Tian closed his eyes. Brother Long… he remembered their games of Go fondly, but with increasingly complicated feelings. Brother Long wasn’t suited for cultivation. Not really. He would have been happier living as a scholar, joining the civil service and living as a gentleman should.
Brother Long was smart enough to find beauty in ugliness, wise enough to know what suited him, and wealthy enough that unpleasant things could be avoided. Until they couldn’t be avoided any longer. Until the illusion of safety was shattered. His nerve broke, and the last Tian had seen or heard of him, Brother Long had trapped himself in his cell, too scared and ashamed to show his face to the sky, let alone other humans.
“Small world.”
“Very small. The mountain rises sharply to a narrow peak. There aren’t a whole lot of cultivators in the Inner Court, compared to the population of the whole kingdom. Combine that with how long-lived they are, and you start seeing the same few dozen names over and over. And over. And over.” Hong’s voice had a trace of gallows humor to it.
“Wait, if the immortals aren’t supposed to be thinking or caring about the mortals, how much use-”
“Grandma had left on a journey that was expected to take three years. She was gone nine months when the attack was launched. By the time we knew we were under a coordinated attack, we had already lost two thirds of our stores, three caravans, and eighty percent of our guards. A week later, the last of the stores were gone, and we were barricading ourselves in the courtyard in Mountain Gate City. Centuries of hard work and heartbreak, destroyed in less than two months. They didn’t kill the last few of us because Granny would be back some day and they wanted to preserve that taboo. But not a single person lifted a finger to help us. Not one. Not our “old friends,” or business partners, or inlaws. Nobody. Because the Long Clan Ancestors were sipping tea in the main hall of the Long Clan compound.”
Tian faintly nodded his head. Nobody was stupid. Everyone got the message. Better to live quietly and grow stronger invisibly, lest they become the next Hong Clan. After all, there were no permanent allies or enemies, only benefits.
“Well. My palms aren’t heavy enough to kill someone at the Heavenly Realm, but they are getting stronger every day. And I seem to remember someone saying something about times of chaos being the best opportunity to settle scores. Something may come up.” Tian half smiled.
“Yeah. What are we going to do about the kids, Brother?”
“What can we do but yell for help? We have to risk going back to the Mountain. This is too important. Too many people will die because of whatever they are working here, and I can’t save these kids. Only a Heavenly Realm doctor would have a chance.”
Liren looked stricken, but Tian pressed on. “I can’t imagine many places like this exist. We will be able to get Heavenly People moving to support us, if only to see the kids and read the notes.” Tian hated how bitter his voice sounded. He loved his temple. Those days were precious memories. But the shine had come off of them, and the loss pained him.
“We can’t just leave them like this!”
“We can, and we must.” Tian looked Hong in the eyes. “We must, because staying here is no help, and moving them is worse. The spikes and the formation are keeping them alive and has been for months. They… don’t appear to be in pain. We will do our best to seal up the stairs leading to their chamber. No barrier to a Heavenly Realm person, but mortals won’t get past it and do something stupid. It will discourage Earthly Realm cultivators too, if any reach here before the Inner Court does.”
“What about all the wounded bandits outside? Or the ones who ran away?”
“What bandits?”
Liren looked ready to snap at him again, then she grinned viciously. “Oh yes. Her Highness.”
“Mmm. She is being very thorough.” Tian didn’t mention how much persuading it took to get her to ignore the women and children. A crane had little enough empathy for its own species, let alone the young of others.
Silence settled in around them again. Tian gave Liren time to think.
“Where would we go? Back to the Convent and wait for a lift?” Liren asked.
“We run to Mountain Gate City. It will take longer, probably, but it’s a hell of a lot safer. With the letter, they will either let us in, or send for Brother Fu or Elder Rui. Or Senior Sister Bai.”
“And once I finish my work there, I’m straight back into the jungles and mountains again, even if I have to drag you behind me. I’m done. The Inner Court is worse than a snake’s nest, because the snakes generally don’t eat their own. The whole goddamn city just ignored two old bastards murdering the family of the old bitch who left town, because there was nothing in it for them if they meddled. Is this even still a sect? Do they dare still speak of brotherhood? I wouldn’t believe them if they did.”
Hong shook her head. “Even flying, that’s days away and the crane can’t fly that long.”
“There is nobody here who can help us, and plenty of heretics who will hurt us. We need to get back to the Monastary…” Tian’s voice trailed off. “That’s it. That is exactly it. It’s why the Prefects and the Magistrates keep running off for the capital. I thought it was some kind of… I don’t know, magic or something. What if it’s simpler than that? What if they can feel the change in fortune in their lands, and don’t feel safe? They might not know why, but they feel like everything is collapsing, and they need to run for their seniors and get help.”
