Space-time Quest Issued: Rescue the Princess. Reward: Three greater-demon-energy bounties and deep memory dive. Mission: Your friend’s true love across lifetimes is trapped in a cliché. Her family has locked her up to marry her off. Unfortunately, she can’t die here. That wouldn’t bode well for the plane’s well-being. Rescue her here, and not only will you get a juicy reward, but you won’t disappoint your human brother and potential girlfriend (she’s way too old for you, by the way).
What the hell is this? Huxian thought. How was this remotely a space-time quest? There was no way reality hinged on his success.
Mission update: It does. You’re just too short-sighted to see it. But hey, if you don’t want the reward and you want to let your friend down, go ahead.
He didn’t have long to grumble at the snarky quest issuer, however, because a second space-time quest arrived, along with a failure notice for another.
Ongoing Space-time Quest Failed: The war with the lands has passed the point of no return. Stargazer City and Shimmerwing City are now doomed to fall. No penalty for failure.
New mission issued: Evacuate the Demon Lands. Remove as many demons from the demon lands as possible to preserve their bloodlines and demonic energy. Remove major sources of demonic energy or deny them from the enemy. Rewards proportional to demon bloodlines and demons saved as well as resources denied.
Huxian’s three friends popped out beside him as they walked through an alley. They, too, had received the quest, and all three of them were frowning.
Something must have changed recently, Huxian thought. He pulled out his communication device and used his clumsy fingers to send a message to Silverwing.
Hey, Huxian sent, what the hell just happened?
Change in tactics, Silverwing replied. Defense and stalling now. Retrieval operation of some kind. Lei Jiang got hurt bad when we ran a distraction. Silver Fish and Dragon Lady went on a mission. Lost contact with both.
Is Lei Jiang going to be okay? Huxian asked.
There was a pause.
Lei Jiang will be fine, Silverwing replied. Enjoy your vacation.
Crap.
Separately, Mr. Mountain sent him another message. He’ll be out for three days, but then he’ll recover. It’s about time he learned to fear death a little.
Huxian felt like garbage now. His friends had been fighting in the demon lands all this time. He’d thought the situation was stable, but now, Lei Jiang had nearly kicked the bucket. He sighed and sent a message to Mr. Mountain.
Silverwing says everything’s all right. He likes to lie. Tell it to me straight. We’re currently in the Burning Lake Prefecture, and we need to bust out Xiao Bai and Mi Fei. I can’t leave. Is there anything we can do for you?
Send Gua, at least, Mr. Mountain said. And see if you can find a thunder source stone. The shaman said it will help Lei Jiang recover. Three days is just waking. He’ll need more than that for a full recovery.
Just Gua? Huxian asked.
He’s the best of us defensively, Mr. Mountain said. Except for Miyue. Send both if you can.
All right, Huxian said. I’ll send them. He cut off communications.
“What’s going on?” Gua asked.
“Change of plans,” Huxian replied. “The demon lands need both of you for stalling tactics. You guys go, and I’ll keep Bifang to run distractions. Try to buy some demon ingredients humans are trying to sell off here before going. Buy a thunder source stone. Take three quarters of our money. Use it all.”
“You sure?” Gua said. “I don’t think you’ll be able to break in on your own.”
Huxian straightened his back and looked north toward the demon lands. “They almost got Lei Jiang. Vacation time’s over. I’ll figure something out on my own with whatever money we’ve got left.”
“We can stay,” Miyue said. “Saving Mi Fei and Xiao Bai is very important.”
“Yeah,” Huxian admitted. “It is. But our friends are just as important. Besides, I’m not alone. I’ll lean on Wei Longshen for help. I’ve gone on missions with people here, so there might be other people I can work with.”
“Don’t you dare fight fair,” Gua said.
“What do I look like, a dragon?” Huxian said. “Hurry up. Time’s a-wasting.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Miyue said as they parted. The two broke off and headed toward the market district.
Huxian led Bifang into the darker corners of the city, where assassins lurked and thieves sold their wares. He might lack for funds, but he was a good spy, and information was a valuable currency.
