Hou’s hands were slick with blood. There was blood on him up to the elbows and across his chest. The further the blood got from his hands, the dryer and tackier it became, some even turning black and flaking off. He estimated only about an eighth of it was his.
“Come on, you old monster! Fight! You got this!” Hou yelled, pinching shut an artery while desperately trying to stave off the advancing infection ravaging Daoist Yan. Yan’s right arm was already gone between the elbow and shoulder, crushed by a shaman who seemed to be possessed by a bear, or possibly fathered by one. Hou didn’t know who ripped open Yan’s guts, or slipped the saber into his chest, but the old monster was standing in a nest of dead and dying shamans. Didn’t seem hard to guess.
Yan gasped, and gasped, and gasped, trying to keep breathing, trying to force air into his lungs. His eyes rolled up into his head, fishbelly white. Hou heard the heart stop beating.
“SHIT!” He had once seen a surgeon restart a heart by massaging it. The ribs were broken anyway. He sliced them out in half a second and started contracting the heart by hand. His vital energy flooded into the dying organ, forcing it to contract, forcing the chambers to open and close in their proper order. He had to stop to do the same for the lungs. Then the heart again. Then back to the lungs. While desperately trying to keep an artery clamped shut. He kept it up for ten minutes. His meridians screamed in pain, his vision turned grey, then white around the edges. Vital energy wasn’t meant to be used like this, but it was a doctor’s creed, the silent pride of the Bamboo Medicine Hut. You fought death until you fell. Hou fought, and fell. Yan never started breathing on his own again. Nor did his heart regain its rhythm.
He was dead.
Hou bit back a scream. He had been fighting to keep Yan alive for four hours. It would have been longer, but not a single one of the Earthly cultivators who went out to fight came back unharmed. Somehow, there were people in even worse shape than the old sword demon. He had hobbled between them, trying to stabilize one long enough for him to be able to stabilize the next and so on, until one of the stabilized was no longer stable and then he was right back where he started, except now he was even more tired and everything hurt and every step was agony.
His first patient was himself, stitching up some gashes on his head that bled like crazy, and setting a broken leg. He’d sooner be beaten to death than admit he had just tripped, and then got trampled by a horse. His Eminence was right. He really didn’t know how to fight. Didn’t seem to have the knack for it.
Hou gave himself this much grace - the others did know how to fight, and they came back even worse than he did. Those who came back. There weren’t many Earthly cultivators in the city to begin with. Fewer now. All with injuries, except the one who didn’t go. The one who ran at the last possible instant. Ma.
I must kill Daoist Ma. I must kill him today. I will not permit the sun to set on this feud. A gentleman can wait ten years for vengeance, but I’m done with being a gentleman.
Hou collapsed onto a stool, leaning against the cool stone wall of the hospital room. It wouldn’t have passed muster as a shed for stowing hoes and rakes back at the sect, but that’s how it was out in the secular world. You just did your best with what you had, even if all you had was trash.
It took twenty minutes for Hou to realize that the reason his back was so cold was that he had taken off his robes, leaving only his light trousers. He wasn’t even wearing socks or shoes. At some point, his clothes had become so soaked with blood and bile they were an unbearable hindrance. Propriety be damned. It was easier to wash blood off skin than get it out of silk anyhow.
“Orderly.”
“Yes Divine Doctor Hou? How may I serve your eminence?”
Hou kept his eyes fixed on the beam over the window across from his stool. He didn't move so much as an eyebrow. It took him half a minute to find the words he wanted to say.
“Orderly, I know you are a mortal, and are being respectful. But if you call me “divine doctor” ever again, I will have to make my apologies to your widow. There is a dead man on that table, orderly. His heart stopped in my hand. I called you for a basin of warm water, some soap, and someone to take his body for incineration. I already put the charm on him. Do it now. Silently.”
An hour later, presentable but not feeling any more human, he found two of his less wounded comrades and a squad of mortal soldiers. The city had gone mad. The City God, the Martyr Venerable, had descended in their hour of need. The Divine Emissaries, the Burning Heaven Cranes, had descended and done battle by his side. Everyone knew that Salvation White and Valiant Gold had stormed the Yuu camp, resolved to die rather than let the Grand Shamans break the city wall.
Nobody was talking about the lesser immortals who rushed out to destroy the massive catapults and capture the foreign siege engineer. The operation had been a success despite the one hundred percent casualty rate. Who cared about the catapults? The city was saved. A treaty was struck. Maybe Ma was raising a cup to toast the victory even now. Or maybe he was running for his friends, his old compatriots, out in the steppes. It would make sense for him to run. Clearly he was good at it.
“D- Doctor Hou, we have found Immortal Ma’s residence. He is staying in the guest house at-”
“Take us to him.” Hou cut him off. His leg was hurting.
“Yes, at once.”
