Unseen Cultivator

In the night, atop the wall, Qing Liao sought to order thoughts consumed by chaos. It was not easy. Over and over again he relived the moment when his dagger plunged into Deng Sheng's neck. The death that followed, the critical moment within the darkness when the vital qi left the murderer's body and the end came, that emerged as the core of the matter.

He had come to that realization swiftly. He recognized that sensation, that loss, as the reason why taking a human life impacted him so forcibly compared to ending the existence of an animal or a demon. Those things both possessed their own qi, but it was different, not human. Bringing those lives to an end was the destruction of something different, an other. Killing a human was not like that, it was, in some indefinable sense, striking the blade into a mirror.

Perhaps, he imagined as he paced back and forth between the fifth and sixth towers, that as cultivation increased it would not feel that way. Sensitivity, the ability to differentiate the qi of individuals, increased with advancement. The self, the understanding and intimacy of one's own qi, also grew better known throughout the process. Grand Elders, the ultimate expression of this, were unique beings. Each one stood apart from humanity in a distinct, if not entirely absolute, manner. A mortal life was not, could not be, the same as one of theirs.

Liao believed that such a perspective must be most great and terrible. It was, for now, far beyond his understanding. Instead, lacking such immense knowledge, he paced along the Starwall and occasionally asked questions of Sayaana. Sometimes she answered, sometimes not. "Killing comes to us all," she'd told him. "It is a part of the cultivator's life, and just as all have their own path to the dao, everyone must find their own method, their own way, of shouldering this. I cannot give you mine, even as much as I want too."

A kind answer, ultimately, but of little help in the moment.

This night, his second walking the wall when he ought to be meditating or sleeping, brought with it an unexpected interruption.

Stealth, as Liao had been most recently reminded, possessed bizarre traits in the world of advanced cultivators. The slow silent stalking of the hunting in the woods was lost, replaced sudden, shocking summons. A flash of motion, a burst of qi, and in an eyeblink an empty wall accepted a new arrival. Poised and present, as if they had always been there, standing beneath the pale light of the stars. No other illumination covered that great barrier, the Celestial Origin Sect had never found the need.

Even with his qi-enhanced night vision, this new arrival was difficult to discern against the black. She wore a clinging, midnight-blue dress with a dark hood that shrouded equally light-drinking long hair. The soft indigo face that lay beneath, with its sharp chin and blue-over-blue eyes, featured a prominent circlet bearing a black diamond the size of Liao's thumbnail fashioned between the brows. Only the grand elder's hands, the cool blue shade of old ice and capped by curved and sharpened nails that were practically claws, offered a hint of illumination.

Grand Elder Artemay was at once the easiest of the Twelve Sisters to recognize, revealed as she was by her perpetual hooded status, and the most mysterious. She was the maverick of her company, a status relayed through numerous tales and through her highly eccentric practices as master of the dagger hall and the vitally important alchemy pavilion.

That she would involve herself in the matter of Deng Sheng was hardly unexpected, but it remained an outcome most dreaded.

"So, this is my sister's latest special project," Artemay began speaking without introduction. Though her facial expression was serious, deep, and formidable, she possessed a sly and coy voice that bounced up and down in a manner that made her sound both youthful and perpetually amused. "Yes, I can see why she has such high hopes for you."

She circled around Liao, moving with an erratic, cat-like bouncing stride. Though not an especially tall or broad man, Liao stood significantly superior to the petite elder in stature. Exposure to her manner and motion left him confused. He immediately felt deeply in solidarity with the large and puzzled dogs of the world when confronted with the feline breed.

"You are exactly the sort she favors, so eminently practical," the grand elder mused aloud. Blue lips curled upwards in a disturbingly predatory fashion. "Not precisely my style, but I recognize the appeal. Tell me, young Qing Liao, are you prepared to save the world?"

Liao blinked. "Apologies grand elder, I do not quite understand…" he stumbled desperately to try and gather his wits and formulate a response to such a maddeningly ridiculous inquiry.

"Grounded too, it seems," the murmured delight only increased. "Yes, she would like you. No wonder she offered Sayaana to you, a prize far greater than any youth could ever appreciate properly."

"I am not some sort of bauble!" Brightly indignant, green eyes flashing, Sayaana materialized as a vision of emerald fury in front of Liao. A moment later she was forced to scramble to the side in a rush as Artemay very deliberately stepped into precisely the space where the remnant soul had chosen to appear.

"Of course you can't," the blue lips only curled further.

"How? How did you do that, grand elder?" Liao stumbled through the question. No one else could see the remnant, or hear her, he knew that to his bones. Yet, somehow, Artemay had anticipated her perfectly.

Dual-shaded blue eyes moved in close, staring up at him from barely beyond his nose. "That," the mysterious smile vanished. "Is a useful question. You might be able to save the world after all." She pulled back and shrugged lightly. "As to how, that's simple. People can be predicted, especially immortals. It is not so hard to announce a provocation knowing the likely response, or to know, based on where the only person who can see her is looking, another might choose to stand."

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This answer was perfectly logical, but also somehow cruel. Liao wondered, deep in the hidden recesses of his thoughts, if it was appropriate to dislike a grand elder simply because they were strange, or if such thoughts would engender hatred towards all immortals.

"You are predictable too," Artemay circled around him rapidly. Liao had to conduct dizzying turns to keep up with the motion and keep his eyes fixed on the blue form. "You just killed a man for the first time and are struggling to reconcile yourself against that action. It would be rather frightening, otherwise, considering what my sister intends for you to do."

