Volume 2- Chapter 17

Chapter 17

~~~~Tai Su~~~~

A cultivator needs to be strong, quick with their weapons and on their feet. They need to know when to cut down their foes and whether to do with swords or words.

A swords flew through the air, it's horizontal arc making it clear that it was meant to separate my head from my body. I barely avoided it, tips of my already short hair bearing the brunt of the hit meant for my neck.

My fall to the ground did not stop however, I needed the kinetic in my legs to propel me towards my target and so, before the sword could change it's trajectory I used my own legs like a spring and jumped towards elder Shen Xifeng, my spear ready to try and impale her.

My target wasn't moving and looked entirely unbothered as I managed to move away from its protector.

With spear in hand and my mind to focused to even bother with a battle cry I charged towards my teacher with every intention of stabbing her with my very sharp spear.

I was inches away from her when her flying sword deflected my charge and had me harmlessly head to the side.

"You know, it is strange seeing you move, Tai Su. You think and think and think, and yet when you move and act you stop thinking. You act as if doing and thinking are two entirely different actions that shouldn't be done at the same time." Elder Shen Xifeng said, entirely unbothered by the fact my spear almost tasted her blood.

Almost is not the same as did after all.

I managed to stab my sword in the floor and used it like a dancer to spin around it, my two hands loosely around the rather short pole and my feet on the opposite side of it.

I redirected my momentum back towards her for a foot kick, but that too failed as she used the large sword to block my momentum. I jumped off it and spun through the air until I landed a short distance away from the woman.

Now it was my turn to deflect and block as the giant sword came at me.

My muscles were empowered by my Qi, the nearly Liquid streams of Qi flowing through my body at a dizzying speed, as my body did its best to push itself beyond its limits.

"You still focus too much on your muscles, I can hear your bones crack disciple. You continue to strengthen them at different intervals, but at least you strengthen them both now." She said simply.

She was right, strengthening my muscles allowed me to move fast and hit harder, while doing the same with my bones allowed my body to better survive such effort, but bones took longer to strengthen and so I had to choose between fast burst movement and not feeling any pain for a split second.

A worthy trade until I no longer suffered from the issue, and good training regardless.

I continued to dance around the flying sword moving more deftly than I could as I tried to find an opening. The Elder was holding back less than normal today, which meant a new mission awaited me.

The opening came swiftly, the sword swung just a bit too much in it's vertical cut, but it took my spear down with it. I let go of it and, once the sword hit the ground, used my left foor to drive it harder into the floor.

I could feel the skin experiencing a light cut despite my enhanced body but I ignored it, as the wound will close swiftly as my Qi was working hard.

I ran towards elder Shen Xifeng, the red haired woman utterly amused at what I just did. The first step my foot was bloody, by the second the skin was raw, but the wound closed and by the third it was back to normal and I gave my all into the punch headed straight for the elder's face.

My fist never hit her face, as the woman blocked it with her finger.

I didn't care, this ended when the elder moved from her position or I managed to land hit her on her body and face, and her limbs didn't count.

I dropped to the ground in an attempt to sweep her off he feet with a leg strike, but before it would connect the sword flew and planted itself into the ground.

"Excellent work disciple, but that's enough for now. Rise up and look at me properly." Elder Shen Xifeng said kindly, as if what we just did didn't end with me bleeding on the floor.

Cultivators are weird like that I found. I've met others in the sect besides my friends and all of them were a bit off. They weren't frothing at the mouth lunatics, but all of them had weird reactions and ways of viewing the world.

I sighed and did as she told me. Her green eyes looked into mine looking for whatever it is that she was looking for. Green met brown as the red haired woman looked at me with an amused smile.

I put my hand in my fist and bowed.

"This Disciple thanks his master for the training session." I declared, my tone even.

I was a bit winded, as elder Shen Xifeng has made sure to maintain a high pace that is difficult to keep up. Cultivation was weird in that I didn't get tired, the mechanisms behind my muscles losing responsiveness from effort no longer firing, but physical effort past a certain intensity made me shiver as my muscles needed to get use to no longer being as strung up as before.

Despite all that I wasn't tired, the sensation I always felt when tired was just gone, all that was left was the knowledge that parts of my body have been stretched and I need to wait for some time until they have recovered.

"You don't look infected by some unspeakable Madness that breaks cultures in pieces and spreads through screams and death." The woman joked.

I sighed again and looked up, the joke was getting old.

"Because my old life wasn't like that master." I replied, my tone clear that I was tired of this nonsense.

Apparently, I am not the first individual from Earth to reach this world, I am the third and for some reason the Imperial Authorities seem hellbent on believe my world is afflicted by some sort of Madness Inducing Spiritual Maladies that make our population go crazy and start killing each other in the name of strange beliefs. This started a year ago, when I was back at the sect and the Sect Master asked me to draw a map of my old world for storage and realized that they already had such a map.

