Sky Pride

Chapter 9- Needs and Wants

“Disciple Tian Zihao greets Master Cruel Treachery.”

Hong clasped her hands and echoed Tian.

“No genuflection? No, I suppose not, after having said all that. Well, if you wouldn’t kneel before ancient monsters like Voidcatcher or Merciless, why should I be special?”

The words felt bitter to Tian. He wondered if she had intended them to be ironic. Had he been a bad teacher for Han? Tian thought he had done his very best for him, but had he somehow wronged the boy by not creating a master-disciple relationship? It seemed absurd, but none of the elders were stupid. Presumably there was something he was still not understanding.

“So much, Disciple Tian. So much. What’s worse is that you have led Disciple Hong around to your way of thinking. Two years ago, she would have understood. And no, you didn’t wrong that Han child. You raised him well.”

Right. Mind reading. He didn’t have that useful amulet anymore. The Myriad Colors Holy Land didn’t let them outside. He did have a thought-isolating spell, but had completely fallen out of the habit of using it after leaving the Mountain. He could feel Cruel Treachery snorting, even if it wasn’t audible.

She still hadn’t opened her mouth. Tian found it a pretty mild quirk, given the absolute blue of her eyes. He had the growing feeling that they weren’t simply blue colored. It felt like he was looking into a blue sky. He half wondered if he would see a cloud crossing them.

“The Sky Treading Art, at its core, places the human in the heavens, and gives them agency. That is a crucial word- agency. The power to make choices. This is the ‘treading’ part of the title, you can walk where you will, not driven hither and thither by the winds of fate or circumstance. In theory.”

The two disciples nodded.

“What does it mean to place the human in the heavens? Both the literal meaning of the words, and the metaphorical meaning. Flying without a tool is the signature ability of the basic mastery level of the Sky Treading Art, though even at the Human Realm, it is considerably slower and more tiring than using a sword or, yes, a boat, or flying on the back of a bird.”

That made sense to Tian. Swimming was more tiring than riding on a boat. Or so he imagined, anyway.

“The cultivator must, wait, you can’t float? Not being able to swim I understand, most people can’t swim, but you don’t float at all? That’s… neither here nor there. And Disciple Hong is in increasing danger of blowing away in a high breeze. I suppose that is sort of helpful in learning the Sky Treading Art.” She was sounding rather tired now.

“The metaphorical meaning of the name of the art, the actually important meaning, is to situate the divine thought in the world of heavenly qi.”

Tian felt Grandpa suddenly grip his shoulder. He could feel the old ghost giving Cruel Treachery his full attention.

“The human bridges the heavens and the earth, but it is ultimately rooted in the earth. What transcends this limitation? Qi and Shen. What is qi and shen? The energetic origin of the universe, and the divine thought that transcends the immediate and material. The Sky Treading Art teaches you to separate your qi and shen from their earthly confines, filling them with the vastness of heavens. When you are ready, when your energy bodies are sufficiently full, you bring the illumination of shen. The divine thought that transforms a void into the heavens, and reveals all it shines upon. At the end of the imperfect mortal realm, you condense it all back again, and are reborn as something greater. Something free of the shackles of mortality.”

She closed her eyes, the lids drifting down like clouds shrouding the sky. “I’ll let you know the details of that step once I manage it for myself.”

Tian and Hong bowed deeply.

“You still have a copy of the philosophical teachings of the Ancient Crane? Good. You memorized them, in fact. Hah. How filial. Well, lend your copy to your dao companion. She will need to study it to fully grasp the meaning within the chant of the Sky Treading Art. It’s rather long, so we will begin by memorizing it in sections. Sit. This will take some time.”

The sun was setting by the time they had the chant memorized. Understanding would take years, and even the initial breathing and energy circulation pattern was considerably tricky. They were to come back the day after tomorrow at dawn, for Treachery to guide them through their first cultivation session.

“It will be easier for you than for most, as you already cultivate high quality Heavenly cultivation spells. You can cultivate both, incidentally, the spells are of sufficiently high quality. It’s only the low quality stuff that you need to worry about crippling you.”

She sighed. “I can’t help but feel that some of your stubbornness comes from the fact you already have a clear path forward. You have your own reliance in those spells you cultivate, and so don’t need your elders in the sect for your progression. It’s part of the deal, to put it in depraved terms. It’s the bargain. We have seen further. We have delved deeper. We have inherited a legacy, a heritage older than kingdoms, propagated by affection, interests and ideals. We offer immortality. We offer power enough to reshape the world, at least locally. We offer freedom from want. Freedom from anxiety. Asking that you treat us as family doesn’t seem like too terrible a requirement.”

They both had the sense of being waved away, though she still hadn’t stirred a muscle bigger than her eyelids.

“Go. When you see your friend Wang, tell him that you have taken me as your master. I don’t want our terms made public, but you can tell him,” The bitterness was inescapable now, he could feel it boring towards his marrow, “That what I have accepted from two people, I can accept from three. Tell him that there is at least one person on this mountain who doesn’t cross his bottom line.”

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Brother Wang had broken through with a true revelation? That was fabulous news! Though that made it even more surprising that he didn’t have a master yet. Tian would have thought the elders would be fighting tooth and nail to recruit such a lucrative student.

Cruel Treachery’s eyes snapped open, the blue suddenly very cold. For the first time she opened her mouth. “Scram!”

The two kept their thoughts to themselves until they had returned to their cave home. There was a lot to think about, but Tian kept returning to the immense bitterness that Cruel Treachery didn’t bother to hide. Ultimately, he could only sigh and let it go for now.