Hong laughed. It was a bitter, painful sound. “We strip this place to bedrock, block the tunnel, then go. Top speed. All the way home.”
The Snow Grace Crane wasn’t the fastest bird in the air, but few could match her endurance. She couldn’t carry them all the way back, but she soared high into the sky, so high it became hard to breathe and bitterly cold even for cultivators. She beat her wings, looking for something, sensing something. Eventually she settled down into a stream of air and locked her wings out.
“A river. She found a river of air through the sky.” Hong breathed the words out in wonder. Tian could only nod along. It felt wrong to call it a steady wind. There was a feeling of rushing along a course.
That thought connected to something. He pulled out the notes recorded from the children, and started skimming through. Every phrase was dense and meaningful, calling for patient meditation and study. He didn’t have time for that. He was looking for something in particular.
“Here is it. The Path. This section is clearly referring to the dao in the sense of a path. Then in this passage here…”
Tian started reading aloud. “You seek the dao, not seeing it. You grasp emptiness with your hands, and do not touch it. You beg for instruction on the dao but do not hear it. All because you believe there is a “you” to do these things. “You” are hollow reeds, the dao is the wind that blows across them, life and death are the sound the wind makes as it crosses over the empty mouth. The emptiness you grasp is the dao. The dao is the light and the dark that befuddle your eyes. The breeze shaking the tree leaves instructs you more truthfully than any words could. If only you could forget “you,” and simply be.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Hong grunted. “Cryptic, yet unpleasant sounding.”
“Oh no, the real ‘cryptic, yet unpleasant sounding’ has yet to begin. Sorry, Sis. But I really do think I’m on to something.”
Tian pulled out his bamboo flute, a gift from Daoist Steelshimmer. She said he would play, harmonizing with the wind. That seemed like the exact right thing to do. He lifted the flute to his mouth and gently blew across the hole. He wasn’t trying to play a particular note. He just blew, and let his fingers move over the holes.
It was strange, trying to just feel the wind and let that wind blow through him and through the flute. He carried too much sadness, too much frustration. It was better to be empty, so good things could fill you. Better to be empty, and not full of bad things. A properly enlightened daoist would explain that good and bad are often matters of perspective and preference, not absolute truths. Tian wasn’t there yet. He was just sad, so he let the wind blow away his sadness.
Tian let his breath rise and fall, his fingers drifting over the holes clumsily. He didn’t mind it. Just breathing in time with the wind. Until there was a moment when it all came together. The flute, the wind, the crane, Tian. Not a transformation of material things, but of understanding. They were all one piece. The dao was everything, in everything, moving through everything, the path that everything moved along. Moving in a virtuous direction.
He didn’t know how long he harmonized with the wind. Eventually he had to put down the flute, as the Crane was landing, exhausted but happy. He looked back at Liren, ready for the scolding she would doubtless give him, only to see her staring down at a drawing.
It wasn’t a very good drawing. It was barely recognizable as a person. Swirly lines and jagged lines, some thick, some thin, none forming a complete shape on their own, but taken together did look like-
“Did you draw me playing the flute from behind? I didn’t even know you drew.”
“I don’t, but I had the idea a while back. If the vastness of the sky scares me, then I just need to focus down on a single point. I could cultivate, but that seems too risky on the back of a bird. So if you could be a flute player who doesn’t know how to play the flute, I can be an artist that doesn’t know how to draw.”
The tip of Ancient Crane Mountain was just visible on the horizon. That didn’t mean much. The mountain was impossibly tall, rising from the center of the flood plane and stretching past the clouds themselves. They were still a long way from home. They shared a glance and started running. No strolling. No hiding from the mortals. There hardly seemed to be any point, now, in an era when immortals died every day.
The area seemed peaceful. Not too surprising, really. This close to the mountain, the Inner Court could be flying overhead at any moment, undetectable to villains below. Though it did raise a question.
“The heretical envoys can’t possibly be avoiding detection all the time. So how are they avoiding detection so regularly?” Tian asked. Hong shrugged.
“No idea. But at the moment, I’m going to assume they have lousy cultivation bases and the Inner Court ignores them. Then the Outer Court has to get rid of them when they make a mess.”
Tian grunted. Sounded plausible.
