Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

The wind sang across the high stone ledge, but Mah Goshung did not stir. He crouched at the edge of the precipice, one paw resting atop the well-gnawed femur of a recently deceased giant, his great black tail curled neatly around his haunches. Below him, clouds stretched in all directions, pillowed fields of white pierced by the jagged spines of distant peaks. The sky above was the color of old bone.

He liked it here. It was the heavens he had been denied, only with fewer rules.

The fools announced themselves with thunder.

A spiral of cloud split open as Elder Jian Dianfeng floated up onto the stone, his dao* bare and trailing a vapor of violet lightning. His boots touched the ground soundlessly even as the wind howled around his flapping robes. Behind him came Yu Huacai, swaying as though carried by the breeze itself, her eyes half-lidded, the scent of orchids behind her. Mo Ganzhe arrived last, climbing up the side of the precipice instead of flying. Dust and small stones raised with his every step.

"We extend our greetings, Infernal Beast," Dianfeng said grandly. "Where is your master, Xiao Sheng?"

The great wolf turned one orange-red eye toward him, not allowing the killing intent that flared at the use of the word "master" to slip through. "Beyond your reach," Goshung said dryly "Preparing for his final step."

Yu Huacai let out a soft, amused hum. "And he left you behind? How shocking. The boy is still here as well, isn't he?" She swayed languidly, her whip coiling around her wrist. "Where is the disciple, demon? Xiao Sheng turned us all away, and now the Living Blade wastes his last days on some rootless stray?"

"Mm." Goshung yawned, teeth flashing. "You're not wrong to be offended. I would be ashamed as well."

Dianfeng's expression did not change, but the wind around him rose, stirring the wolf's thick fur. "You mistake your role here, beast. We came to speak with Xiao Sheng, not his pet. If the master is not present, we will discuss our misfortune with the pupil."

Goshung shifted his weight slightly, the tips of his claws sinking into the stone. "A shame, then, that your path ends in conversation with a wolf."

Yu Huacai's smile thinned. "We don't need your permission, beast. There are only two other cultivators on this mountain. A broken vessel and a child. I take it the child is his new pupil? Out of respect for your master, I will ask you to stand aside before we force you."

Mah Goshung's tongue lolled. He was going to enjoy this.

Mo Ganzhe stepped forward at last, stones grinding beneath his heels. He said nothing, only looked at Goshung with eyes of cold amber. The relic at his chest, a golden bell, gave a faint chime, not from motion, but from pressure as spiritual power began to gather.

Goshung sneezed. That bell was a nuisance. He opened his spiritual sense and let it pass through the three fools with enough care to keep them from realizing he was doing anything.

Dianfeng's aura snapped and twisted, all that flash and fury hiding the wrinkles in his skin. Early nascent soul, sharpened by temper while dulled by vanity. Someone of his level should have been able to restore his body to youth; he had to have made a mistake somewhere along the line.

Yu Huacai flowed with the grace of a spirit-infused vine, mid-stage perhaps, her aura wrapped in too many layers to measure without letting her know she was being assessed. Poisonous. Pretty. Predictable.

The third, Mo Ganzhe, was slow and heavy, with roots of fire and earth. His foundation was well laid, with the most potential of the three of them, though he would now never reach it. A fresh nascent soul was squirming inside of him.

Goshung rose, towering over them. "This is the only warning I will give. Turn back."

He wouldn't have given them that much, but the heavens watched his every movement, and he preferred to give the Jade Court no reason to render an early judgment.

Dianfeng's curved blade lifted in answer, and Yu Huacai's smile grew more sincere. She was the type who enjoyed this sort of fight, with a single opponent and allies at her back. Mo Ganzhe planted his feet, less showy and more dangerous.

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They moved as one.

Dianfeng struck first and without flourish, a blur of motion accompanied by the shriek of rending air. Stormvein, Goshung had read the names of their sacred relics as easily as he read their advancement, sang as it swept forward. Lightning wreathed the dao's blade in a cage of pale violet. The wind around him responded, compressing with a concussive snap. From the curve of the strike, an arc of razored wind and lightning flew directly for Goshung, bright enough to burn afterimages into the stone.

Before the blade's pressure had even reached him, the air bloomed with petals.

