剑书: Or, Wandering Tianxia on the Cheap

There was good news and bad news at that moment, because Tu Gong did not need to kill the population of Longyau Village. The bad news was that it was the same moment that a giant bear, head and shoulders above the walls that it just smashed through like an avalanche. In one second, the back ranks dissolved into mists of meat and blood in it's passing. The next, Master Jin turned to face it, with his best disciples forming serried ranks around him. Their sabers flashed. The claws of the bear flashed and all the men were bowled over like dolls, thrown by an uncaring child. Master Jin took the first blow, and in a flash of metal struck the bear's neck.

There was no blood on the saber. The monstrous bear smashed him into a wall and in the third moment, reached Tu Gong. The swipe shook him to his bones. It was like standing in the vanguard of the army again, facing down chariots and horses with only a thin length of metal against the weight of an armored charge. The second swept him off his feet and into the wall like the twitching pile of flesh and cloth once called Jin, flakes of stone rising in his vision. Just barely he got the sword in the way of the bear, hot breath against his face, saliva dripping into his eyes.

Ivory ground against bronze. "Get away from him!" someone yelled. All of a sudden the weight was gone, he turned and saw…

Ma, at the head of a herd of horses. Idiot, Tu Gong thought. What are you doing? Why are you charging for me? You were free, fool. The brave idiot charged at him, and the bear fled. The crowd was silenced. "I knew it!" Master Yi shouted. "Kill the wi-"

"Why did you return?" Tu Gong asked. Ma dismounted and dragged him to his feet.

"You want me to leave you here? Get on the horse." Ma was pushing him, and Tu Gong followed. The street was chaos. The people were split between fending off the bear, and corralling the neighing, mane-tossing herd of horses. The bear was throwing them all around, like it-she- was playing with food. "Let's ride!" they shouted, something like joy in their voice.

The horse reared up. Ma pulled the reins and slapped the riding crop against it's flanks. "Do you actually know how to-"

"No!" Ma interrupted as they nearly tripped over a corpse.

"But you had a horse!" Tu Gong continued, snatching the reins and controlling the mare once again.

"Yeah, and did you ever see me ride it?"

Tu Gong reviewed his memories and found that no, Ma never did. Then both of them fell to the ground. Sunlight glinted off a knife in the animal's neck. "You won't get away that easily!" Master Yi shouted through the stampede. "I-"

The bear hit him over the face. The claws cut into his flesh, and he screamed, blood splattering in crazy circles around him, dripping off of white bone. The monster rounded on them.

It didn't move. Ma stood in front of Tu Gong, shielding him with their body, and the demon did not move. The street was silent. Even the horse had ceased to move. "Are you…" Controlling it? Commanding it? Tu Gong didn't know. He shouldn't have asked, because when Ma nodded everyone knew.

The bear reached out with a paw and ruffled Ma's hair, and turned towards the crowd with a snarl. "Run," Tu Gong grabbed his hand and ran from the melee. Some started to chase them, but they were inconvenienced by the demon bear in their way. "I sound like a cricket, here, but what just happened?"

"That's what I'd like to know, too."

They should have heard Motiandaer and his troop of Luoshas from a mile away. Their iron mail shirts rattled like a temple ceremony. "Duke's augurs told him there was a demon in the marketplace. Ordered us to- is that the demon!? Ma, isn't that the mother bear of the cubs you-"

"You saw a bear?" Ma blurted out.

Motiandaer shrugged. "Yes. You five! Go over there and get the spirit away from the crowd." Five warriors dropped from their horses and hustled into the crowd. "Look, all I want to know is-"

'That's the ghost, that's the ghost," Ma cried, rubbing their eyes. Tears were beginning to form. Motiandaer patted their back and moved past them as a Luosha hit the wall behind them.

"You should run. Duke's got me on catching whoever did this, and they're all going to blame you two. Split up," Motiandaer advised. "If one of you is caught, I'll tell my fellows to stop looking. And we won't be looking too hard."

