Brother Long was Tian’s friend. Brother Long was an elegant young man who cultivated sophistication. He studied the four arts a gentleman scholar should master with the grace of someone who would never be pushing a plow or digging ditches for a living. He cultivated immortality the same way- as a duty expected of a gentleman such as himself, though not one he enjoyed.

He should have been an insufferable prig. Tian found him easy to talk to. Brother Long wanted to be friends. He wanted to share his hobbies. To bring something civilized to the barbaric hell of the Redstone Wastes.

Brother Long was born into a good family. He had a distant grandfather in the Inner Court, and while he was the only member of that clan in the Outer Court, the Four Treasures Trading Company had a network that included a significant percentage of the Crafters, Quartermasters and Beast Tamers in the sect. Tian had never discussed the mortal influence of the company with Brother Long. Neither thought it was worth discussing.

Maybe it had been worth discussing after all. Tian hadn’t spared a single thought for those mortals, beyond their use to the sect. They were all still rock throwers to him. He wasn’t seeing much to change that opinion.

When the base was under attack, Sister Li converted her workshop into an arrow making factory. She cast arrowheads by the hundreds, made strong, straight shafts, carefully fletched each arrow. She made them in whatever shapes and sizes she could, hands, arms, back, shoulders, neck, legs, feet, all working until they cramped, then screamed with pain. Sister Li crushed pills between her teeth to keep working, keep the production rate up, keep the fighters on the front line fighting.

Brother Long’s job, his only job, was to run the arrows to the quartermasters distributing them to the fighters. That was it. All the crafters had their staff doing the same- dozens of people running back and forth under the shuddering dome of the protective array. Seeing the hideous Giants fighting with the enormous Redmane and Windmother, seeing their elders making moves that would vaporize the little people with the aftershocks should the array fall.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Watching Sister Li burning what life she had in a blaze of toxic pills and furious creation.

Then the array fell. Horrors swarmed in. Even with the Elders thinning out the invasion and the Inner Court fighting the enemy experts, it was a massive, hideous, cruel tide. The heretics weren’t fighting for glory. They wanted loot. A lot of them, far, far too many of them, went for the crafters.

Sister Li snatched an axe off her workbench and, fueled by pills and pain psychosis and sheer fury, gave a good accounting for herself. For a crafter. For a time. Then a heretic hacked off her arm and hit her so hard, they both thought she had killed her. What actually saved Sister Li’s life was that the heretic immediately moved to steal every single thing in her workshop. No time for the “dead” crafter.

Brother Long saw the enemy coming, and ran. He ran for his cell, slammed the door shut, plastered the room with defensive talismans, concealment talismans, warding talismans, and hid. In the aftermath of the battle, he refused to leave his room. For anything. The stink had nearly blinded Tian when he went to check on him. Brother Long wouldn’t open the door for him. The smell came straight through the wood.

The Four Treasures Trading Company. A powerful merchant house with the support of a Heavenly Person and a cultured youngster who disdained “Mere wealth.”

Sometimes, Brother Long would show Tian one of his paintings. They weren’t very good, and Tian was always at his wits end to find something nice to say. They had spent hours and hours playing go and drinking tea together. He couldn’t just trash the man’s paintings.

The Master of this company branch was a heretic. This was a frontier city, and not a small one. It was militarily important, and a trade hub. With the company’s network and the might of Ancient Crane Monastery opening the way, this Master Ji would be a powerful man in a crucial location.

Such a person was an intolerable danger to the city and the kingdom. He could not be ignored. But his death would cause the company to lose immense face. If he was revealed to be a heretic, the loss of face would be nearly unrecoverable. Worse, it would reach the Sect, damaging the Ancient Crane Monastery’s face too. But the most burning slap would be for the Heavenly Person ancestor behind the Long family.

Tian dared to do a lot of things, but he was scrupulously well behaved in front of Heavenly People. He had no illusions that he could fight them. The barrier was uncrossable. Since the ancient days, the Heavenly was above the Earthly, and while the low ones might rage, the heavens remained untouchable.

Except, his father had done it. He beheaded the heretic, and crushed the false heaven’s wrath.

Tian breathed out with a long sigh and stopped rubbing the bloody jade rosary. His soaked hands were only making the mess worse. He tucked the string of beads into his belt, and turned to one of the paralyzed apprentices. A single touch and a gentle circulation of Tian’s vital energy was enough to revive him.

“Where is this… Ji?”

Tian raced across the rooftops, flowing like a black cloud over the city. Grandpa tried to ease his mind a little, describing similar monks he had seen to wandering monks of the Pure Land Monastery. Their humility and resolve. Their astounding acceptance of life and death and boundless compassion for the suffering. The magic that they could make in people’s hearts with the sincerity of their preaching. Some of it got through.

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Tian stopped to drop into a back yard to steal a broomstick. He left a silver coin and the bristles behind. The shaft was half as wide as his wrist, and tall enough to make a useful short staff. It would do.

