“Fuck this!” Pengfei yelled to the sky. He ran up the steep mountain path once again, complaining to the heavens. He reached out and felt a twinge in his forearm. A step up and he felt an ache in his hamstring. When he jogged over open ground, his shins screamed in pain.

  Four days of training under Chen Rulan and Pengfei’s performance had suffered as much as his body. The short climb up from the cave had improved as he grew more comfortable scaling the rock but that was only a small portion of each day. The long hike down and up the mountain path took longer and longer each time as his aching body slowed him down. Each day the pain and soreness increased. Every new morning there was a new body part to add to the list.

  Today it was his backside.

  “My ass hasn’t been this sore since I learned to sit a saddle.” Pengfei groaned to Elder Rulan as he crested the hill.

  “Haha, good. Power comes from the buttocks!”

  The man laughed. Already one of the kinder elders, Chen Rulan had only become more affable as the days of Pengfei’s training passed. He gave no rebukes at the disciple’s abysmal pace but instead pushed forward a bowl of food.

  Pengfei grimaced as he ate. Once again the exercise had triggered a fire in his belly. But like pouring water on flames, the meal seemed to alleviate the symptoms.

  “Elder, do you think you can ask the Master Chen Lei for some medicine? My stomach is still bothering me.”

  “I’ll mention it to him tonight. Do you need anything else?”

  “Maybe another blanket? The nights are getting colder.”

  Chen Rulan nodded. “Autumn is starting in earnest now. I’ll bring some for you and the others tomorrow.”

  Pengfei recalled his friends in the other cliffside punishment cells. Shutian, Xiaotong, and Neng. They were already a month into their own isolation and did not have the elder’s training sessions to break up the monotony of it.

  --Actually, maybe they’re better off than I am? I bet they don’t have sore ass cheeks.--

  He placed his chopsticks gingerly to the side and pushed his bowl forward as he finished his meal. Chen Rulan retreated a few paces and brought forth a wooden sword.

  “You can’t put off the jian any longer,” the elder said, holding the weapon out to Pengfei.

  “I haven’t been putting it off… just seemed there was always something else to do.”

  “Hmmpf.”

  Pengfei took up the sword, holding it awkwardly in his right hand. The jian, the canonical weapon of Kunlun, like so many other sects in the Wulin. Mount Hua, Wudang, Southern Edge, Emei, the Nangong Family… they all used the double-edged straight sword. And for the Taoists, it wasn’t just a weapon, it was also a spiritual implement for all manner of ritual.

  “Chen Weidao would be a better instructor for the sword, but we’ll do what we can. Keep the grip a bit looser. Keep the tip up. Stance more bladed, bend the knees… good.”

  The disciple assumed the posture, bounced in it slightly, feeling the balance.

  --This feels awful…--

  The elder gave Pengfei an overview of the basic cuts. Splitting, drawing, pushing, rising cuts. But after a quick glimpse of the techniques, Chen Rulan chose to focus the day’s practice on the thrust.

  Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

  The footfalls landed heavily on the ground, each one drawing a wince from Chen Rulan.

  “Enough! You’re not trying to crack the stone beneath your feet!”

  “You said to lunge with power, sir.”

  “Lunge forward. You want your weight, your sword, moving forward. Not up and down. You’re raising your knee too high, like you’re trying to crack a nut with your boot. It should glide just over the earth.”

  The elder demonstrated again, and his foot indeed stayed close to the earth, skimming along the rock with barely a hint of daylight in between. But the end of his thrust was punctuated by a powerful clap of boot on dirt that Pengfei couldn’t understand.

  “Now you try.” The elder reached a hand for his scabbard and made to draw his sword.

  Only it wasn’t a sword.

  Pengfei thought it was a trick of shadow at first. A dark black blade seemed to be attached to the elder’s hilt. The Taoist master swung the black iron once, then took a stance with the weapon held before him.

  “Elder, what is that thing?”

  Chen Rulan held it up his arm so Pengfei could examine the thing. A length of plain iron with a square cross section, attached to a sword’s handle. “It’s a swordbreaker. A bar mace. I never had the grace for a proper jian. A simple iron rod suits a simple man like me.”

  Pengfei inspected the strange weapon for a moment, but when the elder took his stance again and the boy mirrored him hurriedly. A tentative thrust, and the wooden jian was batted away easily by the swordbreaker.

  “The power comes from the back leg. Again!”

  Pengfei tried again and again, never quite meeting his instructor’s expectations.

  “You’ll just have to practice on your own, in your cell. Three hundred thrusts before tomorrow…no, make it five hundred.”

