Chương 92: B3 Chapter 6

"You," Hong Bo said slowly, "do not look like a bodhisattva." Orange-crest blinked.

"A what?"

"A buddhist who has attained enlightenment, and remained behind, for the good of all beings? Not that leaving a bag of money in a beggar's bowl is their usual style." Orange-crest shifted sheepishly. He looked himself up and down, pulling at his jacket where it bunched around his waist. Bodhisattvas sounded like Buddhas, and Buddhas sounded like gods. And gods sounded like they should have nicer clothes and less fur than orange-crest. He wondered what Wukong wore, when he was a god.

Maybe orange-crest could get tips on style, if this mysterious monkey his king put so much stock in appeared in his own dreams.

"No." Orange-crest eventually agreed.

"I don't think I do. Unless the king spoke true-truth and many buddhists are gorillas?" Hong Bo's slack face and raised eyebrow spoke volumes. The text unfortunately however was not in a language orange-crest understood. It wasn't his master's long-suffering tolerance of his antics, nor Yang Wei's stoic refusal to ask follow-up questions. Hong Bo just seemed to take everything in stride, whether it was a polite robbery, or a talking monkey. The silence stretched to the threshold of awkwardness.

Orange-crest couldn't quite see how to break it. There was so much he wanted to tell Hong Bo about himself, but he was standing before Hong Bo precisely because he needed help learning how to move among humans without arousing suspicion. It did not seem correct to begin such an acquaintance with an excessively complete confession.

"You are a strange one. Let us begin anew. A pleasure to meet you on the road..." Hong Bo's mouth traced the shape of several different phrases before settling upon one "... young master? Normally, I would ask a small kindness of you, but it appears you have raced ahead of me in both giving a gift, and seeking one."

"Is that... Good?" Orange-crest asked.

"Was I fast? Or wrong?"

"It is not customary for a beggar to make base commerce of our vocation. We offer men an opportunity to acquire merit, we do not sell information or reputation."

"Oh."

"You speak our tongue, and use our words. It only seems right you should understand them." Orange-crest squatted down and reached out for the coinpurse. Hong Bo's dirty slipper interposed itself between his fingers and the purse.

"Shouldn't I take it back then? If we're starting anew?"

"No need to be so hasty." Hong Bo said, hefting the purse himself. His eyes widened slightly at the weight of it, and orange-crest smiled. He had him. Hong Bo might pretend otherwise, but orange-crest had him. He might have a strange sort of honor, but any sort of honor would demand he hear the monkey out. It was good to see that even the oddest of men were greedy. This at least, orange-crest understood.

"It is poor manners, and poorer karma, to try to take back a gift given freely."

"Then... Do I ask you for help now?"

"I suppose you may. But who is it that asks this lowly Hong Bo for help?" Orange-crest opened his mouth, then closed it again. Who was he, really, if he was not to be Li Hou?

"Orange-crest." Few had ever learned that name. His master and uncle, and Yang Wei. Others had likely heard variations upon it. His master had not been circumspect about spreading the name of orange-hair in those early days. But he also had not had very many friends. Orange-crest had made more in a year than he had in a century. If orange-crest was to begin anew, he would begin with trust.

"I am orange-crest. A monkey, and a cultivator, and an alchemist. And not a demon." Hong Bo's eyebrows rose once more. They were very expressive eyebrows, if not quite as sharply fluffy as fish-finger's. More caterpillars than feathers. Orange-crest still rather liked them.

"Normally, one does not introduce themselves as not a demon." Hong Bo said, ignoring the rest of orange-crest's words.

"Don't men think other animals that talk are demons?"

"It is said they usually are. Yet disclaiming that achieves nothing."

"But I'm not a demon." Despite the line of questioning, orange-crest felt the tension slowly seeping out of his body. This... This was good. This was not how someone who thought he was a demon would act.

"What should I say then, to convince people I am not a demon?" Hong Bo stretched, yawning.

"Not all problems between men are best solved with words. But... I have never given much thought to solving that one. Many men, upon coming upon a beggar wonder if we are deserving. Much of skill at our vocation comes from side-stepping that consideration. A pleasant fellow is oft an easier recipient of charity than a truly deserving one. True misfortune has a way of turning men's eyes aside."

"Huh?" Hong Bo put his bowl away, and set his pair of sacks upon either end of his staff.

"I should move on. It is inappropriate to be begging with such a heavy purse, and late autumn is no time for languorous naps in the country air." Orange-crest shuffled awkwardly as Hong Bo made ready to leave the shade of the mulberry tree. He knew what he wanted. He knew how to ask for it. He thought Hong Bo would say yes.

"Where are you going?" He asked instead.

"Huangshi?" Hong Bo said with a shrug.

