“Senior Brother… was I secretly kicked in the head?”
“Nope. That’s real.”
The West Town Outer Court had assembled in a field outside the town. Their duties had been assumed by mortal servants overseen by the disabled and seniors who had stepped back from the front lines in the Inner Court. Every fit Earthly Realm lay brother and sister had left. No exceptions.
Tian knew he would never forget brother Tang’s face, wrapped in a blanket and sitting immobile in a wicker chair, watching his brothers march out the gate.
The West Town branch of the Outer Court was headed for the Southern Border. And they were going on a flying ship.
“It’s the size of… of…”
“Hush, Junior.”
Tian shut up, his eyes riveted on the boat. It was shaped like one of the river boats he saw polling its way up and down the long river that wrapped around the mountain. Just vastly, impossibly longer.
“I can run pretty fast now,” Tian thought, “But it would still take me at least twenty minutes to go end to end. At least twenty. Thirty?”
The number kept revising upwards as the boat got closer. It was huge on a scale Tian’s mind simply didn’t operate on. He could understand the river being big or the mountain being big, but a human construction like the boat didn’t seem to fit in his mind. It just kept going and going.
“It’s not built for humans. It’s too big. It’s just too big.” He thought. “There is no way it could land without crushing hundreds of farms.”
Someone up there agreed with him. Smaller boats fell like pollen, drifting downward towards the waiting cultivators scattered around the base of the mountain. One of them landed feather-light in front of the West Town. It was a flat bottomed skiff with a flat deck and a little covered area seemingly made out of a forest’s worth of woven bamboo splits. The prow of the ship gently fell forward, turning into an enormous ramp, wide enough for the waiting cultivators to march aboard in rows ten across.
“Even their little boats are bigger than the entire Temple complex.” Tian thought. “Who could build on that scale? How does it fly without wings? Hell, how does it fly without making a sound?”
“West Town Outer Court reporting! All disciples are present and accounted for. We await your command!”
Brother Fu’s voice roared out. There was the sound of clashing blades in there, and an old dog ready to show the young pups why it still ruled the pack.
ACKNOWLEDGED. BOARD THE DINGHY AND AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS.
It was a man’s voice, but Tian would swear his ears didn’t hear it. The voice just appeared in his head without bothering with such petty methods.
“WEST TOWN! BY RANKS! FORWARD MARCH!”
“March?” Tian wondered what marching was. Like the annual procession? He decided to just do what his brothers did. They seemed to know what was happening.
They marched up the ramp and into the hold of the dinghy. The interior was mostly empty, at least where they were standing. After everyone was on board, the prow closed up again and Tian felt a gentle pressure on the soles of his feet. “Are we flying?” He muttered.
The brother next to him glared and put a finger to his lip. Then nodded. Then glared again and repeated the gesture. Tian nodded obediently.
The pressure continued for a few minutes, then stopped. The ramp lowered again.
DISEMBARK. FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE STEWARDS.
“WEST TOWN! REVERSE DIRECTION.” Everybody spun around. Tian kept up. The forced ‘stroll’ practice made his reflexes very sharp. “WEST TOWN! FORWARD MARCH!”
They marched out onto an enormous deck. The roof above was almost lost in darkness, with a few floating lights flooding the floor below. There were little roads marked with white paint, others with green or red or blue.
“Welcome aboard the Summer Torrent! Your journey to the Southern Border will take thirty six hours. You will follow the blue path and only the blue path to your berth. Do not stop at any point along the way! Do not talk to anyone. Do not slow down. We have another town coming on board in ninety seconds, so I want you off my deck in thirty! Now, MARCH!”
Tian didn’t recognize the cultivator talking, but he recognized an Inner Court uniform, so he marched. Brother Fu and Sister Bai led them down the blue path, never varying their pace. Even when it looked like there was another town’s worth of Outer Court members blocking the hall, they kept the pace. The others cleared the hall exactly four seconds before the front row reached them, entering into their own berth.
