Two wandering immortals, one in ragged white, the other in vivid blue, set out across the steppes, grumbling.
“I still think you could tow the folding boat behind the flying sword. Or maybe tie the swords to either side of the boat and carry it that way.”
“Sure. You just tell me how to make the boat fly, or how to control two flying swords at the same time, and I’ll get right on that.” Liren couldn’t be bothered to even roll her eyes. “You didn’t mind it when we were on the same sword, but now that we have separate swords, flying swords are bad again.”
“They were always bad. There were just advantages to it.” Tian knew he wasn’t going to win this one, so he turned away with magisterial reserve and surveyed the grassland with his hands behind his back.
“Posing like that won’t convince anyone you won the argument.”
“It might!”
They sped over the swaying grass. The green rolled endlessly on. To the south was the Redstone Wastes, a hell of chaotic qi and poisonous dust, filled with gigantic, monstrous creatures. To the north was the Broadsky Kingdom, lush with rich land and boundless rivers. Between the extremes, was the steppes. A swath of grassland that spread out across the borders of the Kingdom and into the kingdoms beyond. Nobody, or at least nobody Tian spoke to, knew its boundaries. As far as the Kingdom was concerned, it was a place with a northern and southern border, but none to the east or west. The kingdom had borders. But the steppe had been here first, and everyone knew it would still be there when the kingdom fell. Human borders were simply irrelevant.
“I still can’t believe you terrified Han that way. It really wasn’t nice of you.”
“Did I lie? Did I say anything that was even misleading?” Tian kept his hands behind his back, letting his white hair fly behind him. “I don’t know the mortal political situation, but the worse things get on the borders, the more rebellions there are, the more willing the emperor will be to compromise. What’s a few lives, so long as they aren’t his? Especially when those lives might be a danger to him. Hanshen could survive longer than I expect. Depending on how it happens, the Emperor might limit the damage to Hanshen’s family, friends and students. I wouldn’t bet on it. He’s not well known for his spine, and he will be looking to buy peace.”
Not mentioned was that the six foot tall, handsome, well read, swordsman irked Tian for reasons he was struggling to pin down. He knew his irritation was irrational, and that Han was actually a decent sort. It was what it was. He’d figure it out eventually. In the meantime, he would do his best as a teacher, and as the petty man he knew he could be.
“There had to be a better way to tell him all that.”
Tian’s irritation ticked up, but he kept it out of his voice. “Maybe”
His eyes were fixed on the horizon, so he didn’t see the speculative look Liren gave him, or her little smile.
They flew west for an hour, drinking in the immensity of the land. There was something hypnotic about it. The scope of the world you inhabited suddenly changed, from city streets and courtyards to an open vastness that stole your breath. As though the earth and the sky were two impossibly enormous hands, cradling you between them. The soft green grass below, and the aching blue sky above, with drifting strings of white clouds casting shadows on the earth.
You could lose yourself in that sky. Tian smiled, then frowned and looked over at Liren. Her head was tilted downward, her hat blocking her view of the horizon. He sent his flying sword over next to her, and stretched out his hand. She took it. They didn’t say anything. There was nothing that needed saying.
It wasn’t too long after that they found a fort. It was occupied by kingdom troops, but they couldn’t tell if it was Vermilion Bird Fortress or not. Tian immediately began scheming an infiltration, plotting the mortal’s zones of attention and how to slip through them. Liren gave him a moderately filthy look, and dove for the road.
“You, Soldier. Is this Vermilion Bird Fort?”
“AAH! Immortal! Yes. Yes, Vermillion Bird Fort is two miles down the road from here.” The soldiers calmed their horses, who were not particularly happy about a flying flapping inexplicable thing coming at them from the sky. “Should we report to the commander that you are coming?”
“No need, we aren’t visiting. Where did you last see the Yuu?”
The soldiers exchanged looks. “Reporting to the Immortal, the Dutoa Tribe have pitched their Ger about fifteen miles west of the fort, and set out their herds.”
“You don’t sound very concerned about it.”
“We know the Dutoa, Immortal. That is a normal pasture ground for them, this time of year. They are… peaceful.” Liren snorted softly, but nodded. The red plumed soldier relaxed slightly. The horses didn’t. The wind was stirring Liren’s robes and fluttering her veil, things which did not inspire calm in horses.
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“Last question. Have you seen the reported Red Horse running around near the fort?”
The troopers exchanged a great deal of silent side-eye. The man Liren was interrogating looked awkward, but pointed south-west. “You don’t see it, exactly. It’s more like you catch something out of the corner of your eye, and some part of your brain says ‘Red horse.’ We are all troopers, Immortal. We know a horse when we see it, even if it’s only out of the corner of our eye and just for an instant.”
She nodded. The trooper looked relieved. The horses were relieved when Liren flew up, back into the endless blue. The soldiers exchanged looks, and carefully didn’t look up.
