Sky Pride

Chapter 14- Ten Little Ghosts, and One Big One

Yang didn’t mean good. People liked a lot of the things that went with yang. People preferred warm, sunny days to bitter cold nights. People preferred growing to dying, doing seemed more heroic than resting, and while you might crave sleep, wasn’t it so you could wake and be vigorous again? Yet you couldn’t call it good.

Where Liren had been sitting was something inhuman, yang, terrifying. It was roughly human shaped, in the broadest outlines, a thing that only existed if you looked at it from the correct angle. If you saw it dead on, it was invisible. Tilt your head, and it blazed like the noon sun. The weight of its existence pricked at Tian’s skin, and made his eyes burn. Roughly human, like a doll still being carved from wood or a face you find in the clouds until you blink and it’s gone.

Lie down! Close your eyes, and lie down! Tuck the shears against your chest, start cycling the Hell Suppressing Body, don’t waste a single second!

Tian slammed back into the trough, shoving a bit of century old ginseng into his mouth with one hand and pressed Threadcutter’s cursed shears against his chest with the other. Verdant Spring jumped into action, the atmospheric qi entering the triple furnace before being diverted to the male-female statue that held the Hell Suppressing Body Refining Sutra. The earth milk ointment seeped in through the pores of his skin, flooding his body with nourishment, and more. Excessive nourishment. In just the first few seconds, Tian could feel the layers of his skin growing bloated, separating as they filled too quickly and unevenly.

The tone of the Sutra chant changed. It was usually an almost inaudible murmur. It still was impossible to pick out the words clearly. It was just that it sounded welcoming, or like a wanderer who has encountered the taste of home. It started pulling at the medicine, dragging it inward from every corner of his body. Tian quickly found that the pull speed was not even, and naturally, the medicine on the top of his head and the soles of his feet were further from the statue than the medicine covering his belly. The overwhelming nutrition would break them down, infesting them with cancers or worse.

The panic didn’t have time to set in. By the time he comprehended the seriousness of the problem, he was enveloped in a clear sky. He rose higher and higher, the air growing thinner and colder, so high the world seemed to curve on its edges and the sky was shading from blue to nighttime black. The medicine that had been rushing inward was now pulled outward again, falling into a delicate balance between interior and exterior. The nourishment had time to distribute evenly through the skin before sinking gently through the fascia and into the muscles.

Tian’s skin was the envy of jade beauties far and wide, white as muttonfat, soft as a spring breeze, elastic and smooth to the touch. Liren liked to rest her head against his chest on hot days. She said that he was always as soft and cool as the other side of the pillow. Tian was never quite sure how to feel about that. His body had been repeatedly refined and strengthened over the years, taking on the characteristic beauty of a yin cultivator. He was immensely proud of how far it had come, and truly wondered how far it could really go.

Earth Milk was a treasure that could reach the first rank. This batch wasn’t quite that good, merely at the peak of second rate, but there was a remarkable amount of it. Tian was a bit distracted by his busy life, so it is understandable that he neglected a few rather important details. The first was that, while the core treasure was ‘only’ at the peak of second rate, the point of making medicine rather than using it unprocessed was to enhance the effects. The second thing he neglected was that Grandpa’s hatred of alchemists was exceeded only by his hatred of the Mad God, and his perpetual efforts to steal his energy. The old ghost had always been rather willey, and was skilled at steering Tian towards discovering the optimal route forward given the circumstances.

The last, most crucial thing Tian had neglected was Grandpa’s rating system. Second rate was very, very good, better than what was considered top class in the Wasteland of Song. First Rate? The only thing Tian had ever heard Grandpa acknowledge as first rate was Liren’s Ten Suns Godslaying Body Refining Art, and that was transforming her into an ancient god. First rate wasn’t just one rank stronger than second rate. It was the realm of divinity.

What’s more, the medicine wasn’t building up from nothing.

Tian’s body was already a treasurehouse. The Hell Suppressing Sutra had been running almost constantly for coming on a decade. Natural treasures, bodily reconstruction, purification by tribulation, transcending realms with a true, profound revelation of the dao, all had resulted in a fleshy foundation that was vastly beyond his peers. Now, a treasure of the earth sank into him, nourishing flesh, strengthening bone, washing the marrow, and then sinking further still into him. Descending into the organs, into the organ systems, into the endless sub-systems and layers that Tian couldn’t even perceive. Then a step beyond them. Into the realm of the spiritual.

Earth Milk was a gift of the world, of the depths of the mountains, where earth and water crossed, condensed, and formed a blessing. A blessing from the earth goddess. Also known as Houtu, Goddess Queen of the Earth, absolute ruler of Diyu, she who oversees death and rebirth, governs the fertility of the world, or, as the Martyr Venerable might put it, “This Little Monk’s boss’s, boss’s, boss’s, boss’s, boss.”

That same Martyr Venerable had marked Tian and Liren, stamping his approval on them. It didn’t amount to much, in the grand scheme of things, a minor local official doing a favor for a patron. But since when had nepotism and repaying favors been frowned upon by the Civil Service? Such a minor matter, would such a supreme being as Houtu even look into it? And if she did, would she even disapprove? The Earth Milk descended down through the layers of the flesh, found the Martyr Venerable’s stamp of approval, and finally revealed its true power.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Three souls resided in the upper dantian, each identical though with different demeanors, all dressed in the fine robes of a senior monk. They stood as one, then bowed as they received the gift. The Earth Milk poured down, anointing the three but not stopping with them. It descended lower, through the Heart Datian, then down into the Lower Dantian, before spreading out along the meridians. In the space of a single circulation, they found the seven they were looking for.

