Karmic Cultivation

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It is never night, around the Ten Suns Mausoleum. The sun has gone down, the sky has dimmed to ruddy orange twilight, but it does not darken to nightfall and it never will. For this is the grave of nine slain suns, and their presence still echoes and lingers here.

Cinxin frowns as she turns her soup bowl in her hands. The mountain allows little foliage to grow on it, the elemental fire energies consuming any elemental wood faster than it can gather, so there's no forage to be had. And while they'd of course brought a supply of their own food, the lack of firewood was trickier.

Fortunately, they'd arrived at the summit to find a well-worn campsite around a squat iron-ore boulder that endlessly glowed a sullen cherry red. And as many other pilgrims to this holy place surely had, they'd put their pots and pans onto it to cook with the flameless heat.

Cinxin takes another drink from her bowl, savors how the boulder-cooking altered the recipe's taste, and then gives up and admits to herself that her thoughts are going in circles.

"I don't understand your perfection." Cinxin says to the monk sitting on the barren ground across from her.

The Monk of the Consummate Fist, his epithet name after setting aside his birth name as many Celestial Succor monks do, looks the Perfection Dao that Cinxin knows he holds. The immaculate symmetry of his appearance goes down to the calluses on his knuckles being mirrored across both hands. The idea of the righteous Buddhist warrior-monk taken flesh.

Ever since their first meeting, Cinxin had always suspected some latent vanity to his appearance. But now, after all that's happened with their second meeting here and now, she's no longer so certain it isn't genuine happenstance. A mere byproduct of who he is, something he neither pursues nor avoids.

"Hm." Consummate Fist pauses, eyeing her, before giving a small nod. "Then speak, please, Lady Cinxin. What is the shape of this lack of understanding?"

"Perfection, as I understand it, is a thing of finality." Cinxin says, resting her chin on her knuckles as she peers at him. "Calling something perfect is to express that it has achieved a static pinnacle, and can be improved no further. A technique is perfect, so that the only variance is the timing and circumstance of skillful practical application. A smith forging a sword that is perfect, within the limits of its materials and form. And in their perfection, their power is safely assumed known and unchanging, allowing one's attention to be fully turned to other, higher matters built upon that foundation.

"I had believed you had crystallized significant aspects of yourself and your beliefs in this way, but if that were true, then you would have shattered and broken to have accepted me as you have." Cinxin declines to mention how obviously close to exactly that Consummate Fist clearly came, during their duel shortly ago. "But you did not, and so there are shortcomings in my understanding of such things."

Consummate Fist gets a satisfied smile at her ignorance, but he catches himself before he speaks, grimacing and composing himself. Cinxin lets it go. She's been no better to him.

"By your description, your grasp already reaches and brushes at the higher truths of perfection that I pursue and embody." Consummate Fist says, leaning in as he takes a stern expression. "Perfection is not static, but a thing of the moment, the eternal now. The most high result with the present circumstances and resources and skills."

Cinxin feels a buzz down her spine. "You speak of the heart of the very concept of skill itself." She says, weighing the idea as she speaks it and stares at him. "Not merely a technique correctly theorized and realized to the fullest, but executed in the correct time and place for greatest outcome. The infinitely sharp leading edge of the arcing blade of one's advancing strength."

Cinxin thinks back on her first battle with Consummate Fist, her struggle to merely not-die. How she survived only because of the depth of his mistaken assumptions, because of how the first blood of the combat was her initial spear thrust counterattack against his ambush to stab him in the heart.

There was not a single other opening throughout the rest of the battle that was not a deadly lie, a manipulation of her own warrior's instincts to invite her to indulge her killing intent, overextend, and open herself to a mortal blow in turn. One she surely would not have survived as he impossibly had. She still doesn't understand how piercing his heart seemed to merely slow him down.

Cinxin laughs, soft and helpless. "How outrageous. How straightforward. How do you integrate your mistakes? Or can mistakes exist within perfection?"

