The uproar at the Jade Pool had entirely died away, and cloud and mist rolled through the mountains.
Chu Qingxue walked ahead in plain white immortal's robes, the hem lifted lightly by the mountain wind, every step falling on the bluestone even and measured — the Saintess's bearing, polished day and night for three months until it was carved into her blood and bone.
Behind her Lin Jin was still holding that can of iced cola, his one broken flip-flop slapping the stone, beating out a ragged flap-flap the whole way.
He had not said a word from the moment they set off. His tangled thoughts crashed around inside his chest like a knot of hemp until the weight of them made it hard to breathe.
One moment he had been at his dorm computer playing a game, hand tightening on the mouse; the next, blinding golden light had swept over him, and when he opened his eyes he was soaking in a warm spirit spring while dozens of female disciples in elegant robes rushed him, ringed him in and kicked, vicious talk about gouging out his eyes and throwing him to demon beasts filling his ears. That panic of standing at death's door still had his heart in its grip, and every beat carried a dull ache.
He looked around him. Mountain peaks hung suspended in midair, runes carved into the cliff faces flowed without cease, and now and then a keen sword light streaked across the far sky — impossible to tell whether it was a cultivator riding a blade or some kind of monster.
A bellyful of questions piled up at his throat, but the survival instinct in his bones held him back. He understood perfectly: this white-robed immortal lady of unfathomable strength need only move a fingertip and he would ascend on the spot. The more he said, the more he would get wrong. Only behaving himself would keep him alive.
He kept his head down for half the mountain path before curiosity finally beat out fear. Lin Jin lowered his voice on purpose and ventured, carefully, "Um... immortal lady?"
Chu Qingxue's step faltered by a fraction, though she did not look back, and her cool, level voice came from ahead. "Speak."
"What is this place, exactly?"
Lin Jin gripped the cold cola can against his chest, his eyes full of bewilderment.
"The Ethereal Sword Sect. One of the seven great orthodox sects. The cultivation world of the Eastern Wilds."
The few short words landed in his ears and Lin Jin stopped dead, his throat tightening, murmuring to himself under his breath.
Only now did he truly and fully accept the absurd reality of having crossed over. Twenty-odd years of settled, ordinary modern life had become smoke on the wind.
The two of them, one ahead and one behind, walked on slowly again through the misted mountain path.
Lin Jin stole glances at the splendid immortal scenery around him, and his mind threw up, unbidden, those university nights curled on the top bunk with his roommate, reading cultivation novels until dawn.
Back then he would wave his arms about in high spirits and talk enormous nonsense — that if he ever crossed into a cultivation world he would pass his tribulation in three years and ascend in five, crush devil lords with his fist and tread the heavenly dao underfoot. And his bro Chu Yang, head buried in a book, never even looking up, would puncture every last fantasy with a flat "Pass your calculus retake first."
Now he had genuinely set foot in the cultivation world he had dreamed of, and there was not a shred of the hot-blooded exhilaration the books described. His clothes were soaked through with spring water, his cheeks covered in bruises, one broken flip-flop left on his feet, and every inch of him a wreck.
After a stretch of silence Lin Jin spoke up again, timidly, a flustered urgency in his voice to clear his own name. "Immortal lady, about what happened at the Jade Pool — that group of immortal maidens, ah, right, your junior sisters — I really didn't see anything clearly.
The mist over the spring was thick. My eyes still sting from it even now. There's not half a word of deception in that."
Chu Qingxue gave a light acknowledgment. "Mm."
The stone hanging in Lin Jin's chest did not come down, and he pressed on quickly. "Do you truly believe what I'm saying?"
Chu Qingxue stopped abruptly and turned slowly around.
Lin Jin could not check himself in time and nearly walked straight into her. He stumbled back two hurried steps, spine snapping straight, looking every inch a man waiting to be executed.
Chu Qingxue looked at him quietly, seeing clearly the crossing shoe prints on his face, the red swelling and the bruises, and the unease churning behind his eyes.
Something moved in her chest. She understood now. With the grin stripped away, this was not Lin Jin talking his slippery way out of trouble — this was fear from the bottom of him. Fear of having his eyes carved out, fear of being buried in a demon beast's jaws, fear of this foreign world where he had not a soul to turn to and where no one would believe half a word he said in his own defense.
After a moment's silence Chu Qingxue asked softly, "What do you intend to do from here?"
Lin Jin started, then set the cola down carefully by his feet, put away the grin, straightened his back, and turned serious.
"Immortal lady, you spared my life today. I will remember it as long as I live."
Chu Qingxue stood quietly and waited for the rest.
