On the northern continent, thousands of miles from where Tsem was beginning to explore the area around the basilisk’s lair, a girl, two years his senior, sat in wait. Fate is a nebulous thing, constantly shifting, a web of possibility. No outcome is ever assured, however, in that web a startling number of threads connected this girl to Tsem. In most, she was his fiercest, most hated, adversary, often his doom. In those few others where she wasn’t, she became his closest ally, his best friend. It is rare indeed for two individuals to be so connected, but it was not always so for them. Only a few weeks ago, those threads in which they met were comparably rare, and those in which they became adversaries were all but nonexistent. Many of the girl’s threads had been rewritten a few weeks ago. Precious few for the better. It was a particularly ugly thread that had dragged her here, one with the potential to do irreparable harm to everything she was.
The gate leading to the celestial twin sects was obnoxiously large and covered in colorful murals depicting the history of each of its sects. On the left, showing the pride of the sect of the blossoming sun, bright oranges and reds depicted a battle, a beautifully drawn scene of a colossal stone statue dancing, its centerpiece. They’d braided metal letters into the gate too, and they shone in a way that only blessed metal could. On the right, the sect of the blooming moon took a more conservative approach, its images, depictions of old men meditating, were shown in shades of blue. Grypha might have approved of the blooming moon’s way of doing things if she wasn’t certain that the gate would burst into beautiful hand-crafted illusions the second the sun set.
Her fellow disciple candidates all marveled at the grand structure, in awe of its beauty. It was a representation of what the guilds were, glamor and prestige for those talented enough to grab it, a place where those not born into one of the great clans could feel important, could grasp some political power for themselves. Grypha felt sick at the sight. Cultivation was about finding your place in the world and growing into a better version of yourself. It was about communicating with the world around you and gaining some insight of the great world you lived in. This was a perversion of all of those things, and Grypha was embarrassed to be among those seeking admittance.
The worst were those from her own community. She could forgive those dressed in the robes of minor clans, or even the simple shirts of an artisan family, but those few who wore the traditional taishowa—a loose fit, hardy, long tunic woven with a slanted ridge around the shoulders—should have known better. Anyone who had spent any time as a wandering cultivator, meditating in roadside ditches and beautiful natural waterfalls in equal measure, should know that cultivation wasn’t about glamor or power, it was a continuous battle against yourself. Though, who was Grypha to judge? She was here herself, and for a purpose far dirtier than the pursuit of personal power.
A lone man, dressed as a steward, had been stationed by the gate, calling out names about twice an hour. She had been waiting since the sun rose, and had spent the time in meditation, but Grypha was having difficulty concentrating. The little things were distracting her, the things that she’d long since learned to ignore: the occasional tickle of the hair in her ponytail being blown into her neck, the odd stray thread from her taishowa touching against her skin where her shoddy needlework was failing. Even the odd brawl among fools willing to waste their qi against their waiting competitors drew her attention. She half-wished one of those fools would challenge her. Across her lower back, the blade she’d carved from sacred mahogany, her steadfast partner, sat waiting for their next dance. Such joy always helped dispel feelings of dread and terror, and right now, those had a firm grip on her.
“Grypha of no clan.” A series of whispers broke out, but she ignored them, rising from her position and pushing her way through the grand gate. She had bigger concerns than fools who had never interacted with one of her people before.
The moment she stepped past the gate, she realized it had been holding back when compared to the grandeur of the sect itself. On a distant hill, an enormous red leafed tree continuously dropped leaves, themselves the size of large barges. The leaves drifted down where some were swallowed by a grand waterfall that stretched for half a mile across a massive river. In several places, those falls had been redirected, the water flowing into homes, training centers, libraries, and more than anywhere else, her destination: a grand arena encased in thick crystal.
