Twinned Destinies: A Cultivation Progression Fantasy

Ruyi’s usual training clearing had been subject to a hostile takeover by a family of wild ferrets. They’d gnawed through half her ‘KEEP OUT!’ signpost. After a brief skirmish and a screaming match—which she won—she drove them off.

Then she started on her usual benchmarks.

Speed. She ran one hundred strides in a little under three-eights of a breath. A good deal faster than last time, but her gains were slowing. Still it sent up warm fuzzy sparks in her chest. She remembered meditating herself to sleep, struggling to draw qi in, praying each night for the Heavens to cleans her, to save her; she woke up to find she was her same sad self. Now every week she was different. Every little leap was a joy.

This time she made her own weights. Last time she tried playing around with Jin’s stones a servant nearly caught her. So she’d ordered lodestone from the Guild, which had been an ordeal, and raised many a board member’s eyebrow, but she was important enough that with a few special access clearances and strongly worded letters she bullied them into giving her a chunk.

Her crude contraption: a lodestone basket you could load one hundred jin lodestone slabs into, with two handles on the side. It was a bit unwieldy to hold—she never claimed to be an artificer—but it would do. Five hundred jin moved smoothly. Six hundred was a bit of an ordeal; it needed much wheezing and red-faced huffing, but she got it up. But she could do six hundred last time! She had seven hundred in her. She just had to believe.

Seven hundred jin went in the basket. She stared down the black slabs, pacing back and forth, muttering at them like they were her fated rival in a duel to the death. She found she did better when she had an enemy. Then she ran up, clasped hold of the handles, and lifted.

It didn’t budge.

Her teeth gnashed. Her eyes bulged. She let out a strangled scream. The weight would move; she was strong, stronger than even she knew! She believed with all her heart. If she believed, truly believed, she knew she could move the world.

The weight moved.

Slowly, an inch at a time, and her knees wobbled and her legs trembled and her fingers felt like they’d break off her hands any moment, but she got it up, locked out her legs. At the top, she let out a whoop.

Then it felt like a string snapped in her lower back.

She cried out; the weight dropped. She went over writhing and groaning, eating a faceful of bitter dark grass. She flopped around for a bit, still raw, tears in her eyes. They would tell stories of this moment. It would become a sort of parable. She wasn’t sure what the moral was—maybe with great accomplishments come great sacrifices? Or maybe something about how pride can ruin even the best among us. Then another pang of pain lanced up her back, and she cried out. If she was honest, the only real moral here was that morons shouldn’t play with big rocks. She stopped thinking and focused on writhing.

She was not, as she’d first thought, fatally wounded, nor was she paralyzed forever. As she clambered shakily to her feet she seemed mostly fine—irritatingly fine, other than a sharp twinge whenever she tried to bend over.

Strength grew less fast than speed for her. She scribbled it in her notebook.

Maybe she ought to be doing strength training, like Jin did. At first she’d thought his lifting heavy rocks was a vanity thing, but he’d told her it was to condition his muscles to better use the qi he had. Maybe she could be stronger at the same essence levels if she just trained more. But she was growing so explosively it didn’t seem very relevant right now; she scribbled a note to look into it when her growth leveled off.

Then there was her magic. Mostly a bigger essence pool meant she could do what she’d done before, but better, the same way growing bigger muscles helped her move things easier. But she did find a fun new trick—she could put so much essence into a breath now it could clump the moisture in the air into little blocks of frost. She could cause it to start snowing, spontaneously, in summer.

Last of all, endurance. Recent events had taught her there was an entire category of ability she’d been neglecting. For this she marked out the length of the clearing and decided to run back and forth at top speed until her legs gave out. It took all of ten minutes. As she lay there flopping, desperately clawing air back into her lungs, embarrassed at how short she’d lasted, she wondered what could’ve possibly possessed her to do this.

Then there was the other kind of endurance. How well she could give and withstand blows. How was she meant to measure this? This would probably be a lot easier with a training partner.

As an experiment she put all her qi into her fist, then slammed it into a lodestone block. Frost splattered up its face.

“….ow….” she whimpered.

Maybe there was no need to test all her limits, she decided, sucking on her throbbing thumb.

***

Jin accosted her as soon as she set foot in the manor. “Where were you? I’ve been searching all over! The courtyard, the lab—”

“I was out on a walk, that’s all,” she said, a tad defensive. “What?”

“Mei just sent me a crane.” He waved a yellow letter creased at the edges. “There’s been more protests… the Cult has posted its demands. Fifty five of them, nailed to posts all over the city. They’ve pasted hundreds on the Middle Wall. The things they’re asking for…” Jin tore at his tousled hair. “No less than half the Treasury redistributed to the Lower City. Taxing the nobles. Seizing a quarter of the Upper City for peasant housing…Rue, do you know what this means?”

“Uhh.”

“Their heart’s in the right, they must know the Emperor would never agree—not to a tenth of this! Not even threatened with demons! He’ll take this as an attack.”

“Has he said anything?”

“He’s sent in the Imperial Guard,” said Jin. He checked over his shoulder, then said in an urgent whisper, “I’ve told Mei to distance herself from the Cult. Lay low for a few weeks. We should too—no more excursions to the Lower City, alright? They’re stocking troops on the Middle Walls…They think the Cult may be planning something. Something’s coming, something big.”

“Ah… yikes.” She hoped she sounded convincing.

“No visits to the Lower City. I want to hear you say it.”

“No visits to the Lower City,” said Ruyi, nodding.

“Swear it to me.”

“I promise!” said Ruyi, feigning an exasperated sigh. Lying came so easy to her now. When had that happened?

It seemed Jin decided to trust her; his shoulders relaxed. “Good.”

