Elder Fu Jin, slender and eerily pretty in her ominous power, was the one who came to pick Qing Liao up. She also gave him a different version of the red belt that marked him as a body refining cultivator, one she claimed was 'appropriately suited' to a member of the textiles pavilion. Where the belt provided by Yu Yong had been little more than a cleverly dyed chord, this slender sash was silk, soft and smooth. It felt perfectly refined beneath his fingertips, and instantly took up position as the finest garment he'd ever owned.

  He swapped the belts right away.

  “Come with me,” Fu Jin did not waste time. Liao fell in behind her at once, matching his pace to the tall elder's long stride. This would have been something of a challenge mere hours before, but now he found that qi naturally flowed through his frame and allowed him to keep up with the lengthy steps without any extra effort.

  To his surprise, he discovered that their path did not head towards the Textiles Pavilion, at least not immediately. Though he had yet to visit any of the great compounds, they represented the largest buildings on sect grounds by a significant margin, and it was possible to recognize where each one roughly lay. Liao had a good sense of direction, he did not make basic orientation mistakes easily. Instead, he recognized that they had another destination in mind, one found at the very edge of the sect's control.

  The seventh tower of the Starwall, the private domain of Grand Elder Uzay.

  Something in Liao's cadence must have betrayed his trepidation, for Fu Jin spoke before he could voice any words of concern. “We will get you to your new quarters soon enough,” she spoke mildly, almost amused, though the power coiled up within her was such that she intimidated merely by default, no vocal modulation necessary. “But you are a proper initiate of the sect now. It is time for you to learn what that truly means, and the truths central to the sect lie along the Starwall.”

  The barrier was certainly one that could not be missed. Not only did it tower above sect and city alike, its ramparts higher than any building in the entire hidden land, it stood apart in manner of construction. Starwall City mostly gave off earthen shades, a reflection of the earth and wood from which it had been fashioned. The sect grounds, by contrast, had a reddish tinge, sourced to the distinctive, tightly grained wood of the conifers used to form the walls and the clay sourced to form its bricks. The wall stood a single, monochrome shade of charcoal gray, completely without variation along its immense length. The primary masonry, access stairwells, soaring towers, and defensive crenelations all shared this pattern-less coloration, to the point that in dim light the outline blurred in lurid manner. A nearly black stone, cut, leveled, and mortared into place surrounding a strengthened from of alchemist-treated steel formed its structure.

  A man wielding a spade could carve a hole in a city wall in minutes. One with a saw or axe could do much the same in the sect, if not quite so swiftly. Nothing could damage the Starwall in that way. Even a strong man wielding hammer in chisel could work for hours and fail to strike so much as a chip from that stone, though he would surely ruin his tools in the effort. To overcome the least of it required the strength of a cultivator.

  Nor did the stone stand guard alone. Colored flags, perfectly oriented and organized according to abstract mathematical principles, indicated the presence of numerous overlapping defensive formations. Constructs of channeled qi, they were invisible to the eye, but no less potent for that limitation. Liao knew that one of those formations was so powerful that its forbiddance applied even to Grand Elders, barring all from flying over the wall and within the Killing Fields. Birds, notably, gave the barrier a wide berth.

  Beyond that, the other protections were secret, capable of unleashing devastation he could only guess at.

  Cultivators patrolled the wall with weapons bare. They were widely dispersed, for the enclosure was lengthy and their numbers few, but the presence of any visitor would be both felt and observed. Some of those dictated to patrol wore everyday robes, flashes of white against the dark background. Others wore blood red battle armor of various designs. None appeared happy to fulfill the duty of standing that post.

  “As a body refining realm initiate you will be expected to patrol the wall for one week in every ten,” Fu Jin explained. She did not look back to gauge the reaction of her newest student. “You are not expected to fight any stray demons, but to keep watch and sound the alarm if the enemy is sighted. Should a horde arise you, like every other member of the sect, will take your place upon the Starwall in battle.”