“Somehow, I can feel my brothers frowning. We are supposed to move unseen across the countryside. This lessens our domineering appearance.” Tian sniffed in disapproval. Liren just shook her head and ignored the commentary.
“South-west. Past the ‘peaceful’ Dutoa tribe.”
“Yep. Let’s head over. Maybe we can get lucky, catch a stray shaman or something.”
“Sure. We can hover over them on our flying swords, robes flapping in the wind as our commanding words emerge from our veiled faces. Well. My veiled face. You are just going to have to be dainty at them. Maybe that intimidates shamans.”
“Dainty? Dainty?!” The two made their way slowly south west, bickering and raking the ground with their senses.
“I’m seeing exactly zero ghosts or spirits. You?” Tian asked.
“If you can’t see ‘em, why would I be able to?”
“You always boast about how good your eyes are. Maybe they can see spirits.”
“It’s you! YOU always go on and on about how good my eyes are. And if I couldn’t see them in the Kingdom, why would I see them here? In fact, it sounded like most Yuu can’t see them either. Just the shamans. Which I would usually assume meant they were scammers but they obviously aren’t.”
Tian could vividly remember the Grand Shaman of the Giant Wolf Tribe, sighting down his arrows at him. Not sloppy, not arrogant, just the confidence born of long experience. Tian had assumed he was centuries old. Funny to think he was a mortal fast reaching the end of his life.
“I remember feeling a thread of qi touching me while he was shooting arrows at me. I assumed it was part of his cultivation or some spell or something. What if it’s the spirits?”
“Those wolf things that sprung up from the teeth he scattered were physical enough to hurt, but ghostly enough to ignore any attacks that didn’t carry at least a little qi on them.” Liren rolled her shoulders. “We are probably overthinking this. Qi is the energy of the universe. Not strange that whatever “spirits” are, they are made of the same stuff.”
Tian grunted. “Makes sense.”
“Grandpa, any advice?”
You two are on the right track. Let’s see. First thing is that they are doing what the daoists are doing- trying to describe something so inhumanly vast, so utterly outside the mortal experience, that they have to rely on approximations and analogies to explain what they are seeing. So yes, the spirits are a real thing that really exist, but no, that doesn’t mean the Yuu cosmology is correct in all aspects.
“Well. That’s a relief, I guess. So the answer is to be using our senses to look for disturbances in the qi to try and find any hiding spirits or shamans?”
Forget finding the spirits, unless they are active, they are indistinguishable from the background qi. Even the shamans need to use special methods to wake them up. Invoke them, to use the technical language. The self activating ones are closer to ghosts. As for something like this red horse… I’d have to see it to give you more information. And it wouldn’t be cheap.
“I don’t suppose the perception spell could be upgraded to detect spirits?”
Not directly. Hmm.
Tian had the feeling Grandpa was stroking his beard.
The ‘spirits’ are… and you don’t have good language for this, so just work with me here, please, are essentially merged into the world around you. Imagine… I don’t know, two thin pieces of rice paper with a black ink drawing on them. Say, a picture of a tree with a mountain in the background. Stack the two on top of each other and hold them up to the light- looks like one picture. Separate the papers, and it’s two pictures. That’s what the shamans are doing. The human spirits they are worried about is a little different, a green ink picture of someone glaring at you and reaching out from the paper to grab you. So, no, there isn’t a good way for you to detect them with your current spell. On the other hand, you are more sensitive than most to the flow of elements and qi, and we can lean into that.
Tian felt the old ghost’s hand on his shoulder. This isn’t a new flow of energy to master, just a different way of looking at what you are seeing. Even with my improvements, this is a pretty trash spell, so we’ll just do our best with what we have.
Tian smiled. “Same as ever. Grandpa, can you see spirits? Are you on that same sheet of paper?”
Grandpa Jun laughed. It’s not worth the effort. I am currently seeing the world on a level those little spirits can’t even imagine. You need to not mystify these mystic spirits too much. The spirit of a rock is, generally, “a rock.” A patch of grass is grass, a bird is a bird, and not an interesting bird either. Just a bird, doing bird things. Might be useful, probably isn’t. You know what? You can see it for yourself.
Tian landed on the grassland. It was shorter than he had expected. Perhaps it had been grazed recently, or the grass just didn’t grow that high. It barely covered his ankles, the blades remarkably tough and dense. He ran his fingers through it, marveling at its resilience. It didn’t rain much on the steppes, but it was still lush and green. He sent his senses into the earth, and found the roots stretched deeper than he was tall.
Tiny shoots of grass, with deep roots in the land. Thriving, where others exhausted themselves and died. They might not look like much by themselves, but they weren’t by themselves. They were here in their millions.
It was a bit inspiring. Tian always thought of the cosmos tree when cultivating his vital energy, but this was good too. It was another expression of wood rooted in the earth. Not growing tall, but spreading widely. Immense vitality, with no external expression. All the really interesting things were happening inside and below the surface.
How very daoist.
He laughed, and cast his senses wide, opening himself to the steppes and all they had to teach him.