"Mistakes are shortcomings of the moment." Consummate Fist says, with a brief bow of his head and a soft, wholesomely-pleased smile. "Perfection and flawlessness are separate concepts. Flawlessness is a true impossibility, an illusion wrought of the limitations of perception and insight, and foolishness to pursue. Perfection is a state of being. One that can be achieved, stumbled in, and fallen from and retaken."

Cinxin shakes her head in disbelief. She's proud of her ability to internalize impossibilities and higher truths as concrete fact without question, and the fact she can't help but strain to look for some trick or hidden nuance to this makes her give another helpless laugh. "You are very strong, Monk of the Consummate Fist."

"My thanks, Lady Cinxin."

They fall quiet. Consummate Fist seems lost in thought. Cinxin lets that last topic roll around inside her head until she finishes her soup bowl, then she stands and returns to the center of the campsite to get a refill.

Cinxin looks around at her companions on this pilgrimage, weighing whether to take a break and speak with any of them. Or to just take a break generally, really. Her mood is strange, a struggle to place. She can't tell if she wants to unburden her woes to a patient ear, to relax with idle banter, or to just find somewhere she may sit and be alone for a time.

In the end, Cinxin simply loiters at the cauldron until she feels the prickle of Consummate Fist's attention turning toward her. She composes herself, fills two bowls of soup, and returns.

"Thank you, Lady Cinxin, but I've already had my fill." Consummate Fist says.

"Whatever do you mean?" Cinxin says, sitting down again. "I merely wanted two bowls."

Consummate Fist tenses and squints at her. Then he notices her coy eyes, and shakes his head in bemusement.

"I would ask, Lady Cinxin, that you please tell me the original purpose of your scriptures." He says, leaning forward with a serious look. "From the beginning, they always read to me as intended for yourself before your worshipers, and this more than anything is why I failed to realize you truly believe in what you have written. What do they gain you, that you continually pour such great effort into them?"

Cinxin pauses, peering at him sidelong. "...How much do you know of my early days?"

"Very little." He gestures toward her. "The names of your mortal parents and siblings, for which I acknowledge your piety in ensuring their remembrance. That you and Dai Ling were childhood friends." He responds to her reflexive snort with a politely blank look. "A reaction which summarizes my ignorance. The tale of your becoming Thousand Bloody Needles' apprentice and first earning the epithet Thunder Goddess is the earliest story of you I know in any detail."

"My apologies." Cinxin says, straightening and bowing her head even as she struggles to wipe the smile from my face. "It is indeed common knowledge that how Dai Ling and myself grew up together and are close as adults surely means we were always friends, and unfortunately also entirely false."

He purses his lips. "You were childhood rivals?"

"Something like that." She shrugs. "A story for later."

Never, if he doesn't ask again. It's a story she's not wholly proud of.

"To answer your question... Hm." Cinxin taps a finger on a soup bowl, and then glances at him. "I suspect you may have slightly misworded your question. The original purpose of my scriptures is to provide order to my heavenly lightning. I grasped my first spark of it in the middle of Connection Realm, before I was even a half-century old."

The usual surprise at that revelation flickers across Consummate Fist's expression, but he pushes past it and peers at her with searching eyes. "...Which isn't the reason you continue with honing your scriptures. They are comprehensive beyond any possible application of your lightning. They're good enough, so why persist?"

"Nobody strong is ever satisfied with good enough." Cinxin snaps back, narrowing her eyes as she looks at him for signs of insult to take. She pauses on seeing nothing but pure curiosity, and squirms at realizing she may have said more than she wished.

Consummate Fist gazes at her for several more moments, before his stern expression cracks and crumbles to form a slow smile.

"You write your scriptures to follow them yourself. You –"

Consummate Fist laughs. It's a sharp, oddly hesitant sound, as if it's so unfamiliar that he fails to commit to the reflex. "You wanted a higher ideal and code to follow, so you created one to hold aloft above your own head. That's the only reason your scriptures exist."

Cinxin pauses for an awkward moment, then puts on a coy smile. "Why, how would I ever be able to trust they were worth following if I didn't pen them myself?"

