Book One, Chapter 40 - Sexy, Talented, Not So Smart, and Absolutely Stuffed With Problems

One, two, buckle my shoe, really wish I could get myself properly engaged and able to write earlier in the day. I leave notes and minor edits for hours, but for some reason it's right before bed that I come around for the big changes? Crazy.

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The fools at the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect have broadcast their weakness to the world. The chaos happening within their walls even as we speak is the clearest sign possible of their incompetence. They could not hold their own against nor provide a proper showing for the Imperials as they arrived, and now, they fall to infighting and chaos as they mobilize against their honorable seniors. The Blazing Swords sect is not known for its patience, and yet, we have been patient. Only now, at the right moment, do we confront the rot that has long dominated our city.

We move, now. Let the Imperial Guard care for the mortals below- the moment that the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect leaves their walls, we will be ready to strike.

-Elder Yuu Okamura, wielder of the Ten-Bladed Strike, pre-deployment briefing to a localized response squad.

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Shin Ren has not been having a good month.

It started out fine enough. He wasn’t exactly happy to be back from the Soldier’s Academy, and the trip through the wilds to get home, even in the second ring of the Empire, was arduous and long, but neither frustration held all that much weight. Show up, impress the elders, maybe get to just relax and cultivate and not have to deal with a thousand squabbling classmates, some of them strong enough to wipe his sect out on their own, all vying for some meaningless advantage or another. A good vacation, if not an ideal one. Spend a few months, a year at most, just enjoying the privileges of sect life and the rewards he’s earned for his cultivation, and then head on back a little early to begin the next round of lessons and machinations against those who stand in the way of his opportunities.

And while the School of the Tiger isn’t the most prestigious branch of the Soldier’s Academy, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have to rest, prepare, and center himself to re-enter it. Not if he wanted to survive, much less continue his impressive rise through the realms between Heaven and earth.

And then the elders stuck their noses in.

He was certain they would eventually; what is an honorable elder cultivator if not a meddler? But he didn’t see coming how fast it would be. By the time he’d emptied his spatial ring and started setting up new treasures in his old room, he had already received a visit from his grand-uncle Elder Ren, bringing with him a gift and an invitation to speak with the sect patriarch when his responsibilities and rest allowed. A summons, in effect, but he didn’t even need to make it to said meeting to find out what about. His honored uncle, it would seem, could not shut up about the anomaly.

A proven cripple, going by some ridiculous name that sounded more like something from a beastblood or from the edges of the Wall than anything properly Imperial, somehow able to stand up against an outer sect disciple. She’d been working as a servant, had only been allowed in on the passionate support of one Inner Disciple Qen Hou and originally kept as nothing more than an assistant (or, according to rumors, toy) of an apprentice healer undergoing a two-year mentorship. Apparently something or other changed, the cripple was left to work with the other servants, and the aforementioned outer sect disciple took offense and decided to remove her from the sect permanently.

Technically, he was well within his rights to be insulted by her presence, and many, including Shin Ren’s uncle, should it have come to his attention naturally, would look on the act more favorably than not. Removing a cripple would gain the sect some of the face lost by having her employed in the first place. Hardly a well executed or proper move, but one where none of the blame could be lain on the sect proper, and in which a minor inconvenience was summarily removed. Lesser disciples should wish to be of such direct utility to the sect. 

Shin Ren was more uncomfortable with the execution of that act, but even he could see that perhaps it might have been for the best. Still, the event nagged at him, and, seeing himself tied to it in exchange for having some more time to himself after, before the next time someone bothered him, he realized it was more than that. As people kept talking, he got more curious. He looked into the matter, asked around directly amongst other core disciples and even the inner disciples below him.

 Apparently, the cripple had been a cultivator before, from some minor sect in the outer reaches of the western third ring. The Hungering Roots sect, many weeks away even by cultivator’s metrics. She’d participated in a local tournament, standing in the opening steps of the Core Formation realm, in spite of her lackluster origins and seemingly brutish ways. Taking insult at the horror of someone crippled being around you might be only natural, but it felt wrong to him that she should be killed for such a thing, especially if she was simply in the course of her duties.

Then, he met the patriarch. Heard the news about a “triumphant showing of the prowess of the sect’s young great talent”, and learned what exactly that would entail.

