Year 658 of the Stable Era,

  Twentieth day of the tenth month

  Forty-five minutes past the stroke of the 1st Inner Hour

  Yao Minzhe’s eyes flicked from left to right as his hand rapped the side of his desk in a sharp pattern, his single moment of indecision all to visible to Chang Hui. She’d known him for too long to miss his tells, and this was more than simple nerves.

  She was also more than familiar with the sequence he used to activate his Noise Isolation Array, and his speed with activating it was more than a sign that he was hiding something, it was a billboard that he was worried about some secret that he might have already let slip.

  “Minzhe, you can tell me,” she pleaded, softening her tone. “How long have we known each other? Three hundred years? Four hundred? You can trust me with a secret.”

  He wavered, and Hui seized the opportunity, intent on pushing him while he was unbalanced. She slapped a fistful of qi-rich spirit stones down on the table, the shock of the sound jolting Minzhe.

  “Twenty stones,” she said. “All yours if you just tell me what I need to know.”

  “I…”

  “And if you don’t tell me, I’ll just work it out myself. I’ve got many friends among the Sword Division, many of whom might be more cooperative…”

  To punctuate her point she plucked a spirit stone from the pile on the desk, Minzhe watching in horror as it disappeared into her ring. He looked down at dull purple stones, back up at Hui, and then back down at her encroaching hand.

  “Fine,” he finally said, sweeping up the remaining stones before she could reclaim any more of them. “But you can’t tell anyone about this.”

  “Brother Minzhe,” she replied, giving him a look of disappointment. “Since when have I been known for my indiscretion?” He grumbled a bit at this, clearly unhappy at the salt on his wound, but after the return of the last stone he considered it thoroughly healed.

  “The truth is that the Sword Division no longer owns the Eye,” he said, bracing himself for Hui’s exclamation. After she had finished, he continued. “A few years ago, a group made us a very generous offer, and after some consideration, we agreed to sell them the orb, providing that they still allowed us access to it for the sake of appearances. They do, for a small fee, but only so long as the purpose is related to swordsmanship.”

  “How generous of an offer?” Hui asked, already intrigued by his tale. Minzhe glanced around a few more times, double checking the integrity of his array before he responded.

  “700,000 spirit stones, outright.”

  Hui’s eyebrows rose faster than she could catch them. Seven hundred thousand spirit stones…that was serious money. That was a price of a heaven-defying artifact. Or a relic of from the Age of Immortals. Even her treasured Divine Silver Thunder Splitting Sword, acquired through a century and a half of careful scrimping and saving, was a paltry trinket in comparison.

  Of course, the Jade Drifting Cloud Eyes were a precious artifact in their own right, only available through auction, but they had only ever reached a price of 400,000 spirit stones, and often their price was paid at least partially in kind.

  To pay so much, in only spirit stones, was almost unheard of. That was the sort of money that could change a small sect forever, and enough to make a splash even for one the size of the Teal Mountain Sect. You could elevate an elder to the fourth stage, acquire a small mountain atop a dragon’s vein, or even…

  “Is that where you got the money for the pagoda?” Hui asked, appraising the Sword Division’s changes with new eyes. The fancy uniforms, the new swords, the qi-rich stone quarried from distant provinces. She had assumed that the Sword Division’s wealth came from their discovery of a hidden realm left by a long-gone Immortal, but now…Minzhe’s face said it all.

  “There never was a shard from the mirror of the Immortal of Reflections, was there?”

  “No,” he eventually admitted.

  “I can’t believe that you would just sell the sect’s artifact like that. Especially to a stranger.”

  Not that the Southern Peaks Gambling Hall could have offered a better price, she thought to herself. Their coffers might be deep, but such an expense was staggering even for them.

  “They’re not a stranger,” Minzhe protested. “They’re a sword club.”

  “Oh?” Hui said, blinking in surprise. Now that was a very interesting detail.

  As a rule, clubs were subordinate to the Divisions that they were associated with. They were generally made up of disciples dedicated to exploring a single aspect of their path, or those intent on realizing a shared vision scorned by their peers. Their number was always in flux, as the inflexible nature of cultivators often resulted in them fracturing over the slightest of slights.

