David

The rapid staccato of explosion after explosion followed one after another without pause until David barely registered them. Each one carried the sound of the Song, but none were exactly alike to his senses.

The screaming began long before the explosions ended. Louder than the explosions and the screams was the overpowering dissonance of Liu Na losing control of her core just a hair's breadth from its formation.

The sound of that tinkling bell stopped immediately as the incomplete core dispersed into silence and Liu Na's nerveless fingers let go of the Amplifier.

Shishi gasped. In the corner of his eye, he watched her fists clench as she stood. The porcelain cup she'd just taken a sip from shattered into dust, sending tea splashing in every direction.

The Song in the stadium rose, instantly saturating the air. It was so oppressive and thick, the shards of porcelain and the spray of tea stopped falling.

The woman, who'd surely detonated the explosives by splitting the wooden box she'd been playing, leapt out of her stool. She forced herself forward - half walking, half swimming - through the heavy blanket of qi.

Her Song rose from her as the woman threw the combination of a shove and a haphazard punch with one hand at the small of Liu Na's back, throwing her off the stage directly into the crowd below.

Her other hand found the Amplifier. The attack on Liu Na was clearly an afterthought - her eyes were firmly trained on the jade stick the whole time.

Before David had stood on the shore of Immortal Lake across from the stadium, the most qi he'd ever seen was in Tianbei during a forging empowered by the accumulated vitality of Earth Peak and the historic weight of the city's bells.

Before that, it had been when Uncle Jiang's Song, a glimpse of twenty thousand year's worth of cultivation, had crashed onto him and Alice with the intent to provoke a violent response.

Neither of those incidents compared in magnitude to the river of adulation that tens of thousands of mortals offered to the performer on the altar known as the Bird's Nest. It was not a quantity of qi that someone who hadn't yet formed a core had a chance of keeping.

While it had paled in volume to the anger of an Immortal or the lighting of the Skyforge, the amount of qi in the Yang Spirit Spring, a treasure his sect had fought countless wars throughout its history to defend, would have melted him alive had he slipped and lost control of his thoughts.

Uncle Jiang had clamped down on his Song the moment he noticed its effect on the crowd gathered on that little island. David couldn't have been underwater for more than a minute or two at most. The Bells rang at dawn for just over ten minutes every morning - the forging had failed long before they'd finished.

Under normal circumstances, the qi siphoned from the crowd would have disintegrated her before she could finish a single verse from her song. Liu Na had been performing without pause for several hours. But that in itself wasn't nearly as ridiculous as what David witnessed here.

Just like the little runes scratched onto his room's doorframe, just like the patterns inscribed onto the sheets of slate that formed the Iron Road, the Hall of Voices was an array. Everything - from the carvings on the walls to the shape of the dancefloor to the placement and height of the stage - directed the energy produced by the crowd to the performer.

With a cursory listen, David could hear it funneling the lion's share of that incomprehensibly vast sound of the Song from the crowd directly through Liu Na's apertures. The qi that rose over the Bird's Nest was just what escaped.

The moment the old woman's fingers found the Amplifier, David realized that was where the endless ocean of qi was going.

The blanket of qi over the stadium fell away. The tea and the remains of Shishi's cup, no longer suspended by the Song, fell through the air.

Shishi gave a short, shocked scream, slumping forward. David and Wen turned in unison. One of the waiters had buried a knife into her upper back, just inches below her neck. If Shishi hadn't leaned forward to squint at the woman on stage, it would have likely found the back of her head.

David turned to her attacker and instantly recognized him. It was the concert promoter - the one who'd taken his money for the cart ride. It was the man who'd been watching from a nearby temple when Wen's ancestor had possessed Daoist Bo. His Song was dominated with plucked strings, quick and high. His Core contrasted with a low, rhythmic thump.

David didn't hesitate - he took a step forward with his right foot. His knee bent and he felt his Song roar triumphantly as he fell into a stance from the Scripture of the Uprooted. His left hand formed a fist. As the man threw himself forward to block the fist with his elbow, David's right hand darted out, fingers first.

His right hand went straight through the man's stomach. His fingers found the man's spine, snapping it with a horrific crack.

The man stared at him in disbelief, then anger, then resignation. David heard the sound of the Song from beneath his hand - a single, frenetic note plucked on a zither played faster and faster and faster.

“All is already dust,” muttered the man. “The world is shrouded in red illusion. The most beautiful lotus blooms in the darkest swamp.”

Was the man praying? The man’s Song grew and grew in volume. His sleeves began to flutter and billow.

“To be cleansed of past karma is the reward of devout life. To the wheel, we will return.”

David had a sudden, sickening realization. The explosions from within the crowd hadn’t been a product of any talisman or array. It hadn’t been some chemical or alchemical compound lit with qi.

“To forget the suffering in this life is Buddha’s mercy. To the dust, we must return.”

Wen pulled the dagger out of Shishi's back and jammed it through the side of the man's neck, silencing the man's Song instantly. He gave a short, brutal kick to the side of the man's stomach that would have shattered the man’s core if he’d remained alive. The man slid off of David's arm with a warm plop and hit the ground with a thud.

"Give a man a chance to say his last words and he tries to blow himself up. Piece of shit," Wen swore, dropping the bloody knife onto the table with a clatter, then began to stare forlornly at Shishi, who had slumped face first onto the table.

David wiped his hand on the side of his robes, trying not to think about what he was wiping off.

"Do you have anything that can help?" Wen asked David.

David shook his head.