"I don't understand, grand elder." Liao felt off balance, as if he was about to fall off the Starwall. Talking to Artemay, the entire idea of having a discussion with the terrifyingly unpredictable grand elder, it was something he wanted no part of. He wanted this conversation to end, immediately. Regrettably, there was no way for an initiate to accomplish that desire. If Artemay chose to keep talking to him until he collapsed from exhaustion, he remained obligated to listen to every word.

"There are, probably, no more than sixty demonic cultivators still alive in the Ruined Wastes. All are immortals in varying layers of the celestial ascendancy realm." This summary was relayed swiftly. At no point during her speech did Artemay cease walking in circles. "In most calculations, if you," she pointed a needle-sharp nail directly at Liao's nose. "Were to eliminate forty of them, that would tilt the balance. The remainder could be destroyed blade to blade. Should that happen, the world would be saved. Without demonic cultivators, the plague is nothing more than a font of power, and its removal is simply a matter of cleanup." Artemay spun about in place, elegant and coquettish at the same time; a bizarre affectation in someone thousands of years old. "Forty people. Forty horrible traitors who have killed hundreds of thousands for every life that pitiful Deng Sheng took. Do that, eliminate those forty demonic cultivators, and you can save the world. So, I ask you again, Qing Liao," she pushed her face up close once more, fixating him with her eerie pupil-less eyes. "Are you prepared to save the world?"

A flippant answer would not satisfy the immortal. Nor would bravado or base platitudes serve. Sufficient interactions with the immensely powerful had shaped Liao's awareness to the point he knew that much. Recognizing that, he closed his eyes in the hope of banishing the terror of Artemay's empty orbs and did his best to think through the problem. Projecting as much as he dared, he tried to contemplate the simple but impossibly challenging prospect of slaying forty immortals.

No immediate answer emerged. It was too much. However, in contemplation he discovered a gap in his understanding that sufficed to provide the foundation of his reply. "Demonic cultivator or not," he told Artemay quietly, words barely audible to ordinary ears. "I cannot imagine killing an immortal. I can barely conceive of defeating a giant."

He had played out that scenario many times, recalling Su Yi's fight in the killing fields. So far, all such visualizations ended with him smashed to paste.

"Fair," the blue-skinned grand elder stepped back slightly. "Perhaps more insightful than you know. Qing Liao, the person you are now, will not save the world. Even in the soul forging realm, when you might slay an immortal through artifact and ambush, you could not conduct such a campaign. The one who my sister seeks to produce as our savior will bear a different name. Still," she moved back forward and close in. "Let me change the question. Could you kill forty monsters, forty more Deng Shengs, in order to save the world?"

Liao shivered. It was a simple question, and in that simplicity, terrible. "Repeat this, the death of Deng Sheng, forty times?" He said the words aloud, asking them of himself. Duty, the part of his self loyal to the sect, to Mother's Gift, to the Celestial Mother, said that he must. It would save lives beyond counting. Twenty years ago, three demonic cultivators had brought a horde up to the wall. They had killed nearly one hundred cultivators, including those he knew. If he could prevent that from ever happening again was that not a task he was obligated to fulfill?

At the same time, other parts of him rebelled. The trapper, the leatherworker, the wilderness hermit; these aspects of his being balked at the demand, at an existence lived as nothing more than Grand Elder Itinay's weapon. It might be, would be, righteous, but what would be left of him if he did this? "I can fight to defend the sect," he whispered to the blue-on-blue face. "I don't know if I can murder for it."

Deng Sheng, in the end, had fought back. A mortal man, he might have had no chance, but it had still been a battle. The death had come through that conflict. The kill had been automatic, reactive, the interaction of training and weaponry. He would have captured the murderer, if he could.

To shoot him, unseen, he did not know if he could have managed that.

"Killing versus murder," Artemay's face remained remarkably close. "Combat versus assassination. A matter of perspective, such things are, of definition and decision. All such variations fade before the dao, but we cling to them. Hesitancy," she pulled back, stepped high-kneed back and forth across the parapets. "It is not wrong, but neither is it right. You seek clarity, something you can only find on your own. I cannot provide that, but I may be able to shift your perspective."

She pulled a dagger from her belt. The blade was bright yellow, covered from guard to tip in a swirling floral motif. It bore a disturbing similarity to Deng Sheng's stolen weapon. With an almost casual motion Artemay tossed the dagger into the air and then caught it as it fell by the blade, trapped between her index and middle fingers. "This is a tool of death." Her voice suddenly steadied in meter and tone, far more serious than before. "It can kill with the tip, the edge, and even the hilt and guard if used correctly, and it has done all such things. You can feel those deaths, embedded into the qi, if you touch it. Which you will not," she pulled her hand back in sudden caution. Her other hand moved in tandem, long digits and prominent nails directed to point at her navel, the location considered closest to the spiritual core of the dantian. "This, just the same, is also a tool of death, and you can, if you are close enough, feel that embedded in the qi as well. Ask Sayaana, if you wish, linked as she is, she can feel the change in you."

"She is not wrong," the remnant soul spared him the need to voice the inquiry by interjecting the answer within his skull.

"And yet," Artemay flipped the dagger around, this time holding it in an ordinary, workmanlike grip. "It is not merely a tool of death, is it?" She tapped a nail against her navel. "Neither is this. You will not forget those you have killed, but there's no reason to let them define you. Death is part of the dao, but like anything else, it is not the whole dao. I think," she stopped moving suddenly and came to stand directly before him. "You will understand with a new point of view. Let's take a walk, shall we?"

The blue-and-black clad grand elder stepped forward, wrapped an arm around Liao's waist without warning, squeezed tightly, and flung the shocked initiate into the sky.