All-Knowing Novice, page 4
As such, she was too valuable to let go completely. So, a compromise was reached, and she spent her days training the new generations in how to perform the basic Ukata clan techniques.
Taryn once had the bright idea of asking her to awaken his Eco and train him as well, only to find out the true price she’d paid in order to raise him
The only way they would allow Fan Shun to raise him within the city was if she willingly allowed them to seal her core, completely separating her from her Eco and preventing her from using most of the skills she’d honed over decades of training. All to ensure she would not teach the Ukata clan’s secret martial techniques to the outsider.
As his story began to wind down, Fan Shun pulled the bandage she’d wrapped around the crown of his head a little too tight, causing Taryn to wince. “Hey, easy on the head.”
“Easy? You’re lucky I was the one who found you. If it’d been any of the other instructors—”
“I know, I know. I’d be tossed out on my rear,” Taryn said dismissively. “I’m guessing you’ve already talked with Teng De?”
“What do you think?” she asked, practically spitting the words at the back of his head. She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to his feet in a show of strength that didn’t match her size. “Actually, this presents me with a good opportunity to tell you about your punishment.” Fan Shun clapped her hands twice and smiled, something that disturbed Taryn even more than if she’d just started screaming.
Fan Shun didn’t smile when she was angry: screamed and ranted, certainly. But smiling... That was new. And Taryn didn’t like “new.”
AS RALA FINISHED SETTING over the Western Wall, Taryn and Fan Shun returned home. The six-story stone building they called home was located in the first residential district, near the agricultural district.
Due to the severe overpopulation crisis plaguing the common folk of Haven City, especially those living in the first residential district, Taryn and Fan Shun lived with hundreds of other people inside this one building.
Luckily, they were given one of only fifteen private apartments thanks to Fan Shun’s reputation. Their home was the size of the closet Fan Shun had used growing up in the Ukata clan compound.
Taryn knew he didn’t have the right to complain though. Most people lived in communal dwellings, with up to twenty-six people being forced to live in a shared dormitory.
They passed through the front door into a narrow lobby packed with people either leaving for work or arriving home. Each dwelling was granted a steel box inset into the wall of the lobby; as some of the last people to acquire space in the building, Taryn and his grandmother had a box near the entrance.
The private boxes were approximately two hands tall, two hands wide, and a hand and a half deep. By necessity, the communal dwellings had boxes three or four times larger.
Emblazoned with the number 326, their box was on the lowest row—nearly touching the floor. Taryn and Fan Shun placed their shoes inside—as was mandated by the building owner.
This suited Fan Shun fine, as she didn’t like wearing shoes inside their home anyway because of the smell that often accompanied them after exercising all day.
After shutting the box, they shuffled their way through the crowd of people. It took some work, as most people didn’t like being inconvenienced, especially by him, but Taryn managed to shift and sidestep his way through the crowd without any bloodshed.
At the rear of the lobby was a set of stairs just wide enough for two people to traverse at a time. This wasn’t the only staircase in the building, but it was the one closest to their home, and was usually the most convenient one to take.
With Fan Shun’s help, Taryn reached the third floor and their small apartment.
He fished an iron key out of his bag and stuck it into a small hole on the wall beside the door frame. The locking mechanism was something the Qiao clan invented several summers ago. Until then, simple deadbolts had been used. But for anyone above the channel building stage, those were all too easily broken. They didn’t do so well at keeping those in the channel building stage out either. With the new locks, the only way someone would be able to budge the door was if they destroyed the very wall the door was connected to. If someone could get through that, the door was useless anyway.
Like most of the private dwellings in the building, Taryn’s home was barely big enough to be called such. It wasn’t much to look at, none of the rooms in the building were, but for most of Taryn’s life it was home. It was his escape from the world, from the knowledge of who he was, or rather who he wasn’t. In this apartment, Taryn was no longer “Mask” or “the Clanless,” he was just a boy living with his grandmother.
The main living area was only large enough to accommodate a few people. A two-person table was crammed against the far wall, and a diminutive coal burning stove was positioned just behind the door, small enough to be completely concealed by the door whenever it was fully open.
There were no seats to be found inside; instead, small cushions were placed on either side of the table to allow Taryn and Fan Shun some measure of comfort while they ate.
Apart from the stove and the table, there was only one other piece of furniture to be found in the main living area, a small rectangular cabinet positioned above the table that held utensils and plates whenever they were not in use.
On either side of the living area was a door: one led to Taryn’s bedroom, while the other led to Fan Shun’s. The bedrooms were an almost perfect mirror of each other, both only containing a single mat for sleeping, some blankets, and a single white cushion to be used as a pillow.
However, Taryn’s room also possessed a small bookshelf at the foot of his mat. This bookshelf held all manner of scrolls and books that Taryn had collected over the years. Even from where he was standing in the living area, he could see a half dozen scrolls lying on the floor, exactly where he’d left them.
