Published: March 16th 2025, 8:57:17 pm
Orange-crest sat in the center of a storm, eyes sharp with focus. Power surged within him, qi burning away at a furious pace. Well, it was a storm in much the same way that a trickle of water winding its way down the side of a rock face was a river. That is to say, there was technically wind.
"Come to me." The monkey whispered in the true tongue, feeling his energies envelope his target. The world greedily ate away at his power, thin strands of qi vanishing in an instant, like the first fruits of spring before a gang of hungry monkeys.
"You shall not defy my will."
A greater gust of wind surged through the clearing, and the leaf orange-crest was locked in a battle of wills with leapt skywards.
In the wrong direction.
The leaf fluttered away with insulting nonchalance, and orange-crest track of it in a crowd of its fellows.
Orange-crest grit his teeth. Why was this so difficult? He was a cultivator monkey! He just had a mighty breakthrough! But the stupid leaf was in another realm of power entirely!
"Your mother rutted with the Jade Emperor's rotting toenails." Orange-crest calmly informed the leaf. "No. You have no mother. Sad leaf. And your tree-father doesn't like you."
Monkeys didn't have curses of unimaginable foulness. It just wasn't a concept that made a lot of sense. Why would one have words for the sole purpose of not using them? But men had invented it anyway, words everyone knew but were not supposed to say and all agreed to act very angry about when they were used. Orange-crest liked them very much. It was fun, like a prank-act that everyone was always in on, whether they wanted to be or not.
Really, in a way curses were like spells that cost no qi and worked reliably every time. The only downside is apparently all they were good for is making men chase you.
Which was still better than actual spells. Why was the Phantom Palm so impossible! No matter how orange-crest tried, he couldn't make his qi bring him things. At best, he could summon a gentle wind by expelling his qi with great force. A gentle wind that wouldn't even blow in a consistent direction.
Like a wise monkey, orange-crest had consulted every source of learning available to him. His brother said he must temper his expectations. That being able to use a spell of any sort at the second level of qi condensation was remarkable, that he and daoist enduring earth had not been able to use the Phantom Palm at all until they'd reached the fifth and six stages of qi condensation respectively.
His brother's books said that the Phantom Palm was considered a mid to upper tier qi condensation technique because despite the simplicity of its nature, it demanded formidable qi control. As an unanchored manipulation technique, it suffered greater suppression from the will of the world. Which seemed like a lot of words to imply one knew something, without saying it outright in a way others could understand. Unfortunately, one could not ask follow up questions to a book.
"Pfwah." The monkey exhaled. He stopped releasing his qi. He'd already used more of it than his brother had said to.
It was just so frustrating, to possess this new strength, but not understand its rules and limitations. Learning Immobilize had been so easy. Yet illusions were like grabbing an eel. You thought you had it, and then it slipped away, and no matter how you struggled to grasp it again, it was pointless. The eel was long gone.
Despite how hard he practiced, orange-crest could only ever grasp the eel when he was drunk.
Yet other spells were even worse. The Phantom Palm required so much power to even begin to mimic what his brother did. Near one portion in five of orange-crest's qi, and it would fall apart in an instant before accomplishing anything.
And there were other things harder still. Both Daoist Scouring Medicine and Daoist Enduring Oath could spark flame with a tap of their hand. No matter how orange-crest tried, he could not even make things warm. When he moved his qi around as they did and tapped, he only ever tapped a little bit harder than he'd intended. His brother said the nature of fire was weak within him. But his qi felt like fire. How could he be weak in fire and strong in earth?
A great grunt interrupted orange-crest's contemplations. How rude. For men who shushed orange-crest frequently, the daoists were very unrestrained in making loud noises when it suited them.
"Li Xun!" Daoist Enduring Oath coughed out. "Steady it!"
Orange-crest watched as Daoist Enduring Oath's rough skin reddened. Mighty muscles strained, as the powerfully built man struggled to shift his colossal burden.
"Lift with your butt!" The monkey cheered from his perch farther up the hill abutting his brother's garden. "You can do it!"
Daoist Scouring Medicine gestured, and the wobbling cauldron steadied. Orange-crest felt a surge of irritation.
