Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

Fushuai rolled the scroll and sent it into his storage ring with a thought. There was a slight resistance as he did so, a hint of friction that he had never sensed before. Of course, his experience with storage treasures was limited. They were not infinite in size, and perhaps the spiritual weight of the manual was enough to strain its integrity. He wished he could ask his master, or even Goshung, about it. Zhang Sha would know more than he did, but he would be equally ignorant about how such things interacted with a bound fragment of a nascent soul.

The void aura began to loosen, if not fade. It had been tied, in some way, to the scroll. Drawn or exuded, he could not guess. For now, it was still too thick for either of his younger companions to be of any use in this well of darkness.

"I'm going to bring the bodies to the base of the stairs," he said. "I want us to take them up."

"All of them?" Zhang Sha was incredulous. "I was joking about the burials, you know. I want to rob what we can take and be free of this place."

Fushuai had already dragged the first body across the barrier. A woman. Though cultivators decayed slowly, she had clearly been here a long time, now little more than skin and bone. She felt lighter than the scroll had.

"It's wrong to leave them here. I will take what they have only if we can consider it a payment for helping to usher them into the next life. I am not a thief."

"How many are there?" Lin had one hand on the wall, and the other gripped Bai Tu's fur. Her eyes stared without sight.

"A score." He brought out the next. Outside the barrier of sword aura, only the most recent treasure hunters remained unlooted. Within, there was wealth enough to supply a small clan. Or a newborn sect. When Xiao Sheng had mentioned "other goods" being left with the manual, this was not what Fushuai had imagined at all.

"I want a sword," Lao said. "Either give me my share or give me back what you took from me."

"Minutes ago, you nearly ran to your death. You are in no position to make demands." Zhang Sha collected anything that carried the slightest hint of qi. Then handed off the bodies to Lin and Lao to carry up the stairs. "You'll have what we decide you deserve, and nothing more."

When the circle within the barrier of sword aura was cleared of the fallen, Fushuai took the emptied chest as well. With no prizes remaining, he hoped that future visitors would not be tempted to test his master's trap. Knowing the nature of most cultivators, he recognized it may have been a vain hope, but there was nothing else to do. The void aura might fade, but the array would remain an empty promise. A candle calling to moths.

They brought the bodies to the mouth of the tunnel.

"We should burn them," Lin said. "The smoke needs to reach the heavens."

Zhang Sha scoffed. "That's mortal superstition. These souls are long gone. Your brother is just being sentimental."

She stomped her foot. "It's written in the Analects! Do you deny the words of the Emperor?"

"You mean the dead one?"

"Please," Fushuai said. "It is a matter of respect for the fallen. They should not be left here to rot or be fed upon by spirit beasts. We don't have to take them to the surface; our visitor's writ would likely run out before we were done. But I would like to take them farther up. Into the hall of the noble houses, and then I will burn them myself."

There were no objections. They crossed the long passage, back and forth, as the void aura slowly drained into the high chamber marked by the signs of clans long forgotten. They piled the bodies like cordwood, then stepped back.

Fushuai was having difficulty thinking. The echoes of the vision his master had sent him were still hovering around his head, not so different than the whisps that had maddened his companions. Now, that waking nightmare was twisted with tones taken from a second vision. Had Xie Gui intentionally shown him his own defeat, or had that been a message left behind by Xiao Sheng? Perhaps it had been no more than a trace of the event lingering around its result.

He did want to treat the fallen cultivators with respect, giving them something close to acceptable funerary rites. But on a deeper level, this exercise was little more than a delay to allow him the time to process what he had been shown.

The world was ending. Whether in a year or in a thousand years, the result would be the same. That was something he could set aside as being beyond his ability to influence. If the heavens could not stop the Dragon of the End, then what could he do? On a more personal level, Xie Gui had once been called the Devouring Death. There was no reason to assume that he was lying, or otherwise toying with Fushuai for choosing that as a name for his non-existent sect. The man was the author of the Black Lotus Sutra. There was some connection, then, between the techniques Fushuai had inscribed in his soul and the revelation he had received to find and name his Path.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Xiao Sheng had given him the sutra, then sent him to find a manual that contained the lingering remnant of that same defeated nascent soul cultivator.

It was infuriating to see how his road had been set before him, every step, all for his master to say that he was free to discover his way for himself. Was Xiao Sheng the one who had tampered with his bloodline, or had the Living Blade simple recognized him for what he was and chosen his disciple accordingly?

He channeled Yin through the gu-en, bathing the dessicated bodies in blue-black flame. Smoke rose, mixing with the fog of the void aura, and pooled in the vaulted ceiling.

