I'd been in exactly two public cultivator fights before…

In the first one, I'd punched out about six of Lin's uncle's teeth and dropped him like a bag of hammers. That was a pretty unambiguous victory. In the second one, I'd fought with Black-blade Feng and his thugs. I'd call that fight a draw since neither of us got what we wanted out of it.

Just because I fled the town in abject terror doesn't mean I lost, okay? It was a strategic retreat.

Now I was fighting in a marketplace. Again. But this time, I had allies. In fact, we had the numerical advantage - five of us against three of them! Well… until Monkey Yang tried to rush the armored boss guy facing off against Big Shilei and took a boot to the head. The armored guy managed it with contemptuous ease, barely taking his eyes off Shilei as he dropped poor Yang.

Ichikei started toward him. "Yang!" she cried out, her face twisted in worry. I was right - they were definitely an item. Before she could get to him, the other cultivator cut her off.

Meanwhile, Longwye, the creep who preferred me to Ichikei, swung at me with his spear. The angle surprised me, and he was fast, though not quite as fast as Black-blade had been. I twisted to avoid it but still took a hit to the side. Fortunately, it was with the butt of the spear. I guess he wasn't going for the kill.

Not out of humanitarian mercy or anything. No, he just wanted to have me for himself after the fight was over. What a great guy!

He brought the spear back around, holding the shaft near the blade and whipping the weighted butt of the thing around. It whooshed past me, the air from it whipping at my borrowed clothes. Longwye was fast… but I was faster. I dodged out of the way, my sandals sliding along the sand, and pivoted on the spot, reaching out to grab the shaft of the spear.

I grasped it, braced and pulled. Longwye's eyes widened as I yanked the spear to the side, dragging him with it - he was a lot bigger than me, but I was stronger. It would have been about impossible on Earth for me to be stronger than a guy his size who wasn't all unexercised fat, but things were different in cultivator-land. Grappling for control of the weapon, I pushed Longwye back and slammed him into the nearby wall. Brick cracked and the awning above us collapsed to the side, nearly crushing a group of terrified children.

"Get back!" I shouted.

"My teacher is a cultivator!" one of the girls yelled excitedly - she'd been less than a foot from where the awning had fallen.

She was too excited to realize "I said get the hell back!"

Her friends began to drag her away. "Cultivators are mean."

Longwye used my momentary distraction to bound off the wall, doing an improbable flip thing and striking me in the shoulder. A weird thrum of energy reverberated through my body, and suddenly my right arm was half numb, my grasp fumbling around the haft of the spear. He struck again, but I used the weapon to knock his fist to the side. Instead, it vibrated the spear so suddenly that I lost my grip on it and it want clattering to the side.

"You… you're a cultivator!" he gasped.

"Yeah! So… give up, asshole!" I shouted back - I wasn't really sure what significance being a cultivator versus a pill-popper had in the middle of a fight. Or, for that matter, why he'd concluded that just now and not when I was muscling the spear away from him. I tried to shake the numbness out of my arm, but it wasn't fading very quickly.

"I am not beneath you! You will serve me!" He came at me with a flurry of jabs, but I easily backed away - until I tripped over a crate of our stuff and sprawled out on the sunny stones of the market way.

I scrambled to my feet almost immediately, but already Longwye's leg was slicing through the air with a punishing axe kick. I raised my arms to block, only to be struck with another pulse of intruding energy that rattled my bones and completely numbed my right arm while sending pins and needles down my left. I could only conclude that my opponent had some kind of mystical martial arts strike that he could employ.

