It wasn’t a rope dart. It was some ancient wasteland monster disguised as a rope dart. That was Tian’s immediate impression. The rope had doubled in length, now some twenty feet long and made of a fiber that flexed like silk but was harder than steel. A ripple of vital energy along the length raised thousands of sharp fibers that angled away from the head. He could control where they emerged with Snake Head Vine Body. Even a light touch with his finger produced a bead of blood.

  The dart at the head had changed from a plain steel spike. It had an organic feel to it, almost melted. Smooth and matte black, it was twice as long as his hand and almost as wide as his palm at the base, but it narrowed to a wickedly sharp point. As though the material was pulled forward, twisted, then pinched off. The weight of it was so comfortable in his hand, he never wanted to let it go.

  “I love it. Thank you, Senior Sister. Thank you very much!”

  “You haven’t even tried it yet. Take it out back and test it out. If there are any problems, better we find them now than later.”

  “I’m sure it’s perfect, Senior.”

  “Flattery will win you no discounts. Go try it out.” Sister Li rolled her eyes and shooed him out towards the testing ground behind the crafting building.

  The first thing Tian noticed was the change in weight. Every move carried more power and momentum, but equally, it required greater strength and control over his weight. Each movement, and particularly every change of direction and recovery, put a strain on his body. It wasn’t unbearable, but it would take some adjustment.

  He whipped the rope dart around himself, slowly working in Light Body, Heavy Hands. Learning to coordinate the shifts in his vital energy with the movement of the chain. He flicked the dart out, watching it fly light as a feather and land heavy as a mace on the target. The top of the wooden post exploded. Before the dart hit the ground, he shook the long rope and wrapped the thigh-thick wood. He flexed his vital energy and yanked back. The sharp barbs ripped the dense wood into a blizzard of small splinters and dust.

  “Amazing!”

  “Tell me that after you have had to clean it a few times.”

  “Pardon, Senior Sister?”

  “Bits get trapped under the barbs. Wood, flesh, cloth, whatever. You need to clean them out before you can really use it again. I have seen some people manage it with Snake Head, Vine Body, but apparently it’s a little tricky.” Sister Li leaned up against the doorframe, looking a little bored and a little pleased.

  Tian examined the rope, and it was just as she said- little bits of wood were trapped, unable to fall out easily. He tried flexing the barbs even more, but there was a definite limit to how wide they would stretch. He flicked the rope a few times, trying to shake them out. Most of the splinters fell out, but not all of them.

  “Thank you for the reminder, Senior Sister. I will keep practicing.”

  She gave him another look, then snorted. “And now you look your age.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You always act so proper. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that.”

  “Oh. Well. It’s the tradition of the West Town Outer Courtyard. Or at least the tradition of Senior Brother Fu. He’d be disappointed in me if I wasn’t being proper.”

  “I wonder. Wait. West Town Fu? Mad Dog Fu?!”

  “Em. I have heard people call him that, but I really don’t understand it. He’s the kindest person I know.”

  Sister Li laughed, a short, barking sound. “I do see a surprising number of Inner Court members who come from West Town. Maybe he changed. Go. Bring your Senior Brother some honor and kill your way back to camp.”

  Tian didn’t know if Sister Li’s words were a blessing or a curse. On the way back, he ran into a solitary heretical cultivator. The man was well concealed, but Counter-Jumper let him smell wisps of some strange smoke on the heretic. Tian tried to ambush him, but the heretic was wary and launched an attack of his own as soon as Tian got near.

  The two danced back and forth, rope dart against cruel-hooked glave. The bearded heretic was dreadfully strong, and surprisingly agile. His glave moved like a snake, struck like lightning and sliced like the desert wind. His martial arts might not look polished, but they were brutal and effective. Tian was hard pressed to keep his distance and to try and find an advantage.

  Tian had Light Body, Heavy Hands. The heretic did not. He lacked a light body art of any kind, and if he knew an attacking art for the Glave, he wasn’t able to display it. Tian thought he was roughly Level Six, but his lack of combat arts made him fight below his actual level. After the initial clash, the initiative never left Tian’s hands.

  After four rounds back and forth, Tian snagged the man’s ankle with the tail end of his rope as the heretic blocked the dart smashing down on his head. One sharp rip and the foot separated entirely from the leg, bone fragments and gore flying everywhere.

  “I surrender.”

  “That would be helpful, thank you.” Tian kept his rope moving as the bearded heretic tried to hop back with his glave.

  “I know where the treasure is hidden! Kill me and you will never find it!”

  “Okay.” The rope lashed out. The bearded man swore and tried to block the dart while balanced on one foot. Tian rushed in and smashed his palm against the heretic’s chest. The penetrating force turned heart, veins, meridians, lungs, even the dantian, into rotted trash. And like that, the fight was over.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  There were a few spirit crystals on the heretic and a few animal parts. A scripture was written on a tanned bit of hide- “The Art of Fire and Smoke.” It was a cultivation manual. Tian didn’t need any particular expertise to see it was trash. You cultivated by burning people on a fire and inhaling the smoke of their charing bodies. The higher the cultivation level of the sacrifice, the greater the supplement.

  There was nothing at all about a treasure. Even the storage ring was smaller than Tian’s.

  “This broke bastard.” Tian shook his head. “I can see why they are invading. They are poor as hell.”

  They are, but look at his forearm.

  Tian saw ten or so marks fading away, each the character for “iron.”

  “Iron Gorge or whatever it was called?”

  Black Iron Gorge.

  “Military Merits or something?”

  Or something. No bounty for this fellow though. At least not that I saw in the Mission Hall.

