The ice was, if anything, colder than it looked. That was the bad news. The good news was that you could insulate yourself, to a degree, with vital energy. The other bad news was that the draw on your vital energy was atrocious, so you had to move quickly. Across the incredibly slick ice. If you fell, you would be dead before you had time to scream. There was simply no way you were going to be able to protect your whole body with vital energy for long enough to stand up again.
Tian was very patient with all the tests. He did not, in fact, want to be back in a wheelchair, or to lose his feet. He liked his feet. He used them every day. However, patience has its limits, and Sister Su looked like she was willing to conduct tests until the mountain wore down to an anthill.
“The sun is getting low in the sky. I should go now.” Tian cupped his fist and turned towards the lake. The flaming tree was waving in the wind, as though it were inviting him to come take a bite of all that low-hanging fruit. He got two steps closer to the ice when his collar was grabbed again.
“Sister, I can’t imagine my collar is that nice to grab. Tell you what, I’ll grab yours and we can compare.”
“We’ll go together.” Liren was firm on this.
“I’m better at Moon Crossing the Lake than you are.”
“Yeah, but I can use it just fine. And I’m faster than you.”
“Says the woman who never beat me in a race.” Tian grumbled.
“First of all, you cheated by moving the finish line. Second, you know I can see you are secretly pleased, right? You are easily the worst liar in the sect, in the sense of being bad at it.”
“Slander. Of all the vile, despicable slander! I am a fantastic liar!”
“Brothers and sisters, is Tian a fantastic liar?” Tian and Hong looked back at the other three. Brother Wang was sharing a bag of salted melon seeds with Sister Su, while Lin had her own. All three were shaking their heads in perfect synchronicity.
“I hate you all.”
The heads continued to shake.
“This is what happens when I leave the house without crane support. Nothing but oppression and slander. I am going to go eat a delicious fruit now. Keep up if you can.” Tian sniffed and turned back towards the lake. Liren snickered and matched his pace.
They reached the ice edge and regulated their breathing.
“Do you remember when we went night fishing on that lake just off the Pebble river? The little lake with the poplar that had been struck by lightning? Do you remember how the moon rippled across the water as you slowly polled along, how the waves drove the moon over the water? Then the water would calm, and you could see that the moon hadn’t moved at all. The world moved chaotically, but the moon kept to its own time and its own course. That’s what we will move like. Ignore the changes in the world around us. Just be the moon drifting over the water.” Tian murmured, pitching his voice just for Liren’s ears.
“Mmm.” She grinned slightly. “Shall I let you lead this time?”
He looked up at her and smiled back. “Yes.”
He reached back and pulled out his dragon hairpin and let his snowy white hair tumble down to his waist. It felt right to just flow. He exhaled, inhaled, and with the exhale, stepped out onto the frozen lake.
Tian felt the disconnect within himself- blazing yang trapped inside his heart as frozen yin flooded his body. His steps were small, controlled, but quick. He moved so smoothly it looked like he was gliding, it looked like the wind was pushing a spirit of the mountain across the frozen lake.
The ice clawed at the soles of his feet, hungry for warming yang qi and the vital energy that gave life and strength to his body. It was a ravenous hunger, a hole that could never be filled and a darkness that could never be illuminated. It called for you to fall and fall into a sleep with no waking. It wouldn’t fight you. It didn’t hate you. It welcomed you. The cold bid you stop and rest and be still. Forever. But a young crane wants nothing more than to fly.
Tian led them across the lake, leaning into the warm air coming from the burning plum tree. He was moving fast enough for his robes to flutter and dance behind him. The blue sky above him was shading into a blazing sunset, while the clear ice below him caught the light, and he felt that he was flying through a burning sky. Flying with him was Liren. Maybe not as gracefully, but she was right there with him. Keeping up every step of the way.
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It was a mad, wonderful thing. He was flying across a lake on a magic mountain, surrounded by a stone forest as he rushed towards a tree that had been burning since before the last dynasty was founded, to eat a magic fruit and eat magic ice and flying next to him was his very best friend in the world. Grandpa had been right. He had been completely right. It was worth striving for the pinnacle, worth coming to the human world, worth the pain and the frustration and the fear. It was all for these immortal moments where he could run wild, free, and happy.
Under that feeling of flying was the gnawing hunger of the ice. Knowing that with a single slip, it would all end and he would fall forever from the sky. Down into that eternal darkness, down to the yellow springs, to plead his case before Judge Yan and waiting in line to drink a cup of Granny Meng’s soup. He didn’t want to sever this memory. He didn’t want to lose this feeling, or let this wild moment be gone forever. He wanted it to live eternally. A brilliant immortal life!
