David

A silence blanketed the street. It was not the usual comfortable silence of Tianbei, easily disrupted by bells and the wind. It was the calm before a storm, awkward and foreboding - a pointed silence.

It was a silence that came from the question that Granny Meng had asked - a question that was too rude and confrontational to merit a real answer. As the seconds dragged by, the silence dug in deeper. It had become clear that Granny Meng did expect an answer of some sort, because she waited patiently.

The short fight a moment ago suddenly seemed melodramatic and scripted, because a line of uncertainty became Liang's lips and her hands shook and seized imperceptibly. David wondered if Liang's reaction to Chan, which he didn't seem to take seriously, was simply a protracted tantrum - the pair had been infrequent friends for what amounted to a lifetime.

Granny Meng, however, was not Chan Changshou's friend. The way she had spoken to Liang was casual and acerbic, but David could imagine his own mother taking that tone of voice with him. To Chan Changshou, however, she was simply a cultivator of far higher standing who had discovered him fighting with one of her sect's inner disciples in the bounds of her city.

David understood, in this moment, why everyone in Ping'an had treated Uncle Jiang with such deference, why Li had greeted Daoist Nan with such obsequious respect. It was why the inner and outer disciples of the Ascending Sky had considered David and Alice such strange specimens when they’d boldly anticipated the arrival of the Peak Masters.

These cultivators who sat within the fifth realm, who'd sought Principles and resolved them, who'd faced tribulation - they were not schoolteachers or distant relatives. They were Severing - cutting away their ties from the mortal world to ascend to a higher existence, closer to gods than men. Natural disasters who wore human faces, who retained human prejudices. And Chan Changshou, who David now considered a friend, was facing one down.

Granny Meng had asked Chan a question that Liang had clearly identified as a pretext to dispose of this interloper who made trouble in her home. Granny Meng's milky white eyes were supposedly sightless, but David was sure they darted from David to Alice to Liang. She wore a constant pickled frown.

Chan broke the silence, grim and accepting and brave. "I'm not certain," he said, in a slightly scratchy voice. Liang clearly didn’t think the answer was good enough, from the way she clenched her fists.

David wondered if Granny Meng would respond to him at all, or if Chan would be snuffed out like a candle in the wind. It was rather cold up north and the wind often skirted the peaks and howled. The winds in New York gathered about at intersections and blasted down neatly lined streets, but were rarely loud.

David missed home.

The howling wind came together into words that David had read on the face of the bell towers. He didn’t notice his lips move at first, but when Granny Meng’s cloudy, pupil-less eyes locked onto him with no sight and too much vision, he realized those words that no one could read had fallen out of him in a whisper. Tell me, is it really going to storm again?

Like a response to the question, Granny Meng’s Principle took shape.

Or did it?

David waited.

No time had passed at all - this was something he was accustomed to when listening for Alice’s silkworms, for the keening wail of a sword dragged over an anvil for an eternity, for the-

David waited and waited.

And Granny Meng waited with him, patiently, like David imagined his mother might have when he thought of her lips moving in the kitchen - that single silly poem he thought of when he’d left his world behind.

Wholeheartedly does a mother sew, for the fear that her son would roam and roam.

But it wasn’t for a son or for the storm that Granny Meng was waiting for.

“It is considered impolite,” said Granny Meng, “to grasp and grope at somebody’s Principle.”

“I’m sorry,” muttered David, not really meaning it - he’d heard this warning before.

“Do you mean to defend this man?”

David’s unease grew, as did the strength of Alice’s grip on his knuckles - when had she found his hand? He’d only now noticed that he’d stepped forward, singling himself out from the crowd that gathered to watch.

He threw a quick glance at Chan Changshou, who looked somewhat bemused, somewhat ashamed, somewhat pleased. Liang Dadu stood beside him - she was staring at the sky, her nails digging into her palm so deep they had become as purple as her eyes. At that moment, they appeared young - far younger than they were.

David folded his arms and nodded. “They didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, sounding more confident than he felt.

Granny Meng was blind, but David still got the sense that she was looking - from Chan to Liang to David and back.

