There was one more round of fights before it was agreed that it was all quite enough for the night. The agreement largely seemed to be on the part of the Five Elements sect, and Brother Wang was able to persuade his martial siblings that it would no longer be sparring if they chased down their retreating hosts. Sister Su had been watching the whole thing while crunching sunflower seeds. She wasn’t quite up to sparring yet, but she had a look in her eye that suggested she wanted in on the action.
“I was expecting more variety in their tactics.” Tian didn’t keep his voice down. There wasn’t a literal black cloud hovering over him, but the metaphorical one was heavy with lightning.
“Right. Even though they had magic weapons or shields, what they were really relying on was their talismans. Once they realized that they weren’t going to have the time to build up an array, they collapsed. Mentally, anyway.” Hong agreed. She sounded more puzzled than irritated.
“We are cheating,” Tian laughed. It was nasty enough to make the party from Ancient Crane Mountain look over at him with a bit of worry. “I figured out why Mao-whatshisname looked so wrong. He was off-beat. Literally. We were constantly pushing him off the rhythm he was trying to build. We weren’t playing along with the things he was saying, we didn’t fight the way he wanted us to fight, and we weren’t taking him seriously.”
“Oh for-” Hong started rubbing her forehead.
“And because of that, he was irritated and flustered. He was rushed. He didn’t have time to properly think through what happened to my opponent, he didn’t notice the timing of when the array exploded, he didn’t try to make any deductions- he just kept trying to force things back onto his schedule.”
“Not very daoist of him. Nor very strategic.” Brother Wang smiled like a benevolent saint upon a suffering world. His purse was now more of a satchel, or possibly a sack. There had been a lot of takers at the odds he offered, and he was able to rip off an additional chunk for the final round of matches.
“It’s the overspecialization trap, similar to Bamboo Medicine Hut but not so bad. Five Elements Courtyard has some grasp of tactics, positioning, making best use of their equipment, and by the end were at least trying to use light body arts.” Sister Su’s voice slid from cool to acidic. The change came when she saw how Daoist Mei was glued to Brother Wang’s side, firmly wrapping his arm in hers.
The big man was half again taller than Mei, and four times her weight at least. She seemed to have no problem with any of that. Judging by the happy little humming noises she was making, she downright approved.
“But their boxing was non-existent, their swordplay wasn’t much better, and the flying shields just kind of hovered there. If you know the enemy will try to rush you as soon as they realize they are dealing with an array master, light body arts and close-in fighting should be priorities for practice.” Tian shook his head.
“How about it, Lil’ Mei? You any good at close up work?” Wang looked down with a grin.
“Nope!” Mei giggled and smiled up impishly. “Little Daoist Tian has it all backwards. The better you are at making arrays, the less you want to learn how to box. It takes suuuuper-duuuuper long to learn everything about arrays, and if you are good with them, the bad guys die or get trapped before they even know you are there. KaaBOOM! And even if they did know, they can’t beat your array. So if you are spending time learning how to swing a sword around…”
This time it was Mei whose grin was suggestive.
“It’s just a hobby you practice for fun. I can sympathise. I swing a long and heavy hammer, though.” Wang concluded. “Ah, I can practically hear the losers biting their pillows and kicking their feet in frustration. The patter of other people’s bitter tears is wonderfully soothing when accompanied by the chime of a full purse.”
Sister Su cocked her head to one side. “And yet, they are a kingdom dominating sect. Clearly there is something we have yet to understand.”
“Hmm. Daoist Mei?”
She shook her head quickly. “I don’t know how we came to run Three Rivers Kingdom. I just know that most of the work I did in the Redstone Wastes was setting up other people’s arrays. Other sects, I mean.” She giggled. It wasn’t a laugh. You couldn’t possibly mistake it for a laugh. There was too much jiggle for it to be anything other than a giggle.
That got a grunt from Sister Su, who was looking increasingly darkly at the way the cheerful Mei was hugging onto the even more cheerful Brother Wang. Tian had transcended the merely fed up and was ready to vomit with irritation.
“Feast still going on?” Tian asked.
