West Town was a small place, but a good one. The streets were as clean as he remembered. The buildings were well maintained. The gutters that would soon be guiding away the torrential rains were kept clean. The rain would come, battering roofs and gathering on the streets. Then it would, by dint of gravity and careful design, slide off the roads and into the channels that would lead it out of town and safely deposit it in the nearby streams. From there, it would wash into the irrigation systems, then the paddies, and finally be soaked away by the hungry earth.
The autumn rains were dangerous and precious in equal measure. Locals prayed to the rain dragon for just enough water at just the right times, and since that existence was high up and far away, they offered sacrifices to the Land God that looked after their town, and incense to the ancestors who were, even now, doing their best for their descendants.
Descendants who were already blessed beyond measure. Other towns had to worry about all manner of disasters. Not West Town. They had a Temple and a Convent full of immortal cultivators. Disasters, natural or otherwise, could scram. Though you didn’t see the Immortals around much. These last few years, you hardly saw them at all.
Tian walked over to the temple. He looked at its high, whitewashed walls for a long minute, then sighed and pulled on his uniform robes and put his hair in a bun. He didn’t feel like explaining his rebellion to his brothers, especially since most of them would be the wounded who were sent home. He bowed to the Brother guarding the gate, and silently made his return. He wasn’t sure what, or who, he wanted to see. It just felt important to be here. Finishing the cycle.
“Nine Changes Restoration Sword, thrusts rigidly, parries softly. By commanding the interior, all external matters are quieted under the blade. Yin and yang, the five elements, eight directions and sixteen trigrams are all to be found within it. But it starts with you. It starts with a thought, then a breath. The immortal is born, vital energy refined. Upon the concentration of vital energy, internal qi is born. From qi, all things grow, flow, and flourish.”
The voice was steady and quiet, but utterly commanding. Tian walked down a path between the shaded porches he could navigate with his eyes closed, following the voice to a practice yard.
“I have said so much so that you understand- if you want to cultivate the sword, you have to cultivate your vital energy. So stop bouncing around like an idiot, sit down, and get meditating.”
“But it’s so boring!” The voice was young. Piping. Whiny.
“It is boring. Repeating the same thrust one thousand times a day is boring. The same chop, parry, footwork, a thousand times a day, every day, for a hundred years, is boring. But the most dreadful thing of all is that once you commit to it, you come to love it. When you can no longer practice, you feel a terrible emptiness. Sit. Now.”
Tian walked around the corner of a hall and onto the martial practice yards and he was ten once again, learning from his senior brothers how to fight and how to run. How to hit and take a hit, and when you shouldn’t do either. Learning how to be a good person. He blinked away the memories and looked for the familiar voice. Then blinked again.
Brother Tang had gone with him on his first mission out of the sect. Tian had hunted down two frog demons, overgrown animals really. He remembered Brother Tang as an almost silent, stoic swordsman. He felt a little cold, to the young Tian. He still helped Tian fix his monk costume. Still showed him how to stroll. Took all the care and attention a senior brother should for their junior.
He had never been very close to Brother Tang. He saw him around the temple, but the swordsman preferred to live silently, a solitary existence amongst the noise and camaraderie. Tian never forgot him, though. Brother Tang had fought the Heretics inside the kingdom. He had been rushed back to brother Wong for treatment, covered with curses and boils and burns, more dead than alive. Tian had done his best to assist, though it was little enough.
He had last seen Brother Tang in a wheelchair, near paralyzed, watching the brothers and sisters march out of West Town and board the Summer Torrent. Off to war. Tian couldn’t put words to what he saw in the swordsman’s face.
The years had been moderately kind to Brother Tang. He was still in the wheelchair, but his arms worked, and his eyes were as sharp as ever. Some of the edge had worn away. Perhaps it was because he was teaching the boy in front of him. The swordsman looked as stoic as ever, but Tian thought he saw some fondness in the look.
Tian bowed deeply. “Senior Brother Tang, it is good to see you again.”
The swordsman looked at him blankly for a moment, then cupped his fist and gave a small bow in reply.
“Junior Tian, I didn’t recognize you. The years have been kind to you.”
“Hah. I wonder.” Tian chuckled awkwardly.
“Really. You were a rather… plain child… when you left for the Redstone Wastes.” Brother Tang’s mouth twitched. “Meet your new junior, Xiao Ming. Xiao Ming, this is your Senior Brother Tian Zihao.”
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“It is nice to meet you, junior. I’m happy, if a little surprised, that a new brother was found so soon after me.” There was a ten year gap between Tian and the senior recruited before him.
“Your case was unusual, Junior. Four years is a pretty normal gap.”
Tian shook his head and smiled. “I don’t have anything good to give you as a meeting gift, Junior Xiao, but if I could invite you and Senior Tang for some tea, my tea service is a little special. You might gain something from it.”
“Did Senior Brother Fu’s love of tea get transmitted to you?” Brother Tang’s face moved in an approximation of a smile.
“Yes. Very much so. Is Senior Brother Wong around?”
“Yes, at his medicine hut. He will be back for dinner, of course. How long are you staying?” Tang asked.
