Twinned Destinies: A Cultivation Progression Fantasy

Weeks later…

The Middle Wall split the round lands of Jade Dragon City in two, curved like the line between dark and light in a yin-yang. It split the Upper and Lower Cities. Dynasties rose and fell but the wall remained, as it did in every major city in the realm. Walls meant order, structure, this thick plain of gray you could see from nearly anywhere in the city—an inspiration, or so said the Emperor. Among nobles there was a saying: the Wall keeps the peace.

The side which faced the noble was sanded smooth, its face bare, and it seemed to glow faintly in the midday sun.

When you got to the other side as Ruyi did now, shoving her cart through the tunnel gate, it was like you saw a different wall. The Lower City side was shored up with grime at its base, seasoned with chunks of stone and broken-off steel and a beach of fine-grained glass no-one bothered to sweep up. Its face was splattered with blocky red slogans, pasted over with fluttering cult posters, riddled with holes like the skin of a pox victim, and slashed all over with birdshit. Ruyi saw a herd of painters struggling to blotch over a mural that’d sprung up overnight, depicting the Emperor doing strange things with a hog.

Where there’d previously been a handful of guards there was now a squadron there; a few were even in imperial plate—white-gold and shimmering with array carvings. Everyone who tried to cross from the Lower to the Upper City, usually servants, needed a special silverfoil permit, and even then you got harassed thoroughly. Going the other way, as Ruyi did now, was much easier; they sent her off with a smile, a ‘good day,’ and an admonition to stick to the main roads, where it was supposedly safe.

‘Safe’ meant every ten paces there stood an unsmiling Imperial Guard with a spear gripped in fist. Mei met her at the Wall to load her barrel. Together they ambled for Cult headquarters.

The Main Street was a trickle of folk, not the great river it’d been. And it was clean—far too clean. Ruyi realized what it was. They’d swept away all the signs of life.

The night market Jin had taken her to, the one teeming with roasts and sweets, was gone. Only torn banners and turned-up stones in the road marked where it’d been. Apparently it had been illegal all along. The Emperor was furious such untaxed commerce—a ‘black market,’ the papers proclaimed—took place under his watch. The guards cleared it out in a day, seizing what they could.

As they walked the city Ruyi felt a simmering sense of unease. It came into her from the city, from the tension between the blank faces of the guards and the masses of dark figures scurrying about the alleys, picking their way gingerly through the streets, clutching themselves tight, walking fast, as though expecting to be seized at any moment. There used to be children playing in these streets.

To the left a strangled cry, a blur of movement. In a slit of an alley between two leaning buildings a toothless old lady was trying to pick the meat off of a bundle of bones in a garbage bin. A guard was wrestling her for it. They snarled at each other; the guard knocked her to the ground with a boot; she lunged but he kept her down. “Down!” cried the guard, like she was a dog. Ruyi was shocked to see he was fresh-faced with the barest wisps of a mustache, a boy, couldn’t be more than fourteen, but he wore the Emperor’s white, and Ruyi could see it puffed him up with pride and borrowed confidence, and something else too, something sinister.

“Woman, do not try me!” His voice was shrill.

“It’s mine! I found it! You can’t!” wailed the old lady. Her face was full of hollows, her body, poking out from stained rags, looked like wax draped over bones. She made a grab for and he knocked her into the walls. “Give it here!”

But it was plain the boy wasn’t budging. The old lady sagged. Then she tried on a feeble grin, but she was one of those folk who made you flinch; it exposed all the black in her mouth. “Here,” she whispered. “Give it here now. Granny’s very very hungry, all granny wants is a suckling, please, granny knows you’re a good boy, a sweet boy—”

“You’re not my granny!” screamed the boy. “And I’m not a boy!”

She made another grab; he kicked her so hard she slumped against the wall.

“Nala….” said Mei.

Only then did Ruyi realize she was gripping the cart so hard she was starting to bend the metal handle.

She knew what she had to do.

Still, it took her a breath.

