Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

60th Mortal Wheel under the Eye of the White Tiger, Darkwater Boar Year, Tiger Month, First Decan Jia

(January, the first day of the new year)

Excess Yang was wafting from his skin, dense enough to be visible to the naked eye. He waved off the concern of his sisters, assuring them that he could manage the reaction that was ongoing inside of him. Whether such confidence was earned or not remained an open question, but they went on.

He found that his ears had become oddly sensitive to the crunch of earth beneath the wood of his sandals, the rustle of Mei Li's robes, the scratching of small creatures hidden beneath the soil or amid the yellow moss patches. It felt like the first time he had used Moon Step, granted heightened senses not yet under his control. The bloodiron elixir pooled in his stomach like a lead weight as its essence was drawn into his swiftly filling dantian.

"Do you know the orthodox steps of foundation formation?" Fushuai asked as they walked. For once, he was the slowest in the group, circled by a worried fox.

"Of course." Zhang Sha was watching the sky rather than his glowing companion. Exceptionally clear, and marked by more stars than there had been hanging over Lonely Mountain. "Before the pillar establishment, the first step is dantian expansion. What you made firm in qi refinement, you'll have to stretch and tear again. At least if you follow the steps."

"That suits me fine. I need to expand my dantian in any case, or it will soon burst."

The hollow-eyed cultivator spared him a long look. "You don't sound concerned."

"Fear wouldn't help me, would it?" The pain was building, but Fushuai accepted it as a matter of course. It seemed that every step he took along the road of advancement was as likely as not to sink into a mire of fresh agonies. Yes, he might have overestimated himself, and not for the first time. His master had warned him against these choices on numerous occasions, and yet, Xiao Sheng had appeared to encourage risk-taking when it suited him. When he'd drunk the elixir, he'd believed that he could master it.

And he still believed.

Mei Li was walking far ahead of them, straight-backed and oblivious, but Lin spun on her heel. "What have you done? I told you not to!"

"Those statements don't go together," Fushuai said, forcing a smile. "And I haven't even begun to do what you told me not to. Rewriting the technique will have to wait until the tempest in my belly blows itself out."

"Or blows you out," Zhang Sha said.

"Either way."

"Hmph." Lin hid her hands in her sleeves and showed him her back, the picture of frustration. He felt sorry for worrying her, but it was the nature of the game they played. Cultivation could be pursued at a leisurely pace, and the result would be telling. Months turned to years, then to decades. It was the natural course of things for those in the higher stages. Nascent soul cultivators were said to spend centuries between steps, but he could not afford to wait.

The Ash Eater Sect had failed to track them after that first encounter, at least for the moment. But there would be others, and avoiding risk now would mean a sure death later. Still, perhaps he could have begun with a smaller dose of the elixir. Walking helped in the beginning, until the strain in his center became too great to bear.

"A thousand apologies," he said, as his legs failed him and he dropped into a sitting position. "But I must stop for a time."

Lin crouched beside him, her eyebrows drawn together. "What can we do?"

"A thou—"

"Don't apologize." She grabbed his arm. "Just tell us how we can help."

He nodded. Being away from his masters had allowed him to fall into his old habits. There was nothing wrong with politeness among friends, but it could be overdone. "Keep watch, and use the time to practice the cycling method I showed you. What needs to be done can only be done within me."

Zhang Sha barked a laugh. "I could look for more crabs. You do your best work in a beast's claws."

"Not this time." The voices of the others faded as Fushuai sent his awareness deeper within. His dantian was full to bursting, and spending all of the energy in his meridians to send the elixir's power coursing through his body without purification would do more harm than good. His inner sea was simply not vast enough to contain this surge, and the work he had done to stabilize it in preparation for his breakthrough had reduced its flexibility.

So he set about the task of loosening the threads that made up the Circle of Mist domain technique. It was powerful in its own right, but it increased his reliance on environmental Yin, rather than alleviating it. He needed a domain technique that would shore up his weaknesses rather than accentuate them.

Losing the technique was not truly losing it. The formation was etched in his memory, and it could be remade. But he was not following the Void Legacy; what he needed was a skill better suited to the cultivator he was meant to become.

The moon was absent, and the earth remembered the heat of the day, but the Yang was not overwhelming. He could do this if he had time.

"Sha, please give me the flag."

"The what?" That was Lin. She sounded like she was speaking in a distant room. His master's training flag appeared upright beside him, and after a brief exchange among the others, they moved away. A Thread of Still Night extended to connect him to the formation treasure, and he channeled some of his excess Yang through it.

The flag's aura settled on him like the jaws of a tiger, but its grip was light. No more than fangs grazing the back of his neck in warning. He allowed it to rest there and took advantage of the slight release of pressure to further unbind his dantian. The minutes drifted away uncounted, and once it was done, he was able to store the rest of the elixir's energy. He disconnected from the formation, and its killing intent retreated. That tiger was an old friend.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Most of the qi would be processed with the Void Dilution method, but not all. Instead, he began weaving the essence of bloodiron and hunger pooling in his center into a thin cord as he would have were it pure Yin. This cord was not intended for his meridians. Instead, he began to twist it into a shape reminiscent of the Circle of Mist technique. That formation spiraled outward. In his mind, however, the only difference between spiraling outward and spiraling inward was intent. The resulting pattern was the same.

A pulse of qi rippled through him as he finished it, followed by stillness. This was no Path revelation, and perhaps it did not even qualify as an insight. And yet, he felt the alignment of his spirit shifting a hair closer to the alignment of the spirit of the world.

The night was nearly gone when he opened his eyes again, trying to think of a name for what he had created. That would have to wait. He found he was not only surrounded by friends, but by dozens of strangers camped around him at a respectful distance.