"Or perhaps a town along the way, if one suits my fancy. No markets in the mountains. What use is coin?" Leaving that thought hanging in the air, Hong Bo set off at a leisurely walk, leaving orange-crest behind.

"Well?" He spoke over his shoulder.

"Are you coming? Or have you tired of my companionship already?" Orange-crest shed his visual form, dismissing it to the woods, and scampered off to catch up with Hong Bo. He moved quietly, practicing his mundane stealth.

"Where are you going?" Hong Bo called out, the barest hint of concern in his voice, as he watched orange-crest scamper away.

"To Huangshi, or perhaps a town along the way, if one suits my fancy." Orange-crest echoed, close enough for Hong Bo to reach out and touch. Hong Bo flinched. It wasn't quite a jump, but it was clear startlement. Orange-crest smiled, unseen. It was one thing to know, he supposed. Another to see it. Or rather, to not see it.

"That's going to take some getting used to." Hong Bo muttered under his breath.

"I can see why men think you a demon, if you've such a habit of making liars of their senses." Orange-crest flicked his tail, sharply pleased to have put any crack in the beggar's seemingly unshakable composure.

"A hat is a good idea." Hong Bo agreed.

"We won't find a veil outside a proper city though, silk is dear at the best of times, and silk suitable for a veil rarer still. And you'll still need to cover your face beneath it, unless you have some other cultivator trick suitable for concealment. But a doctor, really?"

"Why really?"

"It is a very human ambition, I suppose. The Clean-Handed Faction would not know what to make of you."

"Clean Handed?"

"I suppose you could call them orthodox beggars. Perhaps not as impressive as orthodox cultivators, but they have their own sort of dignity." Orange-crest let the thread of conversation peter out. Hong Bo's words were casual, but he could tell the old man was probing at him, trying to see who he was. Hong Bo had agreed easily that orange-crest was no demon, but he clearly knew the monkey was hiding something.

He prodded at times about orange-crest's opinions on the world of cultivation, displaying just enough knowledge that orange-crest found himself wondering frequently if Hong Bo was a cultivator in hiding. Yet, Hong Bo dodged those questions as scrupulously as orange-crest avoided those about why he wished so fervently to learn to blend in. Twice, they had passed other parties at their leisurely pace. Hong Bo was a master of first impressions. When he sat with his bowl, he seemed every inch the amiable uncle.

But alone on the road, seemingly talking to himself, he warded off all company. When other humans approached, Hong Bo would begin to weave from side to side just a hair as he stepped, and raise his voice at intervals, sometimes taking on both sides of their conversation. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. The travelers passing by would invariably pick up their pace, or spur on their horses.

"They think me mad, or drunk." Hong Bo confided in the monkey, after one such rider left the pair spattered with mud, nearly breaking orange-crest's spell.

"Isn't that bad? If you see them again?"

"Not so much as you might think. Should I meet them again, for every man who might judge me harshly for it, there is one who would judge himself for his preconceptions instead."

"I see." Travelling with Hong Bo was slow. He kept to what felt like a good pace for a mortal, light and tireless upon his feet. But orange-crest was unable to ever cajole him into breaking into a run. He would inevitably tell off the monkey for having no respect for his elderly mortal bones, and stubbornly keep to his own pace. Dusk came in time, as it was wont to do. Hong Bo would not hear of moving through the night, and orange-crest had no interest in abandoning him.

Hong Bo showed none of Li Xun's disdain for sleeping beneath the stars. Indeed, his discernment in selecting potential places to curl up in the evening was almost as keen as a monkey's. Almost. Dinner was an easy affair. Orange-crest was just starting to get properly hungry, after three days of abstention. Hong Bo was happy to share his rice, and did not question from whence orange-crest procured a rabbit.

With a little salt and some probably-not-poisonous mushrooms, it was the closest that orange-crest had come to human food in a long while.

"A doctor." Hong Bo said suddenly, as they lay beneath the stars, pleasantly full. Orange-crest had made certain there were no leftovers.

"It is a curious ambition, for a monkey. Even one who claims to be an alchemist."

"I am a curious monkey."

"That you are, I suppose." It was a non-answer, that orange-crest had given. A glib evasion. It didn't feel right. He was finally realizing what he'd come to Hong Bo for. He wanted to know how to walk the boundaries between lies and truth. That was what Hong Bo did so well. Orange-crest still wondered if he was a cultivator. If he knew the Road-Clearing Society the magistrate had mentioned.

"I want to heal someone." Orange-crest said suddenly.

"Oh?"

"Someone injured, injured badly."

"Why not just seek out a doctor, or a legendary immortal doctor, if the injury requires it? When their parents ail, few mortal men seek to master medicine on their own. To be human is to depend on others."

"I'm not human." Orange-crest protested gently.

