There wasn’t a fight. The mortal swung a mallet at Tian and watched in horror as Tian stopped it with a finger, then flicked it hard enough to send the four pound sledge through the wall.

“Your particular brand of heresy is called the Art of Smoke and Fire or something like that?”

“Im… Immortal!”

“Compared to you? Yes. Where did you get this art from?”

“I shall never tell! Glory to the Heavenly Demon! Glory to he who rules in-”

“This little monk must stop you there.” Tian literally did so. It looked like the potter was reaching for something, and he didn’t plan to let him suicide. Even his crude medical skills were enough to strike a nerve and paralyze the mortal’s arm. It wouldn’t have worked on a cultivator.

“Now. Where did you get your scriptures from? Look at it this way. Whoever gave it to you is your best hope for revenge, so why not send this monk into their clutches?” He thought he sounded very reasonable, but the way the potter was thrashing around suggested he was missing something.

Not that he cared. The long metal hooks, the knives and rasps and saws and buckets that littered the workshop suggested that this particular potter liked to work with more than clay. That he enjoyed it when his medium screamed in his hands.

“You. You will never make me talk!”

“No, I won’t.” Tian agreed. “Torture defiles both the tortured and the torturer. This little monk despises torture and will kill you as soon as he thinks he can not learn anything more from you. All your dreams of immortality gone, and your soul sent to be eaten by devils for eternity. Your friends did explain that part, didn’t they? The devil soul eating?”

“What? You lie!”

“No.” Tian lied. He wasn’t very good at it, but the basket was covering his face. Every little bit helped. “There is a reason real cultivators don’t use it. Why are you using it?”

“Because the heavens deny me immortality, so I will take it for myself! The Art of Immortal Smoke grants life eternal. I have seen it. I have seen the Demon in the smoke. I have seen the ancient masters. Your pathetic tricks are no match for their dread power!”

“Oh.”

The heretic was running high on terror and fanaticism, barely hearing Tian. “With one hand, the Great One picks the sun from the sky. With one hand, the demon overturns the heavens! With his foot, he suppresses the earth! In all the universe, the Holy Demon alone is honored!”

“So far there is a great one, a demon and a holy demon. And some ancient masters. Are they all the same person, or different people? Sorry, this little monk is not familiar with any of this.”

That seemed to throw the heretic. “What do you mean, not familiar with-”

“This little monk has never heard of any heavenly demons or any of that. Ancient masters, yes. Any cultivation sect is going to have its ancient masters. But this little monk really doesn’t know which ones you are talking about.”

“Still pretending to be a monk?” The heretic sneered as he slowly fiddled in his sleeve for something.

“This humble one is a monk.” Tian nodded, determined not to break character. Mostly out of spite. There was something about the evil crushing wandering monk character that appealed to him. Besides, he would need the black robes soon enough, and they were already dirty. No sense in changing into something clean now.

“Who do you-” Tian hit his shoulder hard enough to shatter the bone. The heretic screamed and stumbled backwards. A small jar falling to the ground. Tian picked it up and gently tapped it. There was a rattle- a pill bottle, likely. Nothing he wanted. He tossed it into a corner of the room.

“He will kill you. The Ancient Master will kill you!”

“No, he won’t. Last chance to say something useful.”

“The world will die in smoke and fire!”

Tian slapped the man in the chest, angling up and towards the wall. His palm was empty, but held thunder. He put his body into the hit. What remained of the heretic slammed into the wall. Some of the bones survived in recognizable fragments. None of the flesh did. Tian’s vital energy infiltrated the tissue virtually unopposed, running rampant. Each vibrating thread tearing apart mortal meat with contemptuous ease.

The disgusting sludge slammed into the wall hard enough to bounce. The spray flew back and hit Tian. His monk costume was now coated in gore.

“That’s not great,” Tian muttered. “If kind of expected.” He searched the house. There was a whole chest of clothes in all different sizes and styles. Many with bloody holes in them. Tian would have thought the man would incinerate them with the bodies. Maybe he liked having the trophies. Plenty of them in his size, he noticed. There were quite a few that were considerably too small.