A deep tiredness passed over Granny Meng’s features, shattering the aura of omnipotence thoroughly - so well-worn and beaten that David felt a sense of horror or shame. He was reminded of a time he’d seen one of the faceless old women, who collected bottles from the recycling bins of his apartment building, fall in the middle of the street and pick herself up and continue as if it hadn’t happened.

As quickly as it had come, it was suddenly gone - and Granny Meng had schooled her features into something disapproving again. She nodded curtly at David and spoke again. "Which master from the Clear Skies claims you as a disciple?" She could only have been addressing Chan Changshou.

This question was much easier than the last for the man to answer. "Daoist Tou, Honored Elder."

Liang's fists unclenched. Alice traced an unknowable pattern into the back of his hand with her thumb.

The frown that had never faded on the woman's face deepened. "A man with many students," said Granny Meng. Another emotion - pity, came and went so quickly David wasn't sure he could trust his eyes. "And without much in the way of time."

Chan nodded, then realized she couldn't actually see him. "Yes," he said quickly. "Master does have many students. I happen to be his latest one."

"When I met your Master, there were fewer cities on the Middle Continent," said Granny Meng. "Hold your head high, young man. To both the immortals in the far fields and the records kept in our sects, you and I belong to a single generation." For the first time, a small smile graced her lips. "Your Master will have tea with me in Xijing, in the spring. He will play me a song, if he brings his erhu. If he does not, I will be disappointed in you."

Chan bowed frantically. "Thank you for your guidance, Honored Elder. I will let him know."

Her countenance became something stern yet again. "There will be no brawls fought on the streets of my city," said Granny Meng. "And, because this must be made clear to everyone from Dongjing, there will also be no brawls on our rooftops."

As suddenly as she had appeared, Granny Meng was gone, walking through the air in the opposite direction from Sword Peak, over the Skybound Path. The spectators took that as a cue to leave as well, passing them on the road in either direction.

David could feel the disappointment in the air from the crowd of disciples of the Ascending Sky, that nothing violent had happened. He hated them.

“That was incredibly stupid,” hissed Liang.

David shrugged.

When they could no longer see the figure of Granny Meng in the sky, Liang spoke up again with a bitter sarcasm, with less aggression. "Congratulations on your promotion, newly minted disciple of the celebrated Daoist Tou. I can't think of many more deserving people in your sect, or the continent on a whole!"

Chan, who looked tired of fighting after his near-death incident, addressed the confusion on David's face instead. "My previous master released me from his tutelage after I entered Core Formation," he said. "All the core disciples of the Clear Skies claim Daoist Tou as their master," he said.

"Why are you talking to my juniors?"

"We happen to be acquaintances," Chan snapped at Liang.

“Is that so? When did you meet?”

“We attended a Core Formation Ceremony in Ping’an and met by chance,” said Chan.

“Where’s Ping’an?” Liang asked. There was no malice in her voice - she was actually curious.

“Roughly several hundred li to the south and east. It’s on Sky River, not too far from Dongjing. They sent invitations to a handful of the Great Sects requesting the presence of our Peak Masters and elders, and got some inner disciples with cheap gifts to attend their party. Qingshui was there too, sticking out like a sore thumb, with her being an inheriting disciple and all. Unbelievable, really - their cultivator gave a speech to us, about the importance of working hard at our cultivation.” Chan shook his head.

“You’ve advanced recently, haven’t you? And Little Li as well.” Liang smirked. “Maybe all I need is a motivational speech in the boonies-”

“But it was worth going! The family had an immortal ancestor who showed up,” Chan said, cutting her off. He looked irritated.

Liang was surprised. “An actual immortal?”

Feiyan clapped her hands. “A fortuitous encounter, like from the stories,” she declared. David had forgotten she was there.

They’d begun drifting up the path slowly, towards Sword Peak. The sun was setting in earnest now - the auction would begin soon.

Chan nodded. “Exactly like from the stories. He completely ignored his own family to talk to those two about Fate and Karma.” He pointed at David and Alice with an errant thumb. “Played a guqin duet with her, made him compose a poem. And just like that,” Chan snapped his fingers, “straight from early Foundation Establishment to Core Formation.”