Fan Shun and Taryn had a code, a simple set of rules put in place to ensure they could live together in harmony. And the rules were thus: clean up after yourself, don’t go into the other’s room without permission, and do your best to let the other know if you were going out.
Fan Shun unceremoniously dropped Taryn onto his mat just in time for a wave of dizziness to overtake him. He’d done well to make it back to the apartment on his own two feet, but now all he wanted to do was crawl onto his mat and sleep for about six days.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood.” Fan Shun sighed. “Hang on, I’m pretty sure I still have some elixir left over from the last time.”
Taryn was in the process of removing his mask when he reflexively winced at her casual reminder of the last time he’d been injured. Granted, it was his own fault, and his pride was hurt far more than his body was.
He’d fallen off one of the dividing walls while trying to impress the girl he’d met at the New Year’s Festival. Her name was Yawen. Taryn had never gotten to know her family name, if she’d even had one... Who was he kidding, she wasn’t like him. Of course she had a family name.
Taryn had stupidly believed that they’d become friends, and though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, he had secretly hoped to be more than friends with Yawen. She was smart, courageous, and more gorgeous than any other woman in the city.
However, only twelve days after their meeting, Yawen suddenly stopped showing up to their usual meeting places. She vanished from his sight so thoroughly, it was as if she’d never existed in the first place. She’d left Taryn with only a bittersweet memory... And a convenient excuse to sneak out.
“There, drink.” Fan Shun thrust a half-full glass bottle into Taryn’s chest. It held a faintly glowing blue liquid that stuck to the inside of the bottle like slime.
Taryn inspected the blue liquid with a raised brow. “Doesn’t this stuff only have a shelf life of like, a week?” he asked while shaking the bottle in Fan Shun’s direction.
“As long as it still glows, it’ll fix your woes. Now, shut up, drink every last drop of that, then get to sleep. You’ll heal faster that way. I’m going to see Teng De first thing in the morning and try to convince him not to exile you.” After saying her piece, Fan Shun slammed his door on her way out.
“Thank you! For everything...” Taryn finished in a quieter voice. He was exhausted, more so than he’d ever been before.
He pulled the cork out of the bottle then held it over his open mouth. The liquid oozed out slowly, then fell into his mouth in one big glob of slime. He swallowed it without thinking about it. It tasted like someone tried to make it taste like fruit, but instead it tasted like iron with an extremely sour aftertaste.
Taryn’s body shook at the awful taste, and he wanted to spit it back up. Instead, he set the bottle aside, folded his body into the fetal position, then pulled his blanket over his head and squeezed his eyes shut.
If he was lucky, he’d fall asleep before another wave of nausea hit and he really did throw up.
However, sleep didn’t come easy for Taryn. His dreams were filled with people he’d never known, battles he’d never fought, wonders he’d never seen, and visions of a dark-haired woman with the most breathtaking eyes Taryn had ever seen; they were pools of the deepest red with a tiny golden freckle in each eye.
In his dreams, the woman looked distraught, and she ran towards him, yelling something too faint to hear.
He woke up before she could reach him, before he could understand what she was trying to tell him.
Taryn never got back to sleep after that. As he lay awake on his mat, he tried to understand what was going on with him.
All of his thoughts inevitably went back to the journal.
He crawled over to his bag and retrieved both the journal and his lantern. He’d hidden the journal from his grandmother, pushing it to the bottom of his bag while Fan Shun was busy looking for a bandage to wrap his head with.
Taryn unlocked the hinge on his window and pushed it open as far as it would go, then he returned to his mat and by the light of his lantern, he turned to the first page of the journal and began to read.
Hello, successor. If you’re reading this, then one of my wishes was finally granted. By now you should have realized that things are changing. You now know things you shouldn’t and are dreaming of places you’ve never been. I would just like to assure you that this is nothing to be afraid of. I would never harm you. However, to prevent history from repeating itself, I have taken steps to ensure that you do not make the same mistakes that I have.
Within these pages are my observations of the various worlds I’ve been to. Some of them may even relate to yours. But within the journal, the very binding that you now hold, are my memories. And even now, you are absorbing them.
In a few days, you will have taken in every bit of experience I acquired over my four thousand years of life. What you do with it is entirely up to you—when I did things my way, I failed, so I’m not going to tell you how to live your life. I don’t have that right. However, I would ask only one thing.
Live with no regrets.
— The Mourner.
Chapter 4
RALA SHINED BRIGHTLY on a new day in Haven City. Sixty-one teenagers between the ages of eleven and nineteen stood in a line in front of Fan Shun; each student was in the channel building stage of their cultivation.
The younger students were considered prodigies. Very few people managed to make it to the channel building stage before the age of thirteen. As for the older students, the ones approaching twenty years of age, many of them had settled into their stage, content with mediocrity.
This was a common problem in Haven City. Though it was a requirement for the citizens of Haven City to enter the channel building stage, a large part of the population didn’t care for training, or power. They only did what was necessary for them to be acknowledged as adults, then stopped training altogether.