“Want me to treat you like a mother? Did you ever treat me like a son? Grandpa, am I wrong about all this?”

In the sense of local mores and customs? Absolutely. In terms of harming your future prospects? Absolutely not. The piece, or one of the pieces anyway, that you aren’t remembering is that this is her home. The sect is her family and it has been for thousands of years. Thousands. The faces change, but the legacies and disciple-descendants of her contemporaries remain. In a sense, she may lose people, but she has kept the extended family.

Seeing someone who should be an emblem of that extended family actively despising and mistrusting it, insisting on the family being an institution, that the family lower itself to meet him on his terms, not theirs, hurts. And what hurts worse is that she knows doing it is necessary for her home to survive. Where you two lead, the next generation will follow. Wang first, then probably that librarian girl, then likely Little Treasure. The older generation, if more of them break through, will fall in line easily enough, but they won’t be pillars of the sect the way Fu and you kids will be. And Fu… keeps his own council. He’s burnt too, and is exactly the kind of person who can bend a flow in the direction he prefers, not where others would have it go.

An old, boney hand patted Tian’s shoulder. She didn’t do you wrong, though. I didn’t give the Monastery enough credit. There is some real depth to this art. I’m not going to be able to adjust it with everyone breathing down your neck, but what it is, is already surprisingly good. Peak third tier, I’d say. I’m deducting points for the absurdly picky energy body filling method, the qi refining speed is at a fine-not-great level, ditto the circulation complexity, honestly it would be at the bottom of the third tier except for the shen component. That is quite good, and is setting you up beautifully for your breakthrough to the perfected human realm. In that regard, and only that regard, it actually exceeds the Darknorth Sea Spell.

If it was only slightly better, itʼd be a second tier spell. I could make it peak second tier… ah, never mind. Your teacher must have some troubles if she isn’t able to break through after studying this art for so long. It should be an absolute doddle for her.

Tian and Liren made a simple dinner, rediscovering the old rhythms of life in their cave. Tian took a few moments to admire their new tea tree. It must be admitted that tea trees are not the most lovely trees in the forest. The silvery bark was covered in brown, rough patches. Not a disease, it was just how the bark looked, quite normal for a tea tree. The branches were twisty things, tending towards the spindly. It was early days, of course. The tree was barely a few years old.

“Should we set up that qi condensing formation in our cave? It takes a few crystals to run, but it’s not too expensive. Frankly, we can afford it, and it would probably do all the plants and things a lot of good.” Liren suggested.

Tian nodded, still lost in memories of the day. “Yes, that sounds good. I’m going to stay up tonight. I need to meditate.”

“I’ll keep you company. I’m not as mad as I was, but every now and then it sneaks up on me. I’ll have to head over to the Disciplinary Squad and start that going. I have… so many ideas. So many plans. It sounds like no one will argue too much with me about them either. Lucky them. How are you feeling?”

“Sad. Frustrated, confused, overwhelmed, and sad.”

She smiled, understanding. “A good time to meditate, then.”

The two meditated through the night, not cultivating just thinking through things. Occasionally one would stand and slowly run through a weapon drill or practice some boxing. Tian spent ten minutes making a single cup of tea, and stared into the second cup for a half hour before discarding it and fixing himself a fresh one. Liren declined his silent offer, pouring over the slip containing the spear art she received from Merciless.

When dawn came, he greeted it with staff in hand. He gathered the feeling of righteousness around him and slowly ran through a simple drill. He was still drawn to the image of the tree over the water, but he could feel what Grandpa meant by the limitations of the arts he used as the inspiration for his nameless staff art. Moon Crossing the Lake was a movement art, but it was rooted in illusion and deception, being untouchable. The tree was an adaptation of the Advent of Spring, which wasn’t a combat art in the first place. The actual staff arts at the core were all unmentionable dreck, only learned for their few good ideas and a dearth of better options.

His hands spun the smooth wood, grasping and releasing, raising and lowering. The core of it must be the righteousness. All the other imagery, the other inspiration, could be changed or dispensed with. What was at the core could not change. He was someone who would fight the pain. He would fight the corruption and sickness, in people and the world. He was someone who would slay a mad god. He didn’t need some precious tool to do it, and that’s all a weapon was- a tool. It was the hands moving the tool, and the will moving the hands, that truly mattered.

Liren knelt near him, her spear planted on the ground in front of her. She didn’t touch it. She just watched it, as the sun rose above it. Watched as it cast the first shadows of the day on the ground before it. Saw the hole it left in the world. She drew in a long breath, then exploded forward. Liren snatched up the spear and thrust. It was much slower than Tian was used to seeing. Not at all fitting with the speed she was moving when she grabbed it. But from what he observed out of the corner of his eye, the spear had a monstrous weight to it now. It no longer just pierced, it crushed. This required different qi and a different way of thinking about both spears and the elements as she used them. The first step of her broadening path.

The two silently refined their arts, discarding what wasn’t useful, constantly searching for the right balance and the essential core. Their moves were sometimes rough, sometimes smooth, always exploring, never sentimental. There was a humility to it, an appreciation of how they fell short of their own standards. There was an arrogance to it too.

They didn’t see the two elders watching them, nor the bitter expressions they didn’t bother hiding. The arts the two practiced, within but apart from the sect, were things that were not of the sect. They were things they had found outside, things that were no worse than the best the sect could offer. The sect could still help guide them. Stop them from taking a wrong turn in their studies. Speed up their mastery by years. But those were things the youths could dispense with. An ascetic and a revolutionary, they could dispense with most things, or find them themselves. The sect had taught them to be self-reliant.