“Fairy Maiden descends from the fiery star, unafraid before ten thousand devils.” Hong swung her spear around with one hand, then collected it and fell into a ready stance. Power gathered, ready to lunge upwards and pierce the heavens.

“First Form: Annunciation of Fire.” She saw the lightning come down. The same sort of lazy contempt that the tribulation had shown for Brother Fu was once more displayed. It barely looked like a dragon claw at all. Hong rose to meet it, her ancient spear piercing deep into the twisting lightning. Earthly fire and tribulation lighting clashed over the steppe. In the end, it was the lighting that broke.

Hong landed hard enough to send dirt and steppe grass flying three feet in the air. Before the dust settled, she was up and out of the crater. Her robes were ripped and burned. Her face was covered in dirt. But the edge on her spear head gleamed bright, and so did her eyes.

“I can’t announce the moves when I spar. The goddamn aesthetics of West Town Outer Court. My sisters would kick my head in. ‘Train how you fight or die stupid.’ Zihao would start shipping frog brains over and telling the whole damn convent I need to boil my head. None of ‘em understand momentum.”

Her teeth pulled back into a furious smile as she looked up at the gathering lightning. “You are supposed to be a myth, and here I am. Seeing you for the second time in three months. Starting to feel a bit personal. Extremely personal, in fact. But that’s fine. Your Granny, I, love to take things too far. Come, come. Let’s see if you can stand this next move of mine. It seems I hit harder than Heavenly Talismans!”

She stood ramrod straight, spear posted directly in front. “Fairy Maiden descends from the fiery star, undimmed by ten thousand winters. Second Form.” The lightning lashed down, two claws reaching for Tian. “Linear Flame!”

Spear clashed with lightning. The earthly flame rich with gold, the heavenly sky fire darkening to crimson. Hong landed in another spray of dirt and grass. The hole was deeper this time. She was slow to get to her feet. She spat out a mouthful of blood, then cracked her neck. “Got to hit me a lot harder than that, punk. Your Granny has the Southern Mountain physique. It’s already a damned problem, but you know what?”

She drew her spear up once again. The red in her hair fluttered and danced with her rising momentum.

“What storms hasn’t the Southern Mountain weathered? I think you have enough for one more strike. Come, you shitty heavens. You child murdering trash. You… thing that loves suffering more than the demons. Let’s let it all ride on the next blow.”

Liren swung her spear around and pointed the ancient iron head at the roiling clouds. “How many empty coffins did we bury? How many orphans did we have to take in? How many of my kin did you take from me? Why did you have to murder my dads?!”

She drew a shuddering breath, and coughed out a thick clot of blood into her hand. She smeared it along the spear shaft. Traces of gold arose in the wood, an ancient script twisting along its length, its meaning lost in an era before Ancient Crane Monastery was established.

“And now you want to take my last brother. Fuck you. Fuck you. Worst case, we die together, and in fourteen years I’m a good woman once again.” The clouds condensed, the lighting coming as thick as a water barrel.

“Fairy Maiden descends from the fiery star, her war banner covering the earth.” She slid her hand forward along the shaft, crouching lower. “Third Form: Comet Strike!”

Three dragon claws reached down with convulsive speed from the knotted sky. Hong Liren rose once more to meet them on their own ground. Her vital energy ignited the air around her as she rose, and at the final instant before the clash, a massive ball of earth vital energy gathered on the spearhead, flames twisting around it. No ordinary art of the Earthly Realm could do such a thing, nor any ordinary weapon.

Hong Liren crashed back to earth, her spear juddering in the ground beside her. Her arms were broken, her shoulderblades broken, ribs, knees, legs, all broken or fractured. Burns ran down her left side. Her hair had been burned away. And she was smiling. She was smiling with tears running down her face.

Above her, above Tian, the lightning broke. The clouds twisted and dispersed, showering the two with drifting motes of starlight. The bones healed, stronger than before. Torn muscle reknit, damaged meridians were soothed and gently strengthened. She managed to twist her head over. The demon finger was fading, becoming translucent and filled with golden lines. It was softly pushed out of Tian’s chest, the wound healing without a single mark to show where he had been stabbed.

“I win.” She started laughing through the tears. “I’ll have to tell him that his big sister acted as his dao protector. He will definitely be very thankful.” She collapsed, unable to hear the sulphurous swearing by a member of the truly senior generation that had been going since the first tribulation cloud appeared. The word “cheating” came up a lot. As did “revenge.”

The tribulation clouds had barely dispersed when the stars were blocked again. This time the shape was smaller, and rectangular. “Is that… the manor?” She passed out before she got her answer.

Tian heard the gentle chiming of a bell. The sound was insistent, demanding his attention and pulling him towards it from whatever gray place he currently inhabited. There was a sudden sense of dislocation when he realized that there was a “him” to be pulled, and that directions existed even as an abstract concept, and then he was back in his body and opening his eyes. He was sitting in Elder Feng’s office. Hong was in the chair next to his, looking as bleary eyed as he felt.

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“One of the few rules that the Ancient Crane Monastery ruthlessly enforces across every level of its hierarchy is the duty of filial piety. As juniors, you are used to thinking of that as a responsibility that flows upwards. I will now explain a little bit about how it flows downwards.” Elder Feng took a sip of tea to refresh her throat. Tian watched the black and white pearls sway beneath her ears. They looked fancy, he decided, but he didn’t love the look. Ears should not look busy.

