Short Story: Fish Boi (Patreon)

This short story is set 10 years before Mana Mirror, in Daocheng.

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A fist impacted Chen Liyu's stomach, surging with mid-first gate wood aspected chi, and he was sent sailing backwards through the air as he scrambled to keep his water armor intact.

Sailing through the air, that was, until a foot from another mid-first gate cultivator – wind aspected, this time – caught him in the back and knocked him to the ground.

The third, the leader of their little band, Zhao Fang, a peak first gate cultivator of the earth aspect, lifted his foot to stomp it into Liyu's guts when he was interrupted by the jingle of the bell over the door.

"You know," a lazy voice drawled. "Three mid-first gate against a single early first gate doesn't exactly seem like a fair fight."

Fair. Hah. Nothing in life was fair.

Chen Liyu looked over at the speaker and reached out with his mana senses, only for his hopes to be dashed.

The stranger – a tall, handsome, well built man in his early thirties with short cropped, bleached hair, a leather jacket, and cigarette hanging from his lips – was no benevolent elder.

No, he was an early second gate cultivator, born with the yang aspect, if Chen Liyu's senses were right.

Strong. Stronger than any of them alone. But still too weak to take them all on together.

"Mind your business," Zhao Fang sneered. "The cut-sleeve fishboy works here."

"Yes…" the gangster-looking man said, glancing around the gym and wrinkling his nose. "But does that give you the right to beat him into the ground?"

"It was training time, and we're away from the sect," the wood aspect bully said. "If we didn't get a spar in, it would have harmed our development."

At the mention of the sect, something changed in the stranger's eyes, and Chen Liyu cursed.

A stranger might step in to help against three kids who were acting foolish. But against three members of the Many Strikes, One Body sect?

No. Chen Liyu wouldn't be getting help from the handsome stranger. He'd leave the gym any second now.

Any second now.

Chen Liyu waited, as did the trio of bullies.

"Do we need to teach you a lesson, old man?" the wind-aspect cultivator demanded. "Scram."

"Leave the boy alone," the stranger said. "We can all walk out of here like this never happened."

In response, Zhao Fang snapped his fingers, and all three of Chen Liyu's bullies shot into action.

The wind cultivator slashed his hand out, and a blade of compressed wind sliced through the air, right at the stranger's knees.

The wood cultivator glowed green as his muscles bulged and he leapt forward to drive a fist into the stranger's chest.

Zhao Fang stomped his foot and an earth spike appeared in the air and shot towards the stranger's neck.

Deadly attacks, any one of them able to kill a non-cultivator with one blow.

The stranger sucked hard on his cigarette, the tip glowing brightly, then exhaled.

Smoke and ash, still glowing bright red, swirled out of the stranger's mouth. It burnt the wind blade, threw back the wood cultivator, and melted the stone until the chi construct broke.

That attack…

Chen Liyu shuddered, staying on the floor, not wanting to attract attention from any of them.

The stranger had to be at least third gate, but his aura control was skilled enough to disguise his cultivation level.

"Stop hiding your power, coward!" the earth cultivator bully shouted.

The stranger sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

"You don't want me to," he warned.

"Then you really are a coward."

"Fine, fine," the stranger sighed, then dropped his veil.

Power exploded across the small gym, the fifth gate power of an elder.

It was new, an early fifth gate, maybe even opened within the past week. But it was stone solid, not marred by a pill-based ascension.

All three of the sect cultivators threw themselves to the ground, prostrating at his feet.

"Forgive us, honored expert," the wind cultivator. "We did not know. We thought…"

"You thought I was somebody that you could bully around," the stranger said.

All three flinched, but did not dispute the stranger's words.

"Do you pick on the boy with the beast's blood because of his blood? His cut sleeve? Both?"

"B-both, honored expert," Zhao Fang said. "Such things… Blood of a magical fish? Men who desire other men – not even outside of marriage, but as who they marry? And to say–"

But he was cut off as the stranger sucked on his cigarette, and for a moment, Chen Liyu and sect cultivators alike feared that he'd exhale his ash again and kill them all.

Chen Liyu just lay on the floor, listening, not daring to move, pretending he was knocked out.

The strange wandering elder killing them would be looked down upon, and the elder would need to pay a sum to their sect and families, but they had attacked him first.

Instead, the stranger just sighed.

"Kid, why do you work in a trashy gym like this? I've seen the type before."

Chen Liyu cursed my luck – the stranger must have noticed he was conscious – and rolled until he was prostrate to the stranger.

"Honored elder," he said. "This one had aspirations of joining the Twin Rivers school, but this one's beast-corrupted lunar chi caused his failure."

The stranger stared at me, then began to laugh. And laugh. And laugh.

"A rivers school turned down one with fish blood?"

"It wasn't just that," Zhao Fang said, a note of triumph entering his voice. "As I had meant to say before the honored expert asked Chen Liyu… His mother… Sells tofu… and his father was a drug runner, and Chen Liyu has an enchanted amulet that should be mine! His father stole it from my grandfather."

"He lies," Chen Liyu said. "The amulet of which he speaks was rightfully won."

"Liar!"

A look came across the stranger's face, and he glanced out the window, then down at the earth aspected sect member, snapping to cut off the argument.

"Tell you what. I will train the fish boy for six months, and your sect will train you. You two will duel in that time. If he wins, then the black mark on his name will be removed, and he will concede the amulet. If you win, sect boy, he will return the amulet, and serve six months as your servant."