He commits more to his laughter this time. "Arrogance." He mutters, shaking his head. "Unbelievable arrogance. But not one I have any right to judge you for."

"How humble, Perfect Monk." Cinxin says, tone playfully mocking. After seeing him brush off the teasing with a waved hand, she relaxes and takes a drink from her soup bowl.

"...It's freeing." She says, after a while. "Binding myself to a code gives me freedom."

"Yes!" Consummate Fist, with an enthusiasm that makes Cinxin jolt. He leans in closer, with a tight smile and intent eyes. "You understand. The unworthy think a code is a prison, and the pious often assume that its freedom is purely that granted by strength, but it goes past that. It's a freedom of – of..." He thinks. "Not a freedom from mistakes, no code is that complete, but..."

Cinxin feels a roil of discomfort. "A freedom to be who one is?" She suggests, watching him sidelong. "Boundaries within which one can be themselves without fear of wronging others?"

Cinxin's heart sinks when she sees the agreement spring into his eyes and onto his lips, before he freezes and falls silent at himself realizing this topic's course.

After an achingly long few seconds, Cinxin silently offers him the second soup bowl. He hesitates with reflexive refusal, before pressing his lips into a thin line and accepting it.

"It's good." He murmurs, after a sip.

"It is." Cinxin says, carefully restraining how eagerly she speaks. "The flameless fire that cooked it gives it a unique flavor, does it not?"

"...I'm afraid cuisine is not among my vices." He says, gazing distantly ahead at the horizon.

"...I see."

Cinxin nurses her soup bowl, letting her emotions wash through her. She feels a spark of shame and envy when she sees Consummate Fist close his eyes and squares his shoulders before she steels her own nerves.

"I hold the weak in contempt." He says, voice steady, confessing with the practiced calm of self-mastery. "Those I see as weak. I know in my mind that I am special, the prodigy and paragon I am said to be. But my heart clings to the falsehood that I am normal, and a fair standard to weigh others against. And so my heart judges all others by that."

Cinxin hovers her bowl at her lips, not quite making a face as her eyes search the ruddy horizon for a dawn hours away.

"...I enjoy hurting people." She says, running her tongue over her teeth. "Enemies, friends, and strangers all. When there's meaning to it. It's fun, watching someone be crushed by the despair of realizing their foolish mistakes mean their best cannot be enough. And watching someone flounder and struggle and only prevail at the last second in exhausted sincere triumph, that's fun too."

Consummate Fist just nods slowly. Cinxin gives him a few moments to say something, whether about his own confession or about hers. But he doesn't, and she's not of mind to dwell on this.

"What will you do now, Monk of the Consummate Fist?" Cinxin asks, gesturing to him. "You were the final ordeal of our pilgrimage. With it over, we'll all be heading our separate ways. I myself am most eager to return home."

"I will stay here." Consummate Fist, with the unhesitating immediacy of a decision that had already been made. "To fast and meditate for the next one hundred eight years, reflecting upon my mistakes and the new understanding you have helped me achieve." He raises his free hand and clenches it into a fist. "I am still immature as a monk. I am still far from the strength I seek."

Cinxin suppresses the urge to shake her head in exasperated envy. "Prodigies are absurd, as always."

"I yield to your wealth of experience, Princess Cinxin." Consummate Fist says. Cinxin laughs.

Consummate Fist pauses as he seems to remember he's holding a bowl of soup. He drinks from it, and then squints up toward the Ten Suns Mausoleum proper. "...I shall also do what I can to repair the wear upon this holy place. Barehanded quarrying and masonry are useful practice methods besides."

"I see." Cinxin says, glancing toward the temple. "Then I shall ask to join you for that, as my last business before I depart for home. Extra hands make for fast work, I have some small skill in shrinemaking, and this will allow me to express my gratitude to the Ten Suns Mausoleum for its aid."

"I would be honored to have your assistance, Lady Cinxin." Consummate Fist says, and Cinxin decides that he's probably even being sincere. He glances at her, and gives a chuckle. "Perhaps I might even hear a tale or two from your chronicle, to pass the time?"