Tian hadn’t really considered what it would be like shifting eighteen thousand people in a hurry. He’d never had to organize a group of any size. It was almost as amazing as the ship itself.
Their berth was nothing more than another big room, though smaller than the one they had landed in. Brother Fu and Sister Bai quickly had the Temple and Covenant split up and spread out evenly. When the room was divided to their satisfaction, complete with aisles to walk up and down and determining the location of the privies, they instructed everyone to sit. The noise was remarkable, echoing off the walls and ceilings.
Sister Bai cleared her throat. “Alright, for those of you who haven’t traveled by sky barge before, both of you,” That got a small laugh. “Let me explain what’s going to happen here. You are going to sit right where you are. If you want to sleep, pull out a blanket, bundle up and sleep. You want to eat, eat dry rations. Better still, eat a fasting pill. There is a reason they are the only ‘pill’ available in the Outer Court. All they do is provide enough nutrition to keep a Earthly Realm cultivator going for a week. Key point- if you don’t eat, you don’t excrete. So do drink a lot of water, because any toxins you accumulate in your body will be flushed out through your urine.”
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She pointed dramatically towards the privy. “Enjoy clean bathrooms while you still can. You won’t have them long. Other than that, you can talk quietly with your neighbors, but don’t wander around. Better still, just settle in for a long cultivation session. Right, that’s it. Enjoy.”
Tian immediately followed Sister Bai’s advice and ate a fasting pill. He’d never used them before, but he’d wondered about them since his first mission. The feeling was a little uncomfortable, but not terrible. He suddenly felt like eating even one more bite of food would make him sick.
“You probably have a ton of questions.” Senior Brother Meng leaned over and said in a low voice. “I doubt anyone can answer all of them, but go ahead and ask.”
“What is a sky barge? HOW is a sky barge?” Tian blurted, trying to keep his voice low as he could manage.
“Good question. It’s exactly what it looks like- a giant flying boat. They are called barges because most of them are pleasure craft for seniors at or above the Core Disciple level. Don’t ask me what the Direct Disciples of the Daoist Masters get up to. I’ve been in the temple a long, long time and the number of Direct Disciples I have been within two hundred miles of is two. And I’m guessing about both of them. Sky barges are for Elders we aren’t even qualified to know about, let alone learn the names of. Summer Torrent is a little different. She’s a real working ship, and is many, many times bigger than an ordinary sky barge. She does heavy cargo missions between sects. I believe it’s owned outright by our Ancient Crane Sect, but I can’t swear to that.”
“But… but it’s so big! How could we have built something this big? How could it fly around and we never see it?”
“First, I didn’t say we built it, I said we own it. It was built by the Divine Shaper Sect, who make most flying barges. Second… Junior Brother, do you really think this is a creation at merely the Heavenly Person Realm? If the captain so wished, you could be standing on top of it and never notice. Although, in fact, it never lands. They just shift stuff around in those dinghies.”
“I didn’t know there were realms above Heavenly Person!” Tian whispered vehemently.
“Yeah. Because they aren’t relevant to us. At all.” Brother Meng shrugged. “Think of it like the Mountain. You can see our town, and you can see Mountain Gate City, but once you get a certain distance up the side of the mountain, everything is hidden by clouds. The higher you go, the further you can see.”
Tian remembered how high up the Summer Torrent was when he first spotted it. He couldn’t imagine the view from up there. He smiled thinking about it. One day, he would be strong enough to fly that high all on his own.
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“WELCOME TO FORWARD CAMP REDKNIFE!” The Inner Court cultivator bellowed. He hadn’t bothered to introduce himself. “Members of the Outer Court will bunk with their Towns until given further orders. Our Base is home to five Towns, so get to know each other. ON YOUR OWN TIME! Each Town has been allocated quarters. There is also a Mission Hall and Quartermaster’s Warehouse, as well as some crafting rooms. When you are not given a military command, you may undertake missions to acquire Military Merits. Those Merit Points can be exchanged here on base! Right, you all know this stuff. Anyone holding a Blade token- stick around. The rest of you- dismissed!”
