Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

Threads of Still Night extended from Fushuai's hand, chasing after Lao. In this place of void, the threads were as hard as steel. But he was already around the corner, bounding down the stairs that led toward the heart of the great well, and Fushuai could not follow him yet. Zhang Sha had closed his eyes, and his intent was already clear. The knife flashed forward, angled for the side of Lin's neck. He moved to intercept it, planning to knock the blade away with his gu-en. Instead, he struck something solid in the space beside his sister's head.

The air rippled, revealing the rough outline of an amorphous mass, like a ball of waterlogged weeds. Zhang Sha shifted his stance and thrust his knife into the center of the semi-visible entity, and the hall filled with a sound like the rilling of frogs in a pond, its death cries.

"Go after the boy," Zhang Sha's voice was harsh. "There's more Dream Whisps here. I'll take care of them."

He hadn't been lost to madness? Now that the first had been revealed, Fushuai began to develop a sense of where the other spirits floated, hiding from him even as they assaulted the others with a psychic poison. Why hide from him, though, rather than attempt to invade his mind?

"Go!"

He spun, Moonstep rising with a potency beyond what he had ever experienced before. Yin bled from his flesh, and he became the mist in this shadowed place, touching everywhere at once. Lao was only steps away from brushing the barrier of sword aura, frozen, as if in still time. Was he running, or flying? Fushuai launched himself from the top of the well and dove, turning over in the air to land and plant his staff a step ahead of Lao.

The young cultivator snarled at him, cycling his qi to prepare for an all-out assault. Fushuai unleashed a volley of Yin threads, not to catch Lao, but to pierce whatever was hiding in the air around and behind him. He felt his energy connect with the invisible whisp, and with a quick double snap of his gu-en, knocked the wind out of Lao and knocked the spirit out of the wind.

It hit the ground, and he drove the end of his staff into the rough mass with enough force to hear the clink of its end striking the stone flag beneath.

"Where am I?" Lao waved his hands in the darkness. "I can't see anything."

"Do you feel the sword aura?"

"Hall Master?" The boy dropped his head. "Immortal's mercy! I feel it."

"Good. Take a few steps back and stay there."

It wasn't long after that Zhang Sha brought his sister and the fox safely down the steps. Lin was tracing the curve of the wall with one hand, her senses unable to pierce the blanket of void aura that emanated from the altar behind Fushuai. With the whisps dead, he was able to take a better measure of this place, and he did not like what he saw.

Bodies, both surrounding and within the barrier. It had not cut their flesh, but rather severed the spirit of whoever attempted to pass through it. From the position of some of its victims, it appeared as if anyone who tried to meddle with the array suffered its full effects. If his master had placed this here, it was no surprise that it had remained for as long as it had. It would have taken a nascent soul cultivator to circumvent the trap. So, the cunning of Sect Leader Huashe was on full display.

He could not claim what was protected by this array for himself, and the rest of the ruins had long been raided as well as his skill and the power of his sect would allow. Opening the vault to the public, for a price, ensured a steady income. More, with this deadly barrier at its center, the rumors of treasures waiting within need never be proven false.

The possessions of these unlucky souls were untouched. A quick sweep was enough to confirm that there were talismans, spiritual weapons, elixirs; all manner of loot waiting for someone brave enough to claim it. Some lay outside the barrier, and more lay within, a further lure for arrogant young masters who could not imagine their legends ending in death.

The altar at the center of the array held only a small ironwood chest. The void aura was thickest there, as solid as a bank of snow.

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"Wait for me," Fushuai said. "No one approach the barrier."

He summoned the emblem and raised it before him, feeding it Yin as he did so. His master's voice did not come, but the symbol etched into its surface shimmered. Though it was not bright, the faint glow it cast pushed away the fog of the void, a match for the sword aura rising in gleaming shafts from around the altar.

His trust in Xiao Sheng was absolute. He stepped forward, and it was like crossing through a veil of cool water.

The chest wasn't locked. Flipping it open, he found a scroll. Two glass rods wrapped in silk, without much more volume than the Black Lotus Sutra. To free his hands, he stored his staff and unrolled the scroll across the altar.

