Tales of the Teal Mountain Sect

Year 663 of the Stable Era,

Fifteenth day of the eleventh month

A short walk's time into the 6th Inner Hour

Oma's Seniors were exactly where she expected them to be when she arrived. As ever their routines were precise enough to set her clock to, so she could tell that it was a hair past a stick and a half into the 6th Inner Hour as she stepped into the courtyard of the Sword Intent Club.

Senior Baikun Feng and Senior Li Zhan were sparring to the side of the main courtyard. The latter seemed happy with his sword of the day, as his lips had the slight furrow he made when he was excited about something.

Senior Ruan Chen was busy polishing her swords, her fiery red hair tied back with her usual scruffy brown ribbon. She had just finished working the blade of a Zhangranian longsword to a mirror sheen, moving onto the next weapon of the rack beside her.

The only member to notice Oma's arrival was Senior Weijian Mei. The slim cultivator seemed to blink out of existence when she spotted her, disappearing from her usual spot next to the Jade Drifting Cloud Eye and rematerializing next to Oma in the time it took her eyes to reopen. The looming cultivator she had been facing froze in place, his light-stitched form flickering to a stop mid-swing.

"You're back," Senior Mei exclaimed, staring into Oma's eyes with her intense green gaze. "And late. Did something happen to the slips?"

"No, don't worry," Oma replied, producing the wooden box from her spatial pouch. "I just had—" Mei snatched the box from her midsentence, already counting the narrow jade slips before she could finish "—to talk with the Sword Division about something."

"What's this?" Senior Mei asked, holding up a thin coral plaque. "Some sort of new storage medium?" She tapped it against her forehead, pushing a thin wisp of qi into it as she did.

"The Sword Division acknowledges the bearer of this invitation as an honored guest of the 1962nd Banquet of Blades," spoke a voice, its silky tones oozing from between the gaps of the coral. Their insignia—a trio of crossed blades over the seven-peak sign of the Teal Mountain Sect—glittered faintly as a golden light played across it. Mei tossed the invitation over her shoulder, and Oma winced at the sound of the delicate pink stone clattering against the ground.

"That was the other news," she said, raising her voice just enough to ensure that the rest of the club could hear her. "The Sword Division has invited us to their banquet tonight as an apology for a small misunderstanding. They said that—"

"Did they ruin the slips?" Senior Mei asked as she began riffling through the jade slips again, this time carefully scrutinizing them for any sign of a flaw in the jade.

"Don't worry. There's nothing wrong with them. The misunderstanding had to do with…something unrelated." She hesitated for a moment, before deciding that it would be a waste of her breath to go into detail about her minor miscommunication with the Sword Division.

It was a minor incident, one that would take far longer to explain than it had to happen, and she was certain that her Seniors wouldn't be interested enough to listen to it all the way through. As it was, most of them had already turned back to their own business while Senior Mei finished accosting her for the jade slips.

"You know, seeing as they were nice enough to give us so many invitations, maybe we should, perhaps, consider attending?" she said, speaking to the courtyard. "It's a rare chance to gain insights and trade knowledge about the sword. Surely that's something worth attending, right?"

"I have to practice," Senior Feng replied flatly, barely halting his sword as he did so. His blade rose and fell with immaculate form, the precision of his movements refined to a level that Oma aspired to one day reach herself.

"Are you sure?" Oma persisted. "A chance to be invited to the Blade Banquet comes along so rarely. It would be such a great opportunity to gain new perspectives and learn from others."

"No," Feng replied. "Tonight is training night. So I will be training." He said it with a finality that Oma knew all too well, so she moved onto his sparring partner rather than press the point.

"Senior Zhan, would you like to attend? There will be swordsmen from many other sects in attendance, so you would be able to discuss the differences in blade designs across the continent in great detail. There's even rumor that the Imperial Blade Scholars will be in attendance this year, so this could be a chance for us to see their trigram blades in action!"

"Hmmm," Senior Zhan replied, contemplatively analyzing the hone of his blade as he and Senior Feng drew apart. "Hmm…"

"They said there will also be a demonstration from some of the visiting experts," Oma added hopefully, repeating the rumors that she'd heard from the other disciples.

"Hmmm," Senior Zhan repeated, inspecting the other side of his blade. "I recently attended a family gathering. If I take too many breaks, my technique might dull."

