Chương 3: Administrator Deng

"What's happening? Where is the administrator?" Jianyi asked anxiously. Instead of answering, the guard pushed him in the direction of an open door. Jianyi took a step back but kept his balance. He wished he had his spear with him, but he had also practiced some unarmed martial arts. He wasn't as good as with the spear, but at school, nobody had been able to beat him. If he was honest with himself, he wasn't confident in beating two grown men, who seemed to have a lot of experience.

But looking at the room that the guards were pushing him into, he might not have a choice. In the middle stood a table with straps that looked like they would hold a man stronger than Jianyi tightly restrained. Close to it stood a half-open cupboard that held instruments a mortal healer might use, and on the right wall stood tables with alchemical instruments and a small cauldron.

Jianyi had no idea what Administrator Deng's plan was, but he knew deep in his gut that he should not let himself be strapped to that table. As the guard closer to him tried to push him again, his mind focused and was able to tap into the thousands of hours he had spent practicing his martial arts. He grabbed the hand and pulled. He let himself fall back, brought his leg up, and kicked the man in the stomach, flipping him over himself.

With a thud, the heavy man landed on his back, wheezing, while Jianyi used his momentum to get back on his feet in a roll. The other guard approached him unfazed, drawing a dagger from his belt. Unhurried, the man feinted left, right, then left again. Lazily, never really making an attempt to strike. Still, Jianyi stayed fully focused, never letting the blade out of his vision, trying to find an opening. Finally, the man made his move, striking centrally at Jianyi, his blade gleaming.

He moved back to evade, right into a punch thrown by the first guard, who had used the time to get back into the fight. The punch landed viciously on Jianyi's side, robbing him of breath and strength, forcing him to his knees. He cursed himself for falling for the distraction and fought to get back on his feet, but another punch hit the same spot, making him see stars and drop further, only held up by his hands and knees.

From there, the guards made short work of him and quickly strapped him to the table, where, even after he regained some of his strength, Jianyi was incapable of moving. The calm that he had been able to sustain during the short fight shattered as he lay helplessly on the table. A few minutes passed, the guards had long since left, and Administrator Deng entered the room, looking dispassionately at Jianyi.

"Probably not the birthday you had imagined, Cultivator Zhao…"

"What do you want from me? I have no silver or gold!" Deng chuckled.

"I didn't imagine you did… But you do have something that is worth a lot more than that to some of my contacts.

"I have been conducting the trial now for many years, and it remains unfathomable to me how the Heavens bestow something as valuable as a dual affinity core card—Earth and Metal, no less—to someone like you. A nobody." He patted Jianyi on the shoulder.

"But worry not, we will correct that mistake, and the card will end up in more worthy—or at least wealthy—hands," he chuckled again. Jianyi's heart was racing, his hands sweating. To extract the card, they would need to kill him, and he saw no way to free himself. He thought of his mother and how she would be all alone and what a cruel joke the Heavens were playing on him, making his dream come true, only to take it all away hours later.

"But, but…," he struggled to breathe, "nobody else can use someone's core card! Everybody knows that."

"Mhh, you see, that's what most mortals believe." Deng smiled at him as if they were still talking about his favorite food.

"But there are… ways to make it happen. Also, alchemists can extract essences from core cards just like from any other." Some noise could be heard from above.

"Oh, they are earlier than I expected. They must be especially eager this time." He looked down at Jianyi.

"You will make me a lot of money, boy. It is unfortunate for you that you have no clan or other connections." Slow, measured footsteps echoed from the stairs, Jianyi waited for what would likely be his execution, his heart racing and sweat running down his back. With all his might, he pulled at the straps, trying to free himself, but to no avail. A man walked through the door. A man wearing dark blue cultivation robes, whose long gray hair flowed down over his back. A man that Jianyi had seen before, if briefly.

The piercing, dark gray eyes swept through the room, over Administrator Deng, and came to rest on Jianyi. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Jianyi was held captive by those eyes and the power and calm they conveyed. Deng took a step back.

"Elder Sun! What brings you here?!" The administrator's outburst broke the spell on Jianyi, and he saw how pale Deng had become. The cultivator—no other explanation was possible—raised his eyes towards Deng and slowly took a few more steps into the room, hands clasped behind his back. A small smile started to play around his lips.

"You have done me a great favor today, Administrator Deng. I was resigned to spending weeks trying to find traitors and cultists. Thanks to your greed-fueled carelessness, that now seems unnecessary."

"Traitor! Me? NO!" Deng yelled.

"This must be a misunderstanding. The opposite is true, this miscreant," he pointed at Jianyi, "has admitted to being a demonic cultist. He had infiltrated the trial to… to infiltrate it."

"Mhh, to infiltrate it… If your intellect was as strong as your greed, you could have been a real thorn in the Empire's side. But tell me, Administrator, how many young cultivators have you sacrificed to your greed in these rooms?" Elder Sun looked around in distaste.

