Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

Zhang Yu walked in the third rank of the delegation from the Endless River Sect as the wind sang above the Spine of the World. It was summer, or it should have been summer, but the mountain's breath was its own, and frost still lay thick on the ground. There was a crackling beneath his sandals, frozen needles and soil, that made him think of breaking bones. The image came unbidden, the secondary training yard of the outer disciples, and his opponent lying on the ground.

He had been the victor of that bout, and yet, his hand had broken. It had taken three days and many tinctures to restore it to full function. The sound his knuckles had made when his fist landed the winning blow had never quite left him. Even victory was not without its costs.

The other man was dead now. Zhang Yu had seen to it that he was punished for the temerity of injuring a sacred artist who was descended from the Emperor himself. Distantly, it was true, hardly more than a leaf blown from the eternal tree, but still. The connection was there. He should have known better.

Absently, his hand fell to the silk pouch at his belt, reminding himself that he was important. If anyone else here carried a Jade Court Token at their side, he would eat his shirt. Zhang Shu was not without talent; he had reached the foundation formation stage by the age of twenty-five with minimal support. He'd done things the right way, through effort and ancestral merit.

Not like some he could think of.

"Slower," came a voice from ahead. Elder Yu Wenji raised a hand, her purple sleeve nearly vanishing in the gloom. They obeyed at once. No one questioned a nascent soul cultivator, especially not one who had commanded tides with a wave of her fan.

Zhang Yu took a moment to examine the rest of their group as they navigated a narrow lip of stone no wider than a cartwheel, the clouds below thicker than those above. He had memorized the names and positions of his fellows before they left. Of course, it was proper to know one's place among the worthy.

Closest to Elder Yu was Senior Brother Sun Ren of Jiannan Peak, with white hair bound in a warrior's braid, twin swords slung in a harness across his back. He had formed his core at twenty-six and slain a golden-furred wyrm before reaching thirty. His family dealt in elixirs.

Then came Sister Li Meixuan and Brother Tang Shufei; the former draped in a black and silver treasure garment, her expression unreadable, the latter burly and broad-faced, known for cleaving spirit beasts with his bare hands. Both were Core cultivators. Both powerful enough to kill him with a stroke.

They did not have imperial blood.

The other foundation disciples walked in respectful silence. Ji Han, solemn and thin-limbed, carried his father's bow wrapped in emerald cloth. Sheng Lan of the eastern branch families was said to have a flawless water root. And then, at the end of the line, Zhang Yu. It did not bother him. To be placed at the end was to be placed in balance with the nascent soul who led them.

Ahead, the trail twisted into a broken arch of rock, an ancient causeway, perhaps, built before the Empire unified the continent. Elder Yu's fan flicked once and banished a wall of snow.

"This is where he passed."

They all paused.

Zhang Yu could feel it, faint but clear. A trace of will. Metal aura sharp enough to sever the soul. His hand trembled before he caught himself and pressed it again against the silk pouch.

"Master Xiao," murmured Sister Li, her head bowed.

Xiao Sheng. Once a junior under Elder Yu's predecessor. Once a rising star of the Endless River Sect. He had not left in disgrace, nor exile, but on his own terms, choosing the path of wandering cultivation over security and allegiance. Since then, he had stepped in and out of legends, always alone.

Now the winds whispered that he sought a disciple. The others might be stronger. And yet, to one such as the Living Blade, whether one was core stage or still a child in body refinement would make little difference.

What mattered was the root.

He flinched at the thought. His spiritual roots were nothing special. Five petals of acceptable quality. That wasn't what he had meant. His blood ran deep, while the others were little more than burly peasants. He carried the echo of the Empire in his bones. He had written poetry in seal script since he was a child. He had memorized not only the sect's mantras but their origins in classical law. He bowed when bowing was due and spoke when silence would not suffice.

He would not grovel for the Living Blade's favor. But he would receive it. That, too, was the will of Heaven.

Elder Yu raised her fan again. "We proceed."

They found the first mark before noon the next day. It stretched across the face of the mountain like a scar; forty paces long, shallow as a breath yet etched into stone as if the rock had parted willingly to receive it. Snow had melted from the groove, leaving a line of exposed granite, dark and wet. There were no footprints nearby. No birds above. The wind, which had hounded them for days, had gone utterly still.

"It is not an array," murmured Sister Li, crouching beside the groove.

Sun Ren ran his thumb along the stone, then shook it. Blood welled from the pad, slow and bright.

"Residual intent."

"Touch nothing more," Elder Yu Wenji warned.

