Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

Fushuai reached out with his spiritual sense and was met with a barrier of refusal.

"Not now." Zhang Sha said, sliding down the backside of the hill to reach Bai Tu. The fox was lying on his uninjured flank, silver-gray fur soaked dark with fresh blood. Along the slope, abstract characters had been painted in russet ink.

The physician's bag appeared, and he immediately set to work cleaning the long wound and testing its depth before attempting to close it. Bai Tu growled at him, lifting his long face and baring gleaming fangs, then submitted after receiving a swift bop on the nose.

Remaining atop the hill, Fushuai gazed down at what he had wrought. Duan Dai's robes were as ruined as his hands, curled like dead and drying leaves, and his neck was a ruin. Fushuai closed the dead man's eyes, pushing aside his discomfort at having taken yet another life. This had not been Ao Lao. Too strong to control or trick, and connected to the dominant power in the region, ending his life had been the only option. The question was what came next, and what this act had won them, if anything.

The dao, though somewhat unwieldy, was of excellent quality and richly empowered. The dead man had carried a sect emblem, easily identified, as well as the bag of holding. As Fushuai sorted through its contents, his sisters made their way up the hill. The Virtue Urn, a strange, golden bird, as well as a few other tokens and trinkets. He couldn't have said why he was doing this now. The world felt distant. His surroundings, surreal. His mind was quiet.

"What have you done?" Mei Li demanded. "There's no going back from this."

He glanced up from the trophies. "The Steel Ribbon sect knows we left Ashen City together. It was a Gilded Spear, someone named Sun Tianlei, who extinguished our old home. Not an erupting mountain. Duan Dai knew us for who we are. The duels were to gauge what threat we presented, and to have a chance to fight us separately. I was wrong again, thinking he might let us go."

She covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes growing as wide as teacups. They hadn't heard, then. Duan Dai had spoken for him alone. Lin's face hardened, but she didn't say anything, already moving past both of them to check on Bai Tu.

"You need to get as far away from this place and from me as you can. Tonight. He was expecting more sect members to be looking for him soon."

Mei Li shifted to look back toward the village, her hands slowly falling from her face. "When we are gone, do you think they will pass this place by?"

"Nothing that happened here is their sin. If they are fortunate, whoever comes after us won't waste time punishing commoners." Even as he spoke the words, he knew there was no hope of a reprieve for Sand Orchard. The locals would be questioned to the satisfaction of whoever arrived looking for Duan Dai. After hearing a description of the Devouring Death sect members, they would make the same connection that he had. Not only had they borne witness to the defeat of a representative of the Steel Ribbons, they had harbored the country's most famous fugitive. There would be no quarter given.

He could instruct them in a lie. It didn't seem that Duan Dai had sent a message back about finding Xiao Sheng's disciple. So they could be free of that judgment, at least. But it wouldn't make a difference in the end.

"If a meat pie should fall from the heavens." She had already come to the same conclusion. He stowed the dead cultivator's belongings in his ring, and they went down to the base of the hill together.

The needlework had gone swiftly, and the long wound was nearly closed.

"He needs meat," Zhang Sha said, "and lots of it. He'll recover well enough."

"I'm leaving." Mei Li caught her younger sister's eye. "And you are coming with me. I won't have the same argument again."

Lin bowed her head, jaw set in an unspoken denial. But she had already agreed to part from Fushuai, so there was no debate to be had. He gave them the bag of holding, as they had no storage ring of their own, and they left to gather supplies from the pagoda. One went with evident relief, the other with bitterness.

Bai Tu tried to get up, and his physician pushed him down again. "I'm not finished with you, beast."

The fox whined.

"You found your pillar," Fushuai said.

A grunt.

"Were those not illusions? In the heat of battle, I couldn't sense their unreality."

Zhang Sha didn't speak until he had completed his task. Then he patted the fox, which got its legs underneath itself and rose gingerly.

"Ours was a short-lived sect, wasn't it?"

Seeing that his companion was not ready to discuss his advancement, Fushuai let that line of questioning lie for the moment.

"I tried to be more than I am. It's a lesson I have been slow in learning."

"To be more than you are?" The older man was being careful not to meet his gaze. "Isn't that the essence of cultivation?"

He didn't know what to say to that, so he walked away in silence. The pagoda's silhouette rose against a sky just beginning to grow drunk with stars as they approached a final parting. It felt as if Sand Orchard had been abandoned; all the townsfolk were hiding in their homes, hoping that the storm had passed.

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Lin stepped out of the shadow of the entrance.

"In ten years," she said firmly, "I will visit whatever is left of our ancestral home. If you find me there, I want another chance to join you. Whatever challenge you set, I will meet it."

Fushuai shook his head. "It isn't wise to go there, even in ten years." The city might be gone, but if he wasn't captured before then, the empire's eyes would never stop watching. "There is no limit to imperial resources or imperial patience in this. They can't touch my master. Xiao Sheng is too far above them. So they will hunt me until I am dead or the Golden Empire itself has crumbled."

Her brows drew together, lips pursing. "Then name another place."

Mei Li came out of the pagoda, tying the bag of holding to her sash, and stood behind her sister. "It's better if we never see each other again. Our old lives are gone. Even mother's family wouldn't take us in now."

He nodded his agreement. "I'm sorry, Lin, but my path is not one you can follow."

"What about our sect?" she asked, voice shrinking.

"It never was, and may never be. You should both find another to join. There is safety in that. And Duan Dai spoke the truth about the value of a pure dream root. Mei Li would be accepted almost anywhere on that merit alone."

