Tian didn’t plan on introducing himself. He could see a lot of Outer Court disciples just ‘hanging around’ Hong Liren and her True Disciple grandmother. He immediately thought of dogs waiting to come forward and wag their tails, hoping to please the human and be fed. The thought was revolting. So he turned sharply for the barracks and left them chatting on the road. He got about two steps.
“Junior Tian, join us.” The words seemed to pierce through the air without resistance, landing directly, and crisply, in his ears. He turned and walked over, fixing his robe as he came. He gave his best polite bow, eyes looking down just as Brother Fu taught him.
“West Town Temple’s Tian Zihao greets the honorable True Disciple.”
That got a snort. “Polite for a feral child, aren’t you?”
“My thanks for Seniors’ kind words. I still have a lot to learn.” He did too, there always seemed to be some new book of etiquette or some collection of anecdotes that ended in a storm of blood over a breach of protocol.
“Look up at me.” Tian did as instructed. He never really understood the not-looking-at-people thing, but it was important to the kicked in the head, and that was what mattered.
“Life wasn’t kind to you, was it?” Grandmother Hong was beautiful. Tian understood what was beautiful and ugly now, and she was unquestionably fair. Her skin was milky white and without blemish, her features perfectly symmetrical, the sweep of her eyebrows framed endlessly deep almond eyes. Tian vaguely thought that Hong Liren had a lot to look forward to, if she was going to grow up like this.
“Not particularly kind, Senior, but others have suffered worse.”
“Have they?”
Tian nodded. “Yes.”
Grandmother Hong kept looking at him, then suppressed a giggle. “You really are just going to leave that there, aren’t you? You have worked through most of the polite phrases that you memorized, and now you are just drifting out over the waters of conversation. You aren’t even worried about your lack of paddles or direction.”
Tian didn’t say anything. He hadn’t really been asked a question, and besides, she was right.
“Little Liren tells me that you are a clod, a first rate idiot, ugly enough to make birds fall out of the sky and fish float belly up in the river, smelly, raised by wolves, and quite possibly brain damaged.”
Tian nodded. That sounded like something she would say.
“What she didn’t say, but was clear from her story, was that you have been looking out for her since you arrived and judging by the back of her robe, you killed at least one ambusher who would have killed her.”
Tian nodded again. It was also true.
“Why?”
“She is my Sister.”
That made Grandma Hong blink in surprise and shoot a hard look at Liren. “Explain.”
Hong Liren, who had been staring at Tian with barely concealed shock, buried her face in her hands. “He means in the sense that we are both members of the West Town Outer Court. And in no other way. We haven’t exchanged cups or anything like that. He doesn’t even know what that is.”
“Good. Good.” The senior breathed out a little. “But really, no other reason than she is your ‘Sister?’”
“I don’t need any other reason, Senior.”
Grandma Hong slowly smiled. Tian couldn’t quite put together what she was feeling based on the expression. Amusement, contempt, maybe even a touch of sadness all seemed to drift over her.
“Did you know that, when you rise to the Heavenly Person Realm, your memory improves a lot? It’s not quite a perfect recall, but it’s rather close for mundane things.”
“I did not, True Disciple Hong.”
“It’s true. I will remember you, Tian Zihao.” There was something in her voice, some little twist of sound that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Like a rustle in the grass, or a growl from a dark cave.
Tian bowed. “Thank you, Senior.”
“Dismissed.”
Word got around that Tian had a private conversation with a member of the Inner Court. One who was the Grandmother of Hong Liren, no less. It wasn’t exactly rare for members of the Outer Court to have relatives in the Inner Court. It wasn’t exactly common either.
“You have to do some math on this.” Brother Su explained after his patrol got back to the barracks.
“An Earthly Realm cultivator can live roughly two hundred years if nothing goes wrong. Maybe two hundred and a bit with care and luck. Most don’t live that long, because things do go wrong all the time. A Heavenly Person Realm cultivator can live eight hundred years easily. Of course, those are under optimal conditions. Earthly Person Realm or Heavenly Person Realm, if one is injured or killed, well, that’s that. Except Heavenly Person cultivators heal a lot better, have infinitely better means of preserving their lives, and so on and so on.”
“There are fewer Inner Court disciples, but they live a lot longer.” Tian followed the thinking.
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“Yes, but not exactly my point. The ratio of Outer Court disciples to Inner Court disciples appears to be roughly three or even four to one, but in actual fact, if we looked at the number of recorded names for each Court in a thousand year period, it would probably be closer to forty or fifty to one. Why?”
Tian thought briefly. “Because people die. There is a new outer court disciple in each town roughly every ten years, but people are dying at that rate too. But only a very, very few people ascend.”
“We find potential cultivators more often than you would think. West Town had been going through an unusual dry spell before you came. But you have the right idea. Our West Town Temple and Convent have been remarkably successful at getting our Juniors to break through to the Heavenly Person Realm, at least since Senior Brother Fu and Sister Bai took over. People have been studying their methods, but they are hard to adopt. It’s against a cultivator’s ordinary instincts.”
Brother Su chopped the air with his hands. “But just for that, just for managing to send more people to the Inner Court, we have the best Temple and Convent in the Outer Court. We have the best food, the best manuals and equipment, we never worry about funding or running low on missions- the very best of the Outer Court. And it forms a virtuous cycle.”
