B2 Chapter 26
Orange-crest didn't really remember what being in the womb felt like, though he was told he'd spent time in one once. He hadn't even known what a womb was until Li Xun had forced him to read seven different tomes about anatomy. But if he were to describe what being encased in stone felt like, it seemed an apt analogy. At least from what he'd read. Even being immersed in still waters was not so all-encompassing. Not so... Comfortable. Sometimes his stone form scared him. Orange-crest felt like if he turned into stone in the wrong location, in the wrong state of mind, he might remain that way for countless years, until something happened to remind him that there existed a world beyond the coldless void in which he floated.
Orange-crest could not even feel the bat that he knew was struggling in his grip, nor the air that had to be whistling past him. He barely felt when the pair of them bounced off the rocky wall of the waterfall.
But he definitely felt it when they slammed into the base of the waterfall with enough force to reduce a mortal monkey's bones to dust. A moderately intense jolt, to a Stone Monkey. The reminder he'd been waiting for, that he was monkey as well as stone.
Orange-crest returned to flesh in an instant, already reaching for the knife tucked beneath the jade band around his left arm. The world around him was a thunderous cacophony, water pounded into his back, pushing and dragging the wrestling animals along as it drained deeper into the earth.
The bat croaked pitiably beneath him, orange-crest could barely make out one wing bent back upon itself at a horrific angle, pinned beneath its prone body. Its qi began to rise, gathering in its gaping and disturbingly tooth-filled maw.
"No." He told it in the true tongue, knife rising high.
The raging qi the bat was gathering did not abate, so orange-crest stabbed it. Or, he tried to. The bat was much stronger than him in cultivation. When his knife descended to strike it, it did so slowly, as if he was swinging his arm underwater. The bat's qi was almost more of an impediment than the true waters raging around them, it was hardly a wonder that none of their ranged attacks had landed. But instinctive cultivator or no, it was still an oversized bat. Half the size orange-crest had been when he first joined the sect, closer to a third of his current size. Slowly, almost gently, his arm descended, slipping the wickedly sharp knife into what should have been a lung.
The bat flinched. The intake of breath, the gathering of razor-wind qi, stopped. But the gathered power was already substantial.
Orange-crest met the bat's eyes. His own were adjusting to the deepened darkness, he could see the other animal clearly now. He was already planning moves. Flash stone if it released the attack. Revert immediately, rip the knife up and out, pin it's wickedly clawed feet with his bulk, and stab through an eye. The wind-blast would probably hurt, this close. The bat was not weak, just a poor match for him in the clinch. But it wouldn't be as assuredly fatal as one-and-a-half-finger-lengths of human-forged steel to the eye would be.
He could not see what emotions passed through his opposite's eyes. He wondered if it saw the reluctant murder in his own.
"Peace?" He asked, not really expecting a response. The bat didn't really seem like a Speaker. Apparently, just being an instinctive cultivator of some merit was not enough to grant one that talent.
For a long moment they held each other's lives in maw and paw.
The gathering qi dissipated.
Orange-crest pulled his knife free with an ugly squelching noise. Not ideal for the bat, medically speaking, but the knife had to come out at some point. The bat flopped forward, hopping on its good wing. It fled to where the water was deeper, trusting in the current to carry it away.
The monkey crawled back to the edge of where the waterfall pounded into the earth, where the falling water was constant, but neither blinding nor crushing. He could see a distant glow above, but the color seemed a little off for Li Shuwen's light. Perhaps he'd fallen further than he expected, and distance made the light look strange. How strange to think that he'd grown beyond the fear of falling. It seemed there was no height at all that could hurt him.
Should he have killed the bat? The others would all say yes. It was a potential threat, alive. Potentially valuable, butchered. Some human could probably make shoes out of its wings or something. Grind up its teeth to powder their flywhisks. It was just an animal, after all. Even Li Xun sometimes forgot how darkly such cold logic could ring in orange-crest's ears.
Perhaps orange-crest was being a hypocrite. Men had words for everything, even the flaws in themselves they strained not to notice. He ate plenty of meat.
It wasn't like monkeys preferred the lives of others over their own kind. But it was different. Men's packs were bigger. Those of other packs enemies, not strangers. And most animals something less even than strangers. Fruit on the vine, waiting to be plucked.
