“Where does the true self reside? In your body? But you grow and change all the time. Are you a different person every time you trim your nails? Not in a meaningful sense. Your thoughts, then. Mind should be the essence of self, should it not? But you change your thoughts too. What is truly ‘you’ is what is unchangeable. The Pre-Heaven soul, the perfect thought given form before becoming crooked and lost in this mortal-”
“Senior Starcaller, I don’t care if your Pre-Heaven soul craves it, if you keep drinking wood spirits you will go blind. You are already going blind. You will go blind more, then die. And I will be disappointed my efforts went to waste. So please, if not for your own sake, then for the sake of your remarkably patient doctor-in-training, stop drinking turpentine.”
“NEVER!”
“Give me the bottle, old man!”
“Get your thieving hands off me, you quack! Unfilial! No respect for elders! How dare you steal your granddaddy’s medicine!”
“You are too damn smelly to be my Grandad. Sis’ Liren, lend me a hand!”
“And touch him? Hell no.”
“Ahah! Escape!”
“Like hell you are!”
“The rope moves like it’s alive! Alive!”
“That’s just the turpentine talking. OH WHOOPS IT FELL. Clumsy me, I’ve just gone and set it on fire. Oh well, what a pity. Actually, it reeks. It genuinely is a pity. Daoist Starcaller, for the love of all that doesn’t make my head ache, couldn’t you just be an ordinary alcoholic?”
“And waste money? Frugality is the second of the supreme virtues, Little Doctor Tian, which you would think some people would know. Drink stealing, good booze destroying people. They should know that.”
“Remind me why I’m keeping you alive again?”
“Because you are a soft touch.” Hong refused to stand up from the nice grassy patch she was lying on. The Agate River rushed on smoothly behind her. The air was fresh and sweet. The birds sang in the trees, the bees hummed in the little blue and white flowers as they swayed with the soft wind. She had a wide straw hat covering her head. Her shoes were off. All was well with the world.
“Not helpful.”
“Not at all, no. Hey Senior, how many-”
“Six. You have six pebbles in your pocket. One of which is actually split in half from when you put five pebbles in your pocket originally.” Daoist Starcaller promptly answered, stopping his efforts to get around Tian and stomp out the immolation of his precious “medicine.”
“I’m just going to say it. You being a real diviner is freaky. It’s not right.” Hong muttered, then pulled a small jar of wine out of her storage ring. With a gentle toss, she threw it in the direction of Starcaller’s voice. He snagged it out of the air with the speed of a striking viper, pierced the waxed paper top with an iron-hard finger, and took a long sniff.
“Water? You pay your debts with water?”
“It’s the roughest rot-gut they sell on Sharprock Pier! Even the bargemen only drink it on a bet.”
“Nonsense. You were just cheated. It’s water I- RUN! A MONSTER BIRD!” He pointed at the white winged crane coming in for a landing in the shallows next to the riverbank.
“For the last time, that’s a Snow Grace Crane!” Tian buried his face in his hands. He felt like the old diviner was screwing with him, but given the ancient wreck’s taste for self medication with home made remedies, he could actually be crazy.
“Its face… is peeled!”
“HER face just looks like that naturally. Don’t be rude.” Hong scolded from under her hat.
“Rude? Is acknowledging the plain truth rude? Have the youth of today fallen so far, become so soft-”
“Right, yes, great. Thank you for not dying yet again, Senior. Lets just put you back on your boat now…” Tian picked up the smelly daoist and started carrying him towards the riverside. He had shot up a whole two inches in the last four months, which he reckoned must have helped with the lifting and carrying enormously.
“Brigands! Hooligans!”
“Hear that, Sister Liren? You are seen and appreciated for who you are.”
“I am so happy. Safe journeys, Senior Drunk.”
“Don’t eat the third bun, Violent Girl.”
“Third? Three in a row? Third one in a basket? What do you mean the third bun?” Hong suddenly sat up, her hat flying off.
“Oh no, lack of strong medicine has turned me deaf, bye, see you next time, maybe!” The old diviner polled his little boat away with alarming speed, slipping like an eel into the river current.
“Old Bum, drag your ass back here!”
“Oh, the boatman's life, sweet and wet as a little green fishy!” Starcaller’s warbling song quickly shot down the river, moving faster than a swallow in flight.
“Crane, get him!” Hong roared, red hair blazing through the black. The crane struck swift as a summer sunbeam. With a single brilliant move, she stabbed out, the rushing river hiding the ripples of her move. Returning to the surface with a silvery fish. Which she ate.
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“Not helpful.” She muttered.
“Not at all, no.” Tian agreed. “Well, just never eat a bun ever again, and you are sure to be safe. Unless he was screwing with you. Or it’s a self fulfilling prophecy.”
“We are on a bandit hunting mission. Hunting bandits. Not a ‘treating broke, vagrant diviners’ mission.”
“He’s not a vagrant. He lives in a shack just upriver from Purple Bamboo Village.” Tian sighed and stomped out the last flickering embers of the fire. The burning turpentine really did reek. “And he came and met us here, remember? Coincidentally?”
“Yeah?” Hong fixed her wide straw hat back on her head. She had stopped wearing masks, as it tended to make people think of heretics. She had opted instead for a veil. She had changed from thin silk gloves to heavier leather gloves, though. Same sun blocking effect, and they didn’t stain the way silk did.
Besides, the heat never bothered her. Or so she claimed, and Tian hadn’t seen her sweat in almost a year.
“Yep. Makes you wonder why he would travel almost sixty miles to ‘accidentally run into me’ here.”
