“When the heart becomes serene, much as ice and snow melt without the knowledge or sensation that they are melting, a ray of numinous light will suddenly appear. Not only do others not know when this happens, one has no sense of it oneself. At this moment, all things become utterly clear, no thoughts are born and it seems as though there is nothing- from the heavens to the earth to the myriad things- that does not flow through one’s true self. This is what is called “nurturing vast qi.” It is the zenith of enormity and righteousness, filling all between the cosmos and the earth.”
The words spilled from the lips of a girl no older than ten, dressed in beautiful red silk robes. The collar of the robes were black with dried blood. Someone had driven an iron spike through the gap between shoulder and neck, down through her body and into the stone platform she sat on. The iron had been etched with esoteric shapes and lines, symbols resembling demons or serpents or birds, monsters of such complex forms they strained the eyes to comprehend them.
She spoke with an old man’s voice, or rather, the voice of a ten year old girl speaking like an old man.
“That which is full and substantial is obscure, hidden true yang. That which is empty and substanceless is the dragon and tiger double-eight new moon qi. The key is nothing more than using that which has form to refine and extract the formless primordial qi. Only by doing so can it be made into the elixir.”
A tan child, a farmer’s boy, explained. He had the air of a senior imparting the dao to a favored junior, and seemed to be forcing his voice to match. He, too, was nailed to the stone platform in his beautiful red robes. Blood flowing from under him, mingling with the girl’s blood as it ran down the platform and into a stone gutter.
“A human body and its sensory organs includes the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. From these come seeing, hearing, speaking, movement, and all manner of expression and behavior. All of our comings and goings, or social obligations, and our hundreds of daily activities arise chaotically from the body and its organs. From them come the fire of passion and desire, pretense and recklessness. Our original, perfect brightness is dimmed by objects and phenomena. Our self control is lost. It is not things that burden humans, but humans who burden themselves with things.”
The girl with a pushed up nose and a bit of a squint explained it with an old man’s compassion as she, too, bled into the trough.
“Brother, can you…?” Hong breathed the words softly.
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Rule number one, and it’s a big rule, is that if something is stuck in, you leave it there until the real doctors can take care of it. The iron spike is what’s plugging the holes through their blood vessels and organs. The array here is all that’s keeping the kids alive.”
“We either break the array and kill them, or leave them here fueling whatever heretical thing is happening? No. Fuck that. I don’t accept this. We will figure something out.” Hong shook her head violently.
“Agreed. Where is the crane?”
There was a loud, distinctly impatient, cry from behind the statue. Tian couldn’t bring himself to smile, but the corners of his mouth twitched. He started to move towards the statue, then paused. This close he could feel the immortal breath from the crane, but hadn’t when he was outside. The only immortal breath he could sense then was the crippled and dying archer.
“Ren. This formation is somehow related to that blind musician Ren, from the Copper Roofed Inn. I’m not sensing the flow of elements or the breath of immortality from the crane.” Tian said, kept moving towards the statue. It was a hideous thing, made worse by the skill and care shown by its creator.
The crane was in an iron cage, though mercifully not pierced through with iron rods. It was mad as hell, which Tian thought was fair. He’d be mad as hell too. He was mad as hell. He was just pushing all his emotions far, far away and trying to keep that empty feeling. Trying to just float along.
The cage was crafter wrought steel, but it wasn’t part of an array or enchanted. It was a bird cage, held closed by a simple lock. The Black Acacia heretic must have kept her enchanted one.
“Did you happen to find the key?” Tian asked
“No. You can tell I didn’t, by the way she is still in the cage. Did you grab the storage ring of that Great Chief?”
“I… completely forgot.” Tian shrugged. Hong gave him a filthy look, then took off up the stairs.
Tian pet the crane through the bars. “We will soon have you out. Then we have to figure out how we are going to get these kids free. Maybe interrogate the archer before he dies. Then I have to have a conversation with Sis’ Liren about what, exactly, went on after we got attacked, and what the Monastery is doing about things.”
“It’s a lot. Ever have something be better and worse at the same time?” Hong arrived in a gust of cool, outside air. The ritual chamber was warmer than Tian would have guessed. All those lamps burning heated the air, and added an extra unpleasant smell over the dried blood, piss and ashes.
“Often. Find the key?”
