“Sister.”

  “Ji-eun.”

  Cai Shufen knocked the door closed behind her. She stood firm before Ji-eun, face locked in a neutral mask. Ji-eun felt her hands go slick.

  “What can I do for you this evening, Sister?” She probed, though nobody entered a bedroom with a drawn sword expecting pleasant conversation.

  “Tsk. Even now you’re getting it wrong. It’s Senior Sister, you worm. Or Great Sister. Or anything but just ‘Sister’. I’d ask you to show respect, but what else should be expected from a Northern Savage?”

  Ji-eun eyed the needles in her left and the Jian in her right. Cai Shufen had a real sword to work with; all Ji-eun had was a few training swords out of arms reach. Slowly, she began to circle the room, eyes locked with her assailant.

  “Senior Sister? I didn’t realise you were that old.”

  A needle flew by Ji-eun’s face, missing her by no more than a hair.

  “I’m already here to kill you, parasite. For your sake, don’t give me any more reason to enjoy myself.”

  Yikes. Ji-eun risked a glance towards where the needle had flown. Despite its size, the projectile had bore a hole through her wall. Whatever poison coated it sizzled and steamed from the friction. Ji-eun continued to circle the room towards her swords. Something was better than nothing.

  “So? Why do you want me dead so much, Senior Sister?”

  Cai Shufen’s eyes narrowed. She begun to pace slowly towards Ji-eun.

  “Because you’re a stain on this Sect, mortal. An upstart commoner. Your Great Brothers and Sisters have spent decades — centuries! — working to the bone along the martial path. Why, I myself spent my childhood till my twentieth birthday training just for a chance to become a Disciple of the Sworn Sword Sect.” She paused and raised another needle. “And yet along comes a mortal from the forsaken northern provinces, riding a wave of coincidence and lies to worm your way onto this sacred mountain.”

  She threw the needle. Ji-eun dove to the floor as it whistled overhead. It struck something along the wall hard, sending splinters raining down upon her. Ji-eun’s heart raced. Prickling against her skin, the qi in the room began to condense towards Cai Shufen.

  Raising herself on unsteady knees, Ji-eun spared a glance towards the door.

  “For what it’s worth, I didn’t want to come here. Here specifically, that is. But I was told I could become a Cultivator. That I could reach heaven, like everybody else” She took a breath. With steady hands, she reached behind her. A ripple spread across her chest. Foot forward. “I take it you’re the one who’s been poisoning me the past… what, past year?”

  “A little slow on the uptake, are you?”

  Ji-eun frowned. Wrist loose.

  “Are you going to kill me, or keep taunting me? What the fuck are you doing?”

  “It’s impolite to attack another Cultivator before they are ready. It’s basic manners. No matter how much I despise you, I would not deny you the chance to arm yourself.” She smiled and begun stalking forwards. “Besides, it wouldn’t be any fun to kill you while you’re down.”

  “Says the bitch who brought poison needles!”

  Shoulders back, she lunged forwards far faster than she thought possible. The flat of a Jian met her wooden replica. With a twist, Cai Shufen dragged the sword from Ji-eun’s hands and thurst towards her chest.

  “Too slow.”

  Ji-eun struck back with an open palm, slamming her hand against the woman’s nose. Something was crushed underneath her attack. Cai Shufen stumbled back and tried to raise her Jian. Ji-eun didn’t give her a chance. With her right, she struck again at the face. Her left went low for the ribs. Both connected, but so did the sword. It tore across Ji-eun’s shoulder. Blood arced through the air.

  “You’re right. I shouldn’t have bothered showing you courtesy. Savages like you don’t know the first thing about it.”

  Ji-eun lunged forward, aiming for Cai Shufen’s sword hand. Fist raised, she dropped at the last second. The Jian whistled overhead. Rolling, she grabbed her sword on the way.

  Flick.

  Ji-eun felt a small pinch against her left arm. She glanced down and saw a thin silver needle sticking out of her bicep. She pulled it out quickly, but it was too late. Her arm spasmed violently like her shoulder wanted free from its socket. The shakes spread across her chest and down her leg. She fell to one knee. Cai Shufen approached slowly.