“I know,” she ground out. She turned her head away. She couldn’t—not here. All she would do was get herself in trouble. And it would make no difference. It was there wherever she looked. She saw guards shouting down a herd of scampering boys, leering at a greasy-haired mother and her daughter hugging each other for support. She saw a guard brandishing his electric baton at a mud-streaked boy with his cheeks smushed against the glass of a butcher’s window, admiring a spinning chunk of glazed ham—“Step back from the fucking window!” screamed the guard, spittle flying, as though he were confronting some hardened criminal. The boy jumped, yelping, startled at the sudden noise. The guard yelped too. Louder, if anything—a crack of the baton, a flash of lightning, and the boy went spasming over. As his fellow guards came over, he pointed a trembling finger at the boy’s prone form and cried, “The little shit leapt at me!”

She was so mad.

It was too much. Like that street field hospital boiling over with bodies. The best thing she could do for them, she kept reminding herself, was to turn in this vat of Healing Elixir.

The city felt like it was under an invasion, yet the faces in the uniforms were often smeared dark with mottled skin and yellowed teeth, like the faces in the streets. There were so many guards needed, and so little nobles who wanted the job, it seemed they’d had to fill their ranks with green boys and Lower City folk. If anything the Lower City guards seemed more vicious—some seemed to take a perverse delight in inflicting violence on their own. The noble boys, meanwhile, were constantly on edge—she’d seen a beast tamer handling a caged dragon at a Banquet. They all had that look on their face.

…Had she been like that, too? She winced. Heavens, she hoped not.

“Don’t look,” said Mei. “It won’t help.”

Mei only had eyes for the street. She was also mad, Ruyi realized—she could tell by the hard set to her jaw. But she was marching forward anyways. Was this what it meant to be mature? Was it something you learned, or did it just happen to you?

“Breathe,” said Mei. She was smiling. Strained, but smiling—putting on a brave face. For Ruyi’s benefit, she realized.

“I’m fine, really,” said Ruyi. She could be mature too. “See?” She tried smiling back, but she couldn’t quite manage it.

***

After she handed over the finished formula, Cao held out a gloved hand. “It has been a pleasure.”

When Ruyi stood there eyeing it, he sighed. “It’s just a hand.”

She took it and made sure to give it a hard squeeze—wasn’t that what you were meant to do? She hoped it would make her seem powerful. Cao’s face didn’t change.

“So,” she said. “Do you need to keep me on? You know. In case… anything goes wrong?”

“No need,” said Cao, smiling his unreadable smile. A true businessman’s smile.

“I can help brew, if you like, for a little more flesh.”

“We’ll take it from here. For you, Miss Nala, the job is done.” He snapped his fingers. In strode his pet baldy with two square steel cases. He laid them atop each other in the middle of the table.

Ruyi stared at it.

“This is for me?”

“A parting gift, if you will. Take it.”

She wanted it so bad she was nearly salivating. Still she didn’t move. “Why?”

“Flesh is cheap,” said Cao with a shrug. “Good relationships are not. I like to keep everyone happy.”

“Hmm.” Ruyi supposed that made sense, though she sensed there was more to it. She snatched the two suitcases. She wasn’t not going to take free stuff. But after that Zhilei Zhen business she was starting to think maybe she shouldn’t be so trusting. She’d been so naïve, so stupid. She’d keep a small huddle, only the few folk she knew best—Jin, Mother, Father, Gao, Mei… everyone else could do with a little second-guessing.

The guards didn’t harass her on the way through. They didn’t even ask for identification. Her skin, her teeth, her hair marked her as a noble well enough. She smiled and they let her through.

She was special, and for once she didn’t feel proud of it. She felt quite the opposite.

***

Maybe this was a good thing. She didn’t like being dependent on the cult for flesh, especially with how things were going with the Imperial Guard… maybe she could write to Father? Ask him if she could visit?

Visit what—the front lines of a war? Stupid idea.

Her lab freezer looked like a man-sized block of iron ore with a handle and indents carved into it. She unlatched the square door which swung smoothly open. A simple freeze rune was inscribed up the freezer’s sides; hidden at the top were a battery of Spirit Stones, powering the thing. She wedged the two cases between a few samples of Netherspore fungus and a half-eaten beef wrap she was saving for later.

These would last two more weeks. Then what?