Why didn't I know anything like that? I remember reading on Earth that there were kung fu monks who could supposedly stun people with, mystical energy, but I always assumed it was hogwash. As a yoga instructor and occasional cardio-kickboxing practitioner, I knew enough actual martial artists that I had it on good authority that death poke moves were bullshit. Apparently, there was some truth to them in cultivator land…

Maybe not too surprising. The night before, I'd watched Ken suck the heat right out of a fire and then Big Shilei had sunk the stones of the fire pit right into the sand…

The sound of the others fighting - shouts, cracking stone, and the clash of metal - sounded off to the side, but I didn't dare take my eyes off this Longwye asshole. He made a move to retrieve his spear, so I rushed in and stomped on the haft, cracking the paving stones beneath the spear. Instead, Longwye grabbed a chunk of stone and lobbed it at me. I somehow caught the thing with my good hand and thew it right back, but my aim was way off - I guess being a cultivator didn't make me ambidextrous.

So… how was I going to deal with this asshole? I considered my advantages and disadvantages in the fight:

Advantages: I was stronger and faster than him.

Disadvantages: He was a lot better at fighting and could add paralyzing zip to his punches.

Another Advantage: I bet I was also smarter than him.

I dove in to grab the spear and Longwye moved in to stop me. I fumbled at the haft, unable to grasp it with my semi-numbed hand. He took advantage of the confusion to strike at my left shoulder, but I blocked and he only struck my elbow. Longwye winced in pain, but my arm also dropped slack to my side. My eyes went wide. He licked his lips.

"Not so uppity now, are you?" he said with a smirk.

"I'm still better than you. You're nothing!" I spat on him.

"Then after I knock out your teeth, you can tell everybody that nothing beat you, bitch!" He lashed out with a flurry of strikes, and it was all I could do to dodge them - even if I could have blocked, it might well have numbed me further. I felt the whoosh of air… hell, I felt the probing pulses of qi energy washing off of each strike, ready to pulse into me if he got a decent hit in.

I backed away one step… two steps… ducking and pivoting around Longwye's punches and praying I didn’t trip on anything. And then I backed right into an old stone wall. There was nowhere left to retreat to. He wound up for a hell of a punch.

"Say goodnight!"

In the fraction of a second that he was wide open, I pushed him back with a solid front kick to the chest, followed by a side kick to the same spot as he reeled back, arms spread for balance. I flew back into the wall from the sheer force of the kick, and Longwye flew back further and faster in the other direction, crashing into a stall, which promptly collapsed, half a ton of wood and metal crashing on top of him.

He groaned, semi-conscious, and flailed to move the rubble off of himself. I shook some of the feeling back into my hand as I stalked forward, balling my fist to deliver some richly-deserved retribution. I stomped on his chest just enough to hold the man in place. For the first time, I saw terror in his eyes.

"Goodnight," I sneered.

And then a sword flicked in out of nowhere and pierced right through the asshole's neck. I just stared for a second as blood burbled forth and the life left the man's eyes. I recognized the sword well enough - Red Harvest. I'd watched it erupt from another man's chest just the day before.

"Ichika?" I turned to face my erstwhile savior. "You killed him!"

She retrieved her sword without much emotion, cleaning the bloody tip on the fabric of the dead man's trousers. "You do not leave this sort alive, Lynn. They'll only return angrier and in greater numbers."

I took in the rest of the scene - the marketplace for twenty yards in every direction badly damaged with cracked stone, broken stalls, and deep furrows in the road, as if a great beast had dredged its claws into the earth. Ten yards past us, Big Shilei flicked the blood from his fist - a fist that had, apparently, gone halfway through the boss guy's head - before helping a groaning Monkey Yang to his feet. Just past them, 'Rainbow Phoenix' Ken rammed his shoulder into a wall to pop his dislocated arm back into the socket. The wall came out of that interaction a lot worse than he did.

As had his attacker. Ken and Ichika had dismembered the man in at least three spots, and the sheer amount of blood was fairly ridiculous.

"You killed all of them?" I gasped.

"It was bound to happen eventually," Ichika said levelly. "All that remains to be seen is whether the rest of Gentleman Liu's men are smart enough to turn tail and flee Rushing Rivers or whether we must make them. I think I would prefer the latter."

