Volume 2-Chapter 19

Chapter 19

~~~Rui Min~~~

'A sword does not stop cutting down it's foes because it is tired, it only stops when there is nothing left to cut.' This is the mantra of the Stellar Blade Sect.

Whether it means that one must cut until there is nothing left to be cut or if it means until you are no longer there to cut down your foes is something of fierce debate, one that I do not have the time to ponder, as I have something far more useful to do.

The blade of my foe barely missed my neck, the horizontal slash leaving behind a silver trail of Qi.

"You are getting sloppy Rui Min! A year ago the slash would have never come so close to touching your neck." My foe declared boldly.

Cong Min was my cousin, a woman as beautiful and deadly as I was, but unlike me she liked wasting time on fruitless things like taunting an enemy that can't be taunted.

I glared at the boastful woman and she returned my glare with a cocky grin. She has always lived in my shadow due to being two years younger than me, but she is still one hundred years too young to be using that tone with me.

I glanced down to the ground without a word, my facial features the furthest thing one could be from impressed with her boast.

"Looking down ready to kiss my boots cousin? This Cong Min will gladly let you do so!" She declared with an uncouth a crude laugh.

"You should stop littering cousin, this is an arena, not a garbage dump." I scolded the woman softly as if she was a ten year old.

She was well in her forties still, something she did remind me yesterday when I turned fifty and gifted me the pair of silver bracers I now wore.

The woman looked confused at me, before she looked down and saw the large clump of hair on the floor. It wasn't just a small clump, but one almost as long as her entire hair.

Our previous exchange almost cut her head off before I 'missed' and she managed to 'return the favor' by nearly cutting into my neck. Unfortunately, she wasn't anywhere nearly good enough to exchange equally with me on a good day and today is not a good day for her, because, she is facing me.

"How, why, why can't I feel it?" She asked numbly as she realized that she was bleeding.

My sword had a numbing elixir applied to it, albeit the alchemist I purchased it from told me that it did something with the signals going to the brain and copying them and didn't actually stop them. All I wanted to know is that it would stop people from noticing when I cut them down and I paid him handsomely for several bottles of it.

"Not my fault you can't notice that the difference between us is that between heaven and earth, or that you somehow fail at the most basic aspects of being a Lesser Tempering Cultivator." I scoffed at her.

The woman was at a loss of words as she mourned the hair she treasured above all other things and I decided to twist the knife even deeper. That should teach her to call me a 'senior lady' ever again.

I pulled my sword into a low defensive stance in preparation for my cousin getting ready to try and skewer me.

"You told me you wished to reach Full Tempering, but you can't even maintain proper awareness of your body. Are you certain you even succeeded in Ascending to the Second Tier? I think you must have mistaken that day for your monthly bleedings, judging from how moody you still seem to be every now and then." I continued.

Left unsaid but so heavily implied it might as well have been, was that her performance was so poor she surely wasn't a second tier cultivator, as cultivators no longer have to deal with such an issue. Of those unlucky few that somehow did, only the poorest of the newly ascended first tiers couldn't afford an elixir that removed or, at the very least, heavily reduced the monthly bleeding.

Her face quickly turned from befuddled to so hateful I was for a split second wondering if the woman was even human anymore. She certainly wasn't thinking or acting like one anymore.

She rushed towards me, swinging her sword with the raw power of her Tier and none of the skill, which made it trivial to avoid. She wasn't doing the slashes wrong, or I would have been forced to no longer associate with such a sloppy woman, but there was none of the footwork both of us were trained into, none of the build up in her moves. She was attacking from one moment to the next like a wild animal driven mad beyond all reason.

The avatar or hate and rage wearing my cousin's skin continued to swing her sword around, each swing faster than the rest. I gave ground slowly, my face caught in an impassive stance as the woman continued to try and fail at hitting me.

An attempt to cleave me in half was evaded and repaid with some light cuts to her left side. Those were quickly followed by a flurry of blows with her jian which I parried or evaded. In turn I gave her many more light cuts as I evaded her heavily telegraphed blows

There was a trick to using the Lunar Lullaby, my trusty sword, and that was to never make one large cut. My foes can't feel my cuts, but they can still heal them if they focus on the areas they know they were wounded at.

If they tried to heal their entire body, then that would waste too much Qi and my foes would then start to slow down due to a lack of Qi fueling their movements. But, if they only focused on the afflicted area, then they might miss some and start slowing down due to blood loss or losing mobility in their limbs.

As long as I could continue slowly cutting into my opponents and remain more mobile than my foes, then I would win.

Our fight, if it could even be called as such, continued, my cousin continuing to flail around after the insult I threw on her and only slowly realizing what she had done when she was already losing.

"Bitch." She shouted at me.

