Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

Gao Fushuai stumbled forward, arms full of biting stones, trailing in the wake of two men who made no allowance for the softness of youth.

By appearances, the elders moved at a stately, almost meditative pace. Hands clasped behind their backs, gazes lifted toward distant ridgelines. Yet to keep them in view, Fushuai had to jog. Not flat-out, but steadily, breath always half-spent. Always near the bend that would leave him behind.

The stones shifted in his grip. Goshung had made him choose each one, rummaging through a slope's worth of rubble until he was satisfied. No strap, sling, or pack was allowed. Fushuai had ventured the opinion that a disciple's rock carrying days were normally left behind after body refinement was complete.

"One's arms," the Asura had said, "should always remember the shape of burden."

That had been five days ago. Since then, the march had not changed. From dawn, through dusk, into the cold hush of night with brief rests beneath ledges or twisted pine. Sleep came in snatches, curled around the cold lumps of his stony companions.

Each evening, they would stop just long enough to prepare a single pot of thin rice porridge. Fushuai cooked. Goshung flung the pot into a ravine and declared it "Offensive." The next night, he scowled but ate. Xiao Sheng only tasted one spoonful, closed his eyes like listening to distant music, then passed the bowl back without a word.

Fushuai dearly hoped that this was some kind of obscure preparation for lessons in alchemy.

They climbed through the lesser peaks of the Spine of the World, crags that would be named ranges in any gentler land. Here, they were foothills. Jagged and unmoved since the time before empires.

Xiao Sheng never stopped to admire them. When he looked up, it was always to the same place: the Lonely Mountain. Pale. Towering. Its peak vanished into the clouds. They were not traveling to that peak; he did not think he would make it in his condition, but his master intended for him to begin his training along its snow-touched flanks.

The road remained steep. The wind sang between stone teeth and groaning trees. Fushuai had long since ceased praying that this was the difficult part.

His master stopped abruptly, and they nearly collided. Fushuai grunted, caught his balance. And one stone shifted maliciously to dig into his ribs.

"Disciple, breathe."

Fushuai panted.

"Find the space between heartbeats."

He wanted to ask what that meant. Or if he could set the stones down. Or sleep. Or scream. But he said nothing. Words wasted breath, and Xiao Sheng rarely answered questions he hadn't invited.

So he closed his eyes.

He drew in a breath, and the air scraped his throat as his lungs protested. This cold was not the clean, bracing kind he'd known as a child. It was older. One that did not simply numb but sought entry through fingernails, eyelids, and the cracks in the soul.

"Back straight," Mah Goshung barked from above. "You look like a sapling that regrets growing."

Fushuai straightened.

"Loosen your shoulders. Breath comes easier to a body that remembers it's alive."

He shifted again.

"From the dantian, boy. Not your chest. Unless you mean to impress the maiden sparrows."

Gritting his teeth, Fushuai exhaled. Then drew in again, slower. This time it reached deeper. A faint warmth stirred behind his navel. For a moment, the world narrowed: just breath, just stillness, just—

A gust cut down the pass, sharp as a blade. His left arm dipped. The topmost stone slipped free, tumbled, and came to rest just shy of a drop.

Goshung looked at it. Then at him.

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"A monkey has more focus."

Fushuai bent carefully to retrieve the stone, breath unraveling again. There was no point in replying, and they resumed walking, the rhythm of silence and stone reestablished.

He had begun to think there would be no more words exchanged until nightfall when his master spoke again.

"There was once a hermit who lived at the edge of the sky," he said, hopping across frost-slick stone. "He claimed he could hold his breath for an entire season."

Fushuai blinked, but stayed quiet.

"At first, his neighbors came to marvel. Then to scorn. When the leaves fell and he had not drawn air, they said he must be dead. When snow covered the hills, they said he had become a spirit. When spring came, they found him unchanged. His beard long. His skin like bark. But his eyes…"

Xiao Sheng turned his head enough for Fushuai to see his profile, the soft face immune to both cold and exhaustion.

"His eyes were open."

Behind them, Goshung snorted. "Dead men have open eyes."

"No. He had become breath."

He kept walking as he spoke, his tone unchanged. "It is the bridge between what we are and what we hope to be. The cultivator who does not breathe with purpose is like a fish who forgets water. They will never find a Path."