"I can't believe you knocked down the wall." Daoist Enduring Oath grunted out from his position beneath the massive cauldron.
"It only made sense." Daoist Scouring Medicine replied easily, not so encumbered. He was looking much better these days. Almost back to normal. His skin was still a little pink, but it had lost the eerie waxy-tautness. "Better to lose a wall than risk the whole workshop going up if something goes wrong. When I had the home built, I never intended to move the furnace. I figured I would outgrow the Tiger's Maw before I outgrew the sect. One way or another, I'll be leaving soon. I can live with a tarp for a few months."
Daoist Enduring Oath set the furnace down just outside the garden.
"If something goes wrong? I think we'll have greater problems than the workshop, if something goes wrong with Li Hou's bodily refinement."
Daoist Scouring Medicine shrugged.
"A wise man doesn't stop washing his mixing vessels just because he's working with poisons too vile for mere water to cleanse. It's been a while since I worked on something completely novel, not just an adaptation of existing recipes. I don't test those in the workshop."
"That's fair, I suppose. It still feels a tad callous to me, to worry at all about your things when Li Hou's health is on the line. I suppose I just mislike the symmetries."
Daoist Scouring Medicine raised an eyebrow.
"And if Li Hou does have an adverse reaction, what exactly would I use to cure him, save for the contents of my workshop? I'd already be down a cauldron and assistant, at least allow me to be sure I would have any reagents at all to work with. Not that I have much in those cabinets anymore. I finished off my stocks of a dozen different ingredients refining this bath, and I still had to look for local substitutes." Daoist Scouring Medicine said bitterly. He paused for a moment, before changing tack. "And I thought we weren't talking about your core formation breakthrough anymore."
"You aren't." Daoist Enduring Oath said shamelessly. "It's my botched breakthrough. I get to decide when we speak of it. And who does the speaking. The pill was fine. Just harsher than anticipated. The flaw was in my foundation. But you must admit, it feels like old times. The three of us lugging your cauldron about. Albeit Li Hou is a bit hairier than Cao Renshu was at his age."
"More handsome though."
"Yes-yes." Li Hou agreed. He wasn't sure if he liked it or not when the daoists did this. It was annoying to be almost ignored, but he did like hearing their stories of the misty past. He would have liked to join them, on their adventures. They didn't seem to have as many any more. But perhaps he could get them to join them on his.
Daoist Enduring Oath set the cauldron down in a clear spot, far from his brother's garden.
"I'm not certain the ladies would agree with that. He always did better with the fairer sex than either of us."
"Hah!" Li Xun laughed. "You forget, Li Hou has seen but six winters. It's not a gallant young man they would be comparing him to, but a snotty child. Li Hou surpasses the arrogant twit on all measures. Cultivation, cuteness, even behavior. I've no doubt Daoist Guarding Thunder was a little terror as a child. He was probably one of those officious little twits that make trouble for others then cried to their parents when he was struck."
"I hate to admit that I could see that. He was always unbending, and a little meddlesome." Daoist Enduring Oath said. "This is a strange conversation. I would have liked to see the expression on Daoist Guarding Thunder's face if he'd witnessed it."
"I'm not the one who bears a grudge." Daoist Scouring Medicine grumbled. "He's always welcome here, if he can hold his tongue about my business."
"Peace, brother. Even my patience is not so enduring as to still seek to see the two of you reconciled. Do you need help carrying the reagents?"
"No, I can handle those. It's just a few dozen jars of liquid, I'm no cripple. You can start carrying over firewood."
"Very well." Daoist Enduring Oath turned to Li Hou. The monkey of the hour. "I suppose I have not yet properly congratulated you on your breakthrough. It is a remarkable achievement. Despite your late entry into this year's initiate class, you must be among the most advanced of them now."
Li Hou chittered happily.
"This monkey thanks daoist for his kind words." He said in, his register proper as any court official. "And his wise guidance."
"Very impressive. Your language is almost as remarkable as your cultivation. You have been a good influence on my martial brother."
"Who else has reached the third stage already?" Daoist Scouring Medicine called from inside the house. "I thought this year's class was relatively soft."