Grypha made her way towards that arena, her heart beating so fast she had to reach into herself to make sure her qi was still cycling smoothly. She traced its path. It centered on her heart, expanding out in 12 intersecting loops that traced key paths through bones, muscles, and especially her organs. Each of those pathways, meridians they were called, had taken a great deal of time and effort to cycle her qi into, slowly purifying them, and strengthening her body in doing so. It was the first, the heart meridian, that would be most important today. At the very end of that channel, in the tip of her little finger, she had formed a connection between her inner self and the outer world, a kaerma. In her mind’s eye, it was a bubble which she could saturate with qi. Once inside, she could move that energy around in any way she wanted and even move it outside herself with the use of a technique. Not of course, that she had mastered its use yet.
Inside the dome, twelve sect elders waited. Half were dressed in orange robes, the other in pale blue, all of them had the night sky as their undershirt: fine dark fabric embroidered with celestial bodies that seemed to drift around them as they moved. Grypha knew they were each at least several centuries old, but to her eyes, they all looked youthful. Their skin appeared silky, smooth, and refined, nicer even than her own which had blemishes earned from seventeen years of life. A feast sat in front of them.
A large, fat man leaned forward, half a chicken in his grasp. He waved his hand cheerfully. “Hello there.” He gave a wide grin. “We look forward to your demonstration today. We’ve prepared a leaf from our celestial tree for you. I think you’ll find it will give you plenty of opportunity to showcase your talents. We wish you the best.” The other elders nodded along, seeming happy to let the fat elder speak for them and no wonder, the man was a living legend: the very dancing colossus depicted on the gates. Grypha had heard his story told from a dozen people in almost as many ways. She still wasn’t entirely sure how exactly he’d managed to rout an entire invasion through the art of dance. The stories seemed to differ there, but they all agreed that he had managed the feat.
With a snap of his pudgy fingers, the floor began glowing slightly. Beneath the crystal surface, Grypha could indeed see one of the great leaves she had seen falling outside. They were, for many reasons, the thing the celestial twin sects were most known for. The celestial tree itself held a staggering amount of both divine and demonic qi. As with all things that had both primordial types of qi, the tree exhibited unusual and unpredictable effects. Notably, these leaves served as perfect combat training.
For some reason, each leaf held within it a living breathing illusion. Probably due to the demonic qi’s influence, most of these illusions contained monsters—be they demonic or divine beast or even a complete fiction—and almost without fail, they tried to ‘kill’ anyone who stepped foot in the illusion. So, it was no surprise when a snarling form began appearing next to her. It was, however, a little unexpected to find it wielding a weapon.
Grypha pulled her partner free from its cloth sheath, moving into a light stance that kept her balanced on the balls of her feet. She breathed in a specific pattern, circulating qi through her heart meridian and into the kaerna at the tip of her little finger. Her opponent stepped in, still just partially formed, and Grypha slipped beneath its swinging arm, a solid club swinging over her head. As she passed, she slid her blade in a precise strike across her attacker’s stomach. The attack would have disemboweled a mundane enemy, but here it just skittered off.
She made space, sliding her feet rapidly backward. The floor of the arena had changed along with the illusion. She seemed to be in a cavern of some sort with a deep pool of incredibly clear water in the middle. Her opponent was slow in turning around, its movements not quite natural. The reason was clear: it was not biological. Grypha was facing off against an elemental.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
This elemental seemed to be an odd combination of flame and ice, the two substances swirling around each other in a complex pattern. The club was made entirely from pieces of that ice which meant that it would probably hit with less force than a traditional club. Of course, that was balanced out by the spikes that covered its surface. Those did not look like fun.
The elemental walked towards her with jittery steps, and she easily avoided its clumsy swings. Most of her attention went into building a technique in her kaerna. She wove two parts wood qi and one part…something else…in a practiced pattern. It was the first of five techniques denoted in her path manual. As she pushed the qi into the outer world, she focused on the feeling of solidity and strength. As she did, she stroked her blade with her finger.
The blade lit up with the technique, glowing a faint maroon color. Faint wisps of white brambles wrapped around the blade. Grypha stepped beneath another clumsy swing, sweeping her blade clean through the elemental’s neck. She felt some resistance, but her technique carried enough weight to see it through. Immediately, the decapitated elemental began glowing brighter and the ice and fire stopped their chaotic swirl, seeming to act, again, as nature dictated.
