Alice

Daoist Li gave the man with the mullet a brilliant smile. "Good morning, Junior Shen!"

Junior Shen was passably handsome in the way of all the cultivators in the world. He had nice eyes, an almond that was almost green. There was, however, something angry about the way he walked. His robes were too large for him.

"What do you want from me, Inheriting Disciple?"

There was definitely something angry about the way he talked.

Li tweaked his nose. “Is that how you greet your big sister, little rat? How’s your old mother doing? Still alive, right? And your dog, Tangtang?” Aw, Junior Shen had a dog named Candy!

The man trembled. “Stay away from my family,” he muttered. There was a touch of desperation in his voice that Alice found peculiar. It became clear to her after a few moments - Daoist Shen held a bone-deep fondness for Li.

“I heard on the grapevine that you bought something nice for Master,” said Li, making no promises about the man’s family.

“Who told you that?”

Li pointed at herself with a small smile. “Me? These are just the kind of things I’m expected to know.”

“What do you mean these are the kinds of things you’re expected to know? How could anyone possibly have told you about this? I told nobody. Nobody!” There was a manic look in Shen’s eyes.

“With my connections, all knowledge is possible,” said Li, milking it for all it was worth.

“I bet it was that little cretin, Chan Changshou,” muttered Shen. “He would be the sort to spy on me.”

Li laughed, long and loud. “As if the likes of Changshou would ever waste their time on someone like you.”

Alice had learned that the woman was incredibly defensive on Daoist Chan’s behalf, even if every single word she said about the man was accompanied with invectives. There was no sight quite as sickening as true love.

Li wasn’t done. “You didn’t even realize how important that weapon was. People are killed over gifts like that.” There was something sinister about Li’s expression now - an attempt to let Shen know that she would be the one doing the killing.

He glowered, unconvinced. “Was the sword something special?”

Alice didn’t like where this was headed.

Li rolled her eyes. “It’s a saber.”

“Well I couldn’t have known. I wasn’t able to remove it from its sheath,” he said.

“Of course not!” said Li. “It doesn’t belong to you.”

A deep anger bubbled up in the man. “Doesn’t belong to me,” he whispered, deadly and quiet. “Nothing good in this world belongs to me. This is the essence of cultivation - taking what doesn’t belong to you.”

He tried to push past Daoist Li, but her fingers found his offending shoulder and she lifted him clear off the ground. “Now, Junior Shen, I’ve been very, very reasonable with you over the years. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the way your little medical society has treated me.”

This seemed to be at odds with the man’s body language - enough so that Alice felt the need to say something. “Let him go, you’re hurting him.”

“Stay out of sect business, stupid cunt,” spat Shen.

Li socked him in the face with her free arm, breaking his nose. “Oops. I should really be careful when I’m stretching,” she said.

Shen Xidong screamed.

Alice reached out and set the man’s nose back in place with a satisfying crunch. Another scream. “Don’t you think that’s a little much?” she asked. They were drawing a crowd now.

When it was clear who the aggressor was, the crowd split into inner disciples who thought it best to mind their own business and outer disciples who were too curious to look away, but too cautious to stare.

Alice considered this cowardice. What was Li going to do to them?

Li looked up and gave one of the inner disciples, a woman with hard eyes who’d chosen not to mind her own business, a nasty grin. The woman turned and started walking briskly towards Bei’an with her eyes firmly fixed on the floor.

Alice realized this was why Daoist Li had no friends.

“Would it kill you to be nicer to them?” asked David.

Li nodded emphatically, shaking Shen up and down. His mullet whipped from side to side. “If you knew the sort of problems Junior Shen and all of his friends have caused for me through the years, you would understand,” she said. “This is my time now.”

David sighed.

“Are you going to tell me where the saber is?” asked Li.

“It was taken from me,” said Shen. “Now let me go, you psychopath!”

“Who took it from you?” asked Li, who didn’t let him go and didn’t believe him.

Shen cursed loudly and then let his grievances pour. “I attended a small auction in Dongjing and bought your saber in exchange for one of our sect master’s Eight Heavens Meridian Centering pills. I bid against an elder in white robes who only had spirit stones. Fifteen minutes after the auction, he attacked me in the middle of the street. He said he left me alive to not create more problems between our sects and stole it from me.”

“What did the elder look like?” asked David quietly, intent on not letting the moment slip by.

“Like any other cultivator. Like any other of you well-kept types that don’t respect the craft of cultivation, that spends more time on their appearance than on the pursuit of power.” Shen spat at the ground, away from Daoist Li. She was still holding him aloft by the shoulder.

“If we do find the elder in question and retrieve the sword, it will probably be by violent means,” started David.

Shen sneered at him. “You? You wouldn’t be able to stand in that elder’s aura. He brought me to my knees with a look.”

David, who had taken aggressive steps at an immortal, nodded pleasantly. “That could be true, but however we get it back, we might come across other treasures that the elder has. What would be worth as much as an Eight Heavens Meridian Centering pill?”

