Unseen Cultivator

Qing Liao reacted to the whistle, an emergency signal from Chen Chao, previously arranged, by springing into the air. Abandoning stealth completely, he vaulted onto a nearby rooftop in clear view. Turning in a full circle, he oriented directly along the path of the long blast utilizing the full force of his cultivation-enhanced hearing.

There was no good way, short of crashing through walls, to move quickly through the alleyways, but once free from that maze he could take an arrow-straight path towards the origin of the blast. Darting across the rooftops, he moved as fast as the Stellar Flash Steps could propel him, heedless of shattered ceiling tiles or crashing debris.

Blasting from one roof to the next, he reached the tavern in under a minute, dropping smoothly to leap and roll onto the narrow road directly before the door with daggers in both hands. Somehow, despite this fleet-footed charge, Liao knew he would be far too late. Deng Sheng could unleash tremendous mischief when granted such a vast interval with which to wreak havoc.

And he had. Liao rolled up in combat stance before the tavern to discover a scene of absolute chaos.

Windows and doors stood shattered. The street was strewn with a mixture of boards, crockery, and spilled ale. Bodies had broken free of the portals and vomited into the street. Men and women alike, empowered by alcohol and the heightened emotions of the night, exploded past all restraint into a wild, widespread street brawl.

Nearby neighbors had joined in, and now dozens of bodies slammed at each other with fists, mugs, benches, and bowls as they sought satisfaction for grievances real and imagined. Many, already overcome, had dropped to the mix of mud and earth that filled the avenue.

Worse, some men had retained sufficient intent to avoid the wild scrum and instead chase after serving girls, working women, and other feminine targets. Lost robes and torn wrappings now littered the street. Screams of panic, sourced to corners and folded-up stalls, filled the air. It had not reached the alleys, and the full horror those shadows offered, but it would, all too soon. Liao, suddenly panicked at the sight, discovered he could not see Chen Chao. He could only hope she remained inside, and in steady company. A forlorn thing to depend upon now.

"Wretched," Sayaana's voice hissed across the back of his skull.

It was. Liao had seen drunk men fight before, it was simply a fact of life in any village, especially during the long and dark cold nights of winter, but not like this. Never to this extent. The numbers were overwhelming in their chaos, and the instigation of those not involved puzzled him. A city thing, he imagined, intercession triggered by proximity. Somehow, he was certain Deng Sheng instigated this, though he had no idea what the murderer had done.

A full breath, standing before the ruined doorway, and he managed to sense Chen Chao's qi. It did not last, a flickering instant before she was pulled back further, and the contact broke.

"You need to stop this," the remnant soul, whispering in the back of his skull, tore him from such terrible contemplation as the intermittent contact with his maid invoked. "People will die if this continues."

"How?" Liao was no master of persuasion and struggled to even talk to anything resembling a crowd. He could not even imagine the proper course to take to suppress a riot.

"How?" Sayaana's skepticism bordered on genuine contempt, a fierce response she rarely took with him no matter how badly he failed. "There are no questions," real fury invested her section of their shared qi circuitry. "You are a cultivator. Command. Make these idiot mortals obey, as they must."

There was something, a cold iron truth at the core of that statement, that Liao discovered he absolutely hated. Yet in that place, in that moment, faced with human beings acting like animals, he could not deny its salience.

A blow from a mug or a stool was not intended to be lethal, but should it crack the skull it could kill. He had seen men fall from heights and die that way, including an older serving woman on the Starwall not six months earlier. Lives were at stake, lives it was his sworn duty to defend. It seemed the sect was obligated to protect the people from more than demons.

He dared not hesitate.

Blades held high; he channeled qi to his legs and jumped high up above the street. Spinning in midair, many meters clear of the soil, he used the Stellar Flash Steps to direct his body downward with terrible acceleration, slamming to the ground with the full force of his weight.

He struck dagger first. Qi cushioned his limbs, allowed him to drive the blades to their hilts into the road, until they struck the gravel base laid beneath the earth and unleashed a terrible ringing, scraping cry. Without rolling or bending he pulled free and rose to his full height even as that discordant tone, similar to nails upon a slate, turned every eye in his direction.

Dozens of bodies turned, pulled by impact and irritant, to stare at the man suddenly in the middle of them all.

"Disperse!" Liao was not a loud man, normally, but he'd been taught by his father to cry for rescue using the full potency of his lungs and did so now. A burst of discharged qi further augmented his voice, giving it the potency of a trumpeting bull elephant. "This street is closed! By sect order! All who remain after a count of ten shall serve thirty days road corvee!"

A brutal threat indeed, one that it sickened Liao to unleash. Road maintenance was hated by the people almost as much as wall maintenance by the sect. Brutally hard labor without pay, it could cripple the weak. A cruel thing to conduct, but in that hour, cruelty served a most purposeful inducement.

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People dropped everything they were carrying and ran. Those too drunk to understand were grabbed by compatriots and hauled away. Those far from home scrambled to seek shelter by rushing back into the wrecked tavern or sheltering in a nearby stables.

Liao counted to ten loud and slow, making certain the whole quadrant heard. He waved his daggers above his head and walked in slow circles, staring down anyone slow to move. It felt absolutely ridiculous, but no one opposed him.

By the time he made it to eight the street was deserted. He finished the count anyway, and then waited equally long to see if any would dare to reemerge. No one did. The sect's reputation sufficed to defray all challenges.

By the time this was done a quartet of tall men in hardened leather lamellar coats and with massive truncheons gripped in meaty fingers had arrived. Their distinctive outfits, with bright, yellow-dyed caps, marked them as members of the city's modest contingent of peacekeepers. Liao gave them a brief look as they arrived, only to watch the faces of these hard men, each of whom over-topped him by a head and had nearly twice his mass, retreated in fear and confusion at his barest glance.