He left the purple-crimson storm’s chambers more angry than mollified. He’d come home to avoid the politics, to take a breather using his success as a buffer, to finally be able to relax for the first time in years. He had come “home” to re-center himself. Instead, he was to be paraded out for the sake of humiliating and then murdering someone whose only crimes were surviving a wound and fighting back against lethal intent. But she was costing the sect face, especially after she somehow nearly killed her would-be executioner, even if it was only an outer sect disciple, even if he was barely worth their attention. Shin Ren had marveled at that when he heard it. To somehow retain so much of the skill she must have had as a cultivator speaks to such discipline, such wasted talent. What must she have been like, he wondered, as a whole person and not the lesser thing she’d become? And what willpower it must have taken to hold onto herself, hold onto even her skills and martial understanding, in the face of that horrifying reduction.

So he’d honored her. He’d been honest, and spoken true of what he thought about the whole show. Promised her, as his honor demanded, that he would give her the greatest mercy he could give; a swift death at the hands of someone above her in the ways of cultivation. He’d decided it; his own little act of rebellion, and a gift to one that did not deserve so humiliating a death. He would not drag it out, not make a show of it. He would end it in an instant.

And then she’d dodged.

And then she’d hit him.

And then she baited him, and trapped him, and proceeded to kick the shit out of him for all Heaven and earth to see, in front of a live audience of hundreds of his peers and mentors and family.

It hadn’t lasted, but to his fucking shame it ended not due to his skill or intellect or martial talent. Really, he could only claim his cultivation had been stronger than a device meant to contain, at most, a late Foundational Realm cultivator, its materials and arrays not strong enough or complex enough to stop him from burning through its weak points. Were it made for someone of his level, it might have taken minutes, maybe longer- he was lucky that his Qi had overwhelmed the device, that he’d managed to keep his head and damaged it properly. It had been hell, especially as he tried to get used to fighting without any of his usual senses, trapped in a body that felt like a prison. Before he could make a proper decision, circumstance and luck had already negated a hard-fought, hard-won trick from someone who performed what might best be called a miracle in the eyes of cultivator society.

And then, in a fit of rage and shame and panic, her every movement slowed to an infinitesimal crawl, his own elevated back to the impossible, lightning-fast movement of adrenaline and Qi infusion, he’d stopped holding himself back.

He’d kicked her legs out from under her, grabbed her by the elbow, and whipped her against the ground.

The first blow would have won it. The rest were a tantrum, a fit of pique, like a child would have, and added to the shame of the battle rather than letting him regain any dignity. He’d looked down at Raika, the cripple, reduced to even less of a state than when she began.

And so he’d tried for mercy again. A quick, cleansing fire. She had earned a death by technique rather than mere blows or blades.

And just like when she dodged his strikes, just like when she tricked him, just like when he turned her legs to pulp and made mincemeat of her flesh against the ground, she refused to fucking die.

The rest of the fight had been more and less shameful, ironically. The shame of being a torturer, a failed killer and blackhearted, cruel thing, to leave her writhing in pain as long as she did, and then the revelation that she had never been a person at all. The moment where everything changed, and the fight stopped being about face or dignity or anything beyond survival as that thing, that charred, blackened husk bereft of any signs that it should still be alive, somehow moved and, at the peak of his power, wounded him.

She had eaten a piece of him. Left him open and bleeding and stabbed and took a piece of him in her mouth and tore it from him in one motion. And then she’d topped even that by eating his Qi, consuming, feeding before his very eyes on the fire that is proof of his cultivation and the depths of his growth and very self. 

How could he not surrender? How could he not call for aid, in the face of something like that?

Considering how long the entity lasted against an elder of the sect, his shame was lessened, though it never left.

But then came the pale figure, wrapped in peach and gold and singlehandedly holding back the will of an entire sect.

The weeks after passed in a blur. The Empire, of course, took the creature and evidence of its existence away, leaving the idea of who sent it still a mystery. The Judge had deemed the execution a “fair trial”, that his surrender had meant his defeat and her acquittal, and as annoyingly obscure and difficult to interpret as their kind can often be, this one was adamant that the ruling was valid.

 But obviously they couldn’t let her go, and so they didn’t; whatever she may be, she was clearly some form of threat and insult rolled into one, and the thought of letting such a thing simply run wild ran counter to not just good sense, but their very responsibility as a sect.

Then the mutant had stuck its horned head into their business.

