Fates Parallel (A Xianxia/Wuxia Inspired Cultivation Story)

Rika felt uneasy as she led her team through the streets of her home. There were soldiers everywhere she looked, and while none of them had heard news of any fighting yet, tensions were rising rapidly. Though they’d made it into territory controlled by Ienaga, Rika opted to keep her head down until she could get a better sense of what was going on.

The Takeda family home was under particularly heavy guard, which piqued her interest. Her dojo was well respected and had a long history, but they weren’t exactly major players. What could have warranted such close scrutiny?

If her home had been on Hayakawa’s land, she’d have understood—her affiliation with Jiaguo would render her entire family suspicious—but Master Ienaga was on their side. Rika reminded herself that Ienaga Yumi was not the head of her family. Just because she was an ally to Jiaguo didn’t necessarily mean that her entire clan was.

She’d have to proceed with caution.

“You two wait for me out here. I’m going to sneak in and see if I can reach my grandfather. He should be able to tell us what’s going on with Ienaga.”

Ishihara and Harada both nodded in response, splitting off to do their own scouting patrols.

While they did that, Rika considered her options. Direct infiltration wasn’t really her area of expertise—that was Ishihara’s realm. She was more of a social engineer, blending into crowds and gathering gossip as just another passerby.

Still, she hadn’t been training with Yoshika all these years for nothing.

She closed her eyes and focused on a small pocket within her soul, where she’d been slowly but surely refining a tiny portion of Shadow essence. Steps of the Stalker was one of Yoshika’s most powerful, yet least used techniques. It allowed them to phase in and out of physical reality at will, which they had used to great effect—even using it to escape from the academy when it was attacked by demons during the descent.

But there was a good reason for them to use it so sparingly. Since Rika had begun training the technique, she had never once used it outside of practice. Because she couldn’t.

It was too costly. Yoshika had absurd amounts of essence even before she’d acquired an artifact with effectively limitless power, and even she had found the technique to be unwieldy. They also had a shadow spirit bound to their soul, which had probably helped quite a bit.

Rika wouldn’t be using the technique to spirit-walk like they did. Instead, she’d just be masking her presence. People who didn’t know she was there would have a hard time seeing her, her passage wouldn’t disturb the air as much, and her footsteps would land silently.

Even that much was only going to give her a few seconds before she’d exhausted every last bit of the Shadow essence she’d been painstakingly collecting over the last few years.

Was this really the time to use it? It would work, of that she was certain, but was it the only option?

Rika carefully surveyed the estate as she considered it. Ienaga’s soldiers had every corner of the dojo covered. There was a chance that she could just approach normally and be let in, but that was risky if Lord Ienaga wasn’t the ally she’d thought.

Could she make it past with conventional stealth? While her specialty was creating simulacra, Rika’s core technique was still rooted in illusion techniques, and she was no slouch when it came to the arts of deception.

Disguise herself as a soldier and trick her way in? No. She didn’t have enough information about why they were there, or what their command structure was like. It would take too much time.

Pretend to be an animal and go over the wall? No. Rika was good with illusions, but making herself appear smaller required invisibility. If she could do that, then she wouldn’t need to bother with disguise, and she doubted that anyone was going to miss a mountain lion scaling the wall.

What about violence? The guards were in pairs, and Rika was confident that she could take one of the units out before they could signal the others...if she used lethal force. Knocking them out safely was another story, and either way she didn’t want to antagonize potential allies like that. She didn’t know if they were on her side, but she also couldn’t be sure they weren’t.

Rika groaned internally. What a waste. There was no way around it, though. This was what she’d cultivated the technique for. Maybe when she returned to Jiaguo she could convince Heian to give her a top-up or something.

She cycled the Shadow essence through her body, already running toward one of the clearer spots along the dojo walls. She felt her connection to the physical world loosen, the world growing quieter around her. A guard's eyes passed right over her, giving no indication that he’d noticed anything amiss.

Rika had only seconds to work with. She bounded over the wall in a single leap, rolling to her feet on the other side and quickly assessing her surroundings before dropping the technique.

She let out a small sigh of relief—nobody had noticed her entry. Rika quietly expanded her domain through the house, searching for her family. She didn’t have the same level of clarity through her domain’s senses that Yoshika did, but she could sense a few strong souls within.

More than two.

Rika swore to the kami under her breath. She should have guessed that there would be guards inside as well. She crept around the property, staying out of sight as she made her way towards the house.

The Takeda clan dojo was split into three main buildings, plus a few auxiliary structures for workshops and storage. The one she was closest to was the dojo itself, a large building with a single open space where students could practice. It let out directly into the main courtyard, which itself served as a secondary training area.

Both of those areas were teeming with second stage martial artists. Most students were first stage, so Rika wasn’t about to take her chances that they were just members of the dojo practicing.

The next building was the smallest. It was the guest wing, which served both as a gathering hall and a guest quarters. There were multiple third stage auras within, and Rika made sure to give it a wide berth. One of them might have been her grandpa, but she wasn’t inclined to risk it just yet.

Finally, she made her way to the family house. The place she’d spent most of her life, growing up. It was where her family lived. In better times, Rika could remember sharing vibrant family meals with her parents, grandparents, and baby Chiyo. Now it was just her, Chiyo, and grandpa.