  Hui had been part of a few in her time as a disciple, but while her position required her to keep abreast of their general actions of the more stable of their number, it was inconceivable to think that a disciple-run organization had managed to surpass their entire Division in wealth. It was as if heaven and earth had become reversed.

  “So, which club was it?” she asked, leaning in.

  “I shouldn’t say,” Minzhe replied, stroking his scar. “They’re not the sort of cultivators that you can reason with.”

  “Nonsense,” Hui replied, her response skewering Minzhe’s protest mid-utterance. She drew another five spirit stones from her ring, dropping them on his desk as he gulped. “Everyone has their price.”

  “If you insist,” Minzhe said, somberly sweeping her bribe onto his lap. “I’ll use some of this to burn a good stick of incense for you.”

  “The name, Brother Minzhe.”

  “Very well,” he replied, leaning in close, his hand raising to cloak his words, “the name of the club you are looking for is the Sword Intent Club.”

  *****

  Gao Oma gently scraped her spoon against the bottom of her bowl, gathering up the last of her second serving of sweet red bean soup before letting out a sigh. Usually, one was enough to help her mood, but it would seem that even the power of beans had reached their limits today. They were all the company she had aside from the voices, so they would have to suffice. Her mentor’s meditative breathing had helped, but calming her inner demon had done little for her solitude.

  Lonely lunches had become a part of her routine recently, which was to say seven years at this point. Long for a mortal, but short for a cultivator, or so she had been led to believe. It was funny how that worked.

  A span of time which felt so long to her at the start of her training had reduced to a mere occurrence, shrunk by her stretching standards.

  It hadn’t always been this way.

  In her early days in the sect meals had always been lively affairs. Joyous little moments when she and her fellow disciples, friends at the time, would be able to share the stories of their days. Boasting about the small steps they’d taken and commiserating about their various setbacks.

  But then time had passed.

  One by one schedules shifted, as they each moved past the refinement of their basic cultivation and began to take the first steps onto their chosen paths. At first, they had tried to continue their tradition, each bending their schedules a bit to make it work, but time was an inexorable thing. Like a fine sword, pliable at a light push, but indomitable when truly tested.

  Daily gatherings had become weekly; first five days, then three, and then simply once every other. And then Xie Xiuying had died, killed by bandits off the coast of the Go Islands while visiting family. After that their lunches had become a monthly dinners, the absence of a single voice at the table an immense weight for those first few months.

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  Their conversations had also lost their luster, as their branching focuses meant that there was less and less for them to talk about, the overlaps of their respective domains offering only so much before being exhausted.

  Chang stopped showing after he became embroiled in the competition to become a direct disciple of a renowned mentor of the Teal Jade Pill Tower.

  Feiyu had broken two limbs and never returned after they’d healed.

  Jing had gotten into a fight with Lei over a shared acquaintance and ended their friendship with a duel.

  She’d last seen Sun five years ago, when he’d told her that he was leaving the main sect to become a town guard in one of its outer villages. It was a comfortable position with reasonable responsibilities. Protect the people from common spirit beasts, help with the harvests, and inform the sect should any great threat arise. He’d have plenty of time to train on his free time, to continue his cultivation at a pace that better suited him.

  It might be nice, to live that sort of idyllic existence. She could move back to the countryside to be with her family. Watching over them as they grew old. Protecting the family as an ancestral guardian for generations. A lady of her own small court, venerated more and more as those that knew her as a mortal slowly faded into memory.

  But that would require her to give up on her cultivation.

  Not in a bold declaration, but the acceptance of such a position was a quiet admission of failure.

  That her resolve was lacking.

  That she lacked the determination to truly defy the heavens and carve her own fate.

  To do so would be an admission of her own inadequacy. That she was a failure of a cultivator. That she should have just stayed in her village and let the resources wasted on training her be given to a cultivator that could properly repay the sect’ s generosity.

  But you could just go, the voice, smooth as a silken scarf, whispered in the back of her mind. If you know it, they all know it. That you’re inadequate. A waste of space. That the kindness spent on you would be better spent watering a rock in hopes it flowered.

  “Shut up,” Oma muttered, attempting to drown her heart demon with what remained of her tea. As always, it did, disappearing without so much as an ominous cackle to taunt her. As if even that would be a wasted effort.

