Chapter 35: Under Inner Disciples – Goblin Riders, Part 1
Three days after the trial, her second vein had finally shut up and just existed, like her tail, except her tail at least had the decency to be predictable. She kept reaching for the vein and finding it there, which was still new enough to feel weirdly satisfying and slightly invasive.
She'd spent the time with the fan mostly. Running the shimmer through arc patterns until the qi path stopped feeling new. Practicing Phantom Guise each morning in the water basin — different face, different jaw, different cheekbones, always the same ears and tail staring back like they were personally offended she kept trying to abandon them.
"I know," she told them. "Working on it."
The ears continued to look personally betrayed.
She'd also spent one morning sitting with Serenya's comb in her hand, pressing it to her nose. Nothing. Not even the ghost of frost. She'd put it back on the shelf without using it.
Tharia'd left the formation node notes alone. Not forgotten, she didn't forget things, but the pattern of deliberate suppression and geometric degradation had nowhere to go yet. She needed more pieces. Or a reason to move on what she already had.
The mission briefing arrived before either.
The explanation was short, almost perfunctory, the way all things were at dawn when Maren was involved.
Goblin riders near the border villages. Disrupted trade routes. Burned storehouses.
The sect would respond, as it always did, in the name of service to the empire and the preservation of order. Names were called, and assignments handed down without ceremony.
'Joy,' Tharia thought, standing in the third row, heels clicking once on the stone as she adjusted her weight. "Goblins. Perfect. I love goblins."
A disciple glanced at her hearing it then moved away, as if not wanting to be associated with her. She didn't even look at him.
Tharia did not love goblins, had no opinions about goblins, but was mostly still thinking about whether there would be breakfast before they left.
Three inner disciples would lead, and that detail alone changed the air on the terrace.
When Kaela stepped forward, the outer disciples straightened. Not from respect exactly — from reflex. Her presence did that. She wore the same austere armor, hair bound, posture the same as it always was: a thing that had decided what it was and had not reconsidered since.
To her right: Yan Qishen. Tall, sharp-eyed, sword slung at his side like an afterthought. His robes were immaculate. His expression said this mission was beneath him and he intended everyone to know it.
To her left: Mei Rulan. Whip coiled at her hip. Gaze moving over the outer disciples the way you'd look at tools in a shed; counting, assessing, not particularly interested in what they thought about being assessed.
Tharia looked at the whip, then at the expression.
Kaela spoke. "We move through the eastern passes and descend into the forest road. Maintain formation. Scouts rotate every hour."
"Outer disciples can handle scouting," Yan Qishen said, not quite interrupting. His voice sounded as if restating a fact everyone already knew. "No need to tire ourselves before we reach the village."
Mei Rulan's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Agreed. If they fall into a pit, that is simply misfortune."
A ripple of unease moved through the outer disciples. Tharia felt it. Felt her own tail start to twitch and stopped it.
'Not yet. Save it.'
"Scouts will be assigned," Kaela said. "Supplies will be carried evenly. We do not arrive disordered." Her tone allowed no argument and offered nothing else.
They left the sect under a pale sky.
The mountain paths were narrow and damp, winding through cliffs streaked with moss and old water-runoff scars. Outer disciples were sent ahead and to the sides to probe paths and watch for movement.
Tharia was among them, her presence blurred beneath a careful shimmer — not full invisibility, just enough to slide past casual attention.
It was harder than usual to hold. Yan Qishen's eyes were sharp and moved constantly, catching hesitations, reading gaps. She caught him frowning at a space that had been her two seconds ago and smiled thinly at the trees.
'Can't quite find me, can you,' she thought. 'Hehehe.'
Behind her, Mei Rulan made idle comments about posture and pace. When an outer disciple stumbled under a heavy supply crate on a wet section of path, she laughed. When another adjusted his grip, she commented on it. Observations delivered in the tone of someone who found human difficulty entertaining.
"You," Mei Rulan said at one point, finger extended toward a disciple in the middle of the line. "Carry mine as well."
The disciple flushed, bowed, and took the additional pack without a word.
Tharia watched him struggle up the incline with two people's weight on his back. He was deciding whether this was the moment to say something.
It wasn't. Not yet. But she was keeping count.
About an hour in, she crouched over a section of mud at the path's edge where the tree cover thinned.
The prints were uneven, pressed deep, claw marks dragging sideways at each step. Not the round-footed press of something walking upright but the sharp rear-weighted print of something leaning over the neck of a fast mount.