Now that the war with the demons was heating up she heard whispers the Guild was starting to run tests with demon flesh. She kept up a web of correspondences from across the six provinces; one of them was YuYu Zhu, Young Mistress of the Zhu Clan and a newly-minted Master Alchemist from the Heavenly Bamboo Forest. YuYu had endeared herself to Ruyi by gushing for two paragraphs about how brilliant she found her, and every week Ruyi could count on a steady stream of compliments, which was most of why she kept writing back. YuYu’s letters had this breathy aspect to them, a slight hesitation like she was unsure whether each word she put down was worthy of Ruyi’s eyes, and she’d hedge every request she made with a ‘if you’re free, of course,’ or ‘if you wouldn’t mind, I’d be so grateful if…,’ which was just about the amount of respect Ruyi had always felt she deserved.

In any case—YuYu’s latest had a note that she’d overheard, from her adviser Grandmaster Pao, who sat on a council with Grandmaster Yin, that the Guild was getting stocks of demon flesh. It could be nothing—of late YuYu had been scraping up rumors to present to Ruyi, maybe in hopes that it’d make her seem useful. But still, maybe it was worth firing off a letter to Grandmaster Yin, demanding to be let in on this. Just in case.

In the meantime she started stockpiling raw meats like a squirrel preparing for a long winter.

***

A week passed. She was maddeningly close to Feral. But it would take at least three more cases to push her over. Grandmaster Yin categorically denied the Guild had any flesh, which left her with nothing.

Through the week she heard of skirmishes, little firefights between Cultists and guards. A half-dozen deaths, dozens injured in one as a result of a firebomb which seemed suspiciously of Guild make. Ruyi’s next column, which was a scathing rebuke implying Grandmaster Yin was lacking certain male genitalia, earned her so many angry letters from other Alchemists their yard was fluttering with cranes for two days straight.

She saw horses and mules racing by the road outside their manor, lugging wagons stacked with shields and swords and spears. She saw a line of the Imperial Guard marching past from dawn until mid-day.

Then they got a letter from the Emperor himself, a man Ruyi had much liked and was steadily growing to hate. It was a notice to every noble family that the gates to the Upper and Lower City would be barred for at least a week.

She asked Mother about it at dinner.

“And don’t you tell me it’s nothing,” she said. “You know, don’t you?”

“Well…” Mother looked uncomfortable. “Your Father hasn’t told me a great deal. He says the Emperor has sent in a special task force. Last night they took strong actions against the Cult… they’re expecting a little rowdiness. It’ll settle.”

“‘Strong action’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They’d found out there was some kind of plot. Could we please not speak of this over dinner, dear?”

“What plot?”

“They’ve put an end to it. That’s all that ought to concern us.”

“‘Put an end to it’? How?” Ruyi felt a sinking in her chest.

“Why does it matter?” said Mother, getting exasperated. “It’ll soon be over. They’ve tripled the guards at the walls—we’re safe. We needn’t worry.”

Mother had misinterpreted the look on her face.

Jin was sipping his chicken broth, pretending not to be paying attention, all calm. But he thought Mei had left the Cult. Mei had told him as much—he didn’t know.

They read about it when the mail came the next afternoon. It was the headline of the Jade Dragon Post.

‘IMPERIAL GUARD THWARTS CATASTROPHIC DEMONIC PLOT’

By Ke Li, Staff Reporter

Late last night a special task force, under the command of Empress consort and chief of the Guard, Chen Qin, raided the headquarters of the Demon Cult. The Post confirms that weeks ago, the Guard’s spies learned of a plot to conduct mass demon-summonings in the middle of Jade Dragon City. The Guard has acted decisively. In one warehouse they uncovered a twenty-stride-long Elder’s Chalk array formation, dozens of candles of Incense of Lethe, a sacrificial alter, purification waters, among other implements. Dasa Qin, Lieutenant General, estimates from the evidence that they were mere weeks away from a full summoning. Fifty-eight cultists have been taken under custody. “Most disturbing,” he said. “We have extracted a list of names. They’d planned to use certain ‘vessels’ — bodies prepared with elixirs for demonic hosts. Due to the decisive leadership of the Chief, we were able to locate and neutralize the threat. Citizens of the Lower and Upper City alike can rest assured — their City is safe.”

In the skirmish, fifteen brave Guardsmen were killed. A vigil will be held in the Emperor’s Sunflower Garden.