Tales of the Teal Mountain Sect

Year 663 of the Stable Era,

Fifteenth day of the eleventh month

Two long, boring speeches and one course into the Banquet of Blades

Jianzhu Bo grumbled into his cup as he watched the servers from the corner of the banquet hall. Bubbles like a hot spring popped on the surface of the liquid, until he tired of it and finally finished taking a sip of the excessively peach-flavored liquor. It was good quality, smooth on his tongue and hot on his throat, but it was just too damn fruity. Nothing like the blade wine that Master brewed.

Now that was proper spirit wine.

Distilled for decades, sealed with a complex concoction of oils and herbs that allowed the essence of broken blades to be absorbed by the alcohol, infusing it with a qi far more complex than any found in nature.

The sort of thing that could actually help your cultivation, by filling your meridians with the sensations of the ancient techniques used by those long-gone wielders. Not like this useless stuff being served by the Teal Mountain Sect, which was only good for its quantity of qi and reminding him of the distinct taste of peaches.

He almost considered taking a sip from his current attempt, which had been sitting in his spirit ring for close to twenty years at this point, but decided against it.

According to Master, it would take at least another thirty for a blade like the silver scimitar he had used for his first batch to mellow, and opening the jar early would only ruin the process. Better to be patient and wait. That way he wouldn't have to face another decade of ridicule over his impatience.

He wished that Master was here, but sadly the Wandering Dao was currently busy on the other side of the continent. Which was, in a way, its own strange form of irony, as it meant that he had missed the opportunity to meet the Thousand Li Immortal. And after he had spent so long insisting that Bo attend the Great Gathering of the Sects for his own good, no less!

His master's path had been inspired by the ways of that mysterious ancient wanderer, from his nomadic nature to his insistence on helping out every village that they encountered. He followed the model of the roving hero of the Age of Drought down to the last detail, which was why Bo knew that he was probably still trekking through that accursed jungle in pursuit of an elusive demonic beast that had fled into it after its light reign of terror had been discovered.

He'd likely lament the missed chance when Bo told him about it, in that painfully overdramatic way of his, and then pester him with questions until he had to resort to bribery for answers. If Bo's luck was any better, he would be the one bursting through the doors this very moment.

But that would require him to have left the second he heard the news about the Immortal's appearance. And he knew that there was no way that his master would simply leave the villagers to their fate.

And so, instead, only four scruffy looking members of the Teal Mountain Sect entered, leaving Bo to once again lament his fate.

Stuck in the back corner of the banquet, about as far from the head table as you could get without being on the balcony. Which might have been nice. The brisk wind would make for better company than his current companions.

Apparently being a loose cultivator had placed him at the bottom of the Teal Mountain Sect's priority list, despite his tournament victory, so he was stuck with the dregs of the gathering.

Like Bai Tao, a cultivator from the Edge's Blade Sect that hadn't stopped carousing since he'd sat down. He was a surprisingly corpulent cultivator for his sect, as his robes looked like they were one more dumpling away from bursting. His dark-gray sash was once again taut, its loose knot having already been retied twice to Bo's recollection.

In some ways, it was a bit amazing to encounter a cultivator like Bai Tao.

By his account, it was due to his victory in some tournament that Bo hadn't heard of before. He was still in the middle of correcting some detail of his retelling of it to their other companion, Li Fan, who had made the mistake of agreeing to listen to him. His fellow loose cultivator was somehow enjoying the tale, stroking a misshapen mustache that resembled a calligrapher's splash.

In Jianzhu Bo's opinion the most amazing part of Bai Tao's existence was that he was still a part of his own sect.

The Edge's Blade was known for their ascetic lifestyle, as abstinence was as much a part of their core values as it was their core cultivation technique. Those that he had encountered in the tournament had been dedicated body cultivators, their physiques as refined as the edges of their impressive blades. A touch proud, perhaps, but it was a pride defined by their skill as sword cultivators.

