Tian was so drunk on the sight of the bracelets, he didn’t even see the tea set the Wangs made. He was sure he would appreciate it later, but now he could only stagger a bow and call for Burning Heaven to come and get him. He used the jade ear cuff to call for Liren to meet him at home, sounding half mad. They were perfect. He didn’t even want to touch them, lest his fingers leave the faintest smudge on the polished stone.
Burning Heaven carried him over the Monastery, with its whitewashed walls, black tile roofs, green eves, pillars painted red and decorated with endlessly colorful sacred symbols, holy animals, guardian gods and devils and things he couldn’t even put names to. When did they fade into nonexistence? When did he stop seeing all the beauty and mystery?
It was a vivid life. It was an explosion of color, and if happiness was fleeting, wasn’t it doubly important to savor it while it was here?
He clutched the box, knuckles white. His rope dart twitched in his sleeves, anxiously shifting. He had the urge to wave it around like a scorpion brandishing its tail, saying “Stay back!”
Burning Heaven flew in through the hole in the ceiling, landing next to the pond. Old Toad was as he ever was, securing the pile of rocks in the middle of the pond. Tian tossed him a coin, just to be safe. He would raise his left hand and end this wretched world if the toad ate one of the bangles.
Should he prepare something? Was there a right way to give gifts? He had always just handed them over when he wanted to give someone something, but those were just things. The bangles mattered. They were memories and connection and the thread tying past and future. How do you give over something like that? And they were matching bangles- did he just slip on his? Should he do it now? Probably not, right? She should see them both in that beautiful lacquered case.
He walked back and forth. Burning Heaven couldn’t understand a single thing he was thinking at her and ignored him after finding a cozy spot to settle down. Fair enough. Back and forth, back and forth. What could possibly be taking so long? The Discipline Squad couldn’t be that busy. Were they tidying up the bribery accounting?
“Zihao? What’s all the fuss?”
Liren came into the cavern, pulling off her wide hat and smiling at him, and he still didn’t know what to say. All he could do was clutch the lacquer box as she walked over. The butterflies trailed around her, excited that she was here. They always seemed drawn to her. Tian never noticed the way they flocked around him in even greater numbers.
He held the box out to her, offering it with both hands. Liren stopped to look at him for a moment, her smile getting even bigger.
“For me?”
Tian nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again.
She hurried over and opened the box. She gasped, and covered her mouth with her hand. It took her several deep breaths before she could reach her shaking hand and pick one of the bangles up. She examined the carving carefully, her eyes catching every detail, before turning the bracelet around to read the engraving on the inside.
“It must be terrible. She’s crying.”
“Oh Zihao!” She carefully slipped the bracelet onto her wrist, then lifted the other from the box, sliding it on to his. It felt so light, for such a weighty thing. Then she cupped his face in her hands, and asked him a question with her eyes. He smiled and stretched up as she bent down.
Their first kiss was in their garden, blessed by butterflies.
Tian sat on a bench in a quiet corner of the Monastery. He wasn’t entirely sure how he got there, but that was probably down to his brain being completely fried.
“I always wondered what it would feel like to have urges. And now I know. I have a powerful urge to kiss her again. Strange thing.”
“Not that strange. Normal, really.”
Tian nodded, thinking the voice sounded a little familiar. It took a few seconds for sound to connect to memory, reaching his nervous system before his mind. Tian launched up from the bench in an explosive jolt, spinning in the air to land with his fist cupped in a textbook perfect bow.
“Forgive me, Elder Rui! I didn’t notice your arrival.”
Elder Rui’s dignified mustache twitched. “I’ve been sitting next to you for twenty minutes now.”
Tian had no excuse. He could only bow deeper.
“Alright, alright, enough. Have a seat. We need to have a good talk.
Tian straightened up and rubbed the back of his neck as he awkwardly sat down next to the Elder.
“I see you still have the storage ring I gave you.”
“Yes, Elder, along with the arts you kindly provided. I use them almost every day.”
“You earned them. You really didn’t let down my expectations. It feels like… so long ago, now. But it’s been less than ten years.” Elder Rui’s eyes crinkled slightly before going soft. Tian wondered if he was remembering the martial practice courtyard at West Town Temple and his spar with Liren. It was the day he announced they were going to the Redstone Wastes as the Monastery’s vanguard.
