Beating up demonic cultivators was oddly cathartic, Bai Ning mused, as she activated her shield just in time to block the beam of light shooting from the mouth of the skull-shaped magic treasure her opponent wielded.

  It struck her copper shield like a warm summer breeze, harmless, almost playful, sending sparks of red qi skittering across the battlefield like molten glass before dissolving into the haze.

  The past few months had been relentless. First the auction, then the chaos of the Lava River and the False Core Pill, and now this. Since stepping into Foundation Establishment, she hadn’t had a single truly relaxing day. It was always one trial after another, each one more exhausting than the last.

  In that context, another fight should have felt like just one more irritation in a long string of headaches. Yet somehow… this one was turning out to be strangely therapeutic. Perhaps it was because this was a battle she could actually handle. Her master and the other Core Formation cultivators were occupied with the Gu and its deranged master, while the lower-ranked cultivators mopped up the remaining Black Sail Bandits.

  A battle involving a Gu shouldn’t have felt relaxing; she knew that. Her master had been tense from the start, and seeing his unease had been more unsettling than the knowledge of the Gu itself. She knew those things were dangerous, of course, but his visible apprehension had rattled her. Even against a Nascent Soul cultivator, he’d remained composed, yet this had shaken him. Someday, she resolved, she’d pry the story of his first Gu subjugation – the one he’d mentioned to Jin Rong – out of him.

  Her eighteenth birthday was coming up, after all. She was fairly sure she could wheedle it out of him if she framed it as a birthday gift.

  But for now, there was the fight.

  Her opponent, an early Foundation Establishment cultivator unlike her own mid-stage rank, wasn’t much of a challenge. If he had paused to think for even a second, he would have realized it. But fury clouded his mind completely, making him both unthinking and unheeding. Logic, fear, the fact that he was clearly losing: none of it penetrated his rage.

  He wielded a skull, thankfully though, not a human one, but something that looked like it had come from a Shadow-Stealing Hound, and used it to spit out beams of malignant qi or clouds of toxic smoke. Her copper shield, which she really needed to get around to naming; something suitably dramatic, like the Absolute Copper Halo Shield of Glorious Righteousness, easily blocked both.

  The beams looked dramatic, but they couldn’t break through, and the smoke was basically harmless. Every cultivator on their side had already refined multiple anti-venom and toxin-filtering pills, and her own poison resistance, painstakingly honed under Master Mo Jian’s tutelage, allowed her to ignore it completely.

  Her sword, also still unnamed; perhaps the Green Line of Karmic Debt that Separates Life from Death? she’d workshop it later, was darting through the air, circling her opponent to probe for weaknesses in his defenses. She could easily overpower him and end it in moments if she wanted, but this was a war, small though it might be.

  She had to keep an eye on her qi expenditure, careful not to get so absorbed in fighting one man that she lost sight of the bigger picture. Part of her attention remained on the Undersea Ship that had brought them here; another part tracked the cultivators who had left its protection to join the fight.

  She was one of them, and frustratingly enough, so was Jin Rou. As the nominal head of all the Foundation Establishment cultivators present, it made sense, but she still hoped he would stay preoccupied with his own battle. He was facing the man on the paper crane, after all; the only competent fighter among the bandits, a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator himself.

  It wasn’t as if the whole fake marriage proposal incident had her on edge. She wasn’t even particularly angry or indignant about Jin Rong and his words. She knew perfectly well that some places were… less equitable than others. Her mother had told her plenty of stories about growing up near the archipelago, where the fishermen and their cultivator counterparts were even worse. It didn’t bother her, at least, not as long as they didn’t try to force her to conform to their opinions.

  No, what truly bothered her was the fact that Jin Rou, for reasons unbeknownst to anyone but himself, had decided to spend the entire journey from Blackrock Island to the cosmic bubble trying to flirt with her.

  The idea itself wasn’t exactly foreign; men had tried before, usually when she was alone, but this was the first time she couldn’t simply say no and expect it to end.

  It had all been “Fairy Bai Ning, your face puts the moon to shame,” or “Fairy Bai Ning, after seeing you, I’ve begun to envy mandarin ducks, not immortals.” That last one had been particularly galling, since it was a line from a play she actually liked. In that story, the hero had said it with quiet melancholy to his beloved, reflecting that the mandarin ducks, symbols of devotion and lifelong companionship, were happier than immortals, whose eternal life was cold and lonely.

  Hearing Jin Rou use it as a pickup line had almost made her want to draw her sword on principle.

  When she’d refused him, politely at first, then sharply later on, he would sulk off, only to return soon after, all bright-eyed and eager, armed with a new batch of flowery nonsense.

  What exactly was he after? She was proud of her looks, proud of her intellect, and not na?ve enough to mistake this for genuine interest, especially when his father had already closed the matter in no uncertain terms. Was it a scheme to draw a Core Formation cultivator to his side? Or had he discovered something about her?

  She might not have realized it at first, not consciously, but now she knew it well enough: she was talented. Jin Rou could also be called talented; she doubted he was even fifty yet, and that was young for an accomplished cultivator, but she was not yet eighteen. There was simply no comparison.

