This Venerable Demon is Grossly Unqualified

Elder Li was not having a good day. It was a rare honor for him to be called into the presence of Sectmaster Meng, and unfortunately such honor usually coincided with additional burdens being heaped upon him. This morning had been no exception. It was almost unheard of, for a demonic sect to throw open its doors, as the Sect Master had done. Half a dozen inner disciples had been tasked with testing mortals, searching for talent like a righteous sect might. A new class every year for a decade, all to be taught their fundamentals by him.

It was an honor, to be sure. That the Sect Master trusted him with the most foundational of teaching duties. And a colossal imposition. He’d be compensated, indeed, richly rewarded. Sectmaster Meng knew him to be his most loyal subordinate, and the only one of these spoiled brats he called elders that could be trusted to teach children without murdering half of them, but a decade of his life, when he was already ancient for a mortal, and perhaps only had another half century to pursue his art, was a heavy price indeed. Still, with the sect’s largesse, he might finally finish his great work, and step beyond the limits of flesh. Refusal had never been a possibility.

The plan portended great upheaval in the coming decade to be sure, but for the life of him he could not see where the Sect Master’s plan led. No great conflict with the mortal powers, or their righteous dogs, waited beneath the horizon, so far as he could see. And for the decades he’d known him, Sectmaster Meng had never intimated dreams of conquest. Yet, what would they want such numbers for, if not for war? The riches of the Pathless Night Sect were not endless, and every new disciple meant only a smaller share for the rest.

Perhaps the Sect Master had found the quality of the disciples lacking, and sought to refine them by blood shed in competition? It didn’t seem likely to him. Already, there was no shortage of that. He would need to watch carefully, these coming days, for hints of what was to come.

But today, he needed to do nothing more than deliver the same lecture he’d delivered thousands of times before, though never to quite so large a group. A normal ‘class’ for his introductory series of lectures was perhaps two dozen, and once he’d delivered it to but two students, a pair of noble brats born to parents who had offended the orthodoxy and needed to debase themselves to beg the aid of the Pathless Night, or else see their children’s potential forever stifled.

Today, over a hundred sat before him. His puppets had cleared a section of the woods, leaving a few felled trees to serve as benches. The few halls the sect had that could seat a hundred were far too fine for a gaggle of children. And most were indeed children, the Pathless Night was no righteous sect that needed to get ahold of them young to indoctrinate them, but this class was far younger than most. The average was perhaps sixteen winters, but he saw a few as young as ten, and a singular woman old enough to be the mother of one of the ten year olds. All born to mortals. He doubted one in ten could read. They chattered amongst themselves quietly, seeking to drown their fear in inanity.

He twitched a finger of qi, and Yuan responded. The puppet in the form of a great ape lurching forward from its unnatural stillness to bring its hands together above its head. With a thunderous crash, interlaced wooden fingers drove themselves into the dry earth, sending a great plume of dust rushing skyward. A hundred mundane birds fled in a frightened cacophony, and in their wake, silence fell. Yuan sat down placidly before him.

“You are seated before me, because you have potential.” He began, as he had a hundred times before. “The disciples of the Pathless Night saw something in you. Talent. Ambition. Hunger. Skill. A keen eye, or clever fingers. And yet, you are nothing. When offered the chance to abandon all that you had built, sever every tie that bound you, you accepted eagerly. In flight from failure, or in pursuit of dreams of glory, you eagerly turned from the light.

“I am not here to shepherd you to greatness. Our Sectmaster, your Sectmaster, Meng Xiao, has ordered that you are to be taught. And so I stand before you, my words a chance to change your fate, to grow beyond the place the heavens saw fit to allot you. Cultivation is a winding road of impossible fractal complexity, the facets of the Dao outnumber the stars in the heavens, and to walk your road until its end will require you to find your own truth, and embody it. But first, I will teach you to take your first steps, to make the power that underpins our world your own, and in so doing defy the Order of the Heavens.”

The initiates listened with rapt attention as he explained the steps by which they would condense their first wisps of Qi. The steps were not complicated, but he took care to go slowly, explaining every detail, every sensation they might watch for as a sign of progress. Most would fail to take their first step today all the same. The best of the peasantry these might be, but they were peasants all the same, and young besides. There was only so much he could expect from them. Indeed, most of his lecture was not even on the subject of cultivation, but the most basic of meditative techniques, to give these squirming children a mental toolkit they might use to quiet their ceaseless fidgeting and look inward.

Simple breathing techniques. Visualizations. Counting. Focusing on sections of the body in sequence, before dismissing them. Handling intrusive thoughts. His lecture stretched on for nearly three hours without even touching on the mechanics of cultivation beyond the presence of qi.

It was almost meditative, in a way, though he wouldn’t dare try to progress his cultivation as he taught. Beyond any risk to himself, he would scour the area dry of its already thin qi if he did so, and so waste his own time by depriving the disciples of any chance of taking their first step here.

