The immortals immediately vanished from mortal sight. They had a lot of practice moving very quickly between the gaps in a mortal’s perception. Hong and Tian weren’t doing anything too creative, they were just running in circles trying to feel where the greatest concentration of qi and brainpower was.
Tian returned to the group wearing a frown. Hong joined him a second later.
“The qi distribution seems normal. Or, at least, I don’t feel any significant concentration.” Tian groped for the right words. The trees had fractionally more qi in them than the grass, but so what? Of course they did, it would be stranger if they didn’t.
“The brainpower is similar. It’s really faint, and seems to cover the whole orchard.” Hong agreed.
“Immortals? Um… what is brainpower?” Little Treasure asked.
“We aren’t quite sure either. It’s a kind of qi that Heavenly Realm cultivators can manipulate.” Tian answered. His quite normal tone had Censor Henshen coughing.
“Heavenly Realm?! How many of them could there even be in the Kingdom? And you want to go poking your nose in their arrangements?”
The two juniors looked at each other, then back at the Censor. “Yes? They either belong to the Monastery, in which case they will pardon us, or they don’t, in which case they really don’t want to cause trouble inside the kingdom.” Hong spread her hands, her body language matching her casual tone.
“Or they are heretics, in which case it is highly urgent that we find out about any arrangements they are making.” Tian kept his eyes light on Little Treasure, but the line connecting the Pillar Family of Bluestone City and a key general that supported the founding of the kingdom was very short and very straight. If the heretics had aimed something at Bluestone City, it wasn’t impossible that they were scheming something here.
“Back to the point, though. I’m pretty certain there is a high level illusion cast over the orchard. The problem is that I’m not finding a spot that might be a node I can break.” Hong explained.
Tian pulled out the pendant that was their only clue to the palm art and held it in front of his face.
“What are you doing?” Hong asked.
“Seeing if anything happens.”
Hong waited a moment.
“And?”
“Nothing.” Tian shrugged, and slowly shifted around, trying to peer around the pendant.
“Of course there isn’t. You look like an idiot. Do you think the very senior senior who made this array would set it up so they looked like an idiot every time they had to use it?” Hong’s voice was maddeningly reasonable.
“Better than what you are doing. Which is nothing.” Tian made a point of sounding unbothered while privately swearing vengeance.
“Mmmhmm.”
“Um. Immortals? What’s a node?” Treasure asked.
“A spot where lines connect. Have you played Go or watched people play? You know where the lines intersect? You could call those nodes. Or where several roads meet. It should feel like a concentration of energy, or look like a bright spot if you have the right sensory arts.” Tian explained.
A thought intruded. “Say, Little Treasure, does anywhere here look glowy like me?”
The little boy nodded his head, his tidy little bun wagging seriously in the air. “Yes, that’s why I asked. There.” He pointed. Tian looked. Then looked at Hong. Who also pointed.
“Here?”
“No, Big Sis Immortal, there.”
Hong suddenly radiated a loving, maternal aura. “Yes. I am the big sister. You are a good and wise child. Here?”
“He’s clearly pointing here. Your brain damage is worsening.” Tian frowned. He would have to make the moral and social education of Little Treasure an urgent priority.
“Um, Big Bro Immortal? A bit left. Yes. You have your finger on it now.”
Hong and Tian exchanged glances, then glanced over at the censor, who looked helpless. Tian was pointing a little above shoulder height at an empty spot in the air.
He waved his hand through the spot. Nothing.
“Huh.”
Hong nodded. “Try sticking the pendant in there.”
Tian didn’t have a better idea. He raised the pendant and slowly brought it to the spot Little Treasure had pointed at. It wasn’t until he was right on top of it that he felt the slightest tug on the string. He let the pull guide the pendant. It snapped into place with an audible click, suspended in midair.
Then suspended in the center of a heavy wooden door set in a sandstone wall.
Tian ran his hand over the stone in wonder, trying to replicate the swiping motion he used before. Smooth, not polished but cut with such fiendish precision that it remained satiny to the touch who knows how many thousands of years later. When he looked closely, he could see lines of script etched on the stones. He didn’t recognize the language, but it looked a little like the red squiggles he had seen in the eyes of the boys whose eyes had turned golden.
