Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

Horse Month (May)

A thin ribbon of river shimmered in the valley below, threading between stands of spruce and gray boulders. Fushuai crouched on a bluff above it, one knee to the granite, the butt of his spear planted beside him.

He remembered the first time he'd come here. His legs had been half-dead and his arms half-useless from their burden, his collection of stone friends. The trek to the shrine had taken days from here, but his descent had been accomplished in hours. Though only a few months had passed, the changes in his body and spirit could not have been more apparent.

This was the river where he plucked the Heavens-Draw flowers. Goshung had warned him of the pike that ruled these waters, and he had seen its shadow for himself. Though his senses hadn't been developed enough then to guess at the beast's advancement, it was the best place he knew to begin his hunt.

Fushuai stood, and the moonlight highlighted his weapon for an instant, then seemed to reject it.

A loan from Goshung's immense armory, it was not much to look at. The shaft was a soft orange wood, not lacquered, but polished smooth. Inscriptions ran down the haft in curling script, shallowly carved, and half worn away. He could not read them, but he had a general understanding of the intent behind the object array.

A low-grade yang qiang. A treasure just powerful enough that it would allow him to wound spirit beasts. Lacking the ability to imbue items with qi himself, a mortal blade would have done him as little good as a stick. He would have been forced to fight with his hands, as he had done with the chimera hound.

The head was made of a white metal he didn't recognize, pale as old bone. Perhaps it was bone, that would have been fitting for a weapon belonging to the Asura. It flared at the base, then narrowed to a long point, not quite perfectly straight. A tooth?

Goshung had called it Suntooth, and the weapon did not favor him. The yang within it rebelled against Fushuai's mastery. His mentor must have given it to him for that reason, another challenge to learn from.

He activated Moon Step and descended into the river valley like a ghost. His first experience with the technique had been overwhelming. It was an effort of will to retain focus, pushing back the rush of sounds, sights, and smells that threatened to consume him, but he could do it. In addition to the enhancement of his natural sense, his spiritual sensitivity increased threefold.

Even a hundred paces from the river, he could feel the beast.

Beneath the water, a presence moved.

Fushuai's awareness brushed against it, the barest contact, and the beast turned. Had it felt his attention? The pike drifted along the riverbed with the pride of a king. This was its domain, and all that dwelled within its reach was prey. Its spiritual presence was an order above what he had felt from any beast on the mountain so far, including the chimeras.

He paced the river's edge with careful steps, eyes scanning the shallows, the stones, the eddies where the water thickened around submerged branches. Under the barest sliver of a moon, gauging the depth of the water would have been impossible relying on his eyes alone. He found a section where the bank was not too steep, and the riverbed was low enough to invite the beast without forcing him to submerge himself completely.

It would not attack him on the shore. Otherwise, it would have had him in its jaws when he was collecting Heaven's-Draw blossoms what seemed like so long ago. Did its water aspect forbid it from even risking contact with the soil?

Throwing Suntooth was out of the question. It might find its mark, and then the weapon would be lost. It was only a low-grade treasure; he did not hope to kill the pike with a single strike. Fushuai tied his pack to a low branch, first pausing to thank the tree for this allowance. It wasn't one of the ancients, but one never suffered from exhibiting proper respect.

He removed his sandals, hiked up his trousers, and entered the water to his shins. With Moon Step active, he couldn't feel the cold. He could have walked naked through the heart of winter without discomfort.

The pike sensed him and drifted closer, lazily, so as not to cause alarm. To his amazement, the beast's spiritual presence diminished. It was hiding itself. Had he not already taken its measure, he wouldn't have noticed it was there. In the dark of night, its form was invisible beneath the shifting black surface of the river.

He moved one step deeper.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

His only warning was a twitch in its intent the moment its decision was made, and he moved instinctively. The water surged, and a long, needle-tooth-lined mouth appeared, snapping at the space he had just vacated.

Suntooth vibrated in his hand, daring him to command it, and he tightened his grip. He stabbed in the same moment that the jaws appeared, and the tip bit into the beast's heavy scales.

The pike twisted, and the water bloomed with force. Its tail lashed out, fast and low. Fushuai turned with it, letting the strike pass, and felt the river itself grasping at his legs. The water was responding to the the beast's intent, as eager to trap him as it was.

He felt the mud shift under the balls of his feet and hopped, landing on the surface of the water as light as a riverbug. This was accomplished with a mixture of Ching-Kung and the lightness of Moon Step. His heels pressed into the dark liquid without breaking its cohesion. The river had become ground to walk on. Treacherous, though, as this ground was in motion.