By this time Shen Rin had been… well, not exiled, per se. Failure or not, there was the inhuman nature of his opponent to spin things in his favor, and he remains the fastest growing cultivator in the sect, no matter how shameful the defeat. But perhaps… shelved. Proven as a limited tool. He doesn’t know what was said between the mutant and the elders, doesn’t know much of anything that’s going on except that they remain furious about something or other and that the problem hasn’t ended yet. He could take it as a victory, if he so chose; if not over an opponent with such hidden depths, then certainly as a victory for his own peace of mind. The elders are certain to pursue the best interests of the sect, and whatever the mutant might be, the fact it has been taken into the Imperial authorities rather than properly purged means it holds the will of the Emperor in this endeavor. The whole issue is officially above his head, so to speak.

But he just… couldn’t let it go.

He’d seen her, sensed her, she was a cripple! No meridians, no flow to the strange clumps and stagnant, chaotic droplets of Qi left in her. She shouldn’t have been able to do what she did, he’s heard of nothing that can, not even from the Academies’ lessons or in the levels of security clearance he’s been acces to. 

But then he heard about the accomplice. Or, depending on the rumors, the true mastermind. That very same amateur healer here for a mentorship, who apparently had been stuck on house arrest and close observation after evidence of strange rituals were found in her notes. Apparently she’d been looking into something that had caused some consternation with his uncle, and he’d had her things searched. While Shin Ren hasn’t heard confirmation that she was some sort of demonic cultivator or ritualist. She was isolated, basically imprisoned in her quarters, only escaping the punishment hall due to the fact that, obvious in retrospect, she’d been bait.

He went back to the elders then. To his family, his mentors, his commanders, those who he knows he will reach the heights of someday. 

He asked for a chance to redeem himself.

And they’d obliged.

And time passed. Weeks, without any news of the imprisoned entity, of who might have sent it, anything. The sect armed itself, pulling back disciples sent out on missions and empowering its defences, a show of force against the Empire’s blatant interference with internal matters. The other sects, in turn, showed their true colors, doing the same and preparing for something. If any one of them could curry favor with the Empire by undercutting the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect’s efforts once more, it would swing the balance of power in the city, perhaps permanently.

He felt it. In the air. Like fuel, charged with pure alcohol and dry grasses, ready to catch flame.

He ran drills. He cultivated. He studied. He spoke sparingly to his fellows, spending much of his time trying to meditate, trying to find out what the hell he’s supposed to do now, with this weight, this flagrantly unsatisfied desire for closure-

And then the alert went out.

He and a few other core disciples were all summoned together, all of them told of the nature of the call. That the sect had never lost track of the weapon. That it had been unleashed against them once more. That they know exactly where it is. 

He was first on the scene. The others pushed themselves, but he poured Qi out of his core, bathed the world in it.

And then he was there. He’d launched himself at the medical pavilion and melted his way through a wall, ignored the healer as he saw a dozen other cultivators rushing to the molten magma he’d made of her outer wall, and tried to intercept the blur he’d seen leaving her quarters.

He got ahead of her. Predicted where she’d be. Prepared for the conflict against her, for his retribution and restoration.

And now she’s gone again. Whole, and alive, and nowhere near the crisped husk of meat he’d last seen, and she hit him hard enough and fast enough to make their last fight look like a joke and then she GOT AWAY.

He doesn’t give them time to get out of his way. There are cultivators in front of him, around him, asking him what happened and where she’s gone, and then asking if he’s failed, sly smiles beginning to spread, and finally, turning to frowns of concern and alarm, asking where he is going. 

He simply walks past or through them, leaving outer disciples and inner alike to stumble aside and letting the smarter ones learn from the mistake of trying to distract him as he stalks through the halls of the medical pavilion, making a beeline for the demonic ritualist’s room.

And then someone stops right in front of him. And when he tries to shove them aside, wielding his Qi like a bludgeon, like an idiot brute, something stops him.

A single hand. Right on his chest. Placed there like a sigil against his flesh, Qi cycling through it as his own reserves flare and burn and alter the world around him closer to what he is, closer to the fire and the mysteries of its color and form and glory.

“May I ask what you intend, honored young master?” asks some fucking nobody.

