“Don’t you worry. With those gloves on your hands, you practically can’t let go. This thing is very stable, and I’ll make sure that the winds remain calm. As long as you don’t start wildly flailing around, you’re not going to fall. Even if you do, I’ll be there to catch you before you even realize.”

  “O-okay… Thank you, elder.”

  Even though she tried to look resolute as she nodded along, the young girl didn’t seem entirely convinced. Well, it couldn’t be helped.

  “It’ll get better, trust me! It’s completely normal that you’re nervous right now.”

  Indeed, it was. Elder Ding Xiao herself had been nervous as well, way back in the day when she had first done it. After all, the sect was asking its young untrained disciples, barely in their teens, to jump off of a cliff, thousands of meters high, with nothing but a flimsy wooden staff and a bit of cloth to hold on to. The children were well within their right to be terrified.

  All of that would always fade away quickly however, once they discovered the absolute joy of flying, of riding the wind, dancing with the storm. Even to this day, when she had long gotten access to faster, more convenient and more reliable methods of flying, Ding Xiao still occasionally indulged in the old tradition, if usually under the guise of demonstrating the art to the disciples. Despite her reputation as a strict and serious elder, her soft spot for the younglings was rather well known throughout the sect.

  Her lips curled into a soft smile as she absentmindedly watched the young girl timidly hop of the cliff and screaming, first in fear, then in surprise as she was carried upwards by the winds instead of falling. The other children around her watched on in a mix of trepidation and envy, the latter emotion mostly coming from those who had already gotten their first flight behind them and were already craving for more.

  It would be a long time until they would be allowed to get into the air again. They would have to undertake proper training so that they would not require direct supervision from an elder next time. The first flight was simply an old sect tradition, its role more symbolic than actually helpful to the disciples.

  Ding Xiao’s gaze wandered into the distance, even while she continued to monitor the girl’s flight from the corner of her eye, towards the large arena that clearly stood out from the surrounding fields. She hoped that everything was going well with the tournament.

  Her daughter, her pride and joy, was the one to represent her family on this grand occasion. She had volunteered to stay behind at the sect to give the girl, who had achieved the Dao Contemplation Realm herself, some practice in political matters. She’d one day lead their family after all, and Ding Xiao wanted to make sure she’d be up to the task.

  Cultivators her age rarely had living children. Most lost both their fertility and the interest in it somewhere during the Dao Attunement Realm, simply as a consequence of their aging bodies, and by the time they became this old, they would have outlived any children they’d had before that, if they didn’t reach the Dao Contemplation Realm as well. Ding Xiao was well aware of how lucky she was to see that happen.

  She didn’t mind staying behind with the few disciples too young to watch the tournament either, she actually enjoyed being able to guide them without any of the social constrictions she’d normally have to deal with.

  Suddenly, she saw a bright flash of blue light coming from somewhere near the arena. For a moment, she was confused: there were some clouds, yes, but nowhere near enough to indicate a thunderstorm… Then one of the rings on her hand began giving of a strong yellow glow – an alarm!

  She went from confusion to alertness almost immediately. The ring was connected to the sect’s monitory formations, and the yellow light meant that someone from the Dao Contemplation Realm with an unrecorded soul signature had just crossed them.

  Using her soul sense, she quickly checked where the thread of Qi that had activated her ring was coming from, following it with her eyes. It didn’t take long for her to spot the small group of figures who were rapidly approaching the mountain while flying close to the ground. They – she counted seven of them – were wearing dark clothing that she recognized even from this distance: The robes of the Roaring Thunder Sect.

  This was an attack. By the heavens, they were being attacked! And she was the only elder here!

  She had to retreat into the sect palace. With its defensive formations active and a cultivator as strong as her there to defend it, it was practically unassailable. She could easily hold them off until reinforcements…

  Then it hit her. The children!

  They were far up the mountain, but still a good way below the peak. She`d make it there the blink of an eye, but the children would never make it in time!

  Would they be safe? If the Roaring Thunder Sect was attacking them, that was the first salvo in an active war. In that case, their goal here would be to rob, damage and destroy as much as they could, creating maximum chaos before quickly retreating. Would they stop before hurting their disciples? Would all of them do so? With cultivators, if even a single one didn’t see the need to, that was enough. The children were utterly defenseless against them.

  Ding Xiao’s old mind raced like it was still full of youth. She needed to make a decision, and she needed to make it quickly. There was no time for long consideration and reflection.

  Then she had made it. She jumped into the air, racing towards the girl who was still flying around and just starting to get a grip on how to steer herself by shifting her weight. She snatched her out of the air, ignoring the surprised yelp as she quickly unfastened her gloves and let them, along with the staff, fly away uncontrolled.

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  The moment she landed back on the ground, she shouted out with a loud and strict voice.

  “Attention, everyone! There is an emergency. Stay calm and follow me. Hurry!”

  Naturally, the disciples didn’t exactly stay calm, but at least they did follow her, which was the important part. Ding Xiao guided them across several bridges and deeper into the sect, while continuing to urge them on.

  The place she was heading for was one of the larger gathering and sparring halls for the senior sect members, which was located relatively close by. It was partly built into the rock, so it could only be approached from one side, but it also stood entirely on solid ground, which couldn’t be said about every building here. There was a small open area in front of it, from which steep cliffs fell off in all directions, only to rise again into other, small peaks. Overall, it was a very well defensible position.

  Once they had arrived at the building, she ushered all of them inside, counting them as they went past her. Luckily, everyone was present.

