Chapter 87 - Out Of The Fire, Into The Cooler, Stranger Thing That Might Kill You (Patreon)

Chances of a doublepost tonight are low, though not 0, but either way, enjoy! I had a surprisingly busy and productive day, even if I'm still tired as shit from... life, but this one was a blast to write. Lore, some secrets, and finally using some of the fun xianxia concepts, even if not in the ways people may have expected! Enjoy, darlings!

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“You have broken your cultivation,” the man says, his voice melodious in the strange acoustics of the room.

Shin Ren doesn’t speak for a while. At first wondering what he should say, and then wondering if he can speak at all. He doesn’t want to try, only to find out that he’s ruined himself more thoroughly than he thought.

But the stranger says nothing, and after a few moments, Shin Ren decides that enough is enough. Whoever they may be, they’ve allowed him to rest, healed and bandaged him, and have come asking politely, rather than with any hint of aggression, about his circumstances. It would be a mark of nothing but shame to keep silent here, not when he has been treated so honorably.

And despite everything, Shin Ren does still very much want to be noble.

He opens his mouth. Lets out a breath, makes an “ah” sound as he does, just to see if he can. It comes out poorly, his throat unused to the strain after so long quiet (or, perhaps, still raw from any screaming he may have done without realizing). Still- it does emerge.

“Yes,” he whispers, “I have.”

The man nods. “That was my hope. Anything else, and I would have been very concerned about your teachers, to have given you such a method to pursue.”

He leans forward, hands on his knees, eyes piercing and bright. “You should be dead, boy. I’m shocked that last flare-up of yours didn’t kill you, and pleasantly surprised your body has managed to heal as much as it has. You must be quite a talent to produce as much Qi as you do, considering your hungry houseguests.”

“They are not… houseguests,” Shin Ren hisses.

“No? Did you not invite them in? Raise and nurture them tenderly, with only the most shameful of secrets and self-recriminations? Houseguest is more polite than children, yes, but it wouldn’t do to delude yourself about your situation, boy. You are not poisoned, or cursed, or warped by foreign powers and influences. You are in possession of plump, lovingly grown heart demons, of a kind both stronger and less mature than I expected for your cultivation and apparent age. Unless, perhaps, you’re one of those types that likes to make themselves look young.”

Shin Ren frowns, tilting his head. “I’m… not sure what you mean, honored benefactor.”

The man nods at the honorific, as if pleased by its use. His eyes narrow a bit at the denial, though.

“Are you not near the peak of the Core Formation realm?” he asks. “Even with your altered cultivation and the weights upon it, you’re clearly near its edge, and surely hold some considerable powers of your own. Surely you don’t think me foolish enough to believe you achieved such a height at the young age you present yourself as?”

Shin Ren has to take a moment to process that. “I… I apologize, benefactor, but… I believe I am still in my twenty third year of life. While I am… flattered that you would think me (cough) powerful enough to change myself, I am not sure what you mean?”

The man blinks.

He leans back into his chair, staring very, very intently at Shin Ren.

“You’re not lying,” he eventually says.

“No, sir.”

Slowly, he nods. “Well,” he says, “I suppose this may change some things about the state of your heart demons. I had assumed they were old wounds, left to fester for a decade or more, but wondered at their state of immaturity. Perhaps your spawned deviations share your propensity for singular growth, boy. How long have you had them?”

“I- perhaps a few months, sir. Less than a year.”

The man throws his head back and laughs. “Damnation, boy, and already they’ve nearly killed you? You don’t do things slowly, do you?”

He gets up from his seat, imbued with a sort of bright positivity and boundless energy. “As the kids used to say, Throne be Damned, I’ve yet to see one with such singular talent before you! I’m aware it’s a bit rude to ask after one’s circumstances beyond what’s needed, but tell me, which sect spawned such majesty? I have been cultivating for some time, but surely I would have heard of a master capable of raising such a prodigy. Tell me boy, was it the High Heaven Sect? The Justicars? Ah, no, you possess a fiery nature that may suit them, but your robes hardly fit their colors. Divine Elements sect, perhaps? Or are you from further afield, from the lands of our wilder cousins the Maw’s, rather than a sect? I’ve not saved you just to kill you boy, there’ll be no discrimination from me here. Tell me which sect I must congratulate when I leave my seclusion!”

