Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

The Spine of the World loomed ahead, the mountain range that ran across the heart of the Golden Continent. They had walked for three days, and Fushuai had learned nothing more of what his master had meant about "carrying his legacy." Though as he had only been allowed four hours of sleep that night, and four hours more two days later, he was in no condition to carry much of anything.

It was a troublesome state to be in, as Mah Goshung kept giving him stones to carry instead. The Asura seemed to pick them at random. As small as a fist or as large as a child, some smooth and rounded, others jagged and sharp, he would see them on the side of the road and instruct Fushai to add them to his burden or else drop what he had and carry on with the most recent selection.

"You have soft hands," Mah Goshung said by way of explanation. "Too many days tending flowers with the women. You should have a few callouses before your training begins."

To make matters worse, he was expected to cycle his qi at all times. His father had forbidden him from practicing cultivation after he neared the peak of body refinement, and his control was woefully underdeveloped. It took intense focus for him to force the qi within his spiritual veins to move, as if he was pushing thick mud through a rain funnel.

Intense focus was difficult to attain when traveling through unfamiliar territory and juggling stones.

"It should become more natural than instinct," Xiao Sheng had said, "until you are doing it in your sleep."

Thankfully, he had not been allowed enough opportunities for sleep to have truly failed at that yet.

During the day, it was not cold enough to snow or warm enough to sweat. The kind of cold that remained was stubborn rather than fierce; the dregs of winter clinging to their pride. Beneath their feet, the earth squelched softly with melt, and here and there a patch of green dared to persist.

Gao Fushuai's legs moved by memory more than will. His stomach had caved in somewhere between the second and third hill, and now tugged uselessly at his spine, as though trying to remind him it was still there. He had chewed a stem of silverleaf down to bitterness an hour ago and had no strength to reach for another.

The taste was becoming somewhat bearable. Sweet at first, like candied plum with the sting of mint, then cloying, then numb, then bile. When he'd tried to swallow the pulp on the second day, Master Mah had clouted him on the back with a stone. Not thrown. Just placed with great precision and dropped.

"You are not a goat," the Asura had grunted. "Spit."

The stones had only multiplied since then. Fushuai now carried seven: one round and slick, two jagged enough to draw blood when he slipped, and the rest utterly forgettable except for their weight. He had begun naming them just to have the illusion of friendly company. "Small Suffering," he muttered, shifting the newest from one hip to the other, "please stop biting."

The wind changed.

Fushuai stumbled. One of the stones, he didn't see which, slid from the pile in his arms and struck his knee on the way down. He pitched forward, arms flailing, the rest of the stones scattering, and his head struck the wet earth with a dull, sodden thwump as the world bled sideways.

Then it burned.

The fever had likely begun the day before. Or perhaps the day before that. He had been seeing colors in the mist that weren't there, hadn't he? Red moths in the trees, purple smoke rising from puddles. He had chalked it up to qi cycling, or the lies a mind tells when it went with too little sleep, neither of which he had felt confident enough to question.

Now, however, it was clear. His skin was wet with sweat despite the cold, and his breath came in short, sticky rasps. The ground smelled of old ice and thawed manure. His tongue felt thick. Somewhere nearby, a bird laughed.

An odd sound for a bird.

"Mm," came a familiar voice, neither surprised nor concerned. "It's about time."

A sandal prodded his shoulder. Gently. The way one might test a melon at the market.

Xiao Sheng crouched beside him, his dusty robes pooling in the thawing mud, without apparent concern. His eyes, deep as a mirror, reflected Fushuai's flushed and shivering face. He tilted his head.

"You persisted longer than I expected," the old cultivator said. "Your spirit has been stagnant so long, it did not remember how to move."

Fushuai opened his mouth to reply. He could not tell whether what emerged was a groan or a whimper.

"Mm. Yes," Xiao said, reaching into his sleeve. "You'll be pleased to know this was an intended result."

Good cultivators die of pride. Great ones learn the shape of their limits. You're no great one yet, but at least you're not stubborn enough to drop dead before admitting you're human." He stood and glanced over his shoulder. "Goshung, we'll rest here. A fire, if you would."

Some distance back, the Asura grumbled something in a foreign tongue.

Xiao Sheng turned once more to Fushuai.

"Next time," he said, "collapse before you start to hallucinate. It's more dignified."

Then he walked away, his footprints seeming to crack the ground as the world unmoored.