If he was a failure, then his appearance would make more sense. But a failure would not have been invited to a gathering as prestigious as this one. Unless, of course, said prestige was far more hollow than advertised.

It was quite possible that the Teal Mountain Sect had simply sent extra invitations to the smaller sects and loose cultivators to avoid any claim of favoritism. It could be for any number of reasons, but the most likely was that it was an attempt to obfuscate their current relationship with the Xan Empire. Supposedly theirs was one of alliance rather than subordination, but Bo doubted that the Imperials would allow such a thing. That would require a willingness to relinquish control, and he knew all too well how incapable of that they were.

He stared at the front table with narrowed eyes, watching the Imperial Blade Scholars in their fancy red robes laugh over a duck course that had yet to finish making its way to the rest of the tables.

The bastards.

He took a sip from the awful peach wine, wondering if he'd have to hear another tedious speech before the duck arrived, when he noticed the group from earlier approaching his table. He turned to face them as the youngest of them bowed, her blond hair spilling down her pink silk robe like nervous sunshine.

"Greetings fellow cultivators. This one is Gao Oma, a humble disciple of the Teal Mountain Sect," she said, her slightly hesitant introduction exactly like the one in the etiquette manual that his master had made him read a few decades ago. She seemed a bit young for such a banquet, but Bo could feel a trace of sword intent on her blade, so she was far from as simple as she seemed.

"Greetings! Come joi—" Bai Tao said, rising to his feet, only to be interrupted as one of Oma's companions stepped forwards.

"The journey of a thousand Lis," the stern looking cultivator began, locking eyes with Li Fan as he raised his arm. His movements were sharp, precise. Bo had no doubt that his blade was the same, as it spoke of a control carefully sharpened through decades of practice.

"Begins with specifying which family they are from," Li Fan replied, rising from across the table and grasping his arm in a single move. His brown robe barely fluttered in his wake despite the fact that he had moved entirely across the wide table in the span of a blink—clearly the work of a well-trained movement technique. He smiled, the action raising the corners of his scraggly mustache.

"Li Zhan, of the Stone Tiger Bluffs Lis," the cultivator announced, barely blinking at Li Fan's feat.

"Li Fan, of the Clearwater Village Lis." He clapped his clansman on the back as they broke apart, gesturing to the table behind him. "Come cousin, join us. The wine's good, and the duck's just about here."

Oma politely thanked him before she took a seat and joined her companions, who had already laid claim to the abundance of empty seats. They exchanged introductions as Bai Tao offered them each wine in turn, the peach liquor sloshing around the ornate bronze pitcher as he waved it around. Oma and the cultivator who identified herself as Ruan Chen accepted his offer, while the others were content with helping themselves to tea.

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Bo absently followed the tan-robed servers as they did, watching as plate after plate was delivered to the adjacent tables. One of the last few, being carried by a server with a short ponytail, looked like it was coming their way, but as she circled around another table Bo heard Bai Tao cough politely into a fist.

"Ahem. Junior, we were just completing introductions. Would you like to introduce yourself, or would you prefer that I do you the honor?" he asked, and Bo turned, realizing that the majority of the table was looking at him. Briefly, he considered rebuffing Tao for his junior remark, before remembering that the man was an instructor of some sort. He was likely a good deal older than Bo, even if the gap between their cultivation was likely far closer.

"You don't need to trouble yourself," Bo said, straightening his robe. "I am Jianzhu Bo! First disciple of the Wandering Dao, and winner of this year's Clashing Blades Tournament." The members of the self-proclaimed Sword Intent Club didn't react much to this, except for their youngest.

"I thought you looked familiar!" Oma exclaimed. "I caught a few of your fights yesterday." Bo smiled a bit to himself, until her companion spoke.

"Oh, he's the one that got clipped on his side for overextending his flying sword technique," Weijian Mei said, her sharp green eyes focusing on the sword slung over the back of his chair. She spoke with a precise cadence, each word sharp in both start and finish.

