Chương 4: Demonic Cultists

He thought he could see the flicker of a golden glow. It was below his navel, and he could see how the flicker was connected to the trickle of warmth that he had felt entering his body from Elder Sun.

"Can you sense it?" Jianyi nodded.

"I think I do. I see a slight flicker below my navel region."

"Very good, that means that the slight amount of qi I provided you found its way to your lower dantian. That is where your core card sits and where your other affinity cards will find their home.

"You will learn from cultivation manuals how to gather qi from the environment and collect it there.

"Do you still sense the qi?"

"I do."

"Good, now try to gather the qi in your dantian in the same way that you gathered your soul mist." Jianyi tried to visualize reaching out to the small flicker that slowly grew with the continued inflow from Elder Sun. Try as he might, he didn't manage to get a grip on the qi. After a few minutes, he opened his eyes.

"Elder Sun, I am sorry, but I failed." The elder chuckled.

"Anything else would have been a surprise." He removed his hand.

"Just continue to practice. The qi should not go away; the opposite, actually. Depending on how many meridians you have already opened, some very small amounts of qi will start to be absorbed, and your dantian will slowly fill. Without a proper cultivation manual, it will be slow, but that should be remedied once you join the sect—unless you have a family manual that you can use." Jianyi shook his head. He didn't know what his father had used, but whatever it was, it had been lost with him on the frontlines.

"Now, you are of course free to go, but maybe…" the elder tipped his chin, thinking, "… maybe you could provide me with a little bit of support. The administrator had no ability to extract your core card, so I expect his collaborators to arrive soon. I am afraid that if I am the one to open the door for them, the ensuing altercation could splash out on the street. It would be much more convenient if you could guide them down here, where I can deal with them without any collateral damage.

I guarantee your safety, of course. Would you be willing to do that?" That was an easy decision for Jianyi. The elder had saved him, so he felt duty-bound to help. Also, helping to bring down the people who would have killed him without a second thought felt surprisingly good. He bowed.

"Elder Sun, it would be my honor to help." The elder laughed.

"You really are too polite. Life in the sect isn't quite the way it's told in the stories. A thousand years of war will have that effect… No time to bow and scrape all day long, when thousands of our sect brothers and sisters are fighting every day in the Celestial Confrontation.

"But anyway, I appreciate your help. Seek me out once you are in the sect, and feel free to ask me a question or two about cultivation when you are there.

"Now, sit and practice a bit. I will look through the house to see if there is anything of interest." As Jianyi sat alone in the room that could have been his death, he tried to focus on the exercise but struggled to concentrate. Too much had happened, and he hadn't had a spare moment to think of the Celestial Core Card in his spirit. Now, there was little else he could think about—and there was still the strong feeling that none of this might be real.

If it was real, how could it have happened, and what did it mean? Did all cultivators who had a dual affinity have a Celestial Core Card? But if so, why was it called dual affinity? That didn't make any sense. His thoughts wandered to Elder Sun. He was very different from what he had imagined a sect elder to be. Despite being obviously powerful—Jianyi shuddered at the ease with which Administrator Deng had died—he seemed kind, helpful, and easy to talk to.

He couldn't imagine somebody more knowledgeable to ask for some guidance… A sound came from the ground floor. Elder Sun sauntered back into the room with Jianyi and nodded to him to go upstairs.

"Just guide them here and make them enter this room first." Jianyi nodded and walked up the stairs, heart beating slightly faster than usual. It was still the first day of his life as a cultivator, and he would be meeting traitors or demonic cultists for the second time. As he approached, a second impatient knock could be heard. He squared his shoulders and opened the door. A woman stood before him, tall, slim.

She looked young, but he knew that didn't mean too much if she was a cultivator, as her robes with their wide pants and sleeves indicated. Behind her stood two men, not dissimilar to the guards that had overwhelmed Jianyi and that Elder Sun had somehow taken out and made vanish without leaving any traces in the plain room.

"Why are you standing in my way, boy? Take me to Deng!" the woman said with a slightly raspy voice. Jianyi bowed and stepped out of the way. After the three had entered, he closed the door and quickly led the way down. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. At the bottom of the stairs, he pointed towards the room Elder Sun was waiting in, indicating with another bow that he offered them the place of honor, being the first to enter.

Neither the woman nor her guards paid him any mind as they strode forward.

"Who are y—" The woman's shout was interrupted by a crashing sound. As Jianyi took a step forward, he could see a mass of roots bursting from the ground, grabbing all three visitors and winding around their arms and legs, completely immobilizing them. Roots. This was a Wood technique. The elder had killed Administrator Deng with a flame. He must be a dual affinity cultivator! Jianyi's thoughts raced, his heart beating quickly—had everything he knew about cultivation been wrong?

Was it normal to wield multiple affinities? With a motion too quick to follow, Elder Sun cut the throats of both guards with the spear that somehow appeared in his hand, and was now holding it to the neck of the woman.

"If you draw upon your qi or a technique, you are dead. Tell me your name," he hissed at the woman, the gentleness that Jianyi had experienced before gone. Only now did he see that there were still cards floating in front of Elder Sun, a moment later replaced by five others. The elder ignored them, though, fully focused on the woman before him, his spear threatening her.

"Who are you? Where is Deng?" the woman's voice was demanding despite her precarious position. Her face did not show any fear.

"You are not the one to ask questions. Don't make me repeat myself," the elder said, the cards before him cycling yet again.