He also found a rather elegant dagger. Not cursed or enchanted. Just a good steel blade mounted on a handle inlaid with silver. Not the kind of thing a blacksmith would make or a potter would own. Perhaps a jeweler made it and gifted it to him. That would be quite an interesting connection. There were two makers marks on the blade. It might be unrelated, or it might not. He would run it down anyhow. Particularly since he recognized one of them from his earlier run through the city.

Tian debated changing into his new clothes, and decided not to. It wouldn’t be any hardship to just run over the rooftops. The odds of anyone managing to see him would be low. Besides, if he was right, he would just be getting a clean set of clothes dirty after only wearing them for a few minutes.

He entered the small back yard and jumped, catching a window frame and with a light push, jumping to the next window, and so on until he reached the roof. His feet landed on the terracotta tiles thistledown light. Light Body, Heavy Hands hadn’t gotten much of a workout in a while.

Tian looked around, admiring the orderly rows of houses built into dense squares delineated by streets. There were four main thoroughfares quartering the city, then smaller streets breaking the quarters down into eighths and even smaller streets breaking them down into yet smaller blocks. Everything was orderly and efficient.

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“Sister Su must be loving this. An optimized city.” Tian chuckled and set off at a run for where he remembered seeing the mark advertised. His feet made almost no sound as he raced across the tiles. It became a nice distraction from the blinding fury that was just under the surface of his thoughts.

He challenged himself to be completely soundless as he crossed the roofs. He wasn’t there yet, and the city wasn’t cooperating. Not only were there birds living up on the roofs, some of the tiles were broken. He nearly tripped, and once almost stumbled into someone’s attic.

Some of those clothes had been very small. The heretic was here. Not in the wasteland but in a Mortal city under the protection of the Broad Sky Kingdom and the Ancient Crane Monastery. The heretic was prospering. Maybe the heavens would allow it, but he wouldn’t.

He crouched down behind the ridge of a roof, ignoring the soot and bird droppings covering the tiles. The shop was just across the street. It looked like they made decorations out of various shiny metals- gold, silver, copper, others he couldn’t quite identify. He had no sense of whether they were well made or not. There were bars on the windows, but a handsome apprentice was greeting people at the door and bringing them in.

Tian hesitated, not sure about what to do… then realized he was being stupid again. He wasn’t a mortal. He didn’t have to think or act like them either. Tian waited until no one was looking up, and jumped across the street. After that, it was just a matter of shifting away some roof tiles and disintegrating the dry wood below with Thunderous Palm.

The house smelled of flowers, almost sickly sweet and infesting every room. Little sachets of dried blossoms were tucked under cushions, incense smouldered in brass burners, the house was a blinding sandstorm of scent. Tian switched to Counter Jumper and took a long inhale through his nose. Smoke. Lots and lots of smoke- the smell of burning bodies.

He drifted through the house. He could hear servants downstairs, the shop quietly busy. The upstairs were a home. A couple of tiny, cell-like rooms, clearly lived in. A much bigger bedroom. Comparatively richly decorated. Women’s clothes in a wooden wardrobe, faintly covered in dust. The men’s clothes in the wardrobe next to it were dustless.

It sounded like there were no customers in the store at the moment. Just the “master” and two apprentices. Tian silently appeared before them. A black robed monk, his head hidden inside a woven helmet, drenched in gore.

There were screams. The apprentices didn’t smell like smoke. Two steps, two blows, and two young men who would be paralyzed for the next ten minutes or so. Mortal bodies were just so fragile. He barely touched them. He tried his very best to not break anything, and was pleased to have succeeded.

“The two young Benefactors don’t know the nature of your faith, do they?”

“Do, do you know who owns this shop?” The goldsmith staggered backwards. He yanked an ornate knife off a table and held it in front of him with both hands. The way it shook suggested that even the goldsmith didn’t think it would matter.

“This little monk awaits the Benefactor’s teaching.”

“The Four Treasures Trading Company! The Four Treasures! You can’t touch me. I. I have the full trust and backing of Master Ji!”

