“You mentioned a library of cultivation manuals.”
Lady Jidihu sighed, dipping her head. “Even now, we’re forced to leave the majority of our collection for the wolves who would snap at our heels, did they dare. For all that propriety will be observed, when weeks turn to months, then years, all the prizes within will be reclaimed by others.”
Alex let slip a teasing smile so like the ones WiFu would flash a confused Alex’s way, a lifetime ago. “Perhaps things aren’t quite so bleak as you fear.”
The kitsune before him frowned. “Alex?”
“Take me to the library,” was all he said.
And she did, taking him past the sparse collection of single element cultivation manuals in a comfortable-looking sitting room in the main floor before leading him down numerous stairs and a tunnel into a talisman-secured underground chamber that was absolutely littered in leather bound tomes, bundles of papyrus, and gold capped scrolls, Jidihu more than happy to indulge Alex’s brief request to explain the layout of the massive collection of prized manuals among countless bookshelves of glossy hardwood, flashing a pleased smile when she presented several tomes before him.
“Two of my prized collection of five-element cycling manuals. Each is worth countless spirit pearls, and were they in the central facility, they would cost you more credits to use in seclusion for a day than you’d earn in a score of fights. The headmaster himself would happily claim these, and my entire collection for the central library, if the poor fool realized how significant are the prizes that I actually keep from his autocratic eyes.”
She gave a frustrated shake of her head. “And they are all but useless to me or my girls. The only reason I know that there is more to Heaven and Earth than what’s contained in these tomes is my own affinity for an art developed only with the secret techniques passed down from mother to daughter, and never are we able to ascend to our full potential.”
Alex smiled, heart racing at the thought of the incredible gift he could give. “I know it may sound crazy, but as perilous as things have become, your goal to come to the rescue of a certain precious kitsune may be your salvation as well.”
Lady Jidihu flashed him a bemused smile. “Careful, Alex. You are wearing your heart upon your sleeve, and Hao Chan has already given you her own, if it were not already obvious. If she knows you yearn for one of my kind as well…” She chuckled softly at Alex’s blush. “I only tease, child. Believe me, my kind understands better than most the vagaries of the human condition. I would never shame you for loving more than one partner, but would council you never to do that which would break their hearts.”
Alex lowered his gaze. “I… I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Then say nothing at all. But I am curious, Alex, what is the nature of this salvation?”
Alex swallowed, gazing intently into the elegant noblewoman’s eyes. “What if I were to tell you there was a cultivation tome specifically written for kitsune? One that balances the Shadow element perfectly?”
Lady Jidihu paled, her playful demeanor instantly vanished, intent gaze locked desperately with his own. “Do not toy with me in this, child. Of all things… not this.”
Alex swallowed, heart racing. “A divine gift given to a precious jewel on the verge of death. If it healed her...”
“It might heal us all,” whispered the woman before him, soft downy ears perking up in wonder.
Alex felt a soft finger brush his cheekbone.
“I don’t even have to ask who gave our princess such a boon, do I? Or who you truly are, Alex the First, disciple and assistant to the greatest Inspector Yidushi ever knew.”
Alex flashed a bitter smile, for all that the words he uttered felt no more real than a half-remembered dream. “That Alex’s memories were sealed away for all time. A final mercy to soothe the dying screams of everyone he had ever loved, before joining them upon the pyre of his redemption.”
The kitsune nodded. “The Night of Black Embers, where the God of Mischief took vengeance upon the nobility of an entire city, burning them all to ashes and dust. The unaging boy by his side for countless years vanished that night, never heard from again. But sketchings of them both last to this day. Come. Let me show you.”
Heart hammering, Alex found himself following the enigmatic kitsune to the back of the library in a daze; his odd, dreamlike state so alien to the sharp, viscerally clear awareness that had been his from the moment he had woken up naked in a crypt entrance dedicated to his patron so many months ago, alarming a guard and sent racing away, and it felt like he had been running or fighting ever since.
Always moving, cultivating, doing.
