Getting a Rise Out of the Heavens (Xianxia)Chapter 2: The Bandit Leader
Hu Chen was awake when the two idiots came to his tent.
He hadn't been sleeping. He rarely slept well after a raid, not because of guilt, but because his body stayed wound up for hours afterward, the Qi in his meridians still circulating at a heightened pace from the exertion. It was one of the downsides of being at the third stage of Qi Condensation. Your body remembered violence long after it was over, and it took time to settle. He was sitting cross-legged on the rolled-out mat that served as his bed, eyes closed, cycling his breathing in the slow pattern he'd learned during his years at the Azure Cliff Sect, when he heard the footsteps outside.
Two sets. One heavy, one lighter and faster. Old Wu and the kid, Liang something. He didn't bother learning the names of every man in the crew.
"Boss," Old Wu called from outside the tent flap, and Hu Chen could hear the tension in the man's voice even through the cloth. "We need to talk to you. It's about one of the captives."
He opened his eyes, uncrossed his legs, and stood. The tent was small enough that he could reach the flap in two steps, and when he pushed it open, the two guards were standing there looking like they'd seen something they couldn't explain. Old Wu, the bigger one, had his arms folded across his chest in the way men did when they were trying to look calm and failing at it. The younger one wasn't even pretending. His face was pale and his jaw was tight.
"What about them?" Hu Chen asked flatly.
Old Wu glanced at the younger guard and then back. "One of the village boys woke up. He started talking, and what he said, boss, I think you need to hear it."
Hu Chen waited. He didn't prompt them. He'd learned a long time ago that silence made people talk faster than questions did.
"He says there's a cultivator that hails from the village," Old Wu continued, his voice dropping lower even though there was no one nearby. "Seventh stage Qi Condensation. Says the man leaves for months but always comes back, and he's due any day now."
The words landed, and for a moment, Hu Chen didn't react at all. His face stayed exactly the same, flat and slightly bored, the expression he'd perfected over two years of leading men who would turn on him the second they thought he was weak. But behind that face, his stomach had dropped.
Seventh stage.
He was at the third. He knew, better than most people alive, what a difference in stages meant.
He'd been fifteen when his parents scraped together everything they had to send him to the Azure Cliff Sect. Low-tier spirit roots, the elder who tested him had said, the kind of roots that meant you could cultivate, but you'd be slow, and you'd never reach the heights that mattered. They'd taken him anyway, because sects always needed bodies, and the Azure Cliff Sect was large enough that even the lowest disciples served a purpose. He'd worked harder than anyone in his intake group. He was certain of that, not as vanity, but as fact. While others sat in meditation for four hours a day, he sat for six. While others practiced their sword forms until their arms were sore, he practiced until his hands bled and then kept going. After three years, he'd reached the third stage. Most disciples with mid-tier roots reached that in a year and a half.
Three years of effort, and it still wasn't enough.
The senior disciples had noticed him early on, because that was what senior disciples did. They noticed the ones who couldn't fight back, the ones with low-tier roots and no connections and no one who would speak for them if things went wrong. It hadn't been anything the sect elders would punish. They were too smart for that. No beatings, no theft, nothing that left marks. Just chores. Carry this, clean that, fetch water from the lower spring before morning bell. Small tasks on their own, but they piled up, and every hour he spent hauling water or scrubbing floors was an hour he wasn't cultivating. Every morning, the disciples gathered in the courtyard for sparring practice, and partners were chosen freely. On the days he'd done what they asked, things went normally enough. On the days he hadn't, or couldn't, nobody would pair with him. The other juniors knew better, and the seniors would step in as his partners instead, wearing the kind of smile that said they were doing him a favor. They never truly injured him in those spars. That would have drawn attention. But they pressed harder than they needed to, hit a little faster, held their techniques a little longer, and there was nothing he could do about it because every one of them was at least a stage above him.
He'd endured it for three years. Three years of swallowing it, of telling himself that once he broke through to the fourth stage things would change, that once he was strong enough they'd leave him alone. And then one morning, after a spar that had left him with bruised ribs and a split lip, the senior who'd done it had turned his back and said, loud enough for the courtyard to hear, "Dear Junior Brother needs to cultivate more diligently."
As if it wasn't because of their chores that he couldn't cultivate more.
Something in him had broken. He'd lunged at the man from behind, throwing everything he had into a strike aimed at the back of his head. It was the worst decision he'd ever made. The senior was at the fifth stage, only two stages above him, and the gap between them might as well have been a canyon. The man turned, caught his wrist, and broke his arm at the elbow with a twist that looked almost lazy. Then came the jaw. A single palm strike, delivered with the casual ease of someone swatting a fly, and Hu Chen had felt the bone shatter before he'd felt the pain. He'd hit the ground and stayed there, and the courtyard had been very quiet.