"I've read plenty of cultivation novels. A mortal like me who blunders into a female cultivators' retreat for no reason gets his eyes dug out as the lightest punishment. With worse luck he's chopped up and fed to demon beasts, or refined into a medicinal ingredient."
A trace of a bitter smile crept onto Lin Jin's lips, and he thumped his own chest hard.
"But you didn't only step in and get me out of it, you paid spirit stones out of your own pocket to soothe your junior sisters. That kindness I, Lin Jin, hold in my heart, and I wouldn't dare forget it. I still don't know the immortal lady's name. I hope you'll tell me."
Chu Qingxue looked at that rare pure, earnest gaze of his, at that battered face wearing an utterly serious expression, and her feelings churned. "You may call me Senior Sister Qingxue."
"Senior Sister Qingxue!"
Lin Jin's eyes lit up instantly, the wild delight in his voice impossible to hide, and then he stopped halfway through, coming abruptly back to himself, and ventured a question. "Immortal lady, if you're telling me to call you Senior Sister — does that mean I can stay in the sect?"
Chu Qingxue inclined her head slightly.
Lin Jin's breath caught, and his voice shook as he pressed on. "Then I... I can cultivate too?"
"Mm."
That one short syllable fell, and Lin Jin froze where he stood.
Chu Qingxue watched him standing there dazed, and long-sealed memories of their boyhood came flooding up in her. She knew better than anyone how deep into Lin Jin's bones the obsession with cultivation went.
In middle school, when every other boy in the class was mad about ball games, he alone would tuck himself into a corner of the sports field, snap off a dead branch for a sword, shut his eyes, and hack at the air over and over without stopping for the whole of the break.
The PE teacher passing by took him for a lunatic, confiscated the branch, and made him run laps. The next day he found a longer one and went right on practicing his sword alone, telling anyone he met that his dao heart was firm.
By university, while everyone else had their heads down revising before finals, he alone sat cross-legged on his dorm bunk with his eyes shut, meditating, claiming to be sensing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth in a wild attempt to divine the exam questions.
The students next door would poke their heads in to tease him, and his roommate Chu Yang would only wave a hand mildly — he was like this every finals season, year after year. When he failed the course, he refused to admit he had been lazy and insisted instead that he had suffered backlash for peering into the heavenly dao. That line of his — "I have a sword. It can move mountains, cut rivers, cleave the vault of heaven. Sword, come!" — he had been reciting for six solid years.
She had always taken it for a young man's absurd edgelord fantasy. Only now did she see it clearly for what it was: everything other people treated as a joke came from real longing in him. All he had ever wanted was to one day ride a sword above the clouds and roam the nine heavens.
Now the dream had actually landed in front of him. Lin Jin's eyes reddened, and an excitement he could not hold down swept through him.
He leapt straight up on the spot. The cola can rolled far away, and he had no attention to spare for it. He dropped to both knees and knocked his head against the ground three times, thud, thud, thud.
When he was done he pushed himself up off the ground, his face a mess of tears and dirt — a grown man seven chi tall, weeping openly from sheer feeling.
He scrubbed at it with his sleeve and only made it worse, then gave up on it entirely and said thickly, "I thought I was certain to die today. Dropped into another world out of nowhere, beaten by a crowd of immortal ladies, nearly lost my life. I never dared hope there'd be a chance to set foot on the cultivation road."
He raised his eyes to Chu Qingxue and pulled out a smile that was ugly and utterly sincere. "To me, Senior Sister, you're the parent who gave me a second life. From today my life belongs to you entirely. Serving tea, pouring water, chopping wood, tending fires, any task at all — I won't refuse a single one."
Chu Qingxue looked at him crying and laughing at once, wretched and ridiculous, and five flavors mixed together in her chest; she very nearly could not keep the corner of her mouth from curving. Then she heard the tremor he could not hide in his voice, and an ache rose in her instead.
Watching the bro who had carried this obsession for years finally touch the threshold of the cultivation he had dreamed of — the cultivation world was extraordinarily dangerous, but she was genuinely glad for him all the same.
She lifted the fallen cola can with spiritual power and put it back into his arms, her tone a shade gentler. "Get up."
Lin Jin scrambled to his feet and wiped his cheeks over and over with his sleeve until he had recovered some measure of dignity.
Chu Qingxue drew a jade token from her sleeve and passed it to him. "Wait for me here tomorrow at noon. Tonight, take this token to the guest lodge at the foot of Purple Sun Peak. Show it and you'll be given a room. There are outer sect disciples keeping watch there."
Lin Jin accepted the token respectfully with both hands, his eyes still red, thanking her over and over. "Thank you for thinking of everything, Senior Sister Qingxue! Whatever Senior Sister asks of me, I'd face ten thousand deaths without flinching. In this life I acknowledge no one but Senior Sister."