Never a moment to think about bittersweet memories of halcyon days he had never quite lived.
Save for the version of him that had.
His soul had been one with this world for over a thousand breaths spanning a thousand years.
Who knew how many times he had already been reborn?
And when Alex gazed at the ancient sketches of a handsome man with silver-jade eyes and a cocky smile, wearing a hat Alex recognized all too well, accompanied by a youth wearing an ancient changshan that looked identical to the one WiFu had gifted him with upon his emergence into this world… he knew.
As he gazed into a face that so perfectly mirrored his own, eyes widening in horror as a drop of dampness spattered upon the ancient page, he knew.
As he caught sight of the beautiful kitsune girl in a wedding dress who looked so very much like Liu Li, gazing proud and bold within the portraiture, second daughter of WiFu, and Alex’s wife of a thousand years ago, he knew.
This was all real.
The dreamlike flashes of memory had all happened before.
This was not the first life he had lived.
He was a youth of eighteen who had died of cancer before jolting back to life, living the most intense year he could remember.
He was an ancient soul of a thousand years, a thousand breaths embracing an endless breakthrough synergizing two divine cultivation paradigms into one.
He was a man who had embraced a life rich and full, Watson to a much-beloved fox-like Holmes, who had lost everything and everyone he had ever loved to the vilest of treacherous serpents, before he and his master had burned them all to ash.
Before being reborn once more.
As if it had been the first time.
And it had not been.
Not by far.
Alex crashed to the ground, heart lanced with unspeakable agony.
How many precious souls had he loved and cherished, only to lose them to the flames of treachery and malice that infected this beautiful realm like the darkest of plagues?
Liu Li, so close to death, risen to dance among kings.
Surrounded by serpents eager to strike, even now.
Hao Chan, filling his heart with a serene joy, a prize infernalists and flesh peddlers had striven to degrade and destroy from the moment Alex had met her, before he had risked everything in securing her redemption, and winning her heart.
And soon she too would be racing full speed into a nest of vipers who would love nothing more than to destroy her, just as they would destroy Liu Li. Just as they would destroy every trace of wonder and whimsy, all traces of anything but the grinding weight of order’s shackles, chained to dominion and conquest at all costs.
Somehow, Alex knew this to be true. And the horrific vision WiFu had given him as he bobbed between life and death just months ago, years ago to his soul, only made the peril that much more visceral, that much more real.
“Alex? Alex, are you alright?” Concerned eyes locked with his own.
Alex didn’t even bother holding back his tears. “Enemies will be expecting you, you know. You’re all heading straight into a trap.”
Bitter laughter erupted from a face suddenly jaded and weary beyond her mask of ageless perfection. “Don’t you think I know that, Alex? But we have no choice. No choice at all. I have seen the cords of fate, boy. I k
now how this story must play out. For our peril is only likely, not guaranteed.”
Hard eyes locked with his own. “Only if we fail to make the journey is our doom assured, our enemies finally making their final push to wipe all traces of my kind from the face of this world.”
Alex clenched his fists, feeling her pain, her despair, her desperation as his own.
He locked gazes with her once more. “I can keep your library safe.”
She blinked. “Really.”
Alex took a deep breath. “I can. And I risk everything telling you this. Because if anyone were to realize the prize I carry...”
“The emperor himself would claim it as his own, and countless lords of Silver and Gold would kill you in a heartbeat for the chance to personally deliver it to their master and be risen above all their peers.”
Alex, heart pounding, nodded his agreement. “Yes.”
She squeezed his hand. “A gift from my ancestral father?”
Alex held her gaze. “I think you already know the answer to that.”
Lady Jidihu gazed at him for long moments. “Then I leave the remainder of my priceless library and every artifact within this room to your care, having already claimed what I need. Now do as you see fit.”
She then left without another word, and Alex, dizzy with the sudden weight of knowledge that had been remanded to his care, as if the kitsune had known precisely what to say to avoid Alex having to touch each book individually, did what he had to before leaving only moments later.