It took him a month to heal. The sect had healers, of course, and they'd patched him up because that was their job, but nobody came to visit him in the recovery hall. Not once. When he was able to walk again, the other disciples wouldn't meet his eyes, and the seniors didn't bother with him at all anymore, which should have been a relief but felt worse than the chores had. He'd attacked a fellow disciple from behind, unprovoked as far as the elders were concerned, and the stain of it followed him everywhere. He left two weeks after he could walk.
So much for righteous sects.
He'd been on his own for two years since then. The first few months were the hardest, because a third-stage Qi Condensation cultivator with no sect backing and no money was just a slightly stronger vagrant. He'd fallen in with a group of bandits operating in the outer regions, far from any sect's territory, and within six months he'd taken over because none of them could touch him and all of them were afraid of what he could do. That was the only lesson the Azure Cliff Sect had truly taught him. Power was the only thing that mattered, and the gap between those who had it and those who didn't was absolute.
A seventh-stage cultivator from that village would close that gap on him the same way Senior Brother Zhao had, except this time it wouldn't end with a broken jaw. This time it would end with him in the dirt, dead, and every single one of his men with him.
But he breathed through it, the same slow cycling pattern he'd learned at the sect, and he kept his face still. He was the leader. If Old Wu and the kid saw him flinch, that information would spread through the camp by morning, and scared men did stupid things.
"A village boy told you this," Hu Chen said, keeping his voice flat.
"He didn't seem like he was lying, boss," Old Wu replied, shifting his weight. "The way he talked, the way he looked at us, it was like he knew something we didn't."
Hu Chen considered that. A village boy who woke up tied on the ground and, instead of crying or begging, started laughing and making threats. That was either someone who genuinely had something to back it up, or someone with a death wish. He'd seen both kinds in his years at the sect and on the road, and the truth was that you couldn't always tell the difference until it was too late.
He couldn't afford to run. Not yet. If the boy was telling the truth, then they needed to pack up and disappear before that cultivator came home. If the boy was lying, then running would cost them the captives, the supplies, and the morale of thirty-five men who'd just risked their necks for a payday. He needed to know which one it was before he made a decision.
And one-on-one, face to face, the boy wouldn't hold up. Not against him. Not with what he could bring to bear in a closed tent.
"Bring him here," Hu Chen ordered, his voice cold and level. "The one who told you this. Bring him to my tent."
Old Wu nodded and turned. The younger guard followed without a word.
Hu Chen stood in the entrance of his tent and watched them go, and he kept his face perfectly blank, because that was the one thing he was good at. Hiding what he felt. He'd had three years of practice at the Azure Cliff Sect, and two more on the road after that, and by now his face did what he told it to do regardless of what was happening behind it.
But his hands, hanging at his sides where neither of them could see, were clenched into fists that were shaking slightly.
They brought the boy in less than five minutes later.
Old Wu had him by one arm and the younger guard had the other, and they half-walked, half-dragged him through the tent flap and dropped him onto the ground in front of Hu Chen. The boy's hands were still tied behind his back, and there was dried blood on the side of his face from where he'd been hit during the raid. He hit the ground on his knees and stayed there, and for a moment he just looked around the tent, taking in the rolled mat, the small wooden chest in the corner, the single oil lamp that cast the whole space in uneven yellow light.
Then he looked up at Hu Chen, and Hu Chen saw his face.
The boy wasn't crying. He wasn't shaking. His expression was calm, almost relaxed, with the faintest trace of a smile sitting at the corner of his mouth like he knew something that everyone else in the tent didn't. It was the kind of face that Hu Chen had seen on senior disciples at the Azure Cliff Sect when they watched the juniors struggle, that quiet look of someone who believed, down to their bones, that they were above whatever was happening to them.
Hu Chen did not like that face. Not one bit.
He sat back down on the mat, cross-legged, keeping his posture loose and unhurried, and he looked at the boy the way he'd look at a stain on his boot. He jerked his chin at Old Wu and the younger guard. "Wait outside."
Old Wu hesitated for half a second, then nodded and pulled the younger guard out through the flap. The cloth fell shut behind them, and the tent was quiet.
Hu Chen let the silence sit for a while. He watched the boy's face, looking for the cracks, the twitches around the eyes, the tightening of the jaw, the small shifts that told you someone was holding themselves together through effort rather than genuine calm. The boy stared back at him, and the faint smile didn't move.
"What's his name?" Hu Chen asked. No preamble, no threats. Just the question.