“Filial Piety requires Elders to not covet the fortuitous encounters of their juniors.” She let the statement hang there a moment. Tian was wondering what the hell she was on about, but Sister Liren seemed to open her eyes wide, before composing herself.

“After several thousand years worth of miserable trial and error, we have found that this rule must be enforced categorically and without exceptions for anyone of any rank. Indeed, one of the oaths Elders take is to immediately suppress or execute any other Elder we see violating this rule. That includes the Sect Master. That particular condition was once put to the test and the conclusion was unpleasant. But it did prove the necessity of the rule.”

She took another sip of the tea. Her cup was bigger than the ones Tian preferred, but then, she was hardly doing a whole tea session. This was just for her.

“We don’t ask where something came from. We don’t ask where you learned a particular art, or found a weapon, or how you came to eat a natural treasure. We don’t hint, we don’t subtly encourage it, and we honestly prefer not to know unless you think it is really important to tell us. Because if that rule is not strictly followed, then you are in the position of a little mouse trying to hide its food from hungry wolves. Then the sect really would disintegrate. Morale and cohesion is already alarmingly low in the Inner Court. Without this rule, the Mountain would fall apart entirely.”

Tian and Hong nodded firmly at that. Then froze again when Elder Feng continued.

“This must be balanced against another one of our filial duties- a duty of supervision and proper instruction. I think you must have known I would have my ways of keeping track of you.”

They nodded again, a bit more tentatively this time.

“I have no idea how I’m going to report this to the Sect. I’m not sure who I should report it to, for that matter. We have, in no particular order, a border city being undermined by one of our merchant houses, a cadet branch of one of our more prominent Inner Court Families falling entirely into heresy, and actual Tribulation Lightning again for the second time in three months after who knows how many millenia.”

“Funny. I’m not ashamed of anything I did in Burning Flag City, yet I have the overwhelming urge to transform into a mouse and scurry behind a bookshelf. She is giving me a distinctly ‘wolf’ feeling right now.” Tian did his best to look less guilty. Hong looked mutinous.

“And to cap it all off, we now have our third disciple, in the entire history of Ancient Crane Mountain, who will be turned into a local deity before reaching the Heavenly Person Realm. Possibly both of you, but definitely Disciple Tian. Well done, Junior. You have certainly made the most of your excursion. Abbot Whitebrows is going to throw a fit. He’s been fighting the stories about a secret militant branch of the Pure Lands Monastery since he was a novice.”

“My… apologies to the honorable Abbot?”

“Why are you apologizing when you have no involvement in this whatsoever? The monk responsible for this whole mess is dead. Very dead. Extremely dead. His death has been verified by Censor Zhou, City Guardian Bai, and an Elder of the Ancient Crane Monastery who came to investigate the tribulation lighting. A careful examination of the site of the lightning strikes showed evidence of destroyed robe cloth and human… parts. In a liquified state. The residue of the Monk’s robe after his campaign against the Heretic.” Elder Feng’s voice was dry enough to dehydrate sand.

Tian looked down in a sudden panic. He was neatly dressed in his sect robes. He looked up at Elder Feng wonderingly. “I had Steward Pan change and dress you after he washed you with a high pressure stream of soap and water. Where he found such a tool, I don’t know. And I won’t ask.”

“I will have to thank him later.”

“Do so. You will be interested to know that the only thing we did recover from the location of the lightning strikes was the purified demon finger. Part of why I am so certain you will be enshrined is because that particular finger belonged to an actual Hungry Ghost. The very weakest of its kind, but a genuine demon of true substance, not the base things you saw summoned in the wasteland. It is now a pure, translucent crystal with veins of gold running through it. There is a faint halo, visible in dim light, of righteous aura around it.”

Tian and Hong exchanged shocked looks.

“I was unconscious, Elder.”

“You were in a state of no-mind, presumably because the pain of having that evil thing jammed into your chest overwhelmed your pain tolerance. Very similar, but not quite the same. As the remnant righteous aura seeping into your bone marrow is similar to that found on the former demon finger. But I’m not asking about any of that. I don’t want to know. And I’m not asking you either, Disciple Hong.”

The two juniors bowed politely, if utterly confused. Tian would have to ask Grandpa what happened later. Elder Feng waved her delicate hand and carried on.

“It was agreed that the finger would remain in Burning Flag City to be enshrined. Since you had ignored them earlier, I also suggested they keep the storage rings and weapons of the mercenaries you killed and use an equivalent value of mortal money to pay restitution to those harmed by the heretics. This was met with strong approval. I think they expected me to fight them over it, for some reason.”

“Thank you very much, Elder. That is perfect.” Tian stood and clasped his hands, bowing deeply.

“It was the simplest solution. I would have to explain why we had any claim on them at all otherwise. Congratulations, by the way.”

“Was there something else?” Tian straightened up in alarm. He couldn’t think of what else might have happened to justify her congratulations.

“Just one other thing. It seems you grew a finger back. Doubtless you found it at the bottom of your storage ring, or possibly the pocket of a spare robe. In any case, I’m not asking. And I don’t want to know.”