She was bleeding from at least three cuts, her previously black robes now caked in blood. She was swaying from one leg to the other and looked one stiff breeze away from falling. Yet she still kept her sword up.

I nodded in acknowledgment of her determination, if nothing else. She hasn't shown me the skill she was known for throughout the sect, her temper and ego being her main weaknesses, one that I was all too happy to exploit.

I rewarded such with a kick to her face, making sure to hit her lips with my foot to teach her what it means to kiss someone's foot. Her face deformed from my kick and then the woman fell down and her head hit the floor with a thud.

I prepared myself for her to rise and see if she can still continue this bout, but when she didn't look like she was going to rise up, I turned my back to her and headed to the edge of the arena and towards our audience.

I bowed down, my fist clenched in my hand and eyes closed.

"Ancestor, has my performance been satisfactory?" I asked my ancestor, the man without whom I wouldn't be here today.

Yao Min was a severe looking man, who despite being close to seven hundred years old did not look a day over forty.

My cousin and I fought for the chance to join him in his next mission and the chance at being recognized, which ended with my victory, and hopefully familial recognition.

"Yes, niece it has. Young Cong always had issues with her temper, but hopefully this defeat will push her to correct them. I already made sure she will survive your kind ministrations, now come. The Half Moon sect's schedule is annoying as always and put all of us in a rush." He instructed.

I obeyed without question and followed, any thoughts of my cousin long forgotten.

"Why are we even assisting them with defending their lands? We have not been assisted in a long time with our trials, but I doubt sending just one Practitioner and an elder and calling it sufficient would be seen as anything but an insult." I asked bluntly.

Mother told me our ancestor liked bluntness and that if I ever met him, to never let the silence stretch lest he decide to find ways to banish it. I don't know how a chorus of tortured cats singing about moonlight sounds like and I do not want to learn.

I don't want him finding such cats to teach me what it sounds like either.

"Diplomacy and we won't be the only sects coming. The Empress has decided to acknowledge our ways as true and inform her ink guzzling bureaucrats that she is ambivalent to our ways, as such we now need to start interacting with the other sects again. The easiest way to do that, as well as the least likely to be turned against us, is assisting other sects in looking after their Prefectures while their elders and sect mistress are focused entirely on their Trials." He explained kindly.

That made sense I suppose.

Descendants of an Elder up to six generations are allowed to skip the written trial and the preliminaries of the Tournament that determines who can enter the sect and who can't, so even as I haven't experienced those parts of the Trial, I knew that the sect values all of them equally. If we ever needed any help to ensure we could look over them and our territory, then said help would have been greatly appreciated.

Thankfully we didn't need such and haven't needed it in centuries.

"So, who will I be paired with?" I asked.

I doubt I would be the only one sent there, if this was a diplomatic mission. I've just finished beating my cousin bloody and had her kiss my feet as I was doing it, I am not exactly what one would call diplomatic.

"The two of us will be the only ones from the sect to go niece. Also you may call me uncle from now, you're the least disappointing of my descendants, so you have earned the right to do so." The Ancient Third Tier Cultivator said.

"Yes uncle!" I all but shouted happily.

I had to defeat all of my cousins in the sect for it, but I have finally been recognized as Uncle's family! Mother will be so proud when she hears of it!

Uncle chuckled at my words. I don't know what's so funny about them, but I knew better than to comment on it.

"Good, Rui Min I am glad to see you so excited. Hopefully it lasts when you see your partner, as our old friends the Blazing Fist Sect have decided to send us one of their more renowned scholars to partner up with you." Uncle said.

My excitement faded. Will I need to babysit a scholar of all people? They're the only thing worse than a bureaucrat. At least those blood sucking leeches work hard!

A bureaucrat for all that they are scummy, miserable curs, will work for days on end to find an error and where it came from and will do so for years until their very eyes start failing them. A scholar on the other hand spends all his waking time daydreaming about nonsense, expects to get paid for it, then sleeps for half a day!

"I'll endeavor to look after my charge uncle." I declared boldly.

Hopefully I won't need to deal with too much whining from the scholar, they are a cultivator after all.

"I doubt it will be needed, the Blazing Fist Sect's Practitioners and Disciples, even the scholars, are not quite the pampered things you think of when you hear the word scholar. Fu Jian may be softhearted, but skimping on his disciples' training is not his style, nor that of his disciples." Uncle corrected me gently.

The Blazing Fist Sect, it took me a bit to match the name with anything I knew. They used to be our rivals weren't they?

"What are they like then?" I asked uncle, as I was quite eager to learn more.

My question seemed to have made uncle turn somber and I wondered if I mistepped.