A few of the younger children broke as time passed, hunger or the need to urinate overcoming their meager impulse control, and were removed by his disciples. They would learn, and do better, or be cast out from the Night.

As he gave once more the lecture he'd given a thousand times before, Elder Li noticed an anomaly. In the back of the clearing stood a figure. Clad in robes that were not the standard sect uniform, black edged in red, instead of the midnight blue of an elder, it took him a moment to place him.

It was that… brute.

Hu Xin, the sect master's rabid dog. The elder who had not merely declined to take a disciple, or teach a class, but refrained from even delivering a single lecture, for fifty years. A man who consumed the resources of an elder, but offered the sect nothing but violence.

And now this animal had the gall to intrude upon the duty the sect master had entrusted him? He stood there, a questioning expression on his face, as if he had opinions on the content of his lecture.

The arrogance! Mighty though the man was, what did he who had never taught know of teaching! A hunting dog had his place, and that place was not a lecture hall, however makeshift.

"Of the many facets of night, one of the most prominent is deception. Predation, crime, espionage, all of these acts belong to the night. The most basic cycling technique of the Pathless Night, the Liar’s Breath leverages this affinity.” Elder Li continued, his lecture flowing smoothly into its more esoteric portion. He would not allow this dog to interrupt the sect’s business. “You will ingress qi through any set of meridians of your choosing, except the mouth. Once ingressed, you will join this qi into a singular stream via the governing vessel, and cycle it through the heart meridian. Upon exhaling, you will egress the qi through the mouth via the conception vessel. Done properly, qi will begin to accumulate within your flesh, and over time, you will eventually come to be aware of it.

Elder Hu tilted his head, as if asking ‘Are you sure?’

Li Qiu ignored him.

“Though the Liar’s Breath is a technique of deception, its aspecting is not relevant to initiates like yourselves. The first form of the breath merely leverages this aspect to provide a simplified cycling pattern, the qi that is left behind will be so weakly aspected that it scarcely merits the designation. However, this is not true of the higher variations of the breath. In order to attain the status of disciple, and the right to leave the sect, the sect will expect you to master the second stage of the breath, and at least one associated technique, in order to be able to conceal your cultivation from others.”

Elder Hu frowned.

Elder Li did not frown at him in turn, unlike the dog he had a modicum of self control. Did he think the Empty Breath beneath him? Was he so much a fool he could not recognize the value it offered the rest of the sect, who could not hope to resolve every dispute by waving a sword at it?

One of the younger students noticed the tall form lurking behind him, and fell over with a squeak. And just like that, their attention was lost. Three hours of teaching, disrupted.

“I see the venerable Elder Hu has elected to join us today.” Elder Li said, gesturing towards the interloper. A hundred initiates turned to stare at the man. Murmurs resounded through the audience. They’d heard of him, of course they had. The elder in red trimmed robes. The peerless Sword Saint. The one man who might possibly be as strong as Sectmaster Meng. The new blood always idolized him, up until they realized what it meant that he took no students, or one of them challenged him to a duel and got beheaded in front of his fellow disciples.

Still, this was beyond the pale. What absolute shamelessness, for a man who had not given a single lecture in the entire preceding half-century, to question him, the elder whose teachings had built the very foundation of the current generation, and would do the same for the next.

If he wished to sit in judgment, he could contribute.

“Perhaps Elder Hu would like to elaborate upon the Empty Breath, and its importance as a foundational technique of the sect.”

“I don’t feel that is necessary. I’m confident Elder…” Elder Hu said, pausing as if he’d forgotten Elder Li’s name. “You will impart a full understanding of the technique and its importance upon the younger generation.”

The audacity! To pretend he didn’t know Li Qiu’s name!

“If Elder Hu has forgotten how to perform the Empty Breath, perhaps he would care to enlighten the audience as to the dao of the sword. Surely he can at least remember the one skill Sectmaster Meng keeps him around for.” Elder Li said through clenched teeth. So what if the man was powerful? Such insults had to be repaid in kind. Beneath the sleeves of his robes, he adjusted his fingers, preparing Mei and Xue to intercept. His students chittered like wild monkeys, too naive to understand what it would mean, for two elders to exchange blows so close to them.

Elder Hu took a moment to consider before responding.

"Sorry." The old monster said. "I've already done enough teaching for today."

And then he turned around and walked away, and it was all that Li Qiu could do to restrain himself from throwing Yuan at the man. What the hell was the point of all of that? Had he nothing better to do than make a nuisance of himself!

Even as the initiates gossiped and Elder Li fumed, one of the outer disciples who’d taken the sect mission to assist Elder Li with the initiates for a meager twenty contribution points a week, began to wonder. What exactly did Elder Hu mean, that he'd done enough teaching for today? Everyone knew the man didn’t teach disciples.