"It'll be a chance to learn, though," Oma pressed. "When would you get an opportunity like this again?"

"Next year," Senior Zhan replied.

"But next year we might not have tickets to the banquet!" Oma exclaimed.

"Ah," Senior Zhan said, "that is certainly something to consider." He ran a whetstone against his blade as he trailed off, carefully fixing an imperceptible flaw.

Sighing, Oma left her Senior to his thoughts. Knowing him, he'd take at least a stick to come to a conclusion, so it was better to talk to the rest of the club while he did. It would be rude to repay the Sword Division's generosity with paltry attendance, so she'd need to convince as many of them to come as she could manage.

Senior Mei had retaken her usual position by the Jade Drifting Cloud Eye, intently watching the first round of the day's tournament. She had five different perspectives of the fight displayed from different angles, shaking her head disapprovingly at a mistake she'd spotted.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Too early, too aggressive," she muttered, looking between the swords. "Half a step too far, all to rush into a thrust that couldn't properly transition to guard against his opponent's retaliation. Then see, he's off balance while his opponent is clearly buying time for the chance to use a technique. He should have been able to read that. He's leading into it so obviously, too. But even with his skill, and the proper footing, would a guard have been the best move there? Or would it have been better to keep pressing the attack? Conventional wisdom would view that as a bad move, but it would have forced his opponent to have to react to it. Enough to delay the technique? Or if it caught him unaware, enough further pressure to…but would that be the right move if…"

She unfroze the fight to watch the next few moves, where a flaming slash transformed into a flock of blazing sparrows that attacked from all angles. The disciple of the Edge's Blade Sect drew back, his blade darkening as it carved a fissure into the air. The sparrows attacking from the right side were sucked in, drawn by an inevitable force, and the marble-lined void shut with a spray of sparks.

"Hmm, so he did have a counterattack of his own. But one that can only work in straight lines. Else he would have curved it to encircle himself for a full defense. Perhaps it has to do with the nature of his school's technique? If it seeks to emulate a ravine, perhaps he is limited by…"

"Senior Mei," Oma coughed, sliding in as her Senior let an idea trail off long enough for her to join the conversation.

"Ah, Oma," she replied, freezing the images as she looked over at her. "What do you know about the Edge's Blade Sect?"

"Um, that this is their first year attending the Great Meeting of the Sects. They study an Immortal Scar that's a great cut in the earth left by the Immortals, half a li wide and a hundred li long. A lot of them use stone blades, which is actually really interesting."

"They temper the edges solely with their cultivation, eschewing any sort of chisel or grindstone. Instead, as their qi grows more refined, their blades grow sharper and sharper. It's actually closer to sculpting than forging in some ways, which is such an interesting idea for the fundamental shape of a sword. Rather than improving their swords by adding to the material, they form them through subtraction—slowly removing everything unnecessary until the only thing left is a perfect blade."

"What about their actual sword technique?" Mei asked, and Oma blushed a little, realizing that she'd let herself slip too far into an irrelevant tangent.

"Oh. Sorry… That move's called Shallow Cut, a part of the Edge's Blade Swordsmanship. It's based off of an understanding of the Immortal Scar they study. By contemplating the nature of the cut, they refine their understanding of the act of cleaving to one day match the Immortal's prowess. Supposedly the cut itself is bottomless: some say that the Immortal that made it carved it with some power over space, others that their slice was simply so deep that it cut through the bottom of the world itself. Whichever it is, it allows their moves to contain a fragment of its nature, and they can open small imitations of it in the world as a result."

"And what are the limits of the technique?" Do their cuts inevitably close, or do they have to will them to do so? It seemed to absorb the birds, but at the same time sparks also emerged. Perhaps a form of displacement then, something similar to a vacuum cut?"

"I'm…not quite sure, Senior," Oma said, a tad bit embarrassed. She'd already shared everything that she'd heard from the announcer and the Sword Division members that she'd been watching the match with. She'd had some similar questions of her own, but for the most part she'd only gotten shrugs and vague hypotheticals. "But do you know who could probably answer your questions?"

"Who?" Mei asked, eyes lighting up.