The city was convulsing. It wasn’t a riot. Nobody was in the mood to fight. But it was convulsing anyway, the kind of spastic twitch that came from improper activation of the nerves. A sudden cessation of extreme pressure, combined with a sudden relaxation, caused an explosive release. However, in the process of the release, the body was stimulated by a totally alien shock. That shock provoked reactions. In this case, ecstasy. A nice word, unless you knew what it really meant. There was nothing human in the eyes he saw. They were filled with the madness of the divine.
They came to an ugly guest house. It had probably belonged to a merchant, but some time in the last two years, the merchant had run and the city had converted it to provide housing for their difficult, but vital, cultivators. It was the same exterior stone as every other house, built to the same height and length, it just took up a quarter of the width of a city block instead of a sixteenth.
In another city, Hou might have thought the house belonged to a minor noble. In the steppes, it was a merchant. Burning Flag City had been a place for trading slaves and steel for salt and gold, with a potters quarter doing double duty as a fig leaf, and the cavalry trying to buy or steal enough horses to justify the Kingdom’s being here in the first place.
“He’s inside, Doctor.”
“He isn’t.” Hou shook his head and glared at the mortal.”There isn’t a single living breath in the whole building.”
“I… Reporting to the Doctor, he was observed running in, slamming the door, and has not come out again. Unless he used some immortal methods to evade the eyes of the watcher, but…”
It was entirely possible. Hou had never really learned the trick, but a lot of cultivators had the knack of sensing when they were being observed, and had the speed and body control to stay out of the perception of mortals. The Ancient Crane Monastery was notorious for it, but they were hardly the only ones. Ma had lived a hard life, and always had the air of one who would survive to the end. In the half year or so of their acquaintance, Hou learned endless tips and tricks for staying alive from him. Evading mortal gazes would be less than trivial.
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“A cunning rabbit has three exits to his burrow. Maybe a horsefucker learned to dig.” One of the cultivators with him muttered. He had to mutter. He wasn’t used to speaking without four of his front teeth. He had only lost them a few hours ago.
Hou wanted to kick in the door. His broken leg didn’t agree. “Kick in this door for me.” He waved the lisping man over, and was obeyed. In part because he was a doctor, in part because he was leading when others wished to follow, but the biggest reason was that he had reached Level Eight. Wandering cultivators respected the biggest fist as king. He had backing too. The most utterly gold plated diamond of a pedigree imaginable in Burning Flag City.
Lisp booted the door open hard enough to leave it hanging on one hinge. The cultivators swarmed in, Hou following slowly behind. There was a lot of swearing. One of the cultivators came back out.
“Disgusting. Just-” The man couldn’t seem to find the words and slapped the wall next to the door hard enough to shatter a ten inch diameter hole in it. Hou hobbled in, not too proud to lean on an arm from one of the mortal soldiers.
Ma hadn’t fled the city, nor had he dug a hole. He had fixed himself a drink instead.
The weathered cultivator sat slumped in his chair next to a little table. Reddish foam had poured out of his mouth, along with copious bile. The smell was awful. Judging from the deformation of the face, throat and stomach, the poison was unbelievably toxic. The bowl by his hand would contain residue, if Hou felt like analysing it. He wasn’t much good as a doctor, but he had been passable in the medicine compounding halls. He might learn something from the bowl. He would probably learn more from the note under it.
Hou sat in the chair opposite Ma, never taking his eyes off him. “Thre hun souls and seven po souls. The po dissipate into the earth upon death, the Hun combine and either stay in the ancestral tablets, reincarnate, or both, somehow. Think his Po souls are still around?” Hou didn’t ask anyone in particular, and didn’t expect an answer. Nor did he get one. He exhaled slowly. “Bring me the note. My leg hurts too much to stand up again.”
The soldier bowed and carefully wiggled the paper free, handing it over to Hou with two hands. The note wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular. Ma hadn’t been close to anyone that Hou knew about. No sect, no clan, no gang. A true rogue cultivator.
It was never about being on the steppes. It was being part of a clan. It was the smell of the campfires as my aunts and uncles laughed and argued, the smell of horses, hot in the sun, their harnesses jingling as we rode together, setting up the Ger, everything just as it should be. Seeing my cousins braid each other’s hair. Bathing with my brothers in a stream, or washing each other’s backs with cloths as we kept near the fire to drive away the cold. It was being a child, riding in front of my mother, wrapped in her arms as we migrated. That is the steppes in my heart. Not a place, a people. And there is no going back for me.
The Emissary showed me my truth in a bowl of caravan tea. Then the Guardian carried us up in a flying boat, the green blanket of the steppes all rumpled below us, and we watched the Great Horse Spirit come thundering across the land, leading a herd of horse spirits. In that moment, I had a true revelation. This was what I needed. I want to ride with the herd, and rule it. To be a true Yuu once more, without renouncing the path of immortality. I want my family back, but can’t have it. My most desperate wants and needs are in contradiction.