I still think it's nonsense, but giving them an explanation of what I knew of the politics and situation of my past life did not serve to convince them otherwise. Instead it made them even more convinced of their weird theory that my old world suffered from some form of transmissible Mental Madness.

The woman shrugged at my words and treated them the same way she did every time we had this argument.

"Perhaps, but if we knew you came from Diqiu, we wouldn't have allowed you to publish your books without first having multiple redactors make sure everything is free of your madness. As it is, I was asked to be a bit more through in checking on you." She said, her tone vaguely amused, yet serious.

That little policy changed remarkably little, despite what it meant. The Imperial Palace said that it wants to review any works teacher Hao Wen and I write down before allowing it be published or copied and, in a month or so after, we find our work missing some passages with no explanation as to why.

There's few if any changes, as in a manuscript of five thousand words, perhaps fifty words were added or removed. I liken it more akin to government mandated proofreading than actual censorship, unlike what teacher said it was when she heard we needed to submit our work for imperial review before publishing it.

I've seen censorship, if the Imperial Palace or the Foxes think that changing the way certain things are phrased is censorship they have seen nothing. The censorship in my past life could correct your writing before you even finished writing your sentence down, this was nothing, less than nothing even.

I've compared my own reserve copies to what they send me back, and the differences are so minor, calling it a grammar change is more accurate. I even started leaving message to my proofreader thanking them for the service, which I am sure messed with someone's mind upon seeing it.

Or maybe they appreciated someone praising them for their work. They certainly never replied to them.

"I am not mad master, not anymore than the average cultivator at least." I said simply.

"We are not taking any chances, the last individual coming from a World of Madness we didn't catch in time created the ideological groundwork for what would later become the 'Way of the Fist' and their little heresy." She said bluntly, all traces of humor gone.

There were five 'Worlds of Madness' from what Elder Shen Xifeng told me, five that tales from other reincarnators could confirm at least. Earth, or Diqiu as the Imperials call it, being the only one with a decent standard of living and without Qi in it. The others made life in my home village seem like paradise even to the affluent.

I decided to not dignify that with a response, and instead decided to address the more important topic, my upcoming mission.

"So what is my mission elder?" I asked her to sidestep the conversation.

This isn't the first time we had it and I am pretty sure she was repeating it just to mess with me at this point.

"What makes you think there is a mission disciple?" She smugly asked me.

As if I would dignify that with an answer. A basic rule of Imperial etiquette is to not bring up someone's tells, nervous tics and habits.

Bringing up what someone does to feel comfortable in social interactions is how you make then uncomfortable and have them overthink everything.

We only had to do it once or twice each, for master to be annoying and constantly ask us if she was being too obvious and constantly bring up our own tics for us to no longer bring it up or be too obvious about spotting them.

I raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the woman trying to goad me.

"I guessed. You confirmed it to me when you didn't outright deny it." I lied with ease.

I didn't like lies, even this sort of lie both the speaker and listener knew were nonsense, they were wrong and scratched on something that went deeper than my flesh. My very soul disliked lies and I took it upon myself to not engage in them as much as possible.

Elder Shen Xifeng knew this, but still insisted to at the very least teach me to be comfortable when I need to lie. She called it a valuable skill to staying alive and I could see the point and knew deep within myself that she was correct.

It didn't change the fact that I hated lying.

"I see, I see. You are right then despite the dubiousness of your method of deduction, I do have a mission for you. Tell me disciple, what do you know of the Stellar Blade Sect?"

I considered it, so that's why she brought up the Way of the Fist? The mission she has for us is related to it?

"They are the sect with the dubious achievement of having gone up into rebellion in the most bizarre way possible. I've never ever heard of rising up into rebellion, then continuing to pay taxes." I answered honestly.

Rebellions are usually over taxes, and when they happen people don't just continue paying them.

The Stellar Blade Sect may have gotten into the habit of killing every member of the Imperial Administration on their territory, yet they continue to pay taxes by having their own tax collectors just deposit it in the nearest banner fortress. I have personally never heard of such a strange thing in my past life and it appears to be a first to the people in this world as well.

If elder Shen Xifeng didn't tell me that what I was reading was correct when I was doing it, I would have genuinely thrown the book into the fire. There is a limit to the lies one should allow written on a book, especially those calling themselves history.

"Yes, probably because they don't want the Qi to stop accumulating in their caverns, but it is indeed weird. It's not that important now that they're loyal, what do you know and think of them?" She asked me.