“Key word seems to be accidentally.” Hong sniffed but her fingers started flexing, and a red tasseled spear appeared in her hand.
“Very accidentally. Especially since we are on the easiest route from the Yellow Banner Bandit’s Water Fortress to Oxbow Village. The villagers should be drying their first harvest right about now. Might even have it packed into baskets.”
“Which means merchants.” She chuckled nastily. Then her head snapped up and around. “Do you hear that?”
Tian switched to Counter-Jumper. Footsteps. Fifty of them. There was a breath of cultivation on them too. Not very strong, between Level Three and Five of the Earthly Realm. Still more than enough to wipe out a village. Then do the same to a score more afterward, and vanish before the local sects could move out and catch them.
The two daoists shared a look, shrugged, and stepped into the shadow of the trees. Their blue robes and white trousers made poor camoflage.
“Bounty mission wants them dead, not captive.” Hong sounded like she was reminding Tian to pack a lunch.
“I know.” Orthodox Daoists wouldn’t want to spend eternity as prison guards, and it wasn’t like there were mortal prisons that could hold immortals. Even lousy ones. And these were lousy cultivators.
The bandits came down the riverbank, not bothering to hide themselves. Dirty linen tunics and trousers, browns and undyed whites, ragged blues and the occasional bright splash of red on a saber tassel or sash. The closest they came to a uniform was a yellow bandana tied over each head. The bandits carried spears, axes, sabers, heavy knives, most of mortal make, none precious even if their owners called them “My treasured spear.”
Nobody became a bandit because they were doing well in life. Tian could sympathize with doing what you needed to, to survive. He just hated what these bandits decided was necessary. He’d patched up too many of their victims, and some of the wounds would never heal.
Liren did what she could to counsel the women. It wasn’t much, but it was still better than having Tian talk to them.
One of the bandits pointed at the crane and vaguely waved his hatchet. Another shook their head and pointed up the road. Tian controlled the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. No sensory arts here. No training in detecting the cultivation of others. He could wait. He would just stand in the shadow of the tree until they were on top of him and then-
Hong exploded out of the shadows, long legs driving her forward in a blur of blue and white. The red tassel twisted around her spearhead, a flickering flash of flame that blinded the bandits for the exact length of the gap between life and death. What she stabbed wasn’t simply pierced. It exploded away from her spearhead. One thrust killed two, and the spear was recovered and stabbing out again before the bodies even began to fall.
Tian was half a beat behind her. His rope dart threaded through the air silently, the dart bursting a skull, the gore partially contained by the yellow bandana. He whipped the rope sideways, flexing his vital energy and extending the barbs along its length. Then he ran to one side, and sharply pulled in. Two heads went flying, sawn off by a flying rope. He stopped like his feet were nailed down, hooked the rope with his elbow, and spun the dart around his body before shooting it out again.
It wasn’t a fight. It was simply slaughter. Fast, direct, and unspeakably brutal. Less than a minute after the bandits entered the clearing, Hong was watching the last living bandit choke to death with a crushed larynx. He was taking a little while to die, and she wasn't hurrying him along.
“Did you want to interrogate him or something?”
“What could he possibly know that would be worth me knowing?” She cleaned her spear with a rag, eyes on the bandit.
“My point was that you could kill him immediately.”
“Yes, I know.”
Tian tidied up the bodies. Nothing worth keeping for him, but the local peasants would find some value in the loot. The actual bodies themselves had to be destroyed, however. Heretics could do nasty things with cultivator corpses.
The bandit started thrashing and convulsing. It only lasted a few seconds before the last desperate strength fled him and his eyes rolled up in his head.
“Sister, that cannot be good for your dao heart. I hate bandits too, but-”
“Brother Zihao, you do not.” She met his eyes flat. “You really don’t like them. You are disgusted by what they do. You accept that killing them is what needs to be done. That’s not hatred. I hate bandits. I’d kill them for free, and I think the fact that we are collecting bounties is proof of divine favor.”
Tian kept his hands moving, stacking the bodies for burning. “Your family?”
“An amazing number, a truly amazing number, of bandits magically became mercenaries for a period of six months or so. Just long enough to murder my dads, uncles, aunts, and several cousins I remember liking. They were my age.”
That would have made them five or six. Tian bowed silently, and added the last body to the heap. He scattered Steelburning Powder generously over the tall stack, and stepped well back. He filled his fist with a little more of the powder, and blew his vital energy into it. A fireball bloomed, which he flung quickly onto the pyre.
A pillar of black smoke rose. The stink made the burning turpentine earlier seem like a pleasant memory.
“Lone Saber Academy posted the bounty on the Yellow Banner Bandits, right?” Tian asked.
“Yeah. Apparently, the bandits have been preying on their tenant farmers. And while they naturally could crush the bandits any time they liked…” The two shared a look.
“It will be good to see Senior Yu again. Think he knows the route through the swamp to the bandits’ Water Fortress? I mean, since we don’t have anyone to interrogate?”
“I bet they do. Wiseass. Alright, let’s go get paid and see if they will pay us a second time to finish the job.” Hong put away her spear and stretched. The crane flapped over, curious to see what would happen next. Tian chuckled and summoned a little fishing boat out of a storage ring. He handed the pole to Hong and settled in with the crane.
“So where do you think the self resides, Sister Liren?”
“Oh, who cares. Next time I’m making you row the boat.” Liren grumbled as they shot out into the river. The water flowed past the boat seemingly without resistance, barely raising a ripple as they moved against the flow. Tian smiled and looked out over the green banks of the Agate river. She said that every time, and every time she still grabbed the oar.
The two had been adventuring along the rivers and lakes for four months now, and neither ever wanted to stop.