"I am Fang Ling, and you just killed my guards. The sects will have your head for this!" the woman yelled. Elder Sun smiled slightly.

"I doubt that the sects will punish me for eliminating traitors and cultists. Do you want to trade your life for information on the local shadow sect?"

"Demonic cultist! Me?! How dare you. I served my time on the frontlines and am a well-respected citizen," the woman was either innocent or a very good actor, her perfectly even face showing red spots. It could, of course, also be fear, Jianyi thought.

"Mhh, interesting. We will see." Elder Sun produced a small dagger equally out of nowhere—Jianyi's brain slowly caught up, the man would of course also have a storage device of his own—and threw the knife to Jianyi.

"Please cut the lady's robe over her spine. Tell me what you see." The woman started to struggle against the roots binding her.

"How dare you! You pervert! Let me go!" Jianyi swallowed hard. He did not want to be part of something improper. But so far, Elder Sun had given him no indication that he was not an honorable man—despite the callousness with which he seemed to kill mortals. With a slightly shaking hand, Jianyi gripped first her robes to hold them straight and then sliced them open, then did the same with the silken shirt below them, careful not to cut the woman.

As he slowly pulled the clothes apart, instead of the unblemished skin he expected, he saw puckered, reddened, necrotic flesh down the length of the spine. Jianyi took a step back, appalled by the look and the rotten smell that wafted from the wounds. Elder Sun chuckled before Jianyi even said anything.

"From the look on my young friend's face, I can tell that you are part of the local bunch of fools who inject essences from demonic beasts into your spine, in the misguided belief it would bring you closer to your demonic overlords." The woman first went very still, then started to shout.

"For a thousand years, we have failed to accept the grace that the Outer Realms would bestow upon us. But no more! We are legion, we are…" With a loud crack, the skin at the top of her spine exploded outward. Jianyi jumped back as blood and bone followed. The woman's whole body sagged, only held up by the roots from Elder Sun's technique.

"Mhh, unfortunate," the Elder seemed completely unfazed.

"What happened?" Jianyi felt sick, his stomach roiling, first from the necrotic flesh, now the blood spraying.

"Some small formation, created with demonic essence, triggered upon her starting to talk about her little cult. Not unusual, unfortunately." Elder Sun did not seem particularly disappointed by the outcome. He grabbed a ring from the woman's hand, released the technique that still held the three bodies upright, and let them unceremoniously drop to the ground. He produced a small artifact, Jianyi could not see any details, and held it over the woman's corpse.

It took a moment, but eventually something, Jianyi wasn't sure what, rose from the body and materialized as a jade card. The elder frowned and murmured something about bad luck, stowed it away, and looked at Jianyi.

"Very well, I think our work is done here. Thank you very much for your help, it is appreciated. I can only imagine what the day must have been like for you. Even though it's been… a very long time, I can still remember the excitement of the trial. I was so convinced that I wouldn't make it, despite both my parents being cultivators. And then the relief. And you, you had to go through all that and then be abducted by demonic cultists…

"I hope you can find some rest. The three months until the next intake of outer disciples will fly by, and then you should make it into the sect, and a very intense period of your life will begin. But it will also be a lot of fun. Sure, you need to work a lot, you need to train a lot. But you will also learn so many new things, you will meet people that will hopefully stand by your side as you fight on the frontlines…

"Anyway, I wish you much success. Let us leave this place." Jianyi slowly followed the elder out of the room. His thoughts raced, trying to come to a decision. Should he trust the man with his situation? He looked at the bodies on the floor. How could one person seem so kind and helpful and reminisce about times gone by while standing over the bodies of people he had just killed moments ago? Maybe that was a consequence of being so old? Of having fought for hundreds of years?

Jianyi looked up at the back of the cultivator, making his way towards the stairs, hands clasped behind his back.

"Is something the matter?" Elder Sun asked without turning around, slowly walking up. Jianyi rushed after him. There was nobody else who could help him. What was the worst that could happen?

"Elder, you kindly offered to answer a question or two on cultivation…"

"Oh, have you already progressed so quickly that you require more guidance?" Elder Sun chuckled.

"No, it is not that…" He decided to start with a less conspicuous topic.

"How come I could see you in the palace before the trial, but the Administrator couldn't?" The elder squinted at him.

"You could, could you? Mhh, interesting. You must have an exceptional soul strength," he mused.

"Good for you, my friend, good for you. Few could pierce the veil this easily. Anything else?" Jianyi swallowed hard but decided to move forward.

"How common is it to have dual affinities?"

"Ah, that is an understandable question. You saw my Fire and Wood affinities, and you yourself have Earth and Metal—so now you think everyone has dual affinities." He laughed.

"Let me assure you, you are special. With dual affinities, you belong to the one out of a hundred cultivators—one out of ten thousand of the total population—that have more than one. Does that answer the question?"

"It does, Elder, but… mhh, how many have more than two?" Elder Sun's dark and calm eyes narrowed as he focused his full attention on Jianyi.

"What do you mean, more than two?" Jianyi swallowed. Had he made a mistake in bringing this up? Well, now it was too late anyway, he thought.

"Well, the card I got during the trial. It seems a bit unusual, but maybe I am just confusing things. It is called Celes…" Faster than Jianyi could follow—faster than anything he had ever seen—Elder Sun moved. In the blink of an eye, he stood before Jianyi, and his hand shot forward. Jianyi was going to die.