An Immortal's Retirement: To Achieve Peace

Cai Xiun walked up to the center of the Elder’s Court. There were eyes all around, analyzing every move he made. Everyone of any significance was here, from Sect Elders to Clan Patriarchs and even the Sect Patriarch himself was here, sitting on a throne that overlooked everyone.

"Cai Xiun," the patriarch said. "The things you have claimed to see are of great importance to the Sect and will impact our future deeply, as well as the future of this region. We need to know exactly what happened."

Cai had told them exactly what happened already. He had done this three times over, and this was now the fourth time he would tell them again. This was under the guise of making sure he didn’t forget anything, but they were really trying to get all they could out of him, though all the probing inquiries that came with the second and third sets of questions made him realize something. They wanted him to contradict himself.

Thankfully he had come up with a barebones version of his story that he didn’t add on to or change in any way, laying out what happened over and over again no matter how many times they asked. It was clear that some of them wanted to accuse him of something, if for no reason than to take away the perceived merit, he would gain from providing this information.

All of his aunts and uncles feared that this contribution might help legitimize his long-disregarded birthright of Sect Patriarch and some of them were stumbling over themselves to accuse him of lying, coming up with miraculous theories to slander him with. But they were mostly ignored or shot down. And some even stood up for him, creating a small faction of supporters amongst the sect.

Namely Tai Lui, Sect Elder of the Flowering Sword Sect and head of the Lui Clan. Cai had never noted the man before as he was just one of the many elders within the sect, but now he seemed to be eager to defend him. It could have been simple greed of course. Tai Lui could have merely been trying to curry favor with Cai for political reasons but the Honored Master’s words kept repeating in his head.

Cai finished recounting his story for the fourth time. There was no open pushback this time. Most of the elders were in deep thought, a few stared at him with intrigued eyes. There was a small silence for a minute before one of the elders spoke.

"Cai Xiun, you claim that you were attacked by a member of the Hollowed Echo Sect? A rank four? And you believed him to have been an assassin from our Flowering Sword Sect?" The elder asked.

"I know he was. He taunted me with that information," Cai replied.

The elder ignored Cai’s tone.

"And what reason do you have to trust his words?"

Cai shrugged.

"What reason do I have not to? There’s no one outside of this sect who hates me and the Raging River hasn’t even acknowledged my existence. The Hollowed Echo doesn’t like instigating conflict without fruit, so it most likely wasn’t out of their own initiative. And my assassin only failed because he wasn’t aware of Master Bill’s presence at the time. He was of the fourth rank and I was of the second, which made it impossible for me to escape. He was an expensive guarantee for my death, so why would he lie before he killed me? " Cai responded.

Even though his voice was calm and concise, his words were heard throughout the whole court and there was a sense of anger and indignation throughout the crowd of elders. He claimed that the assassin was hired by the Flowering Sword, and more so he had noted the price of a fourth-rank assassin. It was a fairly minute statement, but the accusation was clear.

Very few people in the whole sect could afford to hire an assassin, especially one of the fourth rank, and most of them were right here. One of the elders had tried to kill him, that was the implication. It was a theory that the elders would have arrived at themselves, but it was one thing for them to think and another for a mere second rank bastard to say it.

It was a bold accusation and not one entirely without flaws either. There were many people who lacked cultivation but had money that could have been the perpetrators, but those would be relatively easy to rule out. Bastard child or not, Cai was the grandson of the Sect Patriarch. None who killed him would be able to live once his grandfather found out, not because his grandfather loved him, but because his grandfather loved himself. Cai’s death would be an insult to the Patriarch’s name, and so those who would do such a thing would have to be strong enough to withstand his wrath.

"Cai Xiun, your words will be taken into account," the Patriarch said.

And with a nod, Cai was dismissed. Cai walked out of the Elder’s Court and into the sidelines. The discussion was already happening amongst them as he left the room. The final say would be the Patriarch’s but everyone would get to voice their case before him.

Cai put his hands to his side and felt the blade at his waist. It was new, a gift from the Sect for his accomplishments. It was a blade worthy of those at the third rank and it also had a flight enchantment already woven into the thing. Flying swords were common with most cultivators, but Cai had never been able to obtain one. Most of the tradesmen and artisans within the city were too afraid of insulting one of the other young masters by helping him and had politely refused attempts at bargaining.

The blade itself was a mix of form, function, and beauty. It was great for the Flowering Sword Style and was made specifically with Cai's Ten Thousand Petals Art in mind. And the divot of the double-edged blade was artwork of the region's past. The metal was stained with intricate pictures of a demonic army clashing against the forces of the Five Sects. The army was filled with beasts and monsters of all kinds, from beautiful humanoids to corrupted beings of despair, and the cultivators wore clean simplistic clothes and charged forwards with their blades in hand.

Cai had seen the picture before in old scrolls and history books. It was a very famous depiction of a battle that had happened a hundred thousand years ago. It was back when demons warred against men and waves of demonic beasts would come by and ravage the region. But that was all in the past and the last wave of demonic beasts had happened over ten thousand years ago.

A few still showed up here and there, but they were mostly individuals or small pack-like groups. The Bloody Fist Sect made sure to take care of them for the most part. That group of bald-headed monks would rather die than let a demon breathe another second.

Cai pushed his qi into the blade and a light hum came from it as it started to hover. With some nervousness, he leaped right on top of it half expecting it to fall. When the sword held true, he put in more qi, forcing the blade higher and higher into the air, until he could see the whole of the Broken Isles.

The Broken Isles was the most prized piece of land for The Flowering Sword Sect. The land itself exuded massive amounts of qi and there was the constant Dao of the Flowering Sword within the air. It was said that practicing a technique here was ten times more beneficial than practicing anywhere else. Three of the seven suns were shining all together today, which was a rare occurrence that only happened a few times a year, and the water that flowed throughout the isles caught and reflected the different color spectrums of the light.

"Hmh?" Cai said as he looked at the shattered pieces of land.

There was something familiar about its shape though. Cai had never been up here before. He’d seen maps and diagrams, but never the actual isles themselves. He flew, pushing himself higher and higher until he could see the whole of the Broken Isles.

"Could this be?"

Cai looked down at the ground. The Broken Isles were a few miles wide and had a tapering curve to them. They were higher than the surrounding ground, and the water produced in the center of the place flowed off of the Isles and into the surrounding area. Cai had read that isles had been built up and created into this pattern by the creator of the Flowering Sword Style in order to let the flow of the water inspire his juniors. Many would sit by the waterside and cultivate for ages on end, merely observing the flow of the water, and trying to mimic that flow with their qi.

Cai thought back to what the honored elder had said about flow of qi and how important it was to the flowering sword style, and then he gazed down at the land with eyes wide in wonder. They were right, in a way. The creators of the Flowering Sword Style had made the Broken Isles. But they hadn’t been built up like the Sect believed. No, Cai had seen the patterns of isles before, somewhere else. And they had not been intricately carved onto a piece of stone but had been put on a boulder as a result of an attack.

The pattern of the Broken Isles was just the result of an attack. And the reason the Isles stood above the surrounding land was not because they had been built up, but because they had been whittled down. The Broken Isles had once been a mountain, and that mountain had been grazed by an attack just as perfect as the one that the Honored Master had shown him.