That’s why almost ninety percent of the population was content to stay in the channel building stage. The few who managed to make it into the body refining stage were considered geniuses. They were prodigies of their generation, and all were destined to become pillars of their clans. And for the handful who managed to make it all the way to the spirit rising stage... Well, they may as well have been divine beings.
At Fan Shun’s command, the students roared in unison as they swung their wooden practice swords.
Meanwhile, Taryn was off to the side of the group in a deep stance: his feet were planted shoulder width apart, knees bent at a ninety-degree angle so his backside was parallel with the ground. For good measure, he was forced to hold his arms out to both sides, and buckets of water had been hung from his wrists via some rope.
“How are you doing over there, Taryn?” Fan Shun asked when she came over to check on him for the third time. Taryn wanted to tell her how he really felt but settled for grumbling under his breath. He knew that if he spoke, if he lost focus for even a moment, he’d fail and have to start again tomorrow.
That was his punishment for going where he didn’t belong. He was to hold this stance for three continuous hours, and failing to do so would result in him having to start over the next day. This cycle would continue until he was able to complete all three hours in a single day, per Teng De’s instructions. And to ensure Taryn couldn’t cheat his way out of it, the entire exercise had to be supervised by Fan Shun, and he wasn’t allowed out of her sight until the punishment was done.
He was thankful that his grandmother had somehow managed to convince Teng De to hold off on exiling him from the city, but he was beginning to wonder if Fan Shun didn’t suggest this specific punishment just so she could teach him a lesson herself...
It wasn’t entirely bad though. At this distance, Taryn could observe the clan’s training methods without needing to spy on them; he could learn the intricacies of their moves, the purpose of their steps, the—no. No, that’s not right... Something in his gut twinged every time they swung their swords and made him want to look away.
It was like hearing the most obnoxious sound you could imagine, on repeat. Taryn wanted it to stop, wanted them to stop and put down the swords before they—they’re awful. This realization hit Taryn like a pissed off Eco Beast.
The reason Taryn was having a hard time watching them was because he instinctively knew they were doing it wrong. Worse still, it was clear to him from the lackadaisical swings and the uninterested stares some of them were showing that they were content with where they were. The Mourner had said that his experience was being absorbed. Well, judging by his reaction at seeing their half-assed swings, it was clear to Taryn that the Mourner knew how to use a sword... Which meant Taryn knew how to use a sword too.
The trainees were garbage—no, that was too harsh a comparison. Garbage at least had a chance to hit something with a little effort. With the way they were swinging those wooden swords, the trainees would be lucky to hit the wide side of a house, never mind a mobile enemy.
To Fan Shun’s credit, she also knew they were hopeless. Taryn could see it in the lines of her face every time she had to correct a trainee’s form. But she was forced to be there, just like he was. If for an entirely different reason.
Mentally, Taryn noted every misstep, every overextended swing, every time one of the trainees bowed out. He was surprised at how easily he was able to keep track of everything. Whatever the journal had done to him, and if the Mourner was to be believed, was still doing to him, was having a profound effect on his mental acuity.
For instance, Taryn noticed a boy around his age in the second row; there wasn’t anything outstanding about him, no, what drew Taryn’s attention was his weak grip on the practice sword. Which was odd, considering the trainee was tall and broad shouldered. If anything, he should have been gripping the sword too tight, not the other way around.
If left uncorrected, the practice sword would soon slip out of his hand. Once that happened, there was a thirty percent chance of it striking the student in front of him.
Taryn saw this from forty feet away, so he was sure his grandmother had to have noticed it as well. Yet, she’d done nothing to correct it. In fact, Taryn couldn’t remember her correcting the boy at all.
“Grandma?” Taryn quietly called out to her, hoping to get her attention before the worst happened. She shot him a warning glance in return. It was at that moment Taryn remembered that he wasn’t allowed to call her grandma while she was teaching. “Teacher Shun?” he corrected.
“What is it?” Fan Shun made her way over and squatted to look Taryn in the eye.
“Pretty boy over there is going to hurt someone if he doesn’t hold his sword correctly,” Taryn whispered to her, gesturing to the limp-wristed student with his head for emphasis.
Taryn noticed a slight widening of her eyes when she realized who he was referring to. She placed her hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. The young master of the Gao family will never see combat,” she muttered, missing the point of Taryn’s statement.
“I’m not worried about him, Grandma,” Taryn assured her, a little louder than necessary. “I’m worried about that chunk of wood leaving his hands and striking the girl in front of him. His wrist is so limp that if it were a horse, it would’ve been put down.” By now, Taryn’s conversation had been overheard by the students in the front row. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out which girl he was referring to, since there was only one girl in the front row... Which made it rather easy to discern who the limp-wristed student was.
Under the amused stares of his fellow students, Ukata Gao Feng’s face turned purple from embarrassment and anger. He threw his practice sword aside and began marching towards Taryn.
“Get back in line!” Fan Shun ordered. Her words brought Gao Feng up short, his body freezing on the spot, which only served to infuriate him more.
