Published: October 23rd 2024, 5:17:21 pm
Orange-crest awoke to light and warmth. A nest had been made for him. His body was nestled into a robe the color of driven snow. His brother's. Small motes of dust danced through a sunbeam, rising to heaven and falling to earth in accordance with the disturbances in the air made by his breath.
The monkey blinked. How did he know that?
The pattern had always been there. His eyes had always seen it. But the connection his mind now made so effortlessly had eluded him.
A paw reached out. He watched as it's passage sent the motes scattering. The paw stilled, and the monkey watched as the small motes of dust fell upon it. He could not catch them with speed, but stillness. The shining specs vanished instantly, like the first flakes of snow.
But he knew they were not gone. Snowflakes did not vanish, they changed. The dust had not become drops of water.
What was dust, he wondered? Why was it so brilliantly clear against the empty air, but vanished into his fur?
"You're awake."
You. A form of general address. The one being spoken to. It was clear now, where it had been muddled before. He'd seen his brother use the word a hundred times. Orange-crest. Daoist Enduring Oath. The tall one who led the glade-pack. Daoist Snowclad Heart.
The men used it because the names they gave each other were excessively long. He'd never made that connection. Now it was obvious. Many sounds meant more sounds. Sometimes long sounds composed of two or more sounds combined. That led to sounds that acted as shortenings, like using you in place of a name. Which meant the language contained yet more sounds. It seemed a very manlike way of doing things. Complex and convoluted, like a tangle of vines mutually strangling each other.
He had few memories of the word awake. He'd heard it before, but only in the broader context of his brother's speech. Yet, it was clear to him now. His brother was saying he was now something he was not before. He'd been carried out of that hellish Fathomless Well. That meant he'd fallen asleep, to be moved without memory. Awake was awareness. Eyes open and clear. The absence of sleep.
"Yes." Orange-crest answered confidently.
"Your accent is better."
"Yes." The monkey agreed. Accent was a speech-thing. The degree to which an utterance conformed to the ideal form of the word-sound; or something very similar. His brother had complained about it before.
So many thoughts whizzed through his head. He'd thought it'd been full before, but now seemingly his entire life demanded reexamination. His memories had not changed. But he could see now just how much fruit he had missed upon the tree. Secrets ripened upon the bough, now his alone to seize.
His brother waited quietly, seemingly content to let Orange-crest take the lead once.
"I am cultivated." The monkey mused.
"You cultivated. Am cultivated would mean another directed your growth. If my garden could speak, its plants would say I cultivated them."
Orange-crest stared at his brother for a time. His brother met his eyes easily. Daoist Scouring Medicine had such sharp eyes. He wondered if his own were like that now, flensing the world to the bone to see how it's meat worked.
"Yes. I am cultivated." The monkey repeated firmly.
It was so very easy now, to extract knowledge from patterns. Four pills, his brother had fed him. Each one had left his head heavy, and he'd awoken with eyes far clearer.
"Yes and no. But mostly no." His brother said. "Your mind is keener now, to notice that. It is impressive."
"Why mostly no?"
Orange-crest was not upset. It was irritating sometimes, having such a busy mind. Harder to find peace in his own head. But this was something he would have always wanted, if he'd been able to imagine it clearly enough to desire it.
Yet, he watched his brother carefully. For flinch or fear. Any sign of motion in the man's own comparable depths. He did not feel betrayed. He wasn't looking for reasons to distrust the man who had done so much to raise him up. That was not his nature, to peel back the flesh of blessings to look for rot at their core. Orange-crest simply realized he did not understand his strange new brother at all. His brother had made him like this. His own mind must be at least as complex as Orange-crest's own now was, full of twists and turns.
