Unseen Cultivator

Qing Liao crouched in the darkness that consumed the drainage tunnels. It was almost entirely lightless, but the gloom was pierced by illumination from a singular source: the burning knife now fallen to the murk at the bottom of the drain. Water flowed over his feet and knees, soaking and cold. A far warmer liquid covered his right hand and the arm well past the elbow, thick, iron-tinged, and sticky.

Blood, familiar but different. Not the blood of an animal, not this time. He could feel it, the variation, the vitality of qi that belonged only to a human being. A qualitative, but profound, difference. The blood of Deng Sheng, murderer of women, whose body lay immobile before him. The flesh was already cooling in the dripping wet, but unlike a demon's corpse, it was not about to fade away. The dead man looked up in the dark with empty eyes, face distorted by the strain of crude and desperate battle.

The first person Liao had ever killed.

Ever since becoming a cultivator he'd expected this day, this event, would eventually find him. That he would attain immortality by keeping his blade targeted solely upon animals and demons had never been believable. Human beings would eventually bleed onto his hands as well, he'd known that from the start.

He thought he'd prepared himself. He'd thought he was ready. The dive into these wet tunnels, into this dark chase through the maze, it had been made in full awareness that only one man was ever going to emerge in the end.

He'd been committed.

But that did not make him ready.

No one could be. There was no true preparation, no practice, that could cover this circumstance. Nothing compared to it, to seeing a human, with a body full of the distinctive qi that only humans carried, stop forever when the blade pierced the body. A single swift moment, one stroke of the dagger, and life was no more. The soul vanished, returned to the cycle of reincarnation.

Liao shook. His body rocked back and forth, and wordless burbling erupted from numb lips. He held his dagger white-knuckled in his hand; his qi-enhanced grip hard enough to mold the metal under his fingers. It was the only part of him that was still. Everything else trembled. Limbs twitched uncontrollably, and his skin was flushed bright red.

He blinked, pushing salty droplets from his eyes, and suddenly Sayaana was there, standing before him in the totality of her green and glorious presence, beautiful and serene. The remnant soul bent down and wrapped her arms about his own, tightly entwined. Though she had no physical presence, no warm touch to offer, the twist of qi flows this motion invoked, flowing through their shared circuitry, made a fair proxy of a true embrace. That, combined with an expression of impossibly deep concern and caring, had great power.

"Drop the dagger," she whispered into his ears, slow, careful. "Drop it. Let it fall. Hear it hit the water. It is done. Let it go. Open your fingers. One. Two. One at a time. Drop it." Repetition conveyed ever-increasing force to this quiet but absolute command.

Blindly, trusting in the green woman, in the compassion conveyed through the gem on his brow, Liao uncurled his fingers. He began with the pinky, then moved left. It took an interminable measure of time; the digits were unwilling to obey. The mind fought the body. It demanded his full effort, the totality of his will, to conduct the simple, primal, act of straightening those extremities. Ring, middle, and finally index; one by one they were made straight, and the little piece of sharp steel fell away.

It landed with a soft splash atop the slick brickwork, muffled by the coating of slime.

"Good," Sayaana tightened her force-less grasp. A gloved hand, working with shadows of qi alone, pressed against the back of Liao's neck. "Now," her next order followed from the first. "Back away. Leave this place. Turn around and go. Move away. Find the path back to the surface."

The surface. Liao remember that. A world lit by starlight and lanterns, bright and welcoming. It was a goal, one that required little thought. His body could shamble and drag its way through the necessary motions, guided by the qi in the water and drawn up towards the stars. It was not an easy task, crawling through slick channels when blind and tired, but it had become familiar by now, practiced. When he came to the surface, a modest exertion of qi sufficed to knock the stiff grating wedged in place out of the way. After that, it was nothing more than a brief squeeze to regain the world above and breathe the night air once more.

