It turned out that necessity did require an apology, even with entirely valid excuses. At least if the necessity in question involved getting your sister naked and washing her down with a handcloth.
Tian tried to point at the gory hell-pit that was the residue filled stone trough they had healed in. The ruins of the clothes were still somewhat visible as discolored stalagmites congealed into rising peaks by the accumulated blood, flesh, fat and foulness that had been sloughed off or lost during the process. If that wasn’t a good enough reason for a scrub, what was?
“I’m not saying I didn’t need a wash, I’m saying you shouldn’t have been the one to wash me!”
Tian felt a vein in his neck start to throb, and anger seeped up from his broken hips. It had hurt dragging her out of the pit and cleaning her off.
“I completely agree and understand. I should have asked one of the other available orderlies to do it.”
“If you had just waited, I could have done it myself.”
Oh yes, the woman who had nearly as many broken bones as he did, after losing a significant percentage of her skin and just having had most of her back, calves and rear rebuilt through profound daoist magic and the costly intervention of Grandpa Jun, would definitely do a fantastic job of cleaning herself. Grandpa Jun used up all his energy for her! He would be silent for who knows how long, years maybe. And now she’s bitching about getting wiped down?!
Tian took a deep breath and forced himself to use his calm orderly voice.
“If I had just waited, you would be fifty percent disease and fifty percent reeking, yellowy puss. As it is, I’m still going to need to draw disease out of you in the next day or so. My body and cultivation art managed to clear out all the thorns and the toxins that came with them, but there is just no way it also cleared out all the disease. It was completely necessary, and urgent.”
Hong grunted, clearly not willing to let the subject go, but her attention had caught on something. “I know you cultivate Advent of Spring for your vital energy cultivation, but… what exactly is your body cultivation art?”
“Nosy.” Tian snapped. He couldn’t keep the orderly voice up.
“Yes. Yes I am. I am completely violating a social taboo. Much like a young man getting a teenage girl naked while she’s unconscious and rubbing his hands all over her.”
There was a heavy silence.
Tian felt his anger deflate, making his mood crater. She was right. She was absolutely right. Under other circumstances, their parents might even insist they get married now. It wasn’t going to be like that, but still. Brother Fu would be furious with him. Aunty Wu would be even more furious. Doctor Pei would glare at him and demand to know if he had forgotten about respecting the patient’s dignity. Tian tried to explain.
“I… genuinely didn’t think of it like that. I knew about the nudity thing, but that part didn’t occur to me. I’m sorry. Really. I am very sorry. But I also really believe you would have gotten extremely sick and possibly died if I hadn’t.”
There was silence again.
“Best I’m going to get, huh?”
“If it makes you feel better, I’m now both angry over you being angry, and ashamed at myself for not understanding why you might get angry.” Tian offered. “At this point it’s mostly shame.”
It was, in fact, all shame. The flame of anger had guttered out in the cold wind of self loathing.
“Yeah, best I’m going to get. What exactly is your body cultivation art?”
“Supreme Virtue Hell Suppressing Body Refining Sutra. Which is less of an art and more like a piece of magical machinery I have planted inside of me. It runs like a waterwheel, Yang and yin turning into nourishment for my body and my meridians. It doesn’t stop me from getting hurt, but it does turn things like curses, poisons, gu and diseases into tonics and supplements. And… I can’t prove this or anything, but I have a feeling I hit demons a lot harder than I probably should be able to. It also makes my body more yin aligned, so I am literally heavier than I should be. Which is probably why I can’t float.”
Tian paused, thought through some things and continued. “I also think it might be doing something with those gold and purple flashes we have been seeing when we rescue the kids. But I don’t know what.”
Hong grunted. Silence settled back in. Then, “I cultivate the Ten Suns Godslaying Body. Remember when you stopped that Gu from trying to kill me while I was cultivating back at Depot Four? That was when I lit the first sun. I still only have the one sun lit. It’s an extreme yang body cultivation art. Hard, rigid. Linear. Explosive. The requirements for cultivating it are very strict, but each sun I light makes me exponentially stronger.”
This time it was Tian’s turn to grunt. “Sounds like we should be prioritizing finding you cultivation aids then. More sungold oranges and things.”
“Screw that, do you know how hard it is to find pure yang food and medicine? But we can hardly move for all the cursed crap around. Let’s push you to the Heavenly Realm. We’ll drop you in a cauldron with four thousand four hundred and forty four cursed nails, Blackwater demon-dragon spit, set yin fires burning below it, cook another batch of Tian Soup and BOOM! Heavenly Person Realm. Just that easy.”