"Cultivation is not a purely self directed process. Especially not at the beginning." Daoist Scouring Medicine answered, his face a mask of placid calm. "Almost none of us choose our first sect or cultivation method. Few of us have much say in who our first teachers are, or what treasures we rely on. However, the fact that I set your feet upon the road does not mean it was any less you who walked it. A different starting point will lead you upon a different path. But it is said that if one has karma with immortality, all roads lead to the same destination, the ultimate culmination of one's nature. My hand guided yours. The Fathomless Well provided the strength. But you were both the sculptor and the material. You cultivated."
It was frustrating, that even his new mind struggled to comprehend half of what his brother just said. He understood the thrust of it, disagreement and justification, but he wanted to understand it all.
"I am good." The monkey said instead. "Am strong. The past is sharp."
"The past is sharp indeed." His brother mused. "More than you know."
"Many that more than I know." Orange-crest said with a self-deprecating snort. "Know many that I no know."
Daoist Scouring Medicine smiled.
"Not merely smarter, but wiser I see."
"Smart? Wise? Is good? Bad?"
"I see you are full of questions today. Smart is knowing things. What they are. How they work. Wisdom is knowing what to do. Understanding what you want, how to live in accord with the world. The ancients say 'Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom'. I personally hold that smart and wise are both good, but intelligence without wisdom can be dangerous. And wisdom with intelligence futile, capable of neither action nor communication."
"Hmm." The monkey sat and thought for a time. He still didn't like it, thinking deeply. It was good-bad in a way he struggled to pin down into words, whether in the speech of men or beasts. It let him see more clearly, understand and anticipate. And his new mind drew him towards the act powerfully. He could no more resist it than water could flow up a hill.
He looked up at his brother, eyes sharper than they'd ever been.
"Will you make more smart?"
His brother laughed gently.
"No, this is likely as far as my simpler methods will take you. To hone your mind from here will require you to do as men do. Learn, understand, and perhaps devise your own methods of cultivation."
"Good." Orange-crest said, struggling to smile as his brother did. His face was not so mobile as his brother's. His lips liked to descend more than they did to rise. To pull them up without baring his teeth as if in rage or fear was difficult.
"Head..." He trailed off, thinking. "Head is wine jar. Has bad-much head-wine."
"Full. Full is jar with wine. Empty is jar with no wine. Too much is bad much."
Look at that, his smart brother was learning how to communicate effectively. One day now he might even manage fragments of the true speech.
"Head is full." Orange-crest agreed. "Kekekek ek." He chirped. Too many man-words in a row. Even they sometimes used the true speech, even if the only sounds they seemed to know were those of rage and laughter.
"Men complain of this ailment from time to time as well. I have found that the cure is often to add more things to it."
"Cure? Cure for too much is too too much?"
"A cure... A cure is what I gave you, after you broke your wrist." His brother tapped his forearm as he spoke the word.
Orange-crest popped his lips. He was filled with so much he felt he would burst. Thoughts in his head, satisfaction in his chest. It was a joyous thing, to be able to communicate so clearly with his brother. The questions awaiting their turn on his tongue were more than the stars in the night sky, more than the biggest number his brother had taught him, a hundred hundreds.
His stomach rumbled. Oh. In the joy of the changes, he'd forgotten the most important part of him was not full at all.
"Let us break your fast. The second stage of qi condensation is rather too early for even the most ascetic to practice grain liberation." Daoist Scouring Medicine said glibly. "Then, I shall show you that most human of habits, distracting one's self from one's thoughts and worries. You expressed interest in my pill furnace many times. Now, you are ready. I shall introduce you to the myriad wonders of alchemy, an art most dear to my own heart and practice."
"Yes." Orange-crest didn't follow most of that. But he definitely wanted food. He rose from the warm nest his brother had made for him, marveling at the strength in his limbs.
Maybe this cultivation thing wasn't all bad.
---
An hour later, a bemused daoist and a very full monkey sat before an unlit pill furnace. Orange-crest ran his hand over the outside. The texture to it really was quite remarkable. It was a great mass of dark grey stone shot with streaks of late-spring green. It's imposing bulk stood a full two and a half orange-crest's high. At it's base, it was wide enough to fit a half a dozen monkeys, narrowing to an opening just large enough to let a single monkey in at the top.