“At least long enough to have a meal.” Tian smiled softly, and glanced at his new little brother. He was a bright child, wide eyed, his hair neatly brushed and twisted into a bun. The shadows Tian saw in the eyes of his senior brothers hadn’t yet darkened Xiao’s.
“Your Senior Brother is completely correct, by the way. Cultivation is the foundation for everything. I’ve seen mortal grandmasters who, strictly speaking, were more skillful with their blades than some immortals. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t last a single move against anyone beyond Level Two of the Earthly Realm. The difference in the foundation is that vast.”
Xiao’s eyes went wide, and he looked awed. Tian bowed to them and walked off to continue his tour, but didn’t get far before he stopped sharp again. The final radiance. That’s what this was. It was the reason Sister Bai broke through out of the blue, and there were probably similar stories elsewhere. The fortune of the kingdom was in its last convulsions, trying to force more strong protectors into existence. Xiao Ming might well be the last cultivator to join the Ancient Crane Monastery. Xiao Ming, or Little Treasure, even if Little Treasure hadn’t started cultivating yet.
You saw it in the hospital. Patients would suddenly feel better. They would be bright and lively for a few hours, maybe even a day, and then they would die. Xiao Ming and Jin Treasure really might be the last two cultivators to be born in the Broad Sky Kingdom.
He looked at the parasol trees, shading the benches and yards. He walked along the fine halls, with their polished wooden floors, and across the martial practice grounds he loved so dearly. The warmth had gone out of them. They were the same, but not the same. Had all the senior brothers had this experience?
They… actually might have. Tian leaned against a tree and looked at the little birds drinking and splashing in a pond. He tried to remember the conversations he had with the wounded in the hospitals. They had mentioned not feeling right when they got home. They hadn’t phrased it that way, but that was the gist of it. Home wasn’t familiar anymore. It wasn’t the ‘home’ they had spent so much time remembering.
Was that why the monasteries were always so simply and sparsely decorated? Tian had assumed it was just part of being a daoist, but what if there was a deeper meaning? The more simple a thing was, the less likely it was to have any big changes over the years. Brothers would go off adventuring, and when they came home, they would see things just how they left them.
Senior Brother Wong was more or less how Tian remembered him. Skinny, with a pointed smile, like a spear grew arms and legs and got into medicine. Brother Wong was happy to see Tian. Tian had brought him a lot of face. Not everyone could say they had trained the most dedicated and caring junior in the hospital.
They slipped into easy conversation, Tian mostly asking questions about various medicines and herbs, or how to manage different fevers. Or toothache. Or if Brother Wong had ever attended a birth. He had, it turned out, though not very many. They didn’t talk about the war, or those who hadn’t made it. One day, Tian knew he would pour out a toast to their memory. Right now, the feelings were too raw.
Brother Wong patted him on the shoulder and offered one of his pointy smiles. Tian had to awkwardly laugh and look away. It seems that his brother understood him, even if he didn’t say anything.
The Xia heir had been an only child, trapped in his bed, isolated from the world. Tian Zihao had the very best brothers and sisters, and could embrace the open sky. It was better to be Tian.
Whatever problems the Monastery had, it was better that Ancient Crane Mountain, or the Outer Court at least, kept on existing. Tian didn’t feel much one way or the other about Broadsky Kingdom. He just thought it was pretty messed up to let it collapse and be ruined by warlords and heretics for who knows how many centuries.
Yes, it was better to be Tian Zihao, and not a vessel for painful memories and ghosts. It was better to live out under the open sky. It was good to mourn those who weren’t here any more, but it wasn’t good to think only of them. His seniors were even more burdened than he was, and didn’t they look after him? Didn’t they shower him with endless care and affection?
Tian chuckled and walked with Brother Wong to dinner. For some reason, he felt lighter. That night, for the very first time, he engaged with his brothers in the duel for food, snagging things from each other’s bowls, and glowering at the people who managed to sneak a long bean or bit of fish from his. Now and then he managed to flick a plump bit of chicken into Xiao Ming’s bowl, snagged from one of his brothers.
When he first came to the monastery, he would have hit someone if they took his food. He would have exploded with rage. Now, he understood. They were his brothers, and treated him like a brother. A brother who had grown up a bit, and didn’t need their protection from every little thing.
Though he noticed Brother Wong and Brother Tang still managed to sneak prime bites into his bowl.
That night, Tian treated them and his new junior brother to the best tea he had, putting his all into the tea service. Sometimes, you had to bring the warmth back with you. Returning it to the places and people who had given it to you in the past. When he was a child, he hadn’t understood. He just thought the temple was a warm place. Now, he could see what Censor Hanshen had been on about- the great chain of filial piety, seniors to juniors, juniors to seniors. An endless string of virtuous cycles connecting past and future.
Now, completing one cycle, he could feel the balance of it all. The harmony of elements, of past and future, yin and yang, human kindness against human cruelty. It was all in there, he just hadn’t seen it before. Through it all was the breath of the dao, blowing across the hollow reeds and giving rise to happy music.
It was, he decided, a dao worth fighting for.