Sky Pride

Chapter 27- Letters From Eight Directions

Dear Brother Zihao,

The soft breezes of late summer ruffle the tall grass and the Dustless Lotuses bloom in the cool waters of quiet ponds. The bees drinking the nectar have no idea that autumn’s chill is already in the air. I wish I didn’t, but since we got Senior Sister Lan’s emergency message, the whole of the Bamboo Medicine Hut is feeling the cold press of a blade at our back.

On behalf of all of us, thank you so much for everything you did for Sister Lan. She wrote in a hurry, but we could all tell she considers you and Daoist Hong the heroes of the disaster at the Copper Roof Inn. She also made a point, underlined, that what saved her life and her honor was practicing her one skillful thrust. Anyone who was starting to forget the lesson you demonstrated in the flesh of Technically-Senior-Brother-Ho has been running around between the practice fields like they were injected with chicken blood. The guards are getting a lot of extra income teaching lessons.

I’m practicing too. I don’t like it. It feels wrong, that a healing hand should kill. But I don’t think you like it either. It’s just necessary. So I remember your face, the desperation in your eyes as you tried to show us how hard we needed to train. How much pain we could accept and still live on.

I wanted to learn a rope dart art like you, but I was eventually persuaded to learn the spear. The guards swear by them, and I will admit that I like the danger happening on the other end of a long stick from me.

I’ve been burying myself in all the things you have sent me about the Art of Wind and Water. Since I broke through to Level Five, the Elders have given me special permission to spend less time on my normal chores and more time studying arrays. It’s been wonderful, but now I see natural arrays everywhere. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Daoist Lan also made very certain that the whole sect knows to look for anyone trying to exterminate villages, any sudden disappearance of children, and any stories about people trying to crown or welcome a new emperor. It sounds unbelievable, but she wasn’t joking and word is that Ancient Crane Mountain is starting to make some big moves inside the kingdom. Well, I expect you know more about that than I do.

It sounds like you are rushing back towards the Capital. Stop by our little place. The grass has grown long under the willow tree, and birds gather together to warm themselves against the coming cold.

Shu Xiaoling

Dear Junior Brother Tian,

It’s hot and dry and the wind scours the rocky sands like it hates each and every grain individually and collectively. I completely agree with the wind on this. The Redstone Wasteland continues to be a complete waste of space. I know perfectly well there is a whole ecosystem at work in here, and I don’t care. I want it to all fall directly into Hell. Once I am safely out of it, anyway.

Look, this is awkward, but thank you. Your letters have been something I look forward to, and I always wonder what mad thing you are going to send me next. I now have the oddest assortment of branches, interesting rocks, bits of glass, silk, leaves, egg shells, and now fishscales. It probably looks like litter to people who don’t know, but to a crafter, they are all puzzles. Each can be used in different applications, some well studied, others barely glanced at.

I keep busy.

Actually, I’m really damn busy.

They fitted me with my new prosthetic three weeks ago. It’s… well, it’s not great, but it exists and it works better than the old one, so that means that I can hold things AND work on them at the same time. Properly, I mean. So that makes it great. Naturally, I’m designing my own arm to replace it. There is the minor difficulty of not knowing how to do any of the things involved with making a functional prosthetic arm, but it’s another problem to keep my mind busy. My body is grinding blades and cutting cloth.

Things have been fairly quiet around Depot Four. Not completely peaceful, because this is the Wastes, but more quiet than not. We have been rearming, repairing and refitting. I’m not up to heavy work, but I can cast arrowheads and grind blades and make the ointment soaked bandages they are starting to use in the hospital. I can’t make hard armor yet, but I can soak linen in flexible glue and cut the pieces to make linen armor, and pass it off to another crafter to finish.

I’m not a waste. And my dao path isn’t broken. When I’m capable, you just write me. Whatever you need, I’ll make.

-Li

Dear Martial Nephew Zihao

I think you The view out my window is one of swaying pines and thriving fields. There is a babble of sweet water in a brook nearby, and at this point I’d quite like to see it. I’m sick to death of my room, and they are still leery of wheeling me outside the bounds of the hospital. Which I wish to Heaven I didn’t agree with.

