Alice

Earth Peak was lush and warm. Sword Peak was windswept and desolate. Sky Peak, which rounded out Tianbei Mountain like a third finger, was an active volcano that spewed soot and ash into the sky. The Skyforge, named after the mountain, were pools of lava in the open air set on a gentle slope. Past the Skyforge was a sheer cliff face, a wall of stone that must have gone at least a mile into the air. Unlike Earth Peak, which was dotted with homes, and Sword Peak, which had little wooden towers built along its ascent, Sky Peak was bare, dark, foreboding stone.

It was the dead of night - the pools were burning a dim red rather than a bright white, but the Skyforge still hissed and sputtered. Standing beside it, Alice could see how hot it burned.

“Why doesn’t it cool?” Alice wondered aloud.

“That,” said Fairy Guan, “is a secret lost to time. The Masters of Sky Peak have many theories, but in the end, the Skyforge is a wonder that requires little knowledge to operate and produces weapons that are hard to match.”

Alice frowned. By the orange glow of the forge, the shape of the Fairy’s face appeared to be cast in porcelain. It was alien. It was beautiful.

“Follow me.”

Fairy Guan and her four students walked past the Skyforge to stop in front of the cliff face. She paused to allow them to survey their location.

Feiyan, who always wore her confusion proudly, piped up. “What are we doing here?”

All four faces peered at Fairy Guan expectantly. The Sword said nothing and she did not move.

Kanhu ran his hands through his hair, staring at the cliff. “Getting supplies to forge with, obviously. Probably? I think?” His voice trailed off as he glanced from the cliff face to Fairy Guan and back.

This was clearly some sort of test, so Alice closed her eyes and listened for the Story around her.

As usual, the moment she began to hear the telltale whispers around her, she was assaulted by a cacophony of flashing images and indiscernible conversation.

Nothing seemed to be amiss.

That wasn’t good enough. There was clearly something that she was meant to feel, something that she was meant to understand.

Alice swallowed the taste of trepidation building at the back of her throat and willed herself to listen more carefully. She felt that scheduled twinge of pain in her chest and began the work of rearranging the incomprehensible little words and phrases that the world was composed of into something that she could understand.

That familiar wave of noise, spitting, creaking, buzzing rose from within her and she tasted iron and mulberries and other things.

The loudest Stories always belonged to those who cultivated. Those Stories began to structure themselves into things she could understand.

The surface of the Ming Sea was always blue at noon and the waves were always high.

“My lord will receive no visitors at this hour, regardless of your station, Honored Daughter.”

His tongue was sour and his palms were warm and his skin felt heavy and it was hard to breath and-

There was a light clink, like the tip of a knife hitting the bottom of a bowl.

The Stories were interrupted abruptly, leaving an emptiness without an echo. Alice discovered that Fairy Guan’s eyes were upon her.

“Continue, without distractions.” The Sword had moved to stand between Alice and her three housemates.

If Alice wasn’t staring at them with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed that the Fairy or any of her fellow Disciples had even existed. There wasn’t so much as a whisper from any of them. Whatever Fairy Guan had done was alien and distracting - it was as if she were watching someone play an instrument without hearing a sound.

Alice felt a growing sense of paranoia as she searched the world around her for those missing Stories, for any faint echo. She took a series of shallow breaths and repeated the Stories she’d heard before in her head.

The surface of the Ming Sea mirrored the sky at high noon and the waves roared as they reached for the Heavens.

No, that wasn’t right.

The Ming Sea, blue and bright - like kiln-fired ink, waves, foamy and white - like porcelain.

No, no, none of this was true, this was not Tai Kanhu’s Story, it was a fiction from within her mind - but wasn’t that what a memory was? The taste of iron grew in her mouth.

White waves crashing on dark sand, a turbulent sea, clear, blue and bright-

She felt a sharp pain on her cheek and heard a crack.

She was now seated and the Sword towered over her. Alice caught a glimpse of anger in her eyes. Fairy Guan had hit her.

The anger softened. “Are you hurt?”

Alice’s fingers found something wet on her left cheek - blood, but the wound it must have come from had already closed. She shook her head numbly and pushed herself to her feet. Her hands idly dusted off the soot on her robes.

“That was unwise,” said Fairy Guan, pursing her lips.

Alice ignored the feeling of indignance in the pit of her stomach. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying her best to sound sincere.

Fairy Guan shook her head. “There is nothing to be sorry for. The blame falls on my shoulders.”

The indignation grew.

“You’ve never had formal instruction in cultivation before joining the Sect,” said Fairy Guan.

It sounded like a question, so Alice nodded.

The Fairy sighed - it was a delicate sound. “There were two mistakes made-” She closed her mouth and furrowed her brow in thought.

The silence stretched. Alice recalled the first time she’d seen the Fairy, hanging in the air above Earth Peak, on the day she arrived at Tianbei - as still as a statue and many times more beautiful.

