Alice

Alice grew up watching wire-fu films. Produced at the tail of the twentieth century, they often featured actors and stuntmen who had started out as award winning martial artists, who quickly discovered that such skills were not very economically viable in the modern world. That was, until producers came knocking on their doors. In an era where special effects were more expensive than wrongful death lawsuits, these martial artists put their lifelong passion into giving movies with few redeeming qualities the most exciting and memorable fight choreography.

Liang's feet left the ground, but instead of travelling through the air in an arc, she took the most direct path to Chan - a straight line. Qi propelled her, exiting her body through apertures in her back, producing enough heat that the air behind her bent and warped the light of the setting sun.

It was rather surreal seeing something that wouldn't have looked out of place in a movie unfolding before her eyes.

She closed the distance of ten paces between them so quickly, Alice was surprised there wasn't a sonic boom.

Chan raised his sword, still grasping it mid-scabbard, looking ready to block her outstretched palm with its handle, but as she approached, turned counterclockwise and flipped the sword horizontally, meeting the palm with the tip of the scabbard.

The brunt of the force from the palm strike moved through the scabbard into the sword, which shot out its sheath. Chan grabbed the handle with his left hand, and spun on the tip of his toe, borrowing that energy - energy from Liang's palm to-the-scabbard to-the-sword to-swing-the-sword in a full arc as she flew past him, slashing at her upper back.

And it was quite a lot of force - even though he’d spun in a full circle, it still carried him forward, forcing him to follow Liang’s momentum.

She stopped herself short by ducking forward into a one-handed somersault with that extended palm, but as she flipped up herself upside down, Liang stretched her legs out into a split, kicking her left leg out at Chan's chest.

Chan didn't block the foot head on, choosing to throw a wild punch at the back of her knee. Her knee bent slightly from his fist, pulling her heel back just far enough for her heel to miss his chest narrowly. The combined swing and punch turned Chan fully around.

Liang seemed to have anticipated something like this. She angled her body to her right and spun clockwise, throwing the knee of her right leg at his back. Her apertures expelled wisps of whispering, volatile qi like afterburners on a jet engine.

Chan bent his own knees, heels now firmly planted on the ground, meeting Liang's knee with a shoulder blade. If she'd built up as much momentum on that third strike as she had with her palm and her kick, she would have scored a decisive blow on him.

But Liang had used most of her strength stopping herself from shooting past him and then turning around. The directional forces generated by her own qi had been self-defeating.

There was no crack of broken bone, just a short stumble forward from Chan, who had reacted in time to coat himself with a layer of his own qi from the apertures on his back.

He used this stumble to throw his elbow at her lower spine, but this too was a glancing blow, succeeding only at reversing the course of her somersault, flipping her up.

Liang skidded away from him, driving the back of her heels into the path, still in that split. As she was forced back, she threw an hooking uppercut with her free left arm at his chin.

It looked to be a casual, opportunistic attack, as both the heel kick and the knee to his back had been, but there was a sort of weight to this punch which wasn't nearly as quick as her first three attempts.

Chan had already scrambled out of reach - a step ahead of her, but it was a more dangerous attack than it first appeared - the very dust on the road rose beneath Liang's feet and her qi pulsed like a wave, pushing against Alice, blowing her hair back behind her ears even from ten yards away.

But this ‘slow’ strike would have been something Alice's eyes would never have caught before she'd begun cultivating. Anyone in late qi condensation, the very first step on the road of cultivation, had strength that dwarfed those who hadn't awoken. This was a fight between the inner disciples of two of the best sects in the world.

Chan's qi roared as he met the fist with the blade of his sword. The sound that followed was incongruous with Alice's immediate expectations - an almighty clang of metal on metal rather than a squelch of steel biting into tendon and bone.

The blowback from the collision forced the combatants apart, driving Liang's feet more than inch into the concrete of the Skybound Path and sending Chan airborne. Chan's pale yellow robes billowed about him for a split second, and for a moment she imagined him as a canary.

Chan descended gracefully on his feet, several steps away from Liang, his robes flapping.

"Congratulations," said Chan, who looked impressed. "To have cultivated that iconic Hammer of Sky Peak without building your foundations upon the Skybound Scripture is an incredible achievement."

"Do you want that mentioned in your eulogy?" Liang snapped.

They sized one another up, just out of reach of one another. The scabbard of Chan's sword had flown off into the distance and was now planted in someone's front yard, in a bed of tulips.

"They swung at each other four times in two seconds," said David, who sounded impressed. He didn't realize that his fight with the Jiang family scion back in Ping'an had almost been as quick.

Alice thought the difference between the two fights was primarily skill and not cultivation-enhanced speed. Liang was Jiang Tiankong's equal in cultivation at a cursory glance and Chan had only just established his foundations, but between the two they had more than a century's worth of martial arts experience.

"Would you say that all these things happened in the timespan of a breath?" she asked, feeling the corners of her lips stretch into a smug smile. David returned some cursory annoyance in the form of a quick glare.

Liang and Chan circled one another, maintaining the same distance.

"Who are we supposed to root for here?" Alice wondered.

"For them to work out their problems without fighting," said David.

"That seems rather unlikely," said Feiyan, who looked excited. "Who's going to win?"

