Published: April 13th 2025, 11:26:10 pm
Daoist Scouring Medicine rose, stretching, and wondered when it had all changed. When a life he'd considered unacceptable had become almost tolerable.
He slept almost every night these days. Spending twelve hours a day performing material refinements without a diet of pills left a man bone-tired. Fully exhausting one's qi was not the same as hard mundane labor, for all they both beckoned dreamless sleep. There were deeper consequences to such exhaustion, for cultivators.
Every day he would drain his meridians dry working the furnaces, then meet with Elder Weeping Lotus. What few hours he had left before sleep claimed him he spent cycling, but his efforts did not come close to replenishing his expenditure. He hadn't slipped yet, but it was only a matter of time. Meridians abhorred emptiness. Men were born with most blocked for good reason. Every night they pulled hard-won innate qi from his dantian, eating away at the walls of his foundation. Keep it up long enough, and you would be lucky to only regress a small stage or two. Pushing that hard could just as easily leave a foundation with flaws.
Such was the price of pills. The cost of a sect's endless appetite for medicines and performance aids. A well run sect tried to spread it as widely as possible. But it was not unheard of for alchemists to break themselves in times of war, attempting to surpass their limitations.
Lu Xin's flinched, as his bare feet greeted the cold wood. It seemed like yesterday, that spring had come. Now summer was already dying. Already the night winds brought a chill. He'd gotten so used to Li Hou keeping a fire lit. He padded across the silent cottage, gathering wood and striking flint like a mortal. He'd need to chop more firewood soon. It was abundant, on the Azure Mountain. But the monkey had burned through more wood most weeks last winter than he did in the average year.
He did not need the warmth of the flames now, any more than he did that winter. But he missed the way the fire made his home feel.
With the hearth now crackling into life, Daoist Scouring Medicine stepped out to the garden. If he was going to waste his time with such a thing, he ought at least make use of it. He'd run out of true tea months ago. What little remained of his savings were too important for small luxuries, like tea or honey. But he made do. Li Hou had reminded him that even mundane plants had their purposes. The tobacco he planted as an insect repellent was not unwelcome for a daoist so exhausted. Tobacco tea was foul on the tongue, but the mountain provided ten thousand ways to conceal its taste. Today, he chose dried citron skins, and hibiscus buds.
He watched the mixture stain the hot water. It smelled acceptable.
He took a sip.
It did not taste good.
Still, Li Xun drank it. It needed a sweetener, but he was too tired to climb the mountain looking for fresh fruits. His pantry was nearly empty. He would need to stop wasting time with tea soon. Start foraging in earnest, lest he starve. The labor that filled his days was not paid, after all.
A problem for tomorrow. One he should have addressed months ago. He could afford more rice, but every bowl was another copper coin he would not have in an emergency.
"Hello, Li Hou."
The statue did not answer him. The stone monkey looked just the same as that fateful day. Except a little greasier. He still hadn't found anything better than that unguent.
"I haven't taken my tea sweet since I was a young man, you know. Your childish tastes appear to have rubbed off on me. Or, perhaps this mixture is just that foul. There's a reason nobody with sense drinks their tobacco. I've heard it can kill mortals with weak hearts or livers. Not that I have to worry about that."
That was a lie. Even his heart was speeding up a little, as the stimulant took effect. His advanced cultivation blunted the effects of most drugs. But that protection was waning, and tobacco tea was used more often as a pesticide than a beverage with good reason.
"I'm getting closer. Weeping Lotus is beginning to lose faith in her incremental approach. Soon, we'll begin to do work that might actually have a chance of healing you. It's almost insulting. I think that she settled firmly on this approach precisely because I supported its opposite. Some suspicion is not unreasonable, I suppose. I was not supporting it an effort to place your interests above Disciple Zhang's. But I would have, if those interests did in fact diverge. Still, incrementally reverting the transformation is pointless. An approach doomed to failure. As if it would be so simple to strip the effects of cultivation away. I know a thousand poisons that can prevent further breakthroughs, only a dozen that can truly destroy a man's spiritual cultivation. Why should the body be any different? You and Disciple Zhang are not suffering from a mere preponderance of lingering qi, like that Hao boy's injury. A medicine that can turn stone to flesh must be at least as violent as one that turns flesh to stone."
Li Xun sighed.
"I've given this lecture before. I'm sure you know it by heart now. I'll stop boring you."
