Of Hunters and Immortals

The rough wood of the table felt familiar beneath Jiang's calloused fingers, a grounding sensation in the disquiet that followed the hunt. Spread across the surface lay the shattered remains of his bow. Splintered maple, scarred and stained from years of use, lay alongside the frayed, snapped length of the bowstring. It wasn't the first time he'd had to repair it – rough use and the unforgiving wilderness demanded constant maintenance – but this was different. This wasn't damage; it was destruction.

He picked up one of the larger pieces, the curve of the upper limb. The bow had originally belonged to his father, who favoured the weapon over a sword or spear. Allowing your enemy to get close meant you'd already lost, he used to say.

Of course, that hadn't helped him when the caravan he'd been guarding had been attacked by a spirit beast – and now, having faced them himself, Jiang could see why. Still, it had been a good bow. He'd used it to feed and protect his family ever since his father's passing. But it was, fundamentally, a mortal weapon.

And Jiang was no longer entirely mortal.

The memory of the hunt flashed sharp and unwelcome in his mind. The snap of the wood under the strain of his unnaturally augmented strength. The sting of the broken string against his hand. The terrifying instant of vulnerability as the spirit beast lunged, claws aimed at his chest.

He hadn't been strong enough to fight them without his weapons. He'd been too strong to properly use his tools.

But it wasn't just about strength, was it? He'd seen the other disciples. The flash of light, the streak of fire that had slammed into the beast with impossible force. The jet of water bursting from an outstretched palm. That wasn't just speed or power refined beyond mortal limits. It was something else.

He ran a hand over the splintered wood, the sharp edges catching on his skin. Ever since he'd become one himself, he'd been thinking of cultivators as just… normal people with a little extra on top. More strength, more speed, senses sharpened beyond human ken – but ultimately, still human.

But watching the other disciples, seeing that raw energy wielded like a weapon, had driven home a truth he'd only vaguely grasped before. Cultivators didn't just hit harder; they tapped into the world's energy, shaping it, commanding it. They fought with more than muscle and steel.

They fought with Qi.

Jiang set the broken limb down and began gathering the pieces, fitting them together by habit. Not to repair—there was no point in that—but to account for them. The tension that had been resting behind his ribs since the fight hadn't gone away, but this helped. A quiet task. Something simple. When he finished, he bound the bundle in cloth and tucked it into the footlocker at the end of his bed.

It didn't matter that it couldn't be fixed. It was the last thing of his father's, aside from the knife strapped to his hip. He didn't carry sentiment like others did, didn't cling to memories or keepsakes, but that didn't mean he threw things away just because they were broken. You didn't toss a dull blade. You sharpened it. And if it couldn't be sharpened… you still respected it for what it had done.

He closed the trunk, then stood and left the room.

Jiang knew that the cultivators called what they did with Qi 'techniques'. He even knew where he could find some to start learning – the library. What he didn't know was… everything else.

If tossing around power like he'd seen on the hunt was easy, everyone would be doing it all the time – why bother carrying a sword when a lightning bolt would do the trick? That meant that there were limits to the techniques. Maybe they used too much Qi to be reliable in an extended fight. Maybe they were difficult to learn, or maybe they incurred some kind of backlash.

Jiang didn't know. What he did know was that the Sect kept copies of the basic techniques in the library for disciples to learn from. Elder Tao had cautioned them against relying solely on techniques during one of the morning lectures – something Jiang had ignored at the time because he had no intention of learning them. In fairness, at the time he'd thought the Elder was talking about some kind of meditation or breathing technique. If he'd known that it involved manipulating a fundamental force of the universe, he might have been more interested.

Or, he admitted to himself, he might have ignored it regardless. Jiang wasn't totally blind to his faults – among which was the inclination to do things his own way irrespective of any advice he received.

The library was tucked against the cliffside, its entrance flanked by a pair of carved stone lions. One of the few buildings in the Sect not constantly bustling. Inside, it was dry, still, and colder than he expected. Shelves stretched high, packed with scrolls and bound texts, each labelled with careful, painted calligraphy. It smelled like dust and ink.

A thin man in scholar's robes sat behind the main desk, eyes sunken, robes too clean. He looked up, marked Jiang's robes with a glance, and then looked back down without saying anything.

Jiang lingered a little awkwardly for a moment before walking past the desk deeper into the shelves. He hadn't really thought this part through. Part of him wanted to ask for help, but his stubbornness meant that he wanted to at least try to figure it out himself.

The further he walked, the quieter it got. Not that the place had ever been loud, but the back rows felt… insulated. Shelves formed narrow corridors, each step cushioned by woven mats worn thin in the middle. High-set windows let in slivers of pale light, but most of the interior lay in gloom. Only a handful of lanterns glowed dimly, their flickering light throwing long shadows across the floors.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Everything felt old. Not just the kind of old that came with dust and age, but the kind that carried weight. Like every shelf had been standing in the same place for decades. The air was dry in a way that made his nose itch, the scent of paper and binding glue thick enough to taste.

He turned down a smaller aisle, scanning the wooden placards nailed above each section. Most of the characters were too dense for him to parse at a glance. The few he could read were either completely unhelpful—"Foundations of Theory"—or clearly for disciples far beyond his level. Presumably, the scrolls were organised according to some kind of system, but it certainly wasn't one he knew how to use.

For that matter, he didn't even really know what he was looking for. Some kind of technique, sure, but what kind? Did he want to toss lighting bolts around? Sure, who wouldn't – but he hadn't forgotten Elder Lu's initial description of Qi alignments. The man had explained that while no alignment was necessarily better than any other, specific alignments were more suited to certain actions.