“Ah… no. Since most of the guests had left, they wrapped it up.” Brother Wang looked regretful.
“Perfect. What a delightful end to the evening. I’m going back to my quarters and making a meal out of what I managed to grab on the way out. What a fine welcome.”
Tian gloomed his way back to the guest house. It was hard to see the beauty of the Five Element Sect through his mood. Everything seemed lively around him. The trees swayed and shimmered with a glow of stored sunlight, or were lined in pale blue moonlight. The grass crunched under his feet with sudden bursts of orange and cedar or the smell of grass on a hot day after a heavy rain. The little windchime tinkle of the pale blue flowers fell on deaf ears, as did the harmonizing nightingales.
What little shards of wonder that managed to fight through the dark clouds were met with a sneering, disdainful, “Illusions.” Never mind that he didn’t have the faintest idea how one could do any of this. He likewise ignored the fact that all this exceeded what he believed was possible with vital energy. He did immediately acknowledge that there were enormous gaps in his education as a cultivator. Another failing by the Monastery.
His mind was jerked back to the first study session after he came to Windblown Manor. Sister Su had argued in favor of a job specific education, rather than a general one. He knew her actual opinion was more nuanced, but she was generally of the opinion that any education not put to a productive purpose was life wasted.
But how could you know what would be useful or important to know later in life? A year ago, Tian would have said he didn’t need to know anything about arrays, or the kingdom’s economy, or their neighboring sects. And yet, here they were. No closer to a solution. His dao heart was stronger than it was when he left Depot Four, no question there. But he was still pissed off, miserable, frustrated, and completely without faith in the Monastery.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
He found a rock in the courtyard to sit on and pulled out his bowl. He had eaten half of it before he realized he wasn’t alone.
“Oh. Didn't see you. Sorry.” Even he didn’t believe he sounded sincere.
“You looked straight at me, and didn’t see me. I’m not asking, I am telling you that you looked straight at me and didn’t see me. If I thought I would succeed, I really do think I would try to kill you right now.” Lin said. Her tone was conversational, but Tian believed her.
“Fair.”
“Fair? How is it fair?”
“At the moment, I think stabbing people who frustrate you is fair.” Tian kept eating. At the very least, he could be fed. “You weren’t at the sparring grounds.”
“Nobody felt the need to pick a fight with me. Which is either a testament to the Lin Clan’s reach, or my own irrelevance. Or both.”
“You could have picked a fight, if you wanted.”
“I didn’t want to.”
Tian gave Lin a proper look over his bowl. There was nothing strange about sitting out in a courtyard and looking up at the moon. Usually, you would have snacks, or a drink, or poetry, or something. Sitting by yourself in the moonlight, thinking how worthless you are…
“Just had the oddest feeling of kinship. Fingers crossed it passes soon.” Tian put down his chopsticks, displayed the crossed fingers, then picked up his chopsticks again.
“How on earth are our situations at all similar?”
“You don’t think you have worth because everyone is telling you that you are second rate. I don’t think the opinions of the people telling me I’m first rate are worth anything. We both feel that whatever it is we are doing is pointless and a waste of life.” Tian cleaned his bowl.
“A lack of filial propriety? From the young dragon Tian Zihao? Scandalous.” Her voice was almost uninflected.
“I’m filial as hell. I’m just pissed off, and I don’t know if it’s the kind of pissed off that gets better. You know what I figured out from all those scrolls, and all those ‘stabilizing missions?’ The unofficial, or hell, maybe it’s actually official, policy of Ancient Crane Mountain towards the mortal world.”
He casually stowed the bowl in his ring. His voice was carrying in the night, bouncing off the walls of the guest house. He didn’t know where Elder Feng was, or where Daoist Steelshimmer or her crow companion were, but he assumed they could hear him. He was just too fed up to care.