Li Hou would have had something to say about that, before. He missed the monkey. Its wry humor. The way the little beast thought he was being subtle, when he was trying to brighten his master's mood. The way the brave, foolish, little creature would stumble home covered in blood, inform him it was mostly someone else's and immediately fall asleep. Leaving him to wander the sect, acting like he knew what his disciple had done, until someone told him.
"I found the wine, you know. The one with all the centipedes. You spilled some on the jar and floor. This is why we drink things with cups, not hands."
Silence.
"I don't know whether to be disappointed or impressed. It took me so long to think to look at your possessions. A factor I did not anticipate. That I do not understand. I burned some of it, in a sealed vessel. The vapors change colors as they combust. I haven't the slightest idea what that means. But it's another avenue of investigation to run down. I should be angry, I think. It would be such a stupid way to die. Very you, I suppose. But it is a new direction, after so many dead ends."
Li Hou said nothing.
"This would be so much easier, if I could make you drink things. Not only must I invent a heaven defying medicine, it must be absorbed through the skin. Next time you drown on land, I expect you to get yourself petrified with your mouth open. Have some damn consideration for your poor master. Still, I'll manage it. I always do."
Li Xun set his cup down. The pile of used vessels was growing large. Another problem for tomorrow.
"Yang Wei is still asking after you. I wonder what he sees in you. Not because there's no virtue to be seen. But because I doubt he sees the same ones I do. After this, once you're recovered, let no man ever deny you deserve the title of alchemist. I'll take up arms to defend your honor if any dare. Anyone, man or monkey, who managed to brew something like that, has earned the title."
The sun was cresting the horizon. Light crept through the cracks in his shutters, bathing the many motes of airborne dust in rays of gold.
"I'll leave you to your peace. Tonight, I'll see about that wine. Perhaps it will help me understand what happened to you. Or, with distillation, prove to be so protean a solvent it can separate rock from flesh. Be well, my disciple."
It was time for him to go to work.
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It had been a while since Daoist Scouring Medicine worked as an employee. Toiling on a schedule, alongside idiots.
It was good to know he still hated it.
The inner disciple at the desk wordlessly handed him his work assignment. Meridian-Opening Pills. Twenty of them. He'd been assigned two adjacent cauldrons, both of them old, temperamental beasts. The ingredients were processed, but not refined, available at counter four in the west annex. In this recipe, that just meant whatever mixture of marginal spiritual herbs they'd foist upon him would be dried already. Hardly a savings in labor.
Those pills each took two hours to make from scratch. Even operating two pill furnaces at the same time, that was not a realistic assignment. Elder Weeping Lotus must still be upset, after their last review meeting.
That was fine. He could cut some corners. His shoddiest product was still a cut above what these idiots would expect from a shop with a gold-lettered signboard. Elder Weeping Lotus was competent, but he couldn't say the same for her disciples. If he was making qi condensation pills, he could work to qi condensation standards.
He launched into work with a precision incomparable to the disciples alongside him. The desk had provided a variety of lowly spiritual herbs. Mostly Golden Mugwort and Sage's Grass. He parceled out the various dried herbs into elementally compatible batches, ground them to a fine powder, then added gum as a binder. The small balls each got a short turn in the furnace, refined by qi more than fire, until they came emerged as shiny beetle-eye-black pellets. As each emerged, he cracked them open, grinding them to powder again, to mix with the rest of the ingredients.
His channels burned. His meridians were like riverbeds in the height of summer. He could almost feel their edges cracking like drought-stricken soils. He let his mind wander, rather than dwell on the dull work that was slowly killing him.
Four months. It was not so long for a mortal man. It was a blink of an eye, for a cultivator.
He'd spent more time living alongside a statue now, than he had a breathing monkey. One hundred and eighty four days. Six months, entering a seventh.
Li Hou should have been preparing for the Initiate's Tournament now.
He'd feared this fate so much. Being under Elder Lu's gentle but unyielding golden thumb. His time and qi dedicated to further embroidering the man's many robes.
Years ago, Li Xun had told himself he could bear anything, if he was but certain that it would end. But was that qualification itself not weakness? He would endure, as long as he needed, for the chance it gave Li Hou. Until he saw a better opportunity than the sect could provide. Six months, or sixty years. He had brought the monkey into this world, he was responsible for it.
It was not karma. Karma was an excuse for monks and cowards to avoid acting at all. These were no invisible threads, but a responsibility he chose anew each day.
A trio of outer disciple passed by his station. One sneered, whispering something to his companion.
"Careful, Brother Meng. That's why you don't get on Elder Lu's bad side."
