This Venerable Demon is Grossly Unqualified

I was sleeping, when the knock came. I was up in a moment. It was easy, when you could eschew the comforts of blankets and sleepwear. The cold of the season didn’t bother me. If I’d opted for a sheet, I would have been liable to simply rip it in two if it caught on something when I rolled over in my sleep.

Instead, I simply rose from the thin futon in the center of my room, pulled at my robe to straighten it, and stepped into my slippers.

I found Fang Xiao at the door, his hair a mess. The scent of ozone radiated from him, like cologne applied by a middle schooler. The first plaza behind him was bathed in the dim light of the morning sun, filtering through the eternal gloom of the sect.

“There’s been another killing. Training ground six, by the split tree.”

I nodded, as if I knew what he was talking about. I had no idea why he was telling me, specifically. Did elders handle law enforcement? Did he want me to ensure justice was done, given our earlier conversation? My stomach clenched, as I wondered if it was someone I knew. Surely he would have led with that, if it were Su Li?

“Is there anything else I should know?” I asked, as if I were the sort of person that should be handling this.

Fang Xiao gulped down air like a drowning man, cycling so vigorously I could feel the ambient qi shift around us.

“Cai Haoyu found him. Ran into the administration hall shouting. Wasn’t discreet. Rumors are spreading already. He didn’t recognize the victim. Outer disciple. Male, young. The heart’s missing, like the ones Elder Fan killed.”

He took a deep breath.

“Need to go. Said I would fetch Elder Liang.”

A technique? A copycat killer? I held back from asking any more questions. I just hoped I wouldn’t be the only elder at the scene. Was I even supposed to be there?

“I’ll meet her there.”

He nodded, then tore across the plaza, actinic sparks shooting from his feet as he ran. That was kind of cool, very Killua Zoldyck, a detached part of my mind noted. Ideas rushed through me, the potential implications of lightning based acceleration, or even partial lightning transmutation. This wasn’t the time. I took a deep breath. I needed to be present. Needed to be Elder Hu.

As he passed through the gate to Elder Liang’s compound, I grabbed my sword and leapt into motion.

The blade shot from its scabbard, flying through the air in an arc. I jumped for it, then at the apex of my leap, cycled my aura in the characteristic donut of my makeshift sword flight technique.

The pull of my qi dragged the blade upward like a magnet, my feet easily catching it.

I flew off, clearing the plaza in a moment. As I ascended, I kept the roads just barely in sight, using them to navigate.

It took less than a minute to reach the training grounds. A minute more to find the sixth, and the split tree.

To my frustration, I was the first elder on the scene.

A pair of disciples stood barely ten feet from the body, loitering with the telltale expressions of curious bystanders.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“Elder! We heard…” One of them yelped, then trailed off.

“Did you witness his death?”

“N-no.”

“Wait by that tree.” I barked, pointing. “Go nowhere until I release you. Stand twenty feet apart, do not converse with each other, or any other disciple. Answer any question an elder asks you.”

I had no idea what the procedure for this was, but I didn't want them watching over my shoulder. We could interrogate them later.

Slowly, I approached the body. I’d seen dead bodies before. Seen both the waxy yellow skin of the embalmed, and eerie stillness of the freshly dead. It was hard to go a full year as an EMT without seeing at least one dead body, and I'd done three.

I had no idea who he was. Relief flooded through me, as I took in the unfamiliar face. The odds had been low, I didn’t know very many outer disciples, but I still felt a little guilty, at how relieved I was to see it was a stranger that had been murdered.

This one was bad, would have been bad even by the standards of men far more hardened than me.

It wasn’t immediately apparent if the gaping hole in his chest was the cause of death, but it was very clearly incompatible with life. He had no shortage of other injuries. A pair of deep slashes stood out on his arms, the flesh puckering where it had split like freshly baked bread. More subtle were several stab wounds, marked only by small holes and the discoloration of his robe where they’d bled freely.

There was so very much blood. I knew the body had more than a gallon of the stuff, but never before had I seen all of it spilled out in one place. Blood drenched the grass around the corpse. So much had been shed there was no direction you could approach without crossing it. It was thick now, a dark crust atop the foliage. I stepped into it, and it crunched wetly as it ruined my slippers.

A distant part of my mind observed that cultivators must be one of the great pillars of the local tailoring industry. Every murder ruined at least three men’s outfits.

I wasn’t qualified to be doing this. I’d learned more about forensics from reading on the internet than I had the few actual dead bodies I’d encountered on calls. My mouth was bone dry.

I was already here, first on the scene. It would look strange, if I did nothing. I doubted the elders would care about the integrity of a crime scene as much as modern investigators.

I shook my head, steeled myself, and took in as many details as I could.

