B2 Chaper 39
The Seventh Prince groaned softly beneath Li Xun's hands. They were not gentle hands, his master's. But they were healing ones.
Orange-crest sat at the human's feet, propped up against the wall. A stone pillow for the Stone Monkey. A pity. The prince was softer.
The soft human would live. His master had declared it, and so it would be. His master did not have any more Foundation Establishment level healing pills. Orange-crest hadn't known that. He'd lied, when he said he had more in his bottomless bag. He'd given them all to his disciple.
But though he protested he was no Immortal Doctor, Li Xun was lying about that too. He treated the prince's many injuries with an easy grace. Punctures were stuffed and bandaged. The prince's shivering stopped after his master carefully fed him a pungent herbal paste that warmed the body, working the unconscious royal's jaw for him. Lesser healing pills supported his spirit and bolstered his vitality, giving his body the strength to cross back from death's door.
"He'll live." Li Xun said softly, still staring consideringly at his patient.
"Good." Orange-crest murmured. "I like him. Maybe hate to like him. Like to hate him?"
"Should I sedate him? He will wake within the hour."
Orange-crest thought about it.
"No."
"Very well."
It seemed orange-crest was not the only one choosing trust this day.
"It seems you've had quite the adventure. You're stronger than when I left you. The fifth stage at your age is a remarkable accomplishment."
Orange-crest smiled at his master.
"It was all an adventure. Every day on the mountain. With you. A great adventure."
Li Xun stiffened.
"You speak as if it is ending. You won't die here. Your body is hale, you are merely exhausted. A few days of sleep will see you recovered, even without a pill."
Orange-crest told his master everything. He moved quickly, leaping from place to place. The speaker he'd met upon the mountain. The centipede in the cold cave. The fox's disappearance, and reemergence. Xiao Shulan's choice, and the Seventh Prince's. His decision to stand against both of them. His voice faltered when it came to what he'd done to Grand Elder Tian's inheritance. Had he broken it, used it, or claimed it? He did not know.
But he did know that he'd raised his fists to a Prince of the Xiao, risked the man's death to thread the needle of fate, in pursuit of a certainty only he could see.
He had no future in the sect. His master might not either.
Orange-crest fell silent, awaiting judgement. He had done what was right. But there were two creatures beneath Heaven whose judgement would shake even his righteous heart. His master, and his king. Li Xun had earned that right.
"You should have told me." Li Xun said eventually. "The fox would not be the only demon I have knowingly sheltered. I... I would have slain her. If I met her after she changed. But if you introduced us before she began cultivating those arts, perhaps I might have helped her. I have some experience, with the costs of that road."
"I was scared. I did not trust you, when it was early. And I did not trust her, when it was late."
"Are you certain, that I should let the prince wake? It would be slow going, but I could bear both of you to the surface. I have sedatives enough to keep him from calling for help until we've a lead of days."
Orange-crest met his master's eyes.
"Are you afraid?"
"I should be. But the hour is late." Li Xun took a deep breath. "There is a reason I did not give you my bag to take into the realm. A reason beyond sentiment or selfishness. After you told me about those strange worms you use to make wine, I made another trip to the outskirts of Mount Yuelu. From those humble creatures, I refined a terrible weapon. You are not the only one with secrets. If the sect comes for me, I will be ready."
Orange-crest was too tired to be as concerned about this revelation as he should have been. It was strange. When he drank wine, there was both a fire and a sleepiness in it. But when he fought drunk, the fire burned away far faster than the creeping exhaustion. Orange-crest wondered if he could one day learn to burn away the sleepiness of drunkenness as he did the furious vitality of it. If he could consume exhaustion to sleep harder, more deeply, and perhaps more quickly? It was an odd thought.
"Li Hou?"
Orange-crest blinked. Time had passed. He knew not how much, only that it was the right amount of time to be passing.
"We can leave now. I can carry you while you sleep."
"Almost. But not yet."