It was blank.

He stared at it until he heard Zhang Sha cough behind him.

"Is that what you were looking for?"

Fushuai didn't know. "There's nothing else here."

"Then why don't you bring some of those bodies across the barrier? For proper burial, of course."

He rolled up the scroll, uncertainty tightening his gut, and turned. Then the world fell away.

It wasn't as overwhelming as the vision Xiao Sheng had sent him. Instead of seeing the end of the world through someone else's eyes, he had become a ghost, watching the Earthly Realm through a veil as soft as unwoven cotton and as impregnable as an immortal's core.

He hadn't moved. But the well, the vault, and the palace above had become no more real than a dream. Through them, he could see gods dueling in the sky. In a moment of confusion, he thought he was back in the hollow where he had first met Goshung, watching his master and future mentor spar with the ferocity of divine beasts. It was his master in the sky, but he was not facing the demon-wolf.

Webs of darkness and light, armies born and perished in the same instant, clashing in a cloudless expanse. The heavens were watching. With a stray stroke, buildings were leveled. Mortals died in droves, trying to escape. Cultivators as well, because they could not look away. The combatants wore the forms of men, but their spirits were as vast as oceans, and deep as the roots of the earth. Jags of black lightning, blades like the lances of the sun itself. An all-devouring hunger meeting a river of power that grew and grew until that which could not be filled was filled and ripped asunder.

Fushuai could experience only awe at witnessing his master fully unveiled. Xiao Sheng was an unstoppable force, the final incarnation of the Path of the Spiritual Sword. There was nothing he could not cut.

His opponent was something else entirely. An echo of the dragon at the end of all things. Terrible. Terrifying, but not the beast itself. More like the shadow it cast on the world.

When that shadow was sundered, a piece of its soul attempted to flee, and Xiao Sheng reached out, capturing it with his will and sealing it in a strip of cloth.

"Are you dying or having a revelation?" Zhang Sha's voice came to him as if from another realm. The vision faded, and he felt his body trembling.

Fushuai turned back to the altar and unrolled the scroll once again.

"What are you?" He demanded.

Characters appeared upon the silk as if under the stroke of a brush.

Speak your name.

His heart quickened. "I am Fushuai. Disciple of the Living Blade."

There was a pause, a few heartbeats that seemed to stretch to an eternity. Then, more characters began to appear as the first line dissolved.

What year is it?

He exhaled in relief. For a moment, he had thought revealing his connection to Xiao Sheng had ruined everything.

"It is the final year under the eye of the white tiger." This time, a response was quick in coming.

The celestial wheel turns. How auspicious. Did your master send you to fetch me? Where is he now? Dead, I hope.

"He did send me, and he lives."

A pity. He didn't tell you who I was, though, or else you would not have asked. Either you are conversing with me against instruction, or he gave you no instruction. Both are interesting possibilities. Which is it, Disciple of the Living Blade? Are you a wayward pupil, or has your master sent you hunting blind?

The manual was not a manual. Or rather, it was a living manual. A mind preserved. The events he had just witnessed played before his eyes again, and dread filled him. Xiao Sheng had bound a fragment of his opponent in a strip of cloth, the very scroll that was now before him. But the spirit within this relic had not been some foundation stage upstart, nor someone in the fourth stage. Fushuai had a healthy respect for core cultivators, of course. Against one of them, he would fare no better than a child. But a core cultivator was not what he had seen clashing with Xiao Sheng under heaven's watchful gaze. Whoever was speaking to him now had once been at the nascent soul stage. Even a sliver of such a spirit, even bound, was dangerous beyond measure.

"I will not answer that."

It doesn't matter, in the end. Nothing does. But you asked a question, and that cannot be your only question. Feed me, if you want more answers. I'm afraid I do not have the strength for extended dialogues.

"I answered your question; you didn't answer mine."

Is that so? I suppose you're right. Once, I was known as the Devouring Death. But that was near the end of my life. Near the end or the beginning? Am I alive or dead? You don't know, do you? That's no mark against you, neither do I. Before I claimed that esteemed title, I had another name. Xie Gui.