The Takeda clan was in decline. Rika’s grandfather had been disappointed to learn that she likely wasn’t going to produce an heir, but hadn’t given her much trouble about it. To her knowledge, he’d never even brought it up with Chiyo—though maybe that’s just because she had been too young.

Within, Rika could only sense a single third-stage aura. She let herself relax a little. That was almost certainly her grandpa. She’d been starting to worry that the entire place had been taken over as some kind of military compound, but if grandpa was still here, there was hope.

Still, better safe than sorry. Rika slipped in quietly through a rarely-used side door, leading into their pantry. It was still in use, which was a good sign, but just as Rika entered the kitchen, a presence sprung into existence next to her and slammed into her side with a vicious kick.

Caught off-guard, Rika was knocked to the floor, but she swiftly rolled back onto her feet to see her attacker—a soldier wearing Ienaga colors, their face hidden between the mask of their armor.

Rika narrowed her eyes. The soldier had no aura at all. It was an illusion—albeit a solid one—most likely being projected by the aura she felt in the house. Said aura was also rapidly headed in her direction.

She frowned. Rika knew that Yamato had its own corps of soldiers training to become unified cultivators, but that was unmistakably the Hundred Mirrors technique. Her technique. Who had stolen her style?

Well, if that was how it was going to be, Rika would just have to show them how it was really done.

She charged towards the soldier, but as he raised his arms to block, Rika’s figure passed right through him. In the meantime, her real body delivered a sharp lance of force straight into the unblocked part of the soldier’s torso. The essence construct’s armor was no replacement for the real thing, and the blow pierced straight through, dissipating the flimsy duplicate.

At the same time, Rika manifested a simulacrum of her own right behind the soldier’s real body. While he was distracted by the loss of his duplicate, she bowled him over and pinned his arms to the ground, summoning another simulacrum to deliver the finishing blow.

“Wait!”

The soldier’s feminine voice gave Rika pause. She sounded familiar...

“Who are you, and who taught you that technique?!”

“You did, you big dumb idiot! Take my helmet off!”

Rika winced, suddenly realizing exactly who it was she’d just attacked. She got up off of the soldier and dismissed her simulacra, letting her stand up and take off the helmet on her own.

She was a young woman with the same tan skin as Rika’s, though she’d inherited their father’s bright green eyes. Chiyo glared daggers at her sister.

“Who the hell breaks into their own house?!”

Rika smiled awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head.

“Uh...it seemed like a good idea at the time? You’ve gotten a lot taller—I didn’t even recognize you.”

“That’s because you’ve been gone for three years, Rika. We didn’t even know if you were still alive!”

She blinked, frowning.

“Wait, did you not get any of my letters? I’ve been writing since I left with Hayakawa Kaede.”

“They stopped after you got to Goryeo. We thought you’d been kidnapped or something.”

Rika grimaced, scratching her head.

“What? I’ve been in Yamato since then. I sent another letter from Okou. I met Minami and the others there too—have you not heard from them, either?”

Chiyo’s face twisted into a nasty snarl.

“Minami Yuuko is a Hayakawa loyalist. I don’t associate with that tyrant’s lackeys.”

Rika felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Wait, hold on—what about Master Ienaga? At least she should have brought back news.”

Her sister gave Rika a strange look.

“Ienaga Yumi never made it back to her clan. After the campaign against the demons, her army was intercepted by the shogun’s forces. She surrendered in exchange for the lives of her soldiers.”

“And none of them had anything to say?”

Chiyo shrugged.

“We’ll never know. Once Master Ienaga was in custody, they were all executed for treason.”

Rika went pale. That was unheard of. An attempted assassination, or a particularly unpopular lord making a failed bid for the shogunate might warrant an example like that, but an entire army summarily executed?

How had she not heard about this already? They’d been traveling through Yamato, gathering information the entire time, and there was nothing to indicate that things had been so dire. Her letters had stopped arriving as soon as she left the country, and Hayakawa had maintained near total control of the spread of information ever since.

Just how long had he been planning this?

Rika remembered meeting her old academy friends in Okou. Encouraging Minami and Fujino to get together, congratulating Hana about starting a family with Ryuuji. Had they known, then? Had they looked her in the eyes and called her friend, knowing about that betrayal?

She shook her head. She couldn’t believe that. If Hayakawa could control information so well, then he’d probably sold a very different story to his side. They didn’t know what they were fighting for.

“Where is Master Ienaga now?”

Chiyo shook her head solemnly.

“We don’t know. I don’t think she’s been executed yet, but we haven’t heard anything all year.”

“And what’s with all the soldiers around?”

“Oh! Grandpa came out of retirement when he heard the news. Said that what Hayakawa did was unforgivable. He’s one of Lord Ienaga’s generals now.”

Rika’s eyes widened. Her grandpa hadn’t talked about his past much, except to brag about his exploits. She’d always thought he was exaggerating, but now she was starting to suspect that he’d been downplaying his own importance.

“Okay...wow. That’s a lot to take in, but I think I’d better go talk to him as soon as possible, then. He’s going to want to hear the real story.”