Of Hunters and Immortals

The fire crackled softly in Old Nan's small hearth, the flames casting dancing shadows across Jiang's face. Wrapped tightly in his cloak, he sat hunched forward, eyes fixed on the glowing embers, trying to chase away the lingering chill that still clung stubbornly to his bones. Lin sat across from him, legs folded beneath her, idly prodding the slowly drying pile of Jiang's clothes with a long stick.

Fortunately for what remained of his dignity, the night was actually unseasonably warm, so none of the other street rats were present at Old Nan's. Jiang found it surprising, to be honest – it may be unusually warm for winter, but as evidenced by the shivers still wracking his frame, that didn't actually make it warm.

Granted, most people weren't stupid enough to go for a swim fully clothed.

The comfortable silence was broken as Old Nan stepped slowly into the room, leaning heavily on a gnarled cane. The old woman looked somehow significantly smaller and frailer than Jiang remembered, her frame diminished and her eyes sunken deeply into lined skin. Despite her appearance, however, those eyes were sharp, alert, and utterly focused as they settled squarely upon him.

Lin was instantly on her feet, confusion and worry etched plainly across her features. "Nan, what are you doing up? It's the middle of the night, and you look terrible."

She hurried forward, gently taking the old woman's elbow. "Come on, back to bed."

Old Nan waved her off impatiently, eyes never leaving Jiang's face. "Leave off, girl," she said, her voice softer than before but still carrying a hint of iron. "I'm old, not dead. If I wanted coddling, I'd have found myself a husband decades ago."

Lin stopped, clearly taken aback at the clarity in Old Nan's voice. She glanced back at Jiang, then returned her gaze to the older woman. "Nan—"

"I said enough, Lin," Old Nan interrupted firmly, gently disengaging her arm from the younger girl's grasp. "I need to talk to this boy here."

Lin reluctantly stepped aside, eyes flicking between the two of them. Jiang could see the concern slowly fade from her posture, replaced with wary curiosity. She took her seat once more, though she watched Old Nan carefully from the corner of her eye.

Jiang straightened slightly beneath his cloak, just as wary and alert. From what Lin had told him, the old woman was almost never fully lucid, but right now Old Nan's penetrating gaze hadn't faltered for a single moment, and he had a feeling he wasn't going to like whatever came next. He shifted uncomfortably, suddenly acutely aware of his relative nakedness beneath the cloak.

Talk about feeling vulnerable.

Finally, Old Nan spoke, her voice quiet but steady, the words almost matter-of-fact in their delivery. "Boy. Show me your Qi."

Jiang stiffened instinctively, eyes narrowing at her request. Well, at least it seemed like they wouldn't be dancing around the issue. Still, the sudden shift from crazy rambling to this direct focus was enough to make him cautious. "Why?"

Old Nan tilted her head, considering him calmly, as if weighing how much truth he deserved. "Because your Qi sings to me, child. You can't hear it, I'm sure, but it hums like an old song just out of memory. I'd very much like to know why."

Jiang's jaw tightened, but he saw no advantage in refusing. She clearly knew more than she was letting on, and this was the closest he'd come to an answer about the strangeness of his own cultivation. Ironically, Lin seemed to relax at Old Nan's answer – clearly, she thought the woman had reverted to her usual nonsensical rambling.

With a slow breath, Jiang focused inward. He drew on the heavy, sand-like Qi that had settled in his dantian since his breakthrough and guided it toward his open palm. He didn't try to form it into a complex technique, just let it pool, coalesce, and manifest. A roiling, inky blackness flickered to life in his hand, a fistful of pure shadow that seemed to drink the firelight around it.

Across the fire, Lin sucked in a shocked breath – though she said nothing, merely staring wide-eyed at the darkness swirling gently in Jiang's outstretched hand. From the corner of his eye, he saw her quickly glance between him and Old Nan, as if desperately seeking reassurance that she wasn't losing her mind.

Old Nan, however, leaned forward, her blind eyes fixed on the writhing energy in his palm. A long, shuddering sigh escaped her lips, a sound of profound and ancient sorrow. "So, it is true," she whispered, her voice cracking with an emotion Jiang couldn't name. "I had almost hoped I was mistaken. The Pact lives on."

"The Pact?" Jiang asked, letting the shadow dissipate. The term meant nothing to him.

