Chương 70: B2 Chapter 30

Orange-crest took in a deep breath, alone in the hidden realm for the first time. This world smelled alive. The smoldering wheat was acrid and mouthwatering in equal measure, like roasting chestnuts buried in chalky wood-ash. But where the smells were lively, the world was silent. Empty. Waiting, perhaps. His master had said it was in the process of changing, a place unfinished. Orange-crest felt like he should have some kinship with that idea, as a monkey in the midst of the same process.

But something about the place unsettled him. Perhaps it was the artificiality of it. The way it was so very human, even as it sought to look like nature. Things placed just so. Nothing existing for the sake of itself. There were no breaks in the endless fields of wheat. No farmhouses, no distant towns, not even signs of mice. In Elder Shen's inheritance ground, things only seemed to exist so far as they expressed the dead elder's intentions. It was like... A lonely lesson.

A sign that Shen's freedom had been more about the destination than the journey? Orange-crest wasn't sure. He was mentally throwing fruit at the wall, trying to see what stuck, as he slowly waded through the wheat. Hopefully he'd stumble across a road soon. The mountain in the distance had to be at least seven or eight li away, and chest-height grasses offered much better concealment to ambushers than travelers. He'd made a choice. All that was left was to see it through.

But he felt like understanding the three elders would be part of the key to doing that. This was their world, after all. And to trick someone, you first needed to understand them well enough to know what they wanted. Oh. There was a fourth. He should have pressed his master for more tales of Old Xiang. He'd seen the most of Elder Shen. He was supposed to be all about freedom. Travelling beyond the edges of the map, seeing places nobody had ever seen before. But he was backward.

He thought real freedom could only be had in his particular, lonely, way. It wasn't about not having a master. Orange-crest had only been rejected when he refused the call to explore that strange road. Elder Shen seemed to think that anything you were not willing to leave behind was a weakness. That one could have whatever attachments they pleased, so long as they were so loosely held that a light breeze would sever them. Then there was Elder Bai.

Brother Han Jian had told him the most of him, for he had dark history with the remnants of the Bai Clan. He said the clan had done something terrible, several hundred years ago. That they had used demonic arts to rebel against the emperor. For this, the clan had been largely destroyed. Where they had once numbered in the thousands, now there were only a couple hundred of them across the empire. And many of those that remained among the living had descended into depravity, becoming full demonic cultivators.

There were still a few men who bore the name Bai who other humans did not hunt as the Bai once hunted beasts. But they were fewer in number every year, and hardly considered noble at all anymore. Grand Elder Bai was apparently not related to this terrible deed. He'd already been long dead by the time it occurred. But knowing what his brother said of the grand elder's arts, orange-crest struggled to understand how his clan could have done anything more disturbing than that.

Grand Elder Bai was said to have wielded a harmony that erased dissent. He had many pet spirit beasts. But it was said that once he'd instructed his Cloud-Summiting Hare to rest in the mouth of his Saber-Toothed Tiger. That they'd remained in that position for an entire evening without protest, completely denying their natures. All of his pets were said to be like that. Once Grand Elder Bai captured them, they became his.

So unified in will and purpose with the elder that he had no need for chains or punishment to control their behavior. His example was one of the reasons that the Azure Mountain had so easily accepted orange-crest as a disciple. Orange-crest had told his brother that obviously he was the demon at the root of their line. Han Jian had said men did not think that way, because it was known his technique only worked upon animals. He'd said it politely. Couched it in soft words to not insult the animal before him.

Spoken without reverence for the grand elder, because he hated one of his descendants so deeply that he refused to speak of the matter. But still, he did not think the elder a demon. Because he was a Grand Elder of the Azure Mountain Sect, and so it was unthinkable. Orange-crest thought the men were lying to themselves. Will was will. Men and animals were not that different. So that was two grand elders, both twisted. All that was left was Grand Elder Tian. He who had tried to master fate.

Orange-crest did not understand fate. At all. It wasn't like he was being obstinate. It was just one of the most difficult of concepts for his master to explain. Fate was what men called outcomes. Or, the principle that decided outcomes. It was structure and the shape of the world. The potential of living beings, and the consequences of relationships between them. A force which was not any of the beings involved. Some called it heaven's will, but that didn't really answer the question, did it?

Cultivators were said to fight against it. But how could you fight against something like that? Orange-crest had met cultivators. They seemed to fight against each other a lot more than they fought against some nebulous principle they could not point a stick at. All conflicts were between beings. If fate was always part of it, how could any victory be said to be defying fate? Either you were triumphing over your opponent, or you were triumphing over fate. Either all victories defied fate, or none did.