And where there had been a priceless collection of scrolls, tomes, and treatises carefully amassed over decades, if not centuries, nothing save a few cobwebs remained to fill a suddenly vast and lonely chamber that had been so full of literary treasures, just moments before.
21
“Alex?”
Alex gazed into beautiful amber eyes filled with anxiety and hope, the increasingly blustery wind caressing stray strands of Hao Chan’s silky dark hair.
He smiled into her eyes and kissed her soft, questioning lips, savoring her gasp of surprise before pulling away. “The library is safe,” was all he said. “None of our foes can get to it, even if it’s not immediately available to us. But it will be. Later. I promise you.”
Hao Chan chuckled softly, squeezing Alex’s hand. “Somehow you, a basic cultivator like me, rescued my patron’s library from a school only now revealing its claws and fangs to us all, and that’s supposed to make sense?” Her cheeks flushed at Yinzi’s happy squeal. “Then again, how did Ning Jing and my sponsor…? Never mind.”
Alex winked, quite sure his patron had something to do with it, but happy to be spared the details. “Now I want you to promise me you’ll study under Lady Feng Huang with all your heart and soul, and elevate yourself to Silver as soon as possible.”
A sultry chuckle caressed his ear before he found himself locked in her fierce grip, lips pressed hotly against his own, both their hearts roaring like the storm coming rapidly ashore before she broke it off with flushed cheeks and husky laughter. “I want you so bad it hurts.”
Alex swallowed as his heart pounded in his chest, hand gently caressing her soft warm cheek. She shuddered at his touch. “The feeling’s mutual. The hunger I feel for you gnaws at my heart, and the rest of me, like a sharp steel blade.” He flashed a wry smile. “And like all the other obstacles thrown in our lives, it can be used to weaken us, or make us strong. Train with all your heart, Hao Chan. Let your hunger sharpen your resolve. I think we’ll both be the better for it, if we can just last until Silver. I’ll catch up with you just as soon as I can.”
Hao Chan paled at those words, heart racing like the storm rapidly coming ashore. “Alex, please… if it’s because of what we feel, I’ll be as gracious as a saint, no matter how much it hurts! Just please come with us. To stay here is death!”
Alex nodded, refusing to deny it. “I know. But I have some unfinished business that I have to take care of.”
“What? What could possibly be worth the risk of facing that damned alchemist who’s done everything he can to destroy you since we first arrived? And somehow you managed not only to defeat but to destroy his nephew, who Jidihu thinks might just be his illegitimate son. The killing hate that man must have...”
Alex shivered, painfully aware of the horrific risk he was taking, all but sensing the caustic, poisonous death waiting for him. He somehow knew that if he surrendered to Hao Chan’s anxious plea, he would escape safely. They all would. And somehow, he also knew that he would have forsaken a precious opportunity that would never come again.
“I’m sorry. I wish I could explain it better, but this is something I absolutely have to do before I can leave for good. If I want to grow, if I ever want to break through to Bronze, let alone Silver, in the next decade...” He shook his head, forcing himself to act before he lost his nerve. “I’ll meet up with you in Baidushi when I can. I shouldn’t be more than a few days behind. I promise!”
Lady Jidihu’s words washed over him. He blinked, not having sensed her so close until that very instant. “Should you actually survive your mad gambit, and I pray you do for obvious reasons, wait until the midnight shift. A man loyal to our sect will be on duty.” A soft hand placed a small silken bag in his hand. “Our enemies wish to save face, above all else. They might tear up the school, but should you survive, they won’t be telling the common rabble that a Ruidian boy got the best of them. My man won’t let you onto the High Road for free, of course, no matter that it is every cultivator’s right that can use it. You are Ruidian, and he has to keep up appearances with the other guards and entice them into taking a cut, if his fellow isn’t one of mine. And he might just decide to follow as well, if things truly worsen, knowing the Jianghu mistress honors all favors given.”
Alex nodded. “Cover story?”