  “I wonder what he was doing out here. Do you think there might actually be a treasure?”

  If there was, he would have stayed as far away from you as possible. No need to rob if you are off to loot an even bigger treasure.

  Tian looked around the red sand and shattered rock of the waste, and sighed. “I didn’t think so either.”

  Back and forth, back and forth. Tian made two more trips between the depot and the forward base. Every trip saw his rope dart stained with blood. He mastered the trick of making the rope crack like a whip while shaking like a dog, the blood and bits of flesh flying off.

  One day, while showering with some of the brothers, he looked at his body, compared it to theirs, and frowned.

  “Ah, don’t worry Junior. You are starting to hit puberty, so pretty soon-”

  “Ah, no, it’s not that.” Grandpa Jun had given the all clear there, and his recent bodily reconstruction saw him shooting up like a weed. “I was just disappointed I don’t have any scars.”

  “Eh? Disappointed?” The senior brothers looked over at him, puzzled. Then they started laughing.

  “Let me guess, Wood qi cultivation art?”

  “Yes, senior brother.”

  “There’s your answer. You are healing your scars. You are going to just have to be the camp pretty boy in the future.” The laughter was less kind than it would have been in West Town, but it wasn’t too cruel.

  Later that night, Tian woke up screaming. None of his senior brothers said anything, though one offered to sit with him until dawn. It seemed that not all his scars were healing so quickly.

  He had now drunk tea with Aunt Wu three times, and managed to get Senior Sister Li to accept a box of candy once. Not forgetting the ‘kind’ souls in the mission office, he was able to gift those brothers some wine. He looted some off a heretic, and Brother Jiang at Camp Redknife swore it was good stuff. Tian was glad he only offered one of the six jugs.

  The next time he saw Sister Li, she was sitting on a bench in front of the crafting workshop. He had run through the depot doors late at night, and Aunt Wu had already gone to sleep. He would make his report in the morning. Tian saw that she had a wine jug open next to her, and offered her one of the looted jars.

  “Junior, did your senior brothers tell you to give people wine?”

  “Yes, Senior Sister.”

  “I’ll forgive them for that one. Sit.” She ripped off the seal and sniffed. “Good wine. From the Three Rivers Province, I’d say. Did you buy it or loot it?”

  “I looted it.”

  “Tsch! Another good brother or sister lost.” She spat. Then she toasted the moon with the jug and had a drink. “You just came in?”

  “Yes, Senior Sister.”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Bad dreams.”

  “I get them too, sometimes.”

  They sat quietly. Tian didn’t drink wine. Grandpa got very cranky if he tried, and a nasty, burning drink wasn’t worth all the scoldings.

  “Want some?”

  “No. I’m told it stunts my growth and fries my brain.”

  “Who told you that?!”

  “An old grandpa I met in the jungle. He’s been right about pretty much everything else regarding my body, so I don’t see any reason to test my luck on wine.”

  She looked at Tian in disgusted amazement, then snorted and had another drink. “Every now and then I meet someone who just seems born to be a cultivator. You’re one of them.”

  “Thank you?”

  “You are welcome.” She didn’t sound very welcoming. She took another long pull. “Did you know that I met your Senior Brother Fu before I was even tested to become a cultivator? Ah, I never lived in West Town. We were from the Ash Mountains. ‘We,’ meaning my family.”

  “I didn’t know, Senior Sister.”

  She took two big mouthfuls, then set down the jar.

  “He charged into a group of forty bandits with two knives in his hands, and two sabers already stuck through his body. The bandits were members of some cult. They had had little real cultivation but had bonded with evil creatures, giving them impossibly strong bodies for their levels. The only bandit that lived more than three minutes after Fu ran in was the one he had specifically saved for interrogation. None of them died with an intact corpse.”

  “Ah. I… didn’t know about that.”

  “The bandits had killed Father and done unspeakable things to Mother before they finally dragged me away. I never saw Mother again. I pray death found her quickly. I was locked in a cage with other girls and told exactly what we would be sold for, and to whom. We weren’t brave enough to kill ourselves or each other. We were so young. So, so young.”

  She stared up at the moon, not seeing it.

  “It’s the smells that come back first. Our bodies pressed together in those cages, wrapped in cheap wool and linen soaked in… nothing nice. The stink of the bandits, and the fires, and the blood. Then the sounds of screams come.”

  Sister Li took another sip.

  “Fu ran in. Every move was a killing blow, and killing was all that mattered. You could smell it on him even before you saw it in his eyes. There was only killing. What I would now call a will of obliteration. Not even destruction- obliteration. Even obliterating himself. A person became a cruel void. Even after everything I saw in that camp. Everything that was done to me. He was the scariest thing.”

  Tian couldn’t imagine Brother Fu like that. He could only see him practicing his characters and listening to the birds argue in the parasol trees outside his little courtyard.

  “When everyone was dead or captured, when he should have collapsed from exhaustion and blood loss, he staggered over to the cages and cut us free.”

  She bent down and looked Tian dead in the eye. “Before he cared about himself, he freed us. I was still a mortal then. Not even tested. All of us were. And he freed us first.”

  Tian nodded slowly. Sister Li didn’t speak for the rest of the night. Tian just sat next to her, watching the moon set and fiddling with his rope dart. Feeling the weight of it. Remembering how he had used it.

  Was that the difference between the heretics and the orthodox cultivators? The heretics saw people as cultivation aids. Things. The orthodox sects saw them as people and valuable enough as they were. Tian mentally shrugged. It probably wasn’t that simple.

  Only one day later, Tian was shivering in the shower, trying to scrub the blood off him. It turned out it wasn’t that complicated either.