They struck camp a little before sunrise. The wounded sister (whose name, Tian learned, was Zhou, another common name in the Broad Sky Kingdom) really was up and moving. She didn’t explain herself, and Tian didn’t ask. She decided it was safer to run towards the battle with the squad than to try and run back to base alone. Maybe she was right, maybe she wasn’t. Either way- not his job, nor his place, to interfere.

True Disciple Ku didn’t grace them with an appearance. Apparently nothing required him to make a move. The tarry mass of hate inside Tian got a little bigger, rising with the sun coming up over the horizon. Nobody felt the need to say anything. They just turned back onto the route and started running.

Tian and Hong Liren stayed in the middle of the pack. The heretics operated with the logic of beasts and would target the weakest first. Tian quite understood. He didn’t make his Brothers and Sisters jobs harder than it had to be. He silently jogged along with everyone else, cultivating through the day and periodically using Light Body to rest as he ran. No use using Counter Jumper. If he was the one to spot an ambush, it was already far, far too late.

The meditation calmed him, but the little tarry blob never seemed to wash away. It was always in his chest. Sometimes it was hanging on his heart, sometimes it wrapped around his lungs. Sometimes it rose and choked him. It was the insanity of it all. His mind struggled to wrap words around the emotions. When he tried to run it through in his mind, he found himself contradictory, or qualifying every little thing, then making blanket statements.

He breathed, and imagined he was a tree. His roots dig into the barren ground, shattering rocks with patient force. His branches reach up into the sky, catching the endless sunlight. There was no rain here, or at least he hadn’t seen any. He would be a thorny, skinny tree then, luring in birds and impaling them on its spikes. Watering his roots with blood and nourishing them with flesh. A demonic tree.

Or was it? A tree growing in such circumstances and surviving in such a way was conforming to its nature. Hornets were practically hate incarnate, and yet they too conformed to the Dao. It was their nature to be awful, spiteful, murderous things, and so they were. Were the heretics conforming to their nature? Tian was sure they would say so, but he didn’t believe it. Before they were a heretic, they were a person. A human. Not whatever a heretic was.

But humans were rock throwers.

His thoughts swirled around and around, and with every pass, a thin layer of black tar coated them. Becoming inseparable from them.

Hating heretics is entirely normal. Not good, but normal. I’m not going to try and talk you out of it. For you, I think the way out is through. But I can tell you a little bit about hate. Hate is an emotion of attraction. You become fascinated with the object of your hate, studying it, coming to know it intimately, or so you will believe. In truth, the one who hates is like one who loves; their emotion makes it hard for them to completely understand the thing they are fixated on.

There was once a monk… not a real monk, this is a made up story, but anyway. There was a monk, sitting at the foot of a spiritual mountain. Doesn’t matter which mountain. Let’s go with Ancient Crane Peak. He’s sitting at the foot of the mountain, meditating on it and trying to understand what he is seeing.

At first, the monk looks up and sees Ancient Crane Peak. It’s a huge mountain and it’s right in front of him, what’s not to see? Then years go by, and he realizes that he isn’t seeing the mountain. He’s seeing some of the rocks and trees and things on the side of the mountain he can see. He can’t see inside the mountain, or around the back of the mountain, or what’s past the cloud layer. He can only see the tiniest and most superficial part of it. He can no longer see the mountain.

Tian nodded. He could follow all that.

So he studies it. Studies it for centuries. For millennia. Studies it for so long, people think he’s a geological formation too. And then it clicks. He can see all of it in his mind. All of it. Every nook and cranny, every scrap of meaning, every grand truth hidden under the myriad layers of illusion the world lays upon our eyes. At long last, he can see the mountain.

Tain waggled his head slightly from side to side. He got it, but didn’t get it. What was the point of the story?

Tian, which stage do you think you are at?

Ah. He was only seeing the heretics without understanding all their parts. First layer. He hated heretics. He wanted to kill as many heretics as he could, or at least kill until this knot of hatred had dissolved. But he didn’t understand them. He saw the awful things they did, but that was about it. And… he had to admit it… they were strong.

The heretics at around his level were weaker than they ought to be, but their Level Nines were brutal, and the Heavenly Person Realm heretics were nightmares. At least, that’s what he had heard and seen at the hospital.

Numbers. It kept coming back to numbers. Never enough orthodox cultivators, too many heretics. But even if the heretics from several countries were concentrated in the Redstone Waste, given their extreme tendency to kill each other, there shouldn’t be this many of them. He must be missing something.

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He was definitely missing something. He dug at the question for hours, not coming up with anything except another question.

Bandits. The Brothers were always off fighting bandits. But they were Level Nine. One of them could clear an army of mortals, their speed largely limited by how fast they could reach their targets. So how did they spend decades out adventuring amongst the rivers and lakes? Who, exactly, were the bandits, and what relationship did they have to the heretics?