“I… I am sorry, benefactor, but I don’t know many of the names you speak of. I am from the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect, of the third ring.”

The man stops cold. He seems to switch almost completely from a benevolent, bright figure, embracing the vitality that glows from him, to a flat and emotionless being, staring out from eyes of golden-brown and measuring Shin Ren like an ant beneath a microscope.

“A bit of a mouthful, no?” he asks, his smile returning, but slower, more sedate. “What alliance does your sect fall under? The Brilliant Scale Alliance? The Brotherhood of War? The Alliance of Strength Divine?”

Shin Ren swallows, trying to keep his breathing even. “Again, benefactor, I’ve never heard of such alliances. I am no student of history, sir, but… perhaps you have been in seclusion for longer than you thought?”

The man frowns. “It’s possible, yes. If not them, then who rules these lands? I am an old figure, it is true, even by my own reckoning, but I was not so far gone into the path of cultivation that I did not have allies, those who would have sought to reach me should they need aid, or to warn me of great changes. Tell me, boy. Who claims the grounds of the burning flats?”

“No one, at the moment, sir. There are few sects or cities this far towards the horizon, especially here in the southlands. The only real authority that could lay claim without contest would be the Empire.”

The room freezes over.

It does not change in temperature, and doesn’t grow icicles to complement the warm stone. Shin Ren’s burns don’t ache any less, like they would in such a change. But the room freezes, and he has no better word for it. It becomes perfectly and utterly still, as if some aspect of movement, of space, of time, has suddenly stopped in its flow and risen from its bed, to coil and look at him as one does prey.

He is, for a moment, startled by the fact that his heart is still beating.

The man looks at him, and his eyes are no longer brown. They are not eyes. There is no color. There is just… space. Like looking into an extension of the same room he’s already in, the warm stone going in forever and yet only showing him a window of a wider place, rather than diminishing.

“Which Empire?” the man asks. His voice is no longer melodious. He sounds like thunder, drifting over the horizon.

Shin Ren struggles to breathe. For a moment, he realizes he doesn’t even feel pain, his every nerve alight instead with adrenaline and a fight or flight response that, when faced by something of a magnitude above, can instead only choose freeze.

“Which. Empire.”

“The- the Empire, sir,” he manages to squeeze out. “The only Empire. It rules all the lands. Every sect bows to it, sir.”

“Since. When.”

“Since the last few thousand years, almost,” Shin Ren says. He is starting to hyperventilate. “In the last few hundred its technology and industry have reshaped the world. Roads, academies, vehicles, healing, and commerce between all cities and sects. I- please. I don’t mean to offend.”

The man blinks, and in that instant they are eyes again, rather than that… everything. The room unfreezes in a moment, though nothing feels like it’s specifically changed.

“I… I apologize, boy. It would seem that my experiences nearly made of me a liar.” The man sits back down where he was, taking a long, deep breath. “It would seem that the urge to discriminate remains. But my word stands. I did not heal you just to kill you, no matter what news this messenger may bring.”

Shin Ren nods, before painfully raising his hands, placing one fist into his palm and bowing. He can feel the bandages and taught skin straining, but he manages it with little more than a low groan.

“This- this unworthy one thanks the benefactor for his mercy and wisdom,” he manages.

The man snorts, but doesn’t say anything else for a while.

“I doubt it’ll be much use,” he eventually says, “but what year is it? According to standard calendar. Or old calendar, whatever you call it now.”

Shin Ren pauses to think. Officially, the date is 3102 AE, After Empire, but he doubts that’s what he means. He has to wrack his brain to think of it, but eventually an old memory, from on of his more boring lessons, bubbles up.

“It should be… 77021, sir, according to the old Sectoral Calendar of Wars.”

The man snorts. “Not a bad name, I suppose. Accurate, too. You said a few thousand years since the Empire. What calendar year is it now?”

“3102 AE, sir, but… it’s a bit misleading. The Empire’s borders didn’t reach out to the fifth ring until a thousand years ago, when the great expansion happened. Before that, it was only really the first ring, with attacks out to the surrounding areas to defeat foreign assaults. Eventually, with the resources and new technology that the Empire brings, the other rings have all either entered into the nation or pledged nonviolence.”

“Ah. ‘Foreign assaults’. Good to know the language hasn’t changed all that much, then.”

The man stands, the slate-grey chair picked up like balsa wood and casually placed beneath the desk off to one side.