Unless fate meant certain people were supposed to win? Humans sometimes implied that. Fate meant that men should triumph over animals, noble humans over normal ones, and the heavens over noble born men. That seemed very myopic. It also didn't make much sense. Orange-crest had definitely noticed it seemed like noble disciples talked far more about fighting fate than common ones did. They acted as if the more esteem fate held one in, the more chafing it became.

There was a part of the monkey that was tempted to dismiss the idea entirely as human nonsense. To say that fate wasn't real, or if it was, it was just the way humans described the myriad pressures they exerted on one another, the many ways their tightly knit civilization restrained and jostled them. But that wasn't true, was it? Orange-crest had seen fate. Had met a messenger of the Heavens.

The being that called itself Shan in his stone-dream had intimated that they thought he might one day have a place among them, if he took human form. Had it been defying fate when he rejected both paths? Probably, at least in some measure. It was the best idea that he had. Yet it still left him with many more questions than answers. Shan had said that to defy a tribulation was an act that still acknowledged Heaven's right to test you. That had stuck with orange-crest, more than anything else he'd said.

He'd burrowed into books and asked many questions of his master after awaking from the stone dream. He'd rejected the choice Shan had asked him to make. But still, he'd made a choice. For all it had been his answer, he was not yet satisfied with it. There was too much he did not know. But it was at least an answer he could offer, if Grand Elder Tian put a choice before him as Grand Elder Shen had. Orange-crest finally saw it. A ebb in the endless sea of wheat. He was drawing closer to the mountain.

The clear blue sky shuddered, and lightning fell in the distance. A solitary bolt, yellow as the sun. Xiao Shulan? Orange-crest didn't think so. The spot was too close to the mountain, nearly at the base of it. If he was right and the mountain was Grand Elder Tian's, surely Xiao Shulan's path should have led her deeper into the sea of wheat. He noted the location. His own road would take him close to it, unless he deliberately took a longer path. Another bolt fell in the same place. It was definitely someone.

The Seventh Prince? He did hail from the same family, who were said to wield lightning. Orange-crest pressed forward, speeding up. He was almost out of the wheat field now. He could see the outskirts of the mountain in the distance, looking more real than anything else he'd seen in this world so far. There were trees and boulders, the little paths that were tell-tale signs of animal habitation.

If he strained his ears, orange-crest could even make out the barest hints of birdsong, a welcome reprieve from the unbroken rustling that dominated Grand Elder Shen's plains. This wasn't just the idea of a mountain. It was a mountain. Illusory or made of qi, perhaps. But still a mountain. Orange-crest was curious about the Seventh Prince. But his thoughts returned instead to Grand Elder Tian. Understanding him felt like the most important thing he could be doing. Yet, even his name was ambiguous.

Human language could be a little confusing, but Tian was a more confusing character than most. Most characters had one or two meanings, though some had closer to four. Tian had ten, easily. It could mean the sky above, or the Heaven composed of Gods that humans claim dwelt there. It could mean that which was supreme, or that which was fated. One old medical book even used it to mean forehead. Orange-crest thought that if you stretched it a little, one might even say it meant the furry crest atop one's head.

Most men might disagree, but was that not the most tian part of the body? One could almost call him orange-tian. Orange-crest chuckled at his own joke. He'd need to keep that one in his mind-pocket. Grand Elder Tian would not be an upholder of fate. It didn't fit the pattern of the other grand elders, nor the Azure Mountain Sect, nor humans in general. He would be one of those who sought to defy the heavens. But when one defied heaven, which heaven were they defying? That was the real question.

Had Grand Elder Tian stood opposite the same heavenly beings orange-crest had known? Had Shan visited him once, and offered him a choice he could not abide?

"Finally." Orange-crest muttered as he stepped free from the wheat field. He crouched down a little and shook his fur out. Maybe he should have worn his robe. Even protected by his stony fur, the press of thousands upon thousands of stalks of wheat against his legs and stomach had left him horribly itchy.

"Stupid field. Stupid crop. Rice is better."

"It is a little monotonous, isn't it?" Orange-crest jumped, like a snake that'd been woken from a nap by a monkey stepping on it. His staff leapt to readiness, and he spun round, searching for the speaker.

"It's very like Daoist Endless Road though. He always appreciated things like that, or so my master said." Orange-crest's head spun round, taking in every inch of the clearing. The voice was human. Feminine and young. Younger than Xiao Shulan, with tones high and bright. But unless they were invisible, orange-crest didn't see any humans.

