Shengtian Meng

The old lady had lived a long life, so it was natural that some times reminded her of others. It was even more often that some people reminded her of others.

Of course this is an opportunity to learn. That's what a fight is. It is a comparison of scripture at the start of the road. It is a comparison of Principle for those who have met lightning. It is a comparison of domains at the highest reaches.

Kong Zhixin's qi surged, but he didn't attack. Instead, it coiled and pooled about him like a living thing, then expanded - filling out the air, the void, the space between things. Kong. When he stood in a sphere thick enough to distort even the old lady's sense of his exact location, the immortal allowed his Principle to bleed through into the bubble around him. It descended like a blanket, finding openings and gaps that didn't exist, cutting off the qi of the world that all cultivators drew.

"A shield?" queried Chow Mulan. The girl seemed only curious, and unconcerned about the desperate battle that had been taking place - that was taking place.

Zhixin scoffed. "A completely impenetrable defense."

"I see," said the girl, who sounded skeptical. "Completely impenetrable," she repeated back at him. "Completely?"

Never had the old lady met someone with less of a danger sense. No, not quite never.

"Your youth excuses the insult to my greatness," snapped Zhixin. "You can have this lesson for free," he said, his voice as clear as water through the bubble of qi. "Cultivation is the imposition of your will upon the world. The pinnacle of cultivation, immortality, allows for your will to become that which is absolute, that which is superlative-"

"That which is advancing, that which is true," continued the girl, interrupting the man.

"Yes, yes," he said. "An immortal's will is the truth of the world. Despite your origins, you are well read."

"Despite?" The challenge in Mulan's tone made the old lady worry. Could she stop a stray blow aimed in anger at the girl?

"It is because of my origin I am well read," continued the girl. "There is little else to do. Tell me, do Immortals get into fights with one another?"

"What a foolish question. The curse of sentience is conflict."

If Immortality added a cultivator to Heaven's great plan, would they ever fight?

"I see. Speaking your truth is an admirable thing," said the girl with a brittle brightness. There was something deeply patronizing about her tone, a triumph for having found a contradiction.

"You sound exactly like her, little girl. You should be warned that this kind of arrogance might be tolerated by someone as patient as this daoist, but-"

"Like who?"

As Sect Master, all the disciples of the Ascending Sky can be considered my children. Even when I wish that weren’t the case. But that would be true even if I weren't Sect Master.

The old lady had to speak. "Like Kong Luming, the Widow of the Valley," she interjected. "My dearly departed senior sister." Kong Zhixin's foster mother.

Zhixin glared, but whatever he started to say was snuffed out by the sound of thunder from the south - from the Earthly Tribulation.

Open the door and walk the plains, by light of sun and moon - make them your own.

When tribulation tore the sky asunder, the old lady always thought of the past.

The Iron Tiger had as many disciples as he had injuries that could not heal. Failing health and ten thousand years worth of enemies left little time for teaching - or for his duties as the Sect Master. Those duties fell to the youngest, and the most talented of his students, the woman who would inherit both his legacies - the bells of Tianbei, and his seat in Sword Peak.

Despite the command from the Skybound Scripture's first line, Meng could only ever recall its verses in the woman's voice. Her name was Kong Luming. Kong - as in the family of cultivators who ruled Kong Island - one of the Still Water Sect's seven Peaks. Lu - as in the road, the journey, the path. Ming - not as in bright, but as in wisdom.

I am indeed angry, but not at you. An inner disciple who's put off Igniting for eight centuries rejects a prospect who has entered Foundation Establishment despite never having seen a scripture. When he realizes that she's come alone, and without a family name, the coward seizes upon the opportunity to show his character. He tells her that her spirit root is of low quality and twenty four is too old. Her fate, like her talent for cultivation, is too mediocre for the Ascending Sky.

The Skyward Blade, the Hammer of Storms and the Star-seeking Palm were not martial arts found within the Skybound Scripture. They were creative interpretations of the verses, movements derived from trial and error that did not contradict the only real cultivation technique within - sequences of meridians and apertures to circulate qi.

Upon passing her at the entrance to my Sect, I'm struck with a bone-deep tiredness. The stability of her qi implies that she's an inner disciple from an allied sect and I'm convinced my evening will be spent drafting a letter of apology. But what I've learned is far worse. You're exactly who we're looking for in a disciple. And thus, I find myself offering that apology to you. Would you please overlook this shameful display and give our sect a second chance? We're more friendly than we appear.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Shengtian Meng had grown up in the slums of Xijing. Like most of her neighbors, she had become a whore. Like most whores, she had trouble making friends, and she'd quickly lost the two she had.

If you believe the drivel he was spouting, that's only more reason to join our Sect. The intrinsic nature of our foundational scripture is the ability to influence fate itself.

That was the key when it came to defeating an Immortal. It was to turn Fate against him, even if that was the weapon he wielded.

If Disciple Meng should step through the gates, the Ascending Sky will become her family and the Sect's name will become her own. Is that an acceptable condition?