Her hands disappeared in her sleeves, her gaze falling to her slippers. "I have no such advantage."

"You are diligent, clever, and ambitious. Any organization that fails to see your worth doesn't deserve you."

"I won't join any sect that refuses to take us both," Mei Li said, placing a soft hand on her shoulder. Fushuai was glad she did. His words weren't false, but the fact was, any number of sects might pass her over, or otherwise try to take advantage. Lin did have all the qualities he had stated, but raw cultivation talent and rare roots trumped all else. Where they had come from, she could have been considered gifted. He could only guess at the expectations of richer regions.

She closed her eyes. "I will listen for news of your death, and pray I never hear it."

"You won't." Zhang Sha tried to sound light. "The gods have a plan for this one."

Fushuai sent a mote of intent to his storage ring, and called out the blade of Han Luo. Resting it across his hands, he held it out. "I told you this was to be a gift for when you reached foundation stage. Better you have it now, and let Mei Li use the steel fan."

She accepted the weapon with reverence, then offered a bow. "I will carry it to Lost Shallows. That is where our sect leader resides, isn't it?"

"There is no sect leader," Mei Li snapped, losing patience. "And I haven't decided where we're going."

Lin only smiled. A few more words were exchanged, formalities of parting, and she embraced Bai Tu, her thin arms encircling his broad neck. The animal rested its chin against her shoulder.

"He should go with you," Fushuai said.

"It's his choice, isn't it?" she replied. Mei Li, looking as if she expected the Steel Ribbon sect to descend on them at any moment, began to chivvy her sister down the street. With a last wave, she reluctantly gave in, and they set off down the road to wherever it would take them.

The fox, still moving with evident difficulty, started after them, stopping after twenty or so paces to look back.

"Go. Protect them, if you can." Fushuai didn't know how much the developing spirit beast understood. It certainly behaved with intelligence, though it was hard to guess if it responded more to the meaning of their words or merely interpreted from tone.

Its eyes, bluer than Duan Dai's robes had been, met his for a long moment. Bai Tu sat on its haunches with a mild groan to watch the retreating backs of the women, following no further.

Zhang Sha had sat on the steps of the pagoda entrance. His gaze was too bright, dark irises glinting as if diamond dust had been scattered amid coal. They hadn't been that way before his advancement. "He'd only make them stand out more."

"He's not strong enough for what's coming." Staying or going, Bai Tu didn't quite fit anywhere.

"Hah. Is that your way of saying you plan on staying?"

"I do." The people of Sand Orchard would all be slaughtered otherwise. He knew he wasn't fit to stand against an entire sect, but he couldn't bring himself to turn his back on them when it was his name that had sealed their doom.

"I guessed as much. We can't win." It wasn't an accusation, merely a statement of fact.

He wasn't wrong.

"Perhaps we could bring them with us, if we left." Fushuai thought aloud. "It would come to the same thing. We'd move too slowly. Steel Ribbon would hunt. We could save a few that way, if they scattered and found other places to settle. This land is so bare, though, I don't know where else they would go."

Zhang Sha became pensive. "He didn't tell them about you. It would have risked losing the glory of being the one to capture or kill you. We don't know how long it will be before someone at Steel Ribbon starts to wonder why he hasn't returned. I'm sure he's already been gone longer than expected. Still, when they do come, it won't be an army they are sending."

"How do you know?"

"One sect is much like another. If a Hollow Reed disciple, or a few of them, had gone missing on an assignment, it wouldn't be something to rouse the entire compound over. An elder will be informed, and the first guess will be that he has gone astray. There's nothing here that should have been able to threaten a foundation formation cultivator. The responsibility of bringing Duan Dai back will fall to his direct senior, and likely, there will be a tagalong. Maybe two. If they don't return, that's when the ant's nest will start to swarm."

It was hardly a sanguine prediction.

"Even if that is so, whoever they send will be stronger than he was."

"Are you not prepared to die?"

He wasn't. If protecting these people was impossible, then the proper response was simply to move on. If he had given his word to Hou Fen, honor would have demanded he strive to meet it, even at the cost of his life. He had not. His duty was to his master, and while Xiao Sheng had been more than willing to allow his pupil to make his own mistakes, he was certain the Living Blade had not chosen a disciple with the intent of seeing him killed for a point of personal principle.

If these people died because of him, it would mean that many more he needed to save in the future to balance the scales. There was a logic there not unlike what he had applied to Zhang Sha. The bitter taste it left on the back of his tongue reminded him of all the silverleaf he had chewed in his time on the mountain.

He'd spent all night trying to imagine another path. Two foundation stage cultivators and a dao seed beast against an entire sect was a mantis trying to stop a chariot. That wasn't all they were, though.

"Xie Gui thinks you are interesting."

More sparks in coal-dark eyes. "Why?"

"He said that someone like you has two lights to choose from. One that burned long and low. The other, bright and brief."

A pause.

"And you didn't tell me because you knew what I would choose."

Fushuai summoned the manual. Doing so required real effort. The relic strained the spatial formation bound in his ring, whether entering or exiting. Still, it was too valuable to carry in a common pouch. After a moment of resistance, the silk scroll appeared in his hand, and he extended it to Zhang Sha.

"I worried it would interfere with our bargain." True, whatever gifts Xie Gui offered likely risked a descent into madness for the cultivator who already teetered on its edge. Between the physician and the Hollow Anatomist, only one would be able to balance the scales of his past sins. But that was not the only reason he had kept the offer to himself.

He didn't want to lose his only peer, his sworn brother. In a world that now hunted him, that would mean carrying on alone.

Though the scroll lifted from his hand, he still felt its weight.