  It was the reason her master concealed her bone age, the reason her parents warned her never to reveal too much, the reason a Nascent Soul cultivator had once expressed interest in her.

  It was her blessing, and her curse.

  Still, this was no time to let irritation get the better of her. Her current opponent might not be a challenge, but there was a reason she was taking her time. Simply put, he made for an excellent training dummy, perfect for testing her new technique.

  Except… calling it a technique wasn’t quite right.

  She recalled her sword to her hand and sent a rippling slash of swordlight toward his barrier. To her frustration, it shattered on impact like wet sand, leaving not even a scratch behind.

  She had used the tiniest possible amount of qi, an amount so small it barely qualified as measurable, because this wasn’t about qi at all. In fact, even that trace of energy was far more than the swordmaster in the memory jade had possessed in his entire body. And yet, he’d been able to do things with a sword she could barely imagine. That was the gap she was trying to bridge.

  When she’d asked Master Mo Jian about it, he’d given her that particular look; the one that meant he knew the answer but wouldn’t tell her, expecting her to discover it herself.

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  Bai Ning had taken it as a challenge. And she would master it.

  It wasn’t like any of the usual techniques or spells she knew. For one, there was no adding qi beyond the faintest trace. Most common techniques, or spells, as the locals liked to call them, required a cultivator to divide their qi into yin and yang. By combining the two in different proportions, one could achieve a wide range of effects, from remaining perpetually clean to conjuring her well-practiced fireballs.

  As a cultivator advanced, so did the complexity of their spells. The more refined techniques required qi to be split into three aspects, the trigrams, which could then be woven together in endless permutations to produce increasingly intricate results. Beyond those came the heptagrams, the octagrams, and more still, each layer expanding the possible combinations beyond counting.

  There were, quite literally, an innumerable number of spells, and an equally innumerable number of ways to cast them.

  Added to that was the fact that qi could be aspected. A cultivator’s qi might be attuned to certain elements: fire, earth, water, wind, and countless others. The number of possible aspects was effectively infinite, ranging from tangible ones like metal or wood qi to abstract concepts such as void qi, pill qi, or even death qi.

  Aspected qi made spells of the same type easier to cast and was often a prerequisite for mastering advanced techniques. Many cultivators specialized in a single aspect for that very reason, becoming fire- or wind-aspected cultivators to take advantage of the benefits.

  Sure, they lost some versatility, but the trade-off was worth it. Specialization made learning new spells easier and even improved cultivation speed, especially when training in locations rich in their element. Fire cultivators flourished in the Ring of Fire; ghost cultivators, as she’d seen firsthand, gathered in droves around the Enigmatic Death Domain.

  Bai Ning, however, favored no element. Her qi was unattributed, like her master’s, her parents’, and, as it happened, the vast majority of cultivators she knew. Academically, such neutral qi was referred to as Heaven and Earth qi, which she suspected was just a poetic way of saying “unattributed” without offending anyone’s pride.

  She didn’t mind. To her, the advantages outweighed the drawbacks. With neutral qi, she could study a broader range of spells and techniques, and she’d always have the option to specialize later if she so chose.

  Yet this technique – the one she was struggling to grasp – had nothing to do with qi control or elemental affinity. She knew that much. It was something far more elusive.

  It wasn’t even right to call it a technique.

  The man whose memories she was studying, that nameless swordmaster, hadn’t left his name behind, but his feelings were unmistakable. To him, it wasn’t a method or a skill; it was a way of seeing the world.

  There were things that could be cut, and things that could not.

  Except, he had made the second part a lie. He had learned to cut everything.

  It sounded like abstract nonsense, the sort of thing a wandering monk might say between sips of wine, a cultivation equivalent of the koan about the sound of one hand clapping. But she had seen what it could do.

  So, she pushed her senses to the limit, aligning mind and body as the swordmaster had, and sent out another blade of swordlight.

  It splattered uselessly against her opponent’s barrier.

  The skull floating before him pulsed, releasing another beam of red light. It washed harmlessly over her copper shield.

  Another failure.

  What was she missing?

  She exhaled slowly, setting her frustration aside. Instead, she tried to feel her way through it, to grasp her intent and anchor it to the blade. What was she failing to see that the man in her memories had found so obvious?

  Her thoughts drifted to Matriarch Lian, head of the Harmonious Rain Sect, and the first time she’d seen her, and the way she’d looked walking away, sword in hand. Effortlessly elegant, yet undeniably lethal. It had been like looking at a naked sword and realizing it was both beautiful and deadly, the beauty heightened precisely because of that danger.

  A sword is meant to cut, she had thought then. Seeing that woman walk away, Bai Ning had known instinctively that if Matriarch Lian wished, she could have cut down everything around her with a single strike. Even Master Mo Jian had admitted that in a straight fight, he would lose to her.

  Bai Ning had decided, right there and then, to follow the path of the sword; to chase that kind of mastery, and then go beyond it.