He rolled free onto an empty street between two of the city's grand blocks. Which ones those might be was beyond his grasp in that moment. He'd lost all orientation below, and had no energy left to try and find his way again. Thoughts fled. He simply laid on his back in the dust, staring up at the stars. The surrounding night was quiet. Most of the residents had long since gone to their beds. The sharp squealing and grunting of pigs, penned nearby, claimed position as the dominant aural strain in the night.

How long he lay there, Liao could not have said. The motions of the stars and moon blurred in his vision. Consciousness followed that flight, unwilling to contemplate anything that had passed. Sayaana remained present, watchful, but she said nothing more. The remnant soul lingered, a thoughtful expression on her face that suggested she waited on a moment to come.

The frozen starlit interval came to an end when Grand Elder Itinay descended from high above to appear beside him. Her entrance was not a thing of grandeur. It was, instead, incredibly sudden. A streak of brightness that materialized beside his prone form before he could even blink.

She had never appeared more as the agent of vengeance and death the stories called her than she did to Liao in that moment. Her dark blue steel blade lanced out from her midnight grasp, bare before the night. That weapon held no mercy, and neither did its wielder. Her terrifying blue-white gaze blazed down upon the road, bright as a lightning bolt. "You have come back up, initiate," Itinay's voice was not loud. It was still and low, but sharp enough to cut ice. "Is it done?"

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"Yes," Liao found, as he tried to form the words, that he lacked the strength to elaborate.

"Deng Sheng, servant of the dagger hall," how the grand elder knew this was beyond the young cultivator's understanding, but it failed to trigger the least surprise. Of course, the immortals would figure out the truth amid the chaos. "How typical. A disappointing outcome, but ultimately, ordinary." Her frightful multi-circular eyes shifted slightly, looking below the hard-packed earth comprising the road. "The remains are within the drainage tunnels."

"Yes," once more he offered a meager response, but the will to expand, to explain, what had happened in that labyrinth simply failed to materialize.

Thankfully, Itinay did not press. "Then your task is complete, and you have done more than was asked." Carefully, the grand elder dropped to one knee beside him. Her sword moved back, concealed behind the shine of her immortal form. When she spoke this time, it was in a soft whisper. "It is a significant thing, to kill another human for the first time. I have no counsel for you, but there are orders that should serve. Go home. Now. Your maid, Chen Chao, is waiting there. Elder Su Yi will come and visit soon enough. Wait for that. You are relieved of from all duties and tasks until the council sends word. Now, initiate, get up and start walking. Know that if you are not home by morning, I will handle your memories according to my own methods. You do not desire that outcome, I assure you."

"Yes, grand elder." In reaction to that threat, Liao found the strength to roll over, stand up, and bow his head.

"Go," Itinay repeated. There were eyes on them now. For all that she was quiet, the presence of a glowing, blue-tinted immortal in the middle of a city street inevitably drew attention. "The remainder of this matter is the business of the sect, and the elders will handle it."

Managing a weak nod, Liao stumbled down the road. He did not know his direction, but the grid served to guide him as soon as he reached the nearest intersection. That much sufficed. He felt no impetus to rush.

Sayaana walked silently beside him the whole time.

He had not quite cleared the road when, behind him, Itinay took action. The grand elder stood, took one step, and positioned her body directly above the point where Deng Sheng's remains lay. She plunged her sword straight into the ground. Though the hard earth had been pounded down to near the consistency of stone by the actions of countless feet and hooves, the blade penetrated the surface as if it was water.

A single twist of the immortal's wrist and the ground cracked open. A hole erupted, reaching down into the dirt and waste and crushed legacy of the past buried beneath the city. Liao knew this surely exposed the dead servant to the stars.

The huge crack drew immediate, immense attention. Heads appeared along the edge of the road. Glancing over walls, leaning around the gates of nearby compounds, even pushed past screen windows by the truly curious. Within moments, hundreds were watching.

