The party of “adventurers” consisted of the juniors from Ancient Crane Monastery and an equal number of talented youths from the Five Elements Courtyard. The stated goal was to traverse the jungle, reach the Ancient Temple of War King Cho, kill the ten-leg horrors infesting it, and return safely. What it actually was, Elder Feng took pains to emphasise, was a chance to show off and for the Courtyard to regain some martial face.
The Elder’s current line of attack, diplomatically speaking, was that the Courtyard should focus on being the manufacturing hub for this part of the warfront. It was all they were good at. Therefore, they should send talismans and array masters in unstinting quantities to those actually capable of fighting - Ancient Crane Mountain and the Seven Stars School.
The obvious problems with that line of argument didn’t need elaboration, particularly since winning the argument could be as disastrous as losing it. At least, that was Tian’s take. It turned out that his imagination was limited by his low level.
The caravan the Courtyard had captured had so many array making supplies, a regional scale array was possible. The Courtyard were also the only ones capable of manufacturing all the components necessary to deploy such an array. Ancient Crane Monastery and the Seven Stars School could focus entirely on the attack, leaving defense to the array and the array masters.
The cost (which was beyond the comprehension of most Heavenly People, never mind juniors like Tian) was entirely justified. It was the kind of strategic move that could change the course of the entire war. It was just slightly tricky to persuade someone that their entire massive windfall should be invested in “the common good.”
“Elder, forgive me if this is an inappropriate question, but… even if we do convince them to spend their wealth, they will still have vastly more surviving cultivators after the war, will they not? And while we might be running rings around their juniors, I can’t imagine they took down a convoy of sky barges protected by Heavenly Person level experts if they didn’t have real experts of their own. So… how does this help the overall post-war situation?”
Sister Lin cupped her hands and bowed as she asked. Elder Feng nodded approvingly at the question.
“Do you know how many strategically important daoists there are in the whole Righteous Alliance? The ones who truly control the balance of power between the sects? Forty six. If we went mad and doubled that number with hidden experts or seniors who faked their own deaths to act as emergency Mountain Guardians, that is still less than a hundred people across eight kingdoms. Quadruple it, and you could still fit them all in a single banquet. They are that rare. Daoist Steelshimmer and I would not be included in that number, nor would Elder Rui. In fact, you can safely assume that any senior daoist you meet with a regular job beyond teaching their disciples is not considered a strategic level power. Only sect master level figures are sometimes an exception to this rule.”
Tian nodded. Same old story. The Daoist Masters didn’t care about the masses. They just needed the few elites. “They just want to make sure their resource gathering base is sufficiently large, so they can train the next generation of experts while their next crop of servants grows up.”
Elder Feng sighed. He could see pain and exhaustion in her tightening eyes and slack cheeks. She had changed over the course of the trip. Still elegant, but…
“It has been an educational journey for me too, Junior Tian. A useful reminder that one can ‘know’ something without really ‘knowing’ it. The Daoist Masters are better than you give them credit for being. They truly do believe in the supreme daoist virtues, and strive to follow as many human virtues as they can as well. They genuinely do want the best for all the members of the Mountain, and for the Broad Sky Kingdom as well.”
Tian nodded. He believed her. He just didn’t care. The Daoist Masters could believe in whatever they liked. His brothers were still dying out on the red sands because the Masters didn’t want to mind the mortals. Elder Feng sighed again and waved away the tangent.
“What the adventure is for is a chance for both sides to show off their methods and demonstrate who has the best future experts. Who is most likely to produce the next one or two people who can change everything. You aren’t the pinnacle of the sect’s junior generation, but you are right up there, and the closest to hand. Go. Demonstrate to them that your future is limitless, and theirs is not.”
That night, Tian meditated in the courtyard. The cool yin qi of the moon helped calm the irritation within him. Being played with was bad enough, and it was pretty bad. What was almost worse was that he was enjoying beating up the bullies. It didn’t take much introspection to figure out. He was finally in a place where, when confronted with rock throwers, he could throw rocks back. And he could throw a whole lot harder.
What a cheap thing to be proud of. Cultivating the Dao, learning the true mechanisms of the universe, all to be a better rock thrower.