"Up here, brother monkey." The speaker said. Orange-crest looked up. Oh. Not the speaker, the Speaker. Orange-crest stared up into the beady little eyes of a bird scarcely larger than his clenched fist. The bird sat smugly in a knot in a tree, one tiny foot extended, preening her neck-feathers. It was an orange bird, which was a mark in her favor. A finch, if he remembered his birds correctly, with a reddish undercoat. A little sunburst of a creature that spoke the human tongue, with a human voice.

That part was a lot more suspicious. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Hello, sister bird." Orange-crest answered politely. Something about her reminded him of Shan. They were both out of place, strange beings in a place that seemed like it should be empty. They were even both orange. But he wasn't about to immediately insult the bird just because she was extremely suspicious.

"You can call me Huo'er, brother monkey."

"You can call me Li Hou, then." Orange-crest offered in turn. It felt odd to use human names among animals, but he would follow her lead for now.

"Li Hou." Huo'er repeated.

"Did your master give you that name?"

"Yes."

"I see." The bird said, returning to her preening.

"Good." Orange-crest slowly relaxed. He couldn't feel any qi emanating from Huo'er. That meant she was probably either not a threat, or so far beyond him he wasn't a threat to her. In either case, being tense did nothing. He slowly began walking forward.

"Are you heading up the mountain?" The bird asked.

"Yes."

"Be careful. It's crowded. You'll be the third today. We've seen more visitors today than we have in the last few decades combined." The bird watched him intently.

"The third?" Orange-crest repeated, thinking.

"Yes."

"The Seventh Prince." The monkey said, certain.

"But who is the other one? Did Wu Yingjie come this way? Was the man skinny, or fat?"

"Ah. A prince." The little bird nodded. For being such a small creature, her bearing and voice were incredibly arrogant.

"That makes sense. But no, the other was no man at all, but a hungry little fox." Orange-crest's stomach sunk. The extra presence, when they'd fallen through the sky. That had been her. She'd not asked, just crept in the door they'd opened by brandishing their sect tokens. Had she thought orange-crest would deny her, if she asked his help in entering the sect's nascent holy land? Orange-crest hated that he could not immediately be certain he would have said yes.

Not when her aura had become so ominous he hardly trusted the other humans not to attack her on sight. Such changes had half a year apart wrought in the two of them.

"A fox?" He echoed, plastering confusion across his face.

"But, is human place. I'm the only animal disciple."

"She snuck in with you and your companions. She must have deceived you on the other side of the barrier. Beware of her. She is mightier than you, and I doubt the kinship of beasts will mean much to one soaked in that much blood. She too seeks what rests atop the mountain."

"Grand Elder Tian's inheritance."

"Yes." Ah. He'd been right. Good to have confirmation. Orange-crest stared at the bird. She stared back, unblinking. Definitely suspicious. But she clearly knew a great deal. Was her master one of the three dead grand elders? One of the three living ones? Old Sect Master Xiang, or the Patriarch of the Azure Mountain? He had no idea. She was rather cagey, he didn't think she would tell him if he asked. But her master had known Grand Elder Shen. That made them very old, and probably part of the Azure Mountain Sect.

"I'm gonna go up the mountain." Huo'er stopped preening her feathers. She tilted her head at him in confusion.

"I won't stop you. That's not my business."

"What is your business?" Orange-crest asked, resuming his walk.

"This place is special. You should know that by now. My master left me behind to watch over things."

"Things. But not inheritance things?"

"No. I'm here to watch over the whole of the realm, not any particular piece of it."

"A big job, for a small bird." Huo'er laughed. The noise was sharp and clear, like a shard of broken glass. It did not sound like anything that should come from the throat of a bird. Or the throat of a human. for that matter. Orange-crest shivered as the cry passed over him. It felt like something like belonged to another world, one more ancient and mysterious than even this strange realm.

"Oh, I'm not a bird. Not even a wing. Scarcely more than a feather, really. But as I told you, my job is to watch. Not to intervene."

"You have two wings." Orange-crest noted as he passed under Huo'er's perch.

"So I do monkey, so I do. And you have a most curious technique. It was very cute, your attempts at swallowing fire. A promising first step. Wherever did you learn such a thing?"

"In the sect?" Orange-crest non-answered. Huo'er clicked her tongue at that. Orange-crest scowled at the little bird over his shoulder. His impulse was to say nothing. The bird was acting as if she were a senior of some sort, saying all sorts of weird and ominous things. It would be bad, if she began to suspect he knew formless-gleam. He suspected the bird was downplaying her loyalty to the sect, and her power over the situation. Normal birds didn't live for decades or centuries inside of sealed holy lands.