"And I'm tired of depending on others. When next someone I care about hurts, I never want my hands to be stupid and useless." Hong Bo hummed. Not just a note. An entire tune that orange-crest did not know. When he finished, both of them fell silent. It was then that orange-crest felt it. A stirring in his dantian. The character that had been branded there was twitching. He wondered what the pattern was. It had sat ill, when they moved toward Elder Lu. It moved violently during his last breakthrough.

And now it twinged, ever so slightly.

"Do you believe in fate?" Orange-crest asked suddenly.

"Fate?" Orange-crest was facing the wrong way, but he could practically hear the eyebrow raise.

"I do. Rather I suppose I must. I would be a poor excuse for a beggar if I did not. I take little from my fellows. But I am no cultivator to live on qi and air alone. If I cannot offer merit to those who sustain me, what can I offer?" Orange-crest still didn't fully understand what a beggar was. The concept seemed simple, if strange. Hong Bo had legs and arms that worked, orange-crest did not know why he did not farm abundant rice, or pick fruit for himself. He did not see how fate and karma came into it.

But Hong Bo clearly placed great importance upon it.

"I want to learn how to act like a human. Can you teach me?"

"Hmm? You already speak the elegant tongue like you were born to it."

"I know how to act like a cultivator. I'm not very good at it. But I know it. But cultivators aren't normal people, are they?"

"I wouldn't know."

"They aren't." Orange-crest insisted.

"Cultivating monkeys aren't normal monkeys. So cultivating humans can't be normal humans either." Hong Bo laughed, but did not disagree.

"Fine. I take your meaning. Let us assume I know something worth teaching you upon the subject of living among my fellows. That I can help you walk among them, and establish yourself as a doctor."

"Learn to be a doctor." Orange-crest corrected.

"Know some pills. How to invent new pills. Been hurt a bunch, healed a bunch. But need human books, human tools."

"Learn to be a doctor." Hong Bo agreed.

"But let us dispense with pretenses. No normal monkey stands almost as tall as a man and walks like a ghost. Your good humor does not diminish your clear supernatural might. If I help you, if by some miracle men and women come to respect the name of Daoist Big Hat, as laughable as it is. If you carve out a place in our world, and master the skills you seek. What will you do with them?"

"Heal the people who need healing."

"And after that?" Orange-crest felt his dantian twinge. Hong Bo needed a good answer. A real one. That was what he thought it was telling him, that things pivoted upon this moment. It fit most of the times the 'wei' character acted up. The only ones that didn't quite fit was his breakthroughs, when it'd been most active. Breakthroughs were important. But surely not as consequential as meeting Elder Lu upon the road had been? Orange-crest shook the wandering thoughts away.

"I'll do what is right." He said, knowing the words to be wrong. Hong Bo snorted. He did not repeat his question.

"I'll do what is right." Orange-crest repeated firmly.

"And brew some good wine. And share it with good people." This time, there was more humor in Hong Bo's snort. And possibly a little snot. As Hong Bo snored loudly, orange-crest lay awake half-cultivating. Feeling the qi, more than actively trying to advance his cultivation. Elder Lu's Scripture of the Golden Order had been built upon ideas of value and commerce. That was a simplification.

But the worth of things, and a view of the world that had centered that consideration above all others, had been at the core of his cultivation. It was claimed that his techniques descended from the lineage of Grand Elder Tian's mastery of fate. Hong Bo's perspective was very different from Elder Lu's, wasn't it? Orange-crest still needed to find some Foundation Establishment manuals. But from his master, he knew that it was the moment when a cultivator first set in metaphysical stone the truth of themselves.

His master had made himself a vessel awaiting fulfillment. His martial uncle had bound himself in chains. Sun Wuming had left his mountain behind. Fate was a part of orange-crest's life. Not just because of what Grand Elder Tian had left him, where he'd trespassed with the seal. He lived in Wukong's shadow, just as formless-gleam lived Daji's. Things moved around him in ways he did not fully understand. Orange-crest wrestled fruitlessly with these heavy thoughts.

He suspected it would be good to have an answer, when he prepared to advance to Foundation Establishment. He did not notice, when sleep took him. It was the first time he'd slept since leaving Mount Yuelu. It was easier, when one wasn't alone. In the morning, Hong Bo wrapped orange-crest's head.

"Itchy."

"It looks it. I'm glad I don't have fur. Especially not like this. It feels stiff as a boar's bristles. What did you eat to get a coat like this?"

"Rocks?" Orange-crest ventured.

"I drank them though."

"I see." Hong Bo was back to his normal unflappability.

"I don't. There's bandage over my eye."

"Ah, let me rewrap that. I need a little more volume here anyway. Your head is already rather oddly shaped. We can lean into that."

"So, I'm a sick human?"

"Pox-scarred. Burned. Deformed. Too ugly to inflict your face upon others. It's your misery. You'll figure it out." Hong Bo paused.