"Stories are a wealth that is not lost when gifted." Cinxin says, suddenly leaning closer with intent eyes. "Though I will ask you to share your own in turn."

Consummate Fist gives a shake of his head and a wry smile. "A debt I'll have to repay in other ways. I am no collector or teller of stories, even without comparison to your legendary avarice and skill. And of my own life, the moments most important to me are mistakes avoided, not deeds accomplished."

"There is still a value to such things." Cinxin murmurs, but she's already thinking, hand on her chin and frown on her face. She closes her eyes. "...You mentioned ignorance of my youth. Would you prefer a story from then?"

"Whatever it would please you to tell. I do not feel I have any right to make requests."

"...I see. Hmm... Well, there are perhaps a few that come to mind..."

 

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Cinxin shimmies sideways through an alleyway, slips out onto a narrow cobblestone street, and sees that one of her pursuer's underlings had gotten arrogant enough to try facing her directly.

The underling has her feet planted in a braced stance, leveling one of her sect's signature bamboo-hafted spears. Vivid leaf green robes, barefoot. Her straw hat shades her face against the noonday sun, but not enough to hide the tight grin on her face or the I've got you gleam in her eyes.

The street is too narrow to slip past the underling's spear. Going onto the rooftops would have Cinxin spotted by the others. And somewhere behind Cinxin is her death. The underling doesn't need to kill Cinxin herself, just stall until her master can catch up, and she'll be the favorite for it.

Cinxin kicks off into a forward sprint with the same motion that she hurls her Thunderbolt Spear overhand at her enemy.

The underling sidesteps to the left, but the Thunderbolt Spear curves its flight through the air to keep its aim true. She reflexively moves to sidestep again, but her eyes widen as that merely slams her pressed against a brick wall.

Too narrow to slip past is also too narrow to dodge.

The corpse hasn't finished skidding to a halt before Cinxin sprints past, plucking her Thunderbolt Spear from it without slowing at all.

"You know, you're making it very hard to keep my sense of mercy." Her pursuer says. She can hear his leisurely voice as if he's behind her within arm's reach. She hears a startled scream through a window she's running past, one among however many mortals hearing the exact same thing as her. She's not sure how far his vocal technique is carrying his words across the city.

"Well, insist as you will, this will only end worse for you. Live or die, that spear will be more grateful to be wielded by me than it possibly would you."

The Thunderbolt Spear vibrates with rage in Cinxin's grasp, violet lightning arcing along its length and up her arm.

"Calm down." Cinxin says aloud to her companion, tightening her grip on its haft as she runs. "We'll see him dead for this, I promise. He's too arrogant to let this go and too conceited to be wise about it."

Cinxin continues to flee. An underling running along the rooftops spots her, and pursues her while yelling for his comrades and harassing her with throwing knives, needles, and other anqi. Cinxin flicks a handful of needles back up at them at an opportune moment while they're jumping between rooftops, smirks at how they need to block them from hitting their face with their forearm, and then finds herself running into a wide open boulevard and almost crashes into a crowd of armored soldiers.

Cinxin loses precious seconds in the open. By the time she disentangles herself, she hears unhurried footsteps, and turns to face her pursuer.

Liu clearly favors courtly nobility's conventional beauty, for how he's refined his body. Slender, elegant build, and middling height for a cultivator. Soft skin, with just the hint of sun tanning necessary to imply he performs outdoors drills. Clean shaven, shoulder length black hair tied back in a ponytail. Youthfully regal handsome looks and a serenely confident smile, as if all he needs to do is go through the motions for the world to deliver him what it owes him.

Foundation Realm, low stage. He'd bragged about being the youngest disciple of his sect to ascend to the second Realm. And while he isn't far stronger to Cinxin in absolute terms, he clearly puts far more effort and focus into training spear-skill than she does, and the gap between the peak of Connection Realm and the bottom of Foundation Realm does matter. Cinxin dislikes her odds if he succeeds at trapping her into the duel he wants to launder this farce through.