  These words offered a measure of relief. Liao was good with the bow, but only in the accounting of everyday village life. His rudimentary practice of the bow arts of the Nine Spheres Arsenal offered little potency in a cultivator's battle. There was a great deal of study and training remaining before he could even consider himself capable according to his new rank. Rather than question the declared duties, he simply remained silent.

  Fu Jin pointed to the nearest set of access stairs. “Come, and mind your footsteps. The steps can be slick on cold mornings.”

  He obeyed. All too soon they strode up that short, narrow ascent and laid their eyes upon a vista bared from the eyes of the million souls protected by the Starwall. Under their feet lay a construct of immense power, designed to guard a fragment of humanity from one of far greater devastation. Beyond it lay the Killing Fields, the portion of Mother's Gift sacrificed that the demons might never penetrate past the critical defensive barrier.

  The top of the wall was narrow, designed facilitate cultivator battles, not the clash of armies. It would hold no more than two people walking abreast. Fighting here would be confined, favoring sharp weapons over grand techniques. Regular crenelations with arrow slits and murder holes broke the outer face apart at steady intervals. Arrows, stones, pitch, and other tools of defense were laid beside these blocks, kept in endless readiness against the inevitable arrival of a demon horde.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Wind blew over the wall, brisk and chill with the winter morning. This stirred puddles of water atop the stones, slick and cold. Not even cultivators could keep such a vast barrier perfectly level for twenty-five hundred years.

  These thoughts flashed through Liao's mind, rapidly, only to vanish when Fu Jin pushed him against the ramparts and bade him stare outward.

  Beyond the wall lay an expanse like nothing the young man had ever seen.

  It was a cleared landscape, covered in short grass. Though not a farmer, he knew it must have been deliberately planted and regularly grazed by sheep to produce such cleanly clipped stubble. It was even possible to observe a handful of the blob-like gray grazers in the distance. All resemblance to ordinary fields ended there.

  No trees, not a one, were allowed to grow on that surface. Nor was the land laid out in orderly shapes with clean lines in the manner of any farm or pasture. A hideous assembly of ditches scarred the space, cut in jagged and overlapping fashion, as if the land itself had been savaged by a giant child wielding an equally massive rake. Many were laced by rows of sharpened stakes and filled with rank stagnant water.

  Walls of sharpened logs, or low stones topped with edge-facing slate fragments, divided up this ditch-devastated expanse. Raised platforms were scattered about, mounds of stone and earth a meter or two high and girded by stout palisades. Short towers were also found in equally pattern-less distribution, many linked by long spans of taught rope creaking in the absent wind. Piles of brush, dried and ready to burn, blocked every lane and channel.

  Though his eyes searched with the seasoned instincts of a bushwhacker, Liao could not find a single open stretch that allowed one to walk more than a half-dozen strides in a straight line.

  Aside from the base blanket of grass and the woolen mowers that maintained that state, the landscape was entirely lifeless. Forbidden flight by the unseen formation, there were no birds. A strange scent clung to the air, not sensed with the nose, but on the edge of qi perception. This lingering sensation took some moments to recognize, but no one who'd lived village life could truly forget the smell of blood. These fields were rank with it, stained down to the very bedrock until the very qi bore the mark of iron-rich liquid. The energy flow of the land itself bathed in warm crimson.

  “Behold the Killing Fields,” Fu Jin whispered from behind Liao's left ear. “The landscape of battle, where the demons are met when they come, and thrown back at a price too dear every time.”

  There were no demons on the field that day. In the distance, to the east, the air was clear. This sufficed to allow eyes to catch the blurry boundary, a place where it seemed fractured crystals clouded the horizon and the grass rippled and contorted. The passage to the Ruined Wastes of the rest of the world.

  Liao realized, automatically gauging distance from that height, that it was not far at all. Less than a day's walk, even without use of his new movement technique, and he could cross that labyrinth of death and reach the barrier. Beyond lay a whole world, one a thousand times greater in all ways than this tiny bounded gift of ascendant divinity.