His own lips rose, first into a cold sneer. Then he schooled his expression into placid acknowledgement.
"Wasn't he here this morning?"
"His shift doesn't end until the elders are done with him. They'll use him up, until there's nothing left."
Daoist Scouring Medicine tuned them out, as they began to gossip about his various supposed crimes. He only wished he'd stolen an ancient pill furnace from Elder Lu and broken it. Then he might deserve this.
Honor and respect were finer things than wealth to covet. Virtues that underpinned civilization itself. But was a man who could not live without them any different from one who grubbed after money? No matter how deserved an honor was, a man who could not bear to be snubbed was no better than an animal. No. Li Xun knew animals now. A man so lacking in control would be worse.
Sixteen hours passed quickly. The work was not memorable. Not worth remembering.
He put the twenty pills in a box, alongside the remaining ingredients. He'd been left alone, but never out of sight. They would expect him to pocket a few ingredients here and there, but he wouldn't give Elder Lu the satisfaction.
If he did steal from the sect, it would not be petty shrinkage. It would be a crime they would speak of for centuries.
He was late, well past the appointed hour, when he finally knocked on the door to Elder Weeping Lotus's office.
There was no answer.
Li Xun waited for an hour. Then two. Night was well fallen, and his eyes were beginning to droop, when he was finally admitted. Perhaps he should have held his tongue yesterday. There would be no investigation of Li Hou's wine tonight. If he was lucky, he might at least manage a few hours of sleep.
Elder Weeping Lotus was no jade beauty.
He had no doubt that was intentional. She was a master of medicine, and stood in the upper half of the realm of core formation. Despite being at least two hundred years old, her remaining lifespan was almost certainly greater than his own.
To say nothing of her power and knowledge. She might be a hard-headed fool trying to force fruit from a dead tree, but if anyone could make that incremental approach work, it was her.
Though her hair was steel grey and her face bore the wrinkles of a mortal of around fifty years, her body was untouched by the ravages of time. Her posture was unbowed by age, and her skin was firm and without any sun damage or liver spots. Beneath her ageless eyes, were tattooed nine tears. Ink-black drops, each said to be for a patient she had lost, that she thought she should not have.
It was a resolve he could respect, as much as they were often at each other's throats these days. A century of pleasant relations, undone by a few months of unwelcome closeness. Apparently the only thing that had kept the two of them from hating each other, was that they were smart enough to stay out of each other's way.
She had not sought to press him into her sphere of influence, and he had not encroached on hers by offering prescriptions as well as pills.
"Li Xun."
"Elder Weeping Lotus."
"Do you have anything to report?"
If she was content to leave unmentioned their vigorous exchange of opinions yesterday, he would do the same.
Li Xun considered the question. The wine could be crucial. But he could always mention it later. He'd missed it for six months. Better to investigate it on his own first, on a day with a less brutal schedule. He remained silent.
"The latest samples were all failures." Elder Weeping Lotus continued. "One rat experienced a noticeable reduction in muscle density. Unfortunately its kidneys liquified themselves. The rest of it would soon have followed, if I did not neutralize the acid to preserve the sample."
"I assume that was the one with my solvent?"
"Obviously. You do seem to live up to your chosen moniker."
"A cultivator might survive that."
Elder Weeping Lotus frowned. Her face was always stern, but he was learning to better read it. She was displeased with the situation, not him. It was a clear sign that she too was growing frustrated, that she even entertained his suggestion.
"A doctor deals in uncertainties. But she does not endeavor to add more of them to her work. Still, it's an avenue worth pursuing. If you have time, after treating the rats, bring me another sample. I will integrate it into one of the next treatments."
Another direction. Another hope soon to be proven hollow. He'd run down so many of them, these months. That solvent was a component of Li Hou's bath. He only had a little of it left, and no good ideas how to make it less... Violently corrosive. It was part of what allowed the earthen qi to penetrate into the body. It was intended to be burned up during the bath's consumption. Not absorbed into it.
"I will do so."
Impossible. Fruitless. Irrelevant. He would find a way.
"Good. Six rats this week. The Zhang family contributed a few herbs with promising properties."
Daoist Scouring Medicine bowed his head. He was doing that a lot lately. He found that every time he did, it stung just a little less. When had he found such a vicious pride? Had it always been within him, from those first days a mortal man had taken his first steps up the Azure Mountain?
"Elder."
"Dismissed." Elder Weeping Lotus had already returned to her papers.
By the time Li Xun returned to his cottage, midnight had already come and gone. First light was only a few hours away. He didn't have time to clean those tea cups, let alone investigate Li Hou's wine.