"I've been thinking about Paths," Fushuai said, adjusting his burden. "I know I should choose one. But none that my family follow call to me."

There was only one Way. Every cultivator walked their own Path along it. Among the Gao, servants spoke of Paths like weapon styles. Brother Chen had chosen the Dancing Sword before his voice had finished changing. To them, that meant his fighting focused on blades. But it went deeper.

A Path was more than a skill. It was a tuning of the self to something greater. For some, a weapon. For others, an element, like his sister Lin, but there were hundreds of Paths recorded in the archives of Ashen City.

Fushuai had no favorite weapon. No favored element. None of the common Paths called to him. And for years, it hadn't mattered. No one had expected him to reach this far. Goshung made a noise so derisive it startled a pair of birds from the brush.

"You are a baby," he said. "Asking what armor to wear before you can stand upright. Should we pick your sword next, or your death poem?"

Fushuai flushed.

His master's commentary was less direct.

"The raindrop does not worry what shape it will take before it joins a stream."

Goshung let them nearly catch up before speaking again, voice rougher now.

"You're too fresh. Not green. Raw. A pot half-formed on the wheel. Still soft enough to collapse under your own weight, and you want to pick a glaze."

Fushuai swallowed hard. "All my siblings chose early. Chen named his before he even finished body refinement."

"A boy naming himself king before he's learned to count."

It was as if Goshung had committed himself to using every metaphor at his disposal. One after another: pots, babies, kings, glazes. Fushuai wasn't sure half of them tracked. He doubted the Asura cared.

They were toying with him. That much was clear. A test, maybe. Or their amusement. The question had been reasonable. A Path was necessary for advancement. He bit the inside of his cheek until the taste of blood came, sharp and grounding. Challenging them would be sheer madness.

Xiao Sheng tilted his head, as if listening to something beneath the wind.

"There was once a man," he said, "who fell in love with a garden before the seeds were sown."

Fushuai glanced toward the heavens, knowing they could not save him from another parable.

"He built a fence, perfect and round. Laid paths for walks he had not walked. Carved signs for fruit that had not grown. But the shoots came wild. Twisting. Crowding. Reaching toward corners he'd sealed away. He spent so long rearranging his garden that the season passed, and the harvest never came."

Goshung, chewing a pine needle, nodded. "Too many young cultivators pick their Path at the first taste of power. 'I am swift,' they say, and name themselves Wind. 'I am strong,' and call themselves Stone. It works for a while. But every Path narrows. And the farther you go, the harder it is to turn."

He spat the needle into the dust.

"Most never reach core formation."

They rounded a bend and the path opened.

Ashen City had not produced a nascent soul cultivator in centuries. Most families assumed it was a matter of talent. A once in ten generation genius. But if what these two claimed was true, and Fushuai had no reason to doubt them apart from bruised pride, then it wasn't rarity that held them back. It was ignorance.

If that was true… how had his father allowed it? Gao Ligang was no fool. A hundred years of life and study behind him. He must have known. And yet Chen had been praised for claiming the Dancing Sword before his muscles had settled.

Ahead, the Lonely Mountain rose, pale and solemn. Its peak hidden in drifting cloud. Though Fushuai continued to cycle his qi as instructed, the flow snagged in his chest. His meridians felt tight, brittle, and unfinished.

"Oh, look," Xiao Sheng said. "A ghost fox."

Fushuai glanced up in time to witness a section of gray rubble transform into a long-furred beast the size of a horse. Its eyes were twin blue gems, harsh and cold, and it radiated an aura of deadly intent. When it lunged, his master floated out of the reach of its snapping jaws in a single step.

"Good fortune!" The Asura announced, suddenly atop a boulder some ways off. "Rest your stones. I want to see what you can do."

"What?" Fushuai said, even as a spear materialized in the air beside the Asura and raced toward him. His rock collection tumbled to the slope, one crushing his foot on its way to freedom. He shifted his stance and grabbed the spear before it could impale him.

With both the elders refusing to fight or be caught, the ghost fox turned its gaze toward easier prey. Fushuai felt his heart skip a beat as its eyes met his and its will clashed with his resolve.

Hold still. It seemed to be saying. Accept your fate.

No, Fushuai thought. I will not.