“It’s yin refinement, so it would be silent or a sort of drawn out sigh, not a boom. But I see the vision. I’m glad I have finally persuaded you on the power of soup. It’s wonderfully effective.”
“You have not. You absolutely have not. I don’t know what you actually did, but I will be…”
She stopped abruptly.
“You were going to say ‘dead and in the ground before I believe you,’ weren’t you?” Tian grinned up at the dark cavern ceiling. He felt another giggle bubbling up, but kept ahold of it. He was not a giggler. He did not giggle. It was unbecoming of an older brother. Even if he really wanted to.
“No!”
“Uh huh.”
There was silence again.
“It would be a lead cauldron, obviously.” Hong continued.
“Mmm. The metal of extreme yin. I wonder if there is a spiritual version of lead. Abyssal Lead, Four Darknesses Lead, something like that.” Tian nodded. Small nods, he had a headache coming on, and it was shaping up to be a doozy.
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“There must be.” Hong sounded quite certain on that front. “There’s at least a dozen forms of cinnabar that I know of, so there has to be at least that many forms of lead.”
“Logical.”
Silence collapsed around them again. Clouds were drifting across the sun. Tian could tell by the way the cavern suddenly dimmed, then brightened again.
“Why haven’t we been rescued yet?” Liren asked.
“Another good question. No idea. Best guess? They prioritized bringing back Little Treasure. If we died, that was that, and if we lived, we could make our own way back. In either case, with a Heavenly level Heretic in hiding nearby, they wouldn’t want to take any chances.” Tian murmured. He knew Liren could hear him just fine, and his head was throbbing now.
A more contemplative silence settled in again. “There is another option. We aren’t as political as the Five Elements Courtyard, but we have factions too. Your dad blew up out of nowhere, and his doctrines are upsetting a lot of people. Same thing with Elder Rui. It’s good that our patron got more powerful, but that power came as a loss to someone else.”
“Point. Think they are leaving us to die?” Tian asked.
“Ready made excuse in Little Treasure, and either way they lose nothing. Why not?” Hong’s voice was cold enough to make Tian shiver.
This time it was Tian who turned quiet. “I think that might be the thing that makes me leave the monastery, if it turns out to be true.” He murmured.
“What?”
“I love my brothers and sisters more than light and air. I love Brother Fu. I truly cannot imagine journeying through this world without you. But I can’t, can not, trust my back to a monastery that would turn its back on me that way. And yes, I blame the Monastery for the behavior of its True Disciples. They are the True Disciples, after all, the Inner Court. Look how they embody the teachings of the Ancestors.”
“Elder Rui hasn’t had time to make his reforms yet. Nor has your father. I think they are aware, but it’s a hell of a time to start making wholesale changes to sect discipline.” Hong sounded… he didn’t know what she sounded like.
“Yeah. And, Sister? You have been very careful to never mention it. But I know you know which family in the Inner Court waged war on yours. Elder Rui and Brother Fu gave their assent when your family wiped out the bastards who lived in your village before you came. Some Elder, and maybe a Direct Disciple, gave their assent when your family was killed.”
There was a deeper silence. “I…”
“If they are targeting you, Sister, they are targeting me. They know I will not share the same sky as them. Like you said, a perfect opportunity to walk away from future troubles. Just say the word. We might not be strong enough to avenge your family now, but we have lots and lots of people who support us, and who are strong enough.”
There was another long silence. Tian thought he heard a muffled sob. An hour later, Hong started speaking in a low voice.
“We had this gate guard named Chen. He was badly burned. Really badly burned. All over his face and body. He just sat by the front gate all day, slowly drinking his poppy sap tea. He was one of the surviving caravan guards who followed us to the village. He was one of the people who raided the… the clan that lived there before.”
“What was the name of the clan?”
“Xia. An honorable name, once. Long, long ago. For generations, it was a curse. Anyway. Uncle Chen would tell me anything I wanted to know. Didn’t care that I was ‘too young’ or whatever. He said he hurt too much to think of lies. So I asked him how he got burnt. He took a big drink of his poppy sap tea, and told me.”
Hong took a long breath herself. “The Brothers slaughtered the fighters and menfolk of the Xia. Anyone carrying arms. The servants and the women were left to us. And the children. The Xia had trouble conceiving, and the few kids they did have died young. They had managed to produce an heir, technically, but he was…”
Her voice trailed off. Tian waited. Hong picked up again.