Tomorrow.
He hadn't accused Elder Weeping Lotus of over-indexing on elemental injuries and failing to understand the intricacies of bodily cultivation today. He shouldn't be given such a brutal workload and snubbing.
The rumpled furs of his bed called to him, a silent song that even Li Hou's plaintive expression couldn't quite suppress.
Li Xun stepped forward and collapsed in his robes. He slept the dreamless sleep of a man who had lost sight of the future.
As the first orange glows of dawn began to seep across the horizon, the exhausted daoist bolted upright. A crack like a the sound of a cliff face sheering away echoed through the small cottage.
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Far below the small hill men called the Azure Mountain, someone else stirred. Rheumy eyes blinked open, and inhuman hands demanded a brush. Reality twisted, then broke. Small and decayed as it was, the fragment of greater will could not be denied.
Withered fingers paused, struggling to remember how to dance. It had been so very long. But a law was made to be obeyed. An oath was made to be kept.
And the smallest of gods were made to write memos.
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Orange-crest woke up.
There was no moment of disorientation, no confusion about where he was. He remembered his last moments of wakefulness clearly. His eyes were glued shut. He couldn't breathe. But there was no growing drowning-pressure in his chest. He felt... Fine.
Comfortable, even. As if the stony shell that suffocated him were a bed of discarded robes, safe and warm.
No, that wasn't quite right. It was more like Mount Yuelu. Like being stuck on the bottom of a monkey-pile when they all slept together, clustered around the fire, in the bitter heart of winter. Warm, yes. Safe too. But sometimes really hard to get out of, when big-butt's titanic leg was pinning your chest down. Just like then, there was nothing to do but get up, lest you starve to death.
Big-butt could sleep for a very long time. Especially in the winter. Big-bear, they sometimes called him.
Oops. He was getting distracted. And tired. Being a stone made one very sleepy, apparently.
Orange-crest tried to pull his hand away, open his mouth. He was so stiff, stiffer than he'd ever imagined possible, but it didn't feel bad. His muscles strained against themselves, and something gave.
Orange-crest felt the crack, more than he heard it. Loud, like the final death-cry of a tree too far gone, but with the deep grinding reverberations of stone against stone.
His arm moved only a finger's width, before grinding to a halt again.
Pain flashed through him, sharp and hot. But the hurt felt shallow, as if he'd torn too-tight skin. It was manageable.
Orange-crest flexed his everything. Arms and back, thighs and jaw. He even flexed his butt, squeezing down as if he had a poo he refused to let free.
"KRRRREAAAAGGGHHHH!" He roared, exploding into freedom.
Orange-crest shattered, and orange-crest stepped forward in his place, flesh and blood born anew from stone.
Oh. He was inside the house now. His dusty afterbirth covered every inch of the walls around him. Small chips of stone were even embedded in the wood. Whoops. His brother would not be pleased about that.
Orange-crest cast his eyes about the room. Where exactly was his brother?
"Li Hou!"
The figure standing at the door did not match the Daoist Scouring Medicine orange-crest remembered. He had lost weight. His cheeks were no longer oddly puffy, but instead hollow in the way of a monkey who was not eating enough. His diligently maintained coiffure was in disarray, with stray little flyaway hairs shrouding his head in a strange human form of new-fur-fuzz.
Orange-crest opened his mouth to return his brother's greeting, but before he could, the man swept him up in a hug.
The monkey froze, as Li Xun spun him around the dusty room. This wasn't how this worked! He hugged the human, and the human
"Silent Heavens, but you're heavy!" Li Xun grunted. "But you're alive!"
"Of course I'm alive?" Orange-crest said, confused. "Bath was scary. Very scary. Then strange. And busy. Lots of monkeys. Then... Nice? Tell you all about. But maybe no more baths. Drowned twice now. Never again. Is almost as bad as caves."
Li Xun dropped orange-crest back on the ground with a groan. What was going on? His brother wasn't Daoist Enduring Oath, capable of launching monkeys through the sky, but he was terribly powerful.
Orange-crest stared up at his brother, taking in his sunken cheeks and thinning hair. Daoist Scouring Medicine was hugging him. He was struggling to lift him. His hair was falling out. His muscles were vanishing. Any monkey could see there was only one possibility.
Orange-crest's stomach sunk. No. Unacceptable. He wouldn't let it happen.
"Are you... Dying?"
Li Xun stared down at the foolish monkey. And for the first time in six months, he laughed from the belly.