I carry the wooden coffin on my shoulder, decorated with the sect’s colours, and slide it gently into the back of a well-made carriage pulled by a pair of docile mid-stage spiritual deer.

  Gazing at the end of the coffin, I slowly reach over and tug the curtain over before stepping back with a shuddering breath.

  Around me workers move around in grim silence, loading merchandise and supplies for their trek back out of Cloudrest.

  It’s common for outer disciples to be sent first to ascertain whether a mission requested by those outside the sect requires a higher cultivator, unless the reward or initial information requires someone stronger than an outer disciple. So, Lan Yue was sent, an easy mission.

  She didn’t meet her deadline to return in a week.

  While I was training, an inner disciple was sent to find and bring her back with one of the sect’s spiritual horses within two hours.

  It took four hours before the alarm was sound.

  Mei Ruyin’s teacher, an inner elder at the sixth stage of Qi Condensation, along with all her students were sent by a flying artifact and arrived at a village of two hundred souls burning.

  The dozen that were still alive claimed bandits, came at dawn, barricading everyone in their homes, killing anyone that resisted. A few hours later, they set fire to the village with them still in their homes.

  Some claimed Lan Yue came through a few days before and left to the forest to investigate but she never came back and they never saw the disciple sent afterwards.

  The corpse of the inner disciple was found a few hundred metres on the path to the village, riddled with arrows and no horse in sight with everything, even his clothes, stripped from him.

  The few traces of the bandits were tracked back to their camp, long empty with bare signs of where the group escaped to, all leads leading to dead ends. A disciple followed the nearby river the bandits used for drinking water after seeing hints of combat near its banks, finding four bloated corpses floating along the banks a few kilometers down.

  One was decapitated, another with a sword in his chest and the third with a broken windpipe… Lan Yue’s arm still stiffly wrapped around the man’s neck even in death despite arrows piercing her back.

  She was brought back, and her brothers were met with her corpse.

  We were all going to meet, but not like this.

  I focus on the present as a hand claps on my shoulder and I turn to face Lan Yue’s elder brother, and I can see the clear resemblance despite the solemness dulling his face.

  “Thank you for bringing her Zhan,” he says calmly, a completely different person right now than what his sister told me about.

  “It was nothing, she was… my friend.”

  His lips twitch up at that, “She wrote very fondly of you you know. Every letter always had her lambasting the ‘barbarian’ for something he did. Which, in her way is… was her expressing her fondness of you.”

  I huff at that; that’s something that she would have certainly done.

  He raises his hand and I clap my hand in his for a firm shake, “It’s regrettable that we met in this situation, but it’s been an honour to meet someone my sister held close in her short time in the sect.”

  My heart tightens at his words and we drop our hands, the man heading off to another carriage to settle for the trip.

  “Take this,” a voice says beside me the moment I felt his presence.

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  I meet Lan Yue’s younger brother’s eyes, lidded and looking nonchalant but I can see how his eyes are red rimmed. Glancing down, I see him offering a slim jian to me, lightly decorated with a tassel hanging from it’s sheathe. Lan Yue’s sword.

  “I can’t,” I say as I push it back.

  He just shoves it past my efforts and into my hands, “We have no need for it, it’s barely worth anything and all it would do is gather dust. She would want someone to use it.”

  I grip the hilt hard, the sword she could use with two hands encompassed by a single hand from me.

  He turns around and gives a wave over his shoulder, “Don’t be a stranger.”

  Pulling the sword halfway out, I see that it’s whole and oiled, ready to be used.

  I slowly slip it back in it’s sheathe and hook it through a loop on my belt. The size and design is in no way fit for me, but that doesn’t matter nor do I care how it looks.

  I stand to the side and don’t bother to interact with anyone else as the servants start mounting inside their own carriages and carts. I hear Tie Feng at some point come to my side and we watch together as the clan start moving down the road, my eyes locked onto the central carriage until it disappears around a corner.

  Tie Feng pats my back a few minutes after they disappeared.

  “Come on Zhan, we should head back.”

  I stay still for a moment before giving a nod and silently follow beside him as we head to the sect’s recruiting hall in the distance, the place we all first met almost half a year before.

  “I’m leaving the sect,” Tie Feng blurts out.

  I come to a stop and stare at my friend who slows down in front of me.

  “What?! Why?” I ask with a bit of hurt and anger I mask.

  Ever since Lan Yue… he’s been quiet, quieter than normal but that’s the same for me.

  “If it’s because of Lan Yue then-.”

  “No, no it isn’t,” he interrupts me. “Its been on my mind for a while now. You know I don’t care for cultivating much, I’m at the fifth stage even after all these months and I know I have little chance of going further.”

  I reluctantly agree with him with a nod, he’s never been all too enthusiastic after the first month of training, much more sticking to his books.

  “Well, I’ve impressed some elders, the exams weren’t just to test me but a way to showcase myself to noble clans and I did well, well enough that I was offered an apprenticeship by a clan’s Advisor. The clan is big, bigger than the ones that send their children to our sect. They regularly step foot into the realm of the Imperial Court, an opportunity like this isn’t something I can ignore.”

  I stare at Tie Feng, a bit speechless to be honest. It’s been slowly shown to me that being in the sect isn’t as grand as a position as I though it was back when I was just a street orphan. It’s a way for the Empire to gain whatever talent they can from wherever possible, either for the army or for the clans to use to further their positions.

  “That’s great Feng! This is a great opportunity for you!”

  He doesn’t notice my brittle smile and returns it with a happy grin, beating back the grief we feel for a moment.

  ---

  I push the boulder up. And down. And up. And down.

  The moon is high in the sky, crickets chirping in the bamboo forest as I pump the boulder back up above my head in the empty training ground.

  My friends are gone.

  Up. Down. Up. Down.

  All I can do is work towards the one goal that got me here. The only thing that changed my life.

  Up. Down. Up. Down.

  I’m happy for them, they’re all reaching their goals just like I want to. What we wanted to.

  Up. Down.

  But Lan Yue…

  Up.

  Mei Ruyin said that the ‘bandits’, weren’t just bandits but a raiding group. One sent by the neighbouring Empire.

  Down.

  The two dynasties have bad blood, but they can’t always be at war, instead sending deniable raiders, cultivators.

  Up.

  The group hid their tracks too well, which revealed them as a raiding party. With the Empire busy preparing for their own skirmishes and none in the sect well versed in tracking, there’s little chance to hunt them down before they disappear back over to their territory.

  “RAAAGH!”

  My muscles bugle and I slam the massive boulder down with all my strength, the ground exploding in a cloud of dust and debris with the ground shaking in a tremor.

  Sweat drips down my body, but I don’t feel tired. I don’t.

  Crack

  My punch takes a chunk off the boulder.

  Crack

  Cracks spread halfway across the boulder larger than me.

  Crack Crack Crack

  My pummel erases portions of the rock. Shrapnel shoots around me, but I don’t stop.

  Crack

  The boulder shatters into thirds but I pummel into the pieces.

  Crack

  Dust flies in the air, and I see splatters of red layering across the rock, but I don’t stop.

  Crack

  My body instinctively reacts, muscles bulging and condensing all their power to my fist and it blurs.

  BOOM

  My fist drives through the remaining piece of stone as tall as my knees and into the compacted dirt ground, cratering a meter around me and piercing into the ground up to my elbow.

  I take a deep breath, ignoring the pulverized stone in the air and pull my fist out from the hole I made in the ground and lean back from where I was hunched over on my knees.

  Nature’s sounds filter into my ears as my fury fades and sorrow takes hold as I look to the moon.

  I stop.