Wu Meng Yao had never considered herself a coward. She had fought spirit beasts and rogue cultivators without hesitation. She had endured the pains of advancement and tribulations. She had held firm on the path of cultivation where so many others hesitated, broke, or failed. Yet, every day, the idea that she was a coward weighed her down a little more. Not a coward of the body, but something far worse, far more reprehensible. She feared that she was a coward of the soul. And all it had taken to plant that seed of doubt inside of her was a look of hurt on the face of a man she barely knew. He had, in the end, tried to be her friend. She had told him that he frightened her.
That much was true. Lu Sen or Judgment’s Gale or whatever name he decided to go by these days did frighten her. He was too powerful by far for anyone at his stage of cultivation. It wasn’t just that he could wield multiple types of qi like it was nothing at all, which had been a shock all on its own. The sheer amount of qi he could wield and the depths of his reserves simply defied belief. The man had stood off a spirit beast tide and, if the aftermath was any indication, had killed a truly staggering number of those spirit beasts…by himself. She had seen the burned-out and blasted ruins of that town, along with the shredded corpses of the spirit beasts. She had seen them with her own eyes and could barely credit it. That alone would have been enough for most people, but that wasn’t what had truly frightened her.
Looking back, she could see that it had been the incident with Changpu that had driven the icy blade of fear into her heart. She could remember the expression on Lu Sen’s face with perfect clarity, as though it had been seared into her eyes. That look of calm, detached, absolute certainty in his own rightness as he cut off Changpu’s arm was the moment when he went from object of curiosity to object of terror. He hadn’t looked like a young man in that awful moment. He had looked ancient, remote, and terrible. Then, the casual indifference with which he had thrown Song Ling the pill, that impossible pill, that dragged Changpu back from the shores of death. It made Lu Sen seem like some kind of mercurial god masquerading as a man. In her mind, she knew that he was just a man. She had seen him injured. She had seen him bleed. In her mind, she knew that it was true, but not in her heart. Then, there was the incident at the brothel. If she hadn’t been frightened before, she was in a lot of company being frightened after that.
That was why she had rejected his overtures of friendship. That was why she had said nothing when Changpu left the sect, vowing vengeance if it took a thousand lifetimes. If only she had known then what she knew now. Her life in the sect had been transformed almost entirely on his word. He had told Elder Deng, Elder Deng of all people, that her honor could be trusted. Oh, how her shame had burned inside of her when she learned that. With those words, she had been brought to the attention of the second most powerful person in the sect. And where Elder Deng’s attention went, everyone’s attention went. Opportunities she could have never dreamed of before were presented to her on an almost weekly basis. With those words, she had been trusted with a personal student. A student who possessed an almost fanatical drive to learn and succeed. With those words, Lu Sen had changed her life. His reward for that spontaneous act of kindness and implicit endorsement of her worthiness? Her fear.
What she wouldn’t give to have that moment back, to be able to do it over again. But that was the stuff of children’s stories. She couldn’t have that moment back to do again. Yet, what had she done to rectify that cowardice? Nothing. If I was sincere in my shame, I would find him, she thought. I would find him and set right what I put wrong. Of course, she also knew that he was effectively in hiding after having, somehow, turned nascent soul cultivators loose on the demonic cabal he had exposed. A genuine reason to fear him, she thought. What kind of man could simply summon nascent soul cultivators, even for something as important as destroying demonic cultivators? Still, the entire cabal had been all but obliterated by all accounts. It was possible that Lu Sen might have finally surfaced somewhere. If he had, she could find him. Plus, Elder Deng had hinted that it might be time for her to take a journey somewhere. Travel could drive cultivation in ways nothing else would. Wu Meng Yao nodded to herself. Yes, it was high time that she traveled.
***
Shen Mingxia was happy. In fact, she was the happiest she had ever been in the sect, save perhaps that first day when she’d been granted membership. What a difference a year could make. Before, there had been Han Jun, with his wandering hands and his expectations. A man who taught nothing save how to avoid his line of sight, at least if you valued your virtue. Those had been dark days, indeed, and Shen Mingxia had often considered leaving the sect to find another sect somewhere else. Yet, her family was here. Yes, she would likely outlive them all, but that was long decades into the future. If she left, she wouldn’t get to see her brother or her sister grow up, marry, or even become cultivators themselves. She would have missed everything. So, she stayed. She endured. She clung to honor because it was the only pillar she had. Looking back, she knew that, if things had continued on as they were, it would have broken her. It wouldn’t have happened all at once, but inch by insidious inch.
