Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

Goat Month (June)

The wound in his belly pulled with every step as he made his way down from the cliffs. He climbed carefully, saving acrobatics for another day.

He paused at a twisted pine that leaned out over a drop. They had rested here. Further down, a cracked boulder still bore the scuff of Zhang Sha's boot, a hint of the soil they had brought with them from the boiling spring. That was all he had seen of the man so far, and there hadn't been a trace of his energy since leaving the ruins.

Fushuai wanted to confront him, to demand to know what he knew of the massacre that seemed to have occurred in the crater. It could still have nothing to do with Zhang Sha, but he wanted to see the man's face when he asked. If nothing else, he claimed to have collected a flower there before. If he wasn't the culprit himself, he still could have seen something, sensed something.

He exhaled and kept walking. The trail narrowed into switchbacks that coiled down the mountain's flank. Loose scree shifted underfoot, and the noise unsettled him. The high slopes were always quiet, but this quiet was watchful. He felt exposed. Twice, he turned without knowing why, though trees offered nothing but stillness.

Zhang Sha had claimed to have little interest in violence. He had treated Fushuai's wounds without asking anything in return until a return was offered. Not once had there been any hint of betrayal, or that he was traveling with him only to take advantage of a less experienced cultivator before claiming all of their plunder for himself.

When they fought together, he had exhibited nothing but calm determination. But what had been done to those bodies had not been an act of rage or torture. Those people had been killed like animals bred for slaughter before being harvested as cleanly as any beast. Callousness and cruelty were two very different things.

When the sun was high, he made camp beside a stunted cedar that grew stubbornly from a pocket in the stone. He cooked thin strips of the brightmetal hawk over a small flame and ate sparingly. It tasted like tin.

Sleep was out of the question. He would not have felt safe in a treetop or a cave. Instead, he cycled what he could from the mountain's aura to reinvigorate himself and went on.

Ever since attuning with his spiritual root, he had begun to hate the sun. It disrupted his focus and made him feel withered and weak. The injury may have had something to do with that as well. He missed the chilling winds and the morning frosts of the previous season.

By the evening, he had descended into a ravine lined with slick stones and ghost-pale vines. There, from the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of white above the trail. He froze, looked, and saw nothing.

Later, rounding a bend, he saw it again, a shape half-concealed behind the trees. It was a fox. Small, white-furred, with eyes the color of wet sapphire. It did not run when he turned to face it. Only watched, ears pricked, tail still.

He studied the creature. The same size. The same calm air. The little beast he had spared, months ago, after catching it with his hands. He reached into his pack and tore off a strip of meat. He set it on a flat stone, then walked ten paces away and sat with his back turned.

Behind him, soft paws on leaf litter, followed by chewing. He smiled to himself as he listened to the animal pad away.

It was the next night when the forest opened below him to reveal the vale of the shrine. A smudge of gray sat on its roof, which soon developed into the shape of his master, deep in meditation. Fushuai lost sight of him as he climbed down into the woods and crossed through them to come to the shrine. He'd briefly considered hopping down onto the canopy and fast-stepping across the branches to get there, but the stitches in his belly advised otherwise.

He stopped before the steps. The pile of stones he had left to one side of them was now green with the growth of lichen.

His master spoke without opening his eyes. "You walk like a man returning from trouble, not triumph."

Fushuai pressed his fists together in a salute. "I was successful. However, I did not kill the beasts alone. I beg forgiveness if this violates the spirit of the task."

Xiao Sheng's mouth tugged sideways in what might have been amusement.

"Mah Goshung did not lift a hand. Nor did I."

He shook his head. "A cultivator I met by chance. A man named Zhang Sha. Without his help, I would not have returned so quickly, if at all."

His master snorted, then leaned forward and put his weight on his hands to help himself rise. "If you found a weapon in the woods, it would have been your right to use it. If you found an ally, all the better."

He stepped down from the roof as if the air had just been reminded it owed him a courtesy. His robes fluttered, and he put his foot on the ground with the ease of descending a single stair.

"Tell me about this Zhang Sha."

Fushuai explained their first meeting and the bargain that had come of it. Their travel and trials together, then the battle with the brightmetal hawk. With some hesitation, he brought up the subject of brotherhood.

Xiao Sheng raised an eyebrow. "It is a common enough pact. And if I had heard that story by a campfire, I would have felt cheated if the heroes were not battle brothers by the end. It is not a fault to make such ties. Though be warned, even without scripts to bind you or an official witness from the Golden Court, such words have power. It would be an affront to the heavens for one of you to turn on the other now. One's honor is worth more than a vault full of gold."

Stolen novel; please report.

He inclined his head, embarrassed. It had been a rash decision, words spoken in the afterglow of battle. "I understand, but there is more to say. I may have made a grave mistake."

Xiao Sheng stretched, his spine cracking like kindling. "Oh? You can tell me about it while you build the fire."

Fushuai blinked, then moved to serve as he was bid, leaving his pack and spear on the steps. As he gathered sticks and split logs with the sides of his hands, he considered which of his potentially grave mistakes to address first. His suspicions about Zhang Sha, or the changes in his spiritual energy that Xiao Sheng must have surely already seen.

His drying racks had been removed, and the stone ring that served as their fire pit was moved to the leftmost corner of the shrine. As he picked up the flint to strike a spark, his master made his choice for him. "I see you have completed the sixth step of qi refinement."

"Yes. The Void Hammer was working, but I needed to condense my qi to escape the grip of a mantis, and it was the beast's body that showed me this method." The first sparks did not catch, so he quickly stripped the bark from the side of one log and tore it into thin strips that lit much easier. Still, his master had not commented, so he went on.