Yes, sharp was a word that described her almost too well. Everything about her, from the angle of her short bob cut to the crisp folds of her robe evoked that blade's edge sensation. He had no doubt that her sword was the same; a standard length jian with a straight edge and a sharp triangle tip, if its sheath was any indication.

"If he had focused more he could have avoided it easily," she continued, dissecting the fight with academic disinterest, as if he wasn't there next to her. "His opponent's feint would have been a glancing blow at best, and committing to the defensive so aggressively threw his blades out of position."

Bo winced internally as her words cut through him, his side aching with remembered pain. It had been one of the few moments of the tournament that had been replaying in his mind since it had happened.

A sloppy move against a weaker opponent, born from complacency. It'd also made the subsequent fights harder than he would like to admit, as he'd had to waste effort hiding the severity of his injury.

"Now, I'm sure that brother Jianzhu's action was the right move at the time," Bai Tao said diplomatically. "There are many factors in a fight, after all, and in the heat of the moment such truths can be hard to discern."

"It wasn't," Mei responded, gesturing with the hand not preoccupied refilling her tea. She formed five precise hand signs, qi flitting between them with practiced ease as a small stone square just over two feet wide materialized above the dumplings.

Bo stifled a gasp at the sight, surprised as he was by the precision of the illusion. There was almost no blur to it, the common trait of such techniques that relied on memory. It took immense mental fortitude to sculpt every detail without the gaps being filled in by the mind's wandering, and he could make out every fold of his robe and scratch on the arena in startling detail. However, he didn't have much time to think about the green-eyed cultivator's skill, as she let the fight begin without ceremony.

"See," she said, poking at his flying blade with a chopstick that caused the combatants to slow, their movements like those of flies trapped in honey. "It's a few degrees too low on the approach. Just below the ribs, especially if you account for the angles. And here—" she turned the image with a twist of her hand, splitting it in five to allow everyone at the table a view of the moment from all angles "—you can tell from the speed of the approach that it's following the same pattern that he used for the third, fourteenth, and twenty-sixth moves of the fight."

"Well within the same average speed, without even being too varied to imply the possibility of a trap or second level of feint. It is possible that it could be a true strike, but in the time it would take to transition such a move, Jianzhu would have had more than enough time to react appropriately, as he did in previously the seventh move of the fight."

The image froze again, as Mei let the rest of the table take in the scene. The older of the two Sword Intent Club members nodded solemnly at her conclusion, while Gao Oma looked like she was seriously considering attempting to hide under the tablecloth in embarrassment. Li Fan and Bai Tao seemed more amused than anything, watching Bo intently to see his reaction.

"Do you have a rebuttal?" Weijian Mei asked, looking straight at Bo. He blinked, taken a bit aback by her direct candor, before he gathered himself for a reply.

"No," he said calmly, letting his shock pass through him. There was no sense in showing annoyance over this, since it would only lower his reputation if he reacted to such sound analysis with contempt. As his master would say, it would be better to deflect rather than attempt to take head-on. "Bai Tao put it well: it is indeed possible to misevaluate circumstance in the heat of combat. But I would argue that I was able to adequately make up for my lapse, especially in the way that I countered my opponent's technique in the last moves of the fight."

He took a sip of the peach liquor to punctuate his point, doing his best to ignore its flavor as he waited to see Weijian Mei's reaction. Would it be of disappointment, or would she attempt to pursue the issue further? He was curious to see what sort of game she would make out of this.

After all, there were many reasons to attempt to provoke a response from him. Pride, dismissal, disdain, the preamble for a challenge…so many reasons, all of which would make this banquet immediately more interesting. A duel would be the most exciting, as he would love a chance to claim at least one more blade before he departed the sect. But instead of pursuing it further, she simply nodded.

"It was an adequate performance," she said flatly, letting the battle resume. It took another seven moves before the fight ended, his miniature doubles blinking out of existence as quickly as they had appeared.