"I must find my servant," he shouted toward the one who seemed to be their leader. "You can handle the rest of this the usual way." He did not know what that was, had no idea as to the rules on civil disturbance. Surely there was some process, drunken brawls could not be a rare occurrence in these compact confines.

"Of course, honored cultivator," the lead guardsman bowed his head as deeply as his hardened cap would allow and set about beating on doors with his truncheon at once, demanding explanations and witnesses.

Seeing this begin, Liao paid the rest of the riot no mind and pushed at once into the tavern. The need to find Chen Chao burned through his veins. He could not forget how he had involved her with a ruthless killer of women. It had been the foolish naivete of a novice, daring to do such a thing and put her in the path of danger that was his to face.

The scene inside the tavern was, visually, worse than that without. Overturned tables, benches, and stools filled the room. Broken crockery, spilled food, and puddled ale covered everything. There were even several dark burn marks from where lamps had found a way to enter the fray. Thankfully, the tavern keeper was clearly no stranger to rough nights and had quickly doused those oils with buckets of sand kept ready to hand.

Those who had remained within during the brawl, or returned at Liao's command, now huddled against the walls, keeping as much distance from each other as possible. No one among their number dared to look directly at him. That, at least, made matters easier, since Liao could simply ignore such stragglers. Chen Chao was what mattered now. He had put her into harm's way, his responsibility. The others could handle themselves and their own foolishness.

The maid was, he discovered to immense relief, hale, though clearly very rattled. She was sheltering in the kitchen with the cooking staff and several other woman, protected by a pair of stoutly built cook's assistants with heavy chopping cleavers in hand. These men, though even larger than the guards outside, gave way instantly as he approached. Not until he reached out to grasp his trembling maid and pull her up to her feet did he realize that the bare steel blades of his daggers, cold metal edges glinting in the lamp light, remained in hand.

Sheathing them quickly, he reached out and pulled Chen Chao into a swift embrace. It was both a gesture of desperate affection and one of protection, for only Deng Sheng, who Liao now realized had been gone before he even arrived, would dare to touch a cultivator's lover. "Are you hurt?" he asked the serving woman desperately.

"No," she shook he head and met his gaze with clear eyes. Then, she looked over to the far side of the tavern where those who had not spilled out into the street remained. "But you arrived just in time. I think they were going to rush us. That would have been…" Her voice was briefly lost to violent shaking. "Very hard."

Liao turned about in a single smooth motion. A sudden, untraceable, spike of anger consumed his mind. "Leave. Now." He ordered all who remained in the tavern. "Surrender to the guards without. They will decide your fate. This establishment is closed till tomorrow."

There was a swift clatter as many bodies made an impromptu exodus across the field of debris.

Liao paid it no mind. Nor did he even acknowledge the tavern owner's glare. Instead, he found a still upright bench and guided Chen Chao to it. Sitting next to her, with one arm over her shoulder and the other hand on her left elbow, he dared at last to ask the critical question. "What happened?"

"I'm not sure," Chen Chao shook her head and whispered as she spoke. "I was seated in the corner, opposite Deng Sheng, sipping ale with a group of washerwomen. Men would come past and proposition us, of course, but it was soft, gentle, nothing to worry about. Deng Sheng was drinking alone, slowly. He spoke to no one. I think," she hesitated. "I think he must have realized I was watching him, because I saw him stare at me and, after I looked away, that was when everything went wild." She stared down, shaking slightly in his arms. "It began with mugs thrown. I think he managed to trick all the men here into blaming each other, somehow."

It was a plausible explanation; one supported by the murderer's absence. It seemed that he had run, but not from a cultivator. A servant would not terrify him, not like that. He would come back, seeking to silence Chen Chao.

And he would get his knife in order to do so.

It meant time was critical. "Chen Chao, have the guards here take you back to the sect, as fast as they can." He said this loud enough to be overheard and added a strong glare to punctuate these words. The burly men nodded vigorously, eager to obey this command. "Will you be alright? I need to stop this murderer, now, tonight."

"Yes," she whispered, then repeated it, finding strength unseen. "Yes. Stop that man. But be careful. He's cunning." She squeezed his hand. Fear grasped every portion of her slender frame at once.

"I will." Liao squeezed back. "And don't worry. Under the starlight the sect is the strongest."

Knowing that every moment he waited saw a desperate killer run loose through Starwall City, one with a weapon the local guards could not oppose, Liao carefully let go of his maid's shoulders and strode hard for the exit. Every pair of eyes followed him as he left, mixed together in a volatile storm of emotions, envy, and regret.

The city guards poured through the door the second he stepped out, choosing their moment well, clearly having overhead it all.

Once on the street, Liao did not allow himself to hold back any further. Qi flushed through his limbs. Light streaked through his eyes. He breathed in deeply and let the Stellar Flash Steps pull him through the city faster than he'd ever moved before.

Each step carried him through the air over an entire building. Distances within the compressed residential block vanished. In a mere seven grand steps, each stride counted and redoubled, he crossed the distance descended. There he streaked to a stop beside the access point that guarded the space where Deng Sheng had hidden his stolen blade. A storm drain grate, now smashed open by swift hammer blows. Beyond those fragmented bars lay the labyrinth of drainage canals that crisscrossed countless paths beneath the city. Even now, the trickle of a soft stream of filthy water could be heard moving below.

Leaning over, Liao bent down and stared into that hole, vision strengthened against the darkness within.

He saw the starlight reflected off the pale, handsome face of Deng Sheng and the fire red mirrored edge of the burning blade the killer held in his right hand.