It was as trapped as he was.

"What are you doing?" Zhang Sha's voice seemed far away. Fushuai continued to channel more energy through his staff, but with the richness of the Yin in the air around them, it felt as if there was no end to what he could draw upon. These bodies were a reminder of a trap more deadly than the one Xiao Sheng had left below. The jianghu itself, a hunger that consumed weak and strong alike. These cultivators had died for nothing.

Traveling from Sand Orchard to Emerald Bastion, he and Zhang Sha both had spent decan after decan attempting to establish their first foundation pillars. For all the older cultivator talked of the failings of orthodoxy, neither of them knew a method that would allow them to advance without following the prescribed steps.

A pillar was more than an inscribed technique. It was a statement, an oath, a defining facet of the artist one intended to become. Zhang Sha knew more techniques than most at his level of advancement, both those he had learned among the Hollow Reeds and those he had developed as an extension of his Path. Fushuai knew only the three he had inscribed and the one he had abandoned.

Moonstep. Threads of Still Night. Circle of Mist. Hunger's Lure. Whether or not these techniques marked where he had been, did any of them define who he would become? What was a technique, really? An established spiritual circuit meant to guide internal energy for a predictable result. A tool, nothing more.

Channeling Yin through the gu-en allowed him to accomplish what should have required multiple techniques. He could create flame, disintegrate stone. If pitted against his sister, he could have manipulated far more water than Ten Cups Blessing allowed. As for wood and metal, he had hardly so much as experimented, but he had no doubt that he could have impressed artists at his stage with both. It was one technique, written into the staff itself, and he only empowered it to act according to its nature.

Was he the same? A tool to be used by Xiao Sheng, or by whoever had been responsible for his altered bloodline?

"Brother, stop!"

His sister's voice cut through his reverie, and Fushuai lowered his weapon. There was nothing left before them but ash. Even the stone at the center of the chamber had begun to melt into molten slag.

"A thousand apologies," he said, and they left the chamber. Even Lao barely glanced at the unexplored passages. Perhaps one brush with death had sated his appetite for treasure hunting, at least for now. Fushui wasn't sure there even was any treasure to be found in the vaults of the old houses. In any case, they already had a small mountain of prizes to sort through once they were out of the ruins.

They rose through the levels of the vault, facing only a single small steel centipede that skittered out of their way as soon as they turned a corner. It wasn't until they reached the main hall of the palace that they met real resistance.

The Yaoguai had gathered themselves. Dozens of them, many armed with clubs and cast-off weapons, lurked among the pillars. More blocked the entrance. Individually, they were no threat. Even together, he didn't sense any power in them that would threaten two foundation stage cultivators. Lin and Lao would simply have to guard themselves while they cleared the hall. He slowed, then stopped, holding up his hand as they reached the center of the vast gallery.

Though these creatures weren't attacking, it didn't seem to be because they were afraid. Instead, there was a sense of eagerness in the crowd. They nudged each other, hooting like apes, blind eyes roving as they sniffed the air.

"Prepare yourselves," he said. "There is something else coming."

"There." Zhang Sha sent his dancing lights to the entrance, where they affixed themselves to a tall, lithe form. Fushuai hadn't sensed anything, at least not anything that he could have named. But now that it was found out, the hidden creature revealed itself.

The lights scattered with the sweep of a thin, skeletal hand. A man stood at the entrance, his body as stretched as a shadow, wearing a robe that was little more than a bedsheet draped across his chest and shoulders.

"A dreamer." The man said, the whisper carrying across the distance between them as if it was spoken at their ears. "It has been a long time since one of you came here."

His face was corpse-white and drawn, his limbs as long as branches, and as thin. What little aura there was carried the impressions of void, dream, and fire.

"You passed the veil of blades. How?"

"By right," Fushuai said. "And we leave by the same. Are you a guardian here?"

"A guardian? I suppose." The man's limbs hung limply, and there was no hint of an expression on his face as he spoke. "I am Shang Tsung. Disciple of the Devouring Death. Since my master fell, I have watched over his remains, as was my duty. But none have disturbed his rest in all these long years. None until you."

"It's a remnant." Zhang Sha said. "A ghost. The man he claims to be is dead."

The corpse-like face twitched. The first real sign of feeling it had shown. "You dare? Little dreamer, I will show you just how wrong you are. Your death warrants were signed the moment you entered this place."

Its hand clenched, and a spear appeared there, as ephemeral as the four ghostly weapons Xiao Sheng had once offered to Fushuai to help him choose an answer. With a sound like parchment brushing across parchment, the remnant flew, racing to meet them with its spear leveled for a killing blow.