Tian was usually quiet, respectful and proper. Just how Brother Fu raised him. Usually.
Dawnlight Lark stared at Tian for a long moment, then the most shatteringly musical laugh he had ever heard filled the room. It hammered on his awareness, filled his eyes and ears, seeped into the pores of his skin. The Lark had loosened her grip on her power just a sliver, and it was enough to shake him like a dog getting dry.
“So many! So many idiots! Ahahaha!” The lark laughed, a merry sound. “I don’t even eat them! I’d hate to have the stupid touch any part of me. I turn them into compost instead, and use them to fertilize my gardens. Do you see the little divot on the tile in front of you? It’s where the idiots genuflect and bang their heads on the floor, screaming out that I am their master, that they will loyally serve me for eternity.”
Tian was struggling to see much clearly, at the moment. Everything was still a chaos of colors and lights.
“Yes, it’s crude. It also works so, so often. Brilliant in one regard, good character in one regard, is far from a guarantee of brilliance and good character in others. But it wasn’t just the obvious trap that made you say no. You didn’t think or hesitate. Why?”
Tian bowed apologetically. “I don’t actually want a master. I came because Burning Heaven wanted to bring me, and I am… very ready to not be in the Earthly Realm any longer.”
The lark stared at him for a long moment. “Are you… no, you have no idea whatsoever who I am or who the Grandmaster is. None.”
Tian bowed again, even more apologetically.
“Because there was no reason for you to know, so nobody ever told you. I can see that sparks a lot of feelings. It’s not a bad rule, most of the time. Child, I’m at the extreme peak of the realm that comes after the Heavenly Realm. It works a little differently for birds, but it’s similar. The Grandmaster has… achieved a considerably higher realm. He is polite to your Sect Master because of certain ancient arrangements, not because of your Sect Master’s strength. What we term “realms” are merely small divisions of the same realm to the Grandmaster. You can think of me as someone nearing the completion of her novitiate, in the greater scheme of things.”
She hopped over to a railing, and nodded out at the stunning vista below. “This cultivation land? It isn’t anything special. It does have better cultivation conditions than anywhere your sect controls, but really, it’s nothing special. I liked the view, and over a few thousand years, I made it special just by being here. Do you at least begin to comprehend?”
Well that was terrifying. It seems he was right. The Monastery were guests on the mountain, and always had been. Benefitting from the benevolent indifference of higher beings.
“Yes, that’s right. Much like you wouldn’t rob a mortal peasant. Even if you took all their stuff, it wouldn’t benefit you at all. On the other hand, even if their work doesn’t benefit you, they are probably doing good things. All that peasanty stuff. So why not leave them be?” The Lark asked.
Tian found himself nodding, before he controlled it.
“But you still don’t want a master, even knowing all that. Why? Speak through your thoughts.”
“I… do not wish to serve a single person. I never did, I think. I am happy being of service to my brothers and sisters. I take a great deal of satisfaction in it. But pledging to obey someone simply because they are older or stronger? Even if it was the Sect Master, I think I would leave the Monastery and become a loose cultivator first. And, forgive me Your Eminence, but I only know a little of your power, and less of you.”
The lark’s beady eyes drilled in. “Ah. To learn what the leader is like, study the organization. That is smart. It seems my little sparrow made a rather poor impression. She is a cruel thing, in truth. It’s why she pledged herself to me. She needed someone strong enough to keep her in check, and weak enough to value her service.”
Tian found himself nodding again.
The lark laughed a little. “Yes, you and I really aren’t suited to be master and disciple. I will permit you to cultivate here until I send you back down the mountain, or up to the Grandmaster, if one of you impresses me. Still, you have pleased me a little. I will answer a single question about cultivation or the dao. Think carefully before you ask. Such opportunities… are more than rare.”
That might be literally true, but surely the problem was that Tian was too ignorant to have good questions. He had questions- What is the realm above the Heavenly Realm, or the Realm above that? How do you read minds? How do you protect your mind from being read? What, exactly should one do with a money calling toad, and how did he teach the people he forgave to forgive themselves? Should he even try? Was there a single universally applicable moral truth? Could there be such a thing as a truly daoist government, or was the concept of daoist government self defeating? What is more important, cultivating virtue or the way? What does the Dao want? Why, exactly, did the Dao insist on farts smelling the way they did, and what was their mysterious relationship to boiled eggs?
The questions raced through his head. He had been around enough birds to recognise the Lark was starting to look a bit boggled. In desperation, his eyes raked over the room and landed on the qin. A question crystalized in a flash.
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“Could you help me with a matter of the music dao? I am working on a song, but I cannot find the two right notes to complete it.”
“Two notes?” There was a breathless quality to the lark’s voice. If Tian was a little more relaxed, he would have detected an emotion he was very familiar with- being torn between laughter and tears.
“Yes, the sounds of humanity- grief and courage.”
The Dawnlight Lark burst into laughter, and Tian’s world shook once more. When his eyes lined up with their holes once again, the little lark had vanished and in her place was a woman, seemingly not much older than him. She was very pretty, and the little red three-petal flower painted between her brows was fetching too. He didn’t have an eye for silks, but he reckoned they were gaudy enough to please Liren. He would have to keep his eye out for some. Then he remembered she was very definitely still in his head.
