This Venerable Demon is Grossly Unqualified

I stared down at the table full of supplies before me. Storage rings could allow their user to visualize their contents, but I still preferred seeing the items in person. The spread before me felt lacking, somehow. There were so many items that after consideration, I’d forgone. Rope just didn’t make much sense, when my vertical leap was nearly fifty feet and I could fly by standing on my sword. Almost everything climbing related met the same fate, as did the majority of mundane medical supplies. I had pills for myself, and pills for those below core formation. If I truly found myself in need of bandages, I had old robes.

Yes, I think I was as prepared as I was going to get. Perhaps appropriately, a full third of what I’d packed were swords, or other sharp objects. The original Elder Hu had already had a good selection of swords, ranging from the almost transparently cursed, to otherwise normal looking but unnaturally durable blades like my daily carry. I’d focused on adding some more expendable pieces of sharp steel, everything from pitons with a moderately honed edge, to a collection of razor sharp scraps from broken blades.

If I had enough time to charge them with intent, they made for remarkably nasty grenades.

There was a knock at my door.

With a wave of my hand, I returned the rest of my supplies to the ring. I’d spent enough hours agonizing over my loadout. I wasn’t going to do better short of access to a bigger market.

I opened my door, and found my disciple on the other side.

“Disciple Su.”

I waved her into the room. I was pretty sure I already knew what this was about.

“Excellent timing,” I continued. “I planned to track you down before I left.”

I wasn’t sure about this. But I wasn’t going to let that hold me back anymore. If she wanted to come, I would let her.

“Please allow me to accompany you on your mission.” Su Li asked, right on cue.

I lifted an eyebrow.

“Who told you?”

“Fang Xiao says he saw your name on the mission posting. He’s going as well, because Elder Cai will be going.”

I nodded, suspecting as much. It wasn’t like it was a secret, but it was impressive all the same. That man really did keep his finger on the pulse of things.

“Why do you want to come?”

“It’s a good opportunity for me, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is, especially if you plan to continue to cultivate a lunar method.”

Su Li swallowed. Did she think this was a test? I suppose it was, in a way.

“I… I want to stay by your side, master. Even if it’s dangerous, or if the opportunity isn’t as beneficial as it’s supposed to be. I think I’ll learn more at your side.” She paused, swallowing again. “And… And I really think I need to get out of the sect. I think a change of scenery will be good for my cultivation.”

“You understand, that it is likely to be dangerous?”

“I think so? The Glass Flowers Sect won’t want to give up control of their discovery. But surely the mission hall wouldn’t have a public posting if they expected it to devolve into open warfare?”

“The Glass Flowers won’t be the only sect there that will be hostile to us. Everyone present will be a potential enemy.”

“I understand master.” Su Li said, nodding fiercely.

“Very well then. Be sure to pack anything you might wish you had. One never knows how long expeditions like these may take. I’ll meet you at the departure site.”

“Thank you, Master Hu. I swear I shall not disappoint you.”

No, I really didn’t think that she would. I was rather more worried about the opposite scenario. I let the comment pass without responding. I felt awkward, continually offering the same reassurance whenever she brought up failing me.

I watched as Su Li left to pack. The moment she slipped out the door, the girl broke into a jog. Her arms pumped furiously as she tore out of the plaza. Fang Xiao must have just sprung this on her.

It was a little funny to watch. She didn’t need to rush, I already had most of the basics well past covered. My ring had plenty of food, and my spare robes and swords would work just as well for her in a pinch. But it would be good to leave those as a safety net.

I felt a bit bad. I should have reached out to her sooner, but I’d been too stuck in my head the last two days. She didn’t, couldn’t, know why this mission wasn’t a routine matter for me. Why my mere presence wouldn’t be enough to ensure her safety. I’d waffled for a day and a half, considered leaving her behind. But there wasn’t any good reason for it, I was just scared. If I left the sect in disgrace, there was no scenario in which her remaining behind would work out.

I turned away from Su Li’s rapidly shrinking figure. I had fourteen hours before our scheduled departure. I couldn’t waste a second, if I was going to turn my hodge-podge of sword related parlor tricks into a collection of techniques that could actually kill a nascent soul level cultivator.