How did someone like Bloody Cleaver Wang happen? There was an elaborate pattern carved on the floor of the cave Tian found him in, as well as a procedure for extracting qi from blood for cultivation. This was obviously some kind of cultivation practice that had gone through some refinement. Refined by who? Where did a hunted rat like Wang learn it? How did those bandits that caught Senior Sister Li learn to graft evil creatures to themselves?

Somehow, the Senior Brothers had never gotten around to explaining that. It seemed important, at least to Tian. He would have to ask, but he wasn’t sure who. Hong Liren might know, coming from a cultivation family and the Disciplinary Squad. But it didn’t feel right asking her instead of a senior. There was also the untreated brain trauma. She may not be reliable.

Tian kept an eye on Sister Zhou, but she seemed to be moving without any pain. If she was hurting, she hid it well. That night, he checked around the camp. There were a few sores that he applied ointment to, a few minor blisters that could become majorly infected if not taken care of, but no serious wounds.

What was serious was that, to his surprise, everyone was accumulating alarming levels of earth and fire-poison qi in their bodies. Alarming to him- the seniors found it entirely normal and were plainly unbothered.

“It’s just some extra time cultivating, Little Doctor. At this point, I just treat it like a chance to practice my internal energy control. Thanks to the suits the poison grows at a manageable level and with the tents, we can clear out most of it during the night.”

“Most is not all, Senior Sister Zhou.”

“True, but that’s just working in the wastes. When we get back to base, we will clean it all out. How are you managing it all?”

“I’m very, very careful, Sister.”

“Oh, I thought you might have an interesting physique or something.” She shrugged. The seniors listening nearby all casually nodded.

“I haven’t studied physiques yet. Are they really so common?” Tian tried to conceal the sudden spike of tension in him.

“Not my area, but yes. Brother Sui?”

“Everyone has one, mortals included. It literally just means “physical body” or “constitution.” For most people it’s just an ordinary mortal physique that gives no special advantages. Others might have something a little more exciting, like a giant strength physique or something. As cultivators, we mostly care about physiques tied to cultivation. For example, someone with Ice Veins would be very suited to water techniques and yin cultivation. They vary wildly in quality and usefulness. For most people, it’s like the shape of their eyes. They care about it, but most of the time they forget about it.”

“It seems like the kind of thing that people might take steps to acquire.” Tian tried to broach the subject delicately, and failed.

“You mean all those heretics with messed up looking bodies and things grafted to them?” Brother Sui chuckled. “Oh yes. The idea is that the stronger the base, the stronger the final development will be. So if you have a physique granting you the strength of nine oxen and three tigers, cultivating will multiply that power endlessly. It never seems to quite work out that way, though.”

A sister Tian didn’t know jumped in. “Rumor has it that our Ancient Crane Monastery has access to some means to help confer and refine certain specific types of physiques. I suspect it would be reserved for those at the Core Disciple level, or maybe first class talents of the Inner Court with extraordinary merits and powerful connections.”

Tian nodded. “That makes sense.” Then under the pressure of his seniors, he decided to throw them a distracting bone. “I smell like lotuses, and apparently a hint of something else. All the time. When I was brought into the sect, I was told my body was related to them somehow. That’s all I know.”

That got a round of “Oohs,” some nods, some mutters about how it was too convenient and the juniors today having all the luck, one person desperately wishing for a bath, and then everyone returned to their tents to cultivate.

Tian silently breathed out. He was convinced his Dustless Body was a great treasure, but seeing his seniors not even caring to investigate was both a relief and a bit disheartening. It would be nice to know he had something worth concealing. It felt like when he broke through to Level One all over again.

Though… he had noticed that while Brother Sui downplayed the importance of Constitutions generally, the words “For most people” did seem to come up a lot. Which implied that some people had constitutions that were worth treasuring. And a boy in possession of a treasure has no one to blame but himself for being robbed of it.

The next morning saw them off and running before dawn. Tian hadn’t wound up asking about the bandits. There was no privacy in the camp, and he was feeling skittish. Something in the air.

They were running through a rocky stretch of desert when the stones began to explode. The shrapnel sliced into the leading brothers and sister, and a few more caught the ones coming from behind.

Tian whipped his head around, trying to have eyes everywhere and see who needed his help first. Everyone needed help. He needed help- there was a gash across the back of his suit that skimmed off his shoulder blade. It didn’t feel broken, but it hurt like hell. There was a roar, and a brother hacked his bright saber down on something that seemed to absorb the morning sunlight.

Demons. They were ambushed by demons. Tian kept looking around, trying to find the summoner, trying to see how many they were facing. He counted fifteen, eighteen, too many. There were too many demons, and he still didn’t see the summoners.

He got his rope dart out. When fighting demons, you kill the summoner first if you can, the demons first if you can’t get the summoner, and you worry about healing people only when the battle is done. Brother Wong had told him that. The doctors at the hospital had too.

Something with too many eyes and hundreds of teeth rushed towards him, screaming like every animal in pain Tian had ever heard all at once. The hate in Tian’s chest bubbled and throbbed. Tian screamed back, and charged at the demon. It loved suffering? Tian would make it hurt!