Published: February 3rd 2025, 1:11:29 am
Orange-crest stared up at the ceiling. That was... new. His brother was a man of many secrets. But this time? He was pretty sure the human was yanking his tail.
"You wrote all over the ceiling." The monkey observed aloud. "The ceiling is not a book."
"No." Daoist Scouring Medicine corrected. "I drew out a novel formation across a dozen pieces of Xuan paper, glued them to thin panels of wood, nailed those panels to the ceiling in precise places, then added the last three strokes while standing atop a couch."
Orange-crest hummed dubiously.
"And then you put the rock on the ceiling."
"Actually, I did that before adding the last three strokes. The formation holds it in place. Glue might have contaminated it with trace amounts of foreign qi."
Orange-crest stared at the rock he'd retrieved from the centipede's lair. It floated a dozen feet off the ground, just a few fingers below the rafters, surrounded by the panels full of oddly arranged characters.
"Earth." The monkey read aloud. "The flowing river runs deep and free. Metal. Abides in stillness, changes without violence. Water. Droplets fall from earth to heaven, and thereby rise."
A single drop of water fell, plinking loudly into the nearly empty metal dish placed directly beneath the floating rock. Another set of papers surrounded it.
"Do not step on it." His brother warned, as orange-crest leaned in for a better look.
"Ekek." He chirped in exasperation. "Does this monkey walk on desk full of papers? No."
"You walk on desks. Excuse me for thinking a warning prudent." His brother protested, speaking as though he thought a sufficiently aggrieved tone would make a falsehood true. Men did that sometimes.
His brother's latest work was a curious thing. Writing magic, apparently made to serve the needs of pill magic. The tops of the trees had blinded orange-crest to the height of the sky. The monkey had thought writing merely a means of storing and retrieving knowings and secrets, but it too had a magic. Perhaps all things had a magic to them? A deeper and more secret way.
"It's not the most traditional of refinement steps. A chunk of pre like this is of more use to a swordsmith than a cultivator in its natural state." His brother said, seemingly speaking as much to himself as to orange-crest. "Even an instinctive cultivator would struggle to digest its power, without a specialized constitution. Normally, I would use alchemical solvents, then neutralize them later. Can't forget that step, or using their products in a bath would melt your bones. And not in a good way. Solvents would be faster. But I'm starting to see more than I could before. Other paths that lead to the same destination. Slowly, my understanding of the dao of alchemy is evolving. All things, all transitions between states, can be turned to the ends of refining medicine. If it can be refined in a furnace, it can be refined in a formation. If a plant can make compound, why can't a man? You'll see, one day. They'll all see..."
Daoist Scouring Medicine trailed off, staring at his work.
Orange-crest was tempted to mark this down as another human strangeness. His brother's words were scattered, leaping about from subject to subject even more than they usually tended to. Much flew into one of the monkey's ears and out the other. Yet, orange-crest liked to consider himself skilled at the reading of faces. His brother's was a riot of conflicting things. Like beast-trails that led to a clear pool in a dry season, one clear track devolving into a mess of violent emotions and complex history.
This mattered to his brother. Not just the doing, the bath he said would make orange-crest stronger. The knowing, the journey to get there. And the fact that it mattered to his brother, meant that it mattered to orange-crest.
His brother was not well. Any monkey could see that. His body was slow to mend. More fear than a primate was meant to bear weighed upon him, fear that stretched across month after month. He had no pack. Only orange-crest and Daoist Enduring Oath.
"Show me?" Orange-crest asked. "Want see what you see."
He meant it. Orange-crest couldn't make his brother see as he saw. See that the laws and grudges of men were small things. That his fears could blow away like a bad smell, if he simply left the sect behind to shelter behind the mighty back of the Monkey King.
Only his brother could change his sight. But orange-crest could change his own, that they might glimpse the same horizon.
Daoist Scouring Medicine blinked in surprise. Li Hou was a diligent student, for an animal. But he didn't usually care about things before he saw their utility directly. It was out of character, for him to care about the synthesis of a reagent that was a mere input in another process yet to begin.
But a wise man struck while the iron was hot. Perhaps coming to understand the potential of formations would help encourage the monkey to pay more heed to the shape of his own written characters.