Fushuai had to move simply to stay still, running against the current, and avoiding the lunges of the beast. It came for him again, and he pricked it before it disappeared back under the shifting, glassy surface. At this rate, he would empty his dantian long before he caused it any meaningful injury.

He took a risk, feigning hesitation even as he felt its intent build to another attack. As it breached, he slid Suntooth at an angle into its gills, quick-footing aside to avoid losing his arm to its countless teeth.

It was twice as long as he was tall, thicker around than he could have reached with both his arms. The spear pierced deep, too deep for him to retrieve it before the beast flashed by. Suntooth was ripped from his hands, and it went happily, leaping from his fingers the moment it was given a chance to do so.

Now the pike circled, the butt of the spear sticking up from the water, still lodged in its gills.

His qi was draining fast, and he sank an inch into the moving river, enough for the water to take hold of him, sucking him under as if it were a hungry beast itself. Even enhanced sight was meaningless in a lightless realm. He closed his eyes, moving with the current, and channeled more Yin into his limbs, pushing it up to his skin and cutting off the Moon Step Perfection as he did so.

Water and Yin were not opposing forces. Its grip on him loosened, as if confused, finding that it held nothing but itself. That moment of weakness allowed him to twist out of the way of the pike. He slipped under it, feeling its jaws pass over his face, and latched onto its underbelly.

The pike was not pleased by this development.

With a furious pulse of qi and muscle, it flung itself against the riverbed, dragging him along the rocky bottom. Stones tore at his back. A root scraped his ribs. He gritted his teeth and cycled what energy he had left to keep his hold.

He found the jutting spear with one hand and twisted it, pressing the tip deeper into the beast's gills.

The pike thrashed madly. It turned and turned, slamming its body against the banks, against the floor, against the weight of the river itself. But Fushuai did not let go. He could not.

The air left in his lungs was quickly beaten out of him, and to draw a breath would have been to drown. His dantian was a hollow gourd, and his root was ravenous. And yet, Yin was all around him. The water, the night, the approach of his own death, all were ripe for the harvest. His mind split into two channels, one part maintaining his hold, the other drawing on the auras around him to replenish his qi.

It would not have been enough to support Moon Step, but it could keep him alive. Not indefinitely, of course. The burden of sustaining his straining, air-starved body would soon be more than his spirit could supply.

The pike dragged him along stone, shredding his tunic. It contorted itself nearly into a loop, forcing him to adjust his hold and nearly lose it. All the while, its jaws opened and closed, fighting for the opportunity to take his head.

With a last burst of effort, Fushuai pressed the spear deeper, half a hand, and the pike convulsed. It was no longer trying to finish him. Instead, instinct conquered its killing intent as it attempted to flee the source of its pain.

Fushuai felt it dying with an intimacy that mirrored his sense of his own flagging lifeforce. For long seconds, it was an open question which of them would be the first runner in this headlong dash toward oblivion.

He let go of the pike, but kept one hand on the spear. His head broke the surface of the river, now too deep for his feet to brush the bottom, and he gulped in air. It could have been the death of him, but so would have been remaining below for one heartbeat longer.

The pike tried to bite, and he held it back even as he was drawn under again.

Its turns slowed, and its qi frayed along with its will. At last, with a final shudder, the beast drifted sideways in the current. They both did.

He could not have said how long it took him to drag it, still twitching, to the bank. Fresh spiritual energy continued to be cycled into his meridians, close enough to pure Yin that it did not need to be filtered by his root. A gift from the night, and from death.

…you must ask death for its favor.

The words of the nameless goddess came back to him as if she were speaking. Is that what he had done here? Asked a favor of the void? His arms trembled, and his legs nearly gave out at the weight of the pike as he dragged it onto the mud. Without water to buoy it, the beast weighed as much as a wagon. He still did not have an answer to the goddess's question.

If death devours death, is there not that much less death in the world?

It wasn't dead yet. Its long, cavernous mouth opened and closed in voiceless gasps as he finally brought them both onto the grass.

Fushuai stood over it, soaked and shivering, blood running down one arm from a long laceration near the elbow. The pike's scales gleamed like hammered silver, its body carved in places by desperate battles of the past. One eye was white and blind, the other focused on nothing. Something clenched in his gut.

It was suffering.

He wrenched the spear free and drove it down again, into the sightless eye, and it stilled.

Harvesting the core took time.