Chapter 39- With Open Hands

Very soon turned out to be after what was technically his hospital shift. The word technically had to be inserted, as people kept stopping him, checking in on him, praising him for his restraint while loudly declaring that they couldn’t have stood it themselves. They’d have killed the little bastard!

Tian appreciated the good wishes, but he didn’t believe the boasting. It was Doctor Pei who sat him down in an examination room and asked the important question. “Why did you let him hit you?”

Tian looked away, then down. “It’s stupid.”

Doctor Pei waited patiently. Tian finally ground out- “I could feel it was a trap. The unnatural flow of the situation led me to hit him, so I didn’t. But the real reason I just stood there while he threw a fit was to establish dominance. Or at least hierarchy. I thought if I just ignored his words and showed he physically couldn’t hurt me, he would settle down. The only other time I’ve been slapped, it was a doctor saving my life. I didn’t know how it would feel.”

Doctor Pei nodded. “A very different thing. You might have heard the expression ‘Face slapping.’ It means humiliating someone. It could easily rise to a life and death vendetta.”

“I think that was the idea, yes.” Tian nodded.

Doctor Pei drew a steady breath, and carefully looked Tian over once again. “You say your care for our patients is driven by spite. Explain that.”

Tian tried to put into words what he had only understood emotionally. Eventually, he cupped his hands and slightly bowed.

“May I speak without minding my language?”

“Hah. Go ahead.”

“Fuck each and every person who throws people in the garbage!” Tian gasped and folded over on himself. He hadn’t know those were the words trying to come out. But it was true. It was what happened to him. Sick, burnt, crippled, practically blind, dying of every single thing and thrown in the garbage. Then they threw rocks at him when he cried for help. When he reached out. When he dared to exist in their sight. They threw him in the trash, then they threw rocks at him for trying to live!

If it wasn’t for Grandpa Jun, he would have died. If it wasn’t for his hugs, for that constant feeling of love and presence, he would have become a monster. A heretic. A being without compassion.

“My brothers and sisters are good people, mostly. And even the ones who aren’t are still people. They aren’t rags to mop up heretics and be thrown out when they are too dirty and torn up. I hate that anyone thinks of them that way. So I’m retaliating. By giving a damn. By being the one who turns up, and listens and is just there. Who fights against the pain, because I’ve been hurt and I’m hurting now but fuck it all to hell, I’m used to living with pain. And maybe, if I scream hard enough, fight hard enough, get big enough fists, I will prove I’m human too. That nobody can throw me or my brothers in the garbage!”

Doctor Pei inhaled sharply. Then nodded. “Can you let go of your feud with the Li Clan?”

“I don’t have a feud with the Li Clan, Doctor. I don’t even have a feud with the little idiot. Despite wanting to slap his head up into a point then round it off. I absolutely have a feud with whoever set us up.”

“That’s fair.” Doctor Pei pulled a battered book from his ring. It wasn’t very thick compared to his first aid manuals, but there was a strange weight to it. It pressed on the air around it.

“This art is not suitable for circulation. It never entered the sect’s dao repository let alone made its way out onto the library shelves. I didn’t hand it in because we have dozens of manuals that do practically the same things, and this particular art could be terribly misused. In the sense that someone could use it improperly and cripple themselves. Especially at the Earthly Person realm. On the other hand, it’s one of the very few true healing arts usable with vital energy alone.”

Doctor Pei extended the book to Tian. “Keep that heart. Keep studying. Keep fighting. And one day, I will be proud to call you Doctor. I am already proud to have a junior like you.”

Tian couldn’t get his head straight the whole rest of his shift. He couldn’t even name all the emotions he was feeling. He was greeted at the door by a member of the disciplinary squad. “Come with me. Supervisor Chen has called for you.”

They walked over to the depot gate. There was an enormous bird, big as the one that swallowed Tian, waiting. It was a crane. White feathers, a red crest on its head, and its long beak looked like the father of all pikes.

Martial Uncle Chen and twenty members of the disciplinary squad, including Hong Liren, were standing around its towering legs.

“Martial Uncle summoned me?”

“You are exactly on time. Good. We are going.”

It seemed they were going. Where, why and how were still mysteries. Still, if the Heavenly Person said “Go,” the Earthly Person went. Martial Uncle Chen waved a hand and everyone was lifted onto the back of the crane. A platform was floating just above the bird’s broad back, formation lines glowing around the edges.