The departure site, a small clearing between Dusk and the Scholar’s Lair, another of the sect’s peaks; was already bustling by the time I arrived. More than sixty disciples milled about with varying degrees of urgency. The first thing I noticed was the sheer volume of silk on display. Fully a third of those present wore the finer robes that marked them as inner disciples.

It made sense, given what we were heading into, but it was still quite a show of force. If I understood the logistics of it all correctly, our delegation would likely be one of the smallest by far, but would have the highest average cultivation by a substantial margin.

I saw more than a few familiar faces. Disciple Hao, Elder Shi’s off-putting personal disciple, sat alone in one corner. Meng Daiyu, to my modest surprise, enjoyed a similar amount of personal space. I suppose considering her father’s power, she was basically a princess. If she desired quiet, who would dare impose on her? Liang Tao sat across from Fang Xiao, who, I noted with some amusement, already seemed to be into his cups.

“Where does my luggage go?” Someone asked the two young men.

“In your bunk.” Fang Xiao replied, only half paying attention to the outer disciple lugging a bulging canvas pack.

“Some of these supplies are-”

“I don’t care.” Fang Xiao cut him off.

“Elder Cai specifically-”

“If Elder Cai cared, she would have packed it herself already. If she told you to keep it safe, then keep it safe. You can ask her for access to the hold when she arrives, otherwise it’s your problem.”

The disgruntled disciple waddled off, looking for an empty spot where nobody would pilfer his apparently valuable cargo.

Rather than join the crowd, I opted to take up a perch in a tree at the edge of the clearing. A hop and a skip and a jump put me a few dozen feet in the air, well above the average disciple’s eye line. Several of the inner disciples saw me anyway of course, but they were polite enough to ignore me.

From my august perch jammed in the fork of two branches, I watched and listened as our disciples prepared themselves.

“Do you think there will be fighting?” One outer discipled asked breathlessly. The boy couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

“Duels, almost certainly.” Another, far older, outer disciple with a fierce expression answered. “It’ll be a good opportunity to test yourself. Probably benefits to be secured, if you win. A cultivation chamber that doesn’t have limits on how many people that can use it is as rare as a qilin’s horn. Duels are often the chosen way to distribute those slots, our elders will certainly push for it.”

“What happens if we can’t win?”

“What do you think happens? Then you can’t use the chambers. Or claim any treasures for your own.”

“So, personal strength is everything?”

The older outer disciple sighed.

“Why am I the one explaining this to you?” He asked. “If you can’t seize what you want on your own, then make yourself useful to someone who can. The sect helps those who help themselves. Or who help the sect.”

I turned away from the pair, looking for more interesting conversations. Someone had approached the corpse-bride. I pricked up my ears to listen in.

“How can you be so calm, sister Yue? This site likely predates the empire!”

“The empire is only six hundred years old, Disciple Qiao, our sect predates it.”

“Yes, and our sect is an archeological wonder! If our sect were to abandon it’s territory tonight, it would take decades before explorers managed to pierce its deepest reaches.”

“I suppose, Disciple Qiao, that the depths of the past become less mysterious when you study under one who lived for centuries.”

“Wait, did Elder Shi tell you anything about the site? Is it really the previous holy land of the Glass Flowers?”

“What my master knows, the elders know.”

“Come on, we’ll all know soon.” Disciple Qiao wheedled. “You can tell me, I’m good for the favor.”

They made for an odd pair. Disciple Qiao looked shockingly normal for one of our disciples. Dark brown hair held up in a comb, sect standard robes, a folding fan tucked between his fingers. The only remarkable thing about him was the sheer number of pockets he’d had added to his outer robe.

Hao Yue on the other hand looked even more like a corpse than usual in the cold light of the morning. It was hard to be paler than stark white silk, but somehow she managed.

“No.” Hao Yue said in a tone that was somehow both arctic and conversational at the same time. “I don't think that's necessary.”

A shadow fell over the clearing. Every eye turned skywards, as a distant shape descended from the heavens.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice the insult you offered Elder Su.” Disciple Qiao added in a harsher voice. “Age isn’t everything in a teacher.”

“I said nothing against Elder Su. It is bold of her though, to call herself an Elder in the presence of someone thrice her age.”