"The Xiao clan sent a pair of cousins. A boy and a girl. I think both of them have reached the rank already. Yang Wei is close, no doubt he'll advance on Li Hou's heels. With his talent and his family's resources, I expect the only reason he's behind the Xiao pair is because he's spending most of his time focusing on his martial skills."
"There's really nobody else worth mentioning?"
Daoist Enduring Oath shrugged, stretching out his aching shoulders.
"Thousand mile horses are common, but good judges of horses are rare. There's the boy from the Wu branch I suppose, but nobody expects much more from him than they do from his family. We're not even halfway through their initiate year. You and I were nobody worth mentioning at the same point in our year. The nobles always lead the pack at the outset, any common born talents are likely flood dragons yet to gain water."
Daoist Scouring Medicine returned, carrying a great clay jug under each arm.
"So, no. You always start reaching for the idioms when you've nothing to add."
"I'm just trying to prevent you from drawing cakes to satisfy your hunger. I'm sure Li Hou will do well. He might even have a chance to win it all. But much can change in seven months."
"A chance! He's all but a favorite! Three stages in three months! Despite starting out two months later than the other disciples he's tied for lead of the pack! He'll easily hit the forth, perhaps even attempt the fifth before the tournament. True, he won't surpass Ren Yuhan's record, But peak forth stage with a refined body, a solid martial foundation, and a couple techniques? He'll laugh at those Xiao brats as their fire and lightning wash off him like rain."
Orange-crest smiled. His breakthrough had greatly lifted his injured brother's spirits. He clambered down the hillside toward the daoists.
"Li Hou!" His brother greeted. "It was a good try. I have no doubt you'll master the palm in the fullness of time. You have the form of it right, but it is a demanding technique. Your command over your qi must be unyielding, to keep the spell from falling apart. Now go wash up. You need to be clean for this."
"But I'm taking a bath." Orange-crest complained. "Bath is for getting clean!"
"Any contamination, however small, might reduce the efficacy of the bath. I am not made of spirit stones to have a second one if the first is insufficient. I left a warmed tub inside."
"Fine. Orange-crest obeys Tyrant Scouring Medicine."
"I should not have taught you that word."
Despite his words, Daoist Scouring Medicine was smiling. Orange-crest headed inside, and started washing up. He hated having wet fur in early spring. It was always cold, and it would dry stiff and wrong. But he would be getting wet again anyway.
The clean monkey paused at the room's threshold.
Daoist Scouring Medicine had said he should use up one part in four of his qi before entering the bath. Qi wasn't easily measured like water or earth, but orange-crest was pretty sure he was at closer to half capacity. He'd just wanted the damnable palm to phantom as it should.
There was an easy way to fix that. He just had to make a quick stop in the pantry.
Orange-crest's stomach growled like a cornered fox. His brother had said not to eat all night. Dutiful orange-crest had obeyed. His brother had also insisted he not be drunk, but a couple sips wouldn't make a monkey drunk.
Orange-crest stepped up to the Twin Worm Monkey Wine and tilted the jar. It was hardly a third full. It was good stuff. Perhaps he should save it. His brother expected him to make more breakthroughs, and orange-crest did not have the materials to make another batch.
Instead, orange-crest crept over to his other jar of spiritual wine. The nameless centipede-cocoon rice wine.
He cracked it open and sniffed.
Eugh.
The monkey grabbed a long-spoon and gave the jar a stir. The centipede cocoons floating on the surface didn't look the most appetizing. Their long soak left them looking more like still-lake-scum than bug-dumplings. But, feeling around with the stick, orange-crest couldn't find the centipede's beast core.
That meant it should be spirit wine!
He'd have just a little bit. To restore his qi.
Orange-crest withdrew a cupful of wine, then gently picked out the very wet bugs. For this wine, he might have to take his brother's advice and filter out the solids.
Scrunching his nose, orange-crest drank.
The taste was sharp and harsh, like a thirsty monkey's piss. Orange-crest forced himself to swallow. No wasting spirit wine.
His chest warmed and his dantian stirred to life, moving back toward the level of fullness his brother had ordained correct.