"If alchemy is the art of transforming substances into more useful ones, formations are the art of arranging the world. A formation can hide a place from prying eyes, or make it more suitable for cultivation. They can even protect cities from armies, or slaughter one's enemies. This one is a small and specialized thing by comparison, with but two very particular functions. The first, is to contain and sequester the small amount of yin qi this chunk of ore releases. Without a more powerful concept to latch on to, the imbalance manifests in the form of cooling. Cold is one of the most natural expressions of yin energy, after all. A cold stone in a warm room naturally produces dew, the water you see falling from it. The second function is to shift the earthen qi within the metal to a form more compatible with water. In order to do this, it leverages the comparatively high concentration of qi within the metal itself to..."
The monkey listened as the man lectured. He learned more. He thought more. And then, with his plans finalized, he went shopping.
And by the time he left, his brother's scowl was a little less sullenly spiteful, and a little more determinedly fierce.
----
Disciple Wang hadn't known what to think, when his senior knocked on the door. He'd been lying on the comfortable hardwood bed the sect provided, staring up at the ceiling without holes in it.
Best enjoy it while he could. He'd be returning to his parents in disgrace soon enough.
The sect would not say as much. The daoist who returned him would no doubt say something vague and empty. Wang Tao had no fate with immortality.
That daoist wouldn't be wrong.
It wasn't the worst fate, he supposed. But staring up at the cobwebs, Wang Tao wondered if it was perhaps more unkind than never being chosen in the first place. He was stronger than a mortal, now. He could run for hours on end. Even after the damage, his cultivation had stabilized at the second level of qi condensation. But that, strength and perhaps modest longevity, were the extent of his cultivation's worth now. He couldn't use qi actively, his reserves replenished in months, not days now. And the consequences of actively cycling or using a technique were... Severe.
And his arm was a ruin. Weeks on, it was still covered in bandages. The strength was there, the limb still answered the call of his will. But his fingers were clumsy things, useless columns buried beneath thick scars. They'd had to cut them apart, two weeks ago. The flame had fused them together. Even after separation, they hardly felt or bended. And the rest of the arm was little better. His skin was tighter than a merchant-lord's purse strings. If he bent his arm fully, fresh lines of painful scarlet would stain his bandages. He felt like one of his aunt's aspic dumplings, poorly formed and ever one sudden movement from leaking liquid all over his clothes.
Just once, he'd tried to cultivate. Defied the advice of of the sect's doctors by testing the truth of their words. It had hurt almost as much as when he'd first burned his arm, as fiery qi had rampaged through his body. His cultivation hadn't regressed again, fallen to the first stage. But it was a close thing.
What was a farmer without an arm? He could pull a plow, and guide an animal. Cultivation made him strong enough for that. Scatter seeds, for the greens, perhaps. He'd be slow to transplant seedlings. A sickle would be worthless, without a second hand, and he could hardly repair a fence or building with one arm.
He was not useless. But he could not maintain a household on his own.
Perhaps he could act as a beast of burden himself, balancing a shoulder pole another would load. Or take up a career as a runner and bring home coin. No bandits could hope to accost him without archers or cultivators among their number, not unless they caught him unaware. He would be surprised, if the county magistrate was not interested in adding a cultivator to his staff. Even one as lowly and crippled as Wang Tao.
Perhaps time would heal him. The inner disciple who had treated him had been clear, his meridians would never improve without intervention. But he'd been less certain about the prognosis of Wang Tao's flesh. It might improve, with years and steady use, he'd said. It could have been an empty kindness. But the disciple had not seemed like a kind man, and Wang Tao trusted his words all the more for the cold brusqueness in his voice as he'd declared Disciple Wang a cripple.
It was among these dreary visions of the future, that the knock had found him.
Wang Tao was on his feet in an instant. He was not important enough to keep anyone waiting. Even the lowliest of initiates were now people he might be unable to afford to offend. Unlike him, they had a future with cultivation.
The senior at the door was an outer disciple, but to Disciple Wang he might as well have been an elder. Fifth stage? Sixth?
"A message, for you."
Wang Tao's tongue itched, to ask who wished to speak with him.
"Thank you, senior." He said instead, inclining his head.
To his credit, the disciple did not frown or scoff. He did not see in Wang Tao a potential friend or competitor, or even an object to deride. He was as far beneath the man's care as a mortal.
Wang Tao read the note. It was not long. Two short columns of characters, and an elegant signature in place of a stamp.
Wang Tao sat down in the small patch of well-swept dirt that constituted his home's entryway. He stared up at deep blue of the late afternoon sky.
The note made no promises. It offered no words of consolation. It was a little more than a name, a place, and a time.
It did not feel like hope. Yet somehow it almost felt cruel. Cruel in the manner of one who offers false hope to the condemned. Wang Tao went anyway. Heaven might be boundless, but the confines of his world were narrow. What else was there to do?