The realms of cultivation were not easily subverted. Each major step on the road of cultivation gave an immeasurable advantage in battle.

Your problem has always been the same, junior sister. You immerse yourself in the here and now. Consider our generation. Most cultivators are dead, of course. This impossible dream of immortality is simply a myth that comes true very infrequently. These few lotus flowers who float back downstream to the mud from which they bloom speak to us of power, of riches, of fabulous customs and histories far more important than the well they've hopped out of. If these places were so impressive, why return?

The old lady would strike the immortal down a third time.

She passed another needle, long and thin and silver, from her right hand into her left sleeve and drew on her qi. The qi passed through her meridians, taking on the nature of yang - hungry and hard to control. It raced up through the pathways towards the open apertures of her thumb and her forefinger and as it burst out, the qi ignited, burning itself as fuel. She flicked her wrist. The prepared needle fled out of her sleeves and through the flame.

Isn't it the case that an immortal should be free of those memories of all the other frogs they swam with? They have become eagles and should no longer feel the need to settle scores with their former enemies. Would an eagle dive into a well for a slimy, wet meal?

The needle snuffed out the fire as it passed through it - that was the point. The needle picked up the searing heat of burning. The needle hissed, sealing Kong Zhixin’s doom.

There was the sound of thunder in the distance. The old lady grabbed the needle out of the air before it left her reach. “Three times,” she promised. Three times she had been fated to fail in killing Kong Zhixin.

Why do we fear lightning, junior sister? Is it because it shows us who we really are?

There was the smell of ozone in the air.

“You fool!” Zhixin roared. “Do you mean to invite the skies here?”

“Tong ren - Concordance,” said Mulan, breathlessly - she was excited, ecstatic. “With her arms hidden in thick grass, the fairy makes no demonstration thrice.” The girl coughed. There was the smell of blood in the air.

What was the girl babbling about?

Zhixin gasped. “Is that-” He stopped himself.

Sit close, junior sister. Let me tell you about the Venerates. It is said that when an Immortal happens upon some kind of universal truth, the Venerates greet her at the Heaven over the Waters, at the place where things are recorded. But no one, not even a Venerate, can read the texts on those shelves. Scriptures with purity - everyone’s heard the legends - The Records of the Flood, the Tales from a Radiant Night. It is said that the greatest of all is one we’ve all heard parts of - Yi Jing - the Book of Changes. Surely that is something they all want.

“Thank you, Dao Mother,” said the girl. “I understand. Three failures is enough.”

“You are having a breakthrough,” said Zhixin, to Mulan. The sound of pure fascination in his voice left a disquieting sensation on the old lady’s skin. “My clever, clever little disciple. My genius disciple.”

Genius? Understanding isn’t genius. Learning isn’t genius. Genius is when you come up with something from nothing at all.

“Not your disciple,” muttered the girl. “I have taken no master,” she continued.

The girl, her qi rose into the sky through the steel frame of a greenhouse. Her mouth opened.

There was the sound of thunder, the smell of ozone - the old lady could not tell if it was from the South, where an Earthly Tribulation had rent the sky, or if it was the rumbling of silkworms in the darkness.

“This is the story of a girl who was born into a world where every man, woman and child had been, and could only ever be mortal.”

Distant lightning.

“She read many books and allowed the fantasy of becoming more to overtake her. And at the age of seventeen, she made a vital mistake. She played a song she shouldn’t have on a stage that was not hers. It was a mistake because the skies above were listening. They were listening to her.”

A sharp, seizing breath from the immortal.

“And because she argued with the skies above her head and made promises she shouldn’t have. Like a lotus, she rose through the mud that trapped her like a silkworm in amber.”

The old lady’s fists were clenched - what did the girl mean?

“And for this crime, she received a wound - not to her body, but to her spirit.”

The Silkworms hissed and spat.

“But it did not deter her. Once, twice, three times, she attempted to gather the emanations of heaven and earth, she tried to pull together the five elements, she failed to balance the yin that fades and the brightest yang - all to no avail.”

Thunderclaps.

“What could have stopped her? Fate? Karma? Dharma? It did not matter. Because in the presence of danger from above and wisdom from below, she set sail on the sea of her self. And she learned-”

There was a surge of qi, clear, blue and bright. If the old lady could still see, she was sure that the world would have been blinding.

It was now or never. The old lady drew upon the qi in her own core, passed it from her gan to her shen and then out of the apertures in her fingers to form a needle of the brightest yang and drove it towards Kong Zhixin.

The needle flew through the air, burning the ambient qi in the air that spun and danced and whispered like silkworms.

It burrowed through an immortal’s impenetrable shield and struck him in the throat.

“And the girl learned to leave a light on.”

The immortal gave a hoarse gasp and the old lady heard the thud of a body hitting mud.

Say, Mengmeng. Have you ever thought of taking a student? No? None of the young girls of our sect who have formed their cores have ever appealed to you in so, so many years? Surely you must take a student before you call the lightning. That old friend of yours, my dear enemy to our west - even he has a student. He’s adopted her, you know…