The bird leapt into the air… and Tian stayed firmly planted on the platform. The whole thing moved and shifted with the bird, keeping everyone flat and steady on it. They weren’t even being battered by the wind. It was one of the strangest things Tian had ever seen. There was a fair amount of movement on the bird’s back, but they could ride it out well enough. They were, after all, cultivators.

“I’ll fill you in on the mission details while Senior Redmane carries us to our target. The heretics have a small base near here. More like a fortified inn or refuge than a proper base, but it amounts to the same thing. We had been leaving it alone as it made for easy surveillance. Not any more. I want prisoners. I want the ledgers. I want a thorough inventory of every grain of sand in that place and where you found it. Clear?”

“YES, SIR!” The disciplinary squad shouted, and Tian tried to keep up.

“Good. Junior Tian, you will stay out of the fighting and focus on keeping people alive. Us and them. Junior Hong, you will stay out of the fighting and focus on the inventorying.”

“Yes, Sir.” They chorused.

Tian noticed that Hong was fixating on the platform. There seemed to be a particular knot she had her eyes locked on to. He stood closer to her. Nobody was speaking, so he remained silent. Then he started cultivating. He saw the corner of her mouth twitch slightly. Maybe it was helping.

The wasteland looked beautiful from high up. The colors seemed to shift and move- all the reds and oranges and browns suddenly swept aside by miles and miles of black gravel and little jagged rocks. Even then there were shades of black, some with a bright shine, others ground matte by the blowing desert sands. Stark, harsh, but undeniably fascinating.

He definitely preferred seeing it from several hundred feet up.

“We are almost there. Get ready.” Tian couldn’t see what the Martial Uncle was talking about, but he pulled out his rope dart and glared at everything he could.

Chen drew a heavy saber from his storage ring. Five gold rings pierced the back half of the saber’s spine. Tian couldn’t imagine why the saber looked like that, but there were faint shimmers of metallic qi coming off them. Whatever it was, it was beyond his realm. Then the Martial Uncle raised his blade, and showed Tian what the world of a Heavenly Person powerhouse looked like.

The heavy saber rose and with it, a ghostly blade made of metallic qi. Tian thought he could see a brutal tiger printed in that qi, its round eyes full of fury, the King symbol burning on its forehead. Senior Chen swung down at a rocky outcrop hundreds of feet below. The tiger descended from the mountain.

The earth split apart.

Rocks exploded, stone fragments scything across the desert leaving long furrows behind them. The outcrop split open. There had been a hidden channel buried inside the rocks. Tian hadn’t seen a hint of it, he could have been right next to it and he’d have missed it. Chen split it in half the long way with his saber, ripping open the side of the rock face and exposing the caves within. It was like ripping open a termite mound. Or an ant’s nest. And now the ants are swarming.

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The heretics ran out in showers of sparks and twists of qi as talismans and formations shattered. In swirls and mobs of gu, or the shrieks of monkey-faced demons with wings for ears and long, clawlike paws. A withered looking heretic exploded upwards in a cloud of boiling demonic qi. “CHEN, YOU BASTARD!”

Chen didn’t frown, didn’t grunt, didn’t even blink. His saber did his talking. He flew off the platform and hacked down once more. The saber qi smashed into the demonic qi, splitting it wide apart. The heretic swung something too fast for Tian to see, but there was a deafening CLANG as blown rocks and dust showed the protective dome over the platform. Elder Redmane came in hot, crushing a few heretics under his long legs and spearing a few more with his beak. The Level Nines hooked ropes to the side of the platform and, bracing their feet against the elder and holding their bodies up with the rope, ran down the side of the giant bird.

Hong held up her hand and slowly closed one finger at a time. She reached five, then ran for the ropes. “Come on!”

It was chaos. The heretics were running, not interested in fighting to the death. Not all of them were level nine either- Tian watched a sister in the disciplinary squad knock out three with three punches, then looked shocked when her fourth punch exploded a heretic’s head.

The disciplinary squad was moving fast. Some were throwing out talismans that landed like little bolts of lightning, paralyzing those struck. Others tossed around exploding balls of smoke powder that left the heretics choking and gasping… and their Gu dying. Mostly they ran in with sabers and heavy maces. A few hung back with heavy bows, shooting down heretics trying to escape with light body arts.