Licking Bronze Fur

"Ahh! That BITCH Princess!"

Pain! Pain he'd never met, an ax cleaving his mind apart, soul threatening to disintegrate. He stuck his fingers into the rock against his twisting back. Then he cursed the princess. Clawing at the ground and cursing, over and over, he held out till the pain faded, but the respite was the worst part, for it was brief.

Xie Qing begged and howled.

"Ahh, No, no… no. Just keep the pain coming, you bastards. That lying bitch, oh heaven."

Still gasping for breath and not trying to get off the floor, he withdrew the divine sense he'd unrolled onto his nerves to block the pain. The strands gathered and rushed into his brain.

He shut his eyes and concentrated. When he opened them, he found an immense world of fog in his vision. Inside the dense, white fog was a small clearing, and hovering there was a metal orb the size of his head. It was mystical. For a moment, he forgot his pain. He materialized the divine sense into an avatar and shuffled over to the orb's other side. A piece was hanging off, marring the perfectness of the sphere.

"Heaven! Still not finished!" he yelled, yanking on his avatar's white hair.

Just when had this sphere appeared? A cultivator's Darya, their sea of consciousness, housed the divine sense, but this metal orb was new and peculiar. After he'd fainted, something crucial had taken place, and the orb had appeared. But he had no answers.

"After I fainted, something happened! And the orb appeared then. But what! What happened?" Xie Qing said through gritted teeth, before yelping in alarm.

He turned toward the sky, where a giant silver-headed ax with a wooden handle was descending toward the clearing. Pupils contracting, he dissipated the avatar into strings of divine sense that flew into the fog, emerging in the material realm.

The divine sense broke out from his brain and streamed along the spinal cord, before splitting into tendrils that wrapped around the nerves. A current surged from each fiber of his body. The pain that detonated left his mouth as a whimper.

Each wave of pain weakened his control over his divine sense. With time, his torment heightened, his whimpers giving way to yells.

Upon the final waves' arrival, he was shrieking, frothing, and twitching with his face distorted and eyes bulging out of their sockets.

A minute thereafter, the pain ceased, and Xie Qing begged to the silver ax. Four minutes and he was past the stage of considering if this episode was the legacy of the cave's owner. His drool soaked the white hair underneath him, and he'd dug himself into a modest pit furnished with stone chips. He contemplated suicide once more, but the chunk was hanging by a sliver from the metal orb in his Darya.

Two minutes passed, when Xie Qing made it to the end with his sanity intact. For an hour, he just lay on his bed of stone chips, gawking at the ceiling, mind vacant and body prostrate.

His divine sense was a rope stretched thin, and many threads had snapped. After half a day of rest, he opened his Darya with the divine sense still intact.

In the realm of fog, his avatar was no longer immaculate, instead matching the bedraggled scholar robes and disheveled white hair of his real body. Parts of its skin had strange gaps. Like patches torn off a shirt, dense glowing threads were visible from the holes. His obsidian eyes had lost their shine.

He ambled over and noticed the metal chunk hovering nearby. Where the ax had struck it off the orb, an ugly, irregular cut was visible, squirming as if struggling to rebuild itself.

Meanwhile, the chunk reacted in no way. Xie Qing could leave it alone, but he'd suffered too much. He'd paid the price, so he sure as hell wanted the benefits.

"Jus-Just what are you, damn it…" he whimpered, tears visible in his eyes.

Resentful, he reached out to the hovering metal chunk. The moment his right hand made contact, the chunk began to twinkle and rotate at an absurd pace, drawing the fog and the avatar inwards. A sense of terror engulfed Xie Qing's mind. He yanked his right arm back, but it was too late, and the spinning chunk swallowed it.

"Is this heaven damned thing not done making me suffer! Fuck, why didn't I leave it alone?" Xie Qing yelled, clutching his head.

He'd lost a sixth of his divine sense to the damned thing. Yet he could only watch as the chunk spun faster, and the golden light turned sharp. A miniature sun appeared in his Darya, and it began to melt the fog enveloping the clearing. Eyes wide, Xie Qing saw the mystical fog leave behind familiar specks of light—divine sense! If not weaved into threads or an avatar, it existed in the Darya as a cloud of these particles.

Cautious this time, he snagged a few of the specks flying towards the sun with his left hand, which absorbed them. The stump that used to be his right arm craved for more.

"H-Heaven!"

Ecstatic, he shoved away any vigilance; it wasn't as if things could turn worse.

The ax had engraved the torment on his very soul. But each bit he absorbed was a miraculous balm for his spirit. The memories didn't leave, but the trauma lessened. Thus, he began a game of running around and bumping into glowing specks, keeping a healthy distance from the miniature sun.

But soon, the light started to fade, the mote production cutoff, leaving Xie Qing with a note of discontent, even though the benefits were much.His avatar now looked pristine and 4 inches taller, without including his injured divine sense. Thinking back, the pain had been worth it. The torment was a fleeting memory. Such was the mysterious world of cultivators.

Xie Qing sauntered over to the source of his troubles. Once the light vanished, the chunk's new form became discernible: it was a bronze goblet the height of his fist. Once it stopped its rotation, the goblet began to expand, not ceasing till its height matched his own.

From his position, Xie Qing couldn't look inside it. But a second later, a thick bronze and black rope came from within, dangling by the goblet's rim. Stupefied, he watched as the rope began to swing at a languid pace. He couldn't hold himself back and ran over and peeped into the goblet. Laid within was a tiger licking its magnificent bronze fur and black stripes, its meter long tail dangling out.

Set on two feet, the tiger might loom at 4 meters high. Its front paws were the size of Xie Qing's head, but he didn't wish to find out if the comparison was correct. The tiger's white beard was, in a phrase, majestic and fierce.

The inconceivable sight of a tiger relaxing inside a goblet in his Darya left Xie Qing stunned until the tiger turned its face towards him. His real body began to sweat, and he felt as if his avatar was disintegrating. A tiger's stare was a reminder of one's mortality. The yellow eyes held no compassion. Every being was equal and beneath them.

The tiger averted its gaze; Xie Qing relaxed. Much to his shock, it growled, and said, "I have an elder brother. You're stronger now, so you will survive."

"You can talk!" Xie Qing yelled, before gasping. "Wait! What do you mean you have an elder brother? Survive what?"

But the tiger was aloof and disinterested in responding, preferring to lick its fur instead. Xie Qing moved his hand forward, but a warning growl made him think twice.

When he didn't leave after a few minutes, the tiger held him with a lazy glare, and deigning to answer, it said, "My name is Sultan. Now leave, before the True Soul Ax continues its work."

No sooner did the tiger named Sultan finish talking, before the accursed ax appeared in the sky above, descending with no warning. A yelp escaped Xie Qing's lips, and he dissipated his avatar and charged into the fog. In the physical realm, he braced himself.

When the pain arrived, it was much worse. He soon realized the price was not worth the gain, even if it could erase the trauma.