Gao Fushuai floated, untethered from time, though not from pain. The fever had teeth and gnawed without pause. Sweat soaked his robes, chafing against his too-tight skin. He blinked, and the foothills were gone.

He stood in the main courtyard of the Gao family estate. The flagstones were sun-warmed, and spring peach blossoms drifted lazily across them. Gao Chen faced him, grinning wide and crooked, his mu jian* already lifted high.

"Again!" Chen barked. He was nine, barefoot, and full of vinegar. "You're not even trying!"

Fushuai was twelve, his frame lean and tall, muscles defined by recent breakthroughs. The blood purifying step had transformed him; he could feel the power coiled in his limbs. He'd never said it aloud, but he no longer considered Chen a worthy opponent. Their matches had become a chore. Polite. Decorative. He was sparring with his bare hands.

Now, Chen's cheeks were flushed with effort. A welt bloomed on his arm where Fushuai had landed a glancing blow.

"Again!"

He rushed. The strike came wild and fast, aimed for Fushuai's groin. Another followed, a jab toward the eyes. No form, no discipline. Only rage.

Fushuai blocked on instinct, parried without elegance. His knuckles ached. Something old and ugly unfurled in his chest.

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"Fine," he snapped.

The next blow broke the wooden sword in Chen's hands.

The one after that broke his arm.

A scream split the courtyard. Fushuai was not even out of breath, his eyes wide as Chen crumpled to the ground. His brother's face twisted in pain, mouth open, the scream shrinking into a whimper. His arm dangled uselessly, bent where it should not bend.

"I—I didn't mean to—"

He called for a servant, then dropped to his knees and held his brother, crying with him.

"Kneel." It was his father's voice.

The training ring was gone. Fushuai knelt on varnished wood. His forehead pressed to it, cold and unyielding. His palms rested on his thighs, blood sticky on the knuckles. Why was there blood? Red wetness was spreading from his hands up his arms, a living slime, but he could not let his father see his fear. Tears stung his cheeks like needles.

Gao Ligang said nothing for a long while.

"I harmed my brother," Fushuai whispered, throat dry. "I lost control. I await punishment."

"You will be punished," his father said.

Fushuai nodded.

"Do you know why?"

"For… for striking in anger. For hurting him."

"No."

Fushuai lifted his head. His father's gaze was that of a hawk. Ancient. Detached. Hungry.

"You are punished," he said, "for weeping."

Silence and darkness. The room flickered.

"You are punished for weakness. You are punished," the Patriarch of the Gao Clan intoned, "for the shame of a coward's heart."

The blood rose to cover his body, and then his knees were on the flagstones where he would watch a man bleed to death for stealing wine a year later.

A blow fell across his back. Then another. The world narrowed to the pain of judgment.

His muscles seized.

Back in the waking world, or close to it, Fushuai's body arched from the ground. His chest spasmed as something deep within clenched, tore, and rebuilt itself. Qi flooded his meridians in a wildfire. His blood boiled, and the veins strained against a current they could not contain. His skin flaked at the edges, sloughing in thin translucent curls. A scream rose in his throat but died there, choked out by the pressure in his lungs.

He clawed the dirt. He could not breathe.

His bones pulsed. His marrow burned. His tongue swelled with the taste of copper.

It went on for minutes, hours, a single night stretched long by torment.

Morning.

He opened his eyes.

The fire was ash now, a thin trail of smoke rising into dawn's pale fingers. Mah Goshung napped upright against a tree, arms folded.

Colors were brighter.

The sky, though overcast, shimmered at the edges of his vision. He could smell wet moss, pine bark, and distant iron. He shifted and noticed the lightness. His body, though sore, responded with precision. A flick of his hand sent dew leaping from a nearby leaf. Then he grimaced as his own odor reached him. It was as if he had crawled out of a sewer.

Xiao Sheng crouched at the edge of the camp, stirring something fragrant in a blackened pot.

"You broke through," the old man said without turning. "I think the delay will be worthwhile."

Fushuai tried to sit. The blanket slipped from his shoulders, and he shivered once, less from cold than from a new awareness of it.

"Body rebirth," Xiao said, glancing back. "Your flesh has tasted suffering. Your blood knows the road. Your soul has not yet fled, so I suppose we shall continue."

He lifted a spoon to his lips, sipped, nodded, then ladled some into a small bowl. He offered it to Fushuai with a raised brow.

