Han was not an enthusiastic spearman. Tian quite understood. He, too, would be unhappy if he had to carry a nine foot pole everywhere he went. That was considered a short spear. Liren’s, as Tian liked to remind Han, was rather longer, and considerably heavier. Liren was a lady of refinement from a reputable family, raised in a convent. Was Han raised in a convent?
The aspiring swordsman accepted the training spear with bad grace, but he did it anyway. Which was for the best. The two immortals tended to respect the nine foot bubble of safety the spear theoretically created. This spared him unannounced boxing practice. However, the immortals would launch little bags of rice flour at him from outside that range, at odd angles and at odder times. The nine foot bubble gave him just enough time to dodge, if he was careful.
The idea was that they were training his situational awareness, reaction time, and evasion arts. The loosely packed bags of flour didn’t hurt, but the swordsman detested looking less than tidy, and fine rice flour was a pain to brush off. When he sulked, or didn’t carry the spear, the little bags came in like gnats in summer.
The immortals had their funny little ways. Han soon learned that Tian viewed any attack coming in horizontally or frontally as a pure distraction, and the real attacks came from behind and below, or above, or directly at the side of his neck just below and behind the ear. Liren, on the other hand, believed that attacks should come blazing fast and without warning. Linear, but there was no time to think, no time to even register what the attack was. It required pure reflex to dodge.
Han could face the world bravely when it came to reflexes. The waxberry and solar orange ointment Tian applied daily was doing marvelous things for the young man. His body was deepening its reserves of yang qi, building up both explosive power and endurance. The yin waxberry was certainly being kind to his complexion. Liren liked to use a full strength skin cream based on it.
Their student was less enthusiastic when Tian came in to apply Voidcatcher’s skincare routine. “You must balance yang with yin. And besides, this is nothing. Let me tell you about the second time I rebuilt my body. No snakes this time. I got swallowed by a demonized hawk along with some giant centipedes. This was when I was thirteen I think? Anyway. Straight down the gullet, barely managing to stop my fall by lodging my trusty rope dart in the demon’s throat…”
He wasn’t sure which was funnier- the look of growing horror on Han’s face, or the look of utter shock on Liren’s.
“You knew all this. I’ve been telling you this for years.”
“I thought you were joking about being dissolved in acid! Who survives being dissolved in acid? I knew you got swallowed by the demonized hawk, because I read your interrogation report. Your interrogator thought it was crap too, and thought your brain was cooked from cutting your way out of a bird taller than a pagoda.”
“It wasn’t a good time,” Tian conceded, slowly working out a knot in Han’s shoulder and driving the piercing lotion deep into his skin at the same time. “But I had experience being dissolved before. You just have to have the right mindset. Yes, everything hurts. Yes, it hurts so much you could just die. Yes, you are being hurt in ways you didn’t know were even possible. But you are alive. You can let the hurt kill you, or change you into something better.”
“It doesn’t always work out like that. Sometimes, the hurt is just hurt, and there is no getting better. Sometimes you just die.” Liren’s voice went soft.
“Yeah. But that’s why we are cultivators. We saw something in our lives we hated so much, we would do whatever it took to fix it. For me, it was my body. For you, it was what happened to your family.”
“And to you.”
Tian bowed his head. “And then we found things we loved. Things worth protecting, dreams worth chasing. It’s a good life, this one. I’ll be sad when it’s over.”
Liren couldn’t keep the lie detecting spell she learned from Merciless running all the time. The drain on her qi was negligible. The drain on her emotions wasn’t. So far, only utter falsehoods told with the intent to deceive triggered the anger response. Liren had flatly refused to practice it with Tian, so she chose instead to hide out on the roof above the Governor's house. She heard lots of things that made her mad, sitting up there, and lots of lies too.
Her crude grasp of the spell was one problem. Regulating her heart was another, bigger, one. Some days, Liren would simply run off into the grasslands and meditate outside the city. Never leaving Tian’s range of senses, letting him be her anchor. She might spend a day and a night out there, breathing through the fury and forcing herself to look at what was making her act the way she was. Making herself find the sources of the anger and pain within her. If Tian’s cultivation could be described as a cycle of destruction and creation, hers was more like a brutal tempering.
Tian wasn’t idle either. His master had mentioned having a clone. Tian dearly wished he did. Between practicing with his staff and trying to work out a palm art he could use in the Heavenly Realm, he barely had the time to refine his Heavenly Swallows Darts.
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“I’m sure I’ve seen Heavenly people move things with just qi. Should I add that on to the “To Study” list?”
Nah, it’s one of those things that just comes with time. Get used to manipulating qi, and pretty soon it becomes intuitive and instinctive. It’s not a spell or something.
Grandpa Jun was the only reason he was able to make any sort of decent headway. Grandpa kept to his usual practice of not telling Tian what to do, but asking questions and helping him figure it out himself. Often slow or frustrating, it did work. Tian was now old enough to understand that it wasn’t just about preserving Grandpa’s precious energy. It was about teaching Tian how to think.