"The Clean Hands would have a fit about this. They frown greatly upon begging under false pretenses."

"But, we're not begging?"

"It's the principle of the thing that they frown upon. Establishing an identity you might later beg with under false pretenses."

"But we're doing it?"

"I have great respect for the Clean-Handed Faction. But they are a little inflexible. Not every situation fits into the rules."

"Mmm."

"You'll learn. Just watch me, and follow my lead." Hong Bo clicked his tongue.

"We're fortunate you have less hair between your brows than you do elsewhere. This would never work if we needed to cover up everything except your eyes."

"I'm glad my face is so easy to disguise."

"You should be!"

"I am?" Hong Bo laughed. Orange-crest pulled his way free of his hands, fiddling about with his disguise himself. He'd thought clothes were bad. For a moment, he almost despaired of his plan to learn to live among humans. His face was so thickly bandaged that it looked like a silkworm's cocoon, as were his hands. Even his eponymous crest was fully covered up, pressed flat. Chunks of old robes were wedged in various places, giving orange-crest a more human looking jaw, and a slightly bumpy scalp.

The morning sun was wan and cold, as warming as a light rainfall. Hong Bo prepared more rice for himself, but orange-crest took none of it. They set off at a sedate pace, heading for a town Hong Bo swore existed, but of which no sign could yet be seen.

"You'll want to let them ask questions, before you tell your story. The best lie is one you never speak aloud. The second best is one that feeds their preconceptions. Don't act prideful. You're unfortunate. They should feel good about being better than you. But don't act too spinelessly either. You're a man, not a monkey, and even the downtrodden have their pride."

"Monkeys have their pride too." Orange-crest shot back.

"See, that's the wrong kind of pride. A beggar isn't proud because he is special. He isn't proud because he is better than anyone, or more moral. He is proud because he's a part of the world."

"I don't get it. Isn't that what I said?"

"You will. Look at that group, up ahead. What should you call them?" There were a pair of men on horseback. They wore robes, but not of silk. One wore a sword at his side, the other a club of wood.

"Stout fellows?" Orange-crest guessed.

"No. Always flatter. They have horses, they are worthy sirs at the very least. Young master if they're young. Honored sir is overdoing it, unless they have silk robes, or a wagon. Nobody wants to feel like a beggar is making fun of them." Hong Bo quizzed orange-crest for most of the morning. How should this fellow be addressed? Was this family prosperous? It wasn't what orange-crest was really looking for, but he did his best to soak up the old beggar's knowledge like a towel.

Orange-crest had come to Hong Bo for teaching, but there was a part of him, and not a small part either, that bristled whenever Hong Bo took the tone of a teacher. Orange-crest only had one master, and had no interest in taking another. He could settle that matter later. His disquiet was a small thing, one quickly buried at the wonder of the many humans ignoring him. Hong Bo spoke up first, when travelers approached. Not always.

Sometimes he left them to pass in silence, telling orange-crest after how he divined their urgent business or cruel temperament in the tightness of their jaw or the cut of their clothing. When Hong Bo did speak, it seemed like he had a different greeting for every traveler. The right words to lower their guard, or coax a smile. Even without his bowl out, a few men tossed coins that he gratefully accepted. The expressions directed at orange-crest were many and varied.

Pitiful or sneering, sometimes bewildered or disgusted. Each time, Hong Bo questioned him about the nuances of their expressions. Their most likely thoughts, and how the way he carried himself might change what they thought of his infirmities. How to show the stiffness of age, without intimating the pain that came with communicable disease. How to avoid looking excessively pitiable, without drifting into the aloofness that might give away his nature as a cultivator.

Orange-crest rarely answered to Hong Bo's satisfaction. He'd thought his grasp of man's emotions was keen, but he was starting to see he'd barely scratched the surface. And worse, many of the manners of daoists were entirely different from those of mortals. Huangsongyu, the town Hong Bo had spoken of, emerged from the mists in an instant. It was a squat little place, nestled between the bank of a small river and a thick forest of grey-green pines.

None of the buildings were the great soaring constructions he'd seen in the Azure Mountain Sect, layer after towering layer set upon thick stone foundations. The town's homes were squat and dense, their roofs sharp lines instead of gently flowing curves. What little stone orange-crest saw was used up in the few great thoroughfares crossing the town, and the long retaining wall that towered over the quiet little river's near shore. Orange-crest had seen more people in one place.

Godsgrave Peak must have held thrice what this town could. But there were so many homes and farms and animals and children and he could smell roasting meat and horse-shit and hear a thousand voices merging into a distant buzz.

"Come on then, Brother Monkey." Hong Bo reached out for the purse secreted inside his robes and gave it a jingle.

"A beggar takes the good in turn with the bad. Let's find ourselves a tavern."