Chương 45: Conviction

Rowan The inn room was nice. The walls had been painted cornflower blue, and there were even a few painted silks hung up on them. Dalia sat down on the bed shyly. She was still wearing the rough-spun cloak Rowan had given her. To his relief, she looked much healthier. Her face was no longer on the edge of gauntness, her cheeks slightly plump and pink. It was a good thing that she was okay. At least he had been able to save one person!

"You… know where I'm staying?" she asked unsurely.

"I used a divination technique," he clarified.

"Listen, did that matron come to see you?" At the mention of the matron, Dalia's fingers curled into the blanket she was sitting on. Her teeth gritted fiercely for a moment, tears pricking her eyes, but she forcefully calmed herself, returning to a state of blankness.

"She… she…" Dalia started.

"She wanted five taels."

"Why?"

"That's how much the man owed for me. I didn't give them to her at first - I thought it was a bad dream. But then I woke up, and I realized I was walking back toward Highwater. I threw the coins in her face and ran. She let me leave." Trembling, Dalia pushed down her sleeves, revealing a myriad of thin cuts.

"I didn't walk through any rose bushes, but I was still cut up. I don't know how."

"The matron wasn't put to rest properly. I didn't put her to rest properly. She turned into a malicious ghost and tried to lure her charges back to the orphanage," Rowan explained quietly.

"I'm sorry. She was a very powerful ghost with strange abilities. If you had any friends that were still at the orphanage, they are probably dead." When Rowan had originally beheaded the matron, he had kicked her head into a dark corner. He couldn't help but wonder if that action had stirred the resentful energy, helping to form the ghost. Dalia drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them. She was quiet for a moment.

"But the matron is gone now?"

"She's gone." She exhaled deeply.

"Good." Dalia didn't say anything more for a while. Rowan, feeling a bit restless, paced around the room, inspecting the various details of it.

"This is a nice place."

"Five taels a night," she murmured.

"I didn't know how much five taels was worth, so I decided to stay here, to see." Rowan nodded.

"I didn't mean to impose. It seems you're doing okay. I'll… let you rest." She nodded into her knees. Rowan opened the door, pausing for a second to observe her one last time, then left the inn. He hoped she didn't stay at the inn long - though it wasn't his business to tell her how to spend her money. Five taels a night meant she would be broke in a week. As he jumped down a bridge into the pathway below - a shortcut across the wharf - a figure cut in front of him smooth as a shadow.

A golden fan snapped open, shielding the lower half of a very elegant face. Dusky purple robes billowed slightly in the breeze, the hint of gauzy cream at the neckline and sleeves catching the scarce moonlight. Sect Leader Kallist of Halfmoon House. Rowan quickly remembered his etiquette, bowing deeply at the Foundation Establishment cultivator.

"Sect Leader, how can this one assist you?" The man's dark eyes peered at him over the fan.

"You have had a busy day, today, Rowan Helsing." In that one sentence, Rowan was immediately sure that the Sect Leader knew of every detail that had happened in the tunnels. Perhaps even how he had tracked down Dalia, and every word of his conversation with her.

"Will Uxia be punished?" Kallist waved his fan and leaned back, chuckling, sounding for all the world like a charmed prince.

"Not by my hand, no. But I cannot control the actions of the Archbishop. Nor would I try. It's a good thing that you didn't see any of the artifacts that Halfmoon House is known for. Otherwise the situation would be different." Rowan got the message. The Sect Leader didn't want anyone to know about this situation, or the mirrors. The man hid a grin behind his fan.

"I didn't see anything from your sect," said Rowan slowly, "but I did see a damaged formation plate barely keeping the Fading Yin qi at bay." After all, they had only exorcised the Fading Yin qi of the matron and the recently dead girls. The resentful energy of the other hundreds of children and Daoist Apex still lingered. To exorcise the latter, they would need the help of the Astrology Bureau, or perhaps someone like Archbishop Vilhalo to come in person.

"No need to worry." Rowan breathed a sigh of relief. Halfmoon House seemed to know their stuff when it came to exorcisms and ghosts. This was out of his league. He could only politely ask the experts for help. He glanced up at the dim lights from the window of the inn.

"Is something going to happen to the girl?"

"What type of sect do you take us for?" said Kallist.

"We only bully the strong." He threw back his head and laughed again, louder.

"Run along now. And stay out of trouble." He paused.

"No. I never listened when anybody told me to stay out of trouble." Kallist snorted. The golden fan shut with a sharp smack, and he held it behind his back.

"Make sure the consequences of good deeds never catch you. Otherwise, you might become a Sect Leader." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Kallist laughed, long and loud, a third time. And, then, when Rowan blinked, he disappeared. /// Rowan shut the door to his dorm behind him, leaning his back against it. He looked at all the hand-drawn Meridian Charts he had plastered to the walls. The thousands of hours of meditation and ink.

They represented his die-hard determination to become a cultivator. Despite being born with, or so everyone thought, a deformed Spirit Root. Then through a fortuitous encounter he had reformed his body and spiritual system in the belly of a Flood Dragon. Why had he been given a second chance? Rowan looked at his right wrist where the cool beads of his mother's rosary coiled around it. Both of his parents died fighting demonic cultivators. He had always held a flame of hatred for demons in his heart.