It had been carved beautifully by the hands of men, their strange word-symbols and other markings adorning it. The only one orange-crest understood was the mouth, a great gaping hole like the maw of a tiger in the front of the furnace, where a monkey's belly would be. His brother would add ingredients through it, then stopper up the mouth again with a metal panel that rose and fell as he gestured.
It's fire was out now. Even before his eyes had been sharpened, the monkey knew enough of flame he would never approach within two paces while it operated.
"This is the formulae for the Quaternary Heart-Fire Pill." Brother Scouring Medicine said, brandishing a sheet of paper. "It is a peak foundation establishment level medicine that I developed myself."
Orange-crest inspected it, keeping his hands back, so his brother wouldn't withdraw the sheet of paper on reflex. It was all writing. No pictures. Not a very useful piece of paper.
"Formulae?" He asked. He was learning words faster than ever today. Yet it seemed no matter how many he learned, men had more.
"When you make wine, do you remember what you put in a given batch?"
"No. Am monkey. Only men remember things." The monkey groused. Did he ask his brother if he wiped his ass when he shit? Ensure he knew which leaves were safe and which would leave him rolling around in itching-pain like red-eyes on a bad day?
"Very funny." His brother said dryly. At least the man could take a joke, if not really make one. "A formulae is like such a memory, but more complex and exacting. Written so the memory cannot fade."
"Foundation establishment level?" Orange-crest asked. A long sequence of sounds, but his brother's cadence made them seem like a single thing.
"Foundation establishment. The second major cultivation realm, as it is usually accounted." His brother corrected. "The realm of spiritual cultivation I have attained. The ways of cultivation are many and defy easy categorization, but it is generally used as shorthand for a particular level of power and refinement. One must be at least that strong to make the pill, and fairly close to that strength to consume it."
Orange-crest sighed. The earth might tremble and monkeys grow wise, but no matter how the world changed his brother would always be long-winded. This, he knew.
"Foundation establishment cultivation two." The monkey summarized.
"Yes. I developed the pill from a nascent soul level recipe I was lucky enough to encounter in my travels. Nascent soul is generally considered the fourth or fifth great realm of cultivation, depending on the broader school of development one's cultivation method ascribes to."
"Four is bigger than two." The monkey noted.
"Yes, oh Great Sage, four is greater than two. Your mastery of numerology is unmatched beneath Heaven."
Orange-crest frowned. His brother was mocking him, he was sure of it. But how could he respond when he didn't know what a great sage was?
"You made it... Lower? Lesser?" He wasn't sure of the word. Or the why. Big numbers of bad things were bad. But cultivation seemed pretty good, so would not a bigger number of realms be better?
"I made it at all. The Azure Heart has not had an alchemist who attained the nascent soul realm in hundreds of years. There are only four or five such alchemists in all the empire. And frankly, most of them probably couldn't make that pill either, not without research and practice. There's just no need for it, so few would have attempted the recipe already. Such an overwhelming protection against cold is of limited value compared to nascent soul level restoratives or breakthrough aids. Indeed, the original pill might well kill anyone beneath core formation who consumed it, there's only so much internal heat the uncultivated body can bear."
"The pill makes you hot?" He was just starting to understand pills, but burning the person to consumed it to death seemed... Bad?
What were men doing with their lives that they felt the need to dedicate them to making foods that burned them alive. Orange-crest had known of plant-fire, the taste like a lingering burn. But didn't think one could die from too much of it. The monkey shuddered at the thought of how such a pill must taste.
"You remember the Fathomless Well? Its abyssal yin and intense cold? There are places far colder, and men who command such cold."
Orange-crest shivered. He'd seen fire as a weapon. The Monkey King had wielded it against the tigers that had encroached on the mountain. The destruction had been terrible, whole swathes of the mountain left blacker than blackest stone for entire seasons. Yet few had died, tiger or monkey. No more than five or ten. Wise and craven alike had fled the steady advance of the flame. The cold of winter killed more monkeys every year, and it was not half so terrible as that dark cultivator pit.