They had the form of ghosts and demons, some deformed beyond recognition. Thief Eater seemed the most normal, an ordinary man in ordinary robes holding a jar, the subtle deformity of his jaw hiding the triple row of teeth within. Smelly Lung was bent, half crouched, one clawed hand holding a pestle, the other reaching for something only it could see. Remove Filth looked like an irritable woman, hollow cheeked and hollow eyed, twitchy. Her robes looked like they had been dug out of the ground with her. Concealed Arrow had the face of a monkey, and was dressed in rags. In one hand, he held a small mirror, a thing of corroding bronze and black stone. Yin Sparrow and Flying Poison were even less human, consisting of a single leg for a body, with no arms and the heads of hungry ghosts. Last was Not Toxic, and he was simply a demon, in and out. Lanky limbs, ripping claws, endless fury burning in its eyes, endless hunger dripping from its tongue.

All the ten souls, the three Hou and Seven Po, bowed with reverence and gratitude, as the Earth Milk fell on them. It seeped into them as it had Tian, refining them as it had refined the rest of the mortal shell they resided in. It was their blessing too, a supreme gift. The seven Po spirits were not a nice bunch, often working to undermine their host during the night. Nevertheless, they were Daoist spirits, and understood the rules. Every gift contained an obligation. This was an enormous blessing, one that transformed and ennobled them, even if they still looked like monsters. They had to make use of the power still pouring into them to return the favor.

It was the Three Hun souls, ditzy though they usually were, that led the way. Bright Spirit, clever and quick, sent the seven Po spirits hunting for the three demonic worms that lived in a mortal’s body. It was Quiet Spirit, turbid, lustful and slow, that directed them to search the gut. But it was the Nascent Light that found the three worms, still desperately consuming decaying grains. One looked rather like Yin Sparrow and Flying Poison, consisting of a single giant leg with a lion’s head. The second had the back of a lizard and the belly, arms, legs and face of a monkey. The last was dressed like a civil servant, with a spiked crown on its head. It seemed the most horrible, because while it was wearing a human form, it still lay on its belly in the intestine, eating the same rotting grain as the others. Each carried a scroll, blackened and crackling with malice.

The seven Po souls fell on the worms with vicious determination, stomping, clubbing, tearing at them. The three Hun illuminated the worms, keeping them from escaping into the shadows and depths of the body. It had to be said that while Nascent Light shined the brightest and did the most, it was Quiet Spirit that was the most active. For a slothful, indolent fellow, he wasn’t shy about sneaking a boot in when the enemy was down.

It was a gang beating, cruel and direct. The three worms had a second name. They were the three corpses, bringing sickness and evil thoughts to the host they parasitized. They came in with the first turbid breath of mortal air a baby inhaled, and only escaped the body upon death. Worse, they were cruel and vindictive. On the fifty seventh day of the sixty day cycle, they slipped away to a certain heavenly office to make their reports to the Director of Destinies. That worthy, it was known, deducted days of one’s life for each misdeed. If one wanted to transcend mortality, the three corpses had to be destroyed.

The ten souls residing within Tian were quite unified in this. They beat those worms to death with no chance of survival. In the end, the three worms tried to make a break for it. They didn’t get far. The vacuum of shen had transformed into a crushing thunderhead, pressing down on the exploding qi and shen pouring from Tian. The worms might have escaped to fight another day, otherwise. Instead, they were ripped to pieces, dissolved, dissipated, evaporated, even the ashes expelled entirely.

The tiny thread of divine energy that animated them began to float away, returning to its origin. They might be cursed things for humans, but they too served the will of heaven, even if it was only as glorified informers. The seven Po spirits couldn’t see the energy slipping away, but Nascent Light, the most eternal and enduring part of the soul, could. It initially didn’t have the urge to do anything about them. It was a pretty peaceable sort of being, if a bit flighty and silly. Then the strings faintly glimmered with golden light, only for a brief moment, but it was fatally attractive. Nascent Light reached out and grabbed the threads of divine energy, and swallowed them.

The divine energy threads didn’t want to stay. They fought to escape. But buried deep, deep within Tian was a single immortal breath, the one he drew when he remade his body for the first time out of snakes and lotus flowers. Immortal and divine called to each other; the little threads of energy found a new home and settled into place. Thanks, of course, to the immense pressure from the divine thought, the shen, of Master Cruel Treachery.

The old woman was sweating now. Still unmoving in her cave, her eyes were filled with thunderheads as her bald head shone wet in the dim light. Her breath, usually slow and constant as a tree, came in sharp gasps as she struggled to keep the tearing energies contained in her disciple without letting them destroy him. She could see the transformation he was undergoing. She was straining more than at any point in the last thousand years. Unbeknownst to her, the corners of her eternally flat mouth slowly pulled upwards, unveiling a smile fit to scare a devil.

Liren had her eyes locked on Tian too. She could feel the explosive energy pouring from him, battered by it. Hungry for it. But she didn’t dare move. Tian’s eyes were open. They hadn’t closed in hours. And within his eyes, two pupils were visible- one gold, the other black. They were fixed on her, but what he was seeing, she couldn’t even guess.