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Inner Disciple Yan Delun leaned against the wall of his fortress. The sect called it an office, of course. But given the nature of his employment, Yan Delun thought his perspective more fitting. His job wasn't really to dispense the materials stored within this room. It was part of his duties. But his superiors would hardly care if he failed at it.
His true duty was to protect the contents of the small room and the endless rows of apothecary cabinets that covered every inch of its walls.
The room had a single entrance, a barred and warded door that opened into the inner chambers of the Administration Halls. A small gap in the endless expanse of cabinets. A window with a lacquered counter was set into the far wall, opening out onto the public courtyard, a deceptively vulnerable looking point. Objects could pass through it, but any foolish enough to think it a point of ingress would find themselves rapidly... Chastised.
It was a waste of an inner disciple's time and talents. But what mortal could be trusted with the keys to wealth any cultivator would kill for? And so here he was, an inner disciple, a man perhaps a decade away from becoming a daoist in his own right, acting as a glorified clerk.
Even mortal officials were not subjected to the indignity of working with the public. And the outer sect certainly merited the pejorative. In theory, they were aspiring immortals. In practice, most of them would live and die without ever leaving the realm of qi condensation. Cultivators they might be, but they would soon find the limits of their talents, and accept they were meant to be nothing more than long lived mortals. Blessed with the luck to see the heavens, but not the strength to grasp them.
A boy approached his counter. Yan Delun stared at him from across the small room. He did not move to approach the disciple.
The boy flinched, then steeled himself.
"Do you have a copy of the requisition form bearing his seal?" Yan Delun barked.
"My master says-"
"Your master can come down here himself. No daoist, no purchase order, and no payment, means no goods."
"It's just three sprigs of-"
"I don't care." Four of Yan Delun's favorite characters.
"He's teaching a class and I-"
"Disciple Yuwen, you will not speak another word if you value your tongue."
Yan Delun waited a moment. The boy's jaw clenched in frustration, but he said nothing.
"If you come before my eyes again, let it be silently, with a copy of that form, bearing your master's seal. Or with spirit stones. You do not have credit here. You may not draw upon your master's without written authorization. If you do other than I have suggested, you will find yourself banned from the hall. Shall we see how much time your master has for a disciple incapable of even running errands for him?"
Disciple Yuwen bowed at the waist, to half extension. A peasant, likely, to retreat to excess deference in the face of chastisement. But a bold one, to return emptyhanded after the first time. Yan Delun smiled as the boy spun on his heels and retreated. It might have taken him two tries, but at least he was capable of learning. For a daoist of any stripe to have taken the boy as a personal disciple, his talent must have been excellent. For a man of modest birth to experience such a change in his fortunes had an unfortunate tendency to leave him with a rather lofty opinion of his own importance. A situation best remedied before Disciple Yuwen himself attained the rank of inner disciple.
That was the second true duty of this job, after all. Teaching uneducated peasants and entitled nobles alike the true rules. Beating into them the unbreakable truth that the Azure Mountain Sect was beyond them and their ambitions. It had existed since before they were born, and would continue to teach long after they were dust. It had known a dozen Sect Masters, outlasted six emperors and two dynasties. Noble houses and earth-shaking talents rose and fell, but so long as the Patriarch slept deep beneath the mountain, the sect would endure any tumult. How then could the Administration Hall, one of its pillars, bend even a chi before some young talent?
Petitioner suitably chastised, Yan Delun stepped back from the counter. He returned to the tedious process of checking the inventory. When a single root spoiling from moisture might mean a dozen spirit stones lost, or stolen, the hall expected paperwork both expansive and immaculate.
Early winter, year 147 of the Qianlong Emperor's reign. Cabinet 302. Hundred-year ginseng. 2 specimens recorded. Both present and mobile. No signs of damage. Inner Disciple Yan Delun.
His work continued in a similar vein for hours. Most of the notes were the same. Only rarely did he note even the smallest of damages or degradation to the goods, and not once an item misplaced.
"It's smaller than I thought it'd be, from the rumors."
The words were just barely audible from Yan Delun's desk.
"I heard it speaks like a man."
"If it did, surely it would have the sense to greet its seniors."
"Is this the place..."
"No. Two desks down."
That was Disciple Yang, at the mission desk. It was heading to him then.
"It does speak!"
"Remarkable. Perhaps not the best use of a daoist's time, but still remarkable."