“I tried my hardest. Every day, I did my very best.”
“I know, I know. You are a good boy, Tian. You really didn’t let me down. It seems I let you down, though.”
Tian didn’t know how to answer that.
“No comforting words?” The Elder asked.
“I seem to be bad at them, so I’ve stopped trying. Apparently, I’m the worst liar in the sect, in the sense of not being good at it.”
The two didn’t look at each other, preferring to observe the swaying camphor tree that shaded them.
“Hah. Yes, you have always been exceedingly honest. Excessively honest.”
Tian didn’t know how to answer that either.
“Can I ask you something, Tian? Knowing that you will be truthful?”
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“Of course, Elder.”
“Do you hate me?”
Tian paused, then shook his head. “No, Elder. I don’t hate anyone, I don’t think. I dislike some people strongly, but you aren’t one of them.”
“You don’t think?”
“Mmm. Sis’ Liren hates bandits. I don’t hate anyone the way she hates bandits.”
Elder Rui nodded softly at that. “Yes, I imagine she does. I went back and looked over my records for the five of you I sent to the Windblown Manor. Do you know what you all have in common? Disciple Lin included?”
“A questioning mindset, Senior?”
“Disciple Lin doesn’t, or didn’t. Neither did Disciple Hong. Not really. She seemed to have all the answers she needed. No, it’s that all five of you really ought to have blood feuds with the Monastery.”
The wind in the tree branches was very loud.
“Disciple Fu, for the first time in my sixty years of acquaintance with him, got blackout drunk a few months ago. He nearly got into a fistfight with three other direct disciples, and it took Elder Feng and I considerable effort to keep him from turning a few halls from architecture into landscaping. I managed to settle him down enough to have a talk. The reason you haven’t seen him for a while is because he is in secluded cultivation in a cave under a waterfall a good way up the mountain.”
The Elder took a long breath and released it. “Which is one way to handle intense shame, and not the worst one. I kept our conversation private, a matter between Master and Disciple.”
Tian didn’t know what to say to that either. It seemed to defeat the purpose of telling the old man he had been forgiven, but Liren kept telling him that his forgiveness only helped, not fixed everything.
“Disciple Su’s family died in a famine that was entirely preventable. Disciple Hong’s family… you know what happened to them, as you know what happened to Disciple Lin. Her family was getting it in the neck from a lot of us before the wards went up, though I wonder if that’s to distract us from our own responsibility. As for Disciple Wang, did he ever speak about his past with you? Or his family?”
“Only that they were rice merchants.” Tian shook his head.
“Then I won’t speak of it either. Some atrocities should remain private, for all that they are so ordinary that they make me want to vomit. Even the interrogators didn’t figure it out. I only realized once I was able to grasp the young man through his actions and the thread of his logic.”
“The interrogators didn’t?”
“Oh yes. If that was all it took to turn someone to heresy, wouldn’t there be heretics everywhere? Naturally they wouldn’t bother to look for… for such things.” Elder Rui’s voice was bitter. Tian didn’t reply. They both knew there were more heretics every year. Endless waves of people eager to sacrifice others for their own power.
“No one is listening in to this conversation, if you were wondering. The Heavenly Realm has its own ways of maintaining privacy.”
Tian hadn’t known that, but it made sense.
“And then there is you. Who… forgave us. Or at least forgave Disciple Fu.”
Tian nodded. He had. It was hard. It still hurt. But he had.
Elder Rui turned to look Tian in the face. “Filial piety is the foundation of everything. Every social rule, every system of government, every human interaction can ultimately be traced back to observing filial piety. Every bad law and cruelty by an authority figure comes from ignoring or disregarding or misunderstanding it. Because all the chains of piety converge at a peak, we are all one family in the end, and therefore should be harmonious. Harmony is the second supreme social virtue. To have harmony, you must have compromise and forbearance, even for things you detest. Do you, can you, understand that?”
“No, Elder.”
Elder Rui’s eyes closed, pain written across his face. “Can you understand that we, your elders, believe that?”
“Yes, Elder.”
“About ourselves too. About the duties we owe to our seniors and our teachers and their teachings, and the way we know to order ourselves. To make this whole endeavor possible.”
“Yes, Elder.”