"It would seem your futile delays are at their end." He says, smoothing out his robes with his free hand. The green silk is decorated with complex embroidery in blues and dark greens in a bamboo forest design. The vivid red bamboo spear he holds has no spearhead, the tip a mere sharpened stake, but Cinxin has learned from experience that anything with that precise shade of blood red became that way through drinking it. "Please, have some dignity. You shame yourself with this desperate display."

Cinxin takes a combat stance as she watches Liu's underlings leap down from the rooftops to loosely assemble to his either side. Did all of their sect's senior disciples have bandits' dispassionate killing eyes, or did Liu just select for it when accepting hangers-on? Cinxin counts nine, all in the middle of Connection Realm. One glares death at her as he pulls her needles out from his forearm, his sleeve speckled with wet blood.

Then, a commotion to the side. The armored soldiers talk and shout among themselves, assembling into ordered ranks and readying weapons. Cinxin counts fifty-two at a glance, two thirds wielding tower shields and spears, the last third loading gunpowder and shot into matchlock arquebuses. Every gun barrel, every spearhead, and every suit of armor the gleaming black iron that gave the Sable Iron Empire its name.

"Halt! Stop, everyone stop, halt!" An officer pushes her way to the front, yelling as loud as she can. Eastlander dark skin, carrying the same spear-and-shield as her comrades, her tower shield emblazoned with the three-peaks-mountain symbol of the empire. Somewhere in the low or middle of Connection Realm, Cinxin estimates with a little surprise. Cinxin wracks her brain and remembers that the officer's peacock-plume helmet signifies her as a captain. "In the emperor's name, all of you stand fast and name yourselves."

"Cinxin, disciple of the Infinite Heights sect." Cinxin says, with eloquent immediacy, then pauses on remembering it's proper to add her new epithet. "Thunder Goddess."

Cinxin is tall even for a cultivator, with a muscular physique and tanned skin, all raw presence and open might. Her dark purple hair billows behind her like a cape, long enough to brush at the backs of her knees. Her plain face is stoic, but she's always enjoyed compliments about how expressive her eyes are. Compliments she received even before the irises turned violet, before they began to glow with inner power.

"Liu, Stagslaying Lance, scion of House Mei, elder of the Eternal Bamboo sect." Liu says, his serene smile fixed and his eyes cold as he glances at the captain. He smiles wider. "The fastest of my sect to ascend to Foundation Realm."

Cinxin silently wonders if he adds that brag to every one of his introductions, then tenses up at seeing his eyes get a smugly cunning gleam.

"I'm overjoyed to see his august imperial supremacy's servants, and bring you a chance to earn honor by –"

"You're terrorizing half the damn city is what you are!" The captain yells, scowling. "We all heard whatever that voice thing was."

Liu's smile wavers and his eyes narrow. "This is a sect matter, captain. I am well within our side of the Decree."

"The hell you are. This is Riversong City, and mortal law reigns here. Or do you want to argue with a magistrate?"

Cinxin watches Liu gaze at the captain with his false smile and cold eyes. Cinxin struggles to weigh how much trouble the Evergreen Bamboo cultivators would have in fighting the imperial soldiers, but that Liu and his underlings would ultimately win isn't in question to her. Outnumbered five to one they may be, that's five-to-one for mortals-to-cultivators. Common wisdom holds that, all else equal, many weak warriors fighting a single strong warrior always favors the latter the advantage.

Evergreen Bamboo versus Cinxin and the imperial soldiers, though? Cinxin isn't sure who'd win that, save knowing that they'd surely bleed dearly for their victory.

"...Fine, fine." Liu says, closing his eyes and lightly brushing off his robes. "I'll pay whatever paltry legal fine there is. Now if we may kindly return to the more important matter, captain," He smiles again and gestures to Cinxin. "This thief has stolen my spear, and I am reclaiming it."

Cinxin's hands clench around her Thunderbolt Spear as she rides out a tremor of rage at the audacity, one her spear answers with its own thrum. Its design is a fangtian spear, with a spearhead and paired crescent axeblades of glimmering blue-white starmetal. The wooden haft is spiderwebbed with cracks, but the violet glow that radiates out through them from the haft's core quashes any impression of disrepair.