Logically, then, one would need lightning-aligned Qi to throw lightning bolts around.

So… what kind of techniques could he use?

Logically speaking, shadow-aspected Qi would probably be good for sneaky things, but Jiang had no idea how that would translate to actual techniques. Could he turn invisible? Teleport between shadows? Look extra mysterious in a cloak? The problem was that he really didn't have a frame of reference.

Not to mention that none of what he could think of would be terribly helpful in a straight-up fight. And while he wasn't stupid enough to believe that challenging the bandits to a battle was a good idea, the reality of the situation was that it was all but inevitable that he would end up in a fight.

So, he needed to find some shadow-aligned techniques that would be useful in a fight. Or maybe some techniques that didn't rely on alignment, if that was even possible.

Jiang sighed, looking at the shelves around him. This… wasn't something he was going to figure out on his own. He turned and headed back to the man at the front desk.

"Excuse me, do you know where I could find anything on techniques?" he asked.

The man blinked up at him with a distracted scowl. "What? Oh, techniques. Somewhere near the back left corner," the man waved a hand dismissively. "Won't do you much good, I suspect."

"Why not?" Jiang asked, to no avail. The man had turned the page of the book he was reading and seemed to be making something of a point of ignoring Jiang.

Jiang rolled his eyes but didn't continue pressing. He had a place to start now, and if he had further questions he'd probably be better off asking Elder Lu for help.

— — —

Jiang rubbed tiredly at his eyes, glaring down at the scroll in front of him. It was not the first scroll he'd read, and unfortunately, wouldn't be the last. He'd been here for… actually, he didn't really know how long. Hours, at least.

Wasted hours, as far as he was concerned.

Some scrolls were worse—older, denser, more abstract. Some were better—newer, written in plainer speech, though still filled with metaphors that didn't help. Qi flowed like water, one said. Like wind, said another. Like fire. Like stone. Like emotions.

That part, at least, made a kind of sense – or, at least, made no sense in a consistent way. It was different for everyone. The same way two hunters could walk the same trail and see different signs.

Jiang pushed the scroll away and leaned back, spine cracking against the edge of the shelf behind him. It was time to admit defeat. He'd read at least thirty scrolls, maybe more, though 'read' might have been generous. Skimmed, parsed, reread, frowned at. A few he'd set down halfway through because they might as well have been written in a different language.

In fairness, the time wasn't entirely wasted. He'd learned a few things.

For starters, there were techniques that didn't rely on any specific Qi alignment, or, alternatively, could work with multiple alignments. They were hardly anything amazing – basic utility types, mostly – but still useful regardless. Somewhat ironically, they were the kind of things that he would have cheerfully killed for a few months ago. Heating water without a fire, drying clothes, preserving food, even reinforcing smaller items to reduce wear and tear.

For a hunter, those techniques were invaluable. For a cultivator, they were mildly helpful. At least he finally knew how everyone was able to wear robes everywhere without them being torn to shreds the first time they sat down funny – they were passively reinforcing their clothing with Qi. If he'd known about this technique earlier, he might have even been able to keep his bow from being destroyed, though admittedly, it may not have helped too much. Reinforcement didn't mean invulnerability, after all.

Either way, these little tricks were techniques in name only. There were no lightning bolts. No shadowstep. No fists of stone. Just minor manipulations—helpful, sure, but not what he needed. They all worked on the same basic principle: put Qi into a thing, influence that thing. That was it.

The more complex techniques were… more complicated. Rather obvious, really, but Jiang didn't have any other way to explain it, mainly because he didn't even know where to start. Some started with a series of gestures that meant nothing to him. Others included diagrams of meridians and flows that looked more like maps drawn by a drunk cartographer. One scroll described a movement technique that let the user 'skip' through the air—but required three complete cycles of breath to prepare, precise foot positioning, and the ability to redirect momentum mid-step. He wasn't even sure what that meant. Redirect momentum how? What was he skipping over?

From what he could tell, the general techniques—the ones that worked regardless of Qi alignment—were universally worse than those designed for a specific alignment. Slower, more complex, and consumed more Qi. They weren't shaped to the user's strength. Just… blunt tools anyone could swing.

He rubbed his eyes again, lids gritty, temples tight. He'd already checked every scroll on the shelves the desk attendant had pointed him to. Thoroughly. Fire-aspected techniques took up the bulk—flames summoned in arcs, explosions of heat, even a technique that, as far as he could tell, hardened sand into little shards of glass and somehow propelled them at the target.

Stone came next. Mostly reinforcement techniques, but also a few defensive methods that formed barriers or bolstered one's skin. Then wind, then water. A handful of wood-aspected techniques too, mostly around entangling or binding.

But nothing shadow-aligned.

Not even a mention.

He glared at the shelf as if it had done it on purpose.

It wasn't that he thought a single scroll would solve his problems. He wasn't that naive. But he'd hoped for a starting point. A foundation. Something to build from. Instead, all he had were scraps of theory and a growing headache.

He closed the last scroll and returned it to its place, letting his hand linger on the lacquered edge of the shelf.

So. No techniques he could use. Not without twisting himself into knots to try and force them to work. He could keep wasting time here—try inventing something from scratch, maybe. That thought made him snort. He didn't have the faintest idea how to invent a technique. He barely understood how the ones he'd read even functioned.

Which left the option he'd been hoping to avoid, primarily out of a stubborn sense of pride.

He was going to have to ask Elder Lu for help.