Two Thousand Five Hundred Years Later

  Despite clear skies and bright sunshine, the morning of New Year's Day brought forth cold and chill. Or, rather than being truly cold, it felt cold. Truly-bone rattling temperatures were simply not a feature of this land, not even in the depths of the Sechan Mountains. Even the highest peaks rarely carried snow much past the end of winter.

  In the foothills, as far as human settlement went, it remained mild despite being the day after the solstice. Though it had frosted overnight, by the time the residents shook free the fatigue of the evening's celebrations and roused themselves to meet the new year the air had warmed to well above freezing. The last remnants of the light snowfall from two nights past were rapidly melting away.

  Though this was common, Qing Liao felt cold regardless. The source of this unusual brisk feeling was easily discerned. He was not properly dressed. He ought to have been clad in a layered ensemble comprised of thick wool socks, fur-lined boots and trousers, with a long fur coat atop it all. Such was his usual costume, garments made by his mother using the skins and hides of animals he'd worked hard trapping and dressing alongside his father. Those would keep him warm even during the worst of the mountain winter, even on the high slopes with the wind howling, and normally he would never go without during the winter months save when sleeping deep beneath piled blankets.

  Today was not a normal day. New Year's Day served as more than a marker of the passage of time. It was tied to obligations, ancient and absolute. Normally, this demanded a great deal of standing about throughout the late morning while the village priest related the old stories of war and the glory of the Celestial Mother. A brief interruption, ceremonial, critical, and usually swiftly concluded, served to bring the official requirements to an end and allow everyone to break for the first hot meal of the year. Roast pig took pride of place on that menu. As the most succulent meat Liao was liable to taste for months, he was practically salivating already.

  Not that he minded the flesh of bamboo rats, hares, moles, and weasels, not truly. They warmed the mouth and filled the belly just fine, but mouth-watering they were not.

  For every one of the previous turnings of the year he could recall, the pork feast dominated his memories. Not this year. Five months ago he turned fourteen years old. This switched out his role in the day's events from bystander to participant.

  He was among those to be subjected to the annual testing.

  In the end, it was this that served to keep him cold. He had been pressed into a line behind the priest and before the remaining villagers alongside all of the other youths who'd reached their fourteenth birthday in the past year. Sixteen boys and girls, a thoroughly typical number, given the roughly eight hundred souls that called Echuantun home.

  Everyone was gathered in the temple square, before the courtyard holding the shrine of the Celestial Mother. There they waited while the priest droned on, repeating old stories everyone knew. Each of the sixteen fourteen-year-old teenagers in line had been divested of their ordinary garments and stuffed into pure white linen ensembles. Coat, trousers, socks, and even undergarments all thoroughly bleached and thin. Even the binding chords and belt were white, and the woven bamboo sandals had white wraps tied over them.

  Used each year for this purpose, none of the outfits properly fitted the young charges obligated to don them on the cold morning. Gaps and loose ties opened drafts. Combined with the command to stand straight in a fixed line rather than walk about or huddle together, all were stuck on the very edge of constant shivering.

  Several were quivering back and forth in a slow wobble that resembled an aborted dance. This failure to contain their emotions came not from the cold, but rather from anticipation.

  These overly exciting youths believed that the ceremony to come was more than a formality. In their minds it was destiny, a moment they'd waited for from the very first time they'd heard the stories or consciously witnessed the testing as children. Despite the odds, they believed that today would mark the moment when their entire lives, when everything, would change.

  Qing Liao did not share such hopes and dreams. He was a trapper's son, accustomed to laying down many snares and retrieving prizes only rarely. His father had drilled this into him, the nature of odds, of chance spread across numerous attempts. The dreams the others held represented the very slimmest of possibilities, not worthy of considering. Pork, that was different, certain. He looked forward to that instead, and the chance to change back into proper clothes and be warm again.

  He also, privately in a space he would never admit aloud, looked forward to the arrival of their yearly guest. It could be safely assumed it would be the same one it always was, and at fourteen, such visions and voyeuristic impulses weighed heavily upon a young man's mind, no matter how unseemly they might be.