His breath flowed in and out. Not really cultivating, just watching the thoughts fly past. Seeing how the pieces fit together, and what gaps remained.
The Courtyard would lead them into a situation where arrays, and only arrays were useful. Arrays let a weaker cultivator use magics far beyond what they could manage with just their own Vital Energy. They could harness nature to do so, but they still needed all kinds of tools to make it work. It took a whole setup.
The Temple would be a trap, then. Maybe not one explicitly designed to kill them, but designed to beat them one way or another. So the Courtyard’s adventurers would have to be crushed before then.
Ten-leg horrors, raised in immense numbers in the jungle. Sounded like insects. Sounded like insect swarms. He could remember fighting enough of those in the wasteland. Another thing arrays excelled at dealing with. Create an impenetrable wall, then simply kill at leisure.
It was their home field. Everything was prepared to give them all practical advantages. It wasn’t a contest. It was an execution. A truly unforgettable lesson on who was the servant and who was the master.
What to do, then? Disrupt their rhythm. Force them to move at a time and place they don’t want to. Force them to confront problems they are unprepared for. But there was no way to plan for such a thing. Not with the gap in information and equipment. What did they have that the Courtyard definitely did not?
Tian watched the leaves fly in the night breeze. Thinking about the desert, thinking about too many things. From the airy chaos, a very cold idea crystallized. Don’t be the rock thrower. Let the rock throwers stone themselves. His Sect-Siblings could do that. There was one thing that every single person from the Ancient Crane Monastery had over the Five Elements Courtyard. They were all survivors.
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“I’ll have to convince the others. Compassion is a dreadful thing, sometimes. But my compassion doesn’t reach far enough to warm the Courtyard too. My brothers and sisters still need all my care.”
The adventurers assembled next to a path leading into the dense cloud forest, on the edges of the more civilized part of the Five Elements Courtyard. You could see the line separating the two quite clearly- all the illusions stopped dead at the forest’s edge. The forests were subtly different than the ones Tian knew. Cooler, for one thing, though no less damp. All the trees and plants seemed familiar, but different enough to make him doubt his identification. The calls in the trees were different too- strange birds and the cries of unknown beasts.
The Snow Grace Crane seemed unimpressed. Tian was just happy she was keeping up. Her walk remained rather ungainly looking, especially while she was out of the water. Nevertheless, she was strong enough to keep up. Every so often, she would flap her broad wings and launch into the air, scouting around for something interesting to eat. Judging by the grumpy feelings Tian was picking up, there wasn’t anything good.
The five daoists from the Courtyard were an interesting bunch. Daoist Mei had somehow finagled her way onto the expedition with two other women. The two men who came along were none other than the Fried Dough Daoists. The filthy looks they gave Tian suggested that his nickname for them had gotten around.
He didn’t care. Oily still gave him an itchy feeling, and Doughy reeked of the same kind of pretension Daoist Ho had, way back at the Bamboo Medicine Hut. He wondered if Doughy wanted to exchange pointers. It still felt like bullying, but there was a better than decent chance the stout fellow actually knew a little something.
The female Daoists from the Courtyard all seemed… fine. Daoist Mei glued herself to Brother Wang as soon as she arrived, and other than rolled eyes and pointed silences, the other two let her be. Sister Liren made an effort to get along with them… briefly. Tian didn’t catch what they said to her, but Hong’s body language made it clear the two were in for a bad time as soon as was practicable.
Sister Su was already having a bad time. She had stuck to her decision to keep her wheelchair for use in the guest quarters only. Out in public, she swung herself along on her crutches. Her usually stoic face had become much more sour. She made a little effort to hide the winces and grunts of discomfort, but didn’t particularly succeed. She kept up with the party, however. And she never complained.
The glare Sister Su was giving Daoist Mei should have been enough to strike the cheerful girl dead by the end of their first hour on the road. Tian couldn’t understand why. Daoist Mei and Brother Wang were the merry, nattering heart of the expedition. The two could keep a conversation going for hours about nothing at all, and with lots of shared glances, affectionate laughs or gentle bumps of shoulders.
He only saw it from the side, but the way Daoist Mei looked up at Brother Wang through her long eyelashes had Tian ready to launch a frontal assault on the Courtyard’s Scripture Pavilion to loot all the height increasing sutras they had.