  And, well… there was another reason she favored the sword, especially considering that Mo Jian used a ding, but that wasn’t something she was ever going to admit out loud to anyone.

  She tried to recall that feeling again; the sensation of standing before Matriarch Lian, as if a naked blade had been pressed to her throat. The mix of awe, danger, and exhilaration. The way the nameless swordmaster in her memory jade had faced a dozen armored foes, cutting through their thick metal armors like they were paper, relying not on the magic of his weapon, but on pure, unadorned technique. Simple motions. Simple strikes.

  To end a fight, a swordsman should cut the sunrise, she recalled, and something within her sharpened.

  The swordmaster had achieved that feat, near the end of the memory jade. He had marveled at how simple it was, and how blind he had been before. It wasn’t about qi. A sunrise wasn’t something that could be cut, no more than it could be folded up and carried away. And yet, a sword was meant to cut.

  So, if something could be named, if it could be conceived, then it could be cut. No matter what it was.

  There was no contradiction in that. You simply had to make it true. That was swordsmanship.

  She didn’t feel as though she truly understood it, not yet, but something stirred. A faint glimmer. The shadow of a shadow of the real thing. A mere echo, but potent all the same.

  She raised her sword and brought it down.

  The swordlight that burst forth looked no different from before, until it struck. It cleaved through her opponent’s barrier as though it were mist, sliced through the skull-shaped magic tool, and then through the man himself, bisecting him cleanly from head to toe.

  Bai Ning froze, stunned. She hadn’t expected the attempt to succeed, and certainly not this spectacularly.

  For a moment, she could only stare. Then she swallowed, forcing down the nausea that threatened to rise.

  He was an enemy. A demonic cultivator. It had to be done.

  “Feng!”

  The shout cut through the din of battle, and Bai Ning turned toward its source. The cultivator on the paper crane was staring straight at her. Even amid the chaos, the rage and anguish on his face were unmistakable.

  “That was my brother, you bitch!”

  He ignored Jin Rou completely, hurling himself toward her in a blur of killing intent.

  Bai Ning’s first thought was, Well, then why let him fight someone a stage above him before you decided to interfere? But she didn’t say it aloud. Instead, she reinforced her barrier and tried to sink back into that elusive feeling again; the one that had let her cut through the impossible.

  It wasn’t easy. Doing it once hadn’t made it simple to repeat. The sensation slipped through her grasp like water, and it was hard to focus with a furious demonic cultivator barreling toward her.

  He was fast. Bai Ning had noticed him from the moment she’d disembarked from the Undersea Ship; the vice leader of the bandits, their strongest remaining fighter, and late Foundation Establishment. The paper crane beneath him gleamed with a silvery, liminal light as it carried him through the air with enviable grace. In his hand, a skull – this one human – glowed with malignant red qi.

  A blast of crimson light slammed into her barrier, far stronger than anything her last opponent had managed. Bai Ning braced herself, teeth gritted, as the impact sent ripples through her defenses. Her retaliatory swordlight streaked out in response, but he slipped away with contemptuous ease, so fast she could barely track him.

  This was going to be difficult. A full stage difference wasn’t something that could be dismissed lightly. It was possible to fight across realms, but far from easy. One needed superior skill, superior tools, superior will; everything had to align.

  However, that question became irrelevant an instant later.

  Jin Rou finally caught up, his shuttle streaking through the air to pull alongside her.

  “Get on, Bai Ning,” he called, shifting aside to make space. “I’ll shield you with my barrier.”

  She really wanted to glare at him for the easy familiarity, and for using her name like that, without a title or even an ounce of restraint, but there was still a battle raging, and now wasn’t the time.

  Instead of boarding his shuttle, she drew out her own flying treasure: a silver handkerchief.

  It was a good tool, though she knew its usefulness was nearing its end. Her parents had given it to her as a gift, meant to last her from Qi Condensation through early Foundation Establishment, and she’d already surpassed that.

  Still, she wasn’t eager to replace it. It was a gift and a memento, one woven through with memory. She remembered when it had been nothing more than an ordinary cloth. Her father had used it once as a prop during a game of Go, waving it in surrender when she’d threatened to cry if he didn’t let her win.

  A sweet, silly memory, but not one she intended to abandon lightly.

  The handkerchief expanded in the air, unfurling into a gleaming silver square large enough to sit on. Bai Ning hopped onto it and rose into the sky.

  Jin Rou, to his credit, expanded the barrier of his shuttle to cover her as well. It was leagues better than sharing the same boat though, because if she had, he probably would have tried to put an arm around her waist or something equally foolish, and she would’ve cut it off.

  Neither she nor Master Mo Jian needed that kind of headache right now.

  this chapter starts right after the Gu battle kicks off, but we’re switching to Bai Ning’s POV. I went back and forth on whether to interweave her POV with Mo Jian’s earlier chapters, but leaving things on the resulting cliffhanger felt a bit forced.

  If the positioning feels off to you, I’d love to hear your thoughts - any feedback is welcome. Thanks!