As he got closer to the Ji Clan manor, he had a growing sense of a nearby presence. In a city of mortals, the breath of cultivators was hard to ignore. He half closed his eyes, stopping and reaching out with Counter Jumper. The city was chaotic, a maelstrom of noise and vibration. But he was very familiar with this qi.

“Sister Liren, are you hunting too? Did you find good brothers and sisters in the disciplinary squad here, or did you bully them into taking action?” He tracked the qi’s motion through the streets. She was moving at the pace of a running mortal, and coming at the manor from the rear. An ambush, then, supported by mortal forces. She must have found something too.

Tian smiled softly. “Well. Your big brother will lend a hand and make sure they don’t see your ambush coming. Besides, it is always good to work on my yang mentality and yang methods.”

By the time he reached the manor, he could feel the qi of four cultivators within. Three level nine, one level five. Four on one might be a challenge. He didn’t slow his steps. His senior brothers could still hand him a hell of a beating on the sparring grounds, he was sure of it. But he really couldn’t imagine dying in a place like this. Not to the trash that would wash up in a mortal city rather than making their way to Black Iron Gorge. Still. Better to be safe. He would weaken them before he arrived.

Tian hopped off the rooftop and walked the last block in the middle of the street. The street, one of the main thoroughfares of the city, emptied around him.

“On, Ran, Cho, Sa, Ni, Re, Hu, Vo, Ti, Lu, Xha…” He let his voice carry, chanting the nonsense syllables Grandpa had suggested, trying to imbue each of them with a little of the elemental charm the sound inspired in him. “On” was sonorous, deep, the enduring earth. Ni was sharp and jagged, a metallic sound. Xha sounded like the wind in the tree branches, the liveliness of growing wood.

His wooden staff tapped gently on the paving stones and his blood stained rosary clattered as he counted the phrases. Occasionally, blood or worse things dripped from his robe. Shutters slammed closed as he passed. Doors slammed shut, heavy wooden bars thudding into place behind them. The street was silent by the time he reached the closed gates of the manor. Not even stray dogs lingered.

The gate bore the sign of the Four Treasures Trading Company carved directly into the wooden doors. The gate was sized to let wagon caravans through, and the picture was equally huge. A dragon twisting around the base of a mountain, its gem in its mouth.

“‘Long’ means ‘Dragon’ and showing the dragon at the base of the mountain rather than in the air… This feels like one of Brother Long’s games. References and puzzles and we all compliment each other on our shared hobbies.”

He took a deep breath, and filled his voice with vital energy. “Benefactors, if you are one who solves the worries of others for money, repent. See through the illusion of wealth and leave now. This little monk comes to purge heretics. You do not have to die here today. You have time to choose a better path.”

His call was met with silence.

He looked at the symbol once more. There was still time for him to choose too.

Tian let the broomstick stand balanced on one end. He gathered his vital energy into his palms. Took a calm breath.

He smashed the doors into splinters, shattering dragon and mountain alike.

“So be it. This little monk will die without a grave, nameless and alone. But until then, he shall not suffer a heretic to live!” His words hammered into everyone who heard them. They rang with a truth so profound it transcended all mortal understanding. Some felt unspeakable terror. Others, a divine commandment to fight. To sweep evil from the world.

The mercenary cultivators were made of tempered steel. Their hearts were not so easily shaken. There were three- a spearman, one with a sword and shield, and one with a fan. Tian grabbed his staff and swept it around to point at the spearman. The other hand he flung out wide. “REPENT!”

“Too late for that, monk. I always knew Abbot Whitebrows couldn’t be trusted. Broken Saint Hall still stands, does it? A legendary Penitent, all the way in Burning Flag City. Tsk, tsk. Killing you will ensure I never have to buy another round for the rest of my immortal life.” The cultivator with the sword and shield snickered.

“It is never too late to repent, Benefactor. See- your comrade has already embraced simplicity and returned to mindlessness. His reincarnation will be painless.” Tian pointed at the fan wielding cultivator. A single bead of blood slowly formed on his forehead, just between his eyebrows and a little above.

The fan-carrying mercenary’s third eye turned bloody, marking the exact spot where the upper dantian was. The fan-carrying cultivator dropped his carved ivory fan. Needles and sachets of powder fell from his sleeves. His knees slowly buckled, and an old monster of the rivers and lakes collapsed onto the cold flagstones. Eyes wide open. Still breathing. Mind destroyed.

“What in the hell did you do?” The spearman breathed out the words softly.

“This monk gave him a choice and a chance for a better life. This isn’t a battle, Benefactor. There are neither debts nor grudges to settle. You can walk through the gate and out of the city. Money cannot buy a revelation, and where there is life, there is hope.”

He tried to explain.

“Benefactor, this little monk is not your enemy. He is the consequences. The choices of many people brought this one to this door at this time. Benefactor, it is not too late for you. You can still choose. There will be consequences. You must decide for yourself what you are willing to endure. But you must choose now.”

Tian entered the city with the dawn. The sun was setting now. The shadows were lengthening. As the shaken cultivators looked on, Tian slowly raised his hand in front of his covered face. The blood stained rosary slowly churned in his hands, as he silently started to pray.