for today,” the immortal spoke tossing the sword over to Cai Xuin and turning around. 

“That’s a warning kid, take it to heart okay?” 

Then he and everyone else walked away.