Tian looked at Sister Su, trying to figure out if he had heard what he thought he heard. She sipped her tea, and made a minute nod of approval. It seemed he had met her expectations. Tian glanced at Liren, who nodded casually.
“Not like it’s a secret or anything,” she said.
“Wasn’t it? Sealed trial ground, ancient and precious treasures waiting for the first soul brave enough to come and take them…?”
Liren, Brother Wang and Sister Su all shook their heads as he spoke.
“You always stay out of the sect politics, Brother, so you probably haven’t picked up on how radical the changes are since we all got trapped on the Mountain. We have a few things at play.”
Brother Wang started counting on his fingers.
“Number one is that we are trapped here. None of the Elders could so much as make the array respond, let alone damage it. Number Two- that means our resource base is whatever is on this giant mountain. The good news is, that’s a lot. The better news is, thanks to the high qi density, the stuff that is on here, growing here and made here is all of a comparatively high spiritual level. But it’s not nearly everything, and even if we have the raw materials, it needs to be processed and transformed into final products. Which leads to point Number Three- population.”
Tian smiled wryly at that. Brother Fu’s questions about an arranged marriage and grandkids had a sort of itchy quality to them. Lingering and hard to ignore.
“Comparatively, there aren’t a lot of people competing for most of the resources. Which is good. But there are very few people producing those resources, which is bad. It also means that certain bottleneck resources, think various specialty sulphers or cinnabar, rare herbs or herbs that only grow in certain climates, specific animal products, etcetera, can choke off entire production lines.”
Tian had to shrug at that one. “I don’t know enough about crafting to have a useful opinion, but that makes sense.”
Sister Su leaned in. “Take sword manufacturing. Normal steel is simply iron and carbon mixed to very precise ratios. Two smiths could take the same billet of steel and make products of wildly different quality based on forging technique, but in terms of material composition, it would be the same steel. But ‘normal’ steel is insufficient for cultivator use. An ordinary spiritual metal like, say, redflake iron would replace mundane iron in that simplified recipe, and the carbon might come from a charcoal made from a thousand year old fireblood pine tree. Without those two ingredients, you would struggle to make a fire aligned sword of acceptable quality, regardless of the smith’s skill.”
Tian nodded along. “And we might have the trees, but not necessarily the iron.”
“Indeed.” Su nodded faintly. “But it’s actually considerably worse than that, because smiths have been finding replacement metals and carbon sources since time immemorial. What’s hard is things like flux, rosin, glue, alchemical catalysts, supplemental metals, minerals, and additives. Small things that, yes, we can substitute for, but their specific alchemical makeup makes the substituted goods inferior. And some are irreplaceable, meaning we can’t make the product at all.”
Tian was quickly getting lost, but just nodded along. “It all sounds like good reasons to send everyone who can get through the formation into the sealed trial grounds.”
Wang nodded. “And we will. Just… later. What I’m trying to explain here is that there is a tension between having enough people making goods and having enough bottleneck resources to make goods. It means that goods that rely on bottleneck resources are now a politically delicate topic, and natural treasures are even more so.”
Wang stretched and shrugged his shoulders, before settling down and meeting Tian’s gaze.
“Let me put it directly. Our internal economy, internal to the Sect as we have until now understood it, is dead. The elders know it too. We, and I’m including the Wang Clan in this as we are crafters and merchants, are all still trying to figure out what comes next. Now, everyone on this side of the ward was selected for being a decent human being, essentially. Having merit, being a reformer, that kind of thing.”
Tian felt a little stab in his side, thinking of all the very decent people he knew on the other side of the ward, but didn’t interrupt. He knew what Wang meant.
“Nobody is going to get too crazy, as long as everything feels fair and follows sensible rules.”
Tian stared at the big man, looked over at Sister Su, then buried his face in his hands. “We need to make a well designed system. The one thing no one has ever managed before, ever.”
Wang had the decency to look awkward, while Sister Su simply nodded and said “Correct.”
“We are a test case, Brother. Or not even a test case, more of an indication of how the Elders intend to run things in the future. Remember what Disciple Fu said? The talented will get more opportunities, the weakest get the most support. Well, this is an opportunity, and a big one. We have a lot of merit, but it is a really big opportunity. Those resources have been sitting for untold thousands of years. Not everything continues to accumulate spirituality indefinitely, but the odds are very good that those trial grounds would have life-changing natural treasures for just about anyone.” Liren explained.
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“We have a need, we have the merit of finding out what’s in there, we have provided a lot of valuable manuals.” Tian worked it out slowly. “Which is good, but we also have a significant amount of patronage, nepotism and, sorry Brother Wang, Sister Su, Sis’ Liren and I have the biggest fists in the Outer Court.”
Brother Wang just nodded, while Sister Su’s reaction was pretty flat.
“So it really depends on how you look at things.” Tian concluded. “And both ways are right.”
“Yep. But there is an easy way to ease the negative reactions, at least a bit.” Brother Wang parted his hands.
“Open it to everyone?”