  They were obligated to wait in line all morning because there was no way to know when their honored guest would arrive. Noon was the goal, but travel was unpredictable, and slight variances along the road meant that even if they could measure time exactly, arrival would never occur with precision. Woe betide the village that was not ready and presented when the sect's representative arrived. The punishments for such failures were legendary.

  Nor was anticipation or scouting possible, given the speeds involved. The path up the mountain to where the houses of Echuantun clustered at the end of the road wound past the neighboring village of Suchuantun, but it was narrow and heavily forested on all sides. By the time the visitor might be spotted even by a keen-eyed observer there would be less than a minute for the villagers to act. The speeds were simply overwhelming to their capacity.

  And indeed, when the village's lookout cried out the announcement some minutes past noon, it was no more than forty seconds before their guest stood in front of the temple monument and the whole village assembly dropped to their knees and bowed. The priest, an elderly man with bad knees who struggled to walk without paired canes, barely managed to crouch his body in proper kowtow position in time to say the essential words without offering up a delay that might give offense.

  “Echuantun welcomes the honored disciple of the Celestial Origin Sect,” his voice cracked and scratched with the weight of many years, but he still managed to produce the proclamation with sufficient volume that all heard clearly.

  “We welcome the honorable cultivator,” eight hundred throats, including Liao's own, pronounced the proper response.

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  “The Celestial Origin Sect greats Echuantun and welcomes it into the New Year,” their newly arrived visitor returned. Her voice, melodious, full, and stimulating, easily projected across the small square and through packed courtyards. Seemingly without any effort at all she over-matched the vocalization of the collective assembly. Nor did she, standing calm and resolute before them, betray the least sign of fatigue from her journey despite having traveled the nearly two hundred and fifty kilometer distance from Starwall City in a single morning. “People of Echuantun,” she intoned the ritualized question. “Has this year seen any concerns that you wish to voice to the sect's ears?”

  Silence answered. The words were stock, the question one of pure formality. As far as Liao knew, the village would never, no matter what happened, ask the sect for help. At least, never like this, openly and in the sight of all. He'd never heard of any village, not even those suffering famine or plague, making a New Year's Request.

  The absence of an answer was allowed to linger sufficient long to satisfy formality, and then the cultivator waved a hand to signal that all were now allowed to stand. “Then,” she advanced without preamble. “We will proceed with the testing.” Not hesitating at all, she moved from the position of prominence she'd initially occupied toward the line of assembled youths. This motion made it possible for Liao to stare at her without making the action painfully obvious by twisting his neck. Several of the other boys in the lineup had failed to resist that particular temptation.

  It took no more than a single glance to reveal the reason. The cultivator was a stunning beauty.

  She wore essentially the same outfit as the fourteen-year-olds lined up and waiting, but rather than the shapeless ill-fitting mess they presented, she wore it like an empress. Her robes had been exquisitely tailored to cling to the fine curves of a lithe, athletic frame sculpted by endless exercise into refined and brilliantly defined shapes. That her outfit was woven of fine flowing silk, not baggy linen, only highlighted this variance. She was further accented by careful splashes of color. The slender belt at her waist, the ties of her socks, and the long and the slender ribbon used to tie her long black hair into a high bun were all bright emerald green, not washed-out white.

  Further blossoming was offered by the several pieces of jewelry that accessorized her outfit. Paired earrings, four rings on the left hand, twin bracelets over the right wrist, and five different glossy belt buckles adorned her outfit. Each one was cast in gold or silver and bore finely cut gemstones in complex settings. No one in the village possessed any such finery, and many had never even seen such jewels save those worn by this very woman. Clear envy filled the eyes of many who looked upon this prominent display of vast wealth.

  Though the clothes and jewels were very impressive, the woman's face put both to shame with almost trivial ease. She had doubtless been born with a significant measure of natural beauty, visible through her narrow chin, pale complexion, fine but soft cheekbones, and large dark eyes, but as she stood before them she represented something more, something beyond the ability of any girl or woman present to match.

  She was perfection.

  Her skin displayed not a single blemish. Not one mole, scar, smear or other error of the surface marked her. With an edge that could match any formed by a razor, her eyebrows stood perfectly straight and even. Black hair grew from her scalp thickly, lush with tone, and never split or cracked along its length. Lips flushed brilliantly red, as if a ruby had been crushed upon them, framed her mouth, within which, everyone was certain, she possessed immaculate white teeth.