It was congee. Rice and pork, water and wild greens, the same meal he had attempted to prepare three nights ago. Simple fare, and yet Fushuai felt he had never tasted anything more divine. Its warmth filled his belly.

Watching his near reverent expression, Xiao Sheng twisted to add a pinch of salt to the pot.

"Do you understand what we have done?" He asked.

Fushuai forced himself to stop eating. Sleep deprivation had slowed his thoughts before, and now he felt as fresh as if he had rested for a year.

"I think so. That grass, silverleaf, is lincao*, or something like it. You have been sharing a spirit herb with me while instructing me to cycle on a forced march. My cultivation has been frozen at the peak of body refinement for years, and this pushed me over the edge."

"So he is not an imbecile," Mah Goshung said, not raising his head. "Merely a child in need of a bath. I was growing worried."

"Why did you stop training?" his master asked, meeting his eyes.

"My father commanded it."

"That is not what I asked."

Fushuai looked away. "He said I was not worth the resources, and a part of me agreed with him."

"Why?"

Something clenched in his chest. "Because I do not have a warrior's heart."

Mah Goshung chuckled, stepping away from the tree and coming to sit by the ashes of the fire. He glanced at it, snorted, and it sprang to live again, roaring merrily without fuel.

"What does a dirt farmer know of a warrior's heart?"

Fushuai felt a denial rise in his throat at the insult to his patriarch, then he swallowed it. To an Asura, a cultivator who had ascended beyond the human realm, his clan may as well have been no more than dirt farmers.

"I know that I am ignorant," he said. "But my father may be right. The sight of blood can make me sick. I have no love for fighting, and I have never taken a life."

That wasn't entirely true. Fighting was exhilarating, and he did love it, in a way. It was the consequences he hated. And blood hadn't actually made him sick in years, though it still twisted his stomach when he thought about the servant he had watched bleed to death.

Xiao Sheng wore a blank expression. "Do you believe I made a mistake in choosing you?"

Fushuai bowed so swiftly that his forehead slammed into the dirt. "Never, master. I would never say such a thing."

The older man sighed. "Again, with that word. If you want to develop the heart of a warrior, perhaps you should begin by acting less like a common servant."

"Never killed anyone," Mah Goshung muttered to the fire. "Can you believe this?"

It flared white, tendrils of flame shivering with shock, before returning to a more natural state. The display was so unexpected that it caused Fushuai to briefly forget his shame.

"I will do my best to follow your instructions."

"No," Xiao Sheng's tone was final. "That is not enough. Before we go any further, I need to know that this path is one you would choose, not simply one you walk to please an old monster like me."

"The path of the warrior?" Fushuai had not truly desired to be a fighter since the day he broke his brother's arm. He wanted all the things Xiao Sheng could offer him: knowledge, power, and status—Who did not?—but he did not want to kill for them. Breaking through to the qi refinement stage was an incredible boon; he was already deeply indebted to his master.

But what if his master did not want him?

The elder shook his head. "No. The path of the cultivator."

"Are they not the same?"

"Perhaps Mah Goshung would disagree with me." The Asura nodded at that. "But I say they are not. Battle is a necessary component, both in training and in life. It is not the core. As my disciple, you will sometimes be called upon to draw blood, even to kill, but never without good reason. You told me the purpose of cultivation was 'to end suffering,' and that answer intrigued me because there is a truth in it I did not see until I had been on this journey far longer than you have been alive."

Xiao Sheng paused to place a hand on Fushuai's arm. "You do not need to fear me. I will not reduce you to ash for telling me what is in your heart. The herbs I have fed you are no more than a token of my appreciation for your answer to my answerless riddle."

He withdrew his hand, sitting up straight and grimacing at a crack from his spine. "Now, tell me clearly and plainly, do you wish to be a cultivator or not?"

Fushuai gathered his thoughts, and the two elders waited without a word. He was not worthy of being this man's disciple. A master who was not only powerful beyond belief, a half-step away from ascending to the heavens, but also generous and even kind. Xiao Sheng was different from any cultivator he had ever met or heard of.

But the question was not whether he deserved this opportunity; it was whether he wanted it.

Fushuai had given up on cultivation out of fealty for his father and disillusionment with his understanding of the warrior's Way. Now, it seemed, there was another road.

"I do," he said.

"Good." Xiao Sheng nodded amiably. "First, I will teach you how to cook a proper porridge."