The temperature rose the closer they got to the island. The burning plum tree produced heartsear fruit, and it was well named. Every breath of the fire-filled air made him feel like roaring, like laughing, like jumping and doing flips and cartwheels.
The temperature rose, even as the ice below got colder. Thoughts started to intrude- that the true immortality was found only in death, and there was no point in a life not lived joyfully. If joy couldn’t last, then let there be an explosion- and perish. Fall into that endless darkness and dissipate, like a firework dissolving into the night sky. It would be fast, a seamless transition from ecstasy to nonexistence. The fire burned him as the ice froze him and his emotions swirled and ripped around him and running next to him, flowing over the ice like the spirit of the sun was Liren.
The whipsaw of emotions choked him. Memories of the dump, memories of pain, of being burned, of the battlefield, of the hospital, of hiding under the sands and praying that his little rope would let enough air slip through to keep him alive. Of falling through the empty gullet of a demonized hawk and dissolving in the freezing acid of its belly. Something clenched around his heart. Something he had forgotten. It had been hard and dead and forgotten for a long time now, but it had never left.
Heart demon. The pain and the fury made manifest. The evil thoughts. The hate. The rage. He had worked so hard for so long to dissolve it, but it never went away completely. Like a disease. It was just in remission. Now, torn between fire and water, between despair and fury, it returned.
He had given up his vengeance. Was that something a person with dignity could do? Was that something a decent human being could do? It was easy not to care when you thought your parents hated you, but knowing that they loved you desperately and were still butchered, that your mother died covering your body, that her last thought was easing your pain and sparing you humiliation, was that something you could really forgive? Was that something you could let go, even if you couldn’t remember it?
Sitting in his storage ring was a little wooden tablet with the name XIA carved on it. He could count the number of times he had offered incense with the fingers of his right hand. It hadn’t seemed a safe thing to do on the mountain. He could see the chain of violence and hatred, how it always flowed downwards. It proved there was only one sin- to be weak.
Had the Monastery changed since they were trapped on Ancient Crane Mountain? Like hell it had! It still came down to who’s fist was the biggest, who’s faction was the strongest, what price could you force someone else to pay. It was just hidden, for now. Everyone was still feeling things out. The only safe thing was to run and hide and grow stronger invisibly. He could descend once he surpassed the heavenly realm, crushing all opposition and showing the world that those things which belonged to him could never, never, be taken away.
That he couldn’t be hurt again. That at long last, he could stand proud in the sunlight and face heaven and hell with equal contempt.
That he wasn’t alone, and scared, and covered in burns. He wasn’t hiding from bigger predators, or the sun, or humans. He wasn’t sick, unable to breathe, or pee, or move, without pain.
He was standing on the island now, under the burning tree. He wasn’t sure when he reached it. Liren was next to him. He couldn’t understand the expression on her face. Hunger and yearning and fear and bone crushing despair. How could she be so despairing? Wasn’t everything going well for her? She shouldn’t feel despair. Anger caught hold of him, the heart demon whipping him. Someone had hurt him! They hurt him by hurting her! Unacceptable! Intolerable! He’d kill them all!
The burning plum blossoms were bright, and the fruit hung down just in reach. Where was the ice? He looked around, and found it quickly enough. At the foot of the tree was a little spring of sorts, pushing up stones of ice. Tian could see that they rose and fell through the surface of the ice spring over time, slow as ages, but as a result, they were far more than ten layers thick. Tens of layers, more than a hundred? He couldn’t count. It was hard to focus with the swirling emotions and the joy and the hate.
How to pick the fruit? How to grab the ice? But he was overthinking things. Liren reached out, and with more confidence than he could ever manage, she grabbed the two ripest, juiciest, most fiery fruits. They weren’t very big, barely more than two mouthfuls. They smelled divine. Tian refused to be outdone. He immediately went to the pond and forced himself to ignore the storm of emotions in him, ignore the fury and the manic joy and the apathy and concentrate. He snagged the ones with the most layers. Thousand layer ice, he decided, even if the number wasn’t exactly right.
Her eyes were so big. What did he look like, in her eyes? She offered him a fruit and her face was torn between hope and despair and words she couldn’t say. He couldn’t say them either, all the words piled up and jumbled behind his teeth, twisting and turning on each other as so many things seemed so important for her to know and he had never really understood how to talk to these animals called “humans,” he could only imitate their calls.
He offered her one of the stones of ice. How could they trade? It would be a little tricky. The sudden absurdity cut through the storm. All that, and they couldn’t find a free hand to swap things with. He could manage at least that much. Tian balanced once ice rock on top of the other, then extended his hand, flat, level and steady as a crafter’s workbench, before reaching for the burning fruit.
He smiled, promising to blaze brightly if only for her, and ate the plum in two bites.