Tian happened, suddenly and violently. He dove into the press of low-level bandits barehanded, ducking a little as though he were trying to evade the eyes of the bow carrying bandit chief. Which was true, to an extent. It made it easy to conceal his throw and the twisting path of the Imperial Heavenly Swallows.
The invisible darts slammed into the archer, two in the right eye, one in the left, leaving the man screaming and falling to his knees. Tian swore and ripped the darts back with a yank of his vital energy. He was a bit too far away from his target. The wound wasn’t fatal. Too much power was lost in transit.
Tian slowly breathed out. Axes hacked at him from behind shields, while spears stabbed over the top of them. Tightly packed formations. Military. It felt military, even if they looked and smelled like bandits. Tian kicked a shield up and in, lifting the bandit strapped to it up and in towards the center of his formation. Creating a gap in the lines. Then Tian was inside, and people started dying.
A pale hand intercepted a descending axe behind its head, and gently redirected it into the flanks of a spearman. A shield was encouraged along the direction it was already going, and the shieldbearer’s head intercepted a spear aimed at Tian. The spear was yanked to one side by the falling shieldbearer, catching another bandit behind the ear. Before the stunned bandit could defend himself, an over-swung axe chopped his neck open.
It was his father’s way of fighting. The one he, even now, thought of as his real father. Flowing like water, not attacking but letting others bear the consequences of their actions against you. Accepting everything and nothing all at once.
Tian wasn’t as good at it as Brother Fu was. Not at all. But he had practiced it and used it in battles before. He liked to flow too; not to think, just feel. To be open to this beautiful, horrible world. Right now he was open to the flow of the elements racing through the bandits, seeing what would happen a half second before muscles moved and weapons swung. The hacking sabers were more dangerous to their wielders than they were to him.
A cold fury rose in Tian, a burning anger that left his heart cold. He didn’t want to use his father’s skill. Didn’t want to use anything from the Temple. Tian switched over to the Dragon Suppressing Palms. The internal cultivation that was the core of the art was still too unfamiliar, but the postures, movements and strikes weren’t anything too difficult. At least, for some of the moves. He would just have to be a little more cautious in his actions.
It was a transformation from yin to yang, from reactive and accepting to initiating and imposing. Tian grunted with surprise when he realized his breathing and posture had completely changed, and with it, his mentality.
The fingers of Tian’s right hand curled in, but his palm stayed open, like a cat’s paw. It thrust lightning fast for the heart of a spear wielding bandit. His left hand swept in from the side and hooked inward. The heart was smashed, the kidney obliterated, an inescapable attack from a distance so close, one might think they were embracing.
It was strange the way you could look directly at someone and not see them. Tian knew he was staring at the light dying in a man’s eyes, and he didn't see him at all. He saw his reflection. Pale. Indifferent. Covered in other people’s blood, with his long hair falling around his shoulders. He looked mad. Quite mad.
A saber chopped at his head with far more speed and authority than the other bandits had managed. It still missed him, sliding past then retreating as Tian dodged the cut without looking and shifted to line up his counterattack.
“Rally! Rally to me, men! Pass the wounded back and move up. Wolf Squad, get in the castle. Reinforce Viper Squad. Stop her! Don’t let her escape! You hear me? If you want to live, FIGHT! Damn you, form ranks if you want to live!” The bandit chief roared.
“It won’t be enough.” Tian could hear the silence in the fortified house. The immortal breaths he could sense had dwindled to just one familiar one. “They are all dead. If you run away I wouldn’t chase you. But if you bear arms before me, you will die.” Tian kept his voice conversational, but it carried, reaching every ear on the battlefield. The level nine bandit chief paused.
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes. Give me the bird, and I will let your men run away without their weapons. I can make no promises about the one ripping through your base, though. I don’t like bandits. She hates you.”
The chief hesitated for a second.
“Your men can’t stop me. You won’t be enough to stop me either. Or your fellow chiefs. Or whatever nastiness you have in that base. Or whoever is backing you. Give me what I want, and you might live. Fight me, and you will certainly die.”
The bandit chief started to snarl a reply when a clatter of shields fell on the ground. Spears fell. Feet thundered on the iron rich ground. The weaker bandits weren’t interested in fighting to the death. They dropped their weapons, and ran.
“Do you think any of them will stop and collect the women and children?” Tian asked the bandit chief.
“No.”
“Pity. I’d have thought better of them.”
“The women and children have already been evacuated. Old mine tunnels.”
“And now I think better of you.”
“Enough to… let this whole unfortunate affair pass?” The chief tested out the words.
“No.” Tian shook his head. “Because I have questions, and depending on your answers, I might just kill you regardless. Starting with… am I going to find dead children inside that stockade?”