He stood, picking up his staff.

Lin and Bai Tu were nearby, and both leapt to their feet when he moved.

"Are you alright? Did you hurt yourself?"

"It's finished, though whether I have truly succeeded remains to be seen." He swept the area with his spiritual sense as well as his eyes. There were no other cultivators here, and no hint of threat. The people looked more than travel-weary. Some appeared nearly dead from exhaustion. Others sat upright, staring at nothing. Most carried packs, but there wasn't nearly enough baggage among them to meet the needs of a group this size journeying through the dust flats. Mei Li, to his surprise, was performing a sort of illusory puppet show for a group of children on the other side of the camp. She looked happy.

"I have missed something," he said.

"They are refugees." Lin pitched her voice low. "There's unrest in Tarnish."

The name was familiar to him, if distantly. There had once been a Silver Empire to challenge the Gold, and it had fallen. Old history, but that word remained as a reminder.

"Someone saw the passing of the throne as an opportunity?"

She nodded.

"Great Elder!" A man who was surely three times his age broke off from a huddled cluster to address him with a bow so deep it must have challenged the limits of his body.

"I am no elder," Fushuai said. "Please don't strain yourself."

"It is no strain to offer you the honor you deserve." Gray of hair and beard, his knees shook as he pressed a hand against his spine to help himself straighten. "A thousand pardons for our intrusion. But High Lady Lin said you would not be displeased if we shared this space with you, and that you might be willing to listen to our plea."

"High Lady Lin?" He glanced in her direction, and the lady in question looked aside, examining the wall of the nearby bluff.

"My name is Hou Fen, Great Elder." His words poured out in a rush, as if her were afraid of being silenced. "We were servants in the household of honorable cultivator Shi Ti. His life was taken two decans ago by a rogue claiming the heavens had decreed the time had come for a new order. All who were loyal to our master were either killed or forced to flee. The High Lady told us of your sect, and so we beg your aid."

"You mean she told you of...the Devouring Death Sect?" Lin was still not meeting his gaze. The old man bowed again, though not so deeply as to risk falling over this time.

"Yes. A fearsome name. We are but ignorant mortals, but we ask that you right this wrong. Whatever small tokens we have to offer may be of no value, but the villain possesses treasures. Without them, he could not have struck down the honorable Shi Ti. We had no choice but to flee or lose our lives as well."

Fushuai sighed. Events like these were likely happening across the empire. No one knew what it meant for Wang Yinjing to die. His son would take his place, but who could guess how that would affect the people he would rule? Nothing might change, or everything. All eyes were on the Golden City in the far north. While they were, minor titles and territories would be passed from hand to bloodstained hand, the exchanges overlooked.

"Your master was not a member of a sect?"

"He paid dues to the Steel Ribbon Sect, but he was never their disciple. Sand Orchard, our home, is of no significance to the great powers. The villain will pay the dues, too, I am sure, and no one will care what he has done."

Now Lin did look at him, and he asked Hou Fen to allow them the privacy to speak. The elderly man nearly lost his footing to another bow, and then saw himself away on the backs of many thanks.

"Where is Sha?" Fushuai asked. Her mouth opened to answer, but a tortured scream cut through the fading night, and they moved in the same instant. A few dozen paces away, a group of refugees had surrounded the hollow-eyed cultivator, who was crouching over his victim. They appeared among them, and in the beat of silence that followed, saw what had occurred.

Zhang Sha had just reset the man's broken leg, and he was now applying a splint with deft hands.

"You have spirit to have come this far," he said. "In another life, perhaps you will learn the sacred arts yourself."

Thanks and blessings fell upon them like rain, and he looked up to meet Fushuai's gaze.

"Hardly a feather on the scales, but it is a beginning. What do you think about this waste of time, now that you're awake?"

Realizing what was being discussed, the men and women around them backed away. All but the patient, who was still recovering, flat on the ground. He looked between them with alarm, surely wondering if he should try to hobble off before the splint was even tied.

"It is out of our way, but I feel I must act."

"Why?"

His patient gasped as the ties were tightened, and he patted the man's good leg. "Off with you."

The three of them walked a little further out toward where the sun's first promise was beginning to grace the dust flats with light. Fushuai knew that retrieving his master's manual should remain his immediate priority, but he could not leave these people as they were.

"They will die out here. They are lucky they haven't come across a crab yet. When they do, it will slaughter them all."

"People live or they die. It is the way of things. If you see it as your duty to protect any mortal without a master you come across, you will never get anywhere."

"This would not have happened if not for the actions of Xiao Sheng. As his disciple, it is my duty to correct it."

"You'll be busy, then. This little act is playing out in a thousand villages and cities across the continent. We happened to stumble into this mess. It has no more meaning than any other accident."

"Perhaps." Fushuai did not know what the answer was. Shi Ti, whoever he had been, was dead. The damage had been done, and any town worthy of a name would eventually be claimed by some wandering cultivator if it did not already belong to a sect. The bloodiron crab loomed in his mind. It had been a predator, and it would have eaten them alive if they had let it. Still, its last minutes were etched in his memory. How he had so casually decided to use the beast as a tool for training, with no thought to its suffering.

Whatever he said or believed, how many steps removed could he be from the typical arrogant young master, if that was how he used the gifts of the world?

His encounter with the demon Yanjin had shaken his confidence in his own motivations. Did he truly think that the purpose of cultivation was to end suffering, or had that claim only been a way of giving voice to his dissatisfaction with the status quo of the jianghu?

It was actions, not words, that spoke the truth of the soul.

"I am sure you are right," he said. "But I will help them, all the same."