--------

Tankano Ichika, the so-called 'Iron Flower' of Karu, didn’t know what to make of her new friend, Lee Lynn. The woman wasn’t exactly closed off, but neither was she forthcoming, and the clues that Ichika had assembled were mixed at best. At first, she'd rejoiced in having another woman cultivator, and one with a similar background to hers… and yet it became increasingly clear that Lynn's background wasn't like hers at all…

Still, it was nice to have another woman in their group, even if her addition had kicked the proverbial hornet's nest. Ichika considered what she'd gleaned about Lynn thus far:

Lynn wasn't very formal - in fact, she preferred to go by her first name like a harlot rather than assuming a cultivator's nickname, as the rest of them had done for purposes of semi-anonymity. Iron Ichika. Monkey Yang. Big Shilei. Ken the Rainbow Phoenix… preposterous for a man still in the late body refinement stage, but a nickname nonetheless. And Lee Lynn was just Lynn - she didn't seem to hate her last name, but neither did she embrace it. Perhaps she was the bastard child of a provincial cultivator? That would explain a bit.

Lynn couldn't read. She was clearly intelligent, possibly very intelligent, and yet she could only recognize a few characters, below the level of a second-year student at literature school. While most townspeople learned to read, and virtually all children of nobles and cultivators did, Lynn had no formal education. And yet she could effortlessly solve fractions in her head, such as when she'd observed that almost two-thirds of the fish they'd caught went to the cats. She'd asked what percentage of people were cultivators, an advanced topic in math. Plus, the fact that she'd asked how many millions of people were in the empire suggested that she was familiar with large numbers, too. Who knew millions, percentages, and fractions but not basic literacy?

The woman was brazenly improper - she asked for the 'tea' on Ichika's relationship with her handsome Yangutan, Monkey Yang. Ichika had blushed despite the fact that it was she and not Lynn who'd engaged in impropriety. When Ichika had sparked something with her Yangutan all those months ago, it had been a thrilling, forbidden thing. And then her father had announced the marriage - and the expectation that she would bear the clan a proper heir…

He knew that she'd experienced her divine awakening and didn't care. He'd rather have a grandson scion than a cultivator daughter, never mind that a pregnancy at such an early stage would ruin her cultivation for years afterward, perhaps forever. Never mind that there was no guarantee that she'd even bear a boy. Never mind that the sniveling second son of the Ichibo clan was a jackass with mediocre talent at best…

Ichika shook her head - it wasn't the time to ruminate over regrettable past decisions, least of all in the middle of a parade. Yes, the mortal mayor of Rushing Rivers had thrown them a parade by popular demand!

Children scampered along as the five of them rode upon the fine black horses seized by the town's Dark Riders. After killing two of the last four riders, the remaining two fled into the countryside. There were equal odds that their warlord, Cold-blood Ieyasu, would execute the men for incompetence or ride a war host to seek revenge. He would quite possibly do both…

"I'm gonna be a cultivator, too!" one of the girls squealed, reaching out to touch Ichika's boot as she passed. She pasted on a smile, just as she had once done for when her father presented the clan to their village, to be seen as examples of ideal ruler-cultivators.

"Keep practicing! You'll be such a good cultivator!" Lynn gushed from behind her. Ichika considered that Lynn might not be a cruel woman to be giving such a child false hope - she genuinely might not know that most women who became cultivators had that cultivation stripped through pregnancy in order to produce powerful heirs for their families. That was another clue that indicated Lynn hadn't come from a noble background…

And yet she clearly knew nobles. Her knowledge of fashion and fabrics was even greater than Ichika's own. Significantly greater, Ichika would reluctantly admit. And Lynn knew quite a bit about music. She had a pretty, melodious singing voice (as did any cultivator who valued such a thing during their body refinement) and delighted in singing the rhythmic and repetitive yet strangely-captivating songs of a noblewoman named Ga Ga…

Ichika had never heard of the woman musician, but couldn't help but see shades of herself in the song about a darkly beautiful romance, dangerous to both partners and yet wholly enthralling to body, dantian, and soul. Her relationship with Yangutan certainly fit the bill.