“Found a lot.” They opened the cage, and the crane burst out, rushing up the stairs and flying off into the sky. Tian didn’t blame her one bit. He’d have done the exact same thing.
“Where’s the archer?”
“They dragged him into a room upstairs. We can interrogate him later, I’ve broken his arms and legs. Brother, we can’t just leave these kids!”
“We aren’t going to. We also aren’t going to be able to free them without a lot more information. Have you listened to what they are saying?” Tian gestured to the rows of sitting children.
“No. I was a little distracted by the iron spikes and blood! And the crane.”
“They are speaking with the same voice, but through different throats. They aren’t reciting the same things. In fact, it looks like they are giving lectures on the dao. Not heretical crap either, from what I can tell. Listen.” Tian pointed towards a pale, moon faced boy that looked like he should have spent his life in silks.
“We temporarily get involved in something or other and proceed to call it ‘myself,’ but how can we know if what we call ‘self’ has any ‘self’ to it? You dream you are a bird and find yourself soaring the heavens, a fish swimming in the depths- how could I know if I am speaking to someone dreaming or awake? An encounter with something pleasurable does not reach the smile it inspires, laughter does not reach the joke. It is when you are comfortable in stillness, constantly forgetting each transformation. That is when you enter into the oneness of the clear sky, of empty Heaven.” The moon-faced boy sounded like an old man teasing a child while trying to explain something serious.
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Hong stared at the boy for a moment, then glanced at Tian.
“He said your name.”
“He said a lot of things. The kids have mentioned fire and burning too. They aren’t talking to us, they are repeating something they are hearing, or something is speaking through them. Something with a vast understanding of the dao. The heretics knew it too. Look, there are prayer mats set up in front of the kids. I bet if you look around, you would find records of what they spoke.” Tian said. Hong held up a storage ring and, a moment later, pulled out a few books.
“Seven volumes of notes. Damn them. Damn them!”
“Take a look at the statue too. A gold dragon, with five claws on each hand, being pushed down into a bloody trough by a five clawed black dragon. Didn’t you tell me once that a five clawed dragon is a sign of the imperial family?”
“Not the imperial family, the Emperor. Look a little more closely. The black dragon is carved from stone. The gold dragon is gilded wood. You can see where the artist deliberately didn’t cover the wood. Where it’s soaking up blood and rotting away. Not a subtle message.”
“What if it’s more than a message?” Tian scratched his chin. “Let's go find that archer. I have questions.”
They found the archer where Hong left him- on the floor of a little side chamber. The room had been decorated simply, with a woven rug and a painted scroll of misty mountain. A wooden desk, a plain chair, some unlit oil lamps made of clay. A man with arms and legs broken in at least two places each lying on the rug, thin streams of blood flowing from the deflated ruins of his eyes as he stared at the empty ceiling of a dark room.
“Have you come to torture me? Torture me more, I should say.” The archer didn’t sound afraid. More… accepting. Despairing.
“No, actually.” Tian’s voice was mild.
“Speak for yourself.”
“I usually do.” Tian nodded. “We seem to have a theological, or perhaps just philosophical, difference of opinions. I believe that compassion, frugality and humility are the supreme virtues, genuine treasures of the dao. That if we all strive to cultivate those traits within ourselves, we might not succeed, but we will be better for it, and the people around us will be better for it too. I try to live according to that principle. You, on the other hand, have children nailed to the floor in your basement.”
Tian squatted down next to the blind man. “I can’t save your life, but I can listen to you.”
“Listen to me? To me? What do you think I would tell you? Huh? What do you think I would tell you?” The bandit had swung from despair to fury, muscles on his neck cording and bulging as he twisted his head around to glare with not yet empty sockets.
“Whatever you liked. Your name, perhaps. Maybe you want to be remembered for who you were, or your noble purpose. You didn’t do all this for no reason, after all. Here, at the end of this life, don’t you want to be understood? Don’t you want someone to listen?”
Tian settled into silence.
“No chance of letting me go?” The archer had gone from fury to wry humor.
“In the sense of a swift death? Or did you hope to just walk away on your two broken legs?”
“Tsk. Cold bastard.” The archer grunted. The silence stretched out, and for the blind man, became unendurable. “This is a good country. It is. The people are good, the land is good, the rivers and mountains are good. The dynasty is a piece of shit. The dynasty was good for a while. The first few emperors did great things. Most of the middle ones were middling, but at least people had full bellies, merchants knew their place and the civil service truly served the people.”