“Well. It hurts me to say it, boy, but my words from before remain true. Say what you will of your Empire, but it seems its methods possess some results, if it means that their sects have raised one such as you. Your masters may be… what they are, but I will grant them this. Twenty two years old, and already pressing against Nascent Soul.”

He sighs. “Well. When you manage to beat those heart demons, you’ll likely push right through it. Probably a tribulation when you do, so… be prepared.”

And then he turns to leave.

“Ah- wait!”

Shin Ren can barely move, but it’s enough to get him mostly out of bed. The blanket, a soft and light thing that barely presses against his burns, still feels difficult to cast off, so weak is he, but he manages to free his legs enough to sit upright in bed.

The man says nothing. He doesn’t even cock an eyebrow or shift his stance, merely waiting with his back turned.

Slowly, Shin Ren raises himself off the bed. Slowly, with trembling arms and legs that scream with every ounce of skin that comes into contact with the ground, he kneels, until he can press his head to the ground. He can feel scabs and blisters tearing, feel his bandages getting wet with blood and other fluids as he kneels in supplication, his hands pressed before him as he makes himself small.

“Please, sir,” he whispers, his voice strained and quiet. He can barely breathe, let alone speak, but he forces the words out anyways. “Please. I ask to be in your care.”

He doesn’t see or hear the man move.

“Surely you have already been cared for?” the man says. “I have no intention to leave my work unfinished. You’ll be healed soon enough, especially now that you can use your Qi again and I won’t be wasting any medicines of higher quality.”

He breathes through his nose, choking on the pain, forcing the trembling to leave his voice even as his hands shake with exhaustion and pain against the ground.

“Please, master. Teach me. Accept me into your care.”

The silence weighs heavy. The world weighs heavy. It is not so intense, but Shin Ren feels that same experience, of the world somehow freezing while continuing to be.

“Why?”

Just one word. Simple question, really. One without much answer. The man, whoever he is, surely must be someone ancient, whose cultivation Shin Ren can only guess at, but it’s enough to sustain him in seclusion for thousands of years, so it can’t be below the Divergent Paths. There’s nothing Shin Ren can offer him, especially not as a member of a group he seems to clearly despise.

Well. There is one thing.

“I am… considered a talent by many, master,” he rasps. “A prodigy. For the third ring. Held against those of the first ring, or even the second, I am no more than a flea, considered slow for my age. Until the bottleneck of the final formation of a Soul, there are many beneath me in age who have accomplished more than I.”

“If you mean to impress me, boy, you’ve gone in the wrong direction.”

Still, he hears the hesitation in the old monster’s voice. The intrigue. The sheer intensity of the fact that so many, so young, have achieved what was once myth or legend.

“Sir, despite my efforts. Despite- despite my travels, even to the academies. I have never met one whose pressure feels like yours. You, alone, stand unique to my senses. I believe, master, that all you would need is a willing student to outshine even the greatest of academies the Empire could offer. I can only offer my knowledge of the world beyond, and the opportunity to mold willing clay. But I pray that you may find some value in what I offer, master.”

He hears footsteps. Bare feet against stone as the man turns around.

“Why do you offer anything?” the man asks. “Surely your empire can aid you. There’s plenty of room left to grow, once you deal with those demons of yours.”

“I believe that you, master, may have differences of thought on demons and cultivation that could benefit me more. Sir.”

There is silence.

The pressure in the room vanishes.

“Get some rest, boy,” he hears the man sigh. “Quit your bleeding all over my floor. It’s been an age since I have taken a student, literally, it would seem, and I’ll not have my first in so long sully himself with foolish shows of subservience.”

Shin Ren’s head shoots up, his eyes wide even as he can’t help but freeze in pain from moving so much, and then freeze again in sudden alarm.

The man is inches away from him, eyes staring into his. It wasn’t visible before, but here, so close, nearly touching, he can see that the man’s pupil isn’t just warm brown. It’s stone. He can see, in his eyes, a city, a valley, a series of stones and mountains and constructs and carvings and temples, arrayed in a beautiful, perfect ring around an infinite black hole that masquerades as a pupil.

“Mark my words, boy,” the man whispers, the world trembling at his voice. “I don’t like being played. You’re lucky that I like standing higher than fools more. I am Qu Haolan, and I shall do far more than mold you. I will make of you something worthy of my name.”