"The method has allowed me to improve by leaps and bounds, but it was not what you prescribed. Have I risked my advancement?"

Xiao Sheng peered at him as if he were a puzzle to be solved. "This weaving. Did you read of it somewhere? This is not the process they use in your home village, I'm sure."

Hearing Ashen City be referred to as a village momentarily distracted Fushuai from the question. He shifted back as fire took hold within the ring and shook his head.

"My father did not share the technique of our clan with me."

"Then you…invented a compression method?"

Fushuai looked up. Xiao Sheng sounded more amused than anything, and his round face was marked by good humor. The method had come to him as part inspiration, part study of the spirit that was invading his own. He supposed he had invented it, though at this time it had felt more like recognition and mimicry than a novel innovation.

"Is it unorthodox? Must I undo it to advance?" He dearly hoped that wasn't so. Even if he stopped actively weaving the spirit energy that he drew from ambient aura, it would only slow the process, which was now as good as written in his soul. Perhaps it could be unwritten, but that would be no simple task.

With a heavy breath, Xiao Sheng sat across the fire from him.

"Did I tell you of the three men who carried water to the monk?"

Fushuai braced himself to endure another parable.

"The well of the monastery had gone dry, but the monk was the last of his order and could not leave his shrine. The incense would go out. A visitor realized his quandary, and ever after it became tradition for pilgrims to bring water with them when they came with offerings.

"Now, one day, three pilgrims all left the village at the same time. The first followed the well-laid path, worn smooth by generations of footsteps. He arrived tired, but whole. The second took a forgotten deer trail, straight but steep. He slipped, broke his bucket, and had to return for another. The third saw a cloud, followed the wind, and brought back snow."

At this, Xiao Sheng glanced at him.

"The other pilgrims chided him for his lack of diligence when he arrived. But the monk accepted all three offerings equally. He only asked whether they had carried what they could, and whether they had learned the weight of it."

He turned his gaze back to the fire.

"Your method is unexpected. But not unheard of. And certainly not forbidden. There is no single path, only the direction you walk, and whether you understand where your feet are falling."

Fushuai felt the tension drain from his shoulders down to his toes.

"Then I haven't ruined my foundation."

"That remains to be seen." Xiao Sheng made a small gesture, and his cauldron appeared overtop the fire. "Show me the cores."

Fushuai rose and brought the lacquered box. With a flick of two fingers and a ripple of qi too faint for display, Xiao Sheng caused the lid to snap open. The five cores rose into the air, perfectly aligned, orbiting over the bubbling mouth of the cauldron like moons that remembered a lost world.

Their light mingled with the steam: amber, silver, crimson, azure, and the dark brown of rich soil. Faint motes of light drifted down like pollen, vanishing into the dark iron mouth below.

Without another word, Xiao Sheng produced an old squash gourd wrapped with rope. Unremarkable enough, the kind of container a peasant might use for their farm-brewed wine. When he unstoppered it, a sweet scent filled the air between them. Pure water poured into the cauldron, bright with some inner light, and Fushuai felt its aura press as surely as that of any spirit beast.

"Ghost Water," his master said, "matures over centuries. It once existed in great quantities in natural basins. Of course, they have long since been drained, and sects war over the drops that condense along those ancient stones."

Fushuai didn't know what to say. Such a gift made his contribution of the beast cores seem paltry in comparison. "Is this necessary for me to reach the next step?" He asked. If all this were to brew an elixir or create a handful of pills, then it seemed exactly the sort of shortcut his master had so often warned against. Even if the result could bring him safely to the peak of qi refinement, he would prefer to have earned it through his own efforts.

Xiao Sheng chuckled. "No. You have the tools you need to advance already. This is for your weapon, as well as to serve as an object lesson in forging and binding."

He was overcome with gratitude, quickly followed by shame. He still hadn't shared everything with his master.

"There is something else I must tell you."

The cores continued to spin, and the Ghost Water seemed to hum in its rest. Xiao Sheng nodded for him to go on, and Fushuai explained what he had found in the ruins, as well as his suspicions regarding Zhang Sheng.

"Have you sensed any other cultivators on these mountains?" he asked. "Or have I been a fool? Are they the same man?"

"Foolishness is one of the privileges of youth, like oaths given to a stranger. If Zhang Sha and the rogue are one and the same, would it change what you do?"

Fushuai did not know. He had sworn, if only to himself, that he would stop the rogue from killing again. He had also given his word to Zhang Sha that there would be no debts between them, with the understanding that they would always be ready to aid one another when the need came. What could stop a man who would not stop, other than death?

"I believe the rogue is killing commoners, using them as ingredients in the experiments of his twisted path. Whether it is Zhang Sha or another, I will not let it continue. Do I have your permission to hunt the one responsible?"

"You already had my permission to do as you chose when you met him. But I will not grant you leave to go in search of the rogue until your weapon has been forged." He gestured to the cauldron. "Attend me."

He inhaled and made a plucking motion with one hand, causing a few drops of the Ghost Water to rise and float to the front of the shrine. Another gesture, and the drops burst, coalescing into four ephemeral shapes.

Jian, dao, qiang, and gu-en; the four answers now formed a question.

Each weapon glowed with a subtle resonance, echoing the elemental hues of the cores still orbiting the cauldron.

Xiao Sheng lowered his hand.

"A weapon is not merely a tool," he said. "It is an extension of the cultivator's will. Goshung is away on an errand. Before you decide what sort of weapon you will carry with you into foundation formation, I would like to see what the old dog has taught you these last months."

His gaze met Fushuai's.

"Show me what you have learned."