One could not run from winter, after all.
Orange-crest did not want to imagine such cold turned to violence.
"We make hot pill?" He asked.
"I will make a Quaternary Heart-Fire Pill." Daoist Scouring Medicine corrected. "You will chop things."
Orange-crest snorted. Chopping. He'd been able to do that before. Waste of time, but his brother wouldn't let him mash.
"Why no good part?"
"Because if you do it wrong, the furnace will explode and bring down my house."
"Explode bad?"
"Explode most bad indeed."
"Fine." Orange-crest grudgingly agreed. "I chop. Give chopper."
"Knife."
"Men make too many words. It chops, yes? It chopper."
Daoist Scouring Medicine pulled out a knife and cutting board for the monkey, too canny to engage with its many opinions about grammar. That was a pit deeper than the Fathomless Well. He settled back to watch. A single stray hair in a recipe like this wouldn't be disastrous, not with proper utilization of refinement techniques. But a seed from the wrong side of a Twin Flame Fruit could be.
He demonstrated the simplest step of the recipe, thinly slicing the dried licorice roots that would provide earth and wood qi fodder for one of the early refinement stages.
"Such bad man. You make tired monkey chop chop. No help."
The monkey struggled a little, to manage a proper hold on the knife. It's fingers were long for its size and impressively dexterous, easily wrapping around the man-sized handle. But it's thumb was stubby, and it struggled to use the smaller digit to control the angle of the blade as a man might.
"No, like this. You will cut yourself eventually if you do it like that." The daoist said, grabbing the knife away. He demonstrated how to hold the root down so one could cut away from one's hand, instead of pulling towards the body as the monkey had been doing. In deference for the monkey's limits, he used only his fingers to secure the root to the stone top of his table.
"Yes yes, orange-hair know daoist man yes-good knife, monkey no-good knife."
Daoist Scouring Medicine sighed, suppressing a smile.
"If only you knew, little one, just how lucky you are. Some of us had to scrape together our knowledge from memorizing library scrolls and blind practice. I was a man grown before I owned a proper herbal compendium. Almost fifty before I received any alchemical teaching worth the name."
"Some of us monkey." The creature shot back, clearly understanding the spirit of his criticism, if not the specifics.
"That's fair." Daoist Scouring Medicine allowed.
-----
So many corrections! No seeds! All the seeds for this one! No orange-crest, you can't eat the other half of the Twinned Flame Fruit, I don't need you passing flame instead of wind!
Brother Scouring Medicine was so picky. Everything must be as he ordained it, or the sky would explode.
But now he was done, and his brother was done telling him everything he did was wrong.
"You sure no wrong?" Orange-crest asked, peering intently into the flames. "I did many wrongs. Maybe you do wrong?"
"That's not how this works."
"Why?"
"I created the formulae."
"But why right?"
"Because I tried enough of the wrong ways to find one that produces a stable pill. Now be silent, this part requires concentration."
Daoist Scouring Medicine threw a few more cylinders of charcoal into the flames.
"Bellows." He called out. "Three pumps."
Orange-crest hopped into the air, hanging off the handle of the massive leather bellow. He let his weight drag it back down, feet fluttering all the while.
Daoist Scouring Medicine felt the flame beneath the cauldron, imbued with his Impurity Scouring Flame technique, surge to new heights. Qi-flames were as much true flames as spiritual technique, exhibiting characteristics of both. He watched as the cauldron began to grow steadily hotter. Slowly, it's forest green verdigris began to glow. He watched the glow rose from the bottom of the furnace like a sunrise.
When the glow reached the lower lip of the tiger mouth, he leapt into motion. He cast the last two ingredients into the tiger's maw. A carefully prepared mixture of the more stable of the two lobes of a Twin Flame fruit, and the crushed petals of a Rime-Wind Rose.
