I woke up, paranoid and paralysed. I could only move my head, so I looked around. A room in a pagoda, overlooking the west and east centerpoints of K'unlun. The near north maybe?
My body was shining in oil for anointment and black sludge, and needles pierced through my acupoints. I was practically leaking chi, so I harnessed it back to my torso. I don't seem to have a dantian though, it's just in a controlled environment inside the confines of my body.
Then my vision went back. I saw every part of my physique, my muscles, tendons, neurons, and nerve linings, and organs and the stuff down there. A transparent world, if you will. This was what I was seeing when I got beat down by that old man!
Then my vision changed again. My chi, bleeding like a cracked wine gourd. Two more minutes and I would die. I forced more of the black sludge out of my body, and I lit in on fire.
The flame melted away the impurities within my veins, but it didn't burn or anything. My skin lit up kike there was a bliking flashlight underneath, the flame-light wading through my blood vessels and limbs. I kept on going until it became night.
As the bells of the pagoda ran, signaling the end of the day, the door to my room creaked. An old man steps in. Clad in butterfly blue robes with scrambled hemlines. Sword at his hip and white beard flowing like some secluded martial master. His eyes landed on my face with veiled interest, glowing in cobalt. His face is too familiar to me.
Half-mad, half-too-sharp.
"So, the demon stirs." The old man grinned with a face contorted in slighted joy and a voice I seem to have heard before.
"You're the one who called me that… You're the crazy old man who tried to kill me!" I barely let out in a hoarse voice.
"And yet you live."
He crouched beside me, laid flat on the floor, plucking a needle on my left elbow, and all my effort in purifying that area turned haywire. My chi leaked out of the hole it left in liters. He haphazardly poked it back into place.
"You were leaking. A cracked vessel. I stitched you together with needles, oils, and some of my current. You have no dantian. Yet the chi runs. A paradox."
My teeth grinded and my knuckles would've turned white if I could move my body.
"So I'm your experiment, then?"
"If you really think about it, all disciples are to a master is an experiment. You're just a bit more… how do I say this… volatile."
He leaned closer, and I saw more of his features. If not for the eyes glowing in blue and the excited smile, he would've passed off as a normal, kindly grandpa.
"Your name is?"
I didn't respond.
"None? Hah, then you're even more strange. A man with no name is a man without a leash."
"What should I call you then?" I whispered.
"I am Chang Yuchun, an elder of the Heavenly Current Sect. I thought you were a remnant of Sahra Sharm, but it turns out, you're just some guy."
He spreads out his hands over me like a cultist about to sacrifice. His eyes and fingers glow and all the needles stuck on my limbs are released. I see his chi circulating in his body and extending from his fingers, controlling the needles as they float to his fingers. I didn't know martial artists could do that.
My chi leaked a bit but in a split second, he tapped each of my acupoints and closed them somehow. I stood up slowly, and he stabbed my back with new needles.
He claps two times, and two disciples enter. They bound me in ropes and blindfolded me, carrying me across the corridor and down the pagoda.
The blindfold came off and the light pricked my eyes. Next thing I know, I'm in a circle. And a spotlight shines on me.
For a moment, I thought I was floating. Then I realized I stood on a stone platform no bigger than a dinner table, suspended in an ocean of shadow. My ankles and wrists burned against the fiber ropes that bound them to the floor. Above, a single shaft of white light caged me, leaving everything else in darkness.
Rows of old men and women sit in shadows but their eyes glow in the light like inhumans, positioned in tiers, robed, stern, critical. A woman stood atop them all, observing me. The sect master, most likely.
The whole space was reminiscent of architecture from another world. Murmurs ripple around me.
"That's the broker from the west district. The one who trades with alchemist and thieves alike."
"The rumored Silent Blade. He fought in the trial of heaven masked, and won the first round."
"He plays master in the old Zhao sellsword division courtyard. They whisper of a "Hao Sect"."
The murmurs grew incessant.
"Enough." Just one word from the sect leader shut up all the elders. He carried an aura that weighed down on everyone. I was sent to the ground, and I could only see his eyes that glowed in blue, his standing on nothing.
"What stands before us is not rumor, but anomaly. He bears no dantian, yet the heavens granted him chi. Spirit veins without something to contain. Such a thing cannot be ignored."
"What do I do with you, hmm?" muttered Mei Huifang.
A scrawny man with glasses attached to his nosebridge stood up, long hair bound behind his ears complete with a scholar's hat and fan.
"The disciple greets the honored master. The Demon Pacifying Tome says to contain him, break his body, scatter his spirit. We cannot risk him spreading his methods to his so-called followers."
A woman in tight-fitting green-blue robes stood up.
"The summon greets the esteemed master. Better to study him, my liege. Use him as a weapon against our enemies. Maybe use him as a scapegoat in the event of a scandal?"
