Sky Pride

The tongue shot out of the water silently, grabbing his leg and yanking him down towards the stream. Tian tried to spin and attack with his rope dart, but he couldn’t get any leverage, everything was wrong and he was going into the beast’s mouth far too fast.

Out of desperation, he slapped both hands against the ground and pushed himself vertical just in time to slam into the beast’s nose. One of his legs was still sticking forward, down the monsters throat, and he could feel the mouth closing. He slapped out once, then a second time, felt something break as the mouth closed. Slapped a third time. A fourth. The tongue was still pulling on his leg. A fifth time, aiming for the same spot. Nothing.

He grabbed the rope dart and whipped it into the beast’s eye. It screamed and let go. Tian fell hard, whatever was already broken got broken worse. He yanked back the dart, spun it over his head and launched it at the demon’s one good eye. It tried to lurch out of the way, but the dart curved impossibly through the air and tore open a corner of it.

Blind demon. Broken Tian. He didn’t like those odds. But his senior brothers were around somewhere, and they hadn’t intervened yet. This was still winnable. And his senior brothers wouldn’t always be there. He had fought sick and wounded more times than he had fought healthy. He bit his lip hard. “Just another hunt,” he thought, “Same as it ever was.”

He almost believed it.

Tian quickly looked around. There was a tree back a little way from the stream. He snagged a branch with the rope and hauled himself up. The demon heard him moving and pounced, tongue shooting forward again. It came close enough to ruffle the folds of his robe- but it missed. And then Tian was up on the tree branch, clinging like a snake.

“I could drop onto its back. I must not have been reaching anything vital when I used Thunderous Palm before. If I was on the beast’s back, I’d be sure to kill it.” Tian thought.

Pain urged him to think a second time. There was a bad throbbing in his knee and hip, and one of his ribs felt the way it used to, when they broke easily. So at least cracked, and maybe broken. Perhaps even worse than that- he was low on qi. He had used Thunderous Palm six times in less than two minutes, five of them in less than thirty seconds. Now, it was trying to help heal him. Dropping on the frog would, best case, aggravate the wounds.

The demon hopped around, roaring and hissing. Something moved in the bushes, and it spun, launching its tongue. It came back with a branch.

“So… this is a dumb idea. But maybe not that dumb.” Tian grinned as he thought. Nobody would mistake it for a happy emotion. “It’s bigger than me and heavier, but maybe I can use that.” He started spinning the dart above his head and shook the tree branch.

The demon shifted with a quick hop and launched its tongue at the rustling leaves. Tian whipped the dart down into the Frog’s mouth. It made an unholy yell as it retracted its tongue. Tian made sure it snagged a bit of the rope as it pulled back. Then he rolled off the tree branch. The rope now made a basic pulley, and yanked the demon, and its tongue, upward as Tian slid down the rope.

What happened next involved a very delicate bit of painful hopping and keeping the rope taught. He had to keep it wrapped around his body to maintain enough grip on it, and enough qi running through it to make it stick to the tree when the demon pulled. The demon was bucking hard. This did bad things to Tian’s broken bones. But he had a demon to kill, and it was pinned in place.

He limped over, found what he thought might be the demon’s ear, and slapped it. The ruined eyes went glassy, but he wasn’t sure the beast was dead. He pulled together the dregs of energy he had left and hit it again. The beast collapsed in on itself. No sign of a pulse or breath. Dead.

“Senior Brothers, if there is a third demon, I must ask you to kill it. Sorry.”

“No no, you did quite well. There are only two demons here.” His senior brothers emerged on the river bank like they had stepped out of a fold in space. He knew they hadn’t, they had been hiding nearby. But they were very good at hiding. The way they appeared was downright eerie. Brother Fan sounded mild as bean milk.

“I seem to remember the mission order only saying one demon, Senior Brother.” Tian did not sound mild. He was doing his best, but his best wasn’t great.

“The mortals reported one demon, so that’s what the Mission Hall posted. You will learn that this is the norm for missions. Just wait until you reach the true battlefield! Almost no mission is as tidy as the mission order makes them sound.” Brother Fan shrugged casually, though Tian could see him taking careful note of the state of his junior. “Brother Tang, if you would?”

The silent Senior Brother walked up to Tian and waved for him to lie down. Surprisingly gentle hands ran over his broken bones. Brother Tang caught Tian’s eyes. Tian took a deep breath and nodded. There was a sharp pain at his knee, followed by a wave of cold, then a subtle warming. It still hurt, but not as badly.

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The hip was more involved to reset, and the pain could be reasonably described as “agonizing.” The rib, however, only got a glance and a head shake.

“He could reset the dislocated bones, but the broken rib is on you, I’m afraid. We will take it slowly on the way back. Incidentally, that healing art he used costs seventy merit points in the Scripture Pavilion.”

“Seven times what it costs for my rope dart and Snake Head Vine Body?”

Brother Fan gave Tian a pointed look. Tian hastily tacked on “Senior Brother?”