  Oma waved her bowl at the waiter, calling for another refill as she stared out over smatter of orange and teal-tiled rooves spread out before her. Her usual lunch spot was on the second floor of a small square building that housed eleven other small restaurants, but her usual table in the far corner had already been claimed by a group of new disciples, so she had been placed at a coveted window seat instead.

  They were excitedly talking about a tour of the sect, those that had already taken it telling the others about the majesty of the views and the different displays the Divisions had put on. A tiger guai with a human face was gesturing widely with his fan, as the rest laughed about some aspect of his tale that Oma couldn’t make out. She wondered how long they would last, before quickly pushing the thought out of her mind as she tried to lose herself in the landscape. Such thoughts only invited bad karma, and she was already drowning in it.

  Unfortunately, today the view of the peaks and rivers failed to ease her spirits. Usually she would enjoy the chance to gaze out over the sect. There were centuries of history to all of its many buildings, styles hundreds, even thousands, of years apart existing in harmony. She always enjoyed spotting something new, as it felt as if she needed at least a century to truly feel like she was even close to seeing it all.

  But today it just felt like a coromandel screen of her failures, each sticking out to her like ivory figures against the landscape. She could see many of the Divisions that she’d been rejected from. Memories of failed tests and narrow losses, broken hopes and resignation. It was not unusual for a disciple to remain unaffiliated, but Oma was starting to push the age where her continued adherence to the generalist’s path felt like the acceptance of another form of slow death for a cultivator’s journey: listlessness.

  Many disciples ended up cultivating with no other goal than their continued cultivation, following the teaching of the sect without ever truly seeking their own path. Their cultivation improving in strength, but never in the ways that truly mattered to a cultivator. Some might make breakthroughs, their pursuit of an as-of-yet undiscovered discipline bearing fruit after centuries, but the rest were no better than long-lived workers, filling out the sect’s labor force until they either quit or died.

  A cultivator needed a dao like a fish needed water, and a purposeless existence was no better than a slow death. Without a goal to pursue, a path to carve or a legacy to leave, there was no merit to a long life.

  She had thought that she had found her dao with the Sword Intent Club, a way to finally realize the affinity she felt for the blade. A place to train with others dedicated to the same path, that shared her passion. She’d given up applying to the Sword Division proper after her fifth attempt to join, as the burden of continued failure had begun to weigh too heavily on her dao heart.

  What a foolish worry that had been, as the act of that very falter had been the source of her inner demon. Had she simply faced it head on… no, she was more likely to form a second one if she kept up such thoughts.

  The past was the past, and nothing she could do would change it. Better to focus on the present. She needed to retrieve Willow’s Branch and then seclude herself. Her inner demon would only continue to disrupt her dao heart if she let it grow, and meditation was the only solution she knew to defeat one. Her seniors would understand, if they even cared at all. They would probably just continue as they always did, given how ambivalent they were about her…no! She had to stop thinking those thoughts. It only fed the demon growing within her dao heart.

  Oma finished the last bite of a fourth bowl of soup as she rose from her table, paying for her meal and returning to the Sword Intent club on reflex. Her seniors were all still there, caught up in their respective trainings.

  Senior Baikun Feng still midway through his exercise, his sword tracing a delicate pattern in the air as he seamlessly moved from form to form. Senior Li Zhan was sparring against Senior Weijian Mei, a break from his usual schedule that shocked Oma so much that she had to rub her eyes to convince herself that it was real.

  She had never seen him leave his bench before the second Inner Hour, let alone spar before the third. His routine for the last two years had been as regular as the sun’s, so reliable that Oma had taken to using it in its place on cloudy days.

  And yet there he was, blade glinting a pale light in the afternoon sun, testing his newest creation against his longtime companion in a blur of bronze and silver. The silence of the training ground was filled with the sound of their clashes, the ring of intent and metal rising like the tides as the pace of their blades rose and fell. Every now and again they would stop for half a moment, blade a hair from cloth or skin, before drawing apart in silent acknowledgement of the halted blow, resuming after the barest of pauses.

  They didn’t seem to be keeping score like in their usual spars, at least as far as Oma could tell. There was no ulterior motive, simply the pure test of skill against skill, each focused solely on the moment and technique.