“Ji. Written with the character that looks like this?” Tian traced a serpentine shape through the air.

“Yes. Yes! That Ji family! You cannot touch me. You…”

“Are you a married man, Benefactor?”

The heretic reeled back, looking like he had been slapped. “You know I was. You know.”

“This little monk always leaves room for hope. Why not buy a slave? Or steal a child from the street?”

“That’s for the outer throng. Those who have barely inhaled the sacred smoke or been initiated into the true mysteries of the heavenly demon. True power requires true sacrifice. But you know all that. I know you.”

Tian tilted his head to one side. Something had clearly snapped inside the crafter. He had pissed himself, then went calm. It was a kind of lucid terror. Somewhat interesting to see from the outside instead of living it.

“You are a Penitent. A Penitent of the Pure Land Temple. I didn’t recognize you without the Instruction Pole. Everyone said you were a myth. That Pure Land Temple uses its body conditioning arts as a form of meditation and self discipline. They wouldn’t hurt anybody. But the rumors never went away. It’s real. You are one of them. A Penitent, come to repent for the sins of the world. By purging them.”

“This little monk isn’t ambitious enough to purge the whole world. He doubts anyone could live that long.”

“Ahaha. Ahahaaha! Yes, yes! Long life! Not just for the immortals on their mountain, but for everyone who can seize it! Longevity. That’s all I wanted. I wanted to live!” The knife was jerking wildly.

Tian looked at the goldsmith. Properly looked at him. He was well dressed. His robe was a rich green, with faint patterns embroidered in darker green around the cuffs and along the edges of the robe. There was a long string of bean sized white jade beads hanging on a string from his belt, with a tassel of red silk dangling from the bottom of them. The heretic’s hair was immaculate, pulled into a fine bun held in place with golden pins. There was silver at his temples, and gentle lines in his face. Older than Tian, but not that old.

Was death truly so terrifying? Was Hell and rebirth something to be feared so much that you would betray those who trusted you the most?

He looked around the room. It looked rich, by mortal standards. Maybe not obscene wealth, but they were only two streets away from a main thoroughfare. A prosperous business in a busy location. The man had two apprentices, fine clothes, and a four story house all to himself. He had a wife, once. Maybe grown children? Maybe not. And he chose the demon in the smoke.

“This little monk… cannot understand you. Nor does he wish to.” Tian moved forward faster than a mortal’s eyes could perceive. His hand slapped down on top of the Heretic’s head, smashing him into a foul smelling mess on the floor. Once again, mortal meat was simply sludge beneath Thunderous Palm.

Tian looked down. He was covered in a fresh coat of blood and liquified flesh. He had seen less disgusting demons.

He stooped down and picked out the beads from the mess. “Grandpa, what is this? It’s like a necklace, but hanging from his belt. A pendant of some kind?”

Kind of. It’s a rosary. People use the beads to mark the prayers they are reciting when they are saying a lot of them. See how some are a little bigger? Just a way of keeping count. Start at the tassel and work your way around.

“The only prayers I know are the ones we say before meals. And for worshiping the ancestors, I guess.”

I don’t know what specific faith they follow at Pure Land Temple, but if you want to lean into the bit, I can teach you some generic ones. Better still, there are some sects that believe certain sounds are inherently holy and will repeat them endlessly in a kind of no-thought meditation.

“Sounds promising.”

Tian looked around a bit more. The apprentices were conscious. They hadn’t lost bowel control, but Tian reckoned it was a near run thing. He sighed and pressed his hands together in prayer, still holding the bloodstained rosary.

“Burn in Hell. Burn a long, long time. And when you are reborn, do better. For your wife, for the people you killed… safe journeys.”

A good prayer.

“Yeah. Four Treasures Trading Company. That is the merchant company that belongs to Brother Long’s family.”

Yes, it is. Which means you have a choice to make.

Tian stood in the ruins of a heretic, surrounded by mortal wealth, and didn’t see any of it. He gently rubbed the beads between his fingers, lost in the darkness of his thoughts.