Tian grunted, connecting many things quickly. “For others, the favor, or even the acknowledgement, of an Inner Court disciple could mean the difference between mortality and immortality. They don’t have a Senior Brother Fu or Senior Sister Bai.”
Brother Su nodded slightly. “They are wrong about the weight of that favor, of course. No favor can grant a revelation. But you can understand why they would think so.”
Tian imagined what life would be like without Senior Brother Fu, and his skin crawled. His stomach, for the first time in almost six years, twisted with nausea. No helpful senior brothers. No advice. No looking out for him on missions, no teaching him medicine or herb gathering, or how to use his arts. More beatings and rock throwings. They might steal his food. They would definitely steal his food. And once he got big enough to have things worth stealing, they would steal them too.
He remembered telling Brother Fu that his Senior Brothers scared him. That he was worried about them eating him up. Brother Fu had downplayed his fears at the time, but Tian saw that the old man was hiding something. He thought it was the ugly side of his Temple. Maybe it was the true ugliness of the whole Outer Court.
Tian was suddenly back on the battlefield, seeing the ambushers pop out of the sand. He watched them stab a senior brother, two on one. He was holding the hand of that senior sister he couldn’t save, watching her choke. Watching the light fade from her eyes as she desperately squeezed his hand. Squeezed so hard, he heard his bones creak.
“AWAKEN.”
Brother Su spoke softly, but the word shook Tian like a bell. He was back in the barracks, his Senior Brothers around him.
“It happens. I don’t know why it happens sometimes but not others. I cannot understand the human heart that deeply. It just happens.” Brother Su’s voice was soft.
“Senior Brother, what spell did you use just now?”
“It’s not a spell, exactly. You will learn. For now, just sleep. You have earned a good rest.”
Tian didn’t really understand why Senior Brother Su spent all that time explaining about the Outer Court until the next morning. People were nicer to him.
They didn’t leap out to do him any favors, but he got smiles and polite nods. If he didn’t know better, he would think he earned their respect. The mission rewards were handed over immediately and without any fuss. The patrol was mandatory, but it paid four military merits and three cultivation crystals.
Tian was surprised to learn his storage ring also acted as his identification and recorded his military merits. He just had to tap it on the silver plate offered by the quartermaster, and it was all handled by magic.
He circulated his energy and watched tiny characters emerge. His few remaining merits from the temple were listed separately from his military merits. He wasn’t sure why, and asked.
“For now? No particular reason. Later? There will be people trying to goldbrick- to act like they are working but aren’t. Sooner or later, the order will come down requiring disciples to earn so many military merits in a month or face discipline. Ah, but it is a different amount depending on your level and realm of cultivation, of course!”
Tian thanked the quartermaster, then quickly hurried away. He had casually asked what it would cost to buy a custom rope dart, one with more penetrating power. He nearly fainted at the quoted price. He would save up.
Tian spent the day practicing every art he knew, particularly the light body technique. After speaking with some other brothers, he learned that it was a somewhat unusual technique. Other light body techniques let one move faster over long distances, become more elusive, hide the sound of your steps, or even simply let you jump higher and safely fall further than you normally would.
Light Body, Heavy Hands just changed how much you weighed. Not just one particular part of you, your whole body. But you were just as strong, your bones just as dense, everything else worked entirely as per normal. It was quite magical. It took Tian a while to figure out why Elder Rui gave him this particular manual.
There were two great weaknesses with rope darts- weak penetrating power, and lack of mobility. The rope dart could move like a living thing, but the user was supposed to only make small movements. The key was creating and manipulating momentum in the dart, not racing around the battlefield.
You could move if you had it out, but it couldn’t build momentum. At most, you could spin it around your head, or throw it and chase after it. Building momentum in the dart while executing high speed maneuvers? Impossible.
However.
Since your clothes and weapons were considered part of you for the purposes of the art, well! Tian could whip the rope around fast enough for the dart to make a sound like ripping steel as it tore through the air in less than a second. Once it was up to speed, he snapped it towards a target, only shifting to his full weight just before it hit. It didn’t fix the problems with rope darts, but it did make them much smaller. Like the things he hit. They got much, much smaller.
“I wonder if I could make myself heavier than I actually am?” Tian wondered. The spell didn’t say how, if it was even possible.
Possible. Entirely possible. Too expensive right now, but…
Grandpa’s hands had been on his shoulders since the ambush, or rubbing his back, or just holding him when he thought he would go flying away in his head. Tian recognized the tone in Grandpa Jun’s voice. He wanted Tian to figure something out.
“I should study the spell more?”
Studying hard is always a good idea.
Tian chuckled quietly. “Grandpa? Am I in trouble?”
With that Hong woman? Deadly trouble. I just don’t know why. Keep an eye out. I doubt she will move against you directly, but it would be extremely easy to arrange your death on the battlefield. I suspect she already has.
“You think she asked them to send me on a deadly mission?”
Never. I doubt she said a single word about you to anyone. I doubt she even hinted at it. Why would she? You really underestimate the bootlickers of the world. That little shit interrogating you even told you your cause of death. One of those sayings you should remember from your reading- It’s easy to talk to the King of Hell, but it’s hard to deal with all his little devils.
“Grandpa, I don’t understand any of that.”
You will. Soon.