Grypha cursed, throwing herself backwards. She avoided the worst of the resulting explosion, but steam poured out rapidly, forcing her to move qi through her meridians and burn it, reinforcing her skin against burns.
In the middle of the cavern, the pool of water began bubbling. Grypha cautiously backed away. She maintained her technique with a slight trickle of her qi, concentrating to make sure she didn’t expend anything she didn’t need to. She felt herself slip and struggled to get control again. Her qi was shaking. With a start she realized her hands were too. You’re pathetic. She raged at herself. She’d fought with her life on the line plenty of times before. Your life isn’t the one at risk today. It was more reason for her to focus and not lose qi.
An image floated through her head, her little brother, barely walking now, always so full of joy at each new discovery the world brought him. In this image that joy was gone though. Instead, she saw a knife at his pudgy little throat, his eyes watering from fear.
Two elementals erupted from the pool, landing to either side of her. Grypha roared, a scream painfully grasped through her throat, just as she grasped for her own courage. Her hands didn’t stop their shaking though and neither did her qi. She swept low, bringing her blade around with a flash through one of her opponents. At the same time, her trailing leg used that momentum to trip the other. Grypha burned qi to give her the strength to push clear of the explosion, burning a little more than she wanted due to her shaky control.
The tripped elemental lost its own form in the first’s explosion, causing an even larger cloud of steam. Grypha sped away from it, racing around the pool which was already bubbling again. This time, four elementals burst free. They seemed to move with just a little more coordination than the previous ones.
With four elementals in close quarters, each moving more like a human who’d picked up a club for the first time and less like a shambling undead, Grypha was pressed. She dipped and ducked, but her sword still had to move to block attacks. There was no proper opening to attack. That was fine. She began weaving a second technique.
She danced in a square through the four elementals, her blade leaping this way and that as needed to block the unorganized attacks that rained down on her. She was slowly, involuntarily pressed towards one of the cavern walls. Unnoticed by the mindless constructs, the faint white, wispy brambles unwrapped from her sword, trailing suspended in the air. With a force of will, Grypha completed her technique, battling her own shaky qi to do so. Coward. The word repeated over and over in her thoughts, frustration at herself building. The technique finished and the brambles began glowing with the same red energy as her sword. Suddenly, the elementals found themselves bound. An experienced combatant may have stilled their movements, but the four constructs moved forward, driving the bramble vines through their bodies.
The resulting explosion was enormous and Gyrpha was forced to use yet another technique to escape. It was the last of the techniques that she had managed to learn, and the one she was furthest from mastery with. Under the best of circumstances, her qi efficiency was poor. With her body shaking like it was, she had to positively gush qi.
Red light poured out around her feet, forming the vague veiny texture of dry leaves. It was a qinggong skill allowing her to move further with each step. Light as a leaf. Light as a leaf. She took five steps along the wall, peeling further away from it with each. She made it clear of the blast, barely, before falling back to the floor, all of her techniques guttering out despite her efforts to hold them.
The pool began bubbling again, and Grypha checked her pool of qi. It was far lower than she would have liked, about a third of the way gone. Knowing she was short on time, she moved her qi rapidly into the kaerna of her little finger again, shifting it in the pattern needed to enhance her blade.
Eight forms burst forth from the pool, two of which immediately fired cones of flames at her, sacrificing their own essence to do so. The attack, so unexpected, almost caught Grypha. She had to abandon her technique, unused qi vanishing to the winds. There was nowhere near enough time to use her qinggong skill, so, she was forced to burn the qi still running through her meridians to fling herself to the side with brute physical force. Her muscles protesting heavily at the maneuver.
A trickle of flame licked her shoulder, and she cried out in pain, skin blistering slightly from the intense blast even despite her copious amounts of internal qi. A club swung at her as she pulled herself to her feet, and she barely managed to block. The six remaining elementals took full advantage of their fellows’ sacrifices, using their clubs with far more skill than even the previous batch. There was no evading them all.
