The First Son, as the most prestigious and respectable of all the Seven Sons, was a river worthy of the name. It flowed fast, deep, and wide, carving a channel through the earth as the inexorable weight of water pushed its way towards its terminus. It was as much a part of me as my hands or legs, and standing on its banks once more I felt the slightest sense of peace, like I had returned home at last. I even attempted to deepen that feeling, skipping smooth pebbles across its surface as I tried my best to lose myself in the nostalgic motions. But all it took was the twinge in my back or the phantom sensation in my ribs as I prepared another throw, and my mood would tumble down.

  The pain seemed to be a new constant in my life. The bruise in my back ached, the unfortunate remainder of my wounds that the Ruby Tears’ dying gasps couldn’t fix, and the rest of my body still went through flashes of pain, half-remembered agony briefly washing over my senses before drawing back once more. My body was adjusting, slowly learning that the injuries were well and truly gone, but in the meantime I was treated to mind-boggling pain.

  But still, none of that could compare to the mental anguish of unknowingly throwing away my entire lead.

  “Two days.” I muttered dully, skipping another stone across my home river. “They’ll have guards patrolling the roads, of course. Some Core cultivators on quick-response duty. Maybe Gareth is already waiting to slap me in cuffs and drag me back. That’d be the best case scenario.”

  Isabella’s groan of annoyance echoed across the First Son from her position lying on the bank, feet drifting in the waters. She pushed herself onto her elbows and turned her head around to fix me with a withering glare. “Can you keep the damned moaning to yourself? Please.”

  Two days, I cried silently, tossing another stone which immediately sank into the waters.

  “Gods kill me now,” the personification of Death said with her face in her hands, before grabbing a hold of the haft of her scythe buried in the sand next to her and levering herself to her feet, taking a moment to put her sandals on once more. “Okay. New topic! Rather than histrionics on how quickly the Sect is going to find you and turn you into fish food, let’s talk about what comes next.”

  “After getting turned into fish food?”

  “As in your promise.” Isabella walked over and grabbed the fresh stone out of my hand, throwing it out into the river and sending up a plume of water. My attempt at saving it was interrupted by the scythe’s rib pressing into my chest. “You remember your promise, don’t you? You said you were going to help me find a way for those cultivator bastards to die.”

  I gently pushed the scythe away from my chest. “I remember! But I’m not exactly sure where you want me to start with that. If the Seven Falls Sect didn’t have anything, where else do we even look? Do you want me to start, you know,” I run my finger across my neck, “researching?”

  Isabella didn’t even grant me the dignity of a response to the latter. “You’re the local. This is your home river, right? What lies at the end?”

  “The Sea,” I replied. “What else?”

  “The Sea.” Isabella repeated. “Just the Sea? Pray tell, does this Sea have a name?”

  I thought for a moment. “I always heard it called the Big Sea. I think the Sixth and Seventh Sons lead to the Small Sea out east.”

  “And where are we now, Ryan?” Isabella pressed, nudging me again with her scythe. “Is this just the Land? Ohh, the Big Land?”

  “No!” I grabbed the scythe’s haft, holding it steady so it would stop poking at me. “Listen, smartass, it’s only been called the Empire by anyone I’ve ever talked to. If not even the tax collectors can be bothered with the name, then it’s hardly that important, is it?” Now free of annoyance, I returned the favour by stabbing at Isabella’s cheek with a finger. “I don’t know what you’re expecting, but I’ve been a bottomfeeder for my entire life. An Outer Disciple is hardly that big a step over a farmer in the grand scheme of things. Why would either care about the other side of the world?” Why doesn’t Death herself have the answers for this, anyway?

  Isabella pulled away from my retaliatory strike, jerking the scythe back out of my hand and hefting it up- and paused. Eventually, she sighed once more, setting it back onto the sand. “Okay. You’re not wrong. Sorry, it’s-” she cut herself off, swearing under her breath, “I just want to figure this out. I’ve been watching cultivators kill people for a damn long time. Just feels like I’m so close to learning how to pay them back for it, and waiting any longer is just…”

  I watched Isabella as she stared out at the First Son. Even now, despite standing a head shorter than me in clothes suited for farmwork, she carried herself with a seriousness better suited to an Elder. Her gaze seemed heavy, the weight of ages reflected in her eyes as she watched the river pass by. Eventually, those eyes closed as she breathed in deeply. “Okay. I’m sorry, that’s not fair of me. And you’re right, it’s hardly like I know much more. We’ll just…need to figure it out.” She sighed out, and she turned back to me with a wry smile. “I guess I can manage a few more days.”

  “Maybe not quite that fast.” I returned the smile as best I could, bumping her shoulder with a fist. “But we’ll figure something out. I don’t break my promises.”

  Isabella raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you swear an oath to serve the sect?”

  “Ah, but there’s the key!” I lifted my hand again, this time to just point at her face. “The Sect Elder I swore to wasn’t a pretty girl. And as I’ve said before-”

  “Yeah yeah,” Isabella rolled her eyes, pushing my hand away. “Guess we’ll keep an eye out. There’s got to be some roaming cultivators out there that can point the way.”

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  “A few.” I thought of the few cultivators I had seen in my life before the Sect who had passed through my home village. They seemed to take great pleasure in lying to children about cultivation, as I had eventually learnt when I had arrived at the Sect and realised their methods were suspect at best. “They might not be the best guides.”

  “Have to start somewhere,” Isabella shrugged, then paused. “And if we have to pass through villages, then you can be filial for once, too.”