"Please forgive me, my lord," She says, voice cold. "But I will dearly enjoy your death."

"My, how vicious." Liu's serene smile widens. "You will forgive me in turn for not fearing an imposter."

Cinxin stares. "My heavenly lightning proves my identity." She says, feeling stupid for even needing to say it. "There is no-one else alive in the empire who wields it."

"Oh, please." Liu waves his hand dismissively. "Coloring your lightning violet may fool mortals who have never seen a tribulation, but do you truly believe we are so easily tricked?"

Cinxin's shock eclipses her anger. And then she feels a chill down her spine as she realizes the lie is working.

Nobody here has seen tribulation. The crowd assembled at a distance in either direction to spectate the drama blocking the road. The imperial army soldiers warily guarded against both sides. All of them are mortals. Nobody here has seen heavenly lightning apart from Cinxin's and her spear's.

Even the captain only squints suspiciously at Liu, searching for a reason to argue. Cinxin has heard that the empire's institutions often recruit cultivators that stalled out early into Connection Realm, those who fell off the path after only a handful of steps and left their sects to become mortals once again before reaching their first tribulation.

"Captain, I wish to submit myself to the magistracy's judgment." Cinxin says, straining to keep her composure. "My sect will vouch for me and my honor."

"You have no honor!" Liu says, with a scoff and a point. "The true Thunder Goddess would have the strength and valor to face me. All my companions have seen their first tribulation, and will attest to your lie."

Cinxin sees one of Liu's underlings tense up and another shoot him a nervous glance, but the rest stand impassively at ease. How many times has Liu done this?

"Then they can all testify to the magistracy." The captain says, glancing between Liu and Cinxin. "We'll clasp her in chains until a magistrate declares a verdict."

Cinxin sees a flicker of contempt cross Liu's eyes. "No, I will not accept that." He says, and hesitates for a moment as he figures out how to follow up his words. "This thief is a killer, and I demand justice for the blood she has shed. I will not entrust her to mere mortals to hold, we settle this now."

"I am placing her under arrest, in the empire's name, and you can complain to the magistracy if you don't like it!"

"How very good a leader of you, captain, to gamble your men's lives on her kindness." Liu says, his smile fading to cold contempt. "The spear is mine."

The captain stares at Liu in open hate, but Cinxin can tell that the soldiers are anxious and nervous now. Cinxin taps her forefinger on her Thunderbolt Spear's haft, Liu and the captain's continued bitter arguing buying her a few seconds to think, and then whispers something to her companion.

"Elder Liu, forgive my ignorance," Cinxin says, reversing her grip on her Thunderbolt Spear so the spearhead points directly down. "You claim to be the spear's master, but is it not a surpassingly inept weaponmaster that allows their weapon to be stolen?"

Liu's expression contorts into rage. "I am its master!" He snarls. "Every spear serves me!"

"I see. Catch."

Liu pauses, staring at the Thunderbolt Spear being tossed to him in gormless surprise as he unthinkingly raises his hand to receive it.

The moment his hand closes around the haft, the Thunderbolt Spear drives its spearhead down through his foot and deep into the cobblestone beneath it.

Liu screams. Then he screams again, his voice drowned out by the deafening, thunderous roar of the Thunderbolt Spear pouring violet lightning into his foot.

Cinxin smirks as she watches Liu suffer and struggle in vain to pull the spear free, before her eyes snap to one of his underlings seizing the opportunity to charge her while she's unarmed.

Cinxin forms a ball of violet lightning in her fist and launches it with a palm strike. The underling dodges to the left around the lightning bolt, which flies past to strike the Thunderbolt Spear.

With a booming thundercrack, the Thunderbolt Spear vanishes from Liu's foot, tears out the side of the underling's neck in a ragged, charred gash as it surges back up the lightning bolt, and reappears snapping into Cinxin's waiting hand.