"That's a pretty precise image technique," Li Fan mused, stroking his thin goatee. "Quite advanced, for a cultivator as dedicated to her path as yourself."

"Can you do any other fights?" Bai Tao asked excitedly, leaning in intently.

"I can project any fight that I have seen a slip of," Mei said, the arrogance her statement implied dwarfed by the certainty in her voice.

"Do you, perhaps, happen to recall the semi-final fight of the Sixth Stillwater Crane Competition?"

Li Fan chuckled at Tao's words, slapping him on the back as he did. "Quite a shameless request of you to make," he laughed, "to pick such a specific fight as your example."

"You can hardly fault me for trying," Tao laughed back, throwing back his cup. "I could tell that you were getting bored of my tale. But perhaps, if the young lady is a cultivator of refined tastes, she can better display my triumph."

"Were you a participant in that fight?" Mei asked, turning towards.

"Can you not tell?" Tao laughed again, slapping his chest. "I was the winner!" Mei blinked twice in rapid succession, clearly comparing her mental image of the man with his present reality.

"I see," she said, looking at him again with new eyes. "You've changed considerably since then. Your form is quite a bit more refined than it was."

"You see," Tao said, elbowing Li Fan back for his earlier ribbing. "I told you that a real sword cultivator would appreciate the fruits of my effort."

Li Fan only sighed at this, exaggeratingly rolling his eyes as he took his turn refilling their cups.

"If you wouldn't mind, I would like to inquire about your mindset during the fight," Mei said as another stone arena—this time a circular slab with a large gash across its side—took form over the table. "I have spent a considerable amount of time studying this bout, and it would increase my understanding to learn the logic to your actions."

"I would be more than happy to share my insights with the next generation," Tao said with a grin. "Now, you see as I—"

"Pardon," the server said, placing a steaming plate of duck on the table. Its crispy skin glistened atop a bed of thin green beans and lettuce. Tao looked over at it appreciatively, licking his lips.

"—think that we could begin in a minute," he concluded, reaching for his chopsticks. By the time he had, the red-haired cultivator from the Sword Intent Club—Ruan Chen—had already drawn a blade.

It was short, barely longer than a palm, with a wavy blade the shape of a serpent's tail and the color of a sky readying for rain. It had a subtle aura to it, an elemental sensation left by whatever exotic material had been used in its making. Bo felt his hand twitch as he looked at it.

It was an intriguing blade. Everything from its shape to its material made him want to get his hands on it. To try its edge, its feeling…maybe even to add it to his sword, if she was willing to part with it.

"Oh, you won't need that," Bai Tao said, looking over at the blade. "The Teal Mountain Sect isn't such a poor host as to serve such a dish half-finished." He tapped the plate with his chopstick and the duck fell to pieces, as the meat remembered that it had, in fact, already been cut.

"They love this little trick," he said, claiming one of its wings as Gao Oma stared at the neatly separated sections. "Cutting the meat with sword intent, but cleanly, so that it appears to remain in one piece until it's time to be eaten. It takes a lot of control, and it's probably more trouble than it's worth, but it's always fun to see the look on the youngster's faces to see it for the first time. An example of refined swordsmanship, in its own way."

"Oh, this isn't for that," Ruan Chen said, stabbing her knife through a pair of pieces.

"Ah, an eating knife," Li Fan said appreciatively. "You know, it's not an uncommon practice in parts of the coast, even though chopsticks have grown so much in popularity with the mortals in recent years. I received one myself some time ago, when I was last in the region. I think I have it in my ring somewhere…"

As he trailed off about the details of some small fishing village that he had visited, as Bo watched Ruan Chen take bites of meat off her knife. Such a fine blade, being used for such a mundane purpose. Their grandiose name aside, these Sword Intent Club members were definitely far from being as simple as they first appeared. Perhaps this evening wouldn't be such a bore after all.