  “...Yeah.” And with those words, my mood plummeted back down again like my last skipped stone. I reached for my chest, only to pause as I remembered only a few watery shreds of paper had survived. My hand clutched at my necklace instead, the one reminder of- “My parents.”

  Isabella’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not thinking of avoiding them, are you? After what you said on the cliff?” Her grip clenched on her scythe, threatening violence.

  “Gods no!” I shook my head ferociously, returning her glare. “That’s not it. I just-” I ran a hand through my hair, turning again to face the First Son. “I’m worried about leading the Sect right to them.”

  “Oh.” Isabella bit her lip, looking up the First Son, towards the Fault that loomed over the horizon. “You’re not really worried about the Sect finding you, are you?”

  “I’ve gotten away from them once, I can do it again,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. But they won’t have that same chance.

  It was ridiculous to think I’d be able to just give up all my connections to the Sect by throwing away my robes. Disciples might not care much about particular mortals, but there was no doubt there was a record somewhere that listed a certain Brother Ryan as hailing from a certain fishing village along the First Son. And if said Brother Ryan had done something so embarrassing as, say, consuming half a million yuan worth of medicinal pills and causing several million more yuan in damages to their fleet of fancy magical transports…well, you’d probably pay a visit to that certain fishing village. But where a mortal would pay a visit to seek out their debtor and demand payment, a cultivator wouldn’t stop there. The Seven Falls Sect wouldn’t stop until that certain fishing village had been reduced to nothing but ash, salt, and bones. Cultivators were nothing if not spiteful.

  In another world, Brother Ryan would believe that the Seven Falls Sect wouldn’t dare tread on his family in that way. And when the Seven Falls Sect inevitably did, he would swear vengeance upon the Sect, and do his best to return the favour by razing those pristine palaces and jade bridges to the ground. Or maybe Brother Ryan wouldn’t even care, for cultivators were beyond such mortal connections as a family, and instead he’d pursue the Dao of Inner Peace, and become a hermit in some far off mountain. In return, the Heavens would reward his virtue by doing the razing for him.

  But I wasn’t Brother Ryan any longer, and I was never a cultivator to begin with. The thought of leaving my family to die because I didn’t want to face my own mistakes… I made a fist. I would rather die before letting that happen.

  Isabella coughed. “Not to interrupt your inner monologue, but swearing an oath on your own life has significantly less impact if you can walk it off.”

  A laugh pulled its way out of my throat, and I shook out my hand. “Fair point. Maybe I should say I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did let it happen. I don’t want to be the sort of person who forgets about their home. I know how rich that sounds coming from someone who tried to ignore it for so long, but these past few days have been enough of a wake up call.”

  We both watched the river flow by for a few moments more, faint silhouettes of fish and turtles swimming beneath the surface. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, listening to the sound of the waters and the breeze brushing past me, the feeling of the grooves and faded characters on the coins around my neck. It won’t be long now before I’m home. What will they think of everything? Of me?

  “You’ve spent three years having those thoughts, farmboy. Come on, focus on something else.” A hand clapped down on my head, pulling me out of my thoughts. I blinked, turning to face the personification of Death standing on her tiptoes to be able to reach up. Cute.

  She coughed, dropping back to her feet and turning towards the forest. “Seriously. Even if you know less about the world than a frog in a well, we need to start figuring out options. You mentioned travelling cultivators, right? Would they know of any other Sects?”

  I shook my head with a smile, following after her. “Maybe, though I would like to stress again that I don’t think they’re a good source of anything except gossip and fictitious treasure hunts-” I stumbled slightly as another flare of pain erupted in my thigh, “-also, we really need to stop at some point for some painkillers. I’m really not enjoying this whole ‘living’ thing right now.”

  “You have no one to blame but yourself for that,” Death claimed pompously, nose in the air as she marched ahead.

  “I have you to blame for that!”

  “Ryan, this conversation has an obvious ending to it. Do you want that ending?”

  …Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valour. I decided to step ahead of Isabella, clearing my throat loudly enough to block out the sound of a chuckle. “So! Some of the nomads talked about a few other Sects, but they had stupid names like ‘Ten Thousand Blooming Heaven Blossom Learning Centre for the Mighty’, so I figured they were just lying. Definitely knew they were if they said they were too strong for the Seven Falls Sect- please stop, you’re ruining my focus.”

  “No, no,” Isabella snorted. “It’s the name. Is that how cultivators are naming their Sects nowadays?”

  “Probably not the Sect, they’re all old enough to have simple, regal names.” I grimaced. “The techniques, though? One fellow talked all about his ‘Supreme Heaven-Defying Ground Consuming Corporeal Translocation’, which let him…side step. And not particularly quickly.”

  Isabella properly laughed now. “Gods, Heaven-Defying? Dare I ask?”

  “Oh, he showed it to us. He defied the Heavens-” I pointed up past the treetops to the skies above, “-by using it in the rain.”

  “Was that the worst?”

  I was already recalling every last embarrassing excuse for a martial artist that had ever passed through my village. “Not even close...”

  The phantom pain in my limbs and the very real pain of the lost two day lead faded slightly as I regaled Isabella with the failures of others. It was a welcome reprieve from my own failures, and it was reassuring to remember that no matter how bad of a cultivator I was, there were always worse out there. With those fond memories in mind we made our way down along the First Son, only returning to the dirt road once we’d circled the small village that old man must have come from.

  Far ahead, home waited.