  She stood quietly, watching. Enthralled by the display of swordsmanship of a level that she had yet to reach. Learning from their motions, the way that each clash revealed the subtle ways that they used the forms they had practiced, coupled with the flexibility that only true mastery could provide in how they molded them.

  As ever, their talent was an enlightening yet humbling existence, like a bonfire on a dark night. Beautiful and illuminating, its warmth a comfort in the dark. But dangerous when you drew close, searing skin and burning flesh when you tried to touch it, when you dared to believe that you could keep it at anything other than arm’s length.

  She felt like she was being torn in half as she stood there, pulled in two directions at once. On one hand there was just so much to learn. She could feel her mind churning just from watching their duel, new possibilities for her own technique opening as processed each of their moves, refining lessons from each sweep of the blade.

  But on the other, her own inadequacy was already a burden to them. The weakness of her dao heart proved that she didn’t deserve to be there, to include herself amongst their number. A true sword cultivator would never waver. Their conviction would be as sharp as their blade. Their resolve as hard as steel.

  And so, rather than face them directly, Oma skirted around the training ground, keeping to the wall as she approached the bench she had left Willow’s Branch on. As usual, nobody took any notice of her, until she picked up her sword, at which point the dueling duo whirled to a halt. Their blades disappeared into their sheaths, their wielders turning to face her.

  “Ah, Gao Oma,” Li Zhan said, his voice as calm as ever despite his recent exertion. “Are you feeling better?” The question surprised her enough that she did a second double take, shocked at the sudden display of concern.

  “Oh, Seniors, I’m feeling…better…now…” she replied awkwardly, after far too long a pause to make her words any semblance of believable. Her seniors didn’t seem to pay her slip much mind though, continuing on as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

  “Hunger is a serious problem at your cultivation,” Li Zhan said sagely, nodding at her words. “When I was at your stage, Senior Brother would always remind me to remember to eat. Qi alone isn’t enough, even if you feel as though you can continue.”

  “I see, Senior,” Oma said, amazed at the way he treated this revelation like it was a profound statement. Weijian Mei nodded along with him, her fingers tapping a strange, quick rhythm on the pommel of her sword as she did.

  “Are you ready to train?” she asked, turning her attention to Oma.

  “Huh?” Oma asked, taken aback by her sudden address.

  “Are you ready to train?” Weijian Mei repeated. “I have been sparring with Zhan for two hours and forty-three minutes. It would not be fair to force him to face the same opponent for so long.” Her eyes drifted to the side as she spoke, their intense green focus now on the jade orb in the corner of the training ground with a look of longing.

  “I…” Oma started, before Senior Li Zhan cut her off.

  “That is an excellent idea. We will have plenty of time while Feng finishes his exercises.”

  “I really shouldn’t,” Oma said, tapping her foot nervously.

  “Are you ill?” Senior Li Zhan asked, head tilting to the side in concern.

  More like inadequate.

  “No,” Oma said firmly, rebuffing both him and her inner demon with a single utterance.

  “Ah, that is good. At your stage, illness can be such a nuisance. You can lose hours, if not days, of practice to it. But if you aren’t ill, we should begin. As Senior Brother says, the only way to grow is to train.”

  “Why?” Oma asked, only for him to misinterpret her intention from her unspoken words.

  “Because through practice we grow,” he replied.

  “But why with me?” Oma asked again. “Surely it would be better for you to spar with Senior Baikun.”

  “Feng is practicing his drills,” Li Zhan said patiently, drawing his sword. “You are not.”

  “But what can you gain from sparring with me? I’m nothing compared to you.”

  “Training.”

  “But wh—” she began, before he cut her off again.

  “By teaching the blade, my comprehension of the blade will improve. By learning the blade, your comprehension of the blade will improve. You might believe that you can better improve by training on your own, but that is a foolish method. True swordsmanship requires two cultivators to truly grow, as one cannot truly wield their blade without someone to wield it against.”

  Gao Oma stared at him, her mind suddenly glacially slow as she tried to process his words. She started to open her mouth to formulate a response, but before she could speak the door to the club slammed open, the sound echoing in the silence.