“And who are you to ask me anything?” he snarls, voice so attuned and full of the Qi he refuses to contain that he can feel the people around him flinch back away from him, a mix of pain and fear on their faces. Most of the medical pavilion members, a few guards, his fellow hunters, all turn away, either retreating back to their own endeavors or taking the opportunity to steal his glory, to try to find the creature before he can. Even those who were actively trying to talk to him step back, letting whatever is going to happen here happen.

But not the man in front of him. “This one is merely a lowly inner disciple, young master Shin Ren,” he says. “And I’m afraid that this lowly inner disciple has been tasked by Elder Ren of the medical pavilion and Elder Kai Shu of the punishment division to watch over the honored healer Li Shu. May I inquire as to the reason why you seem so intent to speak with her?”

Shin Ren pauses at that. He takes a breath. Deep inhale, deep exhale. The flames around him begin to dim, the world shifting from a deep, maroon-red and purple highlight to more natural lighting slowly. When he feels himself a bit more in control, he re-centers his eyes on the shorter, younger cultivator.

“The enemy I pursued came into this room and fled it not long before my arrival,” he states. “As young master of the sect, I’ve taken it under my authority to interrogate this ‘Li Shu’ and find out everything she knows about that thing.”

Ok. Maybe not entirely in control just yet.

The smaller figure smiles, but there’s something in his eyes that Shin Ren doesn’t expect. In spite of himself, he feels some of the instincts he’s honed kicking in, experience with others like this “inner disciple” returning. He saw plenty of it in the academies.

This man does not intend to let him pass.

“I understand, young master,” the young man blocking his path says with a bow. “But I’m afraid that while your own might is surely enough to take many things under your authority, this lowly one has orders from our mutual sect elders, and cannot defy them any more than a worm could defy the will of the Heavens. The honored healer within has already been injured by the intruder, and the shame of this can only be outdone by this lowly cultivator ensuring that he holds himself to a higher standard. I’m sure that merely speaking to elders shall provide a more equitable solution

Shin Ren… does not snarl. He refuses. He holds himself poised, controlled, every movement falling to stillness until he wills it to be. 

“What’s your name, inner disciple?” he demands.

“This one is called Qen Hou, honored young master,” replies the smaller figure.

“Well, inner disciple Qen Hou,” he snarls, his control slipping again, the vague recognition of the name barely registering; “I am here, and the elders are on their way. In the time it takes them to arrive, I could not possibly act against their will, save to kill the demonic spy in our midst, which I have no intention of doing until she tells me what she knows. So step aside, and know your place before your betters.”

Shin Ren goes to step forward again, and he sees the hesitation in the disciple’s eyes. He sees the moment where he hesitates to get in his way, to find the right angle to end this the way he wants it to go, and steps past him as he does, going for the broken door and the woman who’s Qi he can still sense, scurrying about the room he just melted his way into.

And then feels someone’s hand touch him again.

He rounds on this Qen Hou, the edges of his robe crackling and starting to catch, the air around the both of them turning hot enough to burn lesser flesh. By his wrath, the lanterns that light the hallway begin to shift and writhe, their flames gradually darkening and shifting in hue.

“You dare?” he whispers.

Qen Hou seems to pause, unsure what to say. He almost hesitates more, and then- he grits his teeth and looks Shin Ren in the eyes.

“I dare,” he says.

And before either one of them can say anything else, the sound of the alarm at the walls begins to ring. A massive, tolling series of bells decorate the interior of the walls, calibrated to be able to ring in a dozen different combinations, and this one screams of individual intruders, two to be precise. An instant later the runic array connected to the bells activates, and words begin to manifest in the mind of every disciple and guard and servant of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect.

“Unknown individuals leaving the wall without permission. Available guard squadrons, immediate pursuit.”

Shin Ren snarls again, like a fucking animal. What is wrong with him?

Doesn’t matter now, does it? His quarry has been located, and with a new accomplice.

He turns and glares at Qen Hou again, but the inner disciple is already stepping back and away, taking the opportunity (without facing him, without even looking him in the eyes, like he’s been dismissed) to stand more directly in front of the healer’s doorway.

Then, and only then, does he turn from the direction of the bells to face Shin Ren again. “With your permission, young master,” he says, “I’ll remain here to guard the honored healer, so you may have the opportunity to pursue other objectives more suited to your desires.”

Shin Ren glares at him, eyes wide at the audacity of this worthless thing… and curses, turning and sprinting through the halls so fast half the lanterns go out from the speed of his movement.

She will not get away this time.