Grand Elder Tian's command of fate hadn't yet fully left orange-crest. He wondered if it ever would. Or if someone would descend to take it. It was strange, just how much heresy one could fit in a respectable sect. He wondered if it was the same everywhere, or if the Azure Mountain of the Empire of Xiao was just more crooked, or more honest, than most. Formless-gleam was more right than she could have dreamed when she said that this was man's world, the rest of them just lived in it.
"It is rude to eavesdrop, Worthy Prince Yongzheng." Orange-crest said quietly.
The Seventh Prince's eyes opened. Orange-crest met them.
"Did you claim it? Grand Elder Tian's inheritance?"
Li Xun's eyes turned to his disciple. The Seventh Prince was not the only one who wanted to know.
"No. I broke it." Orange-crest skillfully lied poorly. "Like a clumsy monkey is wont to do."
"I don't believe you."
"You don't want to believe me." Orange-crest corrected. "But you do."
"You played us both. We did not understand, that you were as resolved as either of us in pursuit of your frivolous cause."
"There was no playing, in that place."
"And now, are we playing with words?"
Orange-crest tilted his head, feigning obliviousness.
"I am glad you are not dead, Your Highness."
Xiao Yongzheng slowly peeled himself off the floor of the cave, propping himself along the wall next to orange-crest.
"Daoist Scouring Medicine." He greeted absently, his eyes fixed upon the monkey. "You have taught a remarkable disciple."
"I thank His Highness for such kind words." Li Xun's words were clipped and formal. His eyes were low.
"Are we enemies?" Orange-crest asked bluntly. His master winced. It wasn't what he meant, really. Xiao Yongzheng was an enigma to him in many ways.
"Are you my subject?" The prince returned, equally indirect. He wasn't even emperor yet! That question made no sense on the surface. Orange-crest didn't need to think about the answer though.
"No."
"Then you have answered your own question."
Orange-crest didn't think that made sense. From the face he was making, his master did not either. He tried his best to picture the shape of the prince's mind. What he might be feeling. Slighted, or grateful. Stolen from, or defeated. Fearful, or judgmental.
He couldn't. The prince was just too far from his understanding of the world.
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The three of them fell silent for a time. Daoist Scouring Medicine raised his hands as if to inspect the prince, then dropped them to his side at the last instant. Orange-crest's master remained on his knees, waiting to be dismissed, or called upon.
"She will come for you, one day." Xiao Yongzheng said eventually. "One day her path will demand your blood, or your master's."
Orange-crest rose unsteadily to his feet.
"No. One day I'll come for her. One day sooner."
Xiao Yongzheng nodded.
"I shall hold you to that oath. Fly then, if you will. I will neither aid nor hinder you. I have thinking of my own to do, before I call upon my uncle."
Oh. Orange-crest understood now. The prince had decided formless-gleam was his responsibility. He was washing his hands of both vengeance and obligation. He would blame orange-crest, when she began killing again. Expect him to take responsibility for his choices, and hers. That was... Not the way of animals. But it was more merciful than he'd expected of royalty.
Orange-crest staggered to his master's side. Li Xun rose quickly to catch the unsteady monkey.
"Let's go, master. I want... I want to show you, many things."
No need to say more in front of the prince than strictly necessary. The information existed to piece together where they would flee. But neither Daoist Enduring Oath nor Disciple Yang Wei were likely to share it.
The monkey clambered up on his master's back like he was a youngling again, fighting off eyelids as heavy as Yang Wei's descending saber.
"I hope I can be better." He murmured, just loud enough to be audible. "I hope you can too."
Orange-crest passed out.
Daoist Scouring Medicine shrugged, trying to get the sleeping monkey to rest more evenly across his shoulders. His disciple's limbs seemed to stiffen, as if he were shifting to stone as he slept. He was heavier than before as well, befitting his advanced cultivation. Heavier, but not so heavy he could not yet bear Li Hou upon his back for a thousand li.
Li Xun turned away from the convalescing prince, and took his first steps toward Mount Yuelu.
It was just past dawn when orange-crest awoke.
He wasn't fully rested. He felt like he could sleep for two more days. But something was coming. The 'Wei' character in his dantian was flitting about like an agitated butterfly, sending odd vibrations through orange-crest's qi.