"You lied about mastery, you lied about ownership, you lied about most everything." Cinxin says, flashing a cold smile as she twirls her Thunderbolt Spear in showy flourish. It surges lightning across itself, boiling away blood and washing itself clean. "My companion hates you even more than I do. May I suggest retreating to see a doctor, my lord? That looks painful."

Liu sputters obscenities between ragged pants. He leans on his spear to keep himself upright on his sole remaining good foot. His maimed foot is an ugly, black-charred ruin. At a glance, Cinxin estimates years for a full recovery, perhaps months if the Evergreen Bamboo sect has a master doctor among its elders and Liu's family is as wealthy as he acts.

Liu's underlings are paralyzed with fear and wariness. They've taken combat stances and spread out, but another of their number is a half-decapitated corpse crumpled in the middle of the boulevard, leaving eight. Their master is maimed, unable to run fast enough to maintain pursuit of Cinxin. Cinxin is confident she could pick off the underlings one-by-one with skirmishing if they did press the chase, and with their lack of enthusiasm, she weighs that they're not about to try.

Cinxin allows herself to feel relieved that she's finally able to successfully retreat from this mess, and is weighing whether to flee the city back to her sect or commit to surrendering to the magistracy when she sees the imperial army soldiers begin to move.

They mutter and mumble among themselves as they shuffle and straighten up. Soldiers that were resting their tower shields and spears on the ground heft them ready. The arquebusiers ignite the fuse cords on their matchlocks. They cluster pressed tight together into a squared block, ten spearmen standing abreast with the captain in the center at the front.

"Right, I'll call that enough bullshitting us like you think we're idiots." The captain calls to Liu, turning her spear in her hand. "Liu of the Evergreen Bamboo sect, you're under arrest on suspicion of making false accusations."

The noise Liu makes mixes an agonized gurgle and a contemptuous laugh. "I'll kill any mortal that lays a single finger on me! Know your place!"

"You're a damn liar, and you're going to answer for it!"

The underlings begin to shift, their attention splitting between Cinxin and the soldiers. Cinxin buzzes with a brief flicker of panic, then grits her teeth and hurriedly takes a combat stance.

"Your emperor isn't here for you to hide behind!" Liu yells, sweeping his free hand like that alone could scythe them all down. "You and your rejects and failures! Go back to the sect that threw you out and beg them to take you back!"

Cinxin sees the captain and a handful of other soldiers tense up. The captain's face is flat when she slaps her helmet visor down over it.

"Shieldwall!" The captain yells, and Cinxin feels an odd chill. "Death to solipsists!"

"Kill the mortals!" Liu commands his underlings, not sparing the soldiers a second glance. His eyes lock onto Cinxin as he gingerly settles into a spear-fighting stance, his face a rictus of pain and hate. "Cinxin is mine!"

The underlings turn, keeping half an eye toward Cinxin as they approach the soldiers with the smooth confidence of experienced killers seeing an easy fight. Cinxin starts to circle around Liu toward the underlings and soldiers, hoping Liu is crippled enough that she can intervene while defending herself from him.

Then the soldier formation steps forward as one, and Cinxin flinches back as they transform in her mind's eye.

The uncultivated, mortal mind and body are incapable of executing techniques. And indeed, each mortal soldier's movements are flawed, each individual out of sync with everyone else in a dozen subtle ways.

But Cinxin's eyes begin to slide off faces and individuals. The sable iron they wear and hold gleams in the noonday sun like a single conjoined piece. They move with all the mesmerizing unity of a hundred disciples training the same kata in unison at morning drills, and with the same sense of more.

The underlings fan out to skirmish with the crowd, to pick off the weak one-by-one. And as they insist on seeing only mortals to be killed at leisure, Cinxin looks and sees what feels like nothing so much as a single, hulking magic beast, all armor and spikes.

Then the sable iron beast roars with its many mouths, all defiant outrage and zealous hate, and launches forward into a charge.

The underlings hesitate. And then they die, impaled on spears, battered down with shields, and crushed trampled underfoot.