“Sis’ Liren, are you seeing this?”
“Seeing, yes. Believing, no. I swear I ran through that exact spot.”
“Immortals?” Censor Henshen looked between them.
“Do you not see this?” Tian rapped his knuckles on the door.
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“I do not.”
“Didn’t hear anything just now either, I assume?” Tian asked.
“Correct.”
“That… is some array. Little Treasure, do you see it?”
“The wall and the door that just appeared? Yes, Big Sis Immortal.”
“Good child. Brother Zihao, what about the crane?”
Tian sent his mind over, and the crane returned a memory.
“Faintly, and without understanding what she is seeing. Like it was a tree in a fog.”
“Merit. He can see merit. We must have enough of it to satisfy the array-” Tian murmured. He pushed on the door, and stepped into the true orchard.
“Immortal Tian?!”
“He’s inside the array. Little Treasure, stay out here with the Censor. Big Sis is going to check this out.”
It wasn’t a very big orchard. A tidy circle, surrounded by a nine foot wall and covering fifty yards. There was a lovely grove of orange trees, a pond, a tree growing next to the pond that Tian couldn’t identify, and he really wasn’t paying any attention to trees at the moment.
Carved into the soft stone walls were eighteen diagrams, each accompanied by commentary, couplets of obscure poetry and divinatory symbols. Tian had spent a considerably long time studying palm arts. He had gambled his life on those palm arts. The diagrams on the wall had him bewitched.
“The Proud Dragon Repents, Fullness Cannot Last Long.” He read the couplet in a hushed murmur. He slowly stretched out his right hand as his left drew back into a defensive parry, his feet sliding to mimic the pose. The circulation diagram for the flow of energy was deceptively simple, racing through the yang organs while pooling energy, just a touch, in the yin organs.
“A mortal definitely couldn’t use it all the time. Even I couldn’t use it too often. Not at full power. It’s made to use only part of your strength and leave a lingering injury.” He barely breathed out the words.
“I could use it all the time. Probably.” Hong sounded intrigued as she looked over the art.
“Not without damaging yourself. Look, see the next one? ‘Flying Dragon In The Sky, It Profits To See A Great Person.’ It’s a palm strike launched from above. A flying palm strike! And this was an art created by mortals? I don’t believe it.” Tian shook his head, not taking his eyes off the wall for a second.
“Hey, look at this. It’s a move just for creating distance. Here’s another that’s basically just… distraction?”
“No, no, they all go together. It’s not a set of moves. Or, it’s not just a set of moves. It’s a whole system. It’s an extreme yang fighting system. Hard external strikes, balanced against soft techniques on defense and positioning. Yin-yang principles as applied to a yang art. The actual strikes are explosive, though not all out. Some strength is always retained so that you can flow into the next move. Truly lives up to expectations! Truly!”
“Ambushes, back attacks, attacks from below… am I reading this right? A double palm strike that creates a shockwave through a person’s body?” Hong murmured. “I always thought two-handed strikes were stupid because they didn’t leave any room for blocking.”
“They are stupid. Not only do they not let you block, they split up the force of impact across two points, making them weaker. You have to compensate with more vital energy. Just not efficient.” Tian nodded. “Palm strikes are even worse, because the range is so much shorter. But I see what they are after. You chain it with other moves so you are fighting inside your opponent’s range, create a gap, then slam out both palms with lots of yang vital energy. It disrupts their qi, leaves lingering wounds and creates distance for a follow up attack.”
“A whole fighting system, built around yang qi and palm strikes.” Hong shook her head, the veil on her hat dancing. “You would have to commit to it. If you tried something like that double palm strike by itself, you would get your teeth knocked out. It needs to be used within this system.”
“Mmm. Some of these moves I could see being used on their own or mixed in with something else, but I agree.” Tian was busy making notes and memorizing the carvings. “But you know something? My meridians need a lot of recovery, but my body has tons of vital energy built up in it. I can use this art while I heal.”
