Tian ceased all talking. All attention and energy was poured into a singular focus- healing. And getting taller. But definitely the healing part came first. Or at least at the same time.
The problem was too much thinking, and not enough not-thinking. It wasn’t that his senior brothers had scammed him. They told him the absolute truth- complicated thoughts get between you and the unfiltered dao, because you are breaking up the world into lots of little things and not seeing the unified big thing that is everything. It’s why animals cultivated faster at the Earthly Realm- no complicating thoughts, everything flowing according to nature.
Despite that, he was still given all manner of complicated arts to learn. Complicated circulation paths, complicated politics, complicated economics, complicated mysteries about merit and fortune and…
And the fact that Brother Fu certainly authorized the attack on his family home that saw him burned nearly to death…
No. No intrusive thoughts. He might not be able to stop them entirely, but he could give his mind something else to focus on. The tree. The grand tree that holds up the sky. The big cosmic tree that you were supposed to visualize as you cultivated Advent of Spring. It was so foolish, in retrospect. So obviously vital, and yet, overlooked. Everyone kept saying that “any true path of cultivation is a cultivation of the mind,” and then turned around and said “stop thinking and just be.” How could the two things be reconciled? Simple. He had to stop thinking and cultivate the Cosmic Tree in his mind.
The Cosmic Tree was the purest expression of elemental wood taken to its extreme. It was a literal tree, yes, made out of literal wood, but taking the term “elemental wood” literally would be a mistake. “Elemental wood” means “growth.” Elemental wood wasn’t a noun. It was a verb. It was, he believed, the element most properly associated with life. Even more than water. Water was, after all, the element of winter, death and extreme yin. And from extreme yin, yang is born. Spring follows winter, and all the seeds waiting in the ground burst upward and grow.
Well, here he was. All condensed into a seed. Plenty of water nearby, and he could see the hot sun shining down through the hole in the ceiling. Ready to reach for the light.
No thoughts other than growth. No thoughts other than healing, growing, and reaching for the light. To help his focus (and after checking that it wouldn’t bother Liren,) Tian started chanting, finding sounds that fueled his growth. Finding the wood within them. Letting them carry him upward.
Ten days after Tian and Hong fell into the cave, they clawed their way out of it. Not fully recovered, but recovered enough that they were ready to fight most things under the Heavenly Realm. Tian still got headaches sometimes, and he fought to keep his mood even. He had the strangest urges to start giggling or to lash out. He could feel the hateful words pressing against the back of his teeth, until they vanished and left a foul taste in his mouth. But more than anything, he felt strong. Wounded, but strong.
“First thing we do is find the Crane. Then, next thing, get in touch with Brother Fu.” Tian was firm, though it didn’t achieve much. Liren was shaking her head by the time he ended the first sentence.
“First thing we do is go to the Three Falls Convent and talk to the Sisters. They will know where to find the crane. At the very least, they will have a better idea than we do.”
That was completely sensible. Tian still didn’t want to do it. He didn’t really want Liren doing it either. Unfortunately, this forced him to confront why he didn’t want to ask them.
“I… don’t trust the Monastery, any more,” he muttered. “The Sisters are probably more okay than any of the Heavenly People, but that doesn’t change the fact that if a Martial Uncle or Aunt said “Be sure and send a messenger falcon at once if you see Tian or Hong,” they would. Even if we asked them not to.”
Liren’s face dropped, her eyes searching for something in his expression. Not finding it. She shook her head. “It tears me up too. There are a lot of good people in the Monastery. The best people. There are a lot of villains too, and the people at the top think doing nothing is the wisest course. But I’m not willing to walk away.”
“Not asking you to.” Tian shook his head. Wishing she would walk away. “Just saying I can’t take the risk. And you shouldn’t either.”
“We are going to need the information one way or another, Brother.”
Tian nodded. “Then let’s do so like heretics or wandering cultivators. By rumor, by talking to people. By, hah, flowing with the dao.”
“That’s nonsense.”
Tian shrugged. “I don’t trust them, Sis. I just don’t.” He looked up into the sky, casting his mind out. Hoping for some trace of the Snow Grace Crane. Nothing. He hadn’t expected anything, but he still had hoped.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
With a long sigh, he dusted off his coarse linen clothes. The pants were a faded blue-green, the belted tunic a disreputable, battered dark green. He reached up and pulled the wooden dragon pin from the bun holding up his hair, and stowed it in his ring. He then removed the sect issued ring and put it on the string with the other storage rings he had collected, replacing it with a smaller, less capable one.
“Brother Zihao?!”
The West Town Outer Court had killed his birth family. He… didn’t really care about what happened to his parents. It was comforting to know that he wasn’t hated by them, but it was only a comfort. He had no memory of them. He vividly remembered living covered with burns. Vividly remembered the starvation and the piercing loneliness. His brothers had thought everyone had died. They didn’t intentionally inflict that suffering on him. They might have even thought death a mercy for the sickly boy. They still led the assault on the Xia, knowing that a family would be massacred, and Brother Fu, the kindest, most moral person he knew, approved it.