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  The next day, it was the short chopping cuts with the flick of the wrist that strained his grip on the wooden sword’s hilt. Then the awkward drawing cut meant to slice the inside of an opponent’s wrist.

  Each new technique felt strange and awkward to the would-be swordsman. Even after completing the repetitions in the solitude of his cell, he could not find any dexterity or comfort in the movements.

  --But it’s still early.--

  He told himself with the first strike, the end of the first day, the first week. But even knowing intellectually that he could not hope to master such subtle movements in such a short span of time, his mind rebelled and began looking for reasons.

  --The stance? Using a wooden sword instead of a real one? Practicing alone instead of with a partner?--

  But he had to discount each excuse as time pressed on. And soon only the truth was left.

  Pengfei contemplated the problem on another lonely run up the mountain path. Chen Rulan waited at the top, near the entrance of the punishment cells, ready to instruct on the next lesson of swordsmanship. But Pengfei dragged his feet, stretching the morning exercise to avoid the practice. Voicing to himself what he had come to realize in the few short days of training.

  --I just don’t like the sword.--

  He heaved a sigh and paused his run for a short rest. He was at a point on the path where it it wrapped around the eastern side of the cliff. Pengfei could look up and see several of the other punishment cells carved into the rock, higher up above him, the mouths of their openings filled with shadow. He tried to spot a sign of his friends, imprisoned inside, but couldn’t tell which caves were occupied and which were empty.

  He kicked at pebbles as sweat dripped from his brow.

  --It’s… just so boring. Why does everyone have such a hard-on for the jian? Pfft.--

  Pengfei threw a few punches. In recent days he had found himself neglecting the assigned weapon practice in favor of the ‘Heaven Shaking Fist’.

  The feeling in his fists, forearms, and shoulders as he twisted and hooked each punch… He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Certainly, the fist techniques were more useful inside the sect where none of the disciples carried steel. But in the back of his mind, he knew that the wider world was filled with sharp edges waiting to bite into flesh. He had seen it first hand. Still, he couldn’t find any enthusiasm for the jian.

  --It’s just no fun.--

  A deep breath, the front toe slid forward and gripped the earth, his waist turned as it came forward, turning the torso, extending the arm, turning over the hand.

  “Hah!” he exhaled forcefully with the punch. A satisfying execution. He bounced on his toes for a moment then looked back to the path before him.

  --I guess I better get moving.--

  He continued on his way and soon came to a more difficult section of the route. One of the many vertical rock walls that made the trip up so arduous. He could sit on the ledge and drop down for the descent but the return required wedging his hands and feet into a thin fissure and shimmying up.

  As he prepared his hands for the abrasive maneuver, something caught his eye.

  --What is that?--

  A nearby cave he had noticed several times before. Not one of the cells carved by man into the cliff face. A natural cave, hidden at the back of a crevasse. Only visible on the way back up the path.

  In front of the familiar opening was a strange, curved, shape, more noticeable against the dark backdrop. It reminded Pengfei of something but he couldn’t place it. He stepped away from the rock wall and walked toward the dark slit in the mountainside, the odd lump in front of it.

  He could tell it was a large animal from several strides away but didn’t recognize it until he saw the corpse in its entirety. One of the great Ibex that roamed the cliffs. This one was just as large as the individual that had invaded Pengfei’s cell more than two weeks ago.

  --Might even be the same one.--

  The circular shape Pengfei had noticed turned out to be one of the beast’s horns, the other pinned awkwardly to the ground.

  The body was mostly intact with only the neck showing any signs of trauma. The head was turned to an unnatural angle and a large puddle of blood was still pooling. No smell, no flies, no carrion birds.

  “Where did you come from?”

  The dead mountain goat did not respond so Pengfei surveyed the area.

  “No sign of a herd, and these slopes aren’t very treacherous. I don’t think you fell.”

  The large cave mouth was just a few strides away now.

  “Did you come out of there?”

  Pengfei took a few hesitant strides toward the opening. The rock twisted away from him, blocked his vision past a half dozen paces.

  After a few minutes letting his eyes adjust, Pengfei stepped inside. The only sounds were the echoes of his own footsteps. Another bend and the entrance was out of sight, only a faint haze of sun indicating its direction. Shivers ran up his spine in the darkness.

  --Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea … --

  He turned to leave and stepped on something soft. He reached down to feel at his feet and found something wrapped in cloth. Long, heavy. He hesitated a second, snatched the foreign object up, then hurried back towards the light with increasing anxiety.

  Back in the daylight, he put his back to the mountain. Even flat against the stone, he couldn’t help but feel like something would snatch at him from behind.

