On the Night My Sect Was Wiped Out, Master Said He'd Save Only Me

Also known as The Tale of Qiongshan's Sworn Sisters

On the night my family was massacred, she pulled me from the flames and asked if I wanted revenge. I said yes. She took me to Qiongshan.

Her name was Gu Qinghan, the only person in the Jinglan Sect's hundred-thousand-year history to possess a divine-grade spirit root with both ice and fire affinities. She had never been defeated in her life. I tested my spirit root and found I had the same dual ice-and-fire affinity as her, but mine was so worthless it lit up for less than a breath before going dark.

After taking me as her disciple, she taught me nothing. For the first four years, she only made me carry water, eighteen miles round trip from the cold pool to the alchemy room. She said a steady hand made for a steady heart. Later, while we were on a mission down the mountain, she secretly poured thirty-five levels of cultivation into me overnight, pushing me from Qi Refining straight to Golden Core. It wrecked my foundation, forcing me to start over, and left me afraid to use spiritual power for a long time.

On the carriage ride back, she pulled out a golden cultivation manual, and I caught her at it. With her back to me, her ears reddened all the way down to her neck as she said it was the Sworn Sisters' Heart-Linked Art, meant to be practiced with a cultivation partner.

I looked down at the two manuals in my hands, one hot, the other cold. She tossed me a note: Don't practice until you lose control and go mad.

Father said cultivating immortality was, above all, a matter of cultivating the heart. The sect leader said only those who had seen all living beings could understand what it meant to be an immortal. I couldn't understand those words before. But standing among the ruins of Qingshan Town, watching a hunched old man clutching a purse disappear into the mist, I felt as if I could finally see what they meant.

She has a bookshelf I don't dare search. A sword that must not be drawn. An imperial city she never mentions. And a story about Dongfang Yue and the Crown Prince of Jinlan that she never talks about. I touched the two manuals and the stack of notes in my arms, then climbed the stone steps of Qiongshan. Her figure was just ahead.

I don't know why she took someone with a worthless spirit root as her disciple, but one day, she'll tell me.