His qi rose up around him, a haze of power nearly thick enough to take visual form. It drew into the shape of wings. He watched as the furnace began to shake, the moderating influence of the Rime-Wind Rose steadily burning away.
When the cauldron began to echo with the sound of continual impacts, he released his control over the flame. Immediately the fire surged upwards, drawn into the open mouth of the tiger by the incomplete pill's bottomless thirst. The wings of his qi closed, clamping down firmly on the furnace. He activated the formation to completely seal the device, plates of Refined Copper sliding out to seal the tiger's maw and the chimney.
He felt his qi struggle as the impacts against it redoubled. His Tiger's Maw Refining Cauldron was a very durable furnace for it's quality, but this pill pushed even it's limits.
There was nothing to be monitored, no temperature to adjust. The conditions had been set, the die cast. All that was left to do was hold on, outlast the furious reaction threatening to rip his furnace asunder. The pill struggled desperately, a wild instinct almost more like a living thing than a mere chemical reaction. It radiated power, pressing out in all directions one moment. The next it waited patiently, a tiny medicinal predator, seeking any weakness in his preparations. With an almighty impact, the pill threw itself against the plate sealing the tiger's maw, desperate for freedom.
"Eek!" A distant part of the daoist's mind noted the monkey's exclamation. "You sure formulae right?"
He denied it, again and again. Like a blaze in high summer, the pill burned hot and fast. Then it died out just as suddenly, it's vitality exhausted. A most curious smell extended from the furnace, wood smoke and anise, tinged with traces of the savory scent of freshly roasted flesh.
There was no flesh of any sort in the formulae. Merely fruits and roots, bark and petals. One species of dried beetle. Yet, somehow Daoist Scouring Medicine knew that the strange scent was that of roasting man-flesh.
"Ooh. Smell good."
He didn't correct the monkey. Instead, he slapped the furnace. It was hardly warm, the pill having absorbed every trace of heat it could swallow. The plate descended and a small pill the size of a dumpling emerged. It had the texture of rotted wood, sturdy enough to be held, but threatening to crumble at the slightest pressure. It was a strange pink-brown color, warm as fevered flesh to the touch.
"Small." The monkey remarked, standing on tip-toes to stare at his hand. "You eat? Want see fire."
"Patience. One day soon, you will see the results of our labor."
Daoist Scouring Medicine smiled. The Quaternary Heart-Fire was not a gentle pill. It'd nearly killed him the first time he'd taken it, forty years ago. But his body had grown far stronger since then. He wondered what exactly Daoist Snowclad Heart would come prepared with. Elder Lu would bestow upon him a weapon or technique, most likely. Perhaps one one of his own core formation level swords, or some other compatible treasure.
The pill alone would render him immune to the creeping cold the man favored. He would only need to concern himself with his foe's blade. Perhaps he could harness the flames of the pill for offense as well? He'd nearly died trying it the first time. He would not have any chance to practice with them before their battle. He did not have another Twin Flame Fruit, or weeks to spare in recovery.
It was curious, how much he looked forward to trying. His purse was deflating as rapidly as what remained of his reputation. He still had no real prospect of a breakthrough on the horizon. His remaining lifespan was likely less than half a century. Yet, Daoist Scouring Medicine felt younger than he had in a long time. The farther away his advancement seemed to slip, the closer it somehow felt.
It was ironic, in a way. Looking back upon his journey of cultivation, he'd only ever advanced his spirit when his purse was empty. Perhaps the ascetics were not completely wrong.
"Wine now?" Orange-crest interrupted his musings.
"It's hardly past noon."
"You said wine later if I endured. I endured, yes? You say as much wine as I want. I say I want wine."
"You know what? Fine. We'll clean the furnace together first. No alchemist worth their salts ever leaves a furnace uncleaned, that's how you get explosions. Then, once we're done, we'll do this properly. We'll grab Daoist Enduring Oath and find a place with a good view to celebrate your advancement properly."