"They are our foil. Where we dance with grace they rush ahead, where we avoid a strike they take it and return it twice as hard. What breaks one of us, empowers the other, and when we were still on good terms we would cover each other's weaknesses on the battlefield and in the political arena." He answered me, his tone distant.

His tone made it clear that while his body was in the present his mind was still walking through the past as he reminisced of what was, long before I was born.

"So they fight like how Cong Min fought just now, but better?" I asked dubiously.

Because that sounded exactly like the opposite of what we are meant to be doing.

Uncle's laughter boomed across the empty hallways, as he let his emotions run free in a way only elders were allowed to in public.

"No, my niece no, albeit I can see where you are coming from. You brought your cousin to madness with your remarks and the only thing she had in common with the Blazing Fist Sect's members being the willingness to pummel you into the ground no matter what. Disciples and Practitioners of our Rival are not so hot-headed in a fight.

To them, the battle is an arithmetic of attrition and bloodshed. If one of them thinks that losing an arm will lose you your head they'll sacrifice them and then cut your head off while you celebrate. Stabs are subtractions, chokeholds are multipliers and a fist just a number. Their bodies are a mathematical formula that they learn to refine so that it can be applied to as many problems as they can, albeit they don't call it that." He explained.

"How do they call it then?" I asked.

That sounded like an interesting way to think, albeit I imagine that losing a hand is not as cut and dry. Reattaching a hand is difficult to get exactly right for disciples and the more a limb is unattached to the body, the more Qi it loses into the air, and that could result in months of lost cultivation, as you need to relearn how to use the limb right and bring it back to its former potential and cultivation after you reattach the meridians.

"The Flow, from what I recall they said that the world is one great Flow, that one's movements flows from the next and that if you wish to win, then you must learn to control and break it when you wish to break through. I personally never understood that explanation, but when I applied my method to it, I found that I could predict their actions with great accuracy." He replied.

The two explanations had nothing to do with one another at all, but I accepted it nonetheless. I'll get my answer after we reach the lands near the central spider clan and I can see for myself what this scholar is made out of.

We came out of the tunnels and into the open sky to the sight of the massive sky ship that will take us there. It was long, at least thirty times as long as I was tall, but looked narrow as it's own height was far less impressive.

"A rather small thing is it not? I've seen ships that were more like sky fortresses that were filled with hundreds of soldiers and cultivators, but sky ships have fallen out of favor these past centuries except as transports." Uncle observed.

"It's still impressive." I replied.

The sky ship was made out of wood, like all ships were, but it was covered in glowing copper sheets and lacked the large sails I was told were normal for seas ships. Instead it moved solely through Qi, it's shape optimized for speed and to reduce air drag.

It had no visible crew, but I knew there were some Disciples or skilled alchemists allowed to cultivate so that they may perform maintenance on it. It was Yao Min alone that could control and guide it, for he was one of the very few Third Tier cultivators that could control such ships without a control interface and this ship looked far too small to hold such.

It may be the smallest of the sky ships, but it was still impressive due to what it represents and the skill and resources it took to create it.

"I can see why you would think so, but unfortunately this isn't much. The cost of having it transport materials is quite high, it has no weapons to speak of and what materials it can transport are quite few. It's only use is to quickly transport second and third tier cultivators in case of emergency and allow them to preserve their Qi reserves until they reach the battle." Uncle explained.

Realization quickly came as to what Uncle word's meant.

"This ship was brought back into function for us alone." I declared, trying my best to hide my unease.

We don't need such ships, our territory small and our Second and Third Tier cultivators being dispersed throughout it. If our territory is under attack, then an unarmed fast transport is the last thing we should be using our resources on, especially as every single part of our territory will be under threat, and the sky-ship quickly destroyed by the enemy's flyers or munitions.

"Not quite, but it is the last such ship we've bothered to maintain. It is meant primarily for diplomatic arrangements and to avoid having our envoys struck down, but now, it's up to us to make use of it." The centuries old cultivator clarified softly.

We were boarding the ship now, the thin wooden plank linking the ship to the sky hangar being the only thing separating me from a steep fall to the next level of the Ziggurat. I was no longer scared of such, my body long since capable of surviving such a fall, but it would be better to not fall and incur such an humiliation.

The sect was built like an artificial mountain, one large square floor on top of the next, and right now we were at the second level from the top.

"I won't bring dishonor to the sect." I declared, my voice as sharp as steel.

If I needed to work together with an Imperial Scholar that happened to know how to throw a fist so be it. The sect demanded that I acquit myself well as Uncle reestablishes diplomatic contact with his fellow elders and I will do just that.

Failure is not an option.

"I know you won't niece." My uncle replied, his voice just as cold as mine.

Beneath us the sect grew ever smaller as we flew away from it and towards my new mission.