  “I have a question, before you die,” she begun. “How’d you do it? Get through the poison? A year’s worth of Cloudy Qi toxin would be enough to cripple someone in the Initiate Realm, let alone a mortal without a Foundation. And yet here you are on the cusp of igniting your dantian. It’s… aggravating.”

  She stalked closer as Ji-eun crawled towards a particular side of the room. She never had time to put the Sky Blue Pills away; the jar still sat unassuming on the window desk. If they could purge the Cloudy Qi toxin, surely they could purge whatever was currently inside her.

  “Do you know how many elixirs I had to stomach to reach the Initiate Realm? It was agony! But I managed, and my foundation is all the firmer for it. My hard work payed off. And now, it about to pay off again. I was promised that after dealing with you I’d be given a cultivation technique. Can you imagine how fast I could progress with a proper way to refine my core? I’d be the fastest Disciple to reach the Inner Sect in hundreds of years!”

  Ji-eun was almost there. But the shakes were too strong. She couldn’t stand to reach them. Ji-eun locked eyes with Cai Shufen.

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  “Sounds like all you’ve done is gotten a lot of hands.”

  Ji-eun felt the wind get knocked out of her as a foot landed firmly against her gut. She was launched into the desk with enough force to shatter it. Wood splinters and glass shards came clattering down around her.

  “I’ve worked harder than you ever could.”

  Cai Shufen raised the Jian in her hand, preparing for a downward thrust. Ji-eun found a small marble in her grasp and placed it in her mouth. It dissolved rapidly into honey and crawled down her throat. Warmth spread through her chest, down her arms and legs. Her shaking grew dangerously as a torrent of qi ripped through her. She poured her intent into the flow and desperately forced it to circulate. She defied the odds once before. She’d do it again. A rippling puddle grew into a turbulent pond. The shaking quelled just enough for her to move.

  Cai Shufen thrust her Jian down towards Ji-eun’s stomach. She did not want the girl to have a quick death. But Ji-eun moved with terrible speed, crashing into her abdomen and sending both tumbling to the ground. Ji-eun was atop her now, a dangerous light in her eyes. She punched once. Cai Shufen blocked it. She punched again. This time she didn’t. Another punch. Another. Another. Another. Ji-eun had her pinned under the weight of a year’s worth of frustration. She scowled at the woman beneath her. Another punch. But this one was intercepted, and Ji-eun was violently thrown from Cai Shufen. Her shoulder was dislocated. The shakes were coming back.

  Both stood. Cai Shufen’s face was a bloody mess, bruised and broken. Ji-eun’s arms shook and bled. Neither were in good shape. Cai Shufen raised her Jian in a stance Ji-eun had practiced thousands of times. The taller woman was a little sloppy. She lunged at Ji-eun with all her might, blade whistling through the air. It prickled against Ji-eun’s senses; the Jian was coated in qi.

  Ji-eun rushed to meet the attack head on, a wooden Jian in her hands. The ripple in her chest expanded, arcing into waves. Two swords were raised to meet each other. They struck, and a thunderous shatter rang out. Ji-eun’s sword exploded. But Cai Shufen’s stance was broken.

  A scene of crimson played out in Ji-eun’s mind. White snow and red paint. Three open inkwells. Another stood before her.

  Red light flashed through Ji-eun’s eyes as she spun and tore the blade from Cai Shufen’s hands. It fell easily into her grip. She didn’t bother with a Sect stance. Those never came naturally to her. With enough force to shatter Wrought Iron Bamboo, Ji-eun thrust the silver Jian into Cai Shufen’s side. The shudder of skin against metal ran up Ji-eun’s arm. She resisted the urge to give the blade a satisfying twist.

  With a gasp, Cai Shufen fell to the ground. Blood spilled from her wound and down her robes. It stained Ji-eun too. Her qi rippled in her chest, drinking in the colours of the world. Crimson. The first colour she had come to know. The colour of blood and death. It didn’t look nearly as good against wood as it did painted across snow.

  Cai Shufen stared up at Ji-eun. Two crimson eyes met hers with cold indifference. In that moment, she couldn’t breathe. But something played across her would-be executioners face. Ji-eun sighed.

  “If you spent as much time training as you did gossiping, maybe you’d actually be somewhere in the Sect.”