In that moment, I saw everything I wanted, and knew I could never have it. No amount of cultivation could ever bring it to me, nor could forsaking my cultivation and returning to the steppes. Who would take me in? Who would I dare trust? If I did not trust, how could I give up my strength?
Yalau promised me endless honors and a place at Wuusan’s right hand if I could poison the Heavenly Family. There would be a place of honor if I betrayed the other Earthly cultivators. Exceptions to the law could be made. I could be a sorcerer and a Yuu. She didn’t say so, but I have eyes. The losses amongst the shamans and grand shamans must be causing hell inside the tribes. For a prize this big, she would pinch her nose and turn her eyes away. Anything for a victory. I might have done it a year ago, but I have seen the truth. I’m drinking the poison she gave me.
If you see the Emissary, tell him I am sorry. He gave me all I needed, and I cannot use it. This life was too hard for me. I am not fit to live as a human. In the next life, I pray the Martyr Venerable permits me to return to the steppes. If I cannot manage that, I pray I am reborn as a horse or oxen to labor for the Emissary, willing to dedicate a lifetime to repay his grace. Let me be born a dog, so long as I am a dog at his feet. That much, I think I can manage.
-Sainbayar, known in the Kingdom as Ma.
Hou set the letter down gently. He would pass it on to… who? The city lord? What would he do with it? Hou was now the strongest Earthly cultivator in the city. What happened now was up to him. He flicked a talisman out, watching the little slip of paper land on Ma’s forehead. It would stop any corruption from spreading, ruining the corpse for necromancers. It would still need incineration, of course.
“No will?”
“None that we found. Maybe in his ring.”
Hou waved his hand towards Lisp, what little strength he had was now spent. He could hear the mortals outside. They were spontaneously organizing. Genuflecting towards the Shrine, repeating the holy chant, letting the sounds lead their prayer. There shouldn’t have been any meaning to it, the babbling of birds or babies, but there was something in the echoes bouncing from the stone walls of the houses, the faintest traces of elemental meaning. The City God must have imprinted it on everyone who heard his chant. Which meant everyone in the city, and possibly quite a lot of Yuu.
“Someone go inform the Courtyard.” It took Hou a minute to realize he was the one who spoke. The room fell silent.
“The holy ones have yet to return.” The soldier’s voice shook.
Hou grunted. He thought he was too emotionally wrung out to feel much of anything. Turned out it was yet another thing he was wrong about. He could feel like he was just punched in the gut. He closed his eyes and slowly exhaled through his nose.
“It was already the fortune of a dozen lifetimes that they stayed as long as they did. That’s a problem.”
There was no response. He took another deep breath and slowly exhaled once more. “I’m an external deacon of the Ancient Bamboo Medicine Hut sect. I don’t know exactly how many heavenly cultivators we have, but I only know of four, five if you include the Sect Master. Heavenly people are off adventuring all the time, so it’s possible we have elders who have just been away from the sect for my entire life. Still, it can’t possibly be more than fifteen, total, and even that many would surprise me. It is likely just five. We are on the small side of second rate, and the only first rate sect in the Kingdom is the Monastery. They worked quite efficiently to make sure that was the case.”
The room managed to get even more quiet after that. The other cultivators in the room, if they were from sects at all, might not have even one Heavenly Realm ancestor. This was as much news to them as it was the mortals. The chanting outside the room got louder, it felt like everyone in the street was involved.
“Heavenly cultivators are damn rare to see everywhere, even if they are more common in the Monastery. But flip that around. We are a decent sized sect, peaceful, and very tightly knit compared to others. I wasn’t anyone special in the sect, but I was always sociable, I have a good network. I made sure to make myself useful. And in my century of service to the sect, I have spoken to Heavenly People very rarely. Most of the words exchanged were orders- go there, do that, yes Elder, at once Elder! When they weren’t orders, they were lectures on medicine or the dao. Very generic, in retrospect, but memorable anyway. Heavenly people have a charisma nobody below their realm possesses. Well, you all know. You’ve visited the Courtyard.”
The Cultivators nodded.
“The only time, only time, in a hundred years of service to my sect, that I have had a serious conversation with a Heavenly Person, where they listened, and asked questions, and helped me understand myself, was meeting the Emissary. I had thought that was just proof of how extraordinary he is. But listen.”
The shutters were starting to vibrate. The chanting had spread, consuming the whole city. There was clapping now, and thuds that the cultivators recognized as foreheads banging against cobblestones. Some of the voices were sobbing, others suppressing manic laughter, or fury, or wonder, or holy love, all while repeating the same cycle of syllables. Each expressing what little they understood of what the god had imparted to them.
“I think there was a reason that those elders kept their distance. I think there is a reason you almost never see Heavenly Cultivators, even if you are at the peak of the Earthly Realm. It was the blessing of a dozen lifetimes that they stayed as long as they did. But any daoist knows, in every blessing is a curse. I think they left to protect us. I’m scared we can't withstand the good fortune we already got.”