Tu Gong nodded. Ma hugged Motiandaer, felt the cold metal against their cheek. Then they were gone. They watched him crack his neck and stride with all the confidence in the world. The bear charged at him, ten tons of flesh and bone, and the chief of the Luoshas caught the bear in a hold. OM SHIVA HUM he chanted, in a voice like rolling thunder, again and again. Each time he lifted the bear, and smashed it against the earth. Again and again until Ma was glad that they couldn't see it anymore.

---

It was not half an hour when Ma staggered to a stop in front of the shack, once again. Tu Gong had gone off to find horses for them, and Ma to pick up what remained of their lives. Thank heavens, the shack was deserted. The manual was still there, the knives as well. They rolled them up in their bedroll and left the house.

The air smelled like the moments after a rainstorm. A thin man, straw cloak and hat, ambled towards them. "How'd ya do," he said in a strange accent. "Y'see anyone 'round?"

"They're all in the city," Ma threw over their shoulder.

"Y'right," he nodded, water shaking off in drewdrops off of his hat. "They got one o' them sorcerers, eh? Wild child. They work pretty fast. Ten taels for the kid's head, twice that for the old man."

"You-" Ma whirled around. The man smiled, a slash of sharpened ivory. It was a threat posture, like a tiger showing their fangs. One hand curled around the hilt of a sword. Ma stopped thinking. It was the pure, avastistic reflex of a cornered rat that made him drop the bundle and grab a knife.

He caught it between his fingers. "Good form. But disappointing, ain't it? I was hopin' the big bad sorcerer could do something more than this." Thunder rumbled in the distance. He began to twist, and Ma's arm warped under the stress. They let go and picked up another knife, one of several scattered around the meadow. "You've got spirit. That's good. Ain't no fun in killin' cowards. I'll give ya three more, how 'bout that?"

"I'll kill you in two."

The stranger laughed, high and clear like a sheer blue sky.

Ma charged in again. This time their free hand snaked around the stranger's knee. Some indistinct aura around him made their hairs stand on edge and filled their mouth with the taste of copper. At the same time they lifted the limb, they slashed wildly at the grinning stranger's jugular.

"Close, but no chicken!" An elbow smashed into Ma's face. The wall behind him crumbled, straw and rotting wood raining down on them. Their legs shook. "Don't you have some sorceries? Make this fun!" the stranger roared.

"Come closer and I'll show you!" Ma yelled back.

"Sure!"

Oh, shit. They hadn't really thought he'd take him up on that. They scrambled to stand up, and the stranger casually ambled into blade range just as they were upright. "Well?" the stranger asked. "What's your move?"

This. Ma concentrated, wrung out every inch of their strength, and threw a wild, fearsome blow. Their heart rattled like a seed in the gourd of their ribs, and it didn't matter. It never mattered. All it did was make the stranger draw his sword, a length of dark iron. Their knife was kitchen bronze. It was unfair, Ma thought in a corner of their mind. Unfair. They had a life. They were going to wander the world. And now uncle Motiandaer probably killed Old Jie and they'd never repay Tu Gong.

They couldn't die here like a story never told. There was a dagger in the stranger's belt. They drew it and slashed at his throat again, and this time he could not block it. Both of his hands were around the sword's hilt. Ma's strike snaked across his shoulder and scored a thin line across the stranger's throat.

Then all of a sudden they felt a streak of burning red pain drawn across their chest. Calligraphy with a torturer's hot irons. After that wind howled in their ears, and heaven and earth inverted. They imagined that their entrails left them, stomach and intestines floating outside of their flesh.

Ma blinked and stared up at the sky. Little droplets of rain fell on their face. "Shit, shit, shit," someone chanted. They felt around their stomach. Entrails still there. That's a relief. Then they looked down and saw that a spur of white bone jutted out of a mess of red. Ha, ha, there's the tendons, they thought to themselves. Their arm was snapped like a twig, a bloody bridge connecting it.

"Did I say anything?" the stranger towered over him.

"Ghrk?" Ma ghrk'd.

