I had lied. A few more questions had been a grave understatement. I'd kept Ye Qing for near another full hour, asking her all the tactical questions about the conditions of the inner sect I'd held back on before. Some things she didn't know, others she refused to answer, and we completely avoided the subject of how exactly their sect had fallen to this state, but I still came away with a far better understanding of what exactly we were dealing with.

  When we'd finished, perhaps five hours had passed since I'd left the young mistress. I wanted to leave the inner sect immediately, check on Su Li, and go into seclusion for a day or two. But I didn't think I'd be able to drag the young mistress away until she began to properly feel the effects of the inner sect's cursed environment.

  At least my conversation with Ye Qing had given me plenty of ammunition to act mysterious. It was much easier to appear profound when you'd cribbed the answer key off someone else.

  As much as I wanted to try that cycling technique, I needed a second terminal first. I had a few ideas on how to get it into the hands of the Glass Flowers, but they could wait until we were all in the relative safety of the outer sect.

  Navigating the outer sect with my makeshift map was an exercise in frustration. I was never quite sure if the island I stopped in on was the same one I'd marked down. But with Ye Qing's advice, it was much easier to avoid accidentally activating the revenants. Empty Vessels, she'd called them. Corpses animated by their environments, only those who died in nascent soul and above retained any form of rationality. And even those were far more limited than a Death Cultivator should be.

  Don't affect them with qi, or use too much of it in their close vicinity. Don't physically disturb them. Don't keep too many living people in close proximity to them for extended periods of time.

  Now knowing this, I simply began checking buildings for terminals that weren't in a corpse's hands. I had an algorithm now, a set of steps to minimize the odds of an another violent encounter. Fly up to an island I thought was on the list. Approach within a hundred yards of the building I was considering, and toss a small rock at it. If the rock didn't get intercepted by a hidden wall of distorted space or a shield of white light, I moved on to a knife. Gingerly piloted with the smallest amount of sword qi I could muster, it would fly around the building and then peek into a window.

  If nothing happened then, I would land, completely withdraw my qi, and begin creeping about like a mortal. I left any form of locked door alone. Force might shake the building, and sword qi could wake anything nearby. Why risk it, when I had well over a dozen potential locations on my list?

  The first island had defenses. The second I found a terminal, but it was held tight in the dead hands of it's owner.

  The third, I struck gold. In a small room, a dead cultivator was curled up in a corner. Shriveled hands clutched tightly at their head. From a distance, it was clear their fingers had wormed deeper into their ears than was healthy.

  I winced.

  "Deliver them from all anguish." I mouthed silently. I'd never been much of a Catholic, but this much death had a way of making me reach for half-remembered words. Thousands of bodies, and they'd all been helpless to fight back. Unable to do anything at all against a cultivator so many realms above them.

  It was a stark reminder of the way this world worked. What was a God? One realm beyond an Immortal? More? I hadn't asked Ye Qing.

  I wasn't sure it even mattered. That was the nature of this place, wasn't it? No matter how high you rose, there was always someone above you. Even if I got out from under the Sectmaster's thumb, safety would ever be an illusion.

  Ye Qing had stood above him, and her sect was gone.

  I exhaled, and pushed the grim thoughts away. I couldn't control the world, but I could control my thoughts.

  The terminal sat on a writing desk. I took it and left, creeping back through the same dusty path I'd entered. When I was safely back in the air, I fed a thin tendril of sword qi into the terminal and severed the existing owner's qi signature. The flowers could figure it out from there.

  With the second terminal stored, I retreated back to the same empty house I'd camped out in earlier. I plunged my sword into the ground before the door, pushing enough sword qi into it that it could easily be sensed from a distance, but not enough I worried about waking the dead. I'd give the young mistress twelve more hours, before I pulled her out.

  I pulled out my notes on the Sword Swallowing Method. There were two components to it. The physical way qi moved in three dimensions. And the vague, almost poetic description of the mental visualizations and mantras to focus on while cycling the qi.

  I usually worked with thick clouds of external qi, but thinner tendrils were not too difficult to manifest. They felt slower, more fragile. It took time and restraint to extrude them from the dense aura that shrouded me, and if I moved them too quickly, more qi would flood into them, causing them to grow.