Orange-crest stared up at the waterfall. Keeping his eyes open was difficult, but he wanted to, so he did. What did it matter? The choice was made. The bat spared.
He was thinking too much lately. He thought he'd found a balance between the ways of human and monkey. Between him and what he now knew to be the shape of the world. But he hadn't, had he? He'd made peace with what he could, and buried what he couldn't.
Enough thinking. What did he want?
To meditate beneath the waterfall? The surging flows were pleasant, brushing his stiff fur this way and that. Even through the qi suppressing talisman, he could feel strange energies here. Flavors of qi he would like to know better. But he didn't have long, and cultivating was not exactly stealthy, he'd need to keep an eye cracked for danger. Maybe one day in the future, when he was stronger, he would return.
He could wait quietly. But that was boring.
Orange-crest took more careful stock of his surroundings. The basin at the base of the waterfall was wide and shallow. The falling water scattered as it fell, its force diminished by the sheer volume of space available to receive it. The scattered waters rejoined further into the cavern, finding their way into several smaller rivulets that wound their way deeper into the earth.
Orange-crest knew where the water came from, rain. Probably from all across the mountain. But he could not even begin to imagine where it would end up.
He would press on, he decided. He wanted to see the patriarch's forge. It was supposed to be on one of the rivers. His master said immortal blacksmiths could heat metal so hot it would take years submerged in water to cool back down!
The monkey wanted to see that. He wondered if the patriarch would be there. Everyone else seemed very sure he wouldn't be, but what did they know? He didn't know very much, and most of the other disciples knew even less than him.
Orange-crest crawled out of the water. He didn't know how the others would get down, but his master could surely leap from any height. He no doubt would, just as soon as he secured the safety of the rest of the pack.
Orange-crest hesitated. How would they get back? He couldn't climb that waterfall. He shook the fear out of his head. His master probably had li upon li of rope, he'd packed the storage treasure after all. He'd move on. Get to the safety of the forge and wait for the others.
The monkey advanced into the next layer of the undersect. It was brighter than he expected. Still dismally dark, but not as dark as it'd been above. Li Shuwen's distant golden light helped, but most of the illumination came from patches of azure lichen, glowing of their own accord. They shined so brightly orange-crest had at first mistaken them for veins of spirit stones within the rock.
A little disappointing, but helpful. Seeing things made an adventure a lot more fun. It also helped him find where his whitewood staff had fallen.
Orange-crest considered the various exits from the waterfall cavern. One was too small. The patriarch might be mighty, but he was human, and he wouldn't want to crawl to get to his forge. Another was too wet. The whole entrance was covered with water to the height of one's ankles. Humans didn't like that either. The third was driest and brightest. And the light wasn't all blue. There was an odd quality to it, a light that looked almost muddy. Browner than light should be. Blue mixed with something else. Firelight?
It seemed the obvious choice, he could always backtrack.
Orange-crest crept down that tunnel, hunting the light. His eyes were peeled for danger, but his mind was filled with visions of forges. He wondered what wonders the most powerful cultivator orange-crest had ever heard of might have left behind. A man his master insisted stood an entire great realm higher than the Monkey King. His hand drifted to the gourd at his side, a gift from his absent brother. He already had a good gourd. But he couldn't help but wonder what sort of vessel a man like that could shape from metal.
The forge was said to be sealed by his divine sense. Orange-crest probably wouldn't be able to get in and ransack it. But there was no downside to checking.
He followed the gradient of the light down a tunnel that turned several times. Slowly, the light grew from an ambient glow just bright enough to make out shapes and teeth to the tell-tale warmth of firelight. After a few hundred more chi, orange-crest stood before a torch. A very normal looking torch, in a sconce set into a stone wall.
He didn't feel qi coming from it, but the torch emanated that curious sense of weight and realness that the monkey had come to associated with the Nascent Soul realm. It'd probably been burning for years without maintenance. That certainly qualified as a treasure.
It also emanated something else. A sense of danger like a naked blade. Not hostile, but capable of becoming hostile in a moment. It reminded orange-crest of the stone-dream, of Big-Crest's measuring gaze.
Orange-crest decided not to touch the torch. He didn't want it that badly.
The forge was said to keep out spirit beasts. Perhaps he straddled the line just enough that it was not certain how to classify him? The monkey wondered if it was not beasts itself that were barred, but instinctive cultivators. He might not be human, but his unfinished Monkey Refining Law had more in common with their methods than the way instinctive cultivators just ate things and became more.