Chapter 30: Stacked Odds
Cha Ming woke to light peeking through bamboo shutters, hitting his eyes in just the right way. He groaned as he turned in his sheets and realized that yes, he was alive, and yes, he was injured. He scanned his body, inspecting it for damage, then evaluated it as Li Yin had once taught him.
Scarring through my veins, slow healing, he thought. Organs undamaged. Skin is fine.
His meridians were also fine—they’d been tempered by Grandmist and could probably be used as flexible tubing even if the rest of him was burnt to a crisp. The only real problem was his soul. Oh, and he had a splitting headache. Or maybe it’s because you broke your mind over and over, a piece of him said. You’re a mess held together by weak stitches.
Keep the crazy inside, Cha Ming thought, pushing himself out of bed. He set a painful foot on the warm wooden flooring. There was a bottle with three top-grade pills on the bedside table. Expensive. Specially tailored for him now that he looked at them.
He swallowed them, one after another. One of them sent a light wind through his spiritual sea, healing his scarred soul. The next one sent motes of iridescent light to repair the scarring where his boiling blood had damaged and burst his veins. The last one filled his mind with a sense of peace. His headache eased, and the crude stitches keeping his mind vanished as everything completely mended.
What in the seven hells was I thinking? Cha Ming thought. Oh, wait. He hadn’t been thinking. He’d allowed his emotions to get the better of him. He still felt them—they were there on his dresser in a dark jade vial. He stored the pill inside his Clear Sky World, hoping that he would never need to use it. The odds were slim, he knew, but hope never hurt anyone.
I only slept for less than a day, Cha Ming thought, feeling at the passage of time. It’s not noon yet. I didn’t miss the trial. He was in rough shape, but the trial was why he was here. He then remembered another pressing matter and took out his communication jade. He sent a message to Huxian and waited.
“Hey there, sleepyhead,” Huxian said. “I heard the good news. Congrats!”
“Thanks,” Cha Ming said in a hoarse voice. “I think. I feel like crap.”
“Yeah, you didn’t look too good in those recordings they took,” Huxian said. “But you did look pretty crazy awesome. Points for style. I’m not an expert, but I’m guessing your presentation was the reason they let you squeak through. Those prefecture lords were looking pretty worried when I spied on them.”
“Whatever,” Cha Ming said. “Mi Fei. What’s going on?”
Huxian pulled his ears back. “I snuck into the Mi Clan estate. They’re under house arrest, like we knew, but under heavy guard. Their cultivations are sealed with high-level collars.”
“I’ll kill them,” Cha Ming said. “The entire clan.”
“Trust me, if the Mi Clan knew your relationship with their daughter, they’d be peeing their pants after seeing that recording,” Huxian said. “Anyway, bad news. I got caught. Had to escape. Guard’s doubled, and the Cao Clan is reinforcing.”
“Wei Longshen?” Cha Ming asked.
“I spoke to him,” Huxian said. “We’re working on a plan. We’re thinking we only have one shot at this. It might be best to wait until you get here.”
“The trial is ten days long,” Cha Ming said. “I’ll come right after.”
“Absolutely not,” Huxian said. “If you get phoenix blood, you ne
ed to integrate it. Ten days might seem like a lot, but for something like this, it’s nothing. Then you’ll need to strategize on how to beat those two prefecture lords. Word is, Dripping Blade’s gotten a lot stronger.”
“As expected,” Cha Ming said. “Any word on Burning Lake?”
“None,” Huxian said.
“That’s worrying,” Cha Ming said. “He’s a schemer.”
“That’s what Wei Longshen and I thought too,” Huxian said. “Anyway, any ideas on how you’ll destroy those prefecture lords?”
“I’m hoping that I can figure out this last fire concept,” Cha Ming said. “I’m close. I can feel it. If I can figure out another carving, that’ll greatly increase my odds.”
“Sure,” Huxian said. “Seems like you still don’t have enough time, but you’re the expert.”
“What else can I do?” Cha Ming asked softly. “Miracles don’t just pop out of thin air.”
“Around you, they do,” Huxian said. “As much as you pretend they don’t.”
Cha Ming grunted. “Fine. I was thinking… will our contract let us fight the lords together?”