He wanted to fight them. To protect others. But it had only been a dream until recently, until he faced Daoist Apex himself. After that experience, he now knew why so many feared demonic cultivators. Why some righteous cultivators shrank back from hunting them down. They were… terrifying. He removed the rosary from his wrist, wrapping it around his fist. Rowan had already made his choice. Rowan pulled out his red spatial pouch and took out all of Daoist Apex's manuscripts, his fingers trembling.

Malignant qi hung around the texts like an oily haze. If he was going to be a demonic cultivator hunter, then he needed to understand them. What they were capable of. What their arts could do. He didn't care if he learned things he could never unlearn. What was his life compared to all of those orphans? If he was going to dedicate his life to fighting evil, then he would go all the way. Leave no stone unturned. He would know everything about his enemies. He couldn't trust the Dao Court to handle things properly.

He couldn't trust anyone. He could only rely on himself. He never wanted to feel this kind of trembling, sickening guilt ever again.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"I'm not trying to learn demonic cultivation," he said quietly, sharply.

"I just want to know what I'm up against."

"That's what I meant," said Ostra.

"There are some things that are dangerous when seen with the naked eye. There's a perfectly good mirror on your dresser."

"Thank you, senior." Rowan walked over to his mirror and held the book up to it, examining the pages. Alarmingly, the difference was immediately obvious. Here and there, multiple characters and symbols, and even some punctuation, was missing in the reflection that he knew had to be present in the physical text. Nothing else would explain the missing lines from common words and blank spots that appeared at random on the page. Rowan spent the rest of the night in the feverish daze reading the demonic texts.

The missing words didn't make them more difficult to read, but sometimes it did make some lines of scripture very confusing. The worst part was the section on rituals. His stomach churned at the some of the descriptions within, images of Dalia and the piles of skeletons flashing through his mind. He didn't stop reading until he'd finished. He learned about the alchemical formula to create Human Pills, bone invocation, parasitic cultivation techniques, and even the Triple Bone Heap Ritual.

Featuring most prominently were Flesh Amalgamation arts. Nothing that would've helped him save the orphans. But things that would be helpful in the fight against demonic cultivators, nonetheless. If he ran into another demonic cultivator that practiced amalgamation, he was better prepared now. He knew the weak points. The convoluted meridians and qi flows needed to sustain such a flexible form. There were weaknesses everywhere. The joints, mainly.

The head was actually one of the most secure parts of the body, as the person would only have one. He closed the cover of the last book, and leaned his forehead against the mirror in exhaustion. A hint of dawn peeked through his window in the reflection, the sky as purple as a bruise. His head throbbed, and his eyes strained. Fighting evil. That was why he was a cultivator. He would never shy away from it.

Everyone seemed to value the valor from competing in the upcoming tournament, but what Rowan really needed were the pills and spirit stones offered to the winners. He had to advance. He had to fight Silverteeth and The Red Groom, and all the others. And even if Rowan did not advance, he wouldn't stop fighting demonic cultivators. Likely, he would end up a corpse in a horrible ritual. But if he didn't do anything, there would be more victims.

Rowan had been born into a storied cultivation house, and, despite his rocky start, had already become a cultivator who could protect himself, someone who had already killed in the name of righteousness. And if he didn't continue to do so, there would continue to be victims. And so he would. For the first time since his mother's spirit had drowned Lieren Nostraga in black lightning and molten metal, the rosary warmed.

Rowan immediately pulled his sleeve back, searching and searching for a sign of his mother's qi, but he couldn't feel her presence. Bitterly disappointed, his arm dropped back down. But in the mirror in front of him, Rowan caught a faint glow from one of the beads. Surprised, Rowan found the source of the light. The 108 beads of his mother's rosary were made, as he had learned, of witchwood. They had always been smooth and unadorned.

His mother had taken him to a temple in the city once, and they'd left just as quickly when she caught sight of the monk's rosary - strung together with gold thread and fastened with a jade clasp. A shining character appeared on one of the beads now. Indifference. The beads represented the defilements of the mind, the emotions and fixations that kept someone from a state of enlightenment. If each one of these faces of ignorance could be overcome, the only result would be immortality.

This particular bead had responded to that declaration in Rowan's mind, that he would oppose demonic cultivators. Whatever help that it chose to give Rowan, Rowan would accept. As if it had heard him, the bead glowed again, flashing brightly this time. The bead went white hot in his fingers, but before Rowan could cry out in pain, or drop it, the heat disappeared. It no longer bore the defilement known as Indifference. The lines had changed and moved into another word. Conviction.

Rowan traced the new word with his fingers and felt a sensation of vertigo overtake him. He heard his own voice in his mind, chanting something that he'd never before heard or read. Chanda. My desire is to act in virtue. Chanda. Virtue arises from wisdom. Chanda. Virtue arises from the intellect. Chanda. Wisdom overcomes ignorance. Chanda. Intelligence defeats delusion. Chanda. Overcoming ignorance and defeating delusion is my desire. Chanda. My desire is to act in virtue…

Rowan's finger left the bead, and the voice faded away. It was clear to him what the bead had given him. This was a mantra. The character faded from sight, but that particular bead stayed warm against his wrist. His mother's rosary had activated for him. Chanda. The desire to act virtuously which arises from wisdom and intelligence, not ignorance and delusion. Conviction. In his Qi Sea, a deep red spread through the withered Bodhi Leaf until it was brimming with vitality, plump and renewed and vividly crimson.