"Better training monkeys than producing more pills. Have you not heard? Not content to cripple Disciple Zhang, he nearly killed himself reaching beyond his means in a duel. Burnt himself from within. You couldn't pay me enough to take a pill from Daoist Scouring Medicine's furnace. It's good that the sect has forbidden him from selling his work."
"I heard he won though. The other daoist suffered far worse. And watch your words, his disciple is right there. He's still a daoist."
"No. His pet monkey is right there. And he won't be for long. What man can stand alone against the world? Not an alchemist, certainly."
Yan Delun rose from his desk. The outer sect's latest curiosity, the talking monkey. He wondered if it suffered from the perennial affliction of promising disciples.
"Is this the place to buy worms?"
Yan Delun looked out the window. It was empty, save for a pair of furry little hands clutching at the protruding edge of the counter.
Oh, this was going to be fun. He leaned over to get a good look at the thing.
It was smaller, than he'd expected. Hardly half a grown man's height, with long thin limbs. Even the initiates, young as they were, dwarfed it in size. Impressive, that it could trade blows with them at the second stage of qi condensation. Or, perhaps the new blood were simply that pathetic. They were initiates, after all.
"The place to buy worms? Perhaps you've confused the Azure Mountain Sect with the underside of a rock, little one." He said in a polite tone.
"No, I checked rocks. They have wrong worms. Brother Scouring Medicine says the sect has more kinds. All the best worms."
"I suppose that's true. What sort of worms exactly were you looking for?"
"Fourfold marked Rotworms." The monkey said confidently.
Yan Delun didn't know what those were. Rather than admit ignorance before a literal monkey, he pulled out the index. The hefty tome crashed down with a satisfying thump, covering nearly the entirety of the counter. The monkey withdrew its grubby little paws at the last possible moment to avoid getting them crushed.
Fourfold marked... Ah, there it was. Qi condensation. Weak death qi. Cabinet 6345.
No wonder he'd never seen them. Things ended up in the high cabinets because nobody wanted them.
A quick phantom palm brought it over. He slid the index aside and set it on the counter.
The monkey hopped up for a better look as he opened the cabinet, toeing the very edge of the line that would trigger the defensive formations.
Yan Delun really hoped it would step too far forward and fling itself across the courtyard. It wasn't a very dignified desire. Unsuitable for a daoist. But it was his desire.
The monkey frowned. It stared seriously at the cabinet, then back at him.
"Those." It said slowly, as if speaking to a small child. "Are dead."
"Yes, they are." Yan Delun agreed. Of course the worms were dried. 'We don't keep live worms in cabinets. Do you have any idea how little I would get done if I had to feed everything in this room? Or do you think the Azure Mountain is so rich we can afford stasis formations for our qi condensation ingredients?"
"But they're dead. Alive is better. If I want dead, I can squish worm. Can't unsquish dead worm."
Yan Delun sighed. This interaction was losing it's charm.
"Do you want the dead worms or not?"
"Maybe. What else have?"
"The Azure Mountain Administrative Hall stores and sells nearly eight thousand different plants, insects, animal body parts, and natural treasures commonly used in alchemy, smithing, and formation arrays. Including core formation level treasures. If you need it, we have it. However, how exactly do you plan on paying for those resources."
Its embattled master had no credit here. That had been one of the first privileges he lost. Yan Delun knew it didn't have contribution points.
The monkey withdrew from it's bag an uncut spirit stone fully half the size of its small head.
Avarice flickered through Yan Delun. The sect was very careful about shrinkage. He would never take anything from the storehouse. But it was very hard to say, just how much a raw stone like that was worth. Almost impossible really, unless you measured and cut it. Who could criticize him for helping a disciple make change? He doubted the monkey knew exactly how much the stone was worth, he could easily make ten percent on this, at minimum. An inner disciple's allotment only went so far, when one's ambitions encompassed the heavens.
The monkey's smile was all teeth. That was fine. It could be smug, so long as it paid the sect. And Yan Delun.
"Maybe I go buy my worms from... Where was it you say? Underside of a rock? Maybe they have better quality. More alive."
"Careful." Yan Delun said, staring at the massive rock. "That's dangerously close to slander."
"I be careful. No slander."
"I do believe we can make a deal. What else were you interested in?"
"I have a list!" The monkey proclaimed, drawing a sheet of wastefully high quality paper from it's pouch and brandishing it proudly.
Yan Delun squinted at the characters. He was pretty sure those were characters, and not just random squiggles.
"I'm not reading that. What's the first item?"