Chan's sword darted forwards, nipping at Liang's throat. She blocked a series of thrusts with her fist, not directly at the point, but by meeting the flat of the blade with her knuckles. It continued for a few seconds, sounding like a doorbell being rung as fast as possible.

They continued to circle as Chan pressed the attack, stabbing faster and faster.

"Look at her eyes, that's such a neat trick," said Alice, tugging at David’s sleeve. "She's reacting to the motion of his wrists rather than the point of the sword. He's trying to hide it, to fake her out, but she's reading only the jabs and not the twists that move the hilt rather than the blade."

By now, the ringing had blended into a single, keening trill. Chan and Liang had circled three full times.

Chan pulled his sword back abruptly, letting it fall to his side with a frown.

Liang gave him a look that was part ways derisive and part ways offended. "You must have forgotten where you are. You're standing on Tianbei Mountain's Sword Peak, Daoist Chan. That wouldn't have worked on some of the Outer Disciples here."

"Looks like senior sister's going to take this one," said Feiyan, looking pleased.

David disagreed. "It's hard to tell until someone manages to land a hit."

Alice looked around. There were tons of spectators now - they were holding up traffic on the Skybound Path after all. Most of the confrontations that they could see while walking down the mountain were arguments where the parties said rude things to one another and stalked off - there hadn't been any actual fights.

"When's that going to happen?" Feiyan asked.

"I'll consult my crystal ball and tell you straight away," said David, with an easy amusement that Alice misliked.

Feiyan looked confused. "Is that some kind of divination based artifact?"

David nodded.

"You do know that non-feng shui based divinations are demonstrably scams, big brother," said Feiyan allowing a deep pity to cloud her features. “You must shed yourself of these rural beliefs, or you’ll cause problems in your cultivation. Feiyan doesn’t want that for her-”

David cut her off wearily. “It’s just a joke.”

Chan and Liang continued to circle one another wordlessly like a pair of big cats in the wild, each tense and ready for a bout of sudden violence. The crowd had grown yet again - there were now inner and outer disciples of the sect in droves, explaining to one another what they’d seen thus far and debating who had the advantage. They obviously favored Liang.

Alice caught a snippet of conversation which worried her - a woman’s voice wondered if Liang would kill Chan before someone with authority would do it for her to free up the road. She’d referred to Daoist Chan as ‘the trash that’s floated in from Dongjing’.

Like prophecy, a raspy whisper was heard suddenly, clearer than any of the noise the crowd made.

“Disciple Liang, what has given cause for this attack on a guest from an allied sect?”

The rising wall of sound from dozens of people congregating ground to a halt. Alice couldn’t see who had spoken at first. She scanned the crowd, but the voice had come from somewhere else.

“Youth can excuse many follies, but rarely does impoliteness count amongst them.”

Alice looked up.

The speaker was old - a rarity for cultivators. If Alice had passed her on the street, she wouldn’t have ever guessed she was an elder of the Ascending Sky.

The only proof that she was a cultivator at all was the fact that she was walking six feet off the ground, rather than on the Skybound Path. Her Story was as unintelligible and muted as someone who hadn’t awoken, despite the glaring evidence to the contrary.

Most of the disciples gave a deep nod in her direction, which likely counted for a bow.

Even in the air, she moved like an old woman - at a leisurely pace that was just faster than a hobble. She still wore the white robes of mourning that everyone had put away since the night of the Lantern Lighting. As she arrived, Alice found the woman’s most notable feature to be blank, milky eyes - she was blind.

“Granny Meng.” Liang inclined her head, then thought better of it and bowed low instead. Her tone of voice and form of address were almost at odds with her physical greeting to the floating elder - no, floating was the wrong word. The sight was closer to someone who was walking on a surface that just happened to be air rather than the ground.

Alice remembered with a start that she’d been one of the few who’d bothered to attend the lantern lighting for the new disciples a few days ago. Daoist Shi, who’d led them away from the admissions office, had pointed out Granny Meng’s house - and told David and Alice that they were to go to her if they ran into any serious trouble.

“This disciple is sorry for causing a commotion, and making trouble for-”

The woman cut her off. “A disciple of the Ascending Sky should not fill time by spouting nonsense while she considers how to spin a situation in her favor. Especially when she is not sorry.”

Liang blushed.

“What is your name, boy?”

Liang glared at Chan when he didn’t respond immediately.

Chan realized the elder could have only meant him. “Chan Changshou, Honored Elder,” he muttered.

“Swordplay from Eight Pines Mountain, west of Black Dragon Strait. Qi shaped with those unmistakable habits formed by the White Letters Sutra. A Foundation built on ideas from the Eight Esoteric Scriptures found in schools across the Southern Continent.” Of these things, Granny Meng sounded sure. “If my eyes were fit for purpose, I would see that your robes were yellow, visiting son of Dongjing.”

Daoist Chan looked nervous now, though his words were flattering and easy. “Your vision may be gone, but your sight remains sharp, Honored Elder. No one has managed to glean the origins of my cultivation so thoroughly. This daoist apologizes for his rudeness. A guest should never provoke his hosts.”

“Is it a common trend amongst this generation to apologize without a shred of sincerity?”

Alice wondered if Chan’s panic would be more clearly hidden had Granny Meng not been blind.