The cuts around his chest had defined edges. Places where little flaps of flesh were exposed to the air. It was done with a blade, a sharp one, not an animal’s claws. There were more little flaps all through the cavity. Deep gouges on exposed bone, where the blade had struck them. Thin gouges. A knife, most likely. The length of a sword would have been awkward, for carving away at his chest.

His hands were bloody. Smeared with it, the backs as well as the fronts. The wounds on his arms had bled for a while, before he stopped moving.

I shivered, as I tried to bend one of his fingers. It felt so wrong. I’d carried dead bodies on gurneys. Cried over them. Never touched one, not in the flesh. It was stiff, but it bent. Not full rigor then.

I touched his cheek, one of the few surfaces clean of blood. It was cool, but not as cold as the air. I grabbed his shoulder, gently leaning him forward. He was so stiff I could almost have let go, and he might have held a moment before toppling. There was another stab wound on his back, deep in his guts. With it exposed, I could smell traces of the acrid stench of chyme.

Leaves rustled in the distance. My hand snapped to my sword. The two disciples I’d arrested were still standing silently by their tree.

A man in white robes approached from the treeline at a sedate pace. He was old. The oldest looking elder I’d seen, with hair as white as the driven snow and thin enough it looked liable to blow away in the wind. His face was marked with as many liver spots as any elderly mortal’s. Even with him actively restraining his qi, I could feel something unsettling about it. I wondered what art an elder of the corpse refiners cultivated.

“Elder Hu. A pleasant surprise, to see you again.” He remarked amiably, barely sparing a glance for the body.

I didn’t know his name. Fuck. I desperately needed to get my hands on a full roster of our elders.

Instead of returning his greeting, I gave a report.

“His skin still has traces of warmth. He’s been dead no longer than two or three shi.” I was glad I remembered that statistic. Six hours for the skin to be cold. Twenty four for the core to reach ambient temperature. “His heart was removed with a sharp blade, likely a knife by its length. It took the killer several cuts to remove it, so the wounds on his back, arms, and stomach were almost certainly received first. A single stab wound in the back suggests he was taken unaware, then tried and failed to defend himself. The killer was likely in his own realm, to feel the need to take him by surprise.”

The elder in white lifted a ghostly eyebrow. His face wasn’t quite hairless, but it was a close thing.

“I was not aware that you studied such arts.”

“Anyone who makes enough corpses eventually learns to read them.” I said, shrugging.

He nodded, as if this were a reasonable thing for someone to say. At that same plodding pace, he joined me by the body. I stepped aside, making room for him. He was, I supposed, an actual expert.

I saw the blood squelch beneath his slippers, brush against the hem of his alabaster robe. Not a drop stained the fabric.

From his demeanor, I’d expected a workman’s competence from him. A quick, efficient, assessment. Instead, his fingers caressed the corpse with a father’s tender touch. He took the temperature of the forehead, then the underarm. He pulled the body forward, all but hugging it, as his fingers traced the edges of the ragged ruin of the disciple’s chest.

When he stood, the only drop of blood that clung to him was held between two of his fingers. He rolled the droplet between them, feeling its texture. He raised his hand to his nose, and took a deep sniff. For a moment, I wondered if he was going to lick his fingers.

“Closer to one shi, than two, I think.” He finally said. “It’s still quite wet beneath the surface, even accounting for the chill of the season. Not even a hint of rot. Good, it’s always a shame when too much time passes before the body is found.”

Two to four hours had passed. Plenty of time for the killer to change, dispose of any evidence.

“What do you think?”

He frowned.

“I hope that some child thought aping the late Elder Fan would provide cover for his grudge. I think that we will see more bodies before all is said and done.

“A pity.” He finished with an insincerity so obvious a child couldn't have missed it.

I was saved from further conversation by the beat of wooden wings. A great hawk carved from gray wood banked as it descended, Elder Li standing atop its shoulders. He stepped from the puppets back, and fell to the earth with a dull thump.

“Elder Shi.” He greeted, ignoring me. I filed the name away.

“Elder Li. Elder Hu and I were just discussing the body. It’s always a pleasure to see the younger generation taking an interest in the timeless art.”

Elder Li shot me a look of disgust, as if I’d somehow fallen even lower in his eyes.

“Elder Liang was right behind me. I have no doubt she will divine the truth of the situation.”

Even as he spoke, I heard traces of other elders arriving. The first was not Elder Liang, but a woman I hadn’t yet met.

One moment, there were the snaps of branches breaking, and the sound of footfalls like the heartbeat of a rabbit. The next, a short woman came barrelling out of the underbrush. Her nut-brown hair was cropped short, blown into a wild tangle by the rush of her passage. A few twigs stuck out of it as artfully as if they’d been placed there.

Wearing a short-sleeved version of the sect’s modest robes, it was clear that she was extraordinarily muscular for a woman. Despite only coming up to my chest, her arms were nearly as wide as mine, with muscles that could have been chiseled from granite.

