“Grandpa?”
Are you still set on not becoming someone’s disciple? Because he would be a fantastic master in a lot of regards. A terrible one in others, of course, but that’s just people for you.
“I’m not treating someone who has, based on what he has let drop, forty three children he has never met become my second dad. No chance. None. As far as I can tell, the only person other than himself he ever really cared about was his disciple. Who was a… challenging person.”
Fair. But you are going to rip him off for everything you can, right?
“Not my strong suit, but yes.”
Go for some kind of medicine teaching or manual, plus a cultivation manual. Nothing he’s going to give out is going to be worse than third rate. No idea if it’s better or worse than the Skytreading Art, mind you.
Tian looked around Voidcatcher’s cultivation ground. It was a garden, yes, but only superficially. Or, perhaps it would be better to say it was structured like a garden, in the same sense that the Dawnlight Lark’s five layered pagoda was “structured like a house.” Tian had become familiar with it, one eaten herb at a time.
The whole garden, every leaf and twig, every droplet of dew, every breeze that tousled the soft blossoms, was integrated into a single creation. The only word Tian had to describe it was an “array,” one built on principles of the Art of Wind and Water so profound, they were impossible to recognize on first glance. At least for a complete novice like him. It felt like the wrong word. Too dismissive and diminishing. It was a place perfected. Every aspect of it was designed to enhance the healthy flow of qi, and particularly to nurture wood and water.
Every breath was heavy with wood and water qi. Advent of Spring roared along joyfully, and even the Hell Suppressing Body Sutra was keeping very cheerful with all the free-floating yin qi. It would be impossible to completely recreate back in his cave home, but he had picked up a little bit here and there. Enough to make improvements, at least.
Voidcatcher had been pretty heavy with the hint to drink some of the pond water. And that it would make him quite sick. Tian laughed silently. When he first arrived, that might have alarmed him. Now, it was just another day. He squatted down by the side of the pond, and slid his hands into the water. The cold drilled into his flesh yet again. He was less protected from the pond, now, though he could still feel it was being subtly suppressed. Perhaps that was what made it safe to drink.
Tian scooped up a mouthful, and drank it down. His eyes shot open, staring into the wild blue sky. Had he ever truly tasted water before? He thought he had, but this! This was full of life and stillness. Gathering and nurturing and storing up all in readiness for wood to grow.
The flush of energy was incredible, then agonizing, then incredible, then agonizing… His stomach cramped so hard he thought it must be folding up. He fought down the instinct to vomit. You could take what you liked from the Myriad Colors Heaven, if you could take it. He had been hurt many, many times before. This was manageable.
Then his cultivation arts really kicked into life.
When Voidcatcher returned, he found Tian kneeling with his palms turned up on his knees, looking into the sky with religious ecstasy.
“Hits you that way the first time. You are finally full of energy. For the very first time in your life, you are properly full. My clone is looking over-” He cut himself off, then shifted to “my old disciple. It’s definitely him, by the way, but… not your problem.” He shook his head, still wearing the human disguise.
“I got to be rather fond of Old Toad, even if he sneered at my tea. If there is something I can do to help-” Tian felt like he was speaking over a great distance, his voice whispery in his ears.
“Oh, he is fine. It seems I found why I was so certain I owed you. The next person who sneers at my so-called superstition is feeling the flat of my tongue! But this is too much, the scales aren’t balanced. You even activated his physique and fortune gathering power, though from what I can see, no fortune has yet reached you.”
“Respectfully, Senior, I must disagree. It let me study under you. Your methods are highly effective. I wasn’t speaking nonsense before. I learned a very great deal from you.”
“You only think you did because you are ordinary.” That yanked Tian out of his ecstatic state. He was quite sure he had never been ordinary, for both good and bad reasons. Voidcatcher held up a calming hand before Tian could speak.
“Ordinary isn’t bad. My standards are quite high. One day, you will be the sort of competent doctor any hospital would be pleased to employ. You will not be the genius diagnostician, or the pioneering surgeon, or the godly alchemist. Not unless you are around people far below your level. You will just be quietly competent. Which, again, is not a bad thing.”
Voidcatcher snorted and shook his head lightly. “I’m saying this for a few reasons. The first reason is that you are a really good daoist, which is not the same as being a genius. Don’t get the two confused. That leads me to my second point- some cultivation arts are going to be inherently more suitable for you than others. You will find some things utterly trivial that might stump the geniuses. The reverse is also true.”
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Tian had to nod along with that. It seemed right, even though he wasn’t quite over the “Not a genius” comment.
“Third point- while you can, and should, practice several qi and shen cultivation methods, there will always be a core one you focus on the most in the… the so-called Heavenly Realm and if we don’t find better names for these things I’m going to riot. Heavenly my damp ass! Anyway. You are currently without a cultivation method, and based on what you said to old Dog Nose, you aren’t getting a decent one any time soon.”
“Teacher heard about that?”
“Oh, the whole mountain knows by now. It couldn’t stay bottled up in the Myriad Colors Holy Land for long. I’d say the story leaked to the other Holy Lands and experts no more than three minutes after it happened.”