Old Nan took a moment to answer, clearly lost in her memories. "It is… an old path," she began. "Older than the Sects, older than their stone halls and rigid doctrines. A time when cultivators did not seek to tame nature, but to bond with it." She looked past Jiang, as if seeing into a world long gone. "Humans are creatures of order. Our minds crave structure, patterns. It is what allows us to build cities, to write scrolls, to forge steel. But the Qi of the world is not like that. It is a chaotic river, wild and untamed. A human trying to grasp it is like trying to build a dam with trembling hands. It is slow. Inefficient."

Jiang thought back to the glimpse he'd seen of the world's Qi when he'd first broken through. The impossible complex tapestry, threads of power forever shifting. Despite the heat of the fire, he shivered.

She tapped her cane again. "But the great spirit beasts… they are different. They are born of that chaos. They swim in that river as if it were the air they breathe. They can draw on its power with an ease we can only dream of. But for all their power, they lack our focus. Our structure. They can cause a storm, but they cannot forge a sword."

"The Pact was a solution," Nan continued. "A symbiosis. A cultivator would bond with a great spirit beast – a Patron. The cultivator offered their structured mind as a vessel, a lens to focus the beast's raw power. In return, the Patron offered its deep connection to the world, an understanding of natural Qi that the cultivator could draw from. These cultivators progressed faster than any Sect disciple, and the Patron learned to wield its power with a finesse it could never achieve alone."

Jiang wasn't entirely sure he understood everything, but some of it was starting to click into place. Clearly, the Raven was his 'Patron', whatever that really meant. But if it was a Patron, and he had formed some kind of Pact... then how? He'd certainly never agreed to anything, never performed any ritual or spoken any vow. Unless…

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Unless the agreement hadn't required conscious consent. Or rather, didn't require informed consent. He'd willingly tried to absorb a part of that massive feather, which, in hindsight, could very easily be taken as an attempt to form a pact of some sort.

Lin shifted restlessly across the fire, clearly still shaken by the revelation, though she said nothing. Her eyes darted between him and Old Nan, searching for some sign that this was all some kind of elaborate joke or hallucination. Jiang almost sympathised. He was slowly getting a better sense of what being a cultivator actually meant. For Lin, cultivators were probably the stuff of legends – practically demigods, untouchable and otherworldly. To suddenly learn the bedraggled young man huddled across from her was one of them would be difficult enough to accept, even without the added complication of Old Nan's strange tale.

"So, my Qi comes from the raven," Jiang said carefully, focusing back on Old Nan. "That's the Patron you mean, isn't it?"

The woman nodded slowly, her expression distant. "Yes. The Raven has marked you. Your Qi is touched by its nature. Shadow, silence, secrets – these are its gifts, and its burdens."

"How do you know any of this? And why did no one at the Sect mention anything about Pacts?"

Old Nan's eyes snapped to him, suspicion and disbelief warring openly across her lined features.

"You were in a Sect?" she asked quietly, her voice edged with something like fear. "And they never sensed it? Never questioned you?"

Jiang shook his head slowly, feeling suddenly wary. "No. They… the elder that sponsored me knew my Qi was different, but he never said anything about Pacts or Patrons."

Old Nan's knuckles whitened around the handle of her cane. "They wouldn't," she said bitterly. "Not to you, at least. If they had sensed even a whisper of the Pact, they'd have destroyed you before you had a chance to breathe."

Jiang's heart quickened slightly. "Why?"

Her voice, when she spoke, was brittle, laced with an old, cold anger. "The Sects don't speak of Pacts because they are the ones who destroyed them. They call it the Unorthodox Purge in their dusty scrolls, a footnote in their grand history. They write of rooting out dangerous practices. They lie. It was a slaughter, boy. A war born of envy."

Jiang watched as the frail woman seemed to draw strength from her own bitterness, her grip tightening on her cane until her knuckles were white. "Not every cultivator can form a Pact. Some minds are simply too rigid, too… civilised. Even among those who had the capability, not all were selected. No one knew by what metrics the Patrons judged cultivators, and none of them ever bothered explaining. Some cultivators couldn't form the Pact themselves... so they decided no one could. They hunted our Patrons down, one by one. They didn't understand the Bond. They didn't care."

Old Nan sagged again, the weight of years pressing down on her. "When a Patron dies, the connection shatters," she explained. "The backlash scours the cultivator from the inside out. Most died screaming. They were the lucky ones. The few who survived were left… broken, their cultivation crippled for life."

She fell silent, her own story hanging heavy in the air. Jiang looked at her frail, trembling form and finally understood the source of the deep, weary sorrow he saw in her.

"You were one of them," he said, the words a quiet statement, not a question.