  Working slowly, I wove the shape I'd drawn. Two almost complete circles, one within the other. A single strand of qi connected them in two places, turning the diagram into a single flow. It took a few tries, but it wasn't too hard to create and hold. Then came the final stroke, a second thread of qi that rose from the base of the shape to the top, intersecting both circles at two points, before looping back on itself. Both loops returned to my aura, and I allowed sword qi to slowly flow through the formation. Nothing happened. I took that as a promising sign, it was at least holding together without collapsing in some way. That alone was an improvement from most of my attempts at cycling.

  "The fundamental truth of the sword is that of division. Change through separation, a pure emanation of the Taiji. Violence and dominion, all fruits of it's expression emerge through this gate. Through union without change, this emanation is rejected. The sword is a facet of the Dao, it's change between forms does not require motion." I read aloud. The rest continued with a list of mental images I could use, and instructed me to 'grind away without removal' and 'cast aside the blade in favor of its potential'.

  I closed my eyes, trusting in the stability of my qi. The Taiji was a concept somewhat like the Dao, an expression of cosmological truth. My understanding was that it explained how the interactions of yin and yang gave birth to all existence. So, the instructions said that I was supposed to operate the technique in the opposite manner of cutting. I was less certain about the second part.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Perhaps that meant that pure qi already existed within sword qi, and I was trying to reveal a different face of it rather than filter part of it out? Grind without removal certainly sounded like I wasn't filtering anything away, but somehow revealing a new facet of the qi without actually changing it.

  I was a lot less confident about this part. I thought back to what Ye Qing had said, about me being a product of too much knowing and too little understanding. I resented it, just a little. Sure, my knowledge of electricity was rusty. I'd never built a generator or transformer, and I needed to consult a great deal of reference material before attempting so much as rewiring an outlet. I'd last studied it seriously two decades ago in early college. But electricity and gravity had never been my focus. We hadn't talked about computation, medicine, or jet maintenance.

  But perhaps she was right about my limited understanding of the qi and the sword. I had a lot of disparate facts I'd read, but precious little solid understanding, and less practice. I'd been given a task that should be possible. If I failed to get the technique working, it wouldn't be for lack of trying.

  For my first attempt, I chose 'A sword rusting to dust' as my visualization. It felt wrong from the outset, but it was a starting place. I allowed qi to flow through the shape I'd built as I focused on the image's in my mind's eye. It was difficult to hold, I'd always thought more in words than images.

  When I finally held the image for a moment, I felt it was wrong almost immediately. As rust flaked off the sword, the technique shuddered, grinding against itself.

  I allowed it to fall away, reclaiming as much of my qi as I could, then began anew.

  The image of a sword slicing through water without splitting it caused the technique to do nothing.

  I tried an abstract sequence of a sword being unforged, it's creation played in reverse, next. The walls acquired a few more deep scratches.

  Half a dozen more images failed in similar ways, and I moved on to mantras. Other techniques had listed them, though the description here favored images. But none of them felt right to me. I was unsure how that worked. It all felt very arbitrary, but it had to depend on either the user of the technique, or the qi they were trying to purify. Nothing else made sense.

  "Union without change." Produced no change.

  "Cast aside the blade." Caused the technique to gently fall apart.

  What was I missing? Pure qi was supposed to be the essence of both change and eternity. The power to influence the world, and to become immortal and endure forever. Yin and yang aspects, perhaps? Or maybe that was reductive, the power to change seemed yang aligned, but so was vitality and lifespan in general.

  How did the sword relate to that?

  I let my mind rest on the sensation of Elder Hu's qi. The way it felt like a river of razorblades flowing through my veins, and yet somehow warm and comforting at the same time. The heady joy I felt when it was unleashed.

  My qi was certainly more yang than it was yin.

  "Union without change." I murmured, pondering the concept, rather than trying to use the technique. "Cut away the edge, sever the blade."

  I felt something shift, in a way that didn't immediately destabilize the technique. Qi flowed against itself, intersecting in a way that shifted it. I tried to follow the thread, extend the mantra. What did it mean to cut away the idea of the sword, leaving only raw potential behind?

  "Iron sharpens iron. The blade is whetted until it is no more." I continued silently. Wrong, I instantly knew. I could feel the technique waver, destabilize.

  "Elder Hu." Meng Daiyu's voice shattered my train of thought.

  I exhaled, and withdrew my qi. Frustrating, I was so close. But I'd invited her to interrupt me, placing the sword as I did. I opened my eyes, affecting the 'Irritatingly unhelpful martial uncle' demeanor the young mistress seemed to expect from me.

