The split in the sky pulsed with a cold, pale light. From the void, six figures slid earthward on runners of frozen radiance. They wore silver-white robes that carried the bite of winter hoarfrost. Their faces, obscured by veils of pure light, held no discernible features, only an aura of chilling indifference. Each bore a harvester's sickle formed from compressed astral fire, curved tips glinting like cut glass. They landed with no sound, their ethereal boots touching the rich earth of the Azure Ink homestead as if on air. Su Mian stood rooted by the furrowed dirt, watching as one of the figures drifted toward his rows. The sickle dipped low, shedding white sparks. It did not cut through the stalks; as the curved edge passed over a prize snow-cabbage, the pale green leaves shriveled, turned brown, and collapsed into grey powder. Another sweep, and the neighboring head collapsed into dry ash. “No,” Su Mian whispered, stepping into the furrow. He had weeded those beds at dawn, saved them from snails, and banked clean mulch around every stem. Jin Ruyue moved first, clearing her throat with a hiss. “Thieves!” she snarled, flicking a pair of steel crescents from her sleeves. “Keep off his furrows!” she shouted. She lunged across the mulch, steel whistling toward the nearest invader. The figure tilted its veiled head, bringing its luminous handle around to raise a sheet of crackling frost. Her steel skidded off the shield with a screech of scraping metal. She bounced back, her arms tingling from the impact. A second raider glided toward Su Mian, its curved weapon dipping toward a bed of sweet greens. Jin Ruyue planted her boots and lunged again. She hacked in two clean diagonal strokes across the creature's chest. The curved edge skittered across the robe without catching a single thread. The beings ignored her, sweeping their sickles methodically through the vegetable beds. The tallest of them swept its sickle through a bed of blooming cloud-lilies, reducing every blossom to dry chaff. Jin Ruyue sprang forward with both daggers raised. The tall raider flicked its wrist outward in a backhanded arc. It wasn’t a wide swing, but a precise, almost casual flick of the wrist. The glowing edge caught Jin Ruyue just below the left shoulder. Cloth tore, blood soaked through her collar, and her daggers dropped into the dirt as her knees gave out. Yellow sparks crackled in the torn flesh, searing the edges. Su Mian saw her collapse into the trampled cabbages. He dropped his basket. Beside his boot lay a muddy puddle where a rinse bucket had tipped over that morning. He knelt, dipping his worn bamboo brush into the thick silt until the sable hairs clumped brown with sediment, then rose and faced the open air above. With deliberate, practiced strokes, Su Mian began to draw. He didn’t use a scroll, nor paper. With wide, practiced sweeps, he painted directly against the sky, laying down swollen cumulus bellies and steep columns of cloudburst. The mud hung suspended in the empty air, dark and wet, curling into curling squall lines and dripping reeds. He flicked the brush tip for a final splatter of thunderheads. The air thickened, growing heavy with moisture. Dark, swirling clouds, mirroring Su Mian’s airborne brushstrokes, materialized with impossible speed. Then, the sky broke. Not with blinding light, but with a deluge. Fat, heavy drops of rain, dark as ink, began to fall. It was a deluge, a true summer cloudburst, drenching everything in seconds. The raiders halted as the black downpour soaked through their garments, dyeing the pristine hems in dark streaks. Where the muddy water struck their harvesting sickles, the sharp points rounded off, opening into broad, milky petals of water-lilies. The lotuses, still glowing with ethereal energy, floated gently away, carried by the rising currents of water that now pooled on the ground. The raiders stared down at stems of damp blossom where their weapons had been. A collective, indignant hiss emanated from them, a sound of profound humiliation. They glared at Su Mian, their veiled faces radiating an affronted fury. Their celestial purpose, their very essence of cosmic power, had been rendered absurd by a farmer’s muddy brushstroke. The tall raider let out a sharp hiss, lunged sideways, and caught the injured Jin Ruyue by her tunic. Before Su Mian could swing his brush around, a ring of pale runes flared around the being's boots. A circular array of intricate, glowing glyphs solidified around them, pulsing with immense power. “If the harvest is denied,” the being cried out, “then the seed shall be returned to the halls for refining!” With a sharp crack of ozone, both the raider and Jin Ruyue vanished into the glare, leaving behind only the quiet patter of ink-rain upon the ruined garden.

The Celestial Scythe