Liu hesitates too, in the moments before the charge reaches him. Too maimed to pursue is too maimed to maneuver or flee. His widening eyes flicker between the sable iron beast and Cinxin, weighing which is the greater threat.

Cinxin lifts her spear and infuses her qi into it. Her Thunderbolt Spear crackles with lightning as she readies to throw it at Liu with all her might.

No cultivator that has experienced tribulation can feel nothing when they see the violet lightning of heaven. No-one.

Liu's attention locks onto Cinxin, and he takes a stance fully facing her. He whips his red bamboo spear to the side to deflect the leading spikes of the sable iron beast's charge. But one spike slips past his distracted defense, and for a moment, Cinxin can see the captain as she thrusts her spear into Liu's gut.

Liu dies poorly. Cinxin flinches back as the beast impales him on its spikes, pinning him thrashing helplessly on the ground.

"Get the fucker in the neck!" "Hold him down, hold him down!" "I got his leg!" "Kill the bastard!" "Hold shieldwall! Arqubusiers, circle around and finish him off!"

The distant voices dim out of Cinxin's perception. The fading vision snaps back into clarity. The sable iron beast keeps him pinned beneath its weight as more limbs circle around from the side, take pitiless aim, and methodically take turns shooting until Liu ceases to move.

The beast gives a cry of triumph that disintegrates into a collective cheer amongst the soldiers. Cinxin blinks away the vision, shaking her head and standing up out of her combat stance. She realizes she's suppressing her hands trembling, and shivers as a tremor works through her body.

It's not that she can't get used to her prodigal insight, in an absolute sense. But she gets used to things as she gets used to things, as she builds familiarity.

New truths are new, sharp and raw, wonderful and terrible. And it's only a hallucination if it's not real.

Cinxin looks over the soldiers as they spread out, the captain talking to them and pointing as they move to collect the bodies of the slain. The captain glances at Cinxin, and Cinxin tenses up.

The captain waves. Cinxin waves back on reflex, feels foolish for a moment, and then composes herself as she walks over.

"Captain. I don't suppose I can withdraw my submitting myself for arrest?"

"I think we're a good ways past hauling you in." The captain says, nudging Liu's corpse with her boot. "Consider yourself ordered to not to skip town before you talk to a magistrate, and let's leave it at that. What the hell happened? To start this mess, I mean."

Cinxin's eyes turn cold. "I approached his sect to purchase natural treasures. He suggested my spear would be fair price. I said no. He insisted. The dispute escalated." She shakes her head, and then gestures with her free hand. "There's one more dead Evergreen Bamboo disciple in the alleyways back the way I came. May I borrow a few of your soldiers to help me fetch it?"

"You can. No looting, though." The captain adds quickly. "The magistracy is going to want everything neat and tidy. The Evergreen Bamboo sect is going to be screaming bloody murder, this is, what, ten dead, and..." The captain hesitates, glancing at Liu's corpse. "Shit, was this bastard really an elder?"

"Eleven. And yes." Cinxin says, frowning.

The captain looks between her and Liu's corpse, and gives a helpless laugh. "That's... I don't even know what to say. It doesn't feel real."

Cinxin thinks about the vision of a beast of metal and zeal, and decides to not ask. She takes another look at the captain struggling to compose herself, and decides to not try asking about the Evergreen Bamboo sect either.

"If I may, captain?" Cinxin says, and waits a long second for the captain to rally her attention before she gives a formal bow. "I am Cinxin, Thunder Goddess, disciple of the Infinite Heights sect."

"Ah? Oh, uh, Captain Mitra Arjmand, of the Sable Imperial Army." She says, returning an unpracticed bow in turn. Cinxin doesn't recognize the make or accent of Ingrid's names, but Riversong City is the furthest from home she's traveled yet, and going to new places always means new things. It's why she enjoys travel quite so much.

"It is my pleasure and honor to make your acquaintance, Captain Mitra Arjmand." Cinxin says, bowing her head. "Thank you, and your soldiers. I owe you a debt for saving me, and it is only proper I strive to repay it before I depart."