A Tale of Nice Tails

A Tale of Nice Tails

Yuren Jie stood before the temple’s gates with a heart full of pride.

At long last, he had made it to the top of Beast Mountain. The great jade gates of the entrance stood with the majesty of the heavens themselves. A great stairway of stone awaited him beyond it, alongside great buildings as old as time itself.

This. This was where Yuren would complete his formation and ascend to greatness.

Yuren Jie wasn’t special among would-be cultivators. He was simply young, handsome, incredibly talented, phenomenally lucky–hard work was for those who weren’t born winners, after all–and most importantly of all, about as modest as a peacock on a strut. He was a magnet for beautiful women, though of course, he remained above the influence. Girls led to romance, romance led drama, and drama led to work.

And real work was beneath Yuren, like the earth crawled beneath the sky.

No other sect was worthy of being graced with his immense talent. The Golden Order Sect had produced the greatest and most powerful cultivators in all of the Thousand Story Realms. He would soon put them all to shame.

And so, it was with great pride that he stepped inside the temple. He immediately sensed a warm power flow over him like water on a smooth rock; an energy filling his body with serenity and energy. It was as if all his exhaustion and doubts vanished in an instant.

He found himself entering a courtyard of well-tended grass and lotus flower ponds. A haven of peace… were it not for its occupants.

A bunch of disheveled men crawled on the ground with the grace of maggots.

“She just won’t stop firing at us…” a man rasped, his clothes full of holes and his eyes beset with fear. “Every day…”

“I can’t…” Another replied, while clearly in a fugue state of some kind. “Get back here, minion… get back here…”

Losers, Yuren thought. He knew cultivation wasn’t for everyone. Few possessed the willpower to claim their rightful place at the world’s apex. He didn’t look down on these failures, not really. They were just beneath his notice.

Thankfully, Yuren soon noticed an elder meditating near a pond; a great and powerful cultivator with a long white beard, plain silk robes, and wizened skin. The man turned his head at Yuren with eyes full of wisdom.

“Who are you?” he asked, his words carrying the weight of a mountain.

“I am Yuren Jie, aspiring master under the heavens,” Yuren introduced himself. “I have come to join the Golden Order Sect, greatest in the Thousand Story Realms.”

“You are in the wrong place,” the sage replied before returning to his meditation. “Get lost.”

The casual, sudden dismissal filled Yuren’s heart with anger and incomprehension. “Isn’t this Beast Mountain?” he protested in disbelief. “Then you should be in the Golden Order Sect!”

“No, we are the Golden Hoarder Sect now. With an H and an A. We used to be the Golden Order, but Dragon Sifu-Sensei insisted on the name change.” The sage shuddered. “Arguing with Dragon Sifu-Sensei leads us further away from enlightenment and closer to ignorance, so we accepted his wisdom with pain and humility.”

“Your sect’s name does not matter to me, only its power,” Yuren declared. How dare that old geezer not recognize his limitless potential? “I have to come to train and take my rightful place among the Immortals.”

“To join our Sect is to experience great suffering,” the elder replied without looking at Yuren. “You know not what one must endure to ascend.”

“I’m not afraid of anything, old man,” Yuren insisted. “I will pass any test I must.”

This time, the elder deigned to look at him again. But his eyes… His eyes were devoid of anger and pride. Instead they radiated compassion. A deep sense of pity, the kind one reserved to cancer patients or the most miserable of all creatures.

It took Yuren completely aback. “W-why do you look at me with such pitiful eyes?”

The elder shook his head with a deep sigh and a quiet look of resignation. He rose to his feet and then agreed to Yuren’s request. “Very well,” he said. “Dragon Sifu-Sensei will see to your initiation and put you through the Test of the Mind.”

A dragon? So the rumors were true, the Golden Ord–Hoarder Sect included a true dragon among its elders.

Yuren nodded sharply, and then followed the elder deeper into the temple. The noise of explosions coming from nearby courtyards rocked the structure, but Yuren paid more attention to the strange energy pervading the air. Was that a spell of some kind?

“You are now under the influence of Fairy Elaine’s healing power,” the Elder explained upon noticing his curiosity. “It shall heal your wounds, even the searing flames of Dragon Sifu-Sensei’s divine breath.”