As the press of concert goers scrambled towards the exit, David watched a middle aged man trip forward, disappearing under the screaming, stampeding crowd.

Wen slumped forward, pressing his palms onto the table, exhaling heavily. He then turned back to the surrounding disciples in red and blue. By the golden candlelight, David watched as desperate tears crept from the corners of Wen’s eyes. Many of the disciples had left immediately after the trouble started - those who remained were staring in horror at David, at Wen and at Shishi and at the rapidly cooling corpse on the ground.

David lost his temper. “Do any of you have a way to save her life?” he shouted, scanning table after table. “A hundred chosen children of two Great Sects and not a single one of you has anything that can help?”

There was no response. Some of the disciples near the back of the room stood up and briskly slipped their way past the sliding doors into the Hall of Portraits.

“That’s enough,” muttered Wen. “If they can’t help, they can’t help, you don’t-”

“Can’t help?” David spat. He gave as disdain a glare as he could to the disciples in red. “Can’t help their Sect Aunt or even get help from Song Mountain?”

“They can’t go near the mountain,” said Wen, who was still defending the cowards who could not even find a reply, who could not even meet David’s eye. “Not until Master succeeds.”

The sound of thunder echoed in the distance as the first light of dawn streamed in from the open air behind the stage, but David couldn’t say for certain whether it was the approach of the Heavens accepting an Earthly invitation or the blood pounding in his ears.

“Not a single cultivator is going to try to calm down the crowd?” David continued, ignoring Wen. The concertgoers were literally climbing over one another to fit through the doors in the Entrance Hall. David tried not to think about the people who’d survived the explosions only to be swept over by the waves of desperate people trying to escape. “What a joke. You all really do see everyone as cultivation supplies, don’t-”

“Wait, wait, I’ve got something,” said Wen. With a sudden second wind, Wen began to furiously dig through his pockets. He turned Shishi onto her back on the table, and then threw another glance at the stunned disciples still sitting around them.

David stared instead at the sea of panicked faces making a mad dash towards the exit, with the peculiar feeling that he’d forgotten something important.

David turned back to Wen, who was now emptying his pockets onto the ground while looking up at the stage, where the woman was trying to pry the Amplifier out of whatever had affixed it firmly to the stage.

“What’s she doing?” David asked, his eyes narrowed.

“We’ll worry about that in a second,” said Wen, dropping the melon-sized pill furnace he’d bought in Ping’an onto the ground with a thunk. Right as a trail of thick, dark blood began to emerge from under Shishi’s robes, Wen finally fished a little dirt-brown ball the size and shape of a marble out of his pocket.

“Shishi’s going to be fine,” David said, more confident than he felt. While the sound of her Song wasn’t any different from before she was wounded, the amount of blood now dripping off the table was worrisome.

Wen leaned over Shishi, floating his knuckle over her upper lip, then sighed in relief. "Still breathing," he muttered. He gave her chin a gentle push, opening her mouth, then carefully pressed the pill against her cheek.

“If she would just open her xinbao, like every other cultivator seeking Principle, that cheap knife wouldn’t even have broken skin,” Wen rattled frantically as he checked Shishi’s wrist for a pulse again and again. “Luckily for her, everyone’s favorite Path Friend Wen Cheng often receives mortal wounds.”

Shishi cracked an eyelid open. “Was my last album so bad that someone did something about it?”

“Shishi!” Wen cried out. David looked around. Some more of the disciples had quietly left, but almost all of them were staring at them, relieved.

Shishi closed her eyes. “Just give me a moment,” she promised. “Fix this so I don’t get shouted at later,” she murmured.

“It’s been a second,” David said, elbowing Wen lightly, then pointed at the stage. The woman was still on stage, squatting by the base of the jade stick, pulling and pushing at it, trying to dislodge it. “We should do something about that.”

“It has,” Wen decided, with a shade of his usual confidence. He turned to the disciples. “Path Friends and Senior Sisters,” he proclaimed. “Our beloved Sect Aunt is going to live,” announced Wen, standing straight and proud. “Who’s coming on stage with us?”

Whatever interest that everyone had started showing faded instantly.

Wen's fist slammed into the table. "What are all of you waiting for?" Wen barked at the table of six sitting at the closest table in disgust. "Somebody do something! She’s literally trying to steal the Amplifier!" He pointed up at the stage more aggressively. "Somebody stop her!"

That caught the woman’s attention. She looked over at Wen. Gone entirely was the meek and mild cart driver who had been detained upon entry into Huzhou. Her teeth were gritted and there was something vicious in her eyes. She gave an even more violent tug at the Amplifier.

Wen walked over to the nearest table, where six of the beauties of Song Mountain were suddenly very interested in their nails. Two others sat with them. One of them wore an exasperated pout as she swirled her tea around in a porcelain cup. The other was glaring at Wen with folded arms.

Pout had a sword on the table, a piece which likely weighed more in red gemstones than steel.

Folded Arms spoke up first. “Who are you to order us around? Can’t you tell that cultivator’s Ignited? Even if Shishi wakes up, she might not be able to stop her. Look how easily she dealt with Sister Liu.”

David very nearly swore in English. That’s what he’d forgotten. He took a running leap off the platform and onto the floor.

“Where are you going, Path Friend?”

As his feet touched the floor, he tried not to think about the people sprawled on the floor, tried not hear the screams for help, tried not to smell the rich scent of copper coming from the light red mist that hung ankle high off the ground from which body parts poked out-

“What the hell is going on here?” David asked out loud.