Lady Jidihu chuckled softly. “Hide the lie within the truth. You truthfully are a skilled apothecary with a nose for precious herbs and Qi-infused roots and blossoms. If he presses, you need but make it clear you serve the most open-minded of masters, who cares far more about a tool’s efficiency than its form. If he still presses...” Her gaze hardened. “Then he’s compromised. Bow down gracefully, leave calmly, then flee for the gates as fast and as discreetly as you can. Head for the forest. I sense you are already far more at home there than most cultivators, as likely to survive as any Silver, which is to say, almost assured.”
She flashed a sad smile at that. “From there, you can find any of a number of nameless small towns, all with impressive walls and surprisingly fecund fields full of crops, taking advantage of the constant flood of Heaven and Earth spiritual energy to be found nearly everywhere free of the spiritual pollution of major population centers, resulting in so many spirit beasts and such an incredible bounty of crops. Farmer’s bane and boon, as it were. They, unlike the major cities, don’t ask questions when talented help of Ruidian descent fleeing a major city’s persecution comes their way.”
Alex nodded. “My old master explained that to me, once upon a time. Sure, cropland around a city is fertile enough, and safely provides a fair amount of the food needed, but ten million crowded souls both keeps the surrounding wilderness so much safer, as well as severely dampens the potential for fecund growth of spiritual-energy rich crops for about a day’s travel in all directions. Except in a cultivation academy itself, of course. Feng Shui, talismans, and powerful cultivators keeping the energy flows at Dragon Academy almost as vital as in the heart of primal wilderness.”
He then flushed, realizing he had just cut off one of the most powerful, or at least well connected, cultivators in all of Yidushi with a student’s observations. “This one apologizes for interrupting his better,” he softly said with a quick bow.
She flashed an almost impish smile. “I’m glad to see you were paying attention. I think Liu Jian, or perhaps I should say Cui Jian now, would be proud at how far his Ruidian disciple has come. And for all that the waste Qi generated in the cities is a bane t
o so many crops needing balanced Qi flows, it actually feeds the forest itself quite well. Which in turn feeds us, so long as we keep our farming communities sufficiently small and far apart. Not that living in the city will have any detrimental effect upon basic cultivators taking their first steps in simply clearing out their meridian gateways, though a well-tended cultivation garden is certainly prettier to look at than damp stone walls.
“But once you achieve Bronze and are cycling external Qi… yes. It is at that point that many cultivators who are not already affiliated with any cultivation school will seek to enroll themselves here in pursuit of advanced cultivation techniques and pristine Heaven and Earth spiritual energy flows. Either that, or, if a newly-forged Bronze is already satisfied with the cultivation path they have chosen, they will leave the cities entirely and some few cultivators with a will even seek enlightenment in the deepest wilds to be found many days from all major cities.”
She then furrowed her brow. “So even if you find yourself welcomed in a town or village with absolutely no ties to Yidushi, best you not let down your guard, even then. Most will be as safe and innocuous as you could hope. But at least a few will have Bronze, or perhaps even Silver cultivators ruling as kings in all but name. Or they might simply wish to be left undisturbed, and one never knows if they will take offense at an unknown catalyst for chaos and change suddenly in their midst.”
Alex winced at those words, wondering if any place was truly safe.
Lady Jidihu flashed a reassuring smile. “Relax, Alex. I but state worst-case scenarios. So long as you keep your head down and prove your worth, no doubt a strong, handsome lad like you will be welcome in almost any village or farming community. And assuming some Ruidian village girl doesn’t catch your heart...” Hao Chan glared daggers at that idea. “Then no doubt any number of trade caravans heading toward Baidushi looking for a competent guard, laborer, or if you can pull it off, merchant trader with wares of his own to sell, can be found. Then it’s simply a matter of discretion and patience, as it will take many months to make the trip to the capital of Cuijing Principality. At least some of the traveling merchants will be carrying richer hauls than grain, and will no doubt pay guards with any trace of a cultivation base quite well, compared to any freeman’s wages.”
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