Yuren had been begging to ask something. “Sifu-Sensei? Aren’t they the same thing?”

“You are not to question Dragon Sifu-Sensei’s logic,” the elder replied with the wisdom of the eon-old turtle. “You will hurt yourself and your wounded spirit will crawl away from enlightenment.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“There is no answer, only acceptance.”

That made no sense, but Yuren didn’t have time to wonder for long. The elder soon led him down great stairs wide enough for an army to climb and before great closed gates of gold dug into the very heart of the mountain. It would take two giants to open them.

“Dragon Sifu-Sensei awaits beyond these doors,” said the elder. “I must warn you that only the strongest of will can endure what awaits you.”

“Then I’m overqualified,” Yuren replied.

Once again, the elder sent him a gaze full of pity and compassion.

It started to wear on Yuren’s nerves. “Are you looking down on me, old man?”

The elder shook his head. With no more time to waste on this senile old fool, Yuren approached the golden doors and waited for them to open. They didn’t. He stood in place for five minutes, waiting for the gates to bow before his majesty, before noticing a smaller backdoor dug into the stone. He grumbled as he walked through it.

What awaited him on the other side nearly left him blinded.

Never before had he seen such a wealth of treasures gathered in a single place. A vault larger than an entire town stretched far and wide before his eyes. An ocean of gold glittering like the sun filled each and every corner under the weight of marble pillars.

And atop its greatest hill stood a dragon.

A great and mighty beast with crimson ruby scales, jet black wings, and claws longer and sharper than any spear. The beast’s fangs alone matched all of Yuren in length. The creature raised its immense and wise head upon sensing his approach, then looked at his visitor with eyes of shining gold.

Yuren immediately realized that something was wrong.

This looked like a dragon, felt like a dragon, but it wasn’t a Long. It had no fur, no deer horns, no mustache. Was it a rare form Yuren had never heard of?

“Who dares interrupt my slumber?” asked the dragon, his voice stronger than a thunderstorm, his words heavy with the force of a hurricane.

“I do, oh great dragon sifu-sensei,” Yuren replied upon bending the knee. “I am–”

“Insignifiant!” the dragon interrupted him with a grunt. “Call me Dragon Sifu-Sensei, if you wish to live.”

“I…” Yuren frowned in utter confusion. Had he offended the dragon somehow? “I just did.”

“You will call me Dragon Sifu-Sensei, capitalized. I can tell the difference.” The great dragon narrowed his eyes at Yuren, his tail sending waves of coins falling down his throne of treasures. “Are you a thief? I hope so. I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

“Far from it, Dragon Sifu-Sensei.” How did he… The letters felt right, but he couldn’t explain why. “I have come to study with the Golden Hoarder Sect.”

“Ah, excellent.” The dragon suddenly sounded pleased. He raised his mighty head and swaggered, his chest full of pride. “Then know that I, Vainqueur Knightsbane, First under the Heavens, Great Buddha of this Age, Master of the Golden Hoarder Path, and King of Beast Mountain, shall gladly accept your fee!”

Yuren squinted in confusion. “The fee?”

The dragon’s happy mood suddenly deflated. Yuren felt his blood run cold as the immense beast looked at him with unbearable suspicions.

“Your entrance fee,” the great dragon asked, smoke coming out of his nostrils.

Yuren had the impression of standing on thin ice. Or in this case, kneeling in front of a very large beast with a gullet of swirling fire.

“F-For the sect?” For the first time in his short life, Yuren found himself suddenly beset with dread. “There is an entrance fee?”

“Of course there is one! Do you think this place is a home for homeless cultivators?” The dragon rubbed his claws together. “You must pay the low, low price of ten thousand gold to join my sect.”

The price was so outrageous that Yuren forgot to be afraid. “Ten thousand? You can buy half a kingdom with that!”

“I do not like your tone, miserly poor disciple.” The dragon snorted fumes and raised his head so high it nearly hit the ceiling. “Did you expect the secrets of the universe to come cheap? That I, the greatest immortal under the heavens, would teach you the way of the Dragon Dao for free?”