Grypha took two blows, one to the hip the other to the forearm. The blow to the hip was by far the more devastating, the sharp bits on the weapon biting through her skin, leaving wounds that would have festered with ice if not for her burning yet more qi internally to counteract the effect. At the very least, she was able to build her qinggong skill, though it cost a great deal of qi to do so.
Grypha launched herself up, using the head of one of the elemental’s as a springboard to leap to the ceiling. With a full flip twist, she took herself to the cavern’s ceiling. One foot pushed laterally against the roof, sending her flying across the central pool. She could feel herself falling. She reached another foot up, her full stretch just enough to catch it again and hurl her at an angle into one of the walls. She accepted the bruises willingly, using the time to build her technique back on her blade.
The elementals moved to flank her, splitting into two groups of three. It was a mistake on their part. She was far closer to one group than the other. They’d gifted her with time. She blew into their midst with the speed granted by her qinggong skill, her sword beginning to glow red. She struck at the most central of the group, her blade stabbing through the middle of its stomach. Not quite the blow she’d been aiming for, but she was moving fast and holding multiple techniques at once.
She escaped the ensuing explosion easily with her feet still enwreathed in qi, but Grypha had forgotten their new trick. One of the elementals, seeing it would be destroyed in the blast anyway, opted to turn itself into a cone of billowing flame. The flames licked her feet, burning her skin and disrupting the qinggong technique.
The other group of elementals turned around, charging at her together, but she was ready with another technique formed from her dribbles of remaining qi. A broad stroke of her blade left brambles in the air to meet the charge. She timed it just right, leaving no time for a suitable reaction. She moved backward crying from the pain of her ruined feet. An explosion rocked the cavern.
Grypha fell against a wall spent. She was shocked to find her qi was all but gone from that rapid series of techniques. You’ve killed him. She despaired. She should have been able to hold out for longer, make her qi count for more.
She slowly turned her head, praying that the pool hadn’t started bubbling again. If it had, she would fail the test. Her heart, no longer filled with qi, beat slowly. Her sword hand trembled so badly, she lost her grip, and it clattered to the ground. She made to pick it up, and as she did, her surroundings changed back to the crystalline arena. With the change came a wave of relief, her panic abating.
“She passes.” Announced an especially short elder in pale blue robes with a grunt. “Barely.”
The dancing colossus muttered to himself, his hand gripping a wine glass delicately. “The talent on display was disappointing though. Her qi control is rough, her techniques somewhat problematic.” He listed her failings with a neutral voice, but then his tone turned severe. “And she did not enjoy herself.”
Grypha started at that. Her fingers trembled again. She’d passed, but it didn’t sound like they would accept her into either sect. If she didn’t make it in…
A young-looking woman with a severe expression enhanced by her impressively thick eyebrows stood up amidst the elders of the blooming moon sect. “We should be rewarding her diligence. We have seen far more gifted cultivators fail, even today.”
The room murmured, but nobody seemed to agree with her point. The dancing colossus shook his great head. “Junior Ming, surely you recall what has happened to nearly every disciple we have trained who lacks talent. Diligence does not last. Maybe it happens in a year, or maybe in fifty, but all lose their motivation eventually. All who do not enjoy the journey of cultivation in and of itself will eventually falter and fail. I saw only pain and fear of failure from this candidate today.”
The elder Ming inclined her head and seemed to be about to sit down when she took another glance towards Grypha, and her eyes widened slightly. Her heels suddenly dug down sharply, so sharply, it almost seemed she had used internal qi. “I choose to sponsor her.”
There was little argument after that. Perhaps a few eye rolls, but none seemed to care enough to give more time to the matter. Grypha gratefully left the arena, walking down an indicated hall, sent to meet with a senior disciple who would explain her obligations to her. She didn’t smile. She didn’t actually want to join a sect, and she definitely didn’t want to do what she knew came next. It went against the teachings of her people. They would have told her to leave her brother. Nothing was supposed to stand between a wandering cultivator and her freedom.
Grypha was weak. She was terrified. She was showing the great clans they could command her people. She just wanted her brother back. She wanted him back so badly.