“Elder Su.” We chorused politely, my own voice a fraction of a second late on the third syllable.

“Elders. It’s rare to see so many of us gathered in one place these days.” She greeted us, a refreshingly uncomplicated smile on her face. “A pity it’s not under happier circumstances.” She continued, the expression fading as she turned to regard the body.

Hardly a moment later, Elder Liang joined us. Instead of running or flying, she elected to split the difference, leaping through the air as if there were invisible platforms beneath her feet.

Yet another round of greetings ensued as she landed amongst us.

Elder Shi and I stepped back as she approached. The other elders seemed content to let her take the lead now, and I saw no reason to disagree.

I watched as her qi enveloped the body, swaddling it like a funeral shroud. She held a hand out before her as she worked a technique, fingers twitching as if she were sorting through the pages of a book only she could see.

“There is nothing left. The threads of karma are severed entirely.”

“The killer cut them?” I asked, when it became clear nobody else was going to speak.

“You can’t cut karma.” Elder Liang snapped at me. “His soul is utterly gone. Destroyed or consumed. A karmic connection cannot exist if one of its anchors is erased.”

“Perhaps Elder Xin would be able to find something?” Elder Li asked cautiously.

“You can’t have a ghost if there’s no soul left to linger and make an impression.” Elder Liang said slowly, as if explaining something to a particularly stupid child. “Elder Xin would find nothing, because there’s nothing left to find. Nothing but an empty shell.”

“A pity.” Elder Shi added, this time sounding as if he in fact was just the tiniest bit disappointed.

“Yes.” Elder Liang spat, her voice dripping venom. “A pity. Have you nothing to say for yourself, Meng Xiao?”

The world thrummed in response to her words, as if something had stepped onto a spider’s web. Could he hear whenever his name was spoken? Or had Elder Liang summoned him?

My head ached as I saw the world bend, space itself bubbling as an almighty pressure stretched it thin. Then the bubble popped, and reality righted itself.

A man stood before us. Sectmaster Meng Xiao.

He was outwardly unassuming. Handsome, but in an unthreatening, gentle, way. More of a scholar than a prince. He wore the same robes as most of us, silk in black and blue. His long black hair was held back by a simple white jade coronet, but he otherwise wore no jewelry.

I felt not a trace of qi from him. Was his control that perfect? Or, I wondered, perhaps we were all merely fish swimming in the ocean of his aura? Would I even be able to notice his power, except when I stood near the outer edges of it?

“Elder Liang.” He greeted calmly, staring at her.

“You told us that the matter was done.” She hissed. “That with the death of Elder Fan the threat was gone. That your vaunted vision had caught him the moment his rampage began.”

She gestured at the body. “Does this look done, to you?”

“It would appear that I was mistaken.” Meng Xiao replied in that same mild tone. “Elder Fan must have passed his deranged arts to a disciple.”

“How could you have missed this?”

“The killer struck while my vision was focused externally. Events in the world outside the sect continue apace, I do have other things to do than protect your children from each other.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“Come now, Elder Liang.” Elder Shi cut in. “Disciples live and disciples die. Let’s not blow the matter out of proportion.”

“Easy for you to say, when Elder Fan did not take any of yours. Not that you would care if he did, I suppose. What would a corpse know of love?” She shot back.

“How did we miss a disciple of Elder Fan’s?” Elder Su asked, ignoring the tension. “Surely this would have come up in his interrogation?”

“The techniques Elder Fan used left little of his mind.” Meng Xiao said. “Consuming the souls of others has a deleterious effect on one’s own. There was precious little of who the man was left, when I got to him.”

“Is that it then?” Elder Li asked. “All our vaunted power and we can’t even identify who killed one of our disciples?”

Elder Shi sighed.

“Why would we need to do anything? Elder Hu and I are agreed, the wounds on the body suggest the killer was likely in the same realm as the victim. Any outer disciple practicing such an art is likely to be soon rendered a gibbering lunatic by the contamination of his soul. He got lucky once, his luck will not last forever. Either his own technique will end him, or our sectmaster will.”

“I’m not so optimistic, but it’s just one disciple. We can worry when he kills someone important.” Elder Su added. “Does anyone even know who this guy was? He can’t have been that promising, if nobody remembers him.”

“Chang De.” Elder Li recited. “Was with the sect for two years, third son of a mercantile family. He reached the third rank of qi condensation this year, cultivating the Empty Breath.”

Elder Shi stroked his wispy beard.

“Good. Unimpressive, but the body is ours then.”

That was apparently the final straw for Elder Liang.

“Remind me again, sectmaster.” She snapped. “Why exactly do we serve you if you can’t even keep order in the sect?”

There was silence again, and this time I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut. All of us watched as the sectmaster turned to regard Elder Liang.