“Not a chance,” Huxian said. “They were very specific on that point. More to the point, Wei Longshen and I were thinking that the day of your duel might be the best time to pull off a rescue.”
“Good idea,” Cha Ming said. “Everyone will be there. Assuming that I survive the two duels, I’ll be a prefecture lord. We could hide them in the prefectural tower.”
Huxian’s ears perked up. “That’s… actually a really good plan. While we’re on that topic, though, other bad news.”
“What?” Cha Ming asked.
“Lei Jiang got hurt,” Huxian said. “Bad. He’s back in the game, but I sent Gua and Miyue to help them defend. It’s not looking good for them, Cha Ming.”
“There’s still hope,” Cha Ming said.
“No,” Huxian said. “There isn’t. Listen, I spoke to Clever Dusk about this already. I got a space-time quest.”
“From what you’ve told me, that’s usually not a good thing,” Cha Ming said.
“It told me things, Cha Ming,” Huxian said. “They don’t usually do that. They said Stargazer City and Shimmerwing City are doomed. That I had to rescue as many demons as I could. Pillage demon and energy and deny the rest. Slash and burn.”
Cha Ming frowned. “What does everyone else say?”
“Clever Dusk and my friends got the same quest, and so did the rest of the inkborn,” Huxian said. “Serrendil and Silver Fish are missing. If you see Graceful Twilight today, can you confirm? We need to tell Shimmerwing.”
“When it rains, it pours,” Cha Ming muttered. He looked to the clock in the room. “I need to go. Have breakfast before the trial. I don’t know what they’ll throw at me, but I assume it’s not going to be easy.”
“It is a phoenix trial,” Huxian said. “Built for phoenixes. But I have faith.”
“At least one of us does,” Cha Ming said once the image faded.
Focus on the good news, Cha Ming thought. Think positive. Mi Fei was captive, but she was still alive. So was Xiao Bai. Still, he wondered about that quest—since when did the plane or the universe or whoever gave out these quests decide whether or not they’d lost the war? Was everything decided? Was there even a point in fighting? Moreover, why weren’t they running if they’d lost? Perhaps it had to do with Clever Dusk’s secret plan and why she’d sent him here in the first place.
Cha Ming got out of bed and dressed himself, donning the blue robes with black clouds Clever Dusk and her family had made him. He then walked down the stairs to a table, where some cold porridge and some dishes awaited him.
“Took your time,” Iridescent Wonder said as he sat. He was standing next to the rack of candles. “Lend me a flame, will you?”
Cha Ming obliged. He summoned a small Grandmist flame and pushed at the spark that was now imbedded in it. It began to flicker with many different colors. It was a light but noticeable difference. Iridescent Wonder collected the flame on a special wick that fed the flame-crushed inkwell jades and a violet substance. The color within it grew.
“For this, I would have paid everything I had and trained you ten times longer,” Iridescent Wonder said. “I wonder how difficult it will be to trap inside a flame seed.”
“I suggest keeping a backup fire,” Cha Ming said, sitting down and helping himself to some dishes.
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” Iridescent Wonder said, observing the fire for a little while longer. “Charity and Virtue have gone to make their own preparations. Tempest is off running some errands. So it’s only you and me. Tell me, do you have any questions? Anything you want to know? I owe you a heavy debt.”
“Plenty,” Cha Ming said. “Tell me about the Trial by Ancestral Fire.”
“Ah, the trial,” Iridescent Wonder said. “And here I thought you’d ask me for secrets of alchemy. I guess I forgot that you wouldn’t know about it. Most youngsters get told all about it in their bedtime stories.”
“The trials aren’t a secret?” Cha Ming asked, frowning.
“Heavens, no,” Iridescent Wonder said. “We tell everyone all about it, so you’ll be competing against people who’ve been training for this their entire lives.”
“I thought trials were usually a tightly kept secret,” Cha Ming said. “You know, to test adaptability.”
“But then only the well connected would know,” Iridescent Wonder said. “It’s much fairer to be open about it. To show off, as it were, to give a chance for each generation to crush records and achieve greater heights by surpassing their elders.”
