The Beggar Who Devoured Heaven

"Heaven feeds those who climb."

Saying of the Ninefold Empire

Everyone in the Ninefold Empire knew what happened to cultivators who reached the top.

They ascended.

They rose into the clouds in robes of light. People below cried with joy and lifted their children to watch.

No one ever asked what happened next. No one had ever come back to say.

Ren Kai was not thinking about heaven. He was thinking about a bowl.

It was the only bowl he had ever owned. When he was nine, it broke in two on the stone floor of the Gutters. He cried for an hour. Not for the bowl, but for the sound. It was the sound of something you need, breaking.

He heard that sound now, deep in his belly.

Crack.

His cultivation core was small and useless. Every doctor in Azure City had called it a mistake. Now it split in two. Pain shot up his spine.

Then the sand hit his face.

Thirty thousand people cheered.

The Arena of Ashes was a huge bowl of white stone cut into a mountain. On the day of the Azure City Trials, every seat was full. Merchants sat in silk. Children sat on their fathers' shoulders and screamed for blood.

Only one person was not cheering. In the highest row sat a man in a clean white robe, with a soft smile and folded hands. He had not clapped once. He watched the ring the way a farmer watches his field.

Ren Kai did not see him. He lay face down in the sand and tasted blood.

Well, he thought. The prize money is gone.

"Nine breaths," said a smooth voice above him.

White boots stepped close. They cost more than Ren Kai's whole street.

"Nine breaths," said Lu Zhen again. He was a disciple of the Azure Peak Sect. "A servant usually lasts two. You threw sand in my eyes. You threw a shoe. You bit me."

"Good shoe," Ren Kai said. His mouth was full of blood, so it came out wrong.

The rules of the Servants' Round were simple. A servant faced one disciple. If he stood for ten breaths, he won the Honor Purse: one hundred silver coins. No one ever lasted ten. The sects offered the purse so the crowd could laugh at the poor.

But Ren Kai had not come to be laughed at. He had come for medicine.

He was seventeen and very thin. No one notices a hungry boy.

One hundred silver was a month of medicine for his sister, Ren Lan. She was ten years old, and she coughed all night in a one-room shack with a leaking roof. So Ren Kai stole a servant's robe, walked into the Arena with his head down, and made a plan.

Be small. Be fast. Be annoying.

It had almost worked.

"I will be kind," Lu Zhen said. He pointed to a red purse at the edge of the ring. "The tenth breath is still yours. Just stand up. One hundred silver. Take it."

The crowd laughed.

Ren Kai knew it was a trap. But Ren Lan's cough was worse this week, and no one in Azure City would give him a single coin out of kindness.

So he put one hand on the sand, then the other. He tried to stand.

"Ten!" someone shouted, laughing. "Ten, ten, ten!"

Soon thirty thousand voices were counting for a boy who could not feel his legs.

Ren Kai got one knee under him.

Lu Zhen raised his right hand. Red-gold fire gathered in his palm. It was the Flame Gate technique. It did not kill. It crushed every meridian in the body, so the victim could never hold spiritual energy again.

Ren Kai thought of Ren Lan's small, cold hand that morning. She had smiled and said, Don't come back without noodles, Big Brother.

Under his robe, something moved.

The coin.

It was old and bent, with half a strange symbol worn away. Three days ago, a dying old man in an alley had sold it to him for one bowl of noodles. It had been warm ever since. Coins should not be warm.

Now it was burning.

He knew hunger better than he knew his own name. He had always believed it lived in his stomach. He was wrong. It lived much deeper.

Something at the bottom of him opened its eyes. It was old. It was huge. It was very, very hungry.

Feed, said the dark.

Lu Zhen's palm came down.

Ren Kai did not decide anything. He only opened his mouth, and his empty stomach gave the loudest growl in the history of the Arena.

The fire stopped.

It did not fade. Every thread of red-gold light bent through the air and flowed into Ren Kai's chest. His robe burned away in a ring. Over his heart, a black mark opened in the shape of a mouth. Nine tiny golden teeth shone along its edge.

One tooth cracked, like a bowl dropped on stone.

The energy was gone. Not scattered. Not absorbed in the usual way.

Devoured.

The Arena went silent.

Lu Zhen stepped back and stared at his empty hand. His proud aura had vanished.

"What... are you?" he whispered.

For the first time in his life, Ren Kai saw a cultivator look at someone weaker with real fear.

Boy.

Ren Kai froze. The voice was inside his head. It was dry and bored, like an old man who had just been woken from a nap.

Listen carefully. Whatever you do next, do not eat the man.

"Who—" Ren Kai said out loud.

Do not talk out loud, you fool! They will think you are mad.

A thousand faces were already staring at him. He dropped to a whisper. "Who are you?"

The man whose noodles you paid for.

Ren Kai felt a chill. The alley. The old man with a face like dried fruit. He had died before the noodles stopped steaming.

"You are dead," Ren Kai whispered.

Rude, but true. And the noodles were cold.

A warm, strange heat spread through his belly, like a lit stove. "I was not planning to eat him," he muttered.

Good. A pause. Unless he has a cultivation manual.

"Old man!"

What? Waste nothing.

Then the voice grew serious. You have about ten breaths before someone clever understands this. Cover the mark. Take your money. Walk, do not run.

"My core is broken."

Your core is dust. This is something else. Something much bigger. For the first time, the voice sounded afraid. Cover. The. Mark.

Ren Kai pressed a hand over his chest. The nine teeth felt warm under his palm. Something behind them seemed to smile.

"Forbidden art!" Lu Zhen finally screamed. "Guards!"

"I used a shoe," Ren Kai said. "Ask anyone."

No one moved.

Ren Kai stood on shaking legs. He walked to the purse and took it. One hundred silver. One month of quiet nights for a girl who deserved a hundred months.

Then he licked his lips. He had expected something holy. Everyone said cultivators were pieces of heaven.

It tasted like pork. Plain boiled pork, a little overcooked.

Ren Kai began to laugh. Thirty thousand people stared at the bloody servant boy laughing in the middle of the Arena.

Boy, said the voice. Do not.

He tilted his head back. Above the stone rim, the sky was blue and high. Somewhere behind the clouds sat the immortals.

"Hey!" Ren Kai shouted. "I have a question for heaven."

No one breathed.

"If your immortals are so powerful," he said, grinning with blood on his teeth, "why do they taste like ordinary meat?"

For three heartbeats, the Arena made no sound.

Then, in the highest row, the man in the white robe stopped smiling.

No one noticed. No one ever noticed the Stewards of Heaven.

That was what made them dangerous.