"Listen, Elder, maybe there is something that I can do? In fact, I am sure! I can be helpful to you! I can help you find unsavory elements in the city. All I have ever done was to identify them and present them to the Fivefold Spear Sect and the City Lord for a reward. In that sense, yes, you can say I was greedy, but it was all for the benefit of the Empire!"

The slight smile on Elder Sun's face vanished from one moment to the next, and Jianyi shivered at the anger and fury the old man had hidden so far coming to the fore.

"Silence! You blathering fool. Don't insult my intelligence with your ridiculous excuses." Five translucent representations of cards appeared before Elder Sun. They hung there for just a moment before the elder flicked one in the direction of the administrator. It transformed into a white-hot blistering spark of fire that shot through the air almost too fast to follow and struck Deng in the chest, burning through his clothes and skin as if they didn't exist.

Despite everything that was happening, his being strapped to a table and at risk of dying, the whirlwind of the day, the gruesomeness of the scene: Jianyi was fixated on the ephemeral cards, the use of qi. The casual display of what it meant to be a cultivator gave him goosebumps; this was what he had always wanted, and despite—or because? —of the circumstances, his mind threatened to run away with all the ways in which he could use this power to kill demons.

Deng opened his mouth, whether to talk or cry in pain was unclear, but before any sound could be formed, he dropped to his knees and fell to the floor. Dead. With the same casualness with which he had just killed the Administrator, the elder took another step forward and looked down on Jianyi. Without him lifting a finger, the straps binding Jianiy fell away. He was free.

"As you may have guessed, my name is Sun Longwei, Elder of the Fivefold Spear Sect. You may address me as Elder Sun, or just Elder, as you wish. I am sorry that you had to go through this. Yanling Province is our responsibility, but these traitors hid their activities well and, until recently, had not grown too greedy. Anyway, on behalf of the sect, I apologize." Jianyi jumped from the table and bowed deeply.

"Please, Elder Sun, don't apologize. I owe you my life and am eternally grateful!" The elder smiled.

"A well-raised young man, I am sure your parents are proud. Very well." He left Jianyi standing as he slowly walked over to the corpse of Administrator Deng. He examined the body, then pulled a ring from its hand.

"This fool couldn't even use it," he mumbled to himself. He fiddled with it for a few moments before tossing it to Jianyi.

"Take this, put it on, and infuse some qi into it. I have cleaned it up a bit, no need to confuse a young man like you with too much riff raff early on." Jianyi caught the ring; it was silver, thinner than most rings people wore to show off their wealth, and held faint inscriptions on the inside. A storage device! He had, of course, heard about them and maybe even seen cultivators in the city wear one, but mortals couldn't use them, so it had been nothing but a dream for him so far.

He stared at it for a moment and put it on the index finger of his right hand. He swallowed as he looked at the elder, who stared at him expectantly. He bowed again.

"Thank you so much, Elder Sun. I am very grateful, but I… I am afraid I don't know how to infuse qi into it."

"Mhh, of course, I forgot that you have been a cultivator for barely an hour," he chuckled.

"That will make this an excellent training device for you—with an added incentive built right in."

"I do train every day, morning and evening. If you provide me with an exercise, I will follow your guidance faithfully," Jianyi said eagerly, still playing with the ring on his finger.

"Oh, do I note a hint of pride there?" the elder asked with a wink.

"Good. Cultivation is a hard path—you need to believe in yourself and remain disciplined. If what you say is true, you are off to a good start.

"Now, the exercise should be easy, as you have succeeded in the trial. Remember how you gathered your soul mist and gave it shape?" Jianyi nodded.

"In its essence, this is what cultivation is all about. Instead of gathering your soul mist, you will gather qi and collect it in your lower dantian. Then you will use the qi to affect the world. For powerful effects, we channel it through cards, but for minor tasks, we can also use it directly. In this case, you will need to channel a tiny bit into the ring, and you will have access to its contents at will. You are following so far?" Jianyi nodded slowly.

The idea that cultivators could affect the world directly was new to him. It made sense because there was a limit to the number of cards one could carry in their core, so cultivators would be quite constrained in what they could do otherwise. Still, it was something that he had never considered. It also meant that there likely was a whole other dimension of training that was needed. So far, he had thought that he could concentrate on his spear work, and the rest would be done by cards.

But that was good news for him. He was poor, so he would likely not have access to many or expensive cards for a long time. If he could substitute some of that with training and other abilities, it would only help him.

"Good. As a first step, you will need to be able to sense qi. Come, let me help you." He motioned for Jianyi to step forward, and as he did so, placed his hand on his back.

"Close your eyes and focus inside of you." He felt warmth where the elder touched his back, but all he saw was the blackness behind his eyelids. He started his breathing exercise to relax and calm down. He felt the warmth spread through his body, but not evenly—it concentrated in places and ran through him. A flicker.