  A world he'd never seen. His knowledge came from stories only, the legends of the old world. The world lost to the demons.

  He wondered what it was like. This question came upon him suddenly, in reflection of the silence atop the Starwall. Not the old world that was lost, but the world beyond as it was now. Stories could not be trusted, only rare scouts ventured through the boundary, and those not far. Even within the sect, it seemed there were lies told of mountaintops that split the clouds, canyons deeper than the sky, and bodies of water ten thousand times the size of any lake. Whatever might be real in the Ruined Wastes, only the sight of one's own eyes could be trusted. Nothing else could be relayed beyond the wall of mist and the passage of millennia.

  Liao wanted to know. It struck him suddenly. These Killing Fields were a barrier. They kept the land and people safe, a claim he firmly believed. The effort to maintain these fortifications was far from minimal. It was not done idly. Nor would cultivators spend a tenth of their lives atop walls if the posting was not essential, absolutely necessary. Despite this, he could see with the vision of new eyes and recognized that the wall worked in both directions. It kept the demons out, but confined the humans within. It was a rabbit hutch, this land crafted by the Celestial Mother. The Grand Elders taught that it had saved humanity, and he believed that.

  But now he wondered at the cost.

  Such thoughts, he recognized even through the limits of youthful ignorance, were best left unspoken. Instead, he offered an alternative inquiry to dispel the churning silence. “Why alter the land like this?” He swept his hand outward to in the devastation of the Killing Fields. “Is the wall not strong enough?”

  Fu Jin slowly and audibly took in a breath. “Demons are strong. Stronger than any human without the aid of qi. They are equally solid, built like brick. Ordinary weapons wielded by mortal arms do not suffice. That is why we must be the ones to fight these battles. However,” the preternaturally serene face twisted into a dark frown. “Demons lose much through the transformation of the plague. They are bestial things. They know neither fear nor hesitation. If left to run at a single barrier they will flood it. One to one, even a weak body refining realm cultivator such as you can defeat the least of demons, but against great numbers even elders are vulnerable. It is,” she paused, eyes rising upwards in thought. “Have you ever watched ants as they raid?”

  “Yes.” Great mound-dwelling red-backed colonies were common in the higher slopes. He understood the intent immediately.

  “All you see before you is designed to break apart a horde, to disperse the demons and disrupt their tidal wave attack in order to arrange favorable engagements. It works,” her expression was suddenly stone hard. “Though there is a price.” She turned dark eyes upon him. “As a new initiate, the wall is your station should a horde come. Hope that it does not. That is how most young cultivators are lost.”

  Elder Yu Yong's lectures had contained the same warning, mingled with much discussion of a strange study known only to cultivators: warfare. Life in the villages and towns was not without violence. Drunkards fought amid their cups. Desperate souls sometimes attacked travelers on the roads. The jealous and vengeful took up knives against those they hated in the dark. Even animal attacks were not unknown. One of Liao's cousins had been mauled by a bear when he was young.

  But mass conflict, men gathered in numbers and formed into ranks to set weapons upon each other, this was a lost thing, an aspect of the old world thoroughly slain by the plague, and rare even then. The sect ruled here, and if ordinary people came into conflict, cultivators settled it. Their power could not be challenged.

  Liao attempted to imagine hundreds, thousands, of monsters attacking the wall, swarming across the fields, and failed. It simply did not feature in his mind. “Will a horde come? Soon?” He could think of nothing else to ask.

  “It cannot be known,” the elder shook her head. “Eventually, it is inevitable, but these things are unpredictable. Only traitors can comprehend the ways of the plague. All that can be done in preparation is to grow strong.”

  This instruction, simple and succinct though it was, did not satisfy. It was not in Liao to wait until the trap was closing around him before acting. Snares were his to spring, not to snap. It had been his whole life, and two months as a cultivator had not sufficed to strip that away.

  Fu Jin did not wait for an answer. “Come, there is one more lesson you must learn.”