The bandit chief sighed and slowly raised his saber and shield. “My name is Dugun Rou, War Chief of the Iron Range Militia. Who am I fighting?”
“I’d tell you, but who would tell me? I really haven’t decided. Sometimes a name is just too much to carry.”
“Killed by a nameless madman.” The bandit started laughing. Tian felt one level nine immortal breath cease. He presumed it was the chief with the halberd. The second, already feeble, collapsed to a bare thread. Liren had left one clinging to life. It seemed she had questions too.
“Not the Kingdom’s experts, not the State Preceptor, not a wandering hero or chivalrous expert or some old monster descending from the Mountain, but a nameless boy. What a joke! What a joke! Is that all this Rou’s life amounts to? Is this all the fortune heaven affords me?”
Tian nodded. “Yes.”
A dashing step put Tian at the big man’s chest. The shield was held in front of the bandit like a wall, the saber rising over his head. The bandit had planted his feet, opting to meet the charge rather than fight for distance. Tian dropped almost flat backwards and let his weight land with a kick directly on the bandit’s ankle. A shove and a hop, Light Body activating for a bare second, and he stood up again while shifting to the bandit’s left.
The shield could protect him as well as the bandit, after all. If Senior Dugun wanted to be immoble, then Tian would assist him in achieving immobility. Another dashing step and he was at Dugun’s back.
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“Like Hell!” The bandit whipped his injured leg backward towards Tian’s guts as his thick waist twisted, his shield and saber coming around tight and fast. Tian swayed back from the kick, and Dugun let the momentum finish pulling him around. The saber kept the momentum flowing as it chopped down on Tian’s head.
Tian saw the saber coming before the swing began. He read the flow of the elements through the chief, the deep earth aspected vital energy within him. The saber art wasn’t exquisite, but it wasn’t the usual heretic trash either. It carried the weight of earth with it, and would land like a falling boulder.
Wherever it landed.
Tian swayed back. A too-pale hand rested on the big man’s wrist. A sudden weight drove the saber down, and into the uninjured foot. Pinning it to the rusted earth. Their eyes met for the briefest moment. The bandit didn’t beg. The dignity of a bandit chief. Tian swung his bladed hand like a heavy dart at the end of a rope. It smashed into the older man’s skull right at the temple. A heavy hand, hard enough to shatter bone and fast enough to send the body spinning through the air.
The battlefield felt very quiet. Tian stood, feeling no pride, no anger, no regret. Empty. He suddenly remembered how his favorite crafter, Sister Li, described seeing Brother Fu for the first time. A spirit of pure killing. Not angry, not happy, not anything. Just an unrelenting determination to kill.
It seemed insane, impossible. Brother Fu was the kindest person he knew. The most loving, in his fashion. But Brother Fu had told him the same thing. Over time, the depression and self loathing grew until he truly believed that everything should be destroyed. Even himself. The name Mad Dog Fu came from achievements, not malice. Brother Fu was who emerged on the other side of the madness.
It seemed insane, impossible, but now it just sounded inevitable. For Brother Fu, the despair came from his inability to break through to the Heavenly Realm. For Tian, it was his inability to see a happy future with all the people he loved. Daoism taught him that he shouldn’t project into the future, that he should exist in the present moment, treating happiness and sadness as the same thing and accept all that came to him. He wasn’t that enlightened.
He wanted that path to something better. Some road back to the Temple or the Agate River and happy days with Sister Hong and the Crane. Days without the weight of a dead boy draped across his shoulders. Without the weight of the Monastery's sins on him.
“Nameless?” Hong trudged up to him. She had less gore on her than he did. The advantage of a spear, Tian supposed, though she had lost her hat and veil somewhere.
“Who are you addressing without honorifics? That’s Big Bro Nameless to you!” Tian’s voice was cool, but his lips twitched into the barest smile. However empty he felt, there was one thing he could proudly boast. He had the very best sister in the world.
“How about… Xia Zihao?”
The world got very quiet again. “I don’t know anyone by that name. I don’t know anyone named Xia. Truly.”
“Don’t you lie to me!” Hong rushed in and grabbed him by the tunic. “You are the boy in the fire. You are! How many times have you talked about eating trash? About living on grubs, living sick, being badly burned? Was it funny, treating everyone like an idiot? Did you have a good laugh? ‘I can’t believe these idiots aren’t putting the clues together!’”
“I’m not lying. I really don’t remember anything before I woke up in the dump. I was named Tian Zihao by Grandpa Jun. And I only figured it out myself when you told me about the night the Xia died.”