He was still on his master's shoulder. The li steadily vanished beneath his master's powerful strides as the sun rose once more into the heavens.
Something was coming, but it wasn't yet here.
As he watched the dark violet of the predawn sky vanish into bloody red and blazing orange, orange-crest wondered just how many times the sun had risen over this land. What it had seen. What had happened in those early days, to create the world they now lived in.
He wondered how much the Monkey King knew of that misty history.
Six hundred and forty three years. That was how long the Empire of Xiao had stood.
"You're awake."
Orange-crest didn't know what gave him away. His master was mysterious like that. The Seventh Prince was a phenomenal actor indeed to conceal his own wakefulness from Li Xun as long as he had.
"I am."
"I can bear you a while longer. You can continue resting. We are a day out of the sect, perhaps a day and a half from Mount Yuelu. I took a more circuitous route than I usually do."
"It is strange, going home."
"Are you afraid it will not be as you remember it?"
"No." Orange-crest said quietly. "I'm afraid I won't be."
Orange-crest hugged tight to his master, feeling stone slowly flake off his fur as Li Xun ran.
"After we spend some time upon Mount Yuelu, there are places I wish to show you."
"Oh?" Orange-crest asked.
"I... I have not seen as much of the Empire as I would like. I have seen many places. But so many of them were under dark and desperate circumstances. But some of my memories are happier than that. There is a house I still own, far out in the countryside. Daoists do not pay taxes on property, within certain limits. My parents lived there for decades. I would like to take you to their graves. I never had mortal children, but they would have liked you, I think. There are beautiful places in the south as well. Despite its dark reputation, the Thousand Poison Vale is a veritable playground for alchemists. There are astonishing spiritual plants I saw decades ago that needed more time to mature. I can think of no better companion than you to join me as I harvest them."
"I would like that."
"And the capital! You would not believe the scale of it! It is said there are greater cities in other kingdoms. But it is still beyond anything you have ever seen. Hundreds of thousands of people upon one mountain, living in peace, if not in harmony. Markets filled with treasures from every corner of the world!"
Orange-crest drifted between sleep and wakefulness. His master spoke of cities and rivers, mountains and seas.
"I want to go to an inn and have wine." Orange-crest interjected. "And nuts. Lots of nuts. And then go to a teahouse, and have a fight."
"That's-"
Li Xun laughed.
"What am I saying, with both of us there, that's definitely how it would go. We'll visit a teahouse. And an inn. No, a brewery!"
"A brewery." That sounded good.
"Nay, we'll visit every brewery along our road! I can't deny you any opportunity to explore other examples of your art after all. Perhaps you'll learn something. We'll need to disguise you though, or travel so far afield that word of a talking monkey does not make it back to the Azure Mountain."
Orange-crest chittered.
"I can disguise myself. As a human. Like I can disguise myself as a crowd."
"You can?"
"Yes. But only as Yang Wei. And it makes me act like him."
"That's... A technique? Or a variation upon one? You learned it below?"
"Yes-yes."
"Incredible. We shall have to speak in detail about this art the fox taught you later. But perhaps it would be better to have you visit teahouses under a great furred cloak. We could find you a very large hat. Or a veil."
"I could be Daoist Big Hat."
Li Xun's laughter was so vigorous that it made orange-crest's fur shake. He couldn't help himself, and began laughing as well. The image of a stooped over monkey in cavernous layered robes, with a great wide brimmed hat and a veil. It wasn't him. But he wanted it to be. He would happily conceal his nature to travel the world at his master's side. At least for a few years, until the others forgot about them.
Orange-crest leapt off his master's back, falling into step beside him. He sped up, and his master matched him.
"But first Mount Yuelu!"
"Of course."
"You need to meet big-butt. And red-eyes. Red-eyes will want to fight you."
"Should I let him win?"
"No. Nonono. Smash him good. He likes that. Or, he'd hate winning more. And everyone else likes that too. And the king! You must meet the king!"
"Yes. The Monkey King of Mount Yuelu. I have been looking forward to meeting him."