"They ride low," she said, to the outer disciple beside her. "Fast turns. The flanks are the danger point, not the front."
The disciple looked at the tracks. Then at her. "How do you—"
"Outer disciple." Yan Qishen's voice, from somewhere behind and above. Not looking at her. Still walking.
"Did I ask for commentary?"
Tharia straightened slowly. Her ears went back one precise increment. "The tracks indicate—"
"I do not need your speculation." Still not looking at her. "Do your job and keep quiet."
Heat flared in her chest. She bowed — shallow, precisely calibrated — and turned away.
'Right,' she thought. 'Noted. You don't want the information. That's fine.'
Mei Rulan had drifted close enough to hear. "So sensitive," she said, fingers brushing the whip's handle. "Outers always mistake being noticed for importance."
Tharia didn't respond. Didn't give her the twitch she was looking for. Just moved back into the line with her face set to the expression she used when she was processing something that would be useful later.
Her tail was perfectly still.
The outer disciple beside her caught her eye. Didn't say anything. Just gave a small, exhausted nod that said: yes. That's what this is.
System:
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Chaos Essence: +1 (Controlled Response Under Provocation.)
Note: You did not do the inadvisable thing.
Secondary Note: The System is aware you wanted to.
Chaos Essence: 57 → 58.
[collapse]
By the time they reached the village, the sun hung low and the air smelled of damp ash.
The settlement sat at the forest's edge; a cluster of wooden homes reinforced with hurried patches, boards nailed crooked over older boards, rope where proper fixings had run out. Several buildings were blackened, roofs sagging where fire had eaten through beams. Livestock pens stood empty.
People emerged cautiously as the sect's colors came into view. Faces lined with worry, children clutching sleeves, peering from behind their parents. An older man stepped forward and bowed.
"Honored disciples. Thank you for coming."
Yan Qishen barely glanced at him. "Where are the raiders?"
Mei Rulan's nose wrinkled. "And where are the bodies? Goblins are rarely subtle."
The man hesitated. "They struck three nights ago. Took grain. Burned the east storehouse. Killed two guards."
Murmurs from the villagers. A woman near the back pressed her hands together, eyes moving between the inner disciples. Hope going somewhere else.
One child stared at Tharia's ears.
Tharia crouched to his level. Tapped one ear. "Go ahead," she said.
His hand reached out, very carefully, then his mother moved to pull him back—
"It's fine," Tharia said, to the mother.
She straightened and moved to help unload supplies. Her shimmer slipped for half a breath as fatigue pulled at her focus, three days of recovery and the morning's march had thinned her reserves more than she'd tracked.
Mei Rulan noticed immediately.
"Oh?" Light, pleasant. "Your trick failed."
Villagers turned.
Tharia straightened. The shimmer rebuilt, slower than she wanted. "The humidity interferes. It's nothing."
"Nothing," Mei Rulan repeated, tasting the word. Her hand settled on the whip's handle, fingers resting there. Just resting. Which was enough. "And yet she hides herself like a coward."
A few villagers exchanged uncertain looks.
'Don't,' Tharia thought, at herself. 'She wants the reaction. Don't.'
"I hide to see more clearly," she said. Even. Quiet. Her eyes steady on Mei Rulan's face.
Mei Rulan's expression sharpened. Something moved in it — not quite surprise, something adjacent to it.
"Careful, outer disciple."
Kaela stepped between them. She didn't look at Tharia. "We are here to assess damage and secure the perimeter. Post scouts. Do not antagonize the villagers." She moved on.
Mei Rulan turned away.
The villagers breathed. One man murmured, "At least she listens."
Another, quieter: "Do they always come like this?"
Tharia heard both, and kept walking.
As dusk settled, lanterns were lit along the battered palisade. Outer disciples worked shoulder to shoulder with villagers — repairing fences, reinforcing doors, hauling timber from collapsed sheds.
Raw hands, weary movements, no complaints. The kind of work that happened because someone had to do it and the people who should be helping were discussing rankings on dry ground.
Yan Qishen criticized pace. Mei Rulan cracked her whip idly against a post to hurry a group along — not striking anyone, just the sound of it, which was enough. Villagers flinched at each snap. Tharia watched a child's face when the sound hit.
Kaela walked the perimeter alone, scanning the treeline.
She paused near Tharia, who was tying a rope across a broken gate. "You kept steady," she said, without looking at her.
Tharia didn't look up either. "Barely."
Kaela's silence was deliberate, she moved on.