"Right. You heard nothing, understand? Because I, am going to let you off today." He knelt down and began to bind up the broken arm, sprinkling some water over it from a gourd he produced from somewhere. Their arm stopped hurting and everything was wonderful.

This close, Ma could see where they cut him. Through the tear in the skin, like it was just clothes that ripped, they saw black scales.

"Y're a dragon," Ma gasped out.

"Ao Fan, the Hulong. Heard that there was a demon around, but that little shit Motiandaer already got to the big one, so's I think, better hurry for the little one." He looked into the sky, squinting at some unknown person. "How old are you?"

"Wha?"

"Asked how old are you. Myself, I'm seven hundred. Five hundred years a carp, leapin' over waterfalls. Then two hundred as a snake. Only became a dragon oh, seventy years ago?"

"You're missing a thirty," Ma wheezed.

"I was an egg. An' I still don't know how old you are."

"Fourteen summers." Nothing lost telling him, after all.

"Fourteen years!" Ao Fan laughed. "And you still cut my man-shape. Pretty good for a brat. I'll give you… four years. When that time comes, I'm gonna find you again. And we're gonna have a proper scrap. Eh? Keep the dagger, I got spares. Hell, keep this, too." The gourd of healing water fell beside Ma's head.

"I can't fight a dragon in just four years." Ma protested.

"Yeah, well, carps can't leap over the dragon gate either, and here I fuckin' am."

"But that was for six hundred years!"

"Humans only live to, what, a hundred? Por-portionally I'm giving you the same amount of time."

Ma wanted to find some other objections. But there was a sort of blithe confidence, the sort that a carp would need to look at a waterfall hundreds of meters high and think to itself, 'yeah, I can jump that,' that made them almost believe it by proxy. "What if I just run?"

"I'm a dragon." Ao Fan pointed up at the sky. "As long as you live under my sky, I will always find you." There was a thunderous boom when Ao Fan turned back into a dragon, a black scaled monster, and he disappeared into the heavens like a reverse lightning bolt. All that was left was Ma and the rain.

WELCOME TO TIANXIA: END PROLOGUE

A/N: Well, that's the prologue done with. First update of the first arc next Thursday.

To the reader:

I left Longyau that day, with Ao Fan's dagger and water-gourd at my hip. I could not find my master, but later he would find me. But at that time, I am ashamed to say that I did not care about him. Rarely do we humans respond intelligently after a divinity, especially one as auspicious as the king of beasts, giving one a mere four years to polish one's skills for a fight.

So I wandered westwards, honing my skills on the magistrates and bounty hunters after my head. I stress the importance of any fencer living on the road with a paltry sum of money and in severe personal danger. It is like a whetstone for the mind and the spirit. Three weeks on the road is greater than three hundred years of secluded training. The path will not only bring you in contact with persons of great skill, the path will also teach you very important life skills, such as knowing how to barter, how to survive on stagnant water, how to hunt, and how to flee from any enemies you will inevitably make in the course of your wanderings. It is good for body, mind, and soul. Those without mountains to become hermits on, I recommend that you take a good walking stick and let it fall, and walk ten thousand leagues at the direction it points. If you cannot learn anything from that, you cannot learn anything from anyone, and I recommend mediocrity.

I am not especially proud of this time. My technique was unrefined. I had not yet won a hundred battles, so I died many many times. Only my healthy constitution and Ao Fan's gourd of water allowed me to survive.

Still, not all was bad. After a month on the road, I came upon a series of events that would lead me to my second, and most renowned master.

---

"How am I going to kill a dragon?"

This phrase was Ma's favourite these days. It dogged at their heels and peeked down on them in their sleep. The words wrote themselves in the dust of their footprints and reflected themselves on the water Ma drank. It nearly drove them mad. What else would the passers by call the episode where Ma stripped naked and leapt in a river, screaming that they were a carp, and not, in fact, a human being? Unfortunately for them there were no waterfalls in the state of Yan, so this outre method of cultivation wouldn't have worked either way.