“But–”

“I am a dragon,” Vainqueur interrupted him sharply. “Your kind named its best techniques after me. Which one sounds better, Immortal Dragon Fist or Puny Ape Slap?”

Yuren opened his mouth to answer, but what could he say before such ironclad logic? The weight of his insignificance suddenly dawned upon him when faced with a creature large enough to swallow him in one bite.

“Come to think of it, I should charge you for cultural appropriation too,” Vainqueur muttered to himself. “Your species’ debt towards me keeps increasing.”

“I, uh…” Yuren gulped. The realization of his own poverty suffocated him. “I do not have… ten thousand gold…”

The dragon looked at him as if were lesser than a cockroach. It reminded Yuren of how he used to look on others, but magnified ten thousand times over. Like a noble king glaring at a pile of horse shit waiting to be squashed.

“Are these clothes all that you have?” he asked with a dangerous edge to his voice.

Yuren gulped and then nodded.

“Give me your shirt,” the dragon said. “Give it to me. Give it to me now.”

Yuren was too intimidated, too ashamed, to resist. He threw his shirt at the dragon’s hoard, keeping only his pants.

“Your debt has decreased to nine-thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand gold and nine silver,” the dragon declared with ludicrous precision. “To reward your dedication and humility, I shall accept you as an Emergency Food Disciple.”

Yuren didn’t like that title at all. “Why emergency?”

“Because everyone outside the sect is just food,” the dragon replied kindly. Yuren wisely didn’t push the subject further. “Emergency Food Disciple is the lowest rank in my Golden Hoarder sect. Then you have Minion Disciple, Minion Master, Princess, Virgin Princess, Catering Gourmet, and then Chief of Staff. And then there is me, Dragon Sifu-Sensei. Do you understand your place?”

Yuren opened his mouth to argue, when he suddenly noticed piles of ashes in a corner of the vault. Somehow, he had the intuition that they didn’t start out as firewood.

“I… I do, Dragon Sifu-Sensei.”

“Good,” Vainqueur replied. “Henceforth, you shall work for this sect for free until you repay your entrance fee. It should only take you five hundred years or so, factoring in the interests and the first class lodging accommodations.”

“Five hundred years?” Yuren choked. “But I won’t live that long!”

The dragon looked at Yuren with condescension. The young disciple suddenly remembered the entire reason why he even came to this place; and why it suddenly didn’t appear like a good thing anymore.

“Why do you think,” Vainqueur asked, “We dragons taught you humans how to become immortal?”

Yuren’s heart skipped a beat in his chest, his soul suddenly assaulted by the primal terror of the modern man. The ultimate technique which had brought countless aspiring masters low.

The Student Loan Debt Trap.

“We taught you immortality so you can work longer hours and make us richer. Time is money, and right now, you are wasting mine.” Vainqueur dismissively waved a claw at Yuren. “Return rich or not at all.”

Yuren found himself walking back to the exit before he realized what was happening. His mind, his pride, screamed at him to make a stand, but whenever he tried to straighten his spine, it crumbled back under the weight of his defeat.

“Loafer,” he heard the dragon complaining behind his back. “Another one who lives in his mother’s cave.”

Yuren closed the backdoor behind him, and found the Elder waiting for him.

He looked surprised to see the disciple alive at all.

“What just happened?” Yuren muttered to himself, his brain scrambled. He tried to find an explanation for this meeting and found none. None of this made sense.

“Dragon Sifu-Sensei was brought in as a treasurer, to better protect the sect’s funds from thieves,” the Elder explained. “Dragon Sifu-Sensei is so good at his job that he keeps the gold safe from us too. He only lends us one-one tenth of what we ask for.”

“One one tenth?” Yuren Jie did a quick calculation in his head. “Like a tenth of a tenth?”

“Hence why we ask for ten times of what we need each time.”

“But that’s still a tenth!” Yuren protested.

“Dragon Sifu-Sensei is bad at math, but you?” The elder looked into his eyes. “You will be worse.”

A terrible pain raced through Yuren’s skull, raw and sharp. Blood dripped down his nose and inside his lips. Then he sensed Fairy Elaine’s magic healing his head from whatever wound he suffered through.

“What is this?” Yuren asked upon touching his blood. “What is this?”