Yu Huacai turned, a dancer mid-spin, and Blooming Death unfurled from her wrist. The whip, red as cut muscle, lashed through the air, scattering invisible thorns finer than hair. Shards of spirit-hardened pollen so sharp they could shear silk without disturbing it. Each twist of her wrist sent a spiral of them into the sky. Simultaneously, the Lotus Crucible strapped to her hip hissed open, releasing a fine gray mist from its perforated mouth. The scent was sweet. Deceptively calming.

The air thickened.

The mist was not simply poison. It dampened aggression, dulled the edges of mind and spirit alike. The longer one breathed it, the more the limbs slowed, the more the essence faltered. It was designed not to kill, but to confuse. To make resistance feel like futility.

Mo Ganzhe struck the earth with both fists, and the mountain answered.

Rings of golden fire spread out beneath him, erupting in a pulse of force that fractured the stone and sent cracks racing outward. Gravebinder, his twin gauntlets, bloomed with molten lines. From those lines, anchors of spiritual force shot out, bindings of earth qi that attempted to fix Goshung's limbs in place, as though the mountain itself were clamping down on his bones.

The Mourning Bell on his chest gave a low, trembling chime. Not its final toll yet. A warning.

All told, it was a beautiful combination of techniques. Destruction, suppression, anchoring. Designed for the extermination of rogue cultivators too dangerous to challenge one-on-one. These three had obviously trained for this purpose, perhaps even thinking they might one day challenge the Living Blade himself.

Goshung appreciated the effort.

He flowed forward, and the arc of lightning split the cliff behind him. The stormwhip shattered against a curtain of heat before it could draw blood. The thorns dissolved in flame as they reached his fur. The mist vanished when it met his breath.

Mo Ganzhe's bindings, clever chains of pure earth qi, latched onto nothing but the wolf's shadow as he ran through the air, encircling them in a curtain of hell-born flames that made a mockery of those the nascent soul had summoned.

Dianfeng wheeled with admirable instinct, slashing backward with a burst of wind qi meant to carve an escape through the inferno. The follow-up swing came with a clap of thunder, and it met Goshung's paw mid-air. Stormvein shattered. The qi of its binding unleashed with the fury of damned spirits, catapulting the nascent soul cultivator off into the clouds.

Goshung followed him and raced beyond, passing Dianfeng like a wave washing over a stone. A single swipe of his claw caught the elder full in the chest, splitting supreme-grade robes and Path-hardened flesh alike. The cultivator was thrown down, a comet falling with a tail of blood.

Yu Huacai had already vanished into the cloud of her own making, the Lotus Crucible spilling its final plume of suppressive vapor. From somewhere within the haze, her whip came snaking back. Twice, three times; it aimed for Goshung's throat, his ankles, and the base of his tail as he returned to the precipice.

He didn't bother to dodge; the thorns could not pierce his coat.

He let his aura loose by bare inches, careful not to offend the heavens, and her whip crumbled as he reached into the haze with his jaws and pulled her out by the collar of her robes.

She screamed briefly, and then only Mo Ganzhe remained.

The cultivator stood unmoved, gauntlets gleaming with earth aura. Blood trickled from his nose, but he did not blink. With his stance rooted, the bell on his chest tolled, a deep, soul-shaking sound that echoed from the bones outward. The storm and the sky seemed to hold their breath, and time itself forgot that it should flow.

Mo Ganzhe sighed, clearly grateful for the grace of his last-ditch relic, and slid one foot back. Nothing in the world around him could move, not the dust, the wind, or the wolf. He had the space of a single held breath in which to make his escape.

Goshung growled.

The relic screamed in protest as the wolf leaned into a step. He could see the binding was meant to hold anything short of an immortal ascension cultivator. Unfortunately for his opponent, though the Asura were not welcome in the Jade Court, their ascension could not be denied.

The bindings cracked. The gold casing of the bell whined, and Mo Ganzhe's eyes went wide with shock and terror.

"Not all bells ring true," Goshung said, almost feeling sorry for the man. Cultivators could go centuries without ever running into a monster like him, and if he hadn't kept his aura veiled, they would never have been so disrespectful. Fate was a callous mistress.

He thrust his killing intent like a spear, and the burly cultivator crumpled. The ringing stopped, and the bell split. Goshung extended his spiritual awareness in one last sweep of the mountain to be sure they were all dead and had brought no witnesses.

The woman had been right about there being another sacred artist. Foundation stage, damaged and hardly worth noting.

He returned to the shrine by dusk to find smoke curling from the eaves. Strips of meat hung from frames of stripped branches, the scent tinged with a subtle corruption.

What had his pupil gotten into?