They fell silent once more. The tree branches swayed in the wind, birds flew, insects hummed, the clouds drifted through the sky, all indifferent to the humans below.
“Do you know why your punishment is so odd? It’s because nobody at the meeting disagreed with you or Su. They disagreed about what should be done, disagreed with the disrespect, but not one person in that whole room actually disagreed about the state of the sect. The collective opinion of the Outer Court is that we are criminals and sinners.”
Tian didn’t smile. He had guessed. It was an odd sort of punishment for an ascetic cultivator. He was being punished because some of the elders were outraged at his lack of filial piety and his disregard for harmony. He was being punished comparatively lightly, because most of those same elders actually had a conscience and felt ashamed by what the Outer Court thought of them.
They sat in silence for a while. Then Tian said “Maybe get rid of the whole direct disciple system. Erase the line drawn between Monastery and the rest of the sect. No Inner or Outer Court, no core disciples, no picking and choosing who gets to learn the ‘true teachings’ of the ancestors. Just put it all out there, and let people learn what they want and teach what they want, and spend the rest of the time teaching people how to be decent humans.”
Elder Rui laughed silently. “Ah yes. Once everyone is properly educated, they will govern themselves and things will flow along their natural course to reach the best possible outcome.”
Tian reddened a little, but stuck with his argument. “I’m not saying there won’t be hierarchy, Elder. Just that this way would make better people and stronger cultivators too.”
“Mmm.”
The little birds hopped through the bushes and around the tree roots, looking for tasty bugs. The bugs didn’t stop crying out, looking for mates, looking for who knows what. Because even if you couldn’t imagine a world with birds, you even more so couldn’t imagine not shouting your existence. Tiny lives refusing to go without being acknowledged.
“Do you really think the teachings of the Ancient Crane are irrelevant to the sect?” Rui asked, seemingly from nowhere.
“If they are relevant, I’ve never seen it. Or perhaps I have, and didn’t understand what I was seeing. Elder, if I can imagine my seniors valuing filial piety and social harmony above all other virtues, can you imagine what, from my perspective, the ‘true teachings’ of the sect are?”
The question hung in the air. Tian eventually shook his head and smiled. It was a painful smile, but a true one.
“I’m not saying the Monastery hasn’t done good things. They have, and I’m grateful for that. Generations of seniors protected the land and the people.” Tian’s smile turned a little soft, and he looked over at Elder Rui.
“The very best things about the Ancient Crane Monastery, from the little bit I have lived, are the West Town Outer Court, my brothers and sisters, Brother Fu, Liren. All that is your creation. All of that grew up under your care, and we could all tell you really did care. The statue of you in the hall was dusted every day. I don’t hate you, Elder. I’m grateful to you, if anything. After all, you were the one who decided the sect needed to learn new truths, and live them.”
“I saw it as a restoration. A return to our ancestors' virtues. The whole sect was like that in the early days, from the diaries and records I have seen. Heroes, striding across the land, being a blessing to it and to the people, then returning to the mountain to meditate, cultivate, and grow. If someone had asked me, I would have said I was being filial, and our problems came from a lack of filiality.”
Tian nodded. Starsieve was an ancestor, and look how that turned out. The Inner Court Elder hadn’t made it to this side of the ward, another ancestor. So were the Saintess and Suneater, in a manner of speaking. Elder Rui gave Tian a dark look, clearly guessing his thoughts. Then he sighed and shook his head, dusting off his dustless robes.
“You will make charcoal for a year. I am reducing your quota to two loads a week, but you will have some scriptures to study instead. On, yes, filial piety, social harmony, and the teachings of the Ancient Crane. We will meet monthly to discuss them”
“Yes, Elder.”
Elder Rui began to walk away, then paused and looked back at Tian. “Even with how Disciple Fu raised you, you still-?”
“My father treated me as his son, so he is my father. I respect him, am obedient for him, I try to live his teachings as best I can. My brothers treated me as a brother, willing to live and die for me, so I can live and die for them. Which person who killed the Xia, who turned their eyes from the slaughter of the Hongs, who turned their eyes from what happened to Sister Su, and Sister Lin, and Brother Wang, dares claim that they did the same for us? And so, why should we follow them or their teachings? We aren’t saying we won’t. We are saying give us a reason that doesn’t make us sick. Don’t make us sin again.”