“You sure about that? There is a whole lot of internal energy circulation required. Which requires your meridians. Unrelated, but I’m not having you as my doctor. Just, you know. If it ever comes up.”
“It’s a mortal martial art. So long as I’m relying on the strength of my body and taking it easy on anything that would put pressure on my meridians, I will be fine.”
“But you aren’t willing to test your meridians with Heavenly Realm medicine.”
“Not yet, anyway. I will take them when I have recovered a little.” His hand was flying across the page, each character lesson-book perfect. “It will take quite a while to memorize too. This is definitely the third most complicated art I have ever seen. And strictly speaking, the Demon Pulling Art has fewer steps. Only Heavenly Swallows comprehensively beats it.”
Hong watched Tian write, mostly used to the eerie regularity of his characters. “I don’t think you ever told me how the Demon Pulling Art works, other than it uses your vital energy to draw or push out poison or disease in other people. Doesn’t sound complicated, really.”
Tian’s ink stick stopped suddenly. He looked over at Hong. “I dare you to say that again.”
“Oh? And what are you going to do about it, shorty?” Hong cracked her neck.
“Visit upon you a horror beyond your wildest imagination. I’m going to make you read.” His voice would have frozen a ghost’s bones.
“I… don’t mind reading, though?” Hong made the same bending neck motion as before, but this time, mysteriously, there was no crack.
“You will mind reading this.” Tian handed her his copy of the Demon Pulling Art. “Probably goes without saying, but just read it. I shan’t be responsible if you are suici-stup-idio- if you are unwise enough to use it. No, I had it right the first time. Don’t kill yourself trying to use this. Just read it. And know suffering.”
Tian got back to jotting down his notes. The diagrams were fiendishly detailed, and there were tiny explanatory notes scattered over each of the eighteen images. He was taking pains to memorize everything as he was writing it down, but there was always the deathly fear of missing something crucial.
“That’s some introduction. Humble bastard.” Hong laughed. Tian didn’t. There was a book sized carved stone tablet leaning up against the wall after the last diagram. It looked like the definition of a casual afterthought, but it couldn’t possibly be. Not in a place as well warded as this.
“Wait. Wait. Wait. No, hang on, that’s not how that works. Even I know… What?” Tian didn’t laugh at that either. He knew what was on the next page.
“AAHH! AAAAH! OH GOD! WHY DOES IT HAVE SO MANY SUB-FIELDS?!”
“Mmmhmm.”
“You match your qi to the qi of the ‘demon’ you are trying to expel, but in the exact inverse. You extend your vital energy in long threads that loop around bits and pieces of the ‘demon.’ Each thread uses the principles of both yin-and-yang-attracting and the five element law to haul the disease out. But each disease has its own unique elemental mix, and each place on the body has its own elemental balance, and the two interact, and the interaction changes as the disease is drawn through the various veins, organs, flesh and all that. And, of course, your vital energy changes as it flows through your meridians and your flesh based on your cultivation art which means that if you mess up even a little, something could rupture… I think I feel my brain leaking out. Too many variations. Too many changes in the qi, and each change is too damn subtle.”
Hong didn’t quite fling the book back at him. Tian snagged it out of the air gently and stowed it away carefully. For all the insanity of the art, it had been a gift and a sign of trust from Doctor Pei. It was one of Tian’s treasures.
“Yes. The table is just a guide, really. It does work, though. I have saved lives using it. Every time I want to fling it into the river, I remind myself of that.” Tian smiled, and finished the last stroke copying the final diagram. The pictures and notes had been perfectly preserved, without a speck of dust marring them.
There… wasn’t a speck of dust marring them. There wasn’t a roof to this orchard, which meant that rain and dust should very much have been covering them up. The orchard looked well pruned, too. Very clean, very tidy.
The crane had been quite quiet since it flew into the hidden orchard. Tian slowly turned and looked at the pond. The crane was standing five feet back from the edge. The way its eyes were fixed said there was something uncommonly nasty in the water.