His impulse was to say nothing. But he'd not gotten this far indulging his impulses. He'd spend a lot less time in caves if he did that.

"I found a book, in the Hall of Dawn." Orange-crest explained.

"My master thought it was silly. But he said I could choose, so I chose."

"And you did not? Think the technique silly?"

"No. Yes?" Orange-crest was trying to be honest, but he wasn't quite sure why the book had called to him, let alone how to explain that to the inquisitive finch.

"Silly is a strange way to think about techniques. I liked it. It seemed good for me. For the monkey I want to be. That monkey doesn't care very much about silly."

"I see." Huo'er said. The little bird shuffled over to the edge of the limb she was perched on. She hopped right off the edge, smoothly swooping into a glide, coming to rest atop orange-crest's head.

"Nice hair you have here." She said, picking at his crest with her tiny talons.

"Very stiff. Yet surprisingly comfortable."

"Please don't sleep in my hair senior." Huo'er gave that eerie laugh again. The sound that seemed to belong to an older world left all of orange-crest's fur standing at attention. Huo'er wiggled atop his scalp, seemingly rubbing herself against his prickly fur.

"What a fantastic idea, junior. Such a considerate monkey you are. I can see why my master misses the Bai so. Things just aren't as lively with only humans around." Huo'er nestled down atop orange-crest's head, and made herself quite thoroughly at home.

"Don't you have better things to do? I'm boring."

"I told you, my business is to watch things down here. And I don't think the others will get up to much trouble. So it's you, or this Seventh Prince. That nasty little fox will certainly try to take a bite out of me if I bother her."

"Fine." Orange-crest said mulishly, launching into the forest in earnest. He took care to find the densest sections of brush, to really brush his head against every branch he could.

"Ah, that's the stuff." Huo'er muttered. Her talons dug into his scalp every time a branch threatened to dislodge the little bird.

"You wouldn't believe how stiff you can get when there's nothing going on for years." Orange-crest focused on the road up. Grand Elder Tian's mountain loomed over him like a stormfront. It seemed taller up close, the skies darker than the perfect blue they'd been in Grand Elder Shen's portion of the realm. From a distance, the mountain had looked much like the Azure Mountain. But the further orange-crest made his way through the woods, the steeper it seemed to become.

"Ooh, you've got a bag. Anything good in there? It's been half an age since I've last had a sweet."

"I have wet oatcakes."

"Those'll do." Orange-crest sighed. And shared. And the overbearing bird left crumbs in his hair.

"Old Man Shen never compromised once in his life. His Nascent Soul isn't about to start now." Huo'er had watched his entire fight with Xiao Shulan apparently. And she had opinions.

"He's wrong." Orange-crest insisted, bursting into motion. He held his staff aloft, gauging the distance. Seven steps from the chasm, he thrust the ivory wood into the ground, and leapt. He rose in an arc, scrambling up his staff. At the apex of the vault, he leapt, soaring through the air under his own power. Monkey Vaults the Abyss. Truly an excellent move. Orange-crest silently thanked Disciple Chang. Without his teachings, he would have had backtrack and find another path.

"Nope, get back here!" With two crooked fingers, he recalled his staff to hand. He wasn't sure why, but that spell was always easier when he spoke aloud. He spun the weapon, then hurled it like a javelin. The staff clattered to the ground atop the next plateau, and orange-crest began scrambling up the steeply piled stones to follow it.

"Freedom doesn't mean leaving what you care about behind." He continued, steadily climbing.

"How could I be free if I let someone else tell me what freedom is?"

"Stop arguing with me as if I'm him. He is what he is, and he doesn't want you. Besides, count yourself lucky, his Horizon-Treading Steps are merely decent as far as movement techniques go. If you cultivate it, nobody will ever catch you. But you'll only ever get where you want to go, not where you need to go. Death caught Grand Elder Shen in the end after all."

"You can't keep saying things like that and not tell me how you know them." Huo'er chirped mockingly at the monkey.

"Live long enough and you simply start to know things." Orange-crest heaved himself up onto solid ground again and groaned. Hardly a dozen paces in front of him was a sheer wall of stone easily ten monkeys in height. He couldn't vault that, not even with his cultivation and a running start. The paths to the side were not better, falling off into deep chasms or terminating in insurmountable overhangs.

"Why is this path so steep? Did I choose the worst direction?"

"You're trying to climb up quickly. Of course the path is steep."

"What?" Orange-crest would have made a face, but Huo'er was still nestled in his hair, so it would have been wasted.

"You're trying to get to the top of the mountain quickly. So the road needs to be steep."