  “Stay here and wait. Don’t come out on your own, don’t open the door. I’ll repeat: Do not open the door. No matter what you hear from outside, ignore it and wait. For the sake of yourself and everyone around you. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”

  She shut the door behind her and stepped onto the open space outside, her soul already roaring with power. With a flash from her spatial ring, a light set of leather armor appeared over her robes and a bow in her left hand. She didn’t have time to put on proper enchanted armor, so this would have to do.

  She put an arrow onto the string, stepped to the edge of the plateau, and waited for the assailants to come into view, while doing her best to suppress her Qi so that they wouldn’t know exactly where she was. They could undoubtedly still sense her presence, but she was hoping to get in a surprise attack on them.

  Her mind was totally calm, focused on the task at hand. For a few moments, she just stood there, breathing in the cold air, tumultuous from the wind and thin from the height. She had always loved this air… Then they arrived.

  A group of three, it seemed like they had split up. In the short moment that she took to draw back the string of her bow, Ding Xiao’s soul sense analyzed the strength of her opponents. One of them was strong, sixth or seventh stage. The other two were markedly weaker, one of them at the third and the other at the second stage. The latter was her target then. She loosened her arrow.

  The hit was spot on. The man barely noticed the arrow before being impaled through the stomach. Had he not been able to shift in the fraction of a second he had had, he would’ve been hit in the heart. The force of the arrow, imbued with Ding Xiao’s powerful Qi from the fifth stage of Dao Contemplation, was enough to throw him backwards and into the cliff behind him.

  Pushing her skills as an archer to their limits, the old cultivator loosened a true volley of follow-up shots on her opponents. Now that they were alerted to her location however, every single one of them was struck down by arching bolts of lightning that emanated from their leader’s outstretched hand. His expression was a mix of determination and aggression as he rushed through the air, towards her.

  The other unhurt cultivator, a white-haired woman who nevertheless had a youthful appearance, stayed in his shadow as they advanced. Realizing that her arrows would no longer have any effect, Ding Xiao returned them to her ring alongside her bow, pulling out her favorite sword instead. She stepped back from the edge and calmed her mind and Qi once again. She would meet them up here.

  Seconds later, the two landed on the plateau, their weapons already raised. The man was carrying a four- to five-meter-long chain, ending in a nasty looking curved blade. The woman had a simple curved sword.

  They didn’t hesitate before they attacked.

  Ding Xiao was immediately forced into the defense. Between dodging the chain that the man was wildly whirling around, charged with electricity, blocking the bolts of lightning he threw at her and fending of the pressure that the woman put on her in the close range, she saw herself quickly getting pushed back. Normally, this would be the time for her to retreat, but she couldn’t. The children were still here, in the building just behind her.

  If she wanted to have any chance of getting out of this, she needed to get rid of the woman first, so she focused on trying to counter her attacks as best as she could.

  After several minutes of exhausting battle, she had almost given up hope when the woman made a mistake. Her swing was too wide, it left her too exposed. Ding Xiao pressed the advantage, rushing in to deliver a proper blow. She was faster than her, fast enough. Her sword lined up perfectly with the woman’s heart as she stabbed it forward and…

  She was hit square in the chest by a massive stream of lightning. Her body was flung backwards as the electricity ravaged through her before dissipating into the earth. She smelled the burnt stench as her clothes and hair were singed, but strangely, she barely felt any pain.

  The next minutes were a haze. Her mind was calm and empty, as Elder Ding Xiao, matriarch of the Xiao Family, made her last stand, guided almost entirely by the instincts that had been engrained into her body in over four hundred years of fighting and training. The storm roared around the three fighting cultivators, driven by her Qi, but it could not reach her opponents. Soon, she was hit by another bolt of lightning, then another. Finally, in a lapse of her defense, the woman managed to chop her right arm straight off of her body. It was over… Had long been over… She had no more strength to fight on. The winds guided her sword to her other hand, and she fought on, though now lacking balance.

  She had long forgotten the concept of passing time when she noticed, at the edge of her soul sense, the rapid approach of several more cultivators. Her first thought went to the other four cultivators who were attacking her sect, but none of these felt like lightning Qi. No. She knew them. They were from her sect. Her fellow elders, her sisters, they were here! And there was another cultivator at their side, one with an aura that matched the Matriarch’s in power.

  She watched as her opponents realized what was happening. She watched as the man jumped into the air with haste and flew off with all the speed he could manage. She watched as the woman tried to follow him but was caught at the foot by a root that burst out from the solid stone beneath her.

  Elder Ding Xiao, matriarch of the Xiao family, collapsed to her knees, and then completely. Suddenly her mind felt clear again, clearer than it had ever felt. The last thing she saw before her eyes fell shut was the woman who she had been fighting just a second ago being slowly wrapped in thorny roots, her face red from the strain before it too was enveloped by them. But none of that touched her mind in the slightest.

  No, her mind was filled with other thoughts, more important thoughts.

  …

  Thoughts of her daughter, the joy of her life, who had long grown into a respectable cultivator of her own.

  …

  Thoughts of the disciples she had defended and the many she had brought up before them.

  …

  Thoughts of her youth. Of the friends she had once had. The man she had once loved.

  …

  Thoughts of the cold wind, that yet embraced her like an old friend.

  …

  Thoughts of the sky, hovering high above the problems of the world.

  …

  Thoughts of the sun above it, shining down on an endless ocean of clouds beneath her feet, shimmering through her hair and warming her face.

  …

  So many thoughts… So many beautiful thoughts…

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