“You went through a brain aneurysm,” the elder explained. “By surviving a meeting with Dragon Sifu-Sensei, you have taken your first step towards enlightenment. Next is the Test of the Body.”

A chill traveled down Yuren’s spine.

Ascending to the heavens might prove a little harder than expected.

Yuren Jie walked the many peaks of the Golden Hoarder monastery, wondering what in all realms he had gotten himself into.

There were many manners of sects under heaven, from righteous to demonic, but none with a foreign dragon extorting new prospects. And that was but the first in a long series of surprises. Elders who ought to be overseeing mortal affairs, nodding gravely over cups of tea, ran around in a frenzy to pursue strange and outlandish philosophies.

“The fist of utilitarianism must be wielded for the happiness of the many, not the great happiness of the one!”

“That is not the nature of a cultivator!”

Masters and disciples wore uniforms in a wide variety of styles and colors. Students fought on the streets, exchanging insults and yet, none of them ever spat blood! It was as if some strange aura prevented them from being hurt internally and externally. In this place, one could lose nothing but their face. It was baffling. It was chaos.

The architecture as well defied the imagination. Most pavilions showed the harmony and beauty of the Thousand Story Realms, yet here and there, foreign contraptions ruined the effect like zits on the face of a jade-like beauty.

The test of the Body was to take place in the next peak, and when his eyes rested upon its massive flanks, Yuren Jie’s stomach dropped. Chimneys belched black smoke to the skies while the din of metal on metal strained the ears. As he walked across a long bridge, he was joined by other prospective students. He knew they were like him because the men were shirtless, the women sleeveless, and all of them looked as if their birth village had been burned down by a callous young master they would spend seventy-three chapters tracking down.

They exchanged confused looks but not much else.

Their path led them to a wide, open platform facing the maze of steel and heat that could only be the Armory, a great beast that breathed dark smoke and glared at them from its myriad of glass windows. Targets and strange, wood platforms filled with stacks of precious ores waited on one side. Racks of training equipment lined the other.

Now what?

A man exploded out of one of the windows in a shower of crystalline shards. He slammed into the ground with back-breaking strength before coming to a rest at the students’ feet, yet once again, he stood unharmed. A feminine voice rang through the air. It was very loud.

“A shield against arrows must be made of composite materials! I won’t give two pills about your fancy water enchantment unless it’s layered on a properly designed base! Have I taught you nothing?”

The fallen man jumped to his knee, face lit with the revelation of the dao.

“Thank you for your guidance!” he cried, then more quietly, he needled Yuren Jie on.

“You had better come in while she is in a good mood, junior brother.”

Yuren Jie was not so sure, yet the presence of the other students meant he could not refuse or he would risk losing face. He had to show he was a dragon among men, but obviously of the proper variety this time.

He opened the gate using the strength of a hundred men. It was a heavy gate.

Golden morning light shone on a workshop, and on a woman wearing the strangest cultivator robe he had ever seen.

“HISS!”

She cowered for a second, leaving Yuren Jie certain he was soon to meet his ancestors. Instead, she smoothed that impractical garment of hers.

“Sorry, habit. Ah, yes, I recognize in you the fish-eyed and shirtless appearance of…”

She sniffed the air. Her sky-blue eyes narrowed.

“Fresh blood. ‘Tis time again, it seems. Oh well. I will be with you shortly.”

As she turned to one of her assistants, Yuren Jie studied her appearance even more. She was certainly a laowai from faraway, with golden hair and that strange… dress… of hers. There was something uncanny about her. Her canines were too sharp. Her fingers ended in black talons, short yet sharp. Perhaps some beast blood ancestry.

“The alloy we want is nine part mountain steel and no less than one part vanadium, manganese, and copper. I don’t care if it is not ‘the way’. If you don’t follow my orders, I will not eat you, I will shove an incandescent bar up your buttocks the size of the average machine-translated Xianxia novel, and you know it will not kill you. Not here.”

The apprentice bowed.

The woman returned her attention to them.

“To the Test of the Body, and then we will give you your uniforms.”

She stepped outside, as did all of the other prospective students in various states of confusion.

“Right,” she said. “Let us clear things up. My name is Fairy Thread Seeker and the first thing that will come out of your filthy impurity pools will be ma’am. Do you silk worms understand that?”