  Cosmetics accounted for none of this. Everyone watching could tell that no padding, paint, or powder contributed to her allure.

  It was glorious, but also more than a little frightening. The perfected image was too clean to be real, too idealized to be human. She looked as if a doll or painting had been somehow brought to life; a being descended from some heavenly plane far beyond even the dreams of simple villagers.

  Old Fan, the peddler who bought the best marten and otter pelts the Qing family acquired and took them for sale in distant Starwall City, had once told Liao that all cultivators were like that. Their progress towards ascension refined them into perfected beings, transformed beyond the boundaries of ordinary folk. Maybe it was so. The sculpted imagery of Celestial Mother Orday found in the temple portrayed her always as a being made of starlight and aurora, never flesh, even though she had been born a mortal human woman.

  So maybe it was true, maybe their visitor was nothing out of the ordinary in the sect, but it did nothing to change the simple fact that Disciple Su Yi was absolutely the most beautiful woman Qing Liao had seen in the fourteen years of his life. There could be no comparison to anyone else.

  Every man in the crowd, and more than a few of the women, stared at the cultivator. Their level of shamelessness in doing so varied. Considering that Liao, with vastly inferior senses, thought it obvious, the cultivator must have noticed this, but she did not appear resentful of such lust and envy at all. Instead, she ignored the attention completely as she moved to the end of the line of youths and stepped before the girl who waited there.

  “Each of you is to be tested.” The announcement spared nothing for explanation as she extended her right hand.

  Qing Liao knew everyone in line, some of them closely, others more distantly. Growing up in such a small and isolated place made it impossible to avoid familiarity with all of one's peers. Some of them, he was well aware, had spent almost their entire lives up to this point in anticipation of this day. It was a status he found, now that the moment of truth had come, regrettable. When they failed, as was almost guaranteed, the disappointment would be crushing to such young minds. Some children took years to recover and find a new path, especially those who desired, who needed, an escape from the confines of the village and their families. Chen Deng, two positions to Liao's right, had a drunkard charcoal burner for a father. The wretched man beat his son more days than not, often to the point that the teenage boy could barely stand. If anyone deserved to succeed, he did.

  But the dantian stood between Heaven and Hell. It cared not for circumstance. Success in this test measured no virtue or vice, offered no indication of destiny, great or poor. It simply was. To succeed or fail was utterly beyond any influence of the individual, the community, or anyone in the world, from the weakest beggar to the greatest Grand Elder.

  A roll of the bones by the cosmos, nothing more and nothing less, one conducted long before birth. The test merely read out the result, one waited very heavily against.

  Disciple Su Yi placed her hand on the navel of each youth in turn. This soft contact lasted no more than a single breath before the palm was removed and she moved on to the next. At no point did she speak or offer any visible reaction. In nine years, the totality of Liao's memory, she never had.

  Qing Liao stood twelfth out of sixteen in the line. Upon reaching his position the cultivator reached out and touched his stomach without ceremony. Though she seemed to exert no effort at all, the strength of her touch was such that he had to brace his knees to avoid falling backward. In that moment, distracted as he tried to sustain his balance, something flowed out of the pale hand. It felt cool, but also tingly, crackling with repressed power, as a stone pulled free of the fire just before it burst might, or the air across a field in the moment before lightning descended. This strange essence, a substance without form but never lacking in presence, attempted to race free of the confines of his being. It squirmed and churned as it sought to return to the air; to disperse as dust in the wind or a drop of blood in a pond.

  But it did not.

  Something, some unconscious, unknown part of Liao reacted to that strange energy, to the essence that could only be the primordial power named by humans qi, and grabbed it. He felt his muscles tense, air caught in his lungs, and every nerve in his body quivered as his existence rippled in response to pulling back against the fragment of essence. All that he was reached out toward that droplet of qi, and with pure instinct to guide it, grabbed hold, squeezed with all the might of his will, and pushed it down into the waiting trap.

  It lodged there, fire in his gut, slowly warming up all that he was.

  Suddenly, realization struck his awareness that he was not the least bit cold anymore.

  Su Yi's eyes widened ever so slightly.