It seemed as good a guess as any. The monkey certainly wasn't going to question his good fortune. He moved deeper, walking as respectfully as he knew how.
Perhaps he wouldn't try touching any ominous looking unattended weapons. No matter how shiny and powerful they looked. Best not give the forge any reason to decide he didn't count as human, even though he was a disciple of the patriarch's sect, with the stone token in his bag to prove it.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
One torch led to another. The distance between them reduced each time. Orange-crest was almost there. He couldn't wait to see the first of the Azure Mountain's secret treasures. He wondered if the forge would look like Big-Crest's cave, picked over and disused. A ruin by another name. Or if it would be pristine, untouched. Spared the ravages of time by the power of divine sense, which nobody seemed to be able to explain to the curious monkey.
There! The tunnel widened into another great chamber. A massive basin, dwarfing the waterfall cavern, filled with buildings. A forge? This was a whole complex! It was half the size of the Administration Hall! The central building had two floors! An entire mansion stuffed into a cave, courtyard and outbuildings and all!
Orange-crest sped up, breaking into a run. He wanted to see! And maybe to touch! He hardly knew where to look first, assuming the divine sense let him. There was one open pavilion with a high ceiling and a massive anvil beneath it. An anvil larger than his master's bed! It had a forge like Han Jian's, with bellows so colossal that orange-crest would need to jump to reach the top handle. Another building was so filled with wood that logs and tapers just spilled out through the open doorway. No need to worry about rain here he supposed. If he couldn't touch anything valuable, maybe he could climb up the massive woodpile and take a nap? His master would find him, and this place was clearly protected. It looked untouched! Maybe the patriarch was here! The monkey wasn't sure he wanted to meet him, but if he stumbled into the man's home, he probably wouldn't have any choice in the matter. Such a cultivator would do whatever he wished, and none could stop him.
Orange-crest froze mid-step.
There was something behind him. A bloodstained presence far stronger than him in spirit, stronger even than the Carrion Cap his master had dispatched had been. But there was something else there, within the qi that pressed down upon him. A familiarity. A whisper that he was not the prey the ravening beast sought.
Orange-crest did not trust that whisper.
A part of the monkey wanted to throw himself behind a building and turn himself to stone. To blind and bury himself and turn away. But that urge was from the part of him that had never left Mount Yuelu, and it had been shrinking for a long time now. The monkey that had lived among men turned, and faced the monster.
The tunnel was empty.
"I had wondered, what fools were making a racket fit to raise the dead. I should have known that I would find you among them."
Orange-crest stiffened. It had been months since he last heard any creature save himself speak the true tongue. He knew that voice.
"Formless-gleam." He exhaled, torn between relief, and sorrow.
"I should have suspected that you would somehow be involved with whatever doomed venture the humans had launched. Had I known, I would have endeavored to draw off the worst of the danger you provoked."
The fox that stepped out of the shadows was not the same one that orange-crest had left behind in the cold cave months ago. But then, orange-crest was not the same monkey he'd been. She was stronger now. The Great Circle of Qi Condensation. Somehow, orange-crest knew that she stood at the very apex of the realm. That if she became any stronger, she would have no choice but to advance. He found himself suspecting that she'd found a way to restrain or conceal her true cultivation all the same. It seemed very like her, to rejoice in deceit.
"I apologize, for leaving you without a word. But I have been busy." The fox said, flicking her twin tails. Her eyes were blood red, crystalline beads of fresh blood. Orange-crest wondered if they would ever be amber again.
He did not know how the fox had spent the last half year, but he knew what humans would say if they saw her. They would call her a demon. Orange-crest had complex feelings about the word, demon. It was so very human an idea, with so very many disparate concepts behind it. But whatever method she now cultivated had killed any hope within him that he might introduce her to his master. Her qi did not reek of blood, but the spiritual scent of it was unmistakable. Bloodstained, if not yet blood-soaked.
"Come." She continued. "Let us speak within. The human ruin will not allow us to truly make use of its facilities, but none of the other inhabitants of this gloomy place will trouble us. The blades might be sealed, but the torches alone are more than capable of dissuading anything below the Great Circle of Core Formation from trying their fortune."
Li Hou wondered, how exactly it was that she was not 'dissuaded'. He was a member of the sect, and cultivated a method that had been adapted from a human one.