Orange-crest almost spit, once he'd swallowed the wine, desperate to get the taste out of his mouth. But before he could, the taste changed. Salty-sour, like his brother's pickled plums. Strange, though an improvement on the dry piss foretaste. Well, they couldn't all be successes. He didn't think the imperial court would want to buy this one even if they thought a human made it. Orange-crest licked his lips. The taste kept changing. His mouth felt warm and dry. Now his spit tasted like a pepper, one of those mediocre bitter and fiery vegetables only men and birds seemed to like.
A taste-changing wine. How strange. Still, it had qi in it, and only one of the tastes was truly awful. The other two were merely interestingly-bad. Really, if you thought about it, two good tastes and one bad one made it technically more palatable than tea or rice wine.
Orange-crest rejoined the daoists fussing over the cauldron.
"Stoke the fire a little more, we'll boil the first two solutions together for a quarter of an hour before we add the third. You can stop stoking the flame when the steam ceases. That indicates the reaction has finished." Daoist Scouring Medicine turned, taking in the sight of his disciple. "Li Hou! Good! We're almost ready for final checks. Let me get that band off your arm. Nothing goes in the furnace except a monkey."
"You worry much." Li Hou noted, allowing the Daoist to slip the circlet of stone off his arm. It was surprisingly comfortable to wear. Sometimes he even forgot about it for a time. "You sure is safe?"
"As safe as any of my own bodily refinements were. There's no growth without danger, that applies as surely to alchemy as it does the martial path. Now, let's go over your part once more."
"Again?" Orange-crest complained. "We've done the same talk four times."
He was ready. A little afraid, from all his brother's warnings. But more than a little excited. His brother didn't know how exactly his body would change when he emerged, but his description of the many different possibilities had been tantalizing. Skin like stone. Fur that did not burn. Nails that could cut wood, or strength enough to take the blows of initiates upon his back without flinching. Maybe even something mystical, like the power to grow heavier than stone at his whim. What monkey wouldn't be interested in that?
"Humor me, for this will be the final time we do so."
"Fine. Give quiz."
"What's the basic cycling to slow down the process."
"Is trick question. To slow down, no cycle. Make qi still, and small. To stop, get out."
"Good. And how do you speed the process up?"
"Expel qi, like I am doing a spell. Then cycle, like I want to recover. But not like The Azure Sea Scripture. Slow. Very slow."
His brother nodded, because orange-crest's answers were correct. They had gone over this until the monkey could recite them in his sleep.
"When do you speed it up?"
"If fur itches, but don't feel anything under."
"And when would you slow it down?"
"If bones cold. Or hard to move. Or feel it in belly."
"And why is it dangerous if you feel something in your abdomen?"
"Because it's a bad bath for organs. Only for skin and muscles. Don't want hard organs."
"And when would you get out of the bath in a hurry? Or signal for our help?"
Daoist Enduring Oath watched quietly, as his martial brother continued quizzing the monkey. Li Hou answered all the questions correctly. Flippantly at times. Paraphrased at others. But it treated the procedure with as much seriousness as any disciple he had ever seen.
Bodily cultivation was not popular for several reasons. It was a painful and expensive process. A sufficiently skilled spiritual cultivator could do almost anything a bodily cultivator could, and far more besides. One could pursue both paths, as Li Xun did. But while such a path had made his brother nigh invincible among foundation establishment cultivators, it was not enough to allow him to take on any but the weakest of those in core formation. Indeed, Daoist Enduring Oath suspected that despite the half-dozen life threatening refinement baths his brother had taken, his physical strength was likely still inferior to his own. Even a flawed core granted one terrible power.
"You are ready."
Daoist Scouring Medicine's words returned Daoist Enduring Oath to the present. He was only here to move cauldrons. There was nothing he could do, to improve Li Hou's chances of a positive outcome. By all logic, there was no need for him to stand vigil for the dozen hours the refinement would take.
He would of course, do so anyway.
"Finally!" Li Hou exclaimed, stepping up to the cauldron. He ran his fingers over the sculpted tiger's maw. "Heh. I spent whole life running from tigers. Now I step in one's mouth on purpose."