Yuren Jie gasped.

“WELL?”

“Ma’am, yes,” a few students replied with terror.

“I can’t hear you, sound off like you got a core!”

“Ma’am, yes!”

“That’s better. If you disgusting spawn survive my training, if you find your dao, you will be a shining and tasty example of mankind, leading the world forward with an understanding of war, crafts, ethics, and safe forklift operation. But until that day, you are nothing! You are lice crawling on the ass crack of destiny. Frogs at the bottom of the well. You are lower than the dirt. You are not even cultivators. You are amorphous accretions of baseless audacity. Because I do not give face, you will not like me, but the more you despise me, the higher you shall soar. I am difficult but fair. There is no discrimination on blood here. I don’t care if you are jade like beauties, body cultivators, toad cultivators, three ravens in a trench coat, or if your ancestor fucked a dragon once. You are all equally pathetic. And my goal is to turn your arrogant mediocrity into the exacting perfection of a Golden Hoarder member.”

The woman waited to see if anyone would object. Yuren Jie could not sense her cultivation, but she had to be at least at the navel-gazing realm to become a Peak Master. As a man gifted with the rare talent of common sense, he knew better than to challenge her. By some miracle, none of the students dared protest.

“No one to perform involuntary qigong this time? Amazing. First thing first then, in order to better understand who you are, you will be allowed to attack me so that I may taste your mettle.”

Someone raised a hand. The woman nodded.

“Ma’am, do you mean test our mettle?”

“I said what I said. Enough barking at the moon or whatever. Face me, get your uniforms, then your next stop will be the medical pavilion.”

Fear spread across the ranks.

“No, I will not maim you. You are going there to receive medicine and advice on how to practice safe sects. It is your duty to remain cautious, for the Thousand Story Realms are a dangerous and nonsensical place ruled by maniacs, as you all well know. What? What’s that look?”

“Ma’am, it’s nothing,” a disciple grumbled.

“I thought as much. Since you cannot school your expression, you’re the first to be schooled. Get up here and show me what you can do.”

The woman appeared on one of the elevated platforms. A flick of her fingers, and the nearby targets disappeared, leaving the space bare.

“Get on with it.”

Yuren Jie quickly realized that although his skill was supreme, he was not yet peerless. Students faced the woman one after the other and she somehow matched their skill and even style perfectly to push them to their limits without humiliating them. Her guidance left many disciples in awe.

“How about screaming the name of your technique after you’ve used it? Or even while you cast it, but not, maybe, before?”

“Please do not monologue at me. I am impervious to such low-level sass. Focus on the fight.”

“If you tell me that this pill will unleash your true power, I’m going to try to stop you from eating it, you know?”

Truly extraordinary revelations. After fighting the disciples and giving them advice, the woman would provide them with a matching uniform that would best match their budding dao.

“You smell of water and metal. This should serve you well.”

She handed one of the disciples a salmon-colored robe embroidered with the image of a mighty fish jumping up a waterfall. It was exquisitely made.

“Pink? You want me to wear pink?”

“You also smell like my lunch.”

“I am honored by your gift, esteemed elder.”

“That’s better.”

And soon, it was Yuren Jie’s turn.

As a genius that happened only once in a generation among an arbitrarily selected population number, Yuren Jie wanted to show that he was not to be underestimated, although he often was for some reason. Indeed, he may have been the child of a beautiful seamstress who died of unidentified wasting disease and a mysterious man who left him nothing but a ring bearing the sigil of the ruling bloodline of the phoenix empire, a demonly heavenly manual of techniques that only work with children of the imperial bloodline of the phoenix empire, and also a dagger that could only be wielded by the heir of the phoenix empire, and him for some reason, but he was certain he was destined for greatness. He couldn’t stumble across hidden inheritances every three chapters if fate didn’t recognize in him the seeds of a sage to equal the heavens.

He prepared his first technique, a forbidden special skill that killed most users after three attempts, except for him because he was just that talented.

He raised his fist. The rays of the sun gathered in an ethereal dance like fireflies upon —

“Another protagonist. Ugh, I hate protagonists,” the woman complained.

She extended her hand, then seemed to reconsider.