A physical weight pressed down on us, as a flying ship descended from the heavens. It was physical, I was pretty certain. Not cultivation pressure. Trees creaked and moaned, even the grass was pressed flat as it descended. I wondered if that was how it stayed aloft, somehow diffusing its buoyant pressure across a wide area.

I wondered if I could cut it. It felt almost like a bubble, something with skin.

The ship itself was a wonder of architecture and an abomination of naval engineering. It had the basic shape of a ship, the architect had clearly seen a hull before. The masts had sails. It was everything else that was wrong. A great three story pagoda sat towards the aft of the ship, tall enough that it would have unbalanced a sailing ship of the same size. Yet more cabins were bolted on every inch of the circumference of the deck, giving the whole vessel a top heavy appearance. Shadows clung to the vessel like cobwebs, as if the unnatural gloom of the sect’s domain had rubbed off on it.

“Get aboard!” Fang Xiao roared, as the ship touched down, leaping into action. “We’ll leave in five minutes with or without you. Cabins have name plates, if you’re not sure if you have a cabin, you don’t. Bunks are below deck, and first come first served. Handle your disputes yourselves, if Elder Cai has to come down there, you’ll all wish your parents had left you to the elements.”

I ignored the chaos surrounding the gangplanks, and instead threw out my sword. A short flight took me to the roof of the 3rd level of the pagoda, where I claimed another seat. There were eyes on me now, whispers outer disciples thought I couldn’t hear.

“That’s Elder Hu.”

“Why’s he here?”

“So the Sect Master doesn’t have to be.”

“He’s a man like the rest of us, he’s probably hoping to pick up a new sword in the ruins.”

“Is he stronger than Elder Cai?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t have a boat.”

“It’s a ship.”

“What’s the difference?”

“If a cultivator bothered to make it fly, it’s a ship, not a boat. You’ll live longer if you remember that.”

“Actually, boats are built for navigating inland waterways, it’s a ship if-”

“Nobody cares, little Yang.”

I tuned the gossiping outer disciples out. Though I felt a little bad for the poor, pedantic, little Yang. Hopefully he survived this mess. Most of the disciples heading aboard immediately disappeared into the hold, but a few claimed space on the deck instead. Meng Daiyu and Hao Yue disappeared into their cabins, but Disciple Qiao Ning took up a spot in the shade of the first level of the pagoda. Several outer disciples immediately approached him.

“Do you still have more of those half-moon pills?” One asked.

I immediately tuned out Qiao Ning’s side business. It was good to know, but not what I was looking for.

I spied one outer disciple who had claimed a spot right next to the prow, where the figurehead would sit, if Elder Cai’s ship had one. He was small, young. There was something strapped to the side of his robes.

Daggers? No, the shape was too even. The handles too angular. Those were tonfas. Was that Geng Ru, then? He did look young, he couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. It was a little embarrassing, that my disciple had gotten her ass whipped by a literal child.

Geng Ru turned to face the rest of the ship, and immediately met my eyes. A flash of recognition shot through his eyes, but he didn’t flinch. His stare was calm, unblinking, and utterly unbothered.

That was no child. I wasn’t sure what, why, or how, but there was something wrong with that expression. He knew who I was, and he was not the least bit concerned. Cuckoo, regressor, protagonist, secretly Meng Xiao’s second disciple. I didn’t know what was wrong with him, but something definitely was. No child prodigy had a stare that even, a poker face that good.

Tomorrow’s problem. I closed my eyes and leaned back, resting awkwardly against the rising slope of the roof. Snatches of dozens of conversations drifted upwards to my ears.

“They hate us for the same reason they fear us, because we’re better than them. They’ll come to the table in the end, because even if they believe their own bluster, they’re not strong enough to wipe us out.”

“And you know what we call a goddess who doesn’t answer prayers? Useless. Heaven might be venal, distant, and cruel, but at least they answer. The White Goddess can’t even claim that much.”

“You know what we call an emperor who doesn’t answer prayers? Still the emperor. It doesn’t matter if she retired from the world and her cult died out, that doesn’t change the potential value of any site they left behind.”

“Why did nobody tell me that Elder Cai’s extra credit field work involved traveling into a warzone?”