Somehow, Chan had managed to tell the story without a single mention of how David had fought Jiang Tiankong to the death or the search for the saber that had led them to the doors of the Ascending Sky.

“Fate is strange indeed,” supplied Feiyan, “to have led refugees from the South to the edge of civilization in our Middle Continent.”

Chan Changshou, who David realized by now had taken great pains to provide no incriminating details nor affix dates to his story, raised an eyebrow. “That was something I’d never bothered to ask,” he said. “How did the two of you end up in an out-of-the-way place like Ping’an?”

“Well, we wanted to find a sect to call home, and we don’t have much in the way of experience travelling the roads of the Middle Continent,” said Alice, “So we took a boat ferrying wine from Minghai to Ping’an. The captain convinced us that it was an easy journey from Ping’an to Dongjing, known for its many sects. It just so happened that the Core Formation Ceremony was where the order was headed.”

“And while travelling west, Changshou here made such a bad impression on you that the Clear Skies was never an option,” concluded Liang.

“I didn’t make a bad impression,” protested Chan. “The juniors in my sect are always embroiled in some kind of turf war for sport, and we were unlucky enough to pick a restaurant where one was occurring.”

Liang scoffed. “I’m sure a fight between disciples of the Clear Skies without you could be seen as a stain on your honor and we all know Chan Changshou defends his honor very seriously.”

Chan sighed deeply.

“So instead of joining the Clear Skies, the two of you followed Li up the Iron Road,” said Liang. David nodded. “But the sight of Bei’an, or perhaps the smell, convinced you that you’d be terrible doctors, and so you asked her what the nearest reputable sect was. And the two of you ended up on this road.”

They continued along the Skybound Path for a minute or two in a companionable silence. As they approached the entrance to Sword Peak, Feiyan gave a squeak and rapidly moved to the other side of David.

“What is it now?” Alice asked, exasperated.

Feiyan was peeking over David’s shoulder towards the long, thin double doors that opened inwards.

Guarding the door was an inner disciple, who was checking the jade slips held by those who had come from other sects - invitations. Beside him was the one-eared Peak Master Ling, who was perched on a slab of rock which definitely had not been there the last time they’d visited the sword platform. It was joined to the mountain beneath it, and looked as though it had grown out of it.

Ling was greeting various guests as they streamed into Sword Peak. It was clear that he was friends with many of them. Congregated around him were robes of many sects, but David found his eye drawn, curiously, to the hairpieces of the cultivators there - jade of many colors inlaid with precious stones, hats of many shapes and sizes, pins of different gleaming metals.

But Peak Master Ling was not the only focus of attention in that party of ten or twenty. He commanded attention when he spoke, but he didn’t hold it by default. Most of the people present were fixated on a woman who looked slightly older than David, whatever such appearances counted for.

She wore a hanfu, what David would have counted as a traditional garment before he’d arrived here, but now knew was a symbol of wealth in the same way robes were the symbol of cultivator. It was white and silken, and stitched with intricate flowers. The woman wore pearls in her hair and carried no weapons, unlike the other guests. There was something fragile to her beauty - her lips were pale, her lashes were long and her cheekbones were high. When she smiled, the shadow of dimples could be seen on her face.

David listened for her Song and found it smooth and silent, but radiant with bells and chimes. She had no Principle but the hunger of her Song told him that was what she sought. She had faced tribulation - the sign of a cultivator searching for their Nascent Soul. David hadn’t met many such cultivators, so he wasn’t sure how many meridians she had opened.

“Say, doesn’t that woman look a lot like Feiyan?” Alice mused.

The woman must have heard her, because she perked up immediately and examined Alice for a few moments. She looked terribly confused for a moment, a rather fetching expression - but David found it slightly strange. It looked too practiced, too vulnerable for it to be wholly genuine. Her eyes were too bright and too calm. Her gaze travelled to David, to Liang and then to Chan Changshou before they fell onto the girl hiding behind him.

They were but twenty paces from her, but her voice rang out as if they were far, far away. “Dearest sister, I’ve missed you so!”

Feiyan’s gulp was audible.