“Brother Fu instructed us to keep on top of you about etiquette. Vitally important, as people will absolutely kill you for trivial offenses. I saw a life and death grudge form over a failure to offer a greeting, and a multigenerational clan vendetta broke out over a refusal to drink a toast. Etiquette matters.” Brother Su lost his trademark smile.

“It sounds like etiquette is less important than not being near the kicked-in-the-head, Senior Brother.”

Brother Su jolted at that, then started laughing. It was a merry laugh, but Brother Fan and Brother Tang looked grim.

“Tian, Junior Brother Tian, Little Tian- we are the crazy ones. When you have lost everything except obsession and pride, you don’t let a single goddamn thing slide. Forgiveness and tolerance are only for the weak or the transcendently strong. Understand?”

“No, Senior Brother. But I think I will learn.”

That got a chuckle from Brother Fan. “You will learn. Let’s spend the night here, and head out in the morning.”

“Thank you for your consideration, Senior Brother. I could use the rest.”

The next morning, the senior brothers were amused to watch Tian hack open the frog demons and, by dint of bloody excavation work and some bark twine, he wrapped the two brains in a skin parcel. “Would you like me to put your trophy in my storage ring?” Brother Su sounded like he was choking down a laugh. “I’m afraid both of the brains are pretty addled from your palm arts. The ring will preserve what’s left.”

“That is very kind of you, Brother Su, thank you!” Tian clasped his fist in his hand and bowed, just like he practiced with Brother Fu.

“Out of curiosity, why…?”

“Medicine.”

The return trip to the Temple passed in silence and curious looks.

Alright, good first mission! Now we can really start cooking! Grandpa Jun sounded very eager. Tian could imagine him rubbing his hands together and grinning.

“My rib is broken, Grandpa. I nearly died.”

Close only counts in horseshoes and… Look, the important thing is that you didn’t die. In fact, you downright impressed your senior brothers. That’s big. That means they will cut you loose from the supervised work sooner rather than later.

“Is that a good thing? Knowing I have backup is pretty comforting.”

Far too comforting! We are in energy gathering mode. Full speed ahead. You have been doing a good job so far, but we can take this so much further. Push yourself. Learn new things. Truly master what you have learned so far. Make friends. Make enemies. The important thing is that you are out and stirring around.

“Why is that, Grandpa?”

Tian had been strongly opposed to the entire concept of baths. “NO TIAN SOUP!” he had shouted at a perplexed Senior Brother. Grandpa Jun managed to get him to soak when he pointed out that the tubs were big enough for a malnourished child to fully submerge himself in, and a kid talking to himself underwater was perfectly normal and not kicked-in-the-head behavior. Tian was still skeptical of the benefits of bathing, but was willing to scrub weekly with only a few strong hints from his elders.

Because the more you stir around trying new stuff, going to new places and seeing new things, the more opportunities there will be to utilize your golden finger. A finger you most surely do have. And that means improving your foundation. I told you ages ago that we would be working on your foundation for a long time. Well, right now that kid Fu is kind of right about your qualifications. Based on their so-so testing apparatus, you really are a second rate talent. Don’t feel too bad, that still makes you better than billions of other people. But we ain’t here for second rate.

“I knew that testing device was bad!” Tian decided to ignore the “Golden Finger” nonsense. Grandpa… well, Grandpa could be a little odd at times.

Yeah, it basically ignored your Yin organs, which is a bit of a damn oversight. It’s a paired system, yin and yang organs working together, arranged according to the five elements and regulating the biochemical operation of your body as well as the development and flow of your qi through the meridian network, which also operates in yin-yang pairs. Or at least that’s how they reckon it around here, and hell, it works okay. The thing is, though, even if it did account for everything, it wouldn’t push you into the upper tier.

“Do I really want to be in that tier? It sounds like a lot of trouble.” Tian’s voice came out as a load of blurbles, but Grandpa understood.

You one hundred percent do, because the difference in treatment is insane. The opportunities you get, training you get, equipment, resources, spells, cultivation areas, comrades, food, every single thing that you may come to define as good, the first class talents get the best of it. The top second class talents get the best of the rest, and after that? Grandpa’s voice trailed off.

Tian thought about the townsfolk, and the villagers, and the peasants who worked for the landed estates. “Serfs,” whatever they were.

“Can you be an immortal and a serf?”

Hehehe. That’s my smart grandson. Yes, you can. Functionally, if not literally. It all is quite logical- the sect has to spend resources to raise disciples and those disciples minimize the expense by doing missions. The more missions you complete, the more ‘merit’ you acquire with the Monastery. You are earning, rather than costing, resources, you see? And the faster you grow, and the more powerful you are, the more they believe their resources have been well invested. That means you will earn them a bigger profit in the future.

“But the weaker talents cost more to improve and produce less. So people will invest less in them. They will get treated worse and worse until they get thrown into the dump.”

And the powerful people demand more of them every step of the way down. Signing away your soul is not a metaphor around here.

Tian let a few bubbles out and watched them rise through the bath water. There was a little wooden duck floating in the tub. He didn’t know why, but he was told it was mandatory by his senior brothers. Probably a cultivator thing.

“I should go sign up for more missions.”

I’d do that. And hey. It’ll be fun!