“You forget yourself, Liang Ai.” Meng Xiao said quietly. “I do not answer to you.”

The sky fell upon us all, heedless of who had spoken out against the Night. Eternity pressed down, the fathomless weight of a cycle older than humanity. I felt my fellow elders around me, flickering candles before the storm, their natures stripped bare by the unyielding light of the stars. The ties of karma snapped beneath the weight of the wheel, and the artifice of man rusted to dust alongside them. Might and medicine might alike faltered, and even those who lived in death withered before the tractless aeons.

I was not spared. I saw myself from without, watched as a blade raised in bloody revolution faltered, the hand at the hilt too weak to wield it. The timeless certainty of steel undone by an opposition that could be cut ten thousand times and yet be whole.

It was not an attack, simply an overwhelming will, a suppression so absolute that my qi was bound within my body like a tomb. Meng Xiao loomed over us, clothed in the entirety of the sky.

And then it was over, and he was a man again.

“Do not forget what would have been left of your clan, if I did not open my gates to you.” He finally said. “If you are so dissatisfied with the order I impose, you are welcome to do better.”

Elder Liang’s fists clenched as she visibly bit back words. Without a sound, she turned and ran, leaping into the air. This close, I could see they were more like wires than platforms, invisible cables between the trees that only she could touch. Karma, connection, threads. Slowly, I was building a picture of her arts. I wondered who exactly the late Elder Fan had killed, to make her so furious? A disciple? A child? She didn’t strike me as the same sort of idealist as Elder Li and myself.

With the same rippling of space that had heralded his entrance, Meng Xiao left as well, leaving the four of us with the corpse.

“I have a furnace going that probably shouldn’t be left unattended for long.” Elder Su said, turning to leave. I watched her retreat into the distance out of the corner of my eye. She might not exactly be a classical beauty, but even in robes it was apparent that her lower body was just as muscular as her upper.

I wanted to say I was disappointed with what passed for law enforcement here, but it was already more than I’d expected. The outer sect pretty much existed to spare elders boring chores and provide a pool for identifying talent. Why would we spend any more time than we needed to policing our servants?

“It disgraces us all, that we allow such crimes to go unpunished beneath our noses.” Elder Li said to no one in particular.

Suddenly, I had an idea. What really was the difference between a burgeoning feud and a friendly rivalry? A shared goal could go a great deal towards bridging that gap, and few things would give me more latitude to plausibly pry into every inch of sect records than searching for a killer. I’d been itching for an excuse to tear through the administrative hall without spawning a new round of rumors.

“Elder Li, you have a great number of complaints for a man who has offered no solutions.” I said.

“I am not Meng Xiao. I cannot protect the entire outer sect, only my own students.”

“A poor excuse. Where Elder Liang’s divinations failed, more mundane methods might succeed. The killer has had hours to destroy evidence, but if they are an outer disciple, they must have been witnessed moving around the sect.”

“You would interrogate the entire outer sect?” He scoffed.

“Elder Shi, I assume you will be taking the body?” I continued, ignoring him.

He nodded.

“It is ours by pact.”

“Would you mind examining it in detail for us, before it is processed, and delivering a copy of your conclusions to both myself, and Elder Li? I’m certain your attainments in that field far surpass my own.”

“I can do so. Perhaps you would wish to join me, Elder Hu? It is rare to see an outsider treat our arts with the esteem they deserve.”

He smiled as he answered. I wondered if he felt his mountain was given the respect it deserved by the rest of the sect. To command that death cultivator at their gate, they must be one of the most militarily powerful factions here. Even without tying my reputation to theirs, the combination of displaying interest in forensics and simple courtesy might buy me favor with him.

“Perhaps.” I demurred. “There are many other avenues I must first investigate, before time destroys any proof that remains.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as a change came over Elder Li. He wanted to do this, all he needed was permission. Or, an incentive to show me up. Either worked.

“Leave the body for now.” He barked, activating a storage ring. “I’ll bring it to the Sepulchre myself later.”

A woman appeared before him, unnaturally motionless. He made a complex gesture with his hand and she sprung into motion, charging off into the distance. Another puppet, then. I wondered how exactly he gave her such human looking skin. The answer seemed obvious, despite how transparently hypocritical it would have been.

“I shall have Xue fetch Elder Xin. Let’s see if his arts are as useless as Elder Liang expects.”

“Let me know if he discovers anything.” I said, turning towards the two disciples I’d placed on the other end of the field. “I’m going to start with these two.”

“In the unlikely event you discover something of worth, you will do the same.” He shot back.

I schooled my face, it wouldn’t do to smile here. If I had to eventually suppress Elder Li, then so be it. I had irons in the fire there. But if I could defuse the situation by turning his attention towards a good cause?

Well, it paid to have options.