Then, Han Jun had decided to punish her for not warming his bed by sending her out to die. Then, the killing had started. She still had nightmares about that night sometimes. Yet, she had been spared. She knew, in general, why she had been spared. That man who had seemed to her like nothing more than a ruthless killing machine had needed a message sent. That explained why he spared someone. But she’d never gotten a clear answer about why he had chosen to spare her. Had it been simple luck? She might never know. Then, he’d saved her, which had been something else entirely. Sparing her had been nothing. Saving her had required a choice. A choice he’d made twice, and she didn’t know why he’d done that either. It certainly hadn’t gained him anything in the moment.
For such actions, he could have demanded just about anything from her, anything at all, and she would have been honor-bound to try to see it through in repayment of the life debt she owed him. Someone like Han Jun would have made sexual demands of her, as would have so many others. Some would have demanded that she acquire some impossible prize for them. Him? For his largesse, he said she owed him dinner. Dinner. As if her life was such a petty thing that dinner could be enough. Yet, she hadn’t even managed to make good on that meal, which bothered her more than she’d like to admit. Still, in one evening, he had saved her life and released her from the clutches of Han Jun, a gift that nothing short of his death would have accomplished. In many ways, she felt more indebted to the complicated, strange wandering cultivator for that than for her life.
The greatest gift he had bestowed on her, though, was Wu Meng Yao. She finally had a real teacher. One who was kind, talented, and wise. One who shared her knowledge freely and corrected mistakes firmly but without malice. Shen Mingxia had grown in leaps and bounds with Wu Meng Yao as her guide. How the wandering cultivator had known, how he could have seen so deeply into her to understand the kind of teacher she needed, she would likely also never know. All she knew was that, should she ever meet Judgment’s Gale again, she would kowtow to him a hundred times in thanks if he would let her. She’d also buy him that damn dinner.***
Elder Deng listened to the latest reports from the outside world. There had been a time, glorious centuries, when he had not concerned himself with the outside world save for when war had threatened to topple their city. All of that had changed with the coming of that boy. How Elder Deng had wanted to curse that boy and lay the blame for all of the subsequent chaos at his feet. The elder was honest enough to recognize that some tiny little piece of him truly did blame the boy and resent him. The rest of him, though, the wiser parts of him knew that was unjust and unworthy of the principles of the Soaring Skies sect. After all, the boy had not created the corruption in the sect, merely exposed it.
And there had been corruption. They had ultimately found not one, but two other fully-fledged demonic cultivators hiding in the sect. People that Elder Deng might otherwise have thought committed members of this ancient place. Their discovery had merely uncovered the peak of the mountain. Day by day, week by week, abuse after abuse had been discovered. Some sect members had been cast out. Some had been executed. The demonic cultivators had done their work well, slowly hollowing out everything that once made the Soaring Skies sect the pinnacle of honor. That honor still lived. He saw in the Wu Meng Yao, who the boy had brought to his attention. He saw it in her student, Shen Mingxia, who had refused to attack one who had spared her, very nearly at the cost of her life. Yes, their honor lived, but it had been tarnished. Only time and unrelenting effort would let them buff away that corrosion and return their honor to its previous luster.
Unfortunately, Elder Deng could no longer comfortably look only inward at the sect. That inward focus and his unfounded faith in their honor had let demonic cultivators take root. It let promising students be compromised with poor teaching, false doctrine, or more basic assaults. Now, he turned his eyes and ears to the world beyond the walls of the sect. He listened for word of the demonic cultivators. That news was almost always a small joy because the boy had unleashed an apocalypse on those fiends in the form of Fate’s Razor, Alchemy’s Handmaiden, and the Living Spear. When news of demonic cultivators came in, it was almost always a report of their brutal deaths.
Yet, he also listened for news of the boy. Of that, there had been none for nearly half a year. He feared that the boy might well be dead. Although, word was that he had carved a path of destruction through the demonic cultivators and their servants first. Still, death would be a poor reward for exposing such filth. He had also been hearing troubling news of large, unprovoked spirit beast attacks on towns and villages. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Spirit beasts were usually predictable, at least the ones that chose to occupy lands near to civilization were. He feared changes in that status quo could only prove an ill omen. Frowning at that thought, he resolved to send out people to investigate. If something had changed with the spirit beasts, he needed to know.
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