A middle-aged man with a rough, weathered face, marked by wrinkles, coated with reddish hair and a full beard stood up. He had a large beaded necklace around his neck, with a red robe matching his hair.
"The disciple greets the honored master. We could bind him to one of the underground halls, my lord, never let him see daylight again."
The debate swelled without end. In the end, old man Chang stood up.
"This disciple greets the esteemed one. Venerable, he adapts. Not like me, and not like you. I saw it myself. Kill him, and you waste the chance to give me a disciple. Keep him and we may forge something new.
The whole space paused, waiting for the master's final verdict. The sect leader regards him.
"And you would take responsibility for this… heretical power?"
"I would. Make me his handler. If he falls, I will cut him down with my own sword. But if he rises and succeeds under me, my teachings may live on. The sect, no, the whole city will learn that talent shall not define one's fate as a warrior."
The chamber stills. Finally, the silence is cut by—
"So be it. He is yours."
Men in black floated down from under the tiers to me, releasing me from my chains and covering me with a blindfold.
Chang Yuchung released the blindfold, and the dimly lit room where I woke up came to me again.
The chamber breathes with oil-lamp smoke. My day's just getting worse and worse. My body's too sore, my eyes are fixated on the gold-laced lacquer wood mat that wasn't there before. The old man looms before me, robes flowing, face unreadable.
Whilst cutting my handcuffs of rope and twine, he says, "You know what to do, right?"
Despite my overwhelm, I stayed still. My spy ways come back to me. Out comes from my mouth a measured and trained voice. The calm of a man who lies for a living. Then again, that's just a lawyer.
"What happens now to my old identity? My career as a broker? The courtesans I've laid with? The upcoming Trial of Earth?" I paused, then thought of more things to say.
"In here, what am I? A prisoner? An experiment"
"You are what I tell you to be." His smirk from earlier resurfaces ever faint.
"And if I refuse?"
"You die.", he responds.
"You don't understand your situation, do you? It's not just us that are out for you. That shining light you set off from that yard alerted all of K'unlun. You're lucky we're the first to get to you. You would've ended up six feet under as ashes after being burned as a heretic."
"And if I didn't poach you, you would've still died. The council would purge your veins dry before dawn."
"Then how do I live here? Am I to be a shadow to your disciples? A safeguard if one of your successors die?"
He spat and reeled in disdain.
"I don't have any disciples. That's why I need you. But you won't cooperate. Still playing spy, asking questions. I've seen this performance a thousand times in a thousand men who thought themselves clever."
"You will kneel and perform the nine kowtows, and you will bind your fate to mine."
My jaw and knuckles tightened like last time. The hell is happening?
"Yesterday, you should've died. Today, you are alive. You have me to thank for."
Silence. My body bends over and the quaking tremor from under me is gone. I slowly position myself. My forehead strikes the mat. Once, twice, thrice, and I don't know what the fourth is. Blood, fresh blood, begins to stain the gold in the lacquer.
"I accept you as master.", I whisper.
"Rise. From now, you are a disciple of the Heavenly Current Sect, under me, Chang Yuchung, Second Elder of the Council, Fifth in Succession, True Yin Tyrant."
"You may kill me, curse me, and damn me to the nether, but for now, you are the vessel for my teachings. Appreciate this blessing."
I rose, blood stinging on my brow. My chest heaved, but I kept my posture straight.
Chang Yuchung's gaze cut into me like a knife. His voice was calm, too calm.
"Now," he said, "say it. Thank you."
My lips parted, but no words came out.
"…Thank you? You drag me out of my life, hogtie me like a pig, stab me with enough needles to open a sewing shop, strip me naked, oil me up like a festival roast, and now I'm supposed to say thank you?!"
Yuchung blinked slowly, trying to suppress his low chuckle. "Yes."
I laughed.
"Oh, that's rich. Should I also bow while singing praises? 'Oh merciful elder, savior of my shiny chi-leaking ass, how could I ever repay you for kidnapping me and ruining my career prospects?'"
His smile sharpened, thin and cruel. "Exactly like that."
"You want me to clean the floors and wash the dishes while I'm at it?"
His voice cracked like a whip.
"Say. Thank you."
"Thank you for what? For giving me the honor of being the freak you get to parade in front of your council like a prize ox? Should I start mooing now, or later?"
"Because," he roared, finally breaking composure, "without me, you would not even be alive enough to mock me!"
Silence. My smile froze, blood draining from my face.
I swallowed hard. "…Thank you."
He leaned back, robes falling still. His tone returned to icy calm.
"Good. First lesson: even clowns learn faster when they're breathing."
Great. Kidnapped by a grumpy old man with a sense of humor as dry as a desert. If this was the Heavenly Current Sect, then I was screwed. Can't believe this was the place I wanted to enter.