"Is that how this world works?" Orange-crest didn't want to believe it. That made no sense.

"Probably? I don't think the guardian has truly chosen yet. This space is yet malleable, the product of myriad wills and dao fragments. Freedom demands there must always be a path, but fate rejects fortune without basis, and harmony insists that every way maintains at least a certain degree of unity." There was so much in that sentence orange-crest wasn't going to interrogate. So, the holy land changed based on his expectations. He wanted to climb fast, so the road would be steep.

Well, he bet the Seventh Prince wasn't scrambling hand over foot. He was a high noble, too dignified to get his robes dirty. He was probably marching up some leisurely road just steep enough to be making good progress. Orange-crest shut his eyes and focused. He wanted to reach the top. But he didn't want to be forced to surmount one impossible climb after another. He didn't need to be first. He just needed to arrive before anyone claimed Grand Elder Tian's inheritance.

"You can't just decide to believe things." Orange-crest didn't believe Huo'er. He didn't want to believe that the little bird, whoever she was, knew everything. Thunder crackled in the distance. A bolt of lightning slammed down, just beyond the next rise. Orange-crest smiled. He pulled his gourd from his belt and took another slug of centipede wine, his second for the day. He felt that curious power in his stomach redouble. Slowly, steadily, he was getting better at controlling the power of the drink he'd brewed.

Unfortunately, he was also running low. His master had the last of it in his storage ring. After he finished the five portions in this gourd, the dregs of the jar would just barely fill it once more. He'd need to think about winemaking again when he returned to the surface.

"What are you doing?" Huo'er demanded. Orange-crest scrunched up his paws, feeling the tension build in his hooked fingers. He threw his staff to the side, and reached up for the cliff face. His fingers moved slowly, no longer fully flesh. But when he found a crevice and wedged them in, his grip felt as solid as stone. With the strength of a single arm, he heaved his body upward, already searching for his next handhold.

It was slower and more deliberate than his usual methods of climbing, but it meant even the smallest hold was sufficient.

"Maybe you're not completely hopeless." Huo'er said.

"But this prince's road won't be easier than yours. Fate has called the three of you here, there will be no progress without struggle." Orange-crest ignored her and kept climbing. If this was fate's question, that was his answer. One paw in front of the other. His muscles burned, but fingers that were half-stone did not tire. Finally, his fingers found the top of the rock face. Blessed horizontal ground. He leisurely hauled himself up.

A fall here wouldn't hurt him, but repeating that climb would be tremendously unpleasant.

"Move!" Huo'er suddenly squawked in his ear. Orange-crest rolled, dragging himself up and to the side. A sword crashed down just to the side of his head, right in front of his eyes. An oddly translucent sword. It didn't matter. The monkey surged into motion. There was no time to recall his staff, but his fists were heavy, and they longed to pound home into something softer than stone. He waded in, taking in the details of his assailant. Human. Male. Translucent. Translucent?

The spirit's sword whipped back, and orange-crest leaned back beneath it. He followed in the blade's wake, wading in with vicious punches. Spirit or flesh, the qi within his flesh meant his fists pounded home. A punch to the stomach staggered the man, letting orange-crest get a grip on his forearm. He pushed the blade wide, stomping the man's instep. A twig cracked behind him. Orange-crest ducked, and heaved, throwing one man into the other. It wasn't hard.

The translucent man was nearly weightless, just heavy enough to wield a sword. The two of them fell from the cliff in a tangle of limbs.

"I told you monkey, there are no paths forward without adversity." Orange-crest peered over the edge of the cliff. The strange spirits had fallen in a heap, but they quickly regained their feet. In eerily silent synchronicity, they began to climb. Apparently that was a lot easier when you didn't weigh much, they practically flew up the slope. Orange-crest turned the other way.

The slope of the mountain flattened ahead of him, opening up into a lightly forested path that felt more like the Azure Mountain he was familiar with. Two more translucent figures, wearing the robes of the sect's disciples, stalked out of the trees. Silently, they brandished weapons. Orange-crest cracked his knuckles.

"You shouldn't do this." He told the expressionless ghosts.

"I'm from your sect." Their qi flared in answer. Fourth stage, both of them.

"You're not going to be able to negotiate with them." Huo'er said unhelpfully.

"One day, they will attain sentience, and protect this place. But on this day, they are yet mere memories without will."

"Negotiate?" Orange-crest chuckled. His staff soared up toward his hand, knocking one of the climbing spirits back off the clip face.

"I'm telling them they're making a mistake. What happens after is on them." Lightning crackled in the distance, as the monkey went to work.