'What does that mean,' Tharia thought, pulling the rope taut. 'Is that — was that approval? That was almost approval. That might have been approval.'
Her ears moved through three different positions in about two seconds.
'Whatever, I want a bed and warm food,' she told herself.
That night the villagers shared what they had — thin porridge, dried roots, a few strips of smoked meat. They offered it with bowed heads, gratitude heavy in the air alongside the fear that the sect wouldn't stay past sunrise.
Tharia sat apart, eating slowly, watching the firelight catch on the faces around her.
The outer disciples were rotating through watch shifts on the palisade, spears in cold hands, lanterns sputtering in the damp air. Their chatter was low. One muttered about goblins striking at night, another joked bitterly about acceptable losses.
Villagers huddled near fires. A mother rocked her child. An elder spoke of past raids in a voice that had stopped expecting to be surprised by them.
Above all of it, on dry ground, Yan Qishen and Mei Rulan discussed how quickly news of the mission would reach the elders. Prestige. Whether this assignment would count toward their advancement evaluation. Mei's whip snapped against the ground as she talked — absent, rhythmic, making villagers flinch without bothering to notice it.
Tharia's hands closed around her bowl.
'Hell with them,' she thought, she thought, staring at the dry ground where the two sat discussing their rankings, 'I used to think I understood why outer disciples hated inner disciples. I really thought I got it.'
She understood now. And she kind of wanted to throw something.
The hierarchy wasn't just about cultivation stages. It was about who got to decide whose comfort mattered. Who got to use who as furniture and call it order.
She'd seen bad cultivators before — arrogant ones, dismissive ones — but she'd seen them from a distance, from a position where it was someone else's problem.
Here, crouching in the mud of a village that had lost two guards and a storehouse and was surviving on dried roots, while two inner disciples sat dry and discussed their personal advancement, it settled differently.
Not anger. Something quieter and more permanent.
She watched the treeline.
'They are both an Ass,' she added, privately, and turned away.
System:
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Chaos Essence: +1 (Held the Restraint. Again. All Day.)
Note: The System notes this is becoming a pattern.
Not the fun kind of pattern.
Chaos Essence: 58 → 59.
[collapse]
She was still watching the treeline when the sound came.
Faint. Distant. Carried through the trees in pieces — hooves on wet earth, a guttural cry, quick and sharp.
The outer disciples on the palisade stiffened. Villagers pulled children back. Doors slammed.
Yan Qishen rose smoothly, sword clearing its scabbard. Mei Rulan's whip uncoiled with a sound like a question being asked.
Kaela raised her hand. "Hold formation. Scouts to the front. No panic."
Tharia rose with the others, fan unfolded, its qi-lines faint in the firelight. Her shimmer built clean and fast; the new vein finding its place in the channel like it had always been there, and maybe it had.
The forest beyond the palisade had stopped being quiet.
Shapes moved between the trees. Eyes caught the firelight and held it, too many and too low to the ground for anything that walked upright.
The riders had come.
Her ears went flat. Her heels clicked once on the wet stone.
System Status:
System Status:
Host: Tharia | Age: 18
Status: Healthy (Angry).
[TECHNIQUE ANALYSIS]
Illusion Proficiency: 49.1%
Chaos Stability: Fragile (Holding).
Stage: Foundation Veins: Second Vein Opened.
Achievement: {Style Over Substance: Passed evaluation wearing absolutely nothing. Technically.} - {Fought in Public Naked and Won Anyway (Advanced): Illusion failed. Dignity failed. Victory did not. Again} - {Naked Field Researcher: Turned a failure into very thorough, extremely hands-on field research. Technically.}
Traits: 'The Reluctant Royal' (Passive). ‘Willing Exposure’ (Passive)
Passive Techniques: 'Shame-Guard' (Passive)
Module: 'Path of the Unseen'
Art: Transparent Illusion (Rank: F), Hold: 14 breaths (record) | Phantom Guise (Rank F)
Active Techniques: Illusory Raiment (Rank: C), Shimmer (Rank: F).
Weapon Affinity: Illusory Fan.
Chaos Essence: 59.
Wardrobe: Lucky Charm Hakama (Shelf.) Winter Sprite Dress (Worn.) Mesh Set (Backup.)
Status: Duskwind Sect - Outer Disciple.
Active Quests: Open the Third Vein.
SHOP.
[collapse]
Please support the novel on patr3on or by like and rating/ reviewing the novel. To keep me going knowing many of my readers support me <3