“But, but, the Grandmaster was there. Surely no one would eavesdrop-”
“Eavesdrop? He transmitted the whole thing to all his students and guests! He was howling with laughter. Kiddo, there are forces at play it’s best for you not to know about, and while the Grandmaster is willing to tolerate your Monastery, that doesn’t mean he has any particular affection for you. Your breakthrough, and your Dao Companion’s, cost him. Then your sect master denied the debt. Tsk. Bold choice.”
Voidcatcher wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. “Watching you tell your own sect master that you would sooner risk death studying a random cultivation art than have any closer ties to him personally or any of the elders he trained, well, you have brought more laughter to more people than you could even imagine.”
“I… didn’t exactly…”
“Oh yes you did! And we all know exactly why, too. Worst of all, you aren’t wrong! You dumped a big fistful of salt on that open wound! Glorious. The sheer sincerity of you offering to politely listen as he shared the only vaguely valuable thing the Monastery possesses had us in stitches. I think Old Nine Ears is having a painting made. I hope he does. I’d buy a copy of it.”
“Ah.” Tian had to admire the structural soundness of the mountain. He was wishing really, really hard for the earth to swallow him up, and the ground wasn’t even trembling.
“Your sect master wasn’t lying to you, by the way. At least for your first cultivation art, you really should have an expert to guide you. It’s not as simple as just running qi through your meridians.”
Tian looked up. “Then… does teacher have a suggestion?”
“Yep. Which brings me to my next point, and why I mentioned the not-a-genius-but-a-good-daoist thing. My cultivation art is the best one I know for me. I am a genius. My art suits geniuses, and my disciple’s cultivation art disappeared with him. Not that I could teach it to you anyhow. I do have something suitable for you, however. It’s not the most powerful cultivation art, but I’d say it was roughly on the same level as your sect’s Skytreading Art.”
Voidcatcher grinned. Tian had the uncanny image of his teacher smiling the exact same way when he broke into an herb storehouse or insufficiently guarded treasury.
“And since it isn’t my personal cultivation art, why, I have no compunction whatsoever transmitting it to someone who isn’t my disciple!”
“I still don’t understand why Sect Master is so hung up about that.” Tian had to control the instinct to refer to his sect master as “Dog Nose.” It occurred to him that he didn’t actually know the man’s name. Presumably it wasn’t Dog Nose.
It couldn’t possibly be Dog Nose.
Could it?
“Really? I thought it was quite obvious. Shame.”
Tian blinked and looked over at possibly the most shameless individual he had ever met.
“Shame, teacher?”
“Small human child, on his watch, the sect devolved to the point where the oldest living member who was still an active part of it decided the only way to remedy the situation was to bribe the holy lands to seal the mountain. AFTER he arranged a mass culling of the sect, but before he committed suicide out of shame from the wretched things he permitted to occur. One might almost think he was hinting something to his disciple.”
Tian immediately thought of the sheer amount of time various seniors had spent probing the ward. It seemed that little tidbit hadn’t filtered down from the Sect Master to the rest of the Monastery.
“Really think about that. Think about how many bad decisions, perhaps understandable at the time but nevertheless wrong, Dog Nose had to have made. Now, the next generation of experts is rising up, and one wants to cleanse the sect in blood and fire, again, and the other wants to quietly withdraw from it on the grounds of moral disgust. Neither of them trust the senior generation enough to worship a master from amongst their number. Even with the promise of immense power.”
Voidcatcher leaned in. “Can you imagine a more comprehensive slap in the face for the person who leads a sect, than that the disciples of the sect don’t trust him to teach?”
Tian felt a pit forming in the base of his stomach. The mountain might not want to swallow him up, but it felt like the hole was devouring all his organs.
“Master committed suicide, disciples won’t accept his teachings, and out he comes like he has any face to show the world. Like I said, we were all howling with laughter. But enough about young Dog Nose’s well deserved sleepless nights and ruined digestion! Let’s talk about something much more interesting. I’m willing to transmit the Vast Darknorth Sea Art, water qi aligned, just the thing for you, and it will lay a very, very nice foundation for your eventual Shen cultivation, which it also covers at a later stage. Water qi cultivation on top of wood vital energy and your wood-water physique, great stuff.”
“Student is willing to learn.” Tian said, not without mixed feelings.
“Good! That’s me squared away then. And since my disciple will owe you when he wakes up, let me pass on some money in his place. He would have helped you gather all this anyway, and it gives me a chance to dump my loose change… That is, you must invest this vast wealth responsibly, young man! Just because you are a youth of two hundred or something is no excuse to be frivolous.”
“I’m twenty, teacher.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m twenty, Teacher.”
“Years?”
“Yes, Teacher. Though I don’t remember anything before I was six and had no education before I was ten. So… not sure how old that makes me in practical terms.”
Voidcatcher stared at Tian, then laughed so hard he doubled over, clenching his gut. “Dog Nose got turned down by a ten year old baby! Oh heavens! Oh, I’m going to tell the world about this!”