“Ah, I meant no offence?”
“I wouldn’t be reading your mind if I was going to be bothered by every stray thought. Come then.” She settled herself behind her qin, the ancient brown wood looking even more magical against the petal pink of her robes. “Let me hear what you have so far.”
Tian raised his bamboo flute to his lips. The instrument had been made on a whim by an elder, it was no precious thing. His skills were entirely self taught, and according to Liren, rather poor. Still, you had to consider the audience. Exactly what could he put before the Lark that might save his face? In fact, what face did he have to save? It would be shameful to hem and haw when she knew his standards and told him to play anyway.
He played what he had practiced of his song. He had the tune down but it didn’t sound right. He wasn’t expressing the emotions his words could never convey. When he finished, he lowered the flute and bowed to the Lark.
She had closed her eyes slightly, her fingers resting lightly on the qin strings, with no hint of discontent. “What a romantic soul you have. I see what you are trying to communicate, and why you think you need help playing the notes of grief and courage.”
She plucked the strings on her qin and suddenly he was riding into battle, wrapped in iron armor, carrying a long halberd. His brothers were by his side, his comrades, the tens of thousands of iron clad soldiers following at his back as he rode out to face the enemy, joyful and fearless. Then the lark plucked another string, and he was a father, watching his son come home on a supply wagon. A victory for the army? What victory? His son was dead. His brave, beautiful boy died on the battlefield. He had honored his father’s teachings, fought well, and died, and his father died with him. All that was left was burying the bodies.
“A qin string is never restricted to a single note. It is many notes. Myriad. Plucked one way, it is the grief brought by the heavens,” a chiming harmonic shook the air, sharp and high as the screams of a daughter pulled away from her mother by a storm, “the earth,” and the ground trembled, cracked and compacted as the desperately needed rains slid over and away from the drought cracked soil, the farmers watching their prayed for salvation turn to dust, “and humans themselves.” The tone seemed to stretch out and tremble, almost swaying, like the man looking at his life and seeing nothing. A lifetime of labor and pain and for nothing. He mourned for himself, and for all the lives he could have led, and didn’t.
“A flute is not a qin. It is less sophisticated, less complicated, more primal. A flute is synonymous with wood and wind, two inseparable concepts, and with breath itself. Air, and breath, are inseparable concepts from qi. They literally are the meaning of qi, in the same sense that ‘dao’ is a path or the way. Qi is the animating essence of the world, the energy that pervades everything, and your every breath.”
The lark drew a flute from her ring. Tian couldn’t help but notice hers was considerably longer and bigger around than his, though she seemed to play it in the same way. Her dainty red lips puckered, and she blew a long note. Her fingers trembled, and the note fluttered like the head band of a wandering hero. It went long and deep, as the hero stood on the mountain and overlooked the blood soaked lands to the north.
The flute slowed, as the hero cradled his brother’s head in his lap. He had been too slow, and too confident. Now, as the breath rose in him, all that was left was to gather his guts and face the enemy. To die on his feet, and accompany his brother to Hell. She gently set the flute down on her lap.
“I chose examples of farming and war because they are kinds of courage and grief I think you are familiar with. You wouldn’t have any context for a woman waiting to go into labor, for example.”
Tian nodded at that. Then frowned, thinking about what the Lark was really saying.
“The flute has no notes of grief or courage, of humans, heaven and earth.” He tested out the words slowly. “The wind fills the world and carries the breath of the myriad things. The flute sounds with the breath of the dao itself.”
“Your dao, anyway. Who could express the entirety of the dao in a breath? You were on the right track, but lost the essential staring at the superficial. It’s not about a note, or the string. It’s not about the instrument at all, really. At the end of the day, it’s just a bit of bamboo with holes in it. What matters is you.”
The Lark smiled again, and this time he could see her lips twisting with irony. “We really are not suited at all. I’ve seen people I wanted to teach less, but very few I less thought I could usefully teach. I will send you up the mountain presently. There is someone you should meet. He swore an oath to never take another disciple, but I know he is anxious to transmit his dao and the two of you have similar hearts. He will teach you useful things, as well as providing a suitable cultivation ground.”
She transformed back into a lark, settling down on a tree branch once more. “We will just consider it picking up some free merits, transmitting the dao and smoothing your cultivation path. Just a touch, mind you.”
“I thank the Exalted One for her consideration and her teachings.” Tian cupped his fist and bowed deeply.
“Mourning Cry will lead you back to your room. It’s quite soundproof, so do practice. Ah, one more thing.” Yellowed bits of paper flew out from a thin iron ring faintly visible on one claw, folded together into a crude pamphlet just a few pages long. “This is a mortal guide to playing the flute. It has pictures of where to put your fingers and things like that. I can’t remember where I got it, probably from the storage ring of some bandit years and years and years ago. You know how that goes. Study it. Technique is no replacement for understanding, but understanding can hardly be expressed without it.”