Lynn lifted the child right off the ground and set her in front of herself upon the horse, handing her a little sachet of rose petals to throw at the people lining up along the river way - the mayor had given them each about fifty wu and a bag of rose petals to toss at people. The people would turn the 'cultivator-blessed' petals into a flavoring for their tea and, presumably, spend the wu, though some might keep them as lucky tokens. People had more superstitions about cultivators that even somebody with Lynn's head for numbers could count.

"Okay, you should go back to your parents. Here's… um… three wu. It's all I've got left," Lynn said. She affectionately patted the child on the head and carefully set her down.

She was good with children. Very good with them. Good enough that Ichika thought she might have some measure of the woman's past…

She could imagine it, a plot worthy of the steamy romance stories that Ichika had once enjoyed… and might still enjoy if she'd had access to a decent library. Libraries were few and far between out here in the sticks…

Lynn was the bastard daughter of a mighty cultivator, one vassalized to an even greater family, a mighty noble family, possibly even linked to the imperial clan. When the family requested a tribute, they were given Lynn. Perhaps her father had expected the other family to provide for Lynn's education, but they'd treated her little better than a common servant, though she got to experience the finer things in life vicariously, especially through a musically-talented Lady of the family, who discussed music, fashion, and bad romance with the impressionable girl.

And mathematics, too, apparently.

Lynn had been responsible for taking care of a gaggle of little children, a whole generation of the large and powerful clan, which gave her lots of interaction with the scions of a mighty family. Mostly, she just looked after the children, cleaned after them, sang them lullabies… until one day the young scion of the clan, a Young Master, the grandson or great-grandson of the Lord, arrived at his play area with something curious. A jade slip containing the family's ancient technique, one that could only be unlocked by a cultivator of truly sublime talent…

Nobody had been able to unlock it for centuries. Long enough that the security around the priceless jewel had grown lax. And then Lynn had taken the thing and examined it, intending to return it to the Lord of the manor, for surely she wouldn't have knowingly stolen such an artifact. Instead, she had been the one in ten million geniuses capable of unlocking the thing, some tiny fraction of her blood being recognized as family after centuries of intermarriage between her father's clan and her Lord's. In that moment, Lynn had become a cultivator…

Ichika shook her head. That didn't make any sense - one couldn't unlock the contents of a jade slip without being able to read, and Lynn couldn't read…

But if the slip was truly that ancient, who could read it? Yu characters had only been in common use since the beginning of the current Righteous Qilin Emperor's reign scarcely over a thousand years ago! Ichika had read novels wherein jade slips containing secret techniques had been imbued with the power of transcendent-realm cultivators. Inevitably, the protagonist was taken to a secret domain-realm where the ancient echo of that cultivator served as trainer and mentor in those powerful techniques…

In retrospect, it was obvious that this is what had happened to Lynn. No wonder she was on the run way out in the periphery - she'd accidentally 'stolen' a technique far more valuable than any cultivator's pill, and she would have been lucky to escape with her life.

And now, here she was, on the run, fearing for her life, and utterly untrained… but absurdly talented. She'd broken through to qi refinement in one night in a poor-qi area, a feat that had taken Ichika weeks behind closed doors in the better climes of her family's manor, the final act of rebellion that had allowed her and Yangutan to flee without the whole clan in hot pursuit. Lynn had managed it over the course of one hour after helping Ichika pull fish from the river like a pair of commoner girls.

And yet Lynn had struggled to defeat a man a full realm lower than her.

Ichika couldn't help but chuckle - she'd untangled the mystery that was Lee Lynn. She'd worked out the girl's past, and now they could help one another. Lynn was badly in need of martial training, and if she could impart to Ichika a bare fraction of her overpowered cultivation technique, it would make all the trouble she'd endured in the past two days entirely worthwhile.

But first, they had to finish the parade and then meet with the mayor.