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."