Brother Fu, who had insisted he study ethics. Who had taught him propriety, and that every conversation had its own etiquette. He said that if Tian could master appropriate courtesy, he would find doors open for him everywhere. Brother Fu had been right about that- ever since joining the Temple, Tian had found many more outstretched hands than thrown rocks. And Brother Fu had given his approval to have a family massacred. Something he had done more than once. There were families just like his that no longer existed, because Brother Fu nodded his head.
Did it also need Elder Rui’s permission? It was an Outer Court matter, though arguably also a purely mortal matter. Equally arguably, it was the final phase of an Inner Court struggle, so perhaps not.
All the reformers were complicit. If Brother Fu was involved, then so was Senior Sister Bai. In fact, in a horrible sort of way he was complicit. He had known about how the Outer Court handled Hong’s situation since… his second year in the Temple? Surely it was before they left for the Wasteland.
Tian started to laugh. It was genuine, and painful and self mocking. “Oh God, I must be the biggest hypocrite this side of the Heavenly Person Realm! Isn’t it funny? Down in the dark, it wasn’t real. It was just you and me talking, and I could focus on you and not care about the rest of it so much. But now it’s real. Now it’s out under the blue sky, and it’s too plain to see.”
“Brother, I’m not understanding you. Please, tell me what’s going on?”
“I thought I was okay with your story. But I’m not. I’m really, really not. And you want to know something that is true, but that you will never believe?” Tian looked his tall sister directly in her eyes, a warm smile, heartfelt, welling up from inside of him. The lantern of compassion blazing in his crimson palace, burning with all the fire qi he could muster.
“I think you are the only innocent in this whole story. Maybe me too, or maybe there are no innocents, and we shared the guilt as soon as we took our oaths. But in my heart, out of this whole sick chain of victims making more victims, I really do think you are the only innocent person. Because when I heard about it, I did nothing. When you heard about it, you did something about it! Not much that you can do, now. Training, preparing, building your networks. But you are working on it. Me? I went ‘Oh that’s terrible,’ and kept right on going. Which makes me a fraud, and a hypocrite, for all my fucking moralizing!”
She staggered back, looking like she had been hit. Tian kept on speaking. “So for a little while, I’m taking off my uniform, undoing my bun, hiding my ring. Taking off the names and affiliations I’m wearing. I think it’s time for West Town Outer Court’s Tian Zihao to go rest in the mountains for a while. Maybe I’ll be a tea monk. It wasn’t a bad thing, being a monk. Or maybe I’ll just be a wild daoist, come down to see the mortal world.”
Liren stared at him, her eyes huge. He flicked his fingers at her. “I’m not running off and leaving you, Sis. I just need to be less, for a little while. See who I am when it’s just me and none of the things I’m carrying. I didn’t lie to you before. I’ll not leave you before you leave me. Just tell ‘em I did. Tell ‘em I’m furious, or sick with rage, or just plain crazy and I’ve run off on my own. I’ll walk up stream to the next town past Three Streams Town. You can find me in the inn there.”
“Do you even have mortal money?” She asked. Her fists were tight, Tian noticed. Her knuckles were very white under her tan skin.
“Some. Enough. Or not. It really doesn’t matter. Go on and talk to the sisters, Sis. Your big brother isn’t good company right now. He could use a walk to cool his head.”
He started walking then paused and looked back. Liren stood frozen, as shocked as he had ever seen her. “See if you can get the boat. It’s been badly damaged, but I like it. It’d be a shame to quit on it, when we had so much fun repairing it last time.”
With three light steps, he was gone. Rushing down the riverbank.
He didn’t think. He just ran. He could feel the thoughts battering at him, trying to get in. He focused on his breath, and where he was putting his feet. Being open and sensitive to the attention the world was putting on him and slipping through the gaps in their awareness. There was a lot of traffic on, and along, the Green River. For every mile he went forward, he must have moved ten moving from side to side, up canyon walls and trees or down in the rushes. It was fine. So long as he was moving and breathing. So long as he was reacting, not planning.
If he kept the balance just right, he wasn’t a burnt child curled up under warm rot, hugging himself to feel some kind of human contact. He wasn’t the future hope of his sect, or Liren’s life and death brother. He didn’t have to think about how he would face his father or when Grandpa Jun would be able to speak again. He didn’t have to think about all the salt he ate and the lives that were destroyed making it. He didn’t have to think about the endlessly repeating web of suffering humanity wove around itself.
He could be a tree. Growing. Reaching up for the sky. One day he would be big enough to carry all that weight. But for today, for right now, he needed to just be. Alone, with everyone else.