"Okay." He agreed, burying tears and fears. "It is good to see you, my foxy friend."
"It is good to see you too, foolish monkey."
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"The sect is aware of my presence now. Inner disciples hunt me. I cannot freely roam the surface of the mountain as I once did. But the tunnels beneath the Azure Mountain extend for a dozen li in every direction. There are many entrances beyond the bounds of the sect proper."
Orange-crest did not ask why the sect hunted her. She did not volunteer the information.
"I am fighting in a human tournament. Winning. Also I can turn into a rock now. Almost forgot how to turn back, the first time."
It felt underwhelming, when orange-crest said it like that. It was hard to convey how incredible his stone form was. How it let him trade blows with humans like Yang Wei, or break the bones of beasts several realms above him. It felt odd, speaking in the true tongue, but occasionally punctuating their speech with the human language. If there was a way to say tournament in the true tongue, orange-crest did not know it. It had surprised him when formless-gleam began doing it first. She'd never used the human language last year.
"I see. You do smell... Earthy."
That somehow felt like an insult.
"Also I got very good at the technique you taught me. Still hard to make them move when I'm sober. And I can't always stay unseen like you, or create monkeys far away, or launch techniques from where they are, or conceal my footfalls. But I can make a lot of them. And make them move and talk, if I'm drunk enough."
Formless-gleam chuffed in amusement.
"Oh, how many is a lot?"
"Seven? Was tired, but using lots of pills. Maybe could do more."
"I suppose seven of you is a great many monkeys for anyone to suffer." Again, that somehow felt like an insult. Somehow formless-gleam could make the true tongue sound almost as backhanded as man's elegant tongue.
"We can be very loud." Orange-crest agreed, thinking of the end of his second fight with Yang Wei.
The two animals lapsed into silence. Orange-crest had never imagined that speaking with formless-gleam would one day feel like speaking to a human. That they would dance so carefully around what they really wanted to know about each other. There was so much he really should not tell her. She hated the Xiao Empire. She might well hunt the Seventh Prince if orange-crest let his presence slip.
It would be very bad if the important youth died. Orange-crest had no doubt he or his master would somehow be blamed.
He wasn't sure if he should tell her more than she already knew about the inheritances. If it were just the two of them, they could seek them together. In theory, the hidden realms shouldn't allow her to enter them. But then, if what he'd been told was correct, formless-gleam shouldn't be able to sit here in the patriarch's forge, curled up atop a massive woodpile, either.
Orange-crest trusted her not to betray him, not even for such a great prize. If it could not be shared, she would try her best to somehow compensate him if she managed to take it. He did not trust her to consider humans worthy of the same consideration, instead of clambering over their corpses.
"Do you remember, the human who opened your shoulder with an arrow?" The fox asked. "Back on the day I showed you the Sun-Swallowing Bear?"
"No? Was far, only remember the arrow."
"I see. Never mind, then."
Orange-crest wondered, but feared to press.
"You are not alone, are you?" Formless-gleam asked instead.
"No. My master is close."
"A powerful human cultivator is cutting a bloody swathe through the deeps. Do you know of him?"
"Xiao Wenchuan. Nascent Soul. Avoid. He will not show mercy to you."
"I expected as much. Do you know why he's here?"
"No." Orange-crest lied. "But a friend knew he would come. And that his presence would create opportunities."
Formless-gleam stared through him. Orange-crest felt his fur prickle beneath his gaze.
"Friend is Yang Wei. You would hate him. Is a little like me. Foolish. Except much worse. He would insist on fighting you. Not because you are fox. But because you are stronger. I think his uncle broke him."
That comment got a single amused tail flick out of formless-gleam.
"I will endeavor to avoid him then, one of you is more than enough."
It wasn't a promise. But it was more than the monkey had expected.
"Do you remember, the centipede we killed together?" Orange-crest asked. "I made wine, from it's core."
"Centipede wine." Formless-gleam said dryly. Why did everyone act like that was strange? There was nothing wrong with eating bugs. Or drinking them.
"Yes. Is strong. And... Strange. Protean, my master calls it."
"I see."
"A toast?" Orange-crest asked, pulling the gourd off his belt.
The fox stared at him.
"I'm not truly here, you know."
"I know."
Formless-gleam's illusion sighed.