Her eyes went wide as she apparently realized she told me something I shouldn't know. Or maybe I should have? The red-haired woman does like playing her mind games. If she didn't actually let slip something like this in the past, I wouldn't believe it now, but the woman is used with being diplomatic, not keeping secrets.

"What do you mean by Qi accumulating elder?" I asked her.

The woman sighed in such a theatrical way my eye twitched, but I quickly schooled my features. My opinions on her teaching methods aside, she was nonetheless my teacher and she is taking her duty extremely seriously. As such she has earned my respect and attention, even if she enjoys messing with me..

"You weren't mean to know this, but considering your mission, I suppose it's only right you know. You do know what a Dao Heart is correct?" She asked, her eyes twinkling at me.

She figured out I caught on the fact her 'misstep' was anything but.

I nodded, yes It's been one of the topics I tried to learn as much as I could of.

"Yes, they represent the crystallization of a cultivator's understanding of various concepts into a single spiritual organ. The Empress has Condensed hers into the 'Rejuvenating Flames of the Phoenix' and Emperor Ming into 'Harmonious Aura of Prosperity' according to the texts. The Empress can make flames that heal and burn in equal measure, while Emperor Ming can organize things so that there is no 'disharmony', whatever that means." I answered.

The Empress has created an ability that allows her to create flames that heal herself and others, regain a person their lost lifespan, make one younger and also burns things. Emperor Ming's ability on the other hand is more esoteric and strange, all I could make sense of is that it 'guided' development in ways that were 'harmonious' and no, nobody was clear as to what that meant.

I could guess what the Dao Hearth of the Empress did based on the name and what I knew she offered to loyal cultivators, but knowledge on Emperor Ming and his Dao Heart was always vague.

The woman cracked her neck to the side, each pop sounding like a miniature lightning strike.

"Close enough, please sit down, this is not the type of conversation we should have while standing, and don't worry about the blood, all of it has been cleaned." She ordered then proceeded to sit down.

Only once she was done, did I also lower myself down, as one does not sit down while their superior is standing.

"Emperor's Ming's Dao Heart allows his Qi to infiltrate everything, from the trees, to the rocks, the air and space itself and even people. It guides changes, slows them down and leads people to action or inaction in a passive way that decreases or removes disruptions and disharmony. These changes include the Qi concentration in the air and allows Qi to only gather in great quantities only where he deems it would be harmonious, and there's nothing less harmonious than the breaking of social bonds." She exclaimed.

My mind blue screened as it tried to make sense of the nonsense it just heard. That is not the power of a cultivator, that's the power that could rearrange the entire world into his image just by waiting. That is the power of a god in a way that goes even beyond that of the Empress.

"How… how strong is this ability exactly?" I asked, my voice numb.

The woman shuddered at my question and that told me more than words could have.

"Individually weak, most can't even notice the Qi in the air until they reach the upper end of the Third Tier and it is mostly useless in combat. However, it affects the entire world and an obscene distance beyond it and what it does has shaped the world in a way that is difficult to explain. His Dao Heart has been active for so long that all Qi in the world moves according to his belief of what the world should work like.

Should parts of the world no longer fit it, then those parts will have their Qi accumulation reduced over centuries, and that's just the start as other changes start appearing the more time passes. The only way to remove his influence is with specially treated Lead that gains the properties of 'Insidious Corruption'. That's how the spiders have managed to survive for so long actually." She explained.

"How does that help them?" I asked, eager to learn more, yet perplexed at how Insidious Corruption would help the spiders survive.

Yes, the ability to focus Qi into a single area, then remove it would cripple spiders over the long term, but it doesn't explain how the spiders grow their mountains faster than the Empress could burn them.

"Qi creates matter and space the greater the density of it in a given area. If there is dirt somewhere, then Qi of sufficient density will naturally create more of it, same for water and air. Emperor Ming has decreed that the change in the world's size is to be done little, if at all, especially as the Qi density remains. He manipulates the world's Qi so that the only thing that gets multiplied is Air, which then leaves the atmosphere. Properly refined Lead disrupts Emperor's Ming's passive control over Qi, allowing those that know how to use it right to overcharge the influence of Qi over matter, make space bigger, create more matter and even guide Qi flows." She explained.

That's absolute bullshit, and it made me wish to ask more questions, but the elder put her hand up in a sign for me to pause.

"I know you wish to learn more, but I am not allowed to say more on this topic and I'll ask you to not share what you now know, not until they are themselves Practitioners, as that's when you are normally allowed to learn this information. We need to talk about your mission." She declared.

I sighed at her words and nodded. I wished to know more, but I knew how this is meant to go. Some things are only meant to know with the right clearance, or because they are relevant to your mission.

"So what is my mission then? Go find out what made the Stellar Blade Sect go crazy?" I asked.