  Ji-eun turned and gathered what remained of the Sky Blue Pills. Her qi still shook from the poison. But it grew weaker as the ripple of her qi grew stronger. Ji-eun lept through the lattice windows into the garden below. She stood there for a moment revelling.

  She had done it! She became a cultivator, and beaten a Disciple who had caused her so much grief! She had to share the good news with somebody. Who else but her only friends in the Sect?

  With speed impossible for a mortal, she bound towards the Servant Quarters. Her wounds still ached, and her body still shook slightly, but those were superficial things. Not nearly as big a deal as her good news was! The rippling pond in her chest grew larger.

  Ji-eun arrived just a few steps outside Hu Lin’s quarters. She approached with measured steps. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to greet her in the dead of night covered in someone else’s blood? Oh well, she had let her live in the end, so did it really matter?

  Ji-eun stopped. Her crimson eyes went wide.

  The pond rippled, and a wave came crashing down. Something broke inside of her. Like a dam, qi flooded her body. It filled her meridians and flowed back to her dantian in a circular flow. Like a beating heart, pumping qi around her body.

  But it was wrong. It was not the swift, almost pure feeling of Master Yan’s qi, or Cai Shufen’s, or even the old Master who had found her in the forest. It was dense and thick.

  “No,” she muttered to the air. And to her dismay, the air responded.

  Like oil and water, her qi bubbled against the world around her. It was truly her qi now. Not from a pill, or from Master Yan. It came from her dantian into the world. And the world refused to mix with it.

  “No.”

  Ji-eun stared at the door only an arms length away from her. She looked down to her bloodied robes. In the reflection of a window, she caught her newly crimson eyes.

  She had failed.

  From her robe, Ji-eun took the Sky Blue pills and bundled them within strips of unstained fabric. She had nothing else to write with, so with unsteady hands, she wrote the character for Hu and Ai in blood along a seperate strip, before tying a knot against her makeshift bundle. There weren’t many pills left, but maybe they would be enough.

  She knocked on the door, turned, and fled.

  —

  Hu Lin idly wondered how Ji-eun was doing that night. She couldn’t put a finger on it, but she had a sneaking suspicion that she would be visiting. Even though it meant things weren’t going well for Ji-eun, Hu Lin couldn’t help but hope it was true. After all, it meant she got to see her friend again! And friends were rare in this world. Hu Lin had learnt that the hard way time and time again.

  There was a knock at the door. Was her intuition right yet again!? Another woman answered the door before she could, but there was no commotion like last time. Strange. Hu Lin went to hop back in bed when she heard footsteps approaching. Was she right after all!?

  “Hu Lin, I think somebody left these here for you and Ms. Jing?”

  That was even stranger.

  “C’mon Guan, you know she doesn’t want the honourifics.”

  “It’s not easy to break a habit. Just be glad I’ve stopped calling you Young Mistress.”

  Yeah, Hu Lin had to give her half-sister credit there. Lin Guan was a stickler for formality. It was a miracle she respected that Hu Lin had swapped the characters for her name around.

  Lin Guan passed over a small shoddy bundle. Like she said, on a small tag was the hastily scrawled character for ‘tiger’ and ‘mugwort’.

  “Pffft!” Hu Lin stifled a laugh.

  Hu was an easy enough character. Tiger was a very common reading of it. But mugwort for Ai? Wouldn’t love or friend be more common?

  She shook the bag slightly. Marbles? She undid the knot and the bag fell apart in her hands. Six powder blue marbles shimmered slightly in the candlelight. Hu Lin clasped her hands together tightly. Here eyes were wide. What — no, who the hells had left cultivation resources on their doorstep? Only one person came to mind.

  “Guan, was there anybody around when opened the door?’ Hu Lin asked.

  “No. It’s like the wind itself was responsible. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.”

  Hu Lin came to an obvious conclusion: Ji-eun had achieved the Initiate Realm, and out of some misplaced sense of debt, given these to her and Ai Jing to share. But how did she get them in the first place? Wild theories ran through her mind. Oh well. She supposed she could just ask the next time they saw each other.

  She stepped outside for a moment, the vain thought of catching a glimpse of Ji-eun crossing her mind. To nobody but herself and the rising moon, she whispered.

  “Thank you.”