Three years passed since Qiping came to Clear Water Mountain. Bixian no longer brought up the possibility of leaving. She almost didn’t want to.
Clear Water Mountain gave her a sense of peace she had thought impossible. It was not just because of the wards placed by the phoenix and the dragon prince.
She still returned to her duties at the Qilin Sage’s side whenever she was called. He did not inquire much about her absences; whatever assumptions he had about Qiping’s whereabouts or Bixian’s absences, he kept to himself.
The sage was gaining clout in Heaven. Half the time, she was no longer needed to transport him to Heaven: he could now simply summon a cumulus cloud and ride it to the Jade Emperor’s halls. The Qilin Sage still preferred traveling by crane in the mortal realm, so she continued to ferry him to bustling towns and distant mountains where he was needed.
Her most recent summons had her taking the Qilin Sage back to the mountains near Tianping Temple. As they crested over the mountain peaks, her heart began to beat hard in her chest despite her best attempts to calm herself. It seemed a lifetime ago when she found Qiping in the meditation chamber in the ruins of the temple. She still carried the small black cube with her.
Four years was nothing in the blink of an immortal’s eye. A god may visit the mortal realm twice for breakfast and dinner, with a decade passing in the realm below.
From the air she could see the temple. Nature slowly reclaimed the ruins, vines and weeds covering the architecture with a layer of green. The surrounding area did not change at all, though it was hard to differentiate single trees among the forests. Perhaps the river did change its course, but it was a change only visible through a portrait of eternity.
They did not alight in the temple but rather in a clearing nearby. The Qilin Sage dismounted with a practiced air and procured a knife from his belt. As he unsheathed it from its leather scabbard, the hairs on the back of Bixian’s neck raised and she felt a sudden chill run down her spine. Her master held something deeply powerful in his hands: a golden knife with a curved blade down which a single groove ran in the middle, etchings of a poem glinting on both sides of the groove.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A gift from Heaven: The Knife of Sublimation. A blade scavenged from a pair of the Weaver’s scissors.” He held the knife up and balanced its tip on his finger. “She would cut the threads of animal hides and weave them into the finest fabric, so that the wearer may transform into the creature if they wished. After her…rebellion, some of her tools were reclaimed. Too powerful for someone with a weak heart as hers.”
The knife’s aura was intoxicating. Part of her wanted to hold such power in her hands: a divine implement, probably carved from gold or some similarly precious metal. Yet the crane inside her revolted against a blade that could destroy her. She felt like a goose confronting the chopping block, except she knew the knife’s arc and the final chop.
“It is a fine gift you have received, Master,” she mustered.
The Qilin Sage gave her a brief glance and then returned the knife to its sheathe. “It is a gift wasted on me. Before me the Baihu Sage wielded it, and many demons abandoned their ways to follow the path of divinity, or to simply lead normal lives.”
“Why did he lose such a gift?” Implicit in the question Bixian asked was her true curiosity: why Tianping Temple had fallen to demons if the Baihu Sage could simply take their demonhood away?
“His heart grew soft, consorting with demons. The knife fell into disuse. Though I doubt I will make much use of it myself,” the Qilin Sage pondered. “It is simply a relic to remember an old friend.”
“You could make me human,” Bixian offered.
This time, his stare lingered longer. “Why would I maim my mount?”
The two of them continued forth, the Qilin Sage stopping occasionally to lecture on some detail of nature or theory of the divine. They were looking for a tiger cub, he explained, the possible reincarnation of the Baihu Sage. “It is the least I can do to honor his memory.”
The two of them trekked through the woods, the Qilin Sage clearing a path through the underbrush with quick strokes of his flywhisk. The brambles and brush gave way with a gentle rustle, as if swept to the side by a large broom. It was a pleasant noise, echoed by the wind through the branches above.
A tiger could stalk silently through the wood, its orange coat blending with the surrounding autumn, black stripes imitating the shadows cast by an ever-shifting canopy. While their quarry had similar skill in silence, its white fur gave it away in the distance. The Qilin Sage slowly raised his hand and gestured for Bixian to move forward.
Understanding the small minutiae of his commands, Bixian retrieved the black box from her pocket—the second most precious thing that came of their visit to this mountain three years prior—and with a chant activated the isolation chamber. The six walls of the cube separated, becoming separate black panels that flew towards the tiger and surrounded it on all sides, enclosing it before it could run.
The Qilin Sage approached the chamber and gestured for Bixian to open it. She lifted one of the walls and watched as he entered, slowly tucking away his flywhisk and retrieving the Knife of Sublimation once more.
The tiger growled, its body pressed against the opposite wall. Bixian was struck by how much the creature resembled Qiping when she first found her: powerless and terrified. The Qilin Sage was whispering a spell underneath his breath to calm the tiger; he could quell the aggression but not the fear. With one swift motion he grabbed the tiger by the scruff and made a single sweeping cut along its spine.
Instead of blood, the wound oozed golden light. The Qilin Sage tucked his knife back into its sheath and tore at the cut with his hands. Bixian winced at the sound of tearing viscera, but a horrid sense of wonder kept her eyes glued to the scene as her master tore the tiger’s skin in half.
The bloodless pelt fell away to reveal human flesh. Instead of a tiger, a young boy crouched in front of the Qilin Sage, completely naked. The only trace of his heritage was on his forehead, where a patch of discolored skin spelt the character “王.” The sage took the tiger pelt and gave it a shake, as if it were a freshly laundered shirt. As he did, the fur flattened and stitched themselves together into a cloak, black and white blending to create a light grey. He draped the fabric over the boy’s shoulders.
“Come now, child. You are free of your base animal nature. I will train you with my other disciples, and you too may begin on the path to cultivation.”
The boy stared at him with wide vacant eyes, not comprehending the words spoken to him. “I give you humanity so you may one day reach divinity.”
He led the child out of the chamber. Bixian dismissed it on her master’s command, tucking the black box away in her pocket. She transformed into a crane and bent down as both the Qilin Sage and the former tiger boy climbed into her back.
She carried a heavy weight as she flew them back to Dichang Temple. Not just the added physical weight of the child, but also the shock of the boy’s extraction. The Qilin Sage abhorred violence, but Bixian could think of no other word to describe what happened inside the meditation chamber. Even if the tiger’s fear was simply instinctual, even if his life would be better now that he was under the care of the Qilin Sage. Better to have a full life as a human than the monotony of staying a tiger: hunting, hibernating, then dying prematurely at the hands of some unpredicted disaster.
Something else stirred inside her: resentment. How easily did this child land upon the path of cultivation, simply by being the reincarnation of an old friend. The Qilin Sage rarely took disciples, but the ones he took often went on to lead storied lives as sages and heroes; more than one had achieved minor godhood. He was a fine teacher when he saw potential, and cultivated it intensely through study and art.
After serving him for more than four centuries, was she still not worthy of a disciple’s path?
1/12/2023: Starting the new year with contender for Bastard of the Year: the Qilin Sage!