"Chen Wuji," the boy said, without hesitation. The name came out smooth, no stutter, no upward inflection. He said it the way you'd say the name of someone you'd known your whole life.
Hu Chen had never heard the name. That didn't mean anything. There were thousands of cultivators scattered across the outer regions, and a seventh-stage Qi Condensation cultivator who chose to live near a backwater village wasn't the type to make a name for himself. It was plausible. That was the problem.
"What sect is he from?"
The boy opened his mouth, and then he paused. It was brief, barely a heartbeat, but Hu Chen caught it. A flicker behind the eyes, the kind you saw when someone was reaching for something that wasn't there. Then the boy said, "The White Crane Sect."
The White Crane Sect. Hu Chen knew the name. Large sect, based in the northern reaches of the Liang Province, known primarily for their movement techniques and body cultivation. Reputable enough to be believable. And far enough away that a disciple or elder traveling through the outer regions and settling near a small village wasn't impossible.
But that pause. That single, tiny pause before the name came out. A man who'd grown up under the protection of a cultivator from the White Crane Sect would have said the name the same way he'd said everything else, immediately, without thought. The boy had to reach for it. He'd had to choose.
Hu Chen unfolded his legs and stood. The boy's eyes tracked him as he rose, and for the first time, Hu Chen saw something shift behind the calm. Not much. Just a tightening around the eyes, a slight pulling back of the shoulders. The boy was still smiling, but the smile was working harder now.
He walked forward until he was standing directly over the boy, close enough to reach down and touch him. Then he crouched, bringing his face level with the boy's, and he held his gaze. This close, he could see the pulse in the boy's neck, quick and steady. Not the pulse of someone who was relaxed. The pulse of someone who was controlling himself.
Hu Chen reached down, took the boy's right hand where it was bound behind his back, and selected the index finger. He wrapped his own hand around it, and he squeezed. The bone gave way with a muted crack that sounded louder than it was in the quiet of the tent, and the boy's whole body jerked. A sharp, strangled sound came out through his clenched teeth, and his eyes went wet and wide. Tears spilled down his cheeks almost instantly, and his breathing came in short, ragged pulls through his nose.
But he didn't scream. His jaw was locked shut, the muscles in his neck standing out like cords, and after a few seconds of hard, shaking breaths, the grin came back. It was strained, twisted, nothing like the easy smile from before, more like a grimace that had been forced into the shape of something defiant. But it was there, teeth and all, and the boy looked up at Hu Chen through the tears and spoke in a voice that shook but did not break.
"This is the same thing that will happen to you, bastard," he said.
Hu Chen stared at him. The boy's finger was bent at a wrong angle, swelling already, and tears were still running freely down his face, but that grin held. It held the way a cracked wall holds, barely, stubbornly, with everything behind it straining to collapse. And the look in the boy's eyes was not the look of someone who was bluffing. It was the look of someone who had already accepted what was happening to him and had decided, somewhere behind the pain, that it did not change the outcome.
Hu Chen had seen that look once before. On Senior Brother Zhao's face, right before the palm strike that had shattered his jaw. That calm certainty that said, "I am above you, and nothing you do will change that."
He spat in the boy's face. The saliva hit him across the cheek, and the boy flinched, but the grin didn't drop. Hu Chen stood, turned away, and wiped his hand on his trousers.
"Take him back," he called toward the tent flap, his voice steady and flat. "Tie him up with the rest."
Old Wu and the younger guard came in immediately, which meant they'd been standing right outside, and they grabbed the boy by both arms and hauled him up. The boy didn't resist. He let them drag him, and as they pulled him through the flap, Hu Chen heard him let out a long, uneven breath, the kind that came after you'd been holding everything in for as long as your body would allow.
The tent flap fell shut, and Hu Chen was alone.
He sat back down on his mat, crossed his legs, and placed his hands on his knees. His breathing was even. His posture was correct. His face was blank. He was alone, and there was no one to perform for, and he still couldn't make himself relax.
The boy had hesitated on the sect name. That was real. Hu Chen had caught it, and he trusted his instincts on things like that. But the rest of it, the defiance, the grin through the pain, the threat delivered with a broken finger bent sideways, that was either the performance of a lifetime or the genuine confidence of someone who knew that help was coming.
If it was a lie, then the boy was the best liar Hu Chen had ever met, and killing him in the morning would solve the problem. If it was the truth, then every hour they stayed in this camp was another hour closer to a seventh-stage cultivator arriving and doing to Hu Chen what Senior Brother Zhao had done, except finishing the job.
He sat there in the lamplight, staring at the tent wall, and he didn't know which one it was.
What the hell was he supposed to do?
AN: If you often check out Jumpchains, you might recognize that this ability comes from a Xianxia Jumpchain.
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