Other signs waited further along the spine. A bare hilltop where the clouds above twisted into the shape of falling blades. A circle of cairns, each topped with a single stone on which lay a patch of folded cloth, sect colors from the Harmonious Dagger Hall, the Crimson Veil Society, and others besides. All bloodstained.

Then, midway along a glacier path, a ring of spirit beasts lay dead. The carcasses were too full of qi to rot, but no scavenger had come to claim them. Neither beast nor cultivator dared; such was the weight of the spiritual sword that hung over the plateau.

Zhang Yu stepped lightly as he passed them, his breath catching with each crunch of frost beneath his boots. He recognized one: a silver-fanged frost ape, fur braided with talisman cords. A creature said to command minor blizzards. It was in three pieces.

"Why leave their cores behind?" asked Brother Tang, his voice low.

"A warning," said Sun Ren.

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"Or a test," added Sister Li.

Zhang Yu said nothing. What use were cores like these to one such as Master Xiao? He concealed a smile, knowing in his heart that he would be the same one day.

He had studied the Spiritual Sword Path. Not practiced, of course, his talents were in calligraphy and seal-weaving, but he had read the old scrolls. Intent was the shaping of will, the extension of meaning into motion. The sword, properly wielded, could cut not just flesh but falseness. Delusion. Desire.

This was not a sword path cultivator showing off. This was someone drawing lines in the world and daring others to cross.

They came to the ridge before dusk. The trail narrowed between two leaning pillars of basalt, the earth itself seeming to recoil from whatever lay beyond.

Here, at the edge of twilight, waited the last core elder of their expedition.

Hui Zhen, white-robed and narrow-eyed, with a silver crest pinning back his hair. He held a prayer bead loop in one hand and an iron folding fan in the other. Known for his insight into celestial mechanisms, he had charted the Northern Constellation Shift and once mapped the dreamscape of a slumbering qilin.

He reached out and pressed his palm to the basalt pillar on the right.

Zhang Yu's breath caught. He felt something wrong in the aura here, but he dared not challenge his senior.

A flash of white. A soft chime, like the tolling of an ancient bell from deep within the stone. Elder Hui Zhen vanished, and his fan dropped into the snow as his ashes drifted in the ever-present wind.

Elder Yu stepped forward and retrieved the treasure. She did not look at the ash. "We proceed," she said, folding the high-grade flying fan with a flick of her wrist. "Let this be our last mistake."

Zhang Yu stared at the blackened patch of snow, the faint scorch along the basalt's edge. There was no array. Only the memory of intent, preserved like a footprint in the fabric of the world. He couldn't even tell what types of qi had been used.

Hui Zhen, a core cultivator, had been erased without resistance.

***

The mists were not natural.

That much was clear the moment they crossed the ridge. The air grew dense, metallic. Their footsteps no longer echoed. Sound itself seemed to retreat. Even relic-light dimmed, swallowed by silver coils of fog rising from the broken stones.

Zhang Yu tightened his robes at the throat as a needle of warning threaded through his dantian. The others felt it too; he could see it in the way Sun Ren's fingers tapped against the hilt of his sheathed sword, in the way Elder Yu's pace slowed to a deliberate glide.

The trail led into a jagged pass. Stone teeth rose on either side, black with old fire. It smelled of sulfur.

The mists parted, and the figure that emerged stood a head taller than any man present, his shoulders broad enough to block the wind, his presence too wide for the path. His skin was obsidian, veined with faint molten seams that pulsed in slow rhythm, as though a heart of magma beat deep within his chest. His arms were long, too long, and heavy with muscle. His hands ended in yellow claws, and hooves cracked the stone beneath him with every step.

"Behold," he said, voice low and vast. "Mah Goshung of the Ten Thousand Arms. The Wolf of Soul Furnace Valley. Ninety-ninth among the Deadly Asura."

A silence followed, brittle as glass.

Zhang Yu's throat tightened. The name was not familiar to him, neither from the texts on spirit beasts nor the catalogues of moon realm devils. Yet the title rang with ancient cadence, and its power stirred echoes.

He had heard a voice like this once before.

He had been six years old, a thin, grave child led by hand into the southern pavilion of the Summer Palace. A formality, a form of acknowledgment. He remembered the hush of that golden hall, the weight of a hundred watching eyes, and the man seated beneath the sun-sigil banner: serene, radiant, terrifying.

The Golden Emperor had spoken to him.

Only once. Only a few words that his mother had tried to pretend were not simple dismissal. That voice had made Zhang Yu's bones hum like bells.

This creature sounded the same, not in tone or grandeur. In density. In weight.