"Well, Senior, the folks at the Banquet of Blades!" Oma replied. "The Sword Division invites promising swordsmen from all of the visiting sects to it, so I'm sure that there will be plenty of members of the Edge's Blade Sect in attendance."

"Excellent," Mei exclaimed, "let's go meet with them."

"Um, Senior, the banquet isn't for another few hours, so we would have to wait until then," Oma said.

"What time does it start?"

"Um…sunset, I think," Oma said, fumbling around for the time. Eventually, she grasped the small invitation from her spatial pouch, turning it over in her hand as she read it aloud. "Starting betwixt the chimes of the 7th and 8th Inner Hours, the Sword Division invites you to a night of conversation and… yeah, basically sunset."

"Well, that gives me plenty of time to watch more of the fights," Mei said, turning back towards her artifact. "Let me know when we're leaving."

Oma nodded, mostly certain that the gesture was missed, before making her way over to the last of her Seniors. At this hour Seniors Ten Hongyou and Liu Jingbo were usually out on what Oma was certain was either a romantic retreat or an incredibly long dinner, which just left Senior Ruan Chen.

The muscley cultivator was still at her bench when Oma approached, her grindstone gliding down the blade of a slender jian. A faint skein of skeletal snakes slithered through the waves of the blade, a hint of its components manifesting in the metal.

Oma took a moment to admire its craftsmanship before she spoke, watching the way that the light played along the blade. She was still loyal to Willow's Branch, of course, but that didn't mean that she couldn't take a moment to appreciate the beauty of others. A slender width for greater speed, narrow guard for reduced weight, long handle for flexible stances… it was truly a fine piece to behold.

Maybe one day she'd have a collection like Senior Ruan Chen's. Full of all sorts of blades from every corner of the world. Maybe she'd even know how to use them too, once she'd grown as a sword cultivator.

"So," she started, as her Senior reached for yet another new blade, "did you—"

"Yeah, I heard," Senior Ruan Chen replied, drawing the blade as she cut Oma off. Her accent was thick in her voice, a provincial dialect that could easily be the ancestor of Oma's own. Her ties to her origins was one of the reasons that Oma had always felt closer to her than any of her other Seniors.

If someone like Ruan Chen could become such a great cultivator, then surely someone like her could as well.

"So, would you be interested in—"

"Yes," Ruan Chen said, eyeing the curve of her blade as she traced a finger along its razor edge.

"And about the time?" Oma asked, quickly, to avoid getting interrupted again.

"I'm aware. I'll be able to fully prepare myself by then," Ruan Chen replied, reaching to her side for a polishing cloth.

"Then I'll meet up with you here four, no, five sticks before it starts," Oma said. That should give them plenty of time to head over to the Sword Division's pagoda, while allowing her plenty of time beforehand.

Enough for her to take a bath and wash off the sweat from her earlier workouts, as well as to dress herself, prepare Willow's Branch, and do her hair. This would be her first time attending this important of a gathering at the sect, and from what she had read a good debut was key for ensuring a cultivator's future at a sect.

According to 'The Young Master's Guide to Popularity and Sect Politics', she would also lose face if she showed up looking like a country bumpkin, which was pretty bad, considering that she was mostly certain that she didn't really have much of it. Which was why she needed to 'dress to impress'.

Make a good impression, make connections by talking about shared interests, and occasionally 'grease palms'. Which seemed like an odd thing to do on most occasions, but probably made sense for a gathering like this one. She had a nice new linseed oil that she'd gotten for Willow's Branch, so she had plenty to offer if anyone else wanted to sample it.

Yes. Bath, dress, sword, hair, back to the Sword Intent Club at least a stick before she said she would be to make sure that her Seniors were ready. There was a good chance that some of them might lose track of the time, and punctuality was an important part of showing proper respect to a host.

Thankfully, she had saved up to purchase a pocket clock like Shifu, so she should be able to get them all there on time, assuming that she hadn't—she quickly removed it from her pouch to check—no, she hadn't forgotten to wind it again.

Yes, if she set off now she'd have plenty of time. Once she checked to see if Senior Li Zhan had finished making his decision. The more the merrier, after all. And if they showed enough sincerity then maybe the Sword Division would invite them back again next year. And that would be truly amazing!

"Senior!" she called, waving as she approached. "Have you made a decision about the banquet yet?"