She thought about telling him what Mei had told her, but she couldn’t do it. She’d promised. Somehow that promise seemed more important than this one.

***

“You’re alive,” were Gao’s first words to her when she next visited. “Good.”

She plopped herself on the wicker seat next to Ruyi without ceremony. They sat in their usual spot in the garden. They watched the gentle swaying of the drooping of the sunflowers, their green necks craned, pocked brown faces staring despondent at the earth. It was nearing autumn. Their time was nearing its end.

“No thanks to you,” grumbled Ruyi.

“I owe you an apology.”

“You do,” she agreed.

“…I apologize.”

“Apology accepted.”

Ruyi started pouring a cup out of a porcelain pitcher. “Want some?”

“It should’ve smelled of rot,” muttered Gao. “The last time we exchanged letters was a decade ago. And now, out of the blue, he wishes to see you? Blegh.”

Gao accepted the cup, took a sip.

“What is this?” she said. She took another, a gulp. “This is good. Oolong and… what else?”

“Secret ingredient.” Ruyi winked.

Gao set the cup aside, cleared her throat. “Listen, girl. The blame for this debacle is mine. If you want my resignation, say the word.”

“I want you to stop talking about it,” she sighed. “It’s done! I’ve forgiven you! It’s not even your fault, you couldn’t have known. I don’t want to talk about it. Mother’s been fussing about it all week. I’m sick of it. Can we please, please, talk about something else?”

“…Very well.” Gao swallowed another sip with some difficulty. “Let us say this was a lesson in trust, and leave it at that.”

***

The incident in the mountains was not made public, Ruyi suspected because it would’ve been an embarrassment to the Emperor and his military. Yet somehow everyone important seemed to know about it—most didn’t know it was the Lord, precisely, only that a powerful demon had snuck past human lines and had skirmished with the North Star, Sen Li. It was rumored she’d driven him off. Zhilei Zhen’s name was quietly struck from the Alchemist Guild’s registry.

Midway through the week she got a note via a giant snow raven, so named for its foamy white sheen; when it flew it looked like the snow tumbling off an avalanche. It was a beast used only by the military. It was from Father praising her for her aid, and it sounded like some news dispatch praising a soldier for their valor—in terms clinical and removed. He asked her what she’d achieved of late. Urged her to include any attachments she deemed appropriate. He said he expected only the best of her.

He was thousands of li away. Months gone. She’d thought he had no power over her anymore.

She was wrong.

She’d barely thought about him in months. But the instant she did all that old feeling came welling up in her again. It still felt so good to read his praise it was honestly kind of pathetic.

***

“Another!” said Ruyi, wiping the blood off her face.

A servant named Shu strode up with another bowl. He was gray-haired and bespectacled, a tall stick of a man who’d served the Li family for decades. After the Ling incident Mother had had all the servants replaced with trusted men.

“Raw steak of Tiger’s Roar Valley, mistress, lightly salted, minimally prepared, unfrozen.”

“Just how I like it.” Three forks of varying tips were to her left, four knives, one smaller than the next, artfully arranged to her right. But she always found it easier to grab from the plate and chew. She liked the feeling of the meat in her hands; it felt like hunting. Meat always tasted better when hunted. Something about the sense of… conquering?… gave it a little extra zest.

“Slow down!” gasped Mother. “You’ll choke.”

“I’m a growing girl,” Ruyi shot back. She kept chomping. To her side Jin was cutting his steak with knife and fork the way an artist might apply a final dab of a brush to his masterpiece; he tilted to his head, slipping a fleck of flying blood as a fighter might slip a punch, and went back to cutting.

“What’s gotten into you lately?” he said.

“I’m… running,” she said between bites. “A lot. New hobby. Need… fuel.”

“Right.” He watched her squish two ends of the steak together, then start eating the doubled-over monstrosity. “Heavens! It’s like you’ve become a demon.”

Ruyi choked.

“Jin!” Mother rapped him on the knuckles with a spoon. “Don’t you joke about that. You know better.” Her eyes, glistening with concern, flickered to Ruyi.

“Sorry.” Jin winced.

Now they were both looking at her, but not like they were about to turn her in. More like they were worried she might spontaneously burst into tears. It took a moment for her to realize why.

She swallowed a hunk of meat. She rolled her eyes at them, pretending like her heart wasn’t about to beat out of her chest.

“You know how sometimes I say I’m fine,” she said. “But I’m not actually? This time, I’m actually fine. Really.”

“Let’s speak of something else.” Mother took a sip of pea soup. “Let’s see… ah! Sen’s well recovered—poor girl tells me she’s got a match in two weeks, and she insists on going through with it. Such a soldier; your Father would love her. She’s always worked herself harder than I’d like—”

“Wait. How’d you hear about this?” said Ruyi, perking up. She lowered her steak.

“She wrote me, dear,” said Mother, baffled.

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“I wrote to her days ago! What the Hell. What did she say?”

“Apologies, mostly,” said Mother. “Such a sweet girl… she’s always taken losses so hard—”

“Yes, yes,” said Ruyi. “But what did she say about me?”

Jin let out a little snort.

“What?” She rounded on him. He held up his hands in surrender. “Nothing! Nothing.”

“That’s what I thought. Please continue.” This last bit she said to Mother.

“…She feels she failed you,” said Mother slowly.

“Anything else?”

“Not that I recall…”

“Hmm.” Ruyi nibbled in brooding silence.

“I was thinking of making a trip to her training facility. To wish her luck before her match. If you’d like, perhaps you can come along?”

“No,” sniffed Ruyi. “She’s made it quite clear she doesn’t want to speak to me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not that desperate, Mother.”

The next morning they set off for the Li Family’s Jade Dragon City branch.