"You have so many questions, don't you?"
"What makes you say that?"
"I have many questions. So you must have more."
"I... I still struggle to imagine a Nascent Soul cultivator as approachable as you claim your king is."
"You will see! He's the most approachable! The most everything!"
Orange-crest sped up, rushing headlong toward the bright horizon. He wasn't at his best, but most of the injuries he'd taken in the fight with Xiao Yongzheng and formless-gleam were spiritual or surface level, and he'd consumed several pills. The deep aches and stinging cuts that had yet to close made him feel alive.
Li Xun leaned forward, and with one kick of his powerful legs launched himself through the air. Orange-crest cried at the implied challenge, pushing his legs harder to keep up with his master, feeling them pounding into the earth.
The first time he'd made this trip he'd not been conscious. He'd not even realized it was a journey of days until his master told him as much months later. Now, running at his master's side, it felt right.
And yet, fate's hot breath lingered on his neck.
"Master!" Orange-crest cried.
Li Xun turned back to regard his disciple, slowing just enough for the monkey to catch up.
"I lied. To the prince. Grand Elder Tian gave me something."
Li Xun's smile was wide enough one could have built a bridge across it.
"I knew it! You're always so reticent to speak of cultivation, like it's the last thing on your mind! But I knew you would not emerge from such madness emptyhanded."
"It is odd. I think I spilled most of it. But he might have meant that."
Li Xun nodded sagely.
"Nascent Soul cultivators are often mysterious like that. Inheritances doubly so."
"For a moment, I saw everything." Orange-crest continued. "Fate. But I wasn't allowed to remember it."
"Wasn't allowed." Li Xun repeated.
"Yes."
"Continue."
"I remember a little. Feel a little. Fate is here. Close. Like a hungry tiger."
"Elder Lu." It was not a question.
"Master." Li Hou said. "Promise me that you won't die."
Li Xun slowed.
"I cannot promise that."
"You are a cultivator. You can promise anything."
"How far you have come, from the drunken monkey I carried from Mount Yuelu. Yet still just as unreasonably demanding. Very well. I promise that so long as I live, I won't die on you."
"Good." Orange-crest said, unreasonably satisfied.
Li Xun kept slowing.
"Master?"
"You say we are fated to meet Elder Lu upon the road?"
"Probably? I don't know how things work. I just know things."
Li Xun came to a stop just past the apex of the hill they were summiting. The countryside stretched out before them. They'd avoided the main roads, but a village could be seen in the distance. Men crawled through rice fields like ants, cutting down the golden stalks. Orange-crest was struck numb by the sheer scale of it. The waves of golden grain must have covered easily ten times as much land as the village itself. No wonder humans were so numerous. He'd pondered what it might take for a cultivator to feed all of Mount Yuelu's monkeys months ago. Only now was he beginning to see there were reasons that it was not cultivators that fed humans, but humans that fed cultivators.
It was one thing to read of agriculture in books. Another to see it in life.
"If we are to meet our fate on the road, let us at least do so on a full stomach."
Orange-crest found that in this moment, he was more hungry to see more of the world than he was for food. Or, he was, until his master pulled a pair of bowls from his bottomless bag.
Fiery qi emanated from his master's hands, and the scent of pork and ginger and salt filled the air.
"It is still not how my mother used to make it, despite my repeated attempts." Li Xun complained. "But it is serviceable."
Orange-crest accepted a bowl gratefully.
"It is how my master used to make it." He muttered quietly. He accepted a pair of chopsticks, pretending not to see the solitary tear the words drew from his master's eye.
"Come, then. Eat. And tell me about your adventures in detail. How did you attain the fifth stage? What are the prince and your demoness like? How thoroughly did you beat the impetuous Young Mistress Shulan? Why is it Yang Wei alone whose guise you can borrow? Who was Grand Elder Tian, to leave behind such a mysterious inheritance?"
"She's not my demoness." Orange-crest protested.
"Really? The Seventh Prince certainly sounded like he expected you to take responsibility for her."
"Master!"
For an hour, orange-crest and his master ate and