This Venerable Demon is Grossly Unqualified

Su Li collapsed into a heap atop her bed. She stared up, peering into the shadowy abyss that was her ceiling. Was that a spider web? Should she do something about that? Her broom should reach it. She wondered if the sect had spirit-beast spiders that she needed to watch out for. Normal sized ones, not the great man-sized monsters she already knew roamed the outskirts of Beastblood Peak.

It would be a pathetic way for a cultivator to die.

Something hard was digging into her back. The blanket was caught under her hip. She tugged, trying to work the snarl free, then winced a little when the blanket tore in response. Should’ve just gotten up. She’d need to buy a new one soon. Or move into nicer housing. The inner disciple who acted as quartermaster for Dusk Peak had made it quite clear that complimentary access to luxuries like blankets, or mattresses, was a privilege for upwardly mobile disciples. Outer sect lifers could purchase their own home goods.

She appreciated that Elder Hu cared enough to hold these lessons for her and Fang Xiao. That he’d apparently suggested Fang Xiao act as an escort, to ensure she reached them without issue. But did he really have to hold them so far out in the middle of nowhere?

It was simply so much walking. Two hours each way, every third night, struggling to keep up with Fang Xiao’s longer strides and more advanced cultivation. Whenever Elder Hu’s lessons fell on a night where she would need to serve in the fields the following day, or followed one, Su Li felt like she was struggling to stay afloat. Four hours of walking, two of lessons. Then eight in the fields, pruning and feeding herbs. Another hour or two to eat and clean, and she was left with but a third of the day to train, sleep, and cultivate. Each of those obligations could eat up all her remaining hours, if she let them.

How would she ever get anywhere, when so many days she cultivated for a mere hour or two?

Elder Hu could waive her allotment, if he chose to, but she was loath to broach the matter with him. His teachings were priceless, but the natural treasure he’d produced for her to cultivate from, that had a definite worth. And it’s worth was far greater than her labor.

No, she would keep going. She would slow down Fang Xiao less, complete her work for sister Sun faster. She could eke out more hours from the night. She didn’t need less work, she just needed to be better.

Su Li stood up, ignoring her aching legs. There were still a few hours of moonlight left, she could cycle for a few hours, and still have time to train with other outer disciples in the early morning, before most of them went to sleep. Rice and rest would keep, advancing would make all the sacrifices worthwhile.

Su Li wiped her boot clean, before setting it on the windowsill. She didn’t like cultivating in public, but there weren’t enough hours left in the night for it to be worth traveling anywhere else. As she clambered up onto her thatched roof, she pondered Elder Hu’s story.

Meti. A peerless master of the sword who spent her days in poverty, then was fed to wild dogs by her traitorous students.

She didn’t understand it. Individual pieces made sense. Some famous swordsmen were renowned ascetics. Every nation had its hidden masters and hermit experts. But Elder Hu had asked for a lesson. A moral, as if it were one of Kong Zi’s stories of virtue. Su Li didn’t think that it had anything to do with Meti’s death. Elder Hu had added that in almost as an afterthought, as though he’d noticed the dark symmetry between her situation and his own, and felt compelled to include it. No, the lesson wouldn’t be something as simple as ‘Don’t murder your master and feed their body to the dogs’.

Elder Hu had seemed to think that the lesson was obvious, that whether Meti was a cautionary tale or a figure to aspire to would be clear. But Su Li couldn’t see it. She hated the way he’d moved away from the subject immediately, clearly disappointed his students hadn’t grasped what he was trying to tell them. The tale felt like a warning, but what was Meti’s flaw?

Su Li stared up at the thin crescent of the moon. She called to it, following the well practiced steps of the Manual of the Passing Moon. It was easier now than it had ever been, knowing that the changing of its shape was because the illuminated side of the silver orb now mostly faced away from her. There was a kinship there, that she felt with the White Goddess and her prison. Doomed only ever to shine with the reflected light of another.

She hated that it was always nights like these, when she felt trapped by the weight of… everything, that the moon felt closest. That it’s power most easily came to her. Silvery wisps of lunar qi flowed through her, soothing her aching limbs. Power flowed into her faster by half than it had a month ago. The thin sliver of light in the sky blazed like a beacon to Su Li, even through her closed eyes. Her cultivation felt almost effortless, like she’d laid up the brick outline of a building, and now all that remained was to repeat the same cycle a thousand thousand times, until a tower stretched to the heavens.