“It’s not actually a warzone, trust me, you wouldn’t be saying that if you’d ever seen one. Just don’t go around picking fights and stay out of the way of any higher level cultivators and you’ll be fine.”

Despite Fang Xiao's statement, we didn't get underway in five minutes. Su Li scurried aboard shortly after the ship landed, but it was a full ten minutes after that when the last disciple finally stepped aboard. I didn't know if there was a list, or if Elder Cai had simply gotten tired of waiting, but all at once, the ship began preparing for departure.

And it was the ship that handled most of the preparations.

Even as Fang Xiao shouted at the last few disciples clogging up the deck, the gangways simply began retracting themselves, the long wooden ramps slowly folding themselves into the railings of the ship.

Sails dropped of their own accord, and the wind rose up to meet them, pulling them taut with a satisfying pop. Ropes on giant spindles took and gave slack on their own, working the sails in a mechanized symphony.

I wondered how it all worked. So much of the design seemed… vestigial. Like the builder had been fixated on the flying ship working like a naval one. Perhaps there were complications I was missing? I could see needing sails, if wind-generating formations didn’t generate the same amount of recoil as they did force. But why did the sails and mast need to turn, if the ship could generate its own wind?

Suddenly, we rose into the air. There was no real warning, no sudden uptick in the force of the wind, or raising of an anchor. We simply were sitting on the ground one moment, then rising the next.

“I feel like a real cultivator, now.” Little Yang said. I cracked an eye open. He really wasn’t that little. Very much a normal sized Yang.

“You just saw the ship land.”

“It’s different, being on it.”

I could see Dusk in the distance as we rose into the sky. I couldn’t quite make out my own house, but Elder Liang’s compound stood out from the wooded mountainside like a sore thumb.

We rose higher. Higher than I’d ever felt the need to fly within the sect. The passing minutes shrunk the ground beneath us until even the mountains looked small. The sky felt almost claustrophobic, with the fog that marked the bounds of the sect closer than ever before.

Below, I saw that Su Li had found a spot of her own on the deck, to watch as we departed. I gave her a small smile as I caught her eye, before returning to staring at the sky.

“This is it.” She said quietly. “This is the start.”

I didn’t say anything, or give any sign I could hear her. That felt personal. Somehow, it felt more like an ending to me. I’d spent what, a month and change in the sect? Two months, perhaps. In theory, if I came back from this trip, things would be much as I left them. The sect itself felt timeless. Things happened, but they happened to people living there, not to the sect itself.

And yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the beginning of an end, and not just for me.

It might just have been paranoia. There was plenty in Sect Master Meng’s jade slip to be concerned about. But none of the dangers mentioned there should truly threaten the sect. Not if we handled it all correctly.

A few moments later, we reached the edge of the sky. The borders of the pocket-world. The fog was thicker here than it was at ground level. I looked down, trying to see the great wooden poles that marked the Dusk Gate. Did the boundary extend this far into the sky?

Then the world twisted. I blinked, then clenched my eyes shut, fighting back nausea for the first time since I’d taken over Elder Hu’s body. My eyes insisted nothing was wrong, but my qi screamed at me that space was not reliable, distance could not be trusted. I pulled my qi back as far as it would go, forcing it all beneath my skin again. Around me space itself flexed and bulged, as the flying ship pressed up against the edge of the sect.

Just ahead of the prow, the distortion became thick enough that the way light bent was visible to even the naked eye. I watched as Geng Ru stared at the spot where space itself was breaking down with idle curiosity.

Then we were through. With a dull pop of air pressure releasing, we exited into the real world. All around us, a bubble of shadow was dragged along in the ship’s wake. As we soared out into the mundane night, it trailed along behind us without diminishing in the least. I suppose we would arrive in style then.

My respect for Elder Cai rose considerably. Forcibly breaking out of pocket realms wasn’t a typical skill for core formation cultivators. I could see why she’d been chosen for this mission.

Disciples shouted and celebrated beneath me, as some of them celebrated the first time they’d been out of the sect in years.

I hopped down, landing silently on the deck. I smiled as several disciples startled at finding me standing behind them. Threading my way through the crowd, I made for the pagoda at the aft.

Fang Xiao had said, if you didn’t know you had a cabin, you didn’t have one. I expected I was the exception to that rule.