“There were two mistakes made,” said Fairy Guan, more decisively. “Firstly, you should never search for something that doesn’t exist. This is both a lesson in life and in cultivation.”

Alice felt her annoyance boil over. “But-”

Fairy Guan shook her head, cutting her off. “But nothing. In that moment, you were aware of two important things. You were asked to find something peculiar about your surroundings and, to assist you, I hid myself and your fellow disciples from your senses.”

Alice nodded. Her annoyance became something more uncertain.

“I can understand why you decided it was so important to resolve the dissonance between seeing us here and not sensing the qi that should have resulted from our presence. That was the mistake I made,” said Fairy Guan. “The resting state of most young cultivators is naturally blind, but for you, it must have been deeply disturbing.”

Fairy Guan stepped past Alice and walked, quite deliberately, towards a boulder on the side of the road. “This was what I’d hoped you would have found,” she said, pointing at it.

The stone came up to waist height and was rectangular - three feet wide and slightly longer than that. There was nothing particularly special about how it looked - there were many boulders scattered around the Skyforge and many more on the side of the road that lead to it, even if this one was somewhat darker in color.

Alice then realized that it was the only part of the scenery that wasn’t covered in soot. As she reached out for the Story, she discovered that the boulder was, indeed, subtly different from the other debris scattered across the mountain.

Fairy Guan raised a fist into the air and brought down the back of her hand onto the flat surface. Against Alice’s expectations, there was a muted clang rather than a thud. The clang echoed - not in the air, but in the ground beneath her feet.

Whatever ash that had collected on the boulder flew off of it in a cloud of dust.

When the echoing stopped, there was the sound of stone sliding against stone as a section of the sheer cliff face before them slid upwards into the mountain to reveal an archway, twice as high as Alice and wide enough for all five of them to walk through it together. Pale lantern light and the buzz of quiet conversation flowed outwards.

Fairy Guan turned to Alice’s housemates. “The three of you, go inside. And don’t eavesdrop.”

She waited until Feiyan, Kanhu and Qitai disappeared into the archway before she spoke again.

“Before the day you joined my sect, I was unaware that a Principle could be sought before a Core was formed.”

Alice couldn’t think of anything to say, so she shrugged.

“The conventional process of cultivation, however mystical it might seem, is logically sound. First, you discover that you are able to interact with qi. Then, you build the architecture required to house a reservoir of qi within. You fill the reservoir and irrigate the meridians that allow you to manipulate qi. When you’ve opened your final meridian, you invite questioning from the Heavens. Did you have some fundamental belief about the world you inhabit? Are you Principled?”

The words were directed at her, but Alice got the sense that the woman was thinking aloud.

“Principle is a product of lived experience and a cohesive view of the world. It is the vanity of cultivation to believe that natural law, the dictates of Heaven, are not good enough. Unlike the Lower Dantian - the Core, it is not grounded in physical space. The Middle Dantian - Principle, is a product of the mind.”

Alice nodded uncertainly.

“All of this is to say, in the most roundabout way I can, that I’m not sure how to teach you.”

“I see.”

“That does not mean that you have nothing to learn, or that I have nothing to teach you,” she admonished. “The way you engage in cultivation is likely the most reckless I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

“And you’ve lived a very long life,” Alice said, before she could stop herself.

There was little humor in the smile Fairy Guan gave her. “What you must understand about Principle is that its existence is a challenge to reality.”

Alice frowned. “I’m not sure what that means,” she admitted.

“What that means is that when you color your qi with it, your sense of self competes-”

“Against what really exists,” finished Alice.

“I wasn’t trying to make it easier for you to find the entrance,” said Fairy Guan heavily. “That is a fun little exercise in how observant a new student is and means nearly nothing even as a teaching moment.” She pointed at the entrance to Sky Peak. “I was protecting them from you.”

“Oh.”

“Earlier, I told you that you had no self-control. That wasn’t an accurate assessment,” said Fairy Guan. “You’ve never cultivated without your Principle, have you?”

Alice frowned. Of course she hadn’t.

“The look on your face tells me that you don’t even know what it means to cultivate without your Principle.”

Because that was unfair and also patently ridiculous. The Story and qi were one and the same. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to-”

“I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong,” said Fairy Guan. She gave Alice a light pat on the head that was so incredibly patronizing Alice almost swerved away. “I’m just making sure that you put a lot of care when you do anything that will cause other people to come into contact with your qi.”

Alice knew she was pouting and it was mostly involuntary.

“In the long term, you should work on finding a way to use your qi without coloring it with your Principle, if only for convenience. They know me as the Sword Fairy, but I’ve discovered that when you choose at all times to live your life as the Sword, the solution to every problem is to sever.”

Without waiting for a response, Fairy Guan turned towards the archway and began walking.

Alice followed her into Sky Peak.