She shivered. She didn’t know why, but that thought scared her.

The moon was an old friend. It had guided her through long hours of night travel through hostile lands. Even unawakened, she’d touched it at times, felt it’s quiet surety. It had cheered her as she snuck past checkpoints, watched without judgment as she’d filched coin purses and loaves. It was part of her past, but was it part of her future? It was stupid. She felt ungrateful, she should be marveling at her progress. Two years ago, she would have killed for it, to cultivate this quickly. She knew she wasn’t like many of the disciples here, born with a tiger’s eyes, but for that, she would have killed. If it were the right person, if the strings were not too onerous. Anything to be moving forward again, no longer stuck bottlenecked; wondering if the hours spent cultivating were even achieving anything.

The flow of qi slowed, as Su Li’s doubts poisoned her cycling. Did the moon know when its light wasn't wanted? She didn't think so. It felt more like she was the one pulling away. The moon was many things, but full of doubt wasn't one of them.

The flow of lunar qi surged again.

She cultivated for another hour, until her attention began to drift. There came a point where even the cold silver light of the moon was insufficient to push away the call of the bed.

She abandoned her perch, and set about making dinner. She could spend tomorrow evening at the training fields. As Su Li scraped cold ash from her fire-pit, her mind kept returning to the story of Meti.

She wondered if Elder Hu was supposed to be Meti. Or if he’d met a Meti? He’d spoken about her as if she was a real person. It was a strange name. Meti. Me Ti? But he’d spoken as if it were one name. Meti, of no house but her own.

Elder Hu said that he had changed recently. Something about… He was no longer as satisfied as he’d once been, with what he’d always gotten. Had that been what it was about, encountering someone who was dedicated to the sword to a level he couldn’t ever match. The thought felt almost blasphemous, that there could exist a swordsman who surpassed even Elder Hu to such a degree. She’d seen him split stone and sky alike with a single effortless motion.

It seemed wrong. But what was the alternative, that Elder Hu had seen himself in Meti’s story? Found himself a failure, for mastering nothing but the sword? That made no sense either.

Elder Hu knew more about the moon than the manual the sect had given her. He wasn’t a vagrant living in poverty, he was a peerless expert and sect elder.

But if the lesson wasn’t about how Meti related to Elder Hu, what was it about?

Was it a warning to her and Fang Xiao, that they had to be more than the act of Cutting Down Your Opponent? Or a warning that was all they could be, if they wanted to truly master the sword?

Her mind was getting hazy now. Su Li blearily stuffed down the steaming hot rice. The sooner she finished eating, the sooner she could sleep. She hated that even after half a decade of cultivation, all it took was a mere day and two nights on her feet to leave her too exhausted to keep her eyes open.

Was she on the road to becoming a failure of a Meti? Is that why Elder Hu took pity on her? Because she had nothing but the sword, but she wasn’t even good enough to have that.

Su Li felt like she was slicing at fog. There was nothing to cut, no problem to solve. Just a sense that things were wrong. That she was doing things wrong.

Perhaps if she slept long and hard, it would all make sense in the morning.

This time, there was no knock at my door. Instead, there was a gentle pressure against the qi of my house, the spiritual equivalent of a light gust of wind. The power that rushed over me felt like night on a tropical island, timeless and floral scented, an intimate darkness. There was an undercurrent to it though, thorns on the rose. A sense of urgency and menace, like the bright steel of a kitchen knife stained with scarlet blood.

It didn’t make sense, but that’s what it felt like. Betrayal in paradise.

I opened my door to a woman whose demeanor matched her qi. She was tall for a woman, standing eye to eye with me. Her hair was blacker than ink, blending smoothly into the darkness. She had a face like a statue, beautiful, but the sort of museum-beauty that radiated an implicit warning that it was for looking, not for touching.

She felt vaguely familiar, as if I’d seen her from a distance before. Unfortunately, I had no idea who she was.

The strange woman stared expectantly at me. Shit.

Her robes were silk, and her qi felt powerful. Those all pointed to her being an elder. But she was still substantially weaker than me, early core formation at most.

“Disciple.” I guessed, panicking internally. It just seemed odd that a weaker elder would wait for me to speak first.

She scowled, but didn’t correct me. The disciple of someone important then.