Tian had known for a while his grasp on how qi and vital energy worked was much better than Liren’s. To the extent that he thought about it at all, he credited it to his medical studies. His martial arts talent was likewise not much reflected upon. Martial arts were fun and easy to learn. It was no surprise that he happily spent hours practicing them, which naturally made him a better boxer than most. Or memorizing things. It had never been hard for him. Didn’t all cultivators have excellent memories?
Looking back on it, he could see Grandpa’s hand guiding him from the moment they met in the junkyard. The calisthenics, the jumping games, the memory games, all the little nudges Grandpa had provided over the years on the most efficient way to cultivate or… so many things. All aimed at making Tian stronger, smarter, more able to seize whatever destiny he wished.
Building foundations for someone strong enough to kill a mad god. A sadist or a monster could have turned Tian into something horrible. He knew heretics did things like that. Some of the orthodox sects did too, in their own ways. He certainly didn’t believe a person who obsessed over swords as their dao was raised by good people. Grandpa had guided him into a life dedicated to healing, growing, embracing the good that came his way. A virtuous dao.
What could Tian do but look up at the endless blue sky, reach up with his perfect hands, and laugh with joy and gratitude and love. If this wasn’t being filial, he didn’t know what was. He would repay Grandpa’s grace as best he knew- by growing, and thriving, and learning. One day, those same hands would be stained with the blood of a god, and he’d lay that mad creatures’ head before Grandpa’s tomb.
He might have to build a tomb for Grandpa. He’d never come right out and said it, but Tian had the horrible feeling the old ghost had died without a grave. How else could one of his souls get trapped in a bone ring?
Tian didn’t ask. Questions about where Grandpa came from had very expensive answers.
On a rather ordinary day, Liren rushed into the courtyard. “The scouts are making contact with more nomad clans. All peaceful for now, but nobody believes they are “just traveling past.” The reinforcement column is still two weeks away. Everyone with an ounce of sense knows the attack is days away. The thing we care about is that our targets are very likely in the area."
Tian glanced at her, then nodded. “Where is Little Han?”
“It’s his free hour. I imagine he’s gorging himself in the market.”
Tian’s eyes hooded as he swept his awareness over the city. Everything was as it should be… except it wasn’t. “Lian is about to make a move! The warehouse has an obfuscation array up.”
“What? I can’t-”
“The qi flow is different, he’s making it look like nothing changed.” Tian snapped the words out quickly. He pressed his hands to the ground, trying to extend his senses through the earth. “Gu in the ground. Enough to be a problem. Earth Realm. Daoist Sweetdove is still in town. Tell her she needs to give us the robes, then fight or scram, her choice.”
Liren looked at him for a split second, nodded, and moved, leaving a blur behind her.
Tian gathered his qi, trying to do something he had never done before. He used the communication spell and reached out to all the Earthly Realm cultivators in the city.
“Gu are burrowing under the city. They are likely a distraction for an attack from another direction. None are in the Heavenly Realm. I expect heretics will reveal themselves as well. Not all of you are who you seem. My companion and I are going to have our hands full dealing with the Heavenly Realm threat, so it’s on you to deal with the gu and their controllers. I am leaving some Gu Powder and antidotes in a sack by the gate to my courtyard in the City Lord’s manor. A mortal servant will provide them to whoever needs it.”
Tian paused and gathered his thoughts. “Fight bravely. You may see me for your wounds after the battle. As for everything else… I remind the Fellow Daoists of the words carved above the gate to the Shrine of the Martyr Venerable. ‘I shall not suffer a heretic to live!’”
Judging from the screams of hate and fury rising from across the city, he might have let his emotions color his qi a little too much.
He cast his mind out again, searching for Han. There seemed to be a bit of commotion at the market square- some merchants had taken out hatchets and were hacking apart anyone in reach. Han was handling it, and the guards were on their way. Tian didn’t need to check to know similar scenes were taking place across the city.
“Finish up and return to my courtyard. I’m leaving a sack by the gate. Contents are labeled. Wounded people will turn up looking for medicine. Give them to those who need ‘em. If you see any weird looking bugs, throw the bags labeled “Gu Powder” on them. If you see heretics, kill without question or mercy. If it comes to it, die on your feet. Liren and I need to have a word with a former fellow daoist.”
Liren returned to the courtyard in a blur. She tossed him a golden robe. It felt surprisingly light, yet dense. As though gold itself was woven into soft cloth. Not bad for silk made from sea plants.
The city was being plunged into chaos. Attacks from within and without. Heretics, and untrustworthy allies, and hidden dangers everywhere. Tian pulled on the robe with sharp jerks of his hands, neck tense and eyes twitching around trying to find the ambush.
It felt like coming back to a home he hated.