They stopped mid-day for a little rest and a chance to chat. Tian could have done without either, but he seemed to be alone in that opinion.
“So, is it true you grew up in the jungle?” Oily asked. Tian could feel the words almost tangibly. There was something unbearably squirmy about them. Like they were trying to find a crack in him to dig into.
“The jungle, trash heaps, the fringes of human civilization.” Tian said.
“A trash heap. You grew up in a trash heap.” Oily looked like it was his birthday and New Years all rolled into one. “Is that where you lost your fingers? I had wondered if you had lost them to some kind of monkey, but it was a trash heap. Oh my!”
Tian glanced over at Oily. He knew he was being insulted. It wasn’t lost on him that most people looked down on beggars and vagrents. He had no trouble remembering all the rock throwers.
“You don’t have many friends, do you?” Tian asked. Oily pulled himself up and narrowed his eyes. Something vicious was doubtless dancing on the end of his tongue. Tian cut him off.
“Oily, nobody cares. Do you not understand that yet? Nobody, not one person worth a damn, cares. I could have grown up in a latrine, and it would make no difference. My parents discarded me like I was a week-old lettuce. So what? Nobody cares. I’m missing fingers. So what? Nobody cares. I’m plain looking. So what? Nobody cares. I am capable, helpful, and I make an effort to get along with people. That, people care about. I truly do not understand why you waste your too-short life on this boring hobby.”
Tian felt the tiredness come crashing back down. Why did people insist on these games? They weren’t even fun games. Go was fun. The jumping games with Grandpa were fun. These little verbal spars, the endless struggle to prove who was the biggest ant in a world of hungry birds…
Weren’t they tired? Did they really have nothing better to do?
Tian looked at Oily. He may really have nothing better to do.
“Daoist Whatever Your Name Is, if you are free enough for these idiot games, then you are free enough to go read a book. One might profit you. The other won’t. You guess which is which.”
Tian looked away from Oily to find the rest of the party staring at him in varying degrees of shock, horror and amusement. Most of the amusement was coming from Sister Liren, who was unabashedly sniggering.
“Little fool. You may think no one cares, but in this world lineage counts for a great deal indeed. Background counts. Those with true power keep the good things within their circle. A circle that does not include the trash heap. You are a tool. You are a mule, hauling and carrying-”
“Servant disciple, yes, yes.” Tian spun his hand through the air, trying to hurry Oily along. “Everyone is, except the Direct Disciples and the Daoist Masters. Maybe the Elders aren’t, though I get the impression that’s debatable. Unpleasant thought, but since I can’t change it, so what? I just don’t understand. What is your point here? Are you trying to start a fight for the sake of starting a fight? Is this an attack on my Dao Heart or something? Is this truly all the strategy the Courtyard prides itself on?”
Tian looked over at the other disciples from the Courtyard, who were finding the jungle fascinating. At the very least, they were rigidly looking out into it, and no longer willing to look at him. Though he noticed Daoist Mei’s shoulders were shaking. He sighed loudly and looked over at Doughy.
“Might as well come get this kid. He’s no use. If you want to play games too, just square up. Be sure and tuck your chin and keep your head protected at all times. I’ll smack you around some, everyone will see how things stand, and we can get on with the job.”
“Are, are you challenging me?” Doughy looked like he was trying to inflate himself, taking deep breaths and straightening his spine.
“No. I’m offering you the opportunity to get the boring games done now, instead of dragging them out. You, at least, don’t make my bones itch when I look at you. A manly and direct fistfight seems more your speed.”
Brother Wang’s shoulders were shaking too. Daoist Mei made it look cute. Brother Wang looked like a hill in a happy earthquake.
“Do you really-”
“Yes.”
“Boy, you dare-”
“Yes.” Tian reached into his storage ring and pulled out some dried fruit, a pamphlet on osteopathy and a cushion. He sat down and started eating the fruit while he hunted for where he left off reading last time. “Look, you just say all the usual nonsense. Just assume I’m saying the right things for us to get to the fighting.” Tian opened the pamphlet. “Take your time. Waste all of your life if you like. I’m making something of mine.”