“Uncle Chen told me that my dad told him that the boy should have died in the womb. That he was twisted in body. His brain didn’t work right. He got sick all the time. Every moment of every day that boy was trapped in his bed, in a dim room, in pain. So really, killing him, letting him reincarnate into a better family, was a mercy. A cold mercy. But a mercy, and necessary for our family to be safe.”
Tian nodded. He doubted Hong saw him do it, but she carried on anyhow.
“Uncle Chen found the boy. His mother was leaning over him. She had died when they knocked down the bedroom door. She had killed his nurse and put a poison pill in the boy’s mouth. Bloody foam and vomit poured out of his mouth, covering him. He was the size of a baboon, Uncle Chen said. He looked like he had already been mummified, he was so thin. Huge eyes rolled up in hollow sockets. Uncle Chen reached out with his knife to finish the boy quickly, so he didn’t linger. And then the fire started, before he could give the kid peace. It was something in Madame Xia’s robes. It caught fire, and spread to the jars of oil in the rafters.”
Hong took a sharp breath. “I think about it all the time. He had done nothing, that boy living like a sinner in Hell. Reincarnation is supposed to wash away your sins, so why? Why give him a short life purely to suffer? His parents were doing everything, everything they could to keep him alive, hoping he would get better, and the very last things he experienced in this horrible life were his mother murdering his nurse, poisoning him, then burning him alive. That was it. That was his end. His bones were tossed in the dump, along with the bones of the rest of the Xia.”
She took a deep breath.
“Like my dads. We forted up in our manor, and they did everything they could to pressure us, break our will, make us forfeit our place in the city. They tore apart my dads’ tombs and threw their bodies to dogs in front of our gate. Mountain Gate City doesn’t have feral dogs. The bastards brought a pack of hounds into the city, starved them, then fed them my dads’ bodies!”
He could hear the sobs in her voice, hidden under the fury. He didn’t have to see her to know tears ran down her face.
“That is the Monastery to me. That is the Inner Court. I love my sisters and my brothers. They have been the best things to happen to me since I was six. And yes, I know who killed my family, and yes, I dream of slaughtering the bastards. And their backers. And beating to death every person responsible for letting things get this bad. Working all the way up to the Celestial Emperor and the Jade Court.”
“So why stick around? You could have run off ages ago, if you wanted. Five Element Courtyard would take you in a heartbeat. Hell, why not turn heretic?”
“Because we are the Xia! Don’t you get it? They had been a Mountain Gate City family. I checked the Disciplinary Squad records. They had a Direct Disciple in their background, thousands and thousands of years ago. He died. The clan decayed. And they became that. There will be more Xia and more Hongs. Over and over and over. More kids burning to death under their mothers, helpless to save themselves. Unless the Mountain changes. Not a little bit either. A drastic, top to bottom change. And it’s not the kind of change heretics can manage, because right now, things are running the way a heretic would manage them!”
“A revolution. You want to lead a revolution.”
“Literally, yes, though I’m not planning a military campaign.” She nodded. “I won’t run off, Brother Tian. I won’t spare them. I’m going to climb to the top of this shitheap. I’ll make myself the Head Bitch in Charge. I’ll drag in Brother Wang and Sister Su and Mei and Senior Brother Fu and Senior Sister Bai, Elder Rui, all the reformers. And I’m going to tell them “‘I have the biggest fist in the sect. You make a world with no more Xia Clans and Hong Clans. I’ll make sure no one stops you.’ And once they do, once they make as close to a perfect system as they can, then I’m going to leave. I’m leaving the Kingdom forever. All I’ll leave behind is a fear of me coming back, and a memorial tablet to that kid carved two hundred feet tall into the side of the fucking mountain!”
“What was his name? The boy who died in the fire.” Tian asked.
“Not even the ghosts know. The Xia never told anyone. They were worried their enemies would curse him and send demons after the only child they managed to keep alive past his first year in this generation. Which we, and others, absolutely would have done. He was just… Our Son. Or The Young Master. Titles, but no name. The last person who knew died setting fire to her baby.”
“It would have been nice to know. But I suppose it doesn’t really matter,” said Tian. “He died with his family and was buried with his family, and by now he has been reborn into a better life.”
Tian knew he was a lousy liar, so he told the truth. Praying that his sister didn’t hear him falling apart.