“The Sect Master has a use for you.”

The disciple held out her hand, offering me a thin rod of stone. White jade shot with cloudy streaks of tea-green. Oh dear, was she Meng Xiao’s disciple?

Silently, I took it.

The jade slip looked a little like a computer chip. It was a thin rod, perhaps thrice the size of a popsicle stick in every dimension. The top and bottom edges were embossed with a strange sort of geometric design that resembled a cross between the intentional geometry of an integrated circuit and the odd square crystals of solid bismuth. It was emblazoned with the character for ‘Ghost’.

As the disciple stared intently at me, I cycled qi through the slip. I oriented it with the character right side up, and sent a thin finger of qi in through the bottom.

Silently, I prayed I was operating the thing correctly. I had no idea what I would say if it exploded in my hands.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then information exploded into my mind. Context bloomed like a flower as I simply understood what was being asked of me. It was a trippy experience, knowing something, but knowing I didn't really know it. It was like a second brain has been plugged in next to my own, so long as my qi flowed through the jade.

“I see.” I said slowly. The woman I now knew to be Meng Daiyu stared intently at me. It wasn’t really a question, was it? “It will be done.”

Meng Daiyu’s scowl abated, and she turned to leave, satisfied with my answer. I stared down at the thin piece of stone in my hand as I closed the door. It was everything I’d needed, my first week here. I’d expected it to be something like a computer. Images and words organized into a series of documents. Something like a magical file explorer.

This was nothing like that. It almost felt as if Sect Master Meng were in my head, so long as I pushed qi through it. I would turn and look at something, like Meng Daiyu, and simply know his thoughts about it, at least as they pertained to my mission.

I knew that a site had been discovered, some sort of inheritance or sacred ground. I knew that its ownership was disputed. I knew that the Pathless Night was sending an expedition to it, that a call for elders and disciples had been formally posted. I knew that Meng Daiyu would be on the expedition. I knew I would do the same, and that one of my primary objectives would be to guard her.

I knew so many things. I knew the names of many of the elders attending, and faces and facts to match those names. I could now put a face to the name of Elder Cai, a stern looking woman who wore more years of age than most female cultivators chose to.

I knew that I’d never met either of the elders of the Glass Flower Sect that were on site to enforce their claim. Or, at least that Meng Xiao thought I’d never met them. I knew their histories, political stands they’d taken, arts they’d publicly displayed.

Above it all, I knew a name. Han Yang. Core Disciple of the Heaven-Piercing Spear. Favored of Heaven. Imposter. Enemy.

Meng Daiyu must live. Han Yang must die. Everything else was discretionary.

I could feel him. I could almost hear his voice, wry and amused, as it offered color commentary on every thought running through my mind. Mused about all the various ways the factions present could be turned against each other. Calmly weighed the virtues of framing the Glass Flower Sect for Han Yang’s death, compared to forging a firm alliance with them. Pausing, with a rising curiosity, as it's immaterial eyes turned towards my own doubts. A predator’s grim smile, as it saw what I was. The ways I could be used.

I threw down the shard, breathing heavily. I winced as it bounced, taking an impact that might have shattered normal jade.

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. It had to be a recording.

Han Yang. The sacred ground. I grabbed the shard again. We were thinking about the sacred ground.

I knew it would be best, if the Pathless Night secured its fair share of the bounty of the discovery. We couldn’t hold the site alone. It wouldn’t be worth the risk. But there was no reason we couldn’t have first pick of the mobile treasures, and access to any cultivation chambers by virtue of being a member of the winning team.

But most importantly, Han Yang had to die. He was a full realm below me. But he had a patron. An immortal that had ascended beyond the limits of form. A God. And he could borrow its power.

I put the shard down once more, gently this time. It was just a memory. A snapshot of Meng Xiao’s mind. Something like a large language model in inference mode, interjecting commentary into my thoughts, but lacking the ability to take action, or even true memory.

I hadn’t exposed myself just by holding the slip. But now more than ever, it felt clear that Meng Xiao knew me well enough that even a short conversation would risk unmasking me.

The shard was an opportunity perhaps, to change that.

But that would only be a problem if I survived the coming weeks.

The time for learning was over, and the test was at hand. I had two days, and then the expedition would depart for the northern reaches of the Qin Empire.

And I would have to choose whether to kill, or run.