Hong searched his face, staring deep into his eyes. Tian met her gaze, hiding nothing.
“I meant every word I said in the cave, Sister. I told you no lies. The Xia boy, whatever his name was, died with his family in the fire. I was born, age six, in the West Town dump.”
“Covered in burns. Riddled with disease. Poisoned.”
“Yes.”
“Starving.”
“Yes.”
“Alone.”
“Mostly, yes.”
“People threw stones at you when you tried to talk to them.” Hong breathed out each word, tasting the horror. “A burnt, mutilated, scrawny, sun-burnt child.”
“Yes. They thought I was some kind of sick animal. In a way, they were right. Not that I ever forgave a single one of them.”
Tian smiled, his lips quivering. “But I meant every word I said in the cave, Sister. I forgive you. On behalf of the living and the dead. I’m not ready to extend my forgiveness to anyone else just yet, but… you are Sister Liren. You didn’t hurt me. You and I have lost count of how often we saved each other’s lives. So, for whatever it’s worth, I forgive you.”
Liren shuddered. Her face twisted, her throat moved as she swallowed so many things that were trying to come flying out. She forced her eyes closed. Regulated her breath.
“This isn’t the time for this. The crane is still locked up. There are things we need to do inside the base. Urgent things.”
“Mmm.”
She breathed out. “I… cannot accept your forgiveness.”
“Is that something you really get to decide?” Tian asked.
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“Are you going to be weird about this?”
“Oh go boil your head!” Liren exploded. “This is a weird situation. YOU are a weird situation! I am weird. It would be weird if we weren’t weird. So yes, Tian Zihao, I am going to be very, very, very, extremely weird about this.”
“Oh good, you are back to normal.” Tian smiled. It was a fragile little expression, but sincere.
Liren shrieked and kicked a stone so hard it shattered into dust. Tian’s smile didn’t slip.
“Just answer me one thing, Hong Liren. To me, you are my life and death Sister. One of only two living people I consider family, and I’m having a lot of feelings about Dad right now. So. Who am I to you?”
Liren swayed, before collapsing in the dirt. She sat bonelessly, too bewildered to even cry. “I don’t know. Too many things. Too many. How do I carry this? How do you bear this?”
“I don’t know. I’ve put down my name for barely a day, and I can tell you, it wasn’t long enough. I don’t know how we carry any of this. I just know you are my Sister.”
The moans of the wounded were soft around them. The bandits, the few who met Tian in battle and survived, were staying low, not even trying to crawl away. Liren shook herself and stood. Tian could see her repressing her emotions, driving them down inside of her, focusing on the matters at hand.
“You better come inside. I didn’t want to touch anyone before you got there.” Her face turned from stoic to stony. “It’s bad. Brother.”
Tian smiled. “Lead on.”
“Mmm. Oh, and… Brother?”
“Yes?”
“If you ever run off on me again, I’m going to break your legs.”
They walked side by side into the stockade, ignoring the wounded and the dead all around them. Was it a victor’s compassion, or the arrogance of the blessed? But there was no one who could ask, and none who knew the answer.
The stockade was clean, and smelled… if not fresh, then more fresh than other bandit camps Tian had seen. This was the home of the elite, and kept as such. Painted on the white plaster walls was a crossed halberd and an arrow over a shield. The image was repeated in every room and hallway, as though the artist was afraid people would miss the message.
“They are in the basement.” Hong led Tian inwards.
“They?”
“Just… come and see.”
Tian stopped at the head of the stairs. The lousy oil burning in the lamps smoked and stank, but couldn’t cover up the smell of blood and something else.
“Is that incense?”
“Yes. Not cheap incense either. Come on.”
The stairs turned several times, descending into what was once a mine shaft. Deeper and deeper. Tian heard a confusing murmur of voices. Old men, speaking over one another, losing the meanings in all the noise.
“Old men?”
“No.”
Tian looked at her confused, then horrified. He remembered where he had heard children speaking with the voice of old men. He jumped down the stairs, letting Light Body gentle the landing before shoving off and jumping again.
There was a door at the bottom of the stairs, open, golden light spilling through. Tian dashed in. There were ten children preaching the dao, sitting in lotus, carefully pinned in position with an iron rod running from between their collarbones, through their pelvis and into the rock below. Held on the very precipice of life and death by an array. Bright vermillion seal script crossed over their golden eyes as each child lectured the empty seat cushions in front of them.
Blood was draining from them in a slow stream. Red flecked with gold, gathering and pooling in stone troughs running down to an altar. Above the altar was a statue of two dragons contending. One black, one gold. The black dragon had its claws around the golden dragon's throat. Pinning it down. Drowning it in the trough of blood.