The monkey stuck a single finger in the water.
"Weird. Is thick. Like congee."
"Do you need-" Daoist Scouring Medicine began.
"Nope!"
Li Hou leapt into the cauldron, climbing through the open mouth.
"Ooh, warm." It actually felt rather nice. Like bathing in crystal clear porridge. The liquid in the furnace looked like water, but as the monkey stepped toward the center, where it was deepest, it flowed slowly, resisting his movement. The thick liquid clung to his fur, leaving it unpleasantly sticky like he'd rolled through mud.
"Ready?" Daoist Scouring Medicine asked, hefting the final jug.
"You said I was." Li Hou reminded him.
Daoist Scouring Medicine poured the last jar of liquid into the furnace. It flowed fast, like water, but was slow in mixing with the bath's existing contents. Where the two liquids touched, they began to bubble. A grey-brown metallic sheen arose, where the two liquids met.
Orange-crest shivered.
"Time to make monkey soup." He said, unable to resist one final joke. "Can call you Daoist Cooks Monkeys." Two final jokes.
Then he closed his eyes, and focused.
He felt the moment the steadily mixing bath reached him. It stung like a sunburn. Unpleasant, but nothing he couldn't bear.
The bath grew warmer around him, as the daoists stoked the flames. It was not so hot as water boiled for tea, but the bath began to roil and bubble all the same.
The pain increased with the temperature. Orange-crest felt like he would emerge hairless as a human, though his brother had repeatedly insisted that was not a possible outcome. Orange-crest expelled a little bit of qi, out through his nose. He could feel the qi of the bath now, solid and heavy. Unlike the earthen qi of the Fathomless Well, he didn't need to let it in. It seeped into his skin of it's own accord. His muscles ached, as if he'd suffered through one of Disciple Chang's workouts.
Orange-crest expelled a little more qi. He kept his mouth shut. No drinking the bath. Not that he would have, even if he hadn't been warned. It smelled of rotten eggs.
His skin felt tight, as if it was too small for his frame. The bath got warmer. The bubbles roiled higher. The water wasn't enough to burn, but it burned all the same. It burned good and bad all at once. Orange-crest felt hot and cold, powerful and exhausted.
He didn't know how long he sat in the bath. Slowly, he expelled more qi, letting his power mix with that of the bath. Mark it as something that should be his own. The strength of the earth flowed into his limbs. The liquid thinned, great ponderous mud-bubbles giving way to the gentle boiling of water.
Now.
Orange-crest took a deep breath of rotten air, and ducked his head under the surface.
He wasn't drowning. He could hardly feel his lungs. There was only qi. The raging energy that surrounded him. He guided the bath's power into his body, feeling his muscles bulge. They felt too big for his skin. His fingers wanted to crush something, but there was nothing to grab hold of.
There was so much qi. The liquid was as thing as water now, but there was still more qi. Had he gone under too early?
Orange-crest pulled as hard as he could. He drew in power until he felt his stomach begin to sink. His chest was empty. His throat felt full. He needed to breathe, but he couldn't.
Orange-crest forced his heavy limbs to move, lifted his head above the water.
It was still there. The bath had the consistency of water now, but still it somehow clung to his face. He clawed at it with paws that felt like they could crush stone, but his hands passed through the liquid ineffectually.
He needed to breathe. Air.
He needed to see, but he wasn't supposed to open his eyes. He needed to breathe, but he couldn't drink the bath. Blindly, he groped for the tiger's maw. For the bright spot behind his eyelids.
Brother.
Orange-crest extended an arm.
Help.
The whole bath clung to him. It was like the water had become part of his fur.
Me.
He had to do something. Even through closed eyes, his vision was darkening. Orange-crest pushed, expelled all his qi outward, trying to blow the liquid off him.
The bath ate his qi, and then ate him. It burned like fire now, eating away his flesh. He was drowning in fire. Unable to breathe beneath the earth.
No.
He could hear voices through the waters that swallowed him.
His brother wouldn't hurt him. His brother would fix this.
His mouth opened. Orange-crest swallowed the water. The earth swallowed him in return.
His brother-