They were three weeks on the road. Their shoes had been cut to ribbons, so they were walking barefoot, with the dagger drawn out. "If I cut like this," they mumbled as they trudged onwards, "then they would have to respond." They demonstrated the cut, from the left waist to the right shoulder. "But it's too open. I'd leave all my entrails for the taking."

They paused and thought. A passing-by farmer thought to call out greetings, to be polite, but found that this was clearly a madman, and shut up and became incredibly fixed on driving his ox-cart to the market.

Ma stood at a profile and tried again. Better, they thought. And this time, the cut is more constrained. If I can make one, I can make another.

A fly buzzed in front of Ma. They acted without thinking. Ao Fan's dagger lashed out like a mantis, one cut upwards, one cut downwards. It fell in two pieces, twitching on the dust. They must have missed a cut. Besides, they could be faster, Ma thought. Just a bit. Ao Fan was faster. They closed their eyes and remembered that moment when the wind roared with Ao Fan's movements. What was the trick? The sword outpaced the wind. Was it that dragons ate the sharks and whales of an ocean, and Ma, for their life, ate chickens and millet?

They could do with some chicken and millet. Grubs and roots lost their luster, after Master… After master took them in.

Maybe they should find a sorcerer. From what the crowd yelled at them, sorcerers were able to command demons and make gods dance on their fans. They shit pills of everlasting health and pissed elixirs of immortality. They rubbed their face. No, that couldn't be it. All they had was this dagger. They would have had a sword, but the damned thing kept snapping the swords of the magistrates when they crossed blades. It was very sad.

They considered the dragon's dagger. Like the sword, it was made of dark iron. Even Motiandaer's gear shone, but this drank the light. It was too unfair to use this against yamen guards and runners. A stick would beat those dogs. Hey, that could be something, Ma thought while they snapped a branch off of a nearby oak. They had to test something closer to their skill, but still a spirit. There had to be a demon hiding in the mountains here. At the last crossroads, there were noticies for exorcists, so there had to be some demons around here.

They were putting the finishing touches on the club when three pairs of footsteps came upon them. The sound of a sword hissing out of the wooden sheathe stirred them awake.

They were five paces away from Ma. The first amongst them had a lined face, and the other two had the careful blankness of longtime toughs. "Carver, did you see this child?"

Ma raised their head. "That's me."

"Present your arms," the first ordered, drawing a straight backed saber. A pair of metal cuffs swayed at his waist. The other two drew clubs like Ma's, but they were banded in iron. Ma felt jealous.

"You've arrived at just the time," Ma replied, bouncing the carved stick against their shoulder. Their stomach growled. They hoped that they were carrying food."Come here."

The old magistrate came and Ma struck downwards at his lead foot. The small bones crunched against the heavy oak branch, and then Ma stepped in and raised the stick in a sudden and violent motion. The old magistrate fell to the ground like a puppet without strings, eyes staring at the sky like pebbles. The left yamen runner howled like a beast, like Ma when they found their master, and lashed out. With their right hand holding the carved stick, Ma batted his club aside and the saber glanced across his throat. Blood splattered across their eyes.

When they wiped it away they saw the last thug kowtowing so hard that Ma had to look behind them to make sure some god didn't decide to manifest behind their back. "You are surrendering, right?" Ma checked.

"Oh, yes. I am surrendering so hard. You are a fearsome person, spare this unworthy one's life, so on and so forth."

His tone was about as lively as a dead horse.

"This is the first time someone's surrendered to me." Ma scratched their head. "Hand over your money, your food, and your boots?"

"You could also insult me," the just dubbed Third offered, as he stood up and began to throw the mentioned items at Ma's feet. If there was ever a god of scruffy rakes, then Third would be their tulturary idol. "You have the entrails of a dog and the heart of a wolf. Coward, blackguard, stand and die like a man! You'll die a betrayer's death, dog!"

Ma ignored him and began to inhale the meat bun that was wrapped in a bundle of three. Third stopped. "By the way," he continued, "might I trouble sir to stab me somewhere nonfatal? I don't want to come out looking like I cooperated with you."

Ma swallowed. "Okay," they agreed. They drew the sharp dragon dagger. "Preferences?"