Tian did not, in fact, know all this stuff. What he did know was that it hurt to breathe. The wasteland was accurately named. Fine sand and dust was constantly blowing, rapidly making your eyes water, then go blind. Filling your ears, and nose, and shredding your lips as you desperately kept your mouth closed. And with every sip of air, stone particles shredded your throat and lungs. Every cultivator wore special headgear to keep the dust off, but Tian wasn’t very used to it. He hadn’t quite sealed everything up right, and was paying for his inexperience.
It was brutally hot, but it was a dry heat. It really didn’t make standing out in the sun with his whole body covered in loose cloth and his head wrapped and tied with scarves and goggles any better.
“Come on. Let’s get indoors.” Brother Meng nudged Tian.
“Haven’t missed this place at all. Redknife. I’ve been here before.” One of the Sisters said. “We should be near the Black Sand Desert. Which means demons, slaughter fiends and cursemancers.”
“Still take them over Gu.” One of the brothers aimed for optimism and kind of hit it. “Hate Gu.”
Tian tried to remember what Gu were. The books were a little contradictory- they were both curses and insects, if he understood properly. Which he probably didn’t. Apparently, their methods of cultivation and control were extremely unpleasant, even for heretical cultivators. Something about turning living people into insect breeding grounds, birthing and feeding generations of insects while not being permitted to die as the victim’s pain and horror was also part of the breeding and rearing process…
Tian agreed with his Senior Brother. Demons sounded awful, but he, too, would take them over Gu.
They marched into barracks- essentially rows of bunk beds running the length of a long, windowless stone building. It was dimly lit inside, but that didn’t bother anyone. They were all cultivators. The Brothers and Sisters were separated into different rooms once again, but he was told they were identical in every way.
“Is there a dining room?” Tian asked.
“They call it a mess hall, but yes.” Tian was bunked above Senior Brother Su. He was sure it was not an accident. “You can think of it as a sort of miniature Temple. The way the Sect runs large scale combat deployments is pretty straightforward- the base is either Up or Down. If it is Up, then we are where the battle line is, or supporting the battle line near us. We will be directly issued mandatory missions by the Sect, and discipline will be very strict. If the base is Down, then the battle lines are somewhere else. That doesn’t mean we stop fighting. It just means that you can go to the mission hall and pick the kind of fighting you will be doing. Right now, the base is Up.”
Tian nodded. “Why not just issue mandatory missions all the time? It sounded like the fighting is pretty bad.”
“Because we are cultivators.”
“Pardon, Senior Brother?”
Brother Su smiled a little at that. “Little Tian, our West Town is almost unique in how unified we are. Everywhere else? One cultivator is a menace, two an argument, three a conspiracy and four a war. If we didn’t have the opportunity to go adventuring, there would be a mutiny in a month.”
Tian recoiled. “Really?”
“Really. Just you wait. You are in for one hell of a shock. You don’t know it now, but Level Nine, or worse, Level Ten, is an entirely new life. One spent amongst the rivers and lakes, letting your life ride on a blade’s edge and a beauty’s smile. But you know what? I have a sneaking suspicion that the boy who wanted to run away and do solo missions before he was thirteen will fit in just fine.”
Tian grinned. He did like the sound of going on adventures like his senior brothers. Then frowned, because they obviously would need him here on the battlefield. It would be scumbag behavior to send them out to fight heretics while he was running around having fun. He quickly looked around.
“Where is Brother Fu? I don’t think he came with us to the barracks.
“Blade Token. It’s not a seniority thing, it’s a capability and mindset thing. And a loyalty thing. Not every Outer Court has someone capable of holding our Ancient Crane Mountain’s Blade Token.”
Tian’s eyes went wide. “A loyalty thing?”
“Oh yes.” Brother Su’s smile was almost blinding, then suddenly vanished. “Just remember. You are in a war zone now. There is not a single thing outside the walls of this barrack that doesn’t want to kill you. Notice I said barrack, not base.