He grabbed a piece of cucumber from one of the plates in front of Cha Ming. It was covered in a strange brown sauce. He munched down on it, thinking. “The trial. Where to begin? There are three parts to the trial, as is customary. The first is the Trial of Nirvana. Phoenixes who participate in it undergo a baptism of flame. It deepens their burnings and enhances their fire-manipulation abilities.”
“And humans?” Cha Ming asked.
“No one knows,” Iridescent Wonder replied. “There’s a betting pool on it. There are two-to-one odds on the trial simply incinerating you, since no elder in living memory has seen a human participate, much less witnessed their trial. We’ve had other demons, though, and many came out with strange burns. Some even died.”
“Wonderful. What about the second trial?” Cha Ming asked. “If I burn to death, it is what it is.”
“You’ll probably just have to temper your weak flame,” Iridescent Wonder said. “The second trial will be a Trial of Mental Rebirth. In other words, learning. It’s as much a trial as it is a reward for participating. It’s the main reason core members enter the trial. There are fifty techniques to choose from, many of them repeats, and all of them related in some way to the Iridescent Phoenix Clan. Most of them require our bloodline to be utilized. I’m not too sure about this, but there must be something humans can learn. Maybe those on the edge everyone ignores.”
“It’s nothing I can prepare for,” Cha Ming said.
Iridescent Virtue nodded. “Once someone has cleared both trials, they will be properly equipped for the third trial, the Road of Iridescent Flame. It is a path that must be crossed using only fire and fire manipulation. Physical strength and weapons that don’t involve flame manipulation, and soul attacks, are prohibited and locked down. It’s a race, and the first to get to the end get will have first choice in picking their reward. Only the quickest finalists will qualify for the best items. For example, the Iridescent Ancestor’s inheritance blood.”
“I see,” Cha Ming said. “Would it be possible to finish the other trials quickly in order to finish faster?”
“Hah!” Iridescent Wonder said. “Many have tried. Most have failed. The trials are set up to enhance flame-manipulation abilities. Everything in the first two trials will help you complete the third. Those who decide to skip over such powerful advantages find themselves unable to complete th
e third trial. I’ve never seen anyone complete it in less than eight days. Usually, things drag into late in the ninth day or the beginning of the tenth.”
Cha Ming nodded. “All right. How many inheritance blood rewards are available?”
“Three each time,” Iridescent Wonder said.
“So I need to finish at least third in a trial built for phoenixes,” Cha Ming said. “No pressure.”
“Not quite,” Iridescent Wonder said. “I know for a fact that Iridescent Virtue, one of the strongest competitors, does not wish for inheritance blood. His bloodline is already strong, and he is pursuing phoenix down, a rare resource used to tackle the investiture realm via nirvana rebirth.”
“Why the hurry?” Cha Ming asked probingly. “It seems he can break through at any time.”
“There are complicated contributing factors,” Iridescent Wonder said. “But that is a matter for elders to consider.”
“All right,” Cha Ming said, finishing up his breakfast. “That means I, a human with a wounded soul and no phoenix bloodline, will need to finish in the top four to get what I need. Not a tall order at all.”
“In all fairness, I think your odds are better than you think,” Iridescent Wonder said. “You have frighteningly sharp comprehension abilities. You should have an edge in the second trial. Also, your flames are strong. The third trial shouldn’t pose a problem. I’m more concerned about the unknown first trial.”
“That’s good to hear,” Cha Ming said. “Anything else I should know?”
“Yes,” Iridescent Wonder said. “Some elders will be entering alongside you juniors to obtain different items for the upcoming conflict.” He inspected Cha Ming’s reaction and nodded. “It seems you’ve received some news. Shimmerwing has been surrounded by the humans of the Burning Lake Prefecture. Getting in or out of here will be very difficult.”
“If this doesn’t count as interference, I don’t know what does,” Cha Ming said.
“Fairness is for schoolchildren,” Iridescent Wonder said. He glanced at the dishes. “Are you ready? Are you full? You won’t be able to eat for ten days once you enter.”
Claddings of Light : Book 12 of Painting the Mists Page 47