Shen’s face flitted from suspicious to begrudging to grateful and settled on angry. “Master’s pills are priceless,” he said, through gritted teeth.

Li nodded. “Some of them are! But that one isn’t.”

David sighed. “If we find the saber, I’ll come up with a way to repay you,” he said, but the damage was done.

“I don’t need your charity!” the man screeched, flailing in the air. “Put me down!”

“Okay.” Li threw him over the edge of the causeway. He landed in the bay with a loud splash that came just shy of wetting the hem of her robes.

“If he is lying, I’ll see him expelled from the Iron Scripture, sure as summer rain,” said Li. Shen’s hands had found the stone and he was in the process of hoisting himself up. Li tapped her foot towards him, as though she wanted to kick him in the face. She leaned over the man, whose hair was now plastered to the sides of his face.

She thought better of it, choosing instead to grab David and Alice by their sleeves and drag them back along the path away from Anvil Mountain and back to Bei’an. Li’s intentions were clear - she didn’t want to be around the other disciples of the Iron Scripture.

“Do you think he was lying?” David finally asked, when there were no grey robes in sight.

“No,” said Daoist Li, who suddenly looked very tired. “And even though Shen’s too stupid to put two and two together, it’s obvious where the ‘elder’ is from. I won’t be able to accompany you for this part of your journey, after all.”

“We’re not going to have to take a boat across the Dragonstrait, are we?” asked Alice who was staring at the expanse of Three Blades Bay, fearing the worst.

Li shook her head. “Other direction,” she said. “To the north and the east of Bei’an is the Skybound Path, the only road to Tianbei. White robes and a deep enmity with the Iron Scripture? That can only be one sect - the Ascending Sky. Your saber is, without a doubt, in the possession of one of the elders at that sect.”

“Is it far?” asked Alice, who was very tired of chasing down a fate she didn’t quite believe in.

“A hundred li - an hour’s walk, at the speed we travelled the Iron Path.”

“Is there anything dangerous on the road?” asked David, who looked tired of bamboo forests and iron and everything.

“The Skybound Path escapes out of Bei’an, poorly maintained and rarely used, but it isn’t dangerous. The feud between the Iron Scripture and the Ascending Sky has gone on for so long neither sect can remember the original grievance. One thing we do agree on, however, is the extermination of bandits. If you meet anyone on the path, it’ll be merchants and aspiring cultivators - they are having their yearly test for recruits soon.”

Li suddenly embraced the pair of them. “I believe this is where we part.”

She turned to David, who had admittedly helped her more with her struggles than Alice had. “Thank you,” she said, then she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. Alice misliked that.

David nodded, then looked contemplative. “I have one last thing to ask you about,” he said.

Li looked as though she was preparing for the worst.

“Can you tell me if you’ve heard these words before - ‘Castaway, dive - caverns deep, bind the skies beneath the shores.’”

Li shrugged. She clearly hadn’t. “I’ll ask my Master. I don’t know when I’ll see you next, but when I do, I might have an answer.”

“Do you have any warnings about the Ascending Sky?” asked Alice, who was more sensible. Hmph.

Li nodded, smiling. “Not a warning, but a recommendation. If you meet a Liang Dadu, don’t be put off by her cultivation or her personality. She’s a very nice girl.”

“Is that her real name?” Alice folded her arms, unable to believe that someone would have named their child ‘big poison’.

“Yes. It’s unfortunate, but the Liangs of Jiangxi are famed poison cultivators. She’s very sensitive about her name, don’t bring it up. Talented girl, though. You’d have to be, to get into the Ascending Sky,” said Daoist Li, who looked as though she’d stepped into something unpleasant.

She looked over the pair of them again and then inclined her head. “Please stay safe. I don’t have many friends.”

With that, Daoist Li turned and headed back towards Anvil Mountain. Alice slipped her hand into David’s as they watched her go.

“She really is a different person when she’s around the members of her sect,” said Alice. She rounded on David. “Do you find her attractive?”

“A girl like that, with a pretty face and a bright future?” David gave her a lazy smile that Alice really misliked.

Alice pouted.

David leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips. Her cheeks burned.

“Imagine,” said Alice, who decided she liked Daoist Li and hoped they would meet again. “If we hadn’t lost the saber, we might have ended up at the shittiest sect in the continent, making friends with the Jiang family. Scrambling to establish our foundations.”

David didn’t agree. “I think we would have offended our way out of the Red Wind Sect by this point,” he said. “Maybe we would be here in Bei’an, running for our lives?”

Alice looked at the road that led east, through an avenue lined with red lanterns hanging from poplar trees. In another world, the trees would have been used as wood to craft string instruments. Here, they were just pretty.

“So, should we stop at a restaurant before we leave? I’m sure they have great seafood in Bei’an. I’m very fond of well steamed sea bass,” said Alice, as innocently as she could.

David chuckled. “People tend to lose hands in restaurants here.”

Alice squeezed his in hers and batted her eyelashes at him. “As long as you don’t lose this one.”

David groaned, and they started walking.