"Leave it outside. I'll drink with you."
Orange-crest found a rock with a shallow depression on one side. Not really a bowl, but formless-gleam had a perfectly functional tongue. He poured a small amount of wine, hardly a sip, into the rock.
He would have preferred a saucer, but he hadn't brought one, and the patriarch's power sealing the forge apparently meant that trespassers could touch things, but move nothing. Doors and cupboards did not budge, nor those giant bellows shift beneath his weight. He'd even turned to stone, but they hadn't shifted a hair's width. Even the woodpile was immovable. Orange-crest could not budge a single splinter from it's place as he scrambled back up it.
The monkey wasn't sure why he was offering a toast. This wine was dangerous. Other than him, only his master had ever tried a sip of it. But he somehow felt like he was losing this conversation, like the fox was leading them both toward tragedy, and he had no idea how to put them back on a better path.
Orange-crest felt the moment weighing upon him. What he said here mattered. He wasn't sure how, but it did.
"Peace, and long life." Orange-crest said, hefting the gourd. He took the smallest sip he could. It tasted like blood in his mouth, and went down sweet.
He felt when formless-gleam lapped at the wine. Her placid qi shuddered, unused to the unyielding chaos of the centipede wine. The illusion in front of him swam as if submerged in water. And for just a moment, orange-crest could have sworn he saw a third tail behind the fox.
He felt something else from outside the shed. A fluctuation of qi more powerful, and stranger, than any he'd felt from the fox thus far. It didn't feel like Qi Condensation, but Foundation Establishment. The qi was denser, like water compared to air. And somehow, it didn't feel entirely like a fox either. Somehow it felt almost... Human. He said nothing. He knew the fox would leave in an instant if he ever mentioned such a thing.
"Long life." Formless-gleam echoed a moment later, her composure reclaimed.
It was orange-crest's turn to stare through his drinking companion.
"I came with others." He said, watching carefully. "Other human disciples. They tolerate me. I hope that one day, you might join us."
Two tails flicked against the wall of the woodshed. The impacts were crisp, the sound perfectly timed. Formless-gleam truly was a monster with illusions.
"And I hope, that one day, you will see them for what they are. I will be waiting for you, when you do."
"Will you avoid the others, as you will Yang Wei? He's the sharp one, by the way."
"I know of Yang Wei. And I will offer them all the same mercy that they might offer me, were our places reversed."
That was fair. He'd expected no more.
"None of them would dare hurt you. I would not let them. My master would beat them black and blue if they tried."
"Then I suppose I will not touch them. So long as you or your master are near."
Orange-crest fell silent. He pulled a pair of very sodden oatcakes from his bag, and tossed one out of the woodshed. It disappeared the moment he looked away. He munched sullenly on the other.
"You came at an auspicious time." Formless-gleam said. "Strange things are happening in the layer below."
"Strange?"
"Space itself bends in ways it should not. The humans are doing something. Yet fewer of them brave the deeps than usual."
Orange-crest hummed as if he knew more than he did.
Formless-gleam's illusion stiffened.
"Another approaches. A human female, smelling of smoke and ozone."
"Xiao Shulan. One of mine. Distant blood of the powerful one. Least friendly of our temporary-pack."
"I see. I will take my leave."
Orange-crest nodded.
"Be careful."
"I should be telling you that, foolish monkey."
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Xiao Shulan had feared the worst, when the monkey was not present at the bottom of the waterfall. Doubly so when she'd not seen the corpse of the Windtooth Bat either. Daoist Scouring Medicine seemed reasonable, but more attached to his disciple than she was comfortable with. In the worst case, she could at least cast blame for his death upon the others, who had not even rushed to the monkey's aid.
By the time she reached the patriarch's forge and found it empty, she'd all but resigned herself to suffering through an unpleasant conversation. Until she smelt alcohol on the air, and followed the pungent scent to the woodshed.
"Oatcake?" The odd cadence of Li Hou's voice was unmistakable. The monkey himself was much harder to spot, lounging atop a precarious looking pile of firewood a dozen chi in height. He'd wedged himself in a small gap just beneath the ceiling of the tall shed.
"It's wet." The monkey added, waving the spoiled and half-eaten flatbread at her.
Xiao Shulan sighed, and sat down to cultivate. All the small indignities would be worth bearing, once they reached the inheritance grounds.