Considering I came from a so-called 'World of Madness' it made sense that they wanted to use my perspective to see if I could gleam anything from interacting with someone fro mthat sect.

Elder Shen Xifeng shook her hand in a 'so and so' gesture, which meant I was close but not quite.

"No, even if you were a Golden Core Elder, we are not letting you anywhere near that center of Madness, not until we are certain whatever strain of it is in your mind can't breed with whatever afflicted those idiots." She explained.

I tilted my head to the side at her words, then what am I meant to do? Also, I am not mad, but I knew trying to argue with Elder Shen Xifeng is useless. She wasn't treating me like I was about to go off, but whatever she read of the other people from Earth made her act weird for the last few months, even if she kept it hidden from the others.

" What is my mission then?" I asked plainly as I did my best to hide my annoyance with topic.

Elder Shen Xifeng, to her credit, pretended as always, that she didn't see it.

"The Half Moon Sect is having its Trial shortly and with the coming Era of Blood, the Stellar Blade Sect has ceased its nonsense and returned back into the fold. As such, they are helping with looking over the Silver Shield Prefecture, while the Half Moon Sect's Elders are busy. We want you and one of their promising youths to interact while that is going on and see if you can't figure out what's going on with them." She told me.

I tilted my head again, so me going to their lands is too dangerous, but interacting with some of them is fine? No, I'll ignore that for now, there's more pressing questions.

"Is there something wrong with them?" I asked her.

The woman sighed at my words and looked far too tired from what is meant to be a single conversation. It was an honest expression now at least.

"We genuinely don't know and that's the issue. Beliefs change and mutate over time as culture changes. Nascent Souls from before Imperial times struggle to understand new Nascent Souls and even the newest generation of Nascent Souls has difficulty understanding young cultivators. We genuinely don't know what, if anything, is wrong with the new generation of cultivators from the Stellar Blade Sect. We were hoping to use you to figure out what's going on with them and see if you can figure out how to prevent a repeat of their Rebellion in the future.." She explained tiredly.

"Isn't there a risk of 'crossbreeding our types Madness' as you put it?" I asked again and stopped tilting my head.

I did not believe it was as big an issue as she made it out to be, but I was still curious.

She nodded seriously at my words, which made me reevaluate my thoughts on her actual opinion on this issue. Was there something I was missing?

Perhaps Qi was making you fall to hysteria if you interacted with someone crazy enough?

"Limited one to one interactions were deemed low risk, but you being surrounded by them is not something the Empress is willing to risk. Your work with the foxes is a greater priority than one sect and their nonsense." She answered.

"So what am I meant to do exactly? I doubt you would like me to interrogate that disciple, I wouldn't even know where to start from." I asked again.

I doubt we will be doing any interrogation, we will be helping the Half Moon Sect to look after their Prefecture after all. Even if we wanted to, I doubt the Half Moon Sect would allow it, not unless they wish the number of sects willing to cover for them during their Trials to lower drastically.

Elder Shen Xifeng confirmed that with a shake of her head.

"No, we want you to befriend their disciple and try and find out how life is inside of the sect, as we can't do what we normally do in such cases. Sect disciples are, after all, protected by the Law from being forced to answer questions by means of Mental Compulsion." She explained.

Ah yes, that bit of horrifying knowledge was not fun to come by.

Sect Elders, Military High Officers and First Shadows, as well as the Empress and any Nascent Soul in the Empire all have the legal right to mess with your mind and force you to answer their questions, with the only ones exempt from this by default being Sect Disciples, nobles and other individuals of similar rank to those that can do the procedure.

I can see the logic behind it, after all why bother with a lengthy trial when you can just get the truth, or even better, see if someone has already messed with their mind by checking yourself?

It didn't matter how much I understood it, it still made my skin crawl just thinking about it. My mind is my own, I don't like the idea of someone else being able to see what made it tick. I don't like seeing it myself sometimes.

"So when do I leave?" I asked.

I was resigned to my fate, as it's not like I can say no to missions, not important ones at least. There's some wiggle room in choosing my mission if there's several available, or postponing it if I need more time to do my sect quota, but I didn't need the elder's lessons to know that you don't do that sort of shenanigans without good reason or very, very rarely.

"Tomorrow and yes, I know it's on a far shorter notice than normal, but the Half Moon Sect has their own weird criteria about their trial and when it takes place. Due to this, the Trial always happens at random times in the year and we have a day or two at most to prepare." Elder Shen Xifeng answered.

I sighed again, Bao is going to love that, especially as it seems that I'll be going at it alone. She would have told me if I were to take someone else with me, and it seems this will be a solo mission.

Bur orders are orders, and besides, I am quite curious as to just how different those cultivators from the Stellar Blade Sect truly are.