The mountain grew in front of them, their feet flying over the stone-paved roads of the Broadsky Kingdom’s heartlands. Well tended paddies lay brown and empty, resting, waiting for the next planting season to begin. Peasants hunched over, tending to vegetables or ducks or fixing plows. Sewing clothes, washing clothes, mending, mending, mending. They had broad brimmed straw hats too, though none had veils.
“The peasants never look up. It’s not that they can’t. They must look at the sky from time to time, if only to check the weather. But it’s a life spent mostly looking down. Everything that matters to them is down. Down in the dirt or by their feet. Not permitted to leave their farms, nor the villages they are born in. Do they dream of flying? Of harmonizing with the wind? Or do they think that’s just stupid? Maybe for them it is, but you don’t have to be an immortal to do it. You just have to be open to the Dao. To let the wind play through you, rather than trying to match it.”
He ran past the irrigation ditches, running low at the end of summer. Heavy rains would be coming soon, but for now, the ducks and frogs had to make do with a trickle. Tian remembered that boatman who rowed them to the temple where the Dragon Subduing Palms were hidden. Mortal, but moving with the dao of water. Not consciously, but through lessons learned by his body over decades of labor.
Perhaps these peasants had touched on some truth of the earth, or of wood. Or perhaps their lives were poor, nasty, brutish and short. Tian stopped and scooped up a mouthful of water. Then spat it out. It still had its roots. It's just that irrigation water is utterly foul.
“Idiot. The next village will have a well.”
“Mmm. Let’s have a drink there, and see how things are. Something feels off up ahead.”
Hong grunted. “I thought I was just being depressed.”
“Both things can be true.”
She barked a laugh, and then set off again. Tian raced to catch up.
They didn’t make it to the village. Before they got there, they were waylaid by the sight of a man with his head and hands stuck through a wide and heavy board. There was a ragged looking man crouched next to him, scooping water from the irrigation canal and pouring it into the mouth of the stuck man.
As they got closer, they could see the board was a sign.
“Cao San. Crime- Owes Twenty Three Silver Coins, More Than One Month Delinquent. Punishment- One Month In the Cangue. Fear the Law, be Filial and Obedient.” Tian read the characters slowly. “Then there is a seal. The magistrate, I suppose.”
Cao San was starving. His clothes, poor stuff originally, were now rags hanging from a skeletal frame. His teeth were falling out, his neck bent painfully over, skin rubbed to bleeding sores crawling with flies and maggots. He stank, not just of being unwashed, but of dried excrement. His eyes burned, sunken in his skull like coals melting through wax-paper skin.
The one giving him water was a cultivator, though not much of one at level two and some sixty years of age.
“Oh, fellow daoists, quick, come! This poor fellow is going to die, but I don’t have any clean water to give him, nor food to feed him. Can you spare anything?”
Tian nodded, and Hong already had a water bag out. “Here,” she said, “When he’s drunk enough, we can feed him.”
Tian looked at her like she was insane. He walked over and put his hand on the locking hasp that held the tortured man in the Cangue.
“Don’t!” Hong, the stranger and the imprisoned man all shouted.
“Eh?”
“Removing it without the Magistrate’s approval is a death sentence for him and everyone involved. Death by water or horses! And it might well extend to his family, too, depending on the magistrate.” The stranger said. “My auguries were true. If I didn't stop here today, a great tragedy would have occured.”
“You are a diviner?” Tian asked.
“My Daoist name is Bonecaster. I thank the fellow daoist for his consideration, but please, madman or not, don’t do this. I am not strong enough to stop you, but the laws of the kingdom must be upheld.”
“Hell with that, this is torture. And for what? Not having enough useless disks of metal? It is obscene.”
“It is. I entirely agree. The law is sickening, the teachings that motivated it are worse. But why should you meddle? Leave it in place, and continue onward. That is the true dao, is it not?” A new voice intruded like a cold wind through thin linen.
This fellow daoist came across the fields and paddies, strolling with the stutter step of one who is used to moving unseen.
“I cannot agree, Daoist…?”
“Heartmend.” The man was austere, neatly dressed, with a long beard and wise eyes. “I am Daoist Heartmend, and you are Tian Zihao, and she is Hong Liren, and somewhere around us is the Snow Grace Crane. The Burning Heaven Cranes, alive and well before me.” An indifferent smile crossed his face.
“I have been hoping to meet you for some time. I had made my peace with knowing I probably wouldn’t.”
“Not at all, Daoist Heartmend. I think we were actually looking for you.” Hong said, then glanced over at Tian, who nodded.
They couldn’t see the sin flames like Little Treasure. With Heartmend, they didn’t have to. They could feel them just fine.