"...I suppose that I don't use my left arm. Right. Left aaaarm!" His voice yelped when Ma grabbed their wrist, and with the same motion for splitting bones from joints, sunk the dagger into the space between the bones of the forearm, in and out. "What the hell!" Third yelled. "Give me a warning!"

"I mean it's done now." Ma splashed the last of the gourd's healing water over the wound, and it immediately stopped bleeding.

"Aaah. You're not normal," Third hissed. "Thank you, thank you." He took a sharp breath, and a bit of color returned to his cheeks as he tied his arm up. "Where are you headed?"

Ma pointed westwards, where a mountain capped with snow rose to the sky. "That one? There's faster methods of suicide, you know. Come with me, the guys who do the executions and tortures are friendly with me. They'll give you a nice clean accident before the trial. It's better than going to Zhibei."

Ma nodded. "Thanks. Give me the other pair of boots. Why's that?"

"Huh?"

"You said Zhibei is dangerous. Why?"

"It's where the gods live. No man should set foot there."

"Cool. That's cool." Ma waved goodbye to Third, who didn't appreciate it, and went on with their floppy boots towards Zhibei, with the second pair tied around their neck. They made good time and reached the foothills when the sun was low in the sky. It was a good thing they got new boots, because old roots ate up the trail into a gnarled mess.

Dew formed on their skin and mist weighed down their clothes and chilled them to the core. They shivered and hurried on. There were no good places to sleep in. One winter day, before everything, they came across a deer in a snowy ditch. It was nursing foals, foals that were still alive. But Ma was hungrier, and they feasted from the mother's carcass. Later a wolf ran by with the foals in its jaw.

That's life.

At least it was still early autumn.

You had to count your blessings.

Ma blinked. There was a light beyond the mist. They hurried on. If it was a human, then good. If it was a spirit, then better. They could defeat both. The light resolved itself into a small shack. It was nostalgia. Warm breath hissed between their teeth. They blinked and saw Tu Gong, whiling away the days. They blinked and saw Motiandaer roaring with laughter. They thought that if they turned around, they would see Old Jie in the mist.

They blinked and rubbed their eyes. Since the windows were glowing, they walked to the door and knocked three times. Something clattered, and they took a step back as the door swung open. "Who're you?" Ma's eyes took him in. Old. Scruffy. Unwashed. He scratched his stubbly beard, shot through with white, glaring down at Ma with pale brown eyes.

"Just a traveller. Can I share your fire?"

He shuts the door in their face. Ma blinked. Clearly this was all wrong. They proceeded to ignore the last three seconds and knocked on the door three times again.

"Didn't I make it clear the first time? No guests!"

Ma nodded. This time they also managed to sneak a peek past him. Nothing special, but there were several fox pelts mounted on the wall. "You didn't make it clear the first time, so I wanted to make sure."

"Well now you know. Now git."

The door slammed shut a third time. Ma knocked a third time. "What!" the inhabitant roared like a furious beast.

"This is where I ask again," Ma said.

"Well, I'm not gonna respond. I've got a heart like ice. You can stand there and freeze, for all I care," he declares. Ma's hand goes to their sword. "And don't think your little human sword threatens me. I've-" His mouth clamped shut.

Ma tilted their head. "Human?"

"Yes, because I've fought the demons in these mountains, you fool. You don't scare me, not a single jot. So go away."

"So there are spirits in Zhibei. What are they? I think I knew a bear spirit, but never that well. Can I still come in? It's getting cold. I need to be warm for tomorrow."

That got him thinking. "Brave one," he concludes after a while.

"Thank you."

"Well, I'd love to house such a hero, but my pot is empty. I can't host you with such a shitty reception. I'm got to keep track on the fire, though, so we can eat when you get back. If you would, go out and find something for us?"

[]- Go Out and Hunt a Fox: Ma's sure he'd appreciate one.
[]- Screw him!: This two faced guy's up to no good. Brave Zhibei at night.
[]- Force the Question: Ma has a sword. That can borrow many things.