Elder Yu stepped forward, folding her fan with a snap.

"You are no true Asura. Your aura is wrong. You might be a nascent soul. A demonic pretender, but you are no immortal."

"And yet," the fiend said, "here I am. And here you are. Tell me, fish-smelling children of the Endless River: have you come to seek death, or simply to watch it?"

"Bold," Sun Ren said softly. "For one who hides in fog."

"I do not hide," Mah Goshung said. "I beckon." He did just that, with one pale talon.

Yu Wenji's spirit rose, quiet and immense, like a tide drawn behind the moon.

"You stand in the path of a delegation approved by the imperial seal. We are here to summon a former disciple of our sect. You will step aside, and count yourself fortunate we do not purge you here and now for your past crimes against the heavens."

Mah Goshung tilted his head. For a moment, the molten lines across his skin pulsed brighter.

"Xiao Sheng does not answer to you," he said. "Nor to your rivers. Nor to your palace."

"He belongs to the Empire."

"No," the devil said, still grinning. "And neither do I."

Zhang Yu, along with the other foundation disciples, shifted back. Their elder was being challenged directly, and it was not their place to interfere.

"Allow me, master," Sun Ren said. He was second among the delegation, and it was only right that he test the devil's mettle first.

Steel flashed, twin arcs from his shoulders, flying through the mist. The first blade whistled for Mah Goshung's throat. The second dove low, aimed for his backbending knee.

The claw was a blur. The first sword shattered mid-flight, fragments scattering. The second he caught between two fingers. With an absent twist, it folded like parchment, and steel moaned. Sun Ren had followed the swords, lunging in with a third that appeared out of his storage ring. Goshung backhanded him with such force that he skidded across the mountain path and struck the cliff wall hard enough to crack it. He did not rise.

His fellow core cultivators acted in unison. Tang Shufei bellowed and drove his palms into the stone, summoning spears of mountain rock. Sister Li wove a net of sigils midair, her formation threads flashing with the light of all five elements.

Ji Han, fool that he was, loosed three arrows bound with storm qi. Did he not know that they were nothing in this? Grand Elder Yu Wenji unfolded her fan with a whisper, unleashing a tide of azure flame that spread like a crane's wings.

Zhang Yu stood frozen in his irrelevance. He couldn't see all of what happened next. Not clearly. There was too much brilliance, too many overlapping arts. The path was filled with flame and steam and stone and an unholy din, missiles streaking like comets, rocks cracking, formation light spinning.

And at the center of it all, the devil danced.

He moved like smoke beneath a crescent moon, arms widening to split and split again, long as whips. Swatting weapons, qi techniques, and summoned arrays aside with equal ease. One of Ji Han's arrows flew by him. It did not so much as graze his horns, but it was close enough for him to notice its existence as well as its source.

Ji Han was burned to cinders a moment later, the flames rising from his own feet to consume him before he had a chance to scream. Sister Li managed to bind two of the fiend's arms with her final seal. He laughed and broke her spine. Tang Shufei roared and charged in, hands glowing with power. Mah Goshung caught his head and crushed it like overripe fruit.

Grand Elder Yu held on longer than the rest. Her azure fire lashed the devil's skin. Her fan blurred into a dozen illusions, each dancing, each cutting, each exploding with spiritual force. Rain fell from gathering clouds, and the mists rushed in to cool the demonic fires.

The devil's arm split to become five, complete with claws of their own. One of them seized the Second Mistress of the Endless River Sect and drove her face into the stone with such force that it left a crater.

Zhang Yu couldn't breathe. He had long since fallen to his knees from the sheer spiritual pressure of his elder. When she died, that weight left him, and a heavier one settled on his soul. His hand went to the silk-wrapped pouch at his side. It took two tugs to open it, because his fingers trembled.

Within lay a jade token marked with a single character.

Obligation.

It had been given to him after his brief introduction to the Emperor. His mother had no other sons and would have no more. It was the one proof, more so than any number of genealogical records or charts of pedigree, that Zhang Yu was of imperial blood.

He pressed it to his brow and whispered the words he'd practiced once a year, in private, on his birthday, thinking about all the arrogant fools who had wronged him in his lifetime.

"Pagua sonfa pagua sonfa pagua sonfa pagua sonfa…"

There was no answer, and Zhang Yu felt his heart break. He'd been lying to himself all his life. Then the air changed.

The sky split open like an old ledger torn at the spine, and the judgment of heaven fell upon them. Until the very end, the Mah Goshung of the Ten Thousand Arms would not stop laughing.