A single tear traced a path down her wrinkled cheek. "My Patron was the Great Wolf of the Western Peaks," she whispered. "They cornered him in his den. My entire pack… gone in an instant." She looked at Jiang then, and for the first time, he saw a glimmer of the power she must have once possessed. "All Patrons were different, and thus the nature of their Pacts was different as well. The Wolf's Bond was shared between the entire pack, not just between the Patron and cultivators individually. It was… diffused."

"It is the only reason any of us survived." Old Nan smiled, but there was more grief than joy in the expression. "I carry a fragment of him with me still, a tiny, dying ember of what he once was. It keeps me alive, but it consumes me, day by day. One day, it will burn out. And so will I."

Jiang said nothing, a heavy silence settling over the room. He glanced over at Lin. Her face was pale in the firelight, her earlier disbelief completely gone, replaced by wide-eyed fascination.

After a long moment, Old Nan seemed to gather herself, her focus returning to him. "The Raven is one of the few who escaped. Cunning. Elusive. A creature of shadow and subtlety. You did not just find its feather, boy. It chose you. It has started to form a Pact, and now your path is tied to its own."

"What does that mean for me?" Jiang asked slowly, his voice measured. "Can I hide it?"

"For now, perhaps," Old Nan said, leaning back slightly as some of the tension eased from her frame. "Your Qi is still young, subtle. But the stronger you become, the clearer the truth of your path will be. Eventually, you won't be able to hide it from those who know what to look for."

Her voice lowered, carrying a heavy warning. "Avoid cultivators as much as you can, boy. Avoid their attention, their suspicion. Until you have the power to silence anyone who would expose you, it's the only way to stay alive."

Jiang absorbed the warning, mind racing to fit the pieces together. The history was a tragedy, a bloody chapter he'd unknowingly stumbled into, but ultimately it was someone else's past. His own concerns, his own ghosts, were far more immediate. The fear of being hunted by Sects was a distant, abstract threat, particularly as they hadn't detected him even while he was in the seat of their power; the image of his mother and sister in the hands of the Hollow Fangs was a sharp, constant pain.

"This Pact," he said, his voice cutting through the heavy silence and drawing Old Nan's focus back to the present. "You said it makes cultivators progress faster than any Sect disciple. How? What do I need to do to get stronger?"

The old woman's expression softened, a flicker of understanding in her tired eyes. "Your advancement is no longer entirely your own to control," she explained, her voice growing weaker again, the burst of angry energy fading. "You will find certain aspects of cultivation far easier than most, particularly the early realms, but eventually you will hit an impassable wall. Once that happens, you will not progress by simply gathering Qi and clearing meridians like a Sect disciple. You must pass the trials set by your Patron. You must prove your worth to deepen the Bond."

"A trial?" Jiang echoed, his brow furrowing. "What kind of trial?"

"Each Patron is different, their trials unique to their nature," Nan said. "But the first is always the same: Acceptance. You must wait for the Patron to send a construct – an avatar of its power, a piece of its own spirit. When it appears, you must welcome it, open yourself to it completely, and allow it to merge with your own Qi. Only then will the Pact be truly solidified, and only then will your true path begin." She gave him a weary, pitying look. "It could take years, boy. The Patrons are cautious. They do not grant their power lightly."

Jiang was silent for a beat, processing her words. A construct. An avatar. A raven that shows up, watching him.

"Well," he said slowly, "Somehow I don't think that will be a problem. I think the Raven has been sending a construct my way every time I cultivate."

Old Nan froze. The weary resignation on her face shattered, replaced by an expression of pure, unadulterated shock. Across the fire, Lin, who had been listening with rapt attention, just looked utterly lost.

"It… it what?" Old Nan stammered, leaning forward so sharply her cane clattered against the floor. "It has already appeared to you? And you did nothing?"

"I didn't know what it was," Jiang said defensively. "It just sits there. Watching me."

The old woman stared at him, her blind eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and a dawning, frantic hope. The frailty seemed to fall away from her, replaced by a fierce, startling urgency. "Boy," she hissed, her voice a low, intense command. "You are a fool, but you may be the most fortunate fool I have ever met. The Raven has not just marked you; it has been waiting for you! The trial is not to wait for its arrival, but to have the courage to accept its offer!"

Her thin hand shot out, gripping his arm with surprising strength. "The next time it appears, you will not hesitate. You will not question. You will open your dantian and draw it in. You will absorb it. Do you understand me? You must complete the Pact!"