“Yes, but not immediately, because then there is no reason for anyone to make an effort in the future. We get the first crack at the trial ground that will be of the most use for us, and we will bring others with us. We get the fruit and the ice, everyone else gets what they can pick up along the way.” Hong explained.
“Cliques. Just nepotism and feeding those with the biggest fists.” Tian shook his head.
“Lighten up! We have the first pass-through, but there is another way to look at this. These testing grounds have been sealed for thousands of years. Tens of thousands, probably. So the odds are, whatever is still in there, is something that could survive that long. Which makes it either a Heavenly level existence, a powerful natural phenomenon, or something with a stable enough ecosystem to keep reproducing all this time.” Hong emphasised each point with her hands, chopping down on all negativity.
“Ah. Send in the juniors with the highest probability of survival, to assess the danger for others. Much more politically easy to swallow.” Tian smiled faintly.
“Exactly.” Brother Wang nodded, before biting down on a haw. Tian followed suit. They really were pretty tasty.
“And, of course, we would be clearing out the most dangerous threats, making it much, much safer for our ‘juniors’ to come in behind us. It is an efficient arrangement.” Su nibbled her own haw.
Tian nodded at that too, before going in for another haw flake. He didn’t want to acknowledge the haw flakes. They were too sweet, too tangy. They would brutally overpower more delicate teas. He took another bite, focusing on the experience of the crunch and the dissolving sugar on his tongue as the bright hawthorn started sparkling around his mouth.
Terrible. Far too luxurious. Rice crackers were the truth. He would serve them whenever possible.
He took another haw flake. He would have to destroy these, before his sibling’s palates were ruined forever.
“That covers the Fire and Water valley. What about the others? I don’t think any of us cultivate the sword. The sword path would be a poor fit for us.” He asked. He cleansed his mouth with a cup of the red tea. Perhaps it was the yang deficiency, but the red candy and the red tea weren’t terrible together. Not right, of course, but not terrible. Tian took a bite of the haw flake to test his memory, and found it satisfactory.
The silence had dragged on for a moment. Tian looked up from his tea to find his sectmates all looking lost. “What?”
“You are correct. None of us cultivate the sword, nor the saber. In a group of five cultivators, it is rather startling.” Sister Su snorted.
“I sort of thought you might use a sword as a backup weapon.” Hong looked over at Su, who sharply shook her head.
“Swords take an extremely long time to master, and the only ones who really maximize the benefit of them are those who pursue a sword dao. I don’t pursue any sort of weapon dao. My darts are a tool I use to resolve problems with maximum efficiency. Any other tool would reduce efficiency, and as they are non-optimal, must be ignored.”
That, Tian reckoned, was about as efficient a summary of Sister Su as could be made.
“Brother Wang, no backup weapon?” Tian asked.
“What could be more of a backup than a portable wall to hide behind and a big club to whack things with? My ‘backup’ is javelins, and I’ll be the first to admit I’m lousy with them. I’d do better just walking over and falling on the target.” Wang chuckled.
“Are all the juniors from the Windblown manor coming on this expedition? We are just missing Sister Lin.”
“Yes, and the crane.” Hong confirmed. “Sister Lin uses a bow, but as far as I know, nothing else.”
“While you cultivate the pointy stick, and your backup weapon, other-pointy-stick.” Tian’s face was not creased by even a hint of a smile.
“While you cultivate the noodle-pokey, and the smaller pokey.” Hong likewise was a graven image.
“None of which answers the question about what will be done with the other valleys.” Wang said, admirably trying to climb his way out of the spiraling madness.
“It’s going to depend on how it goes in the Fire and Water Valley. I think the hope is that the tests won’t be too dangerous, and we will take the first crack at four of the five testing grounds.” Hong sounded a little helpless at that. “I’m not sure what they will do about the Sword Path.”
“Mmm. Extreme yin and extreme yang. Oppositional pairs. Very daoist.” Tian half smiled. “Minor yin and minor yang never seem to get any love, and poor old earth is just hanging out in the middle of it all.”
“Oppressed by all, while upholding all. Truly the Earthly suffer.” Wang looked tragic.
“You never hear about yang aspected water, do you?” Hong chuckled. “Even though it must exist. I mean, if there is yin aspected fire-”
“A rushing river would be one example.” Sister Su crunched her own haw flake. She seemed quite content with them. “A stormy wave might be another as well as more esoteric examples like sundrop liquid or redcut water.”
Tian idly wondered what the yin aspect of wood would be. If the cosmos tree was an example of yang wood, yin wood would be small and flexible. A sapling or a vine, yielding and moving with the wind, rather than rigidly opposing it. The roots of Blackwater Willows were about as yin a wood as he could easily think of, and didn’t that take him back!
He chuckled at the thought silently, until a different part of his brain tapped on his mental shoulder and pointedly coughed. Tian was confused for a moment, then buried his face in his hands. His siblings had no trouble hearing the barely muffled “IDIOT!” even if they weren’t sure why they were hearing it.