  "Young Mistress Meng. Have you tired of the inner sect already?" I asked wryly.

  "The Glass Flowers have retreated back to the outer sect."

  "Unsurprising. They've been doing since we arrived. One day in, one day out. I suppose you have noticed then?"

  "Noticed? The resentment here gnaws at me, but I am not so weak I cannot bear it for more than a day."

  I raised an eyebrow.

  "The resentment is a product of so much anguished death."

  "Yes?"

  "If the resentment is a product of such slaughter, then what was the cause of it?"

  I didn't know the full answer to that myself. Ye Qing had been vague about how exactly the sect had died, but she'd been clear that the power that animated it's corpses was a separate thing from the effect that had driven her sisters to violent madness. And that though it was much diminished, that effect still lingered.

  "Fly with me." Meng Daiyu eventually replied. I rose, recalling my sword to my hand, and the two of us took to the air. She led us slowly back towards the tunnel to the outer sect.

  "I need to take time to stabilize my cultivation. If you think what originally killed this sect still lingers, there's no sense in additional exposure to it while I do that."

  "Wise." I said, the barest hint of mockery in my voice.

  We lapsed into silence for a time.

  "I have a technique." Meng Daiyu said suddenly. "It allows me to absorb power from the remains of departed cultivators."

  "I suspected as much. There were only so many things you could have been doing with that body."

  "The lesser undead retain little of their strength in life."

  Ah, I saw where this was going. She wanted leach off me.

  "Indeed they do. They are not true death cultivators, or even proper ghouls. Merely vessels for the accumulated resentment of this place. The ones who were in nascent soul retain more of their rationality and techniques, of course."

  "I hope, to absorb such a revenant. Perhaps even more than one. The remnants of the yin cultivation bases of the lesser disciples have been advantageous to me, but the technique truly shines when used upon dead whose cultivation outstrips me own."

  "I can see how that would be very beneficial for you." I said noncommittally.

  "My master did not order you to help me."

  "He did not."

  "What would it take, for you to help me all the same?"

  I thought about it.

  "I expect Elder Shi is going to head here the moment he is informed of the state of the inner sect."

  "Elder Xin as well." Meng Daiyu agreed. "His techniques are more discerning than my own, but he will likely want his pick of the more intact spirits. As Elder Shi will seek the most powerful bodies. I have no doubt my master would come himself, if war would not break out the moment he began to move."

  "There is something I suspect this sect to possess." I said, thinking of the Celestial Skein Ye Qing had mentioned. If it was as valuable as she'd implied, I had no doubt it would be behind substantial defenses. If I could marshal Elder Cai and the Young Mistress, I'd feel a lot better about potentially waking up powerful revenants. "I have not found it yet, nor proof of it's existence. But I hope to, before others begin to arrive and the race to exploit this place begins in earnest."

  "I will help you seize it." The response was immediate.

  I turned to look at the young mistress. I had not expected that, given her earlier attitude toward me. Her eyes were locked on the exit tunnel.

  "I've grown, since that day." She said, not looking at me. "I do not need every prize."

  There was a great deal of context I was missing. Shit. Hopefully Elder Hu's memories would make it clear what exactly she was talking about.

  "I will consider it." I said. I should probably run that one by Ye Qing, before I started hunting the animated corpses of her sect's disciples.

  "Very well. Do not take too long, Disciple Hao will send word back to her master the moment she sees the state of the inner sect."

  The two of us entered the tunnel without landing, flying directly into the white glow of the barrier.

  When we emerged, it was to an outer sect divided. Black robes stood to one side of the great hall, white the other.

  Elder Cai stood in the center of the hall, facing the two Glass Flower Elders. Inner Disciples crowded around them, our side far outnumbering the mere two the Glass Flowers had brought. Raised voices cut across the jeers and threats of the disciples.

  "She wasn't even harmed." Elder Cai said loudly. "Cowards, the lot of you."

  The young mistress and I exchanged glances.

  "I'm sure this will be good."

  "That is such a kind way of phrasing it Elder Hu. I suppose we've earned this, leaving Cai Haoyu unsupervised. At least she didn't kill anyone."

  "Yet." I added.

  "Yet." The young mistress agreed. "My master would have censured her a dozen times by now, if the proceeds of her workshop did not represent a non-trivial fraction of the sect's operating budget."