An ugly look came over the earth cultivator's face.

"I agree," he said.

"As do I," Chen Liyu said. It wasn't much, but… A slim chance and hope was better than nothing. And six months with a wandering cultivator elder? That was worth much.

"Come on then, fish boy," the stranger said, steppung out. Chen Liyu hastened to follow.

"Go tell your mother, then meet me at the waterfall outside of town," the stranger instructed.

"Yes, honored elder," he said.

"Stop that. Call me Hua Su."

Chen Liyu blinked. That was a very… feminine… name for someone like him.

"Go. And take the amulet too."

Chen Liyu turned and hastened to do as Hua Su said.

"The first thing you need to understand, Fish," Hua Su said. "Is that your fish aspect is not just a worse version of yin chi"

As he spoke, he began to walk up the path that crisscrossed up the mountain, moving with an alacrity that Chen Liyu struggled to match.

"But I struggle to cast anything but water magic," Chen Liyu gasped as he did his best to keep up. "Shadows… Ice… I must expend far more chi for the effect than a lunar chi cultivator would."

"Yes," Hua Su said as he activated an escape talisman that sent them blurring through the forest. "But your aspects of earth and wood chi, of yang chi, mundane chi and more, amply make up for that."

Another escape talisman, and they blurred into the wilds.

"For one, at third gate, you will learn River Dragon's Breath," Hua Su said. "Six months is not enough time to bring you there without breaking you."

"So in the short run, it gains me nothing," Chen Liyu said bitterly as a third, then fourth and fifth escape talisman activated.

Hua Su smacked him in the back of his head.

"Wrong. What spells do you know?"

"Water armor," he said.

"Is that all?" Hua Su asked.

"Yes, elder."

Hua Su sighed and pulled out a cigarette, then lit it as a ninth escape talisman blazed to life.

They emerged at a massive, horseshoe shaped cliff, with seven massive waterfalls crashing down into a pool beneath it.

"Stay here, Fish," he said. "I'm going to go kill the dragon who lives here. He's been terrorizing a nearby town anyways, demanding tribute."

Hua Su's power spilled out of him and a bright golden aura blazed, enveloping him like a champion of the heavens. A moment later, powerful fourth gate draconic chi – chi that felt like a far deeper, more complex, and powerful version of Chen Liyu's own – rippled out in answer, followed by the roar of a dragon.

The battle between the massive azure dragon and Hua Su was fierce. Boiling hot light-fire made of water met Hua Su's clouds of ashen fire, blue aura that wore through reality like a river sawing a mountain in twain was met by Hua Su's heavenly light, and great watery claws were met by Hua Su forging a great blade of fire.

Finally the battle concluded as Hua Su's aura of light cleanly removed the dragon's head from its body.

Hua Su moved quickly then, drawing tools from a storage ring and butchering the dragon, stopping only to slap down a thin strip of its meat before Chen Liyu.

"Eat."

He did, and the chi infused in that tiny bit of meat exploded through his body and soul. He desperately tried to cycle it, to infuse it into his dantien's inner world, but so much of the power was beyond him.

Still… that single bite had added more to his dantien's inner world than a week of working at the gym.

Chen Liyu grinned and devoured the rest of the strip of meat.

"Here's what we're going to do," Hua Su said once he finished his grisly work. He held up a handful of bits of meat in the shape of spells, cut out of the dragon, where its dantien intersected with the physical, like all sacred beasts. "You're going to practice these spells every day for seven hours. Then you and I will spar for an hour. Then you will spend four hours scaling the waterfall by whatever means ."

Chen Liyu reached his hand out for the spells. The next six months would be hard, but they would be worth it.

They were even harder than he had anticipated.

Oh, the training was grueling, back breaking, punishing work that made him cry himself to sleep every night, but he had expected that.

No, the real problem was that Hua Su liked his food bland, and survived on only rice and veggies that he brought from the nearby village, alongside a few strips of dragon meat each day.

No soya sauce or chili crisps, nor galangal or garlic, or any of the spices that Chen Liyu was used to. He had heard that in other countries, like Mossford, they ate this way, with only salt and pepper as seasoning, and after six months of eating that way, Chen Liyu was beginning to wonder if they all may simply be insane.

But six months later, as Chen Liyu ran alongside his temporary master along the path of escape talismans that led back to his home town, he was sure it was all worth it.

They met Zhao Fang on the empty grounds in between the Many Strikes, One Body sect and the town, and Chen Liyu was surprised to see that there was a crowd of people gathered to watch the fight.

Not just sect cultivators either. Mortals and weak cultivators from the village, merchants selling food, and bookies taking bets had all sprung up.

Chen Liyu nervously tightened the veil around his spirit with the Still Pond, Deep Depths cycling technique Hua Su had forced him to master.

"So you finally arrived," Zhao Fang said, sneering. He made no effort to hide his power, unlike Chen Liyu, and his early third gate earth chi was mildly terrifying.

At first. The more that Chen Liyu studied Zhao Fang, the less scared he became. The man's aura reeked of toxic chi, his ascension to third gate rushed by pills and elixirs.

Even if Chen Liyu lost this fight and had to take up Hua Su on his offer, he would still win.

As he stepped into the ring and unveiled his power as a peak second gate, he couldn't help but smile at the look of shock on Zhao Fang's face.

He would not lose.