“Mmm. But then something changed.” Tian encouraged him.
“Something changed. Empress Zhu was the last passable ass on the Dragon Throne. She was hell on the nobility, merchants and civil service, but she treated ordinary folk well enough. Not good, but about the same as the other middling emperors. But once she died?”
The archer started laughing, a wet, cruel sound. “Between her and the Monastery, the whole Imperial Family was dead! They said that the new emperor was an adopted member of a branch family, but that’s a lie. The eunuchs had their revenge. He was a nobody! He had a handsome face and a stern demeanor and he knew how to shut up and do what he was told. They loaded him up with poison and narcotics before they crowned him, just to make sure he stayed in line. The next four emperors were the same, and it wasn’t until the fifth had the eunuchs all killed that things evened out again. But the Imperial Family? The descendents of the founding emperor? Every legitimate descendant is dead!”
Tian nodded. “So?”
“So? So?!”
“Yes. So what?”
“So the kingdom’s pillar is gone! The main thing suppressing the fortune of the Broadsky Kingdom is gone! It’s been gone for more than a thousand years!”
“So you are making it worse?”
“Hahaha! Yes. Yes, that is exactly what we are doing. I don’t know about other cadres, but have you wondered why there are so many bandits? Starving peasants, and cadres of people like me. Because if you aren’t safe in your home, you don’t feel safe anywhere. If the country can’t protect you, can’t make you feel safe, then you aren’t loyal to it. The Emperor loses the faith and worship of the people. Taxes don’t get paid. Bribery becomes the norm. Cruelty becomes the norm. A nation of people without merit or fortune.”
Bloody foam started forming at the corner of the bandit’s mouth. “I give it less than three years until someone proposes the reintroduction of slavery. They won’t call it that. But that’s what it will be. Judicial slavery, perhaps, and debt slavery. Between the two, there will be endless free labor for the nobles and merchants. The free won’t be able to compete, working for less and less until they too fall into debt and criminality. A kingdom of slaves and slave masters. Three years. Shame I won’t live to see it.”
“The kids downstairs?”
“The founding of a country is full of ritual for a reason. Suppressing fortune, imbue it into the people, treasure and land. All the legitimate heirs of the royal family died. But how many bastards did they have over thousands of years? How many branch families got split off, how many fallen noble houses? Some people still carry traces of the imperial qi in their blood. People carrying the favor and fortune of the kingdom.”
There was a pause. The archer seemed to struggle to breathe for a moment, but pushed on. He was sweating. The pain, Tian knew. It could make you sweat. “Not just the Imperial family either. Everyone who was a big contributor to the founding of the kingdom, or even later on. Their ancestors did some service for the royal family during a war, built a canal, something big. They earned merit. They cultivated and even if they didn’t achieve immortality, they formed roots. Their descendants and reincarnations were blessed enough that they could become cultivators.”
“Is every cultivator-” Tian leaned in.
“No, no. Most aren’t. The, hah, minor talents. But every single disciple of Ancient Crane Mountain had an ancestor or previous life that was a meritorious servant of the kingdom or a member, no matter how distant or illegitimate, of the imperial family. Each carries a trace of the kingdom’s fortune on them. The very barest trace.”
“The kids down below could ring the Dragon Calling Bell.” Tian breathed the words out.
“Yes! Yes! The Dragon Calling Bell! Did you think you were the dragon being called? No! You are the little fish feeding the dragon. The dragon is the nation’s fortune. You hear them chanting, preaching the dao? The nation’s fate is so weak, it speaks in a human tongue! Listen to the dragon’s chant. Isn’t it majestic? Isn’t it glorious?”
The pain was taking over the archer’s mind. His words were laced with maniacal laughs, his ruined eyes weeping blood over a too-wide smile.
“Soon the chant will go silent. Darkness will fall. And once this country is in ruins, once all the old order has been washed away with fire and blood and everyone has been reduced to the level of starving dogs, a new empire will be founded. A just and righteous one. From extreme yin comes yang. A glorious empire. Just and righteous. We pave the way for The Emperor to Come. What a pity I won’t live to see it. What a pity.”