Itinay, standing tall, raised up her sword of midnight, and shouted. "Now, bare witness to the judgment of the Celestial Origin Sect!"

Knowing what would come next, and desiring no further part in it, Liao broke into a run.

Running, circulating his qi through his limbs, and invoking the simplest basic motions of the Stellar Flash Steps as he pushed through streets largely left empty by the depths of night, these things restored a measure of equilibrium. It was a living motion, distant from the stillness of death, and served to bring him back to anchor in the properties of his life, of Qing Liao, not that of the one he'd ended. A minor salve, barely more than a distraction, but even small solace mattered to one stained in the blood of his foe.

It did not take long to return to the sect, to his residence. Sayaana ran with him, every step of the way. She vanished with a careful smile as he stepped through the gates of the courtyard.

Chen Chao had stayed awake, stitching beside a single lamp. Driven by some careful intuitive impulse of an experienced servant, she had laid out buckets of water, soap, and towels. Liao had not realized, until he laid eyes of these supplies, how desperately he desired a bath. He stripped down at once, not minding the cold in the least. Chen Chao, discarding all modesty, doffed her own robes in the same instant. By lamplight they scrubbed each other's bodies raw at the edge of the garden. The cold was ignored, disregarded by the need to remove all evidence of blood, dirt, and filth until only fresh pink-brown skin remained.

When finished they withdrew to the couch, leaving the garden a mess behind them, and sheltered beneath the blankets and the comfort of joined human touch.

It was not a moment of romance. There was no desire, no heat, tied to that desperate entwining embrace. They clung together and spoke in wordless whispers as they sought to use contact between the living to push the lingering breath of death from their auras. As the night wore on it blurred in memory and was suppressed by the fog of exhaustion.

Neither slept. They remained together, waiting for the sun to rise.

When it did, breaking over the Starwall as always, a measure of normalcy returned. Liao washed once more and then absented himself from the garden that Chen Chao might do so unobserved, as was proper. He gathered up their discarded clothes and bagged them to be burned. He would not see them used otherwise, not drenched in hideous qi as they were. New sets, left in chests untouched for months, were taken out and donned for the first time.

Shortly after dawn, Elder Su Yi arrived, bringing with her a bounteous breakfast platter. The three ate together. No one mentioned how this violated protocol. Chen Chao's status, everyone understood, had changed. Circumstances had altered her relationship to the sect, and though formal recognition had not yet arrived, it would in due course. All knew that, but it was not a matter for this first new morning. Nothing was said of the events of the previous night. They devoted themselves to idle talk instead.

Serious matters could be addressed later, at a time when their edge had been blunted by time.

Su Yi left shortly after lunch. "This will take time to heal," personal sadness, sourced to the beautiful cultivator's own memory of her passage through this gauntlet, accompanied those words. "When you wish for someone to listen, come and find me. For now, know that I believe you did a hard thing well. Hopefully that helps."

It did, a little, but Liao still found it hard to adjust. He spent the remainder of the afternoon reading, but even that was an imperfect distraction. His manuals of leatherwork carried numerous drawings of blades and diagrams of cuts on flesh. Applied to animal forms they supplied not the least difficulty, but his mind continually summoned up images of those same tools aligned against the skin of Deng Sheng. Sayaana, appearing after he closed the books long before time for the evening meal, advised carefully. "Find the edges of this," she told him. "Learn where it hurts." The remnant soul encouraged him to archery practice. To his surprise, driving arrows into targets offered no trouble at all. It was even, surprisingly, relaxing. Work in the tannery the next day, with hides rather than bodies, was similarly without difficulty.

Daily meditation, however, was not so readily resumed. All efforts to center himself failed, dashed aside by continual flashes of the knife plunging into the throat. Unable to find stillness beneath the stars, he wandered instead, hoping circuits of the sect might allow his feet to lead him to a new path.

On the third night after the mission, his boots carried him through the darkness up onto the Starwall.