  He calmed his breathing and looked to the object in his hand. Dark material, wet, and tattered, wrapped around something squishy. He unwrapped the cloth, and found…

  “Is this pork?”

  His eyes darted back and forth between the pale flesh and the dark material, and as he pulled the objects apart, noticed the red blood on his hands. The recognition of one thing led to the horrifying realization of the other. The shred of cloth was a pant leg, ripped from a set of black robes.

  The lump of meat Pengfei held in his other hand was a human leg, severed below the knee and missing everything below the ankle.

  “Fuck!”

  Pengfei dropped both items and ran.

  ******************************************************************************

  Guoyu stepped into the camp, his younger brother at his side. They were both weary. Like everyone else, but bloodier. Tattered clothes and leaking wounds picked up during a desperate escape.

  The others drifted forward, drawn in by the late arrivals, gathered in a loose ring around a hint of light. A cooking fire was hidden there, a cylinder dug in the earth with a ventilation shaft providing the necessary airflow to maintain the flame.

  The orange that flickered up out of the ground was like a glimpse into hell. The Captain’s thin face, lit from below, seemed even fiercer.

  Guoyu saluted, clasping right fist in left palm. At least, he tried. The fist was gone, the stump at the end of his arm was still puffy. The Qingcheng swordsman had made a clean job of it, but the healing was going slow.

  “Where’s Jichao?” the Captain asked.

  “He – “

  “Jufeng, stop.” Guoyu held out his forearm to silence his brother, then spoke to the Captain. “He’s dead.”

  Murmurs from the others, standing at the edge of the light and listening to the report. The Captain took his scabbard and poked at the burning embers in the fire pit.

  “Explain.”

  “There was a beast. I don’t know why… maybe we disturbed its lair.”

  The Captain looked up from the fire, his cold eyes penetrating.

  “Where’s his body?”

  “It – the thing took him. Most of him.”

  “Jichao was a First Rate. He would have reached the Peak in time. A treasure for our people. And you’re telling me he was killed by a beast? Carried off like a lamb?” The words weren’t angry on the surface. Maybe there was no emotion there. But Guoyu knew behind the cool tone of voice was a scale where his life hung in the balance.

  “It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever heard of. We – it hunted us, tracked us over impossible terrain. I never got a good look at it, but it was enormous. The biggest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “It was a tiger!” Jufeng insisted. The voices from the periphery scoffed at the young man.

  “No, it wasn’t a tiger. I don’t know what it was, just… it wasn’t normal.”

  The Captain sat silently for long seconds, stoking the subterranean fire. Little motes of the blaze drifted up and caught the wind, swirling away into the night.

  Jufeng fidgeted nervously. Next to him, Guoyu clamped down on his body with all his will. His life as a swordsman was effectively over after his amputation, but he still had the discipline that the training had instilled in him. He met the Captain’s gaze without blinking, waiting for some clue to his fate.

  The thin-faced man sighed tiredly. “We’ll have to hope the beast disposes of the body sufficiently. We don’t have time to recover it, and Kunlun could learn much if they find it.”

  Questioning whispers came in from the others. Guoyu gave voice to them. “Sir, are we leaving?”

  “Yes.” The Captain nodded. “We’ve received word from Sichuan. It’s unlikely anyone else will come to Kunlun before their punishment ends. There’s nothing left to do here. I expect orders to return before winter.”

  “But the message – “

  “Has already been delivered. We got the gist of it from the Qingcheng swordsman before he died. That will have to be enough.” The Captain stood to address the rest of the unit. They were already listening, but now he spoke to them directly. “Two months. Give me two more months of your best, then we’ll leave this forsaken land behind. You’ll be back in the Central Plains by the new year.”

  A cheer went up, a rare explosion of sound from the men who tried so hard to observe from the shadows. The Captain turned back to the fire pit, placed a cooking pot over the opening, and plunged the camp back into darkness. The small crowd dispersed with that.

  Guoyu and Jufeng bowed to the Captain, then made to find a place for the night. No one came to check on the brothers or offer condolences for their lost comrade. It wasn’t that kind of unit.

  “You didn’t tell him about the – “

  “Shhh!” Guoyu hissed, silencing his brother. He looked around furtively, then spoke quietly to Jufeng. “Don’t tell anyone about it. We wait a few weeks, then go back for it before we head east.”

  “What about that… thing!? It’ll tear us to pieces!”

  “We’ll figure something out.” He reached his one good hand out for his brother’s shoulder. “That Ginseng is your future. We’re not leaving this hell hole without it. And we’re not sharing it with any of these bastards.”

  Jufeng nodded, pursing his lips. “Thank you, brother.”