“The Monastery is aware of the problems in the mortal world, but not paying attention to them. To the extent that they are unaware, it is because they don’t want to know. Knowing would be a distraction. It would encourage people to take action. And that would lead to two things- Mortals seeing more immortals running around, and immortals filling their heads with mortal worries. Result- Mortals will start wondering ‘Why can’t I be an immortal?’ and getting told that, in fact, they can become immortals… by the heretics. Meanwhile, the orthodox cultivators aren’t progressing because they are worried about the, the, the damn salt production rates at the brine spring they are supervising!”
He took a ragged breath. Lin completed the thought. “So you would have more and stronger heretics met by fewer and weaker, orthodox cultivators. And I say fewer, because most of the Inner Court will desert if you try to make them supervise building roads instead of finding the legendary Stardust Ghost Thistle they need to elevate their carefully created Lunar Eclipse Three Goddesses Dreamfire Phisique.”
“Right. Or whatever. My point is that nobody actually wants to deal with mortal crap except mortals and kind people like Brother Wang. Instead, the Monastery's policy is that we should focus on being the best immortality cultivating daoists we can be, so that we can take on things that mortals can't. Natural disasters, monsters, heretics, that kind of thing.”
“Yep.” Lin nodded, looking indifferent.
“But the first thing they did, before we even left the depot, was to say the old way of doing things is unworkable, and the collapse is so total, they are willing to kick it over to us to work on. Presumably because we can’t mess it up more than it already is. All this last year has been is justifications. We were carefully shown how we got to this messed up place, shown every step of the logic, then told to go think of solutions.”
“Yep.”
“Do a good job, and one day, all this can be yours!”
“Well, yours. Not mine.”
“Swap you.”
“That’s not a choice either of us get to make. And I don’t think you would like a life destined for second place.”
“Except I’m not competing with my sectmates. Quick question, though.” Tian fixed Lin hard with his eyes. “If I had a magic pill that instantly elevated you to the level of a Daoist Master, divine revelation, cultivation, equipment, everything, and it was yours for a mere five hundred years ruling the Ancient Crane Monastery as the Sect Master, would you take it? Would you really, truly, want to be the person responsible for managing all this?” Tian was showing all his teeth. No one would confuse the expression with a smile.
“Yes, but no. I take your point.” She sighed.
“No, you don’t. You have been set up, Sister Lin. I’m being groomed for… not the Sect Master job but something pretty damn senior. But you are being groomed for a job that might not even exist yet. Elder for Mortal Affairs.”
“Eh?” Lin gave Tian a bewildered look. He laughed. It was a little cruel, and very angry.
“It is the perfect job for the Lin Clan, or, better, a Lin Clan scion who cannot reach the pinnacle of cultivation. There are these creatures out there, smart, cunning, but irresponsible and prone to terrible mistakes. They are called mortals. And they are very useful, when raised properly and trained well. They are suffering because they lack such care. As compassionate, generous daoists, we must instruct them. For the best of them, should they wish it, we will ‘awaken their spiritual intelligence,’ and have them join our sect. The worst thing is, as arrogant and condescending as it is, I’m really not sure there is a better alternative.”
Lin went still, her eyes drifting slowly back up to the moon. After a few minutes, she asked “What do you think we are really going to do here? It doesn’t seem like anything we could do would really strengthen the alliance. Or stop the Five Elements Courtyard from taking advantage of our weakness. A display of strength from five juniors means nothing. Future potential is just… potential. So easily lost.”
“I have no idea what the Monastery wants, but Sister, really, who cares?”
“Eh?”
“Our orders, or my orders, anyway, are to strip everything of value we can from the Five Elements Courtyard. I’m not sticking around after this. They are setting me up to run around inside the Kingdom, figuring that if the cage is big enough I won’t see the bars. And hell, maybe they are right. But no matter what, being stronger and understanding more things is never going to be the wrong choice. So I’m going to do that. I’m grabbing every advantage I can, and in the process I will make myself a giant in their minds. I will show them that my friends prosper, and my enemies suffer. I will teach them that my kindness doesn’t mean I am someone they can bully.”
He reached his hand up, and gently pinched the moon. “I will have the courage to be kind, Sister Lin. Because I will be strong enough to stand the consequences.”
He turned away from the moon and locked eyes with Lin. “Why aren’t you doing the same?”