I think you might be misunderstanding how “trade” is supposed to work. Good start with buying the Fifty Year Old White Eyebrow Tea. Makes sense, good price to resale value, promising start. Selling a tea experience is a totally valid value play, and I did say it was about trading for things that improve your cultivation, not maximizing returns. So, not how I would have done it, but reasonable.

Except “I find good people, invite them to a tea session, and our conversations inevitably result in my learning something interesting or useful” is not “trading.” It is, at best, emotional blackmail, but since I know you are genuinely just serving tea because you like someone without worrying about what they could give you, it doesn’t even reach that threshold. I am apoplectic that you are managing to then track down the things they talk about, accumulating a frankly bizarre inventory of tradable goods.

I’m not going to touch on you handing all the actual trading work to Niece Liren. Yes, merchants will aim to maximize their profits, but as I keep telling you, they can smell fear. You need to move with confidence, and that means practicing…

I ran the numbers. It offends every fiber of my being, but you are currently averaging an 800% return on investment per ounce of tea. Hang on to those Blue Goose feathers and the chest of Palgon dates. If you don’t sell them before you get this message, I want you to sell them to a sister of mine in West Town Convent. Ask for Sister Hsing.

Keep writing, your letters cheer me up even if they make me mad.

Auntie Wu

Dear Rat Bastard Tian

The scenery here in the Courtyard remains highly colorful. Very goddamn colorful. I try to make a beautiful background screen for Lil’ Mei and Sis’ Su, but damned if people don’t keep trying to drag me onto center stage. Do you have the faintest idea how many fights I have been in over the last four months? I, and I mean this seriously, I have done more fighting in four months at the Five Elements Courtyard than I did in four months on the red sands.

It is genuinely obscene, I use the word precisely, obscene, how many elegant young masters think they are somehow entitled to possess Lil’ Mei, and would ‘condescend’ to keeping Sis’ Su too. Possession being variously defined. We have been correcting their misunderstanding.

They send their fond regards, by the way. Mei and Su, I mean. Not the young masters. For some reason, your name has become a taboo amongst the younger generation here. But hey, “Heart Killing Sky” is a hell of a nickname.

Lil’ Mei has been cheerfully settling grudges, playing the kind of social games that make my head ache and would be entirely inexplicable to you. Sister Su just calls them out, and if they won’t duel, she follows them around and loudly reads essays, with footnotes, references, appendices and codicils, about their moral, physical, spiritual and hygienic failures.

She got a little printing machine, hand cranked. She’s gotten very fast at setting the type, and has started commissioning new blocks of characters in different handwriting for extra emphasis. Sis’ Su has all her little printing blocks organized, categorized and regimented better than a unit of Imperial Guardsmen. She prints fliers, and distributes them widely, even commissioning missions to other Immortal Grottos (which is what they call their subsidiary temples.) The fliers come with attached bibliographies and a table of citations, as well as lists of women whom the young masters have failed to satisfy. She usually includes the ‘gentlemen’s’ mothers, but notes that the disappointment is merely inferred based on the totality of evidence.

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I insist that you picture Sis’ Su, sitting at her worktable, carefully and precisely setting the characters into wooden forms. It’s all backward, of course, so it prints properly on the page. With her slim, white fingers, stained with blue-black ink, she arranges the following sentence- “Allegations that he has received the unspeakable attentions of a Bull Hippopotamus, repeatedly and enthusiastically, are not without support despite his embarrassing physique and general lack of vigour. See Appendix C for an explanation of what a Hippopotamus is.”

Lil’ Mei helps her out a lot. I find the two of them with their heads pressed together, giggling as they cook up something unspeakable. Did you know Sis’ Su can giggle? I can’t make her giggle. Lil’ Mei can, though. I’ve learned it’s best not to ask what they are talking about. If I ask, they’ll tell me and I won’t feel right for hours and hours.

Eventually, they all agree to fight her. They have all kinds of tricks and strategies. Sis’ Su has one answer- “All tricks are meaningless before an absolute difference in strength.” Which sounds rich coming from a level nine in her mid twenties, but she’s forced five of the bastards to shatter their life saving tokens and ruined them in the sect.

The number of “Heaven’s Chosen” lingering around has dropped off sharply. Inexplicably. Though I have noticed a significant increase in gentle beauties who wish to read and rest in our courtyard, as they find it quite peaceful. Most of ‘em are completely up front about who sent ‘em too, but then they point to Mei and I don’t know what the hell to say. Su is managing them. It seems to be working out, even if some are a handful. I just focus on earning a few spirit stones here and there, and stay out of trouble.

Quite unlike Sister Lin. I don’t know if the two of you are in touch, but she got herself transferred, with the Elder’s enthusiastic blessing, to the Capital. She is assisting the Grand Tutor in teaching the Imperial Princess and Princesses. I don’t know what the two of you talked about, but she’s going hard at it. Do reach out to her if you haven’t already. Something about her letters gives me an acid stomach, and I have too much stomach to stand that much acid.

Elder Feng says the mission in the Five Elements Courtyard is going well, and there is an agreement in principle about the strategic scale array, but many more details still to work out. Not something a simple man like me can meddle in. The other day I was challenged to a drinking contest. The bastards had rigged the wine bottles- theirs had an array that eliminated the alcohol as it left the neck of the bottle, mine had one that concentrated it. If I hadn’t managed to switch the bottles when they were distracted by a water barrel inexplicably falling on their foot, I’d have lost a fortune. Everyone is a scammer. Ayah!

More going on, but I’m worried enough that you will come back here and start vanishing people as they walk home at night. I don’t believe you have ever done such a thing, but the way you stare at people sometimes makes me think that you just haven’t done it yet. I’m off to see the alchemists for some medicine.

Chronic exhaustion and equally chronic yang depletion. You bastard.

Your doubly engaged brother,

Wang

Dear Zihao,

The view from the pinnacle is worth the walk. Among the drifting clouds, looking down on the world below, man and man’s creations vanish from view. How small and brief our lives are. How little we account for, compared to the world itself. Imagine seeing the entire world, and finding it empty. It’s humbling. And exhilarating. And, ultimately, painful. The path to the pinnacle is narrow. It silently demands that those who walk it retreat from the messy connections of the world, and tread it alone. Those at the peak swear it’s the only way up.

But anyone who has spent time in the mountains knows that hiking alone has many dangers, while hiking with good people has many advantages. Would I have reached this peak without all the people whose lives touched mine? The predecessors who paved the way- how could I even find the path without them? What of the smaller lives, did they not contribute to my climb? The ones who grew the rice that fills my belly, who wove the linen and silk I wear, who fired the clay that made my tea cups?

And that’s where I have to stop copying my earlier draft of this letter. Events have overtaken me, to the point where I hardly know where to begin.

The history books you read are understandably vague about the exact process of founding a kingdom. This is one of those things juniors shouldn’t look into too deeply, apparently, and I am still included in the term “junior.” Apparently.

The short version, as I understand it, is this- anyone can found a kingdom. You can, right now. Nobody is required to agree with you or respect your declaration, but you can do it. Founding a kingdom that is recognized by both the heavens and the earth takes considerably more.

It takes obvious things- political power, military control, land, money. It also takes less obvious things like popular support. Most of all, to be a real kingdom, you need fortune. Call it luck, call it qi, call it character or destiny. It becomes the life blood of the nation, fairly literally.

Items that are rich with fortune or destiny- a sacrificial cauldron, a crown, a temple, a mighty sutra, significant weapons or armor, special mountains, rivers, lakes, geomantic nodes, even certain families and people, condense that fortune and stop it from easily flowing away. Hence the term “Suppressing Fortune.” These significant items become much more powerful, condensing yet more fortune, when they are positioned along the dragon veins. Dragon veins are the geomantic pathways that guide both fortune and qi through the country. Think of them like the land’s meridians.

Another thing I had no reason to know. Apparently. I don’t think any of my old brothers and sisters who ascended to the Heavenly Realm before me know this either. Just one more thing that’s not a secret, but those in the know see no reason to mention.

There is one other thing you need to be a real kingdom. Merit. If you want to know the difference between Black Iron Gorge and the Broadsky Kingdom, or any of the other Kingdoms in the Alliance, it is merit. You will notice that the Gorge only really rules itself, a single enormous city. The rest of the Redstone Wastes is a battlefield, and the majority of their combatants are heretic mercenaries. Have a lot of merit, and the fortune of your country flourishes. Don’t have much? Bad things happen.

So what is merit? Conforming with the laws of Heaven, and virtuous acts. What are these laws and acts? We aren’t entirely sure, but we have some very good guesses. Preaching the true Dao is one way. Providing peace and security is another. Filial virtue, ensuring the people are fed, controlling floods and propounding just laws are others.

The Ministry of Rituals is one of the smallest ministries, and also one of the most influential. It is precisely their ability to gather fortune and merit for the kingdom and keep them from dispersing that makes them so necessary. Similarly, the Censorate was founded because it is generally believed that an effective, honest civil service is a blessing to the people, and a sign of the nation’s virtue.

Of course, neither mortals nor immortals have any way to see or quantify merit, which means we are all deducing based on what we can observe.

I’m sure you see where I am going with this. I don’t want to go into the interconnectedness of Daoism, Shamanism, the folk religious traditions of the people who have lived in the Broadsky Kingdom since time immemorial, and foreign religions. Our faith teaches us that no one person could describe the Dao, that is, the totality of the universe, so our understanding of the world is constantly changing and evolving. This includes trying to understand the will of the heavens, and the heavenly officers who control the fates of us below.

We are all trying to understand and explain things far greater than ourselves, and while we all have some evidence to support our theories (particularly us Daoists), we know that we are getting some part of it wrong.

Nevertheless, I put my faith in the Dao. Remember, Zihao, in your dark times, that Dao means many things, including ‘course’ or ‘way.’ The Dao is a myriad of paths, leading to a benevolent end. The Dao is everything, but it is also everything that is happening. It is a thing progressing. Would something great enough to become existence emanate itself for no good cause? Of course not. I may not understand that grand purpose, but, well, that’s why it’s called “faith” and not “understanding.”

Now there is a boy who can see merit. That changes many things. Especially when we can see heretics making a coordinated effort to sever dragon veins, steal or destroy fortune suppressing treasures, and demonstrate to the heavens that the kingdom is pretending to merit it does not actually have. Our fortune is bleeding out of us. And you know what happens when someone can’t stop the bleeding.

The Monastery is emptying out, covering the Broadsky Kingdom in full force. Expect to see very senior members of the Inner Court just about everywhere, and Core Disciples are starting to move around in a major way. Direct Disciples are too, so I’m going to be in the field shortly. What’s really alarming is that my master is starting to stir. You haven’t met a truly senior daoist, so let me just say that if one of them turns over their hand, the weather changes. That is only barely a metaphor. It may well be the literal truth.

Our mountain sits on the largest dragon vein, and most significant geomantic node, in the entire country. Not the imperial capital, us. But veins circulate. Whether they are cut above or below us, we bleed out eventually, and we are already short on fortune.

Your job now is to escort Jin Treasure back to Mountain Gate City, and you are going to have a lot of help. Stay in whatever Temple or Convent you are in when you receive this letter, and use Elder Feng’s authority to send a top-urgency message reporting your location. I arranged to borrow a small sky barge, and am sending a few senior members of the Inner Court to come collect you all. They should be close behind this letter. Sorry to cut short your adventuring, but I think you will find things plenty exciting back home.

I am proud of you, my son. Some days I look out over the sea of clouds and laugh at the wonder of the world. Myself, sitting on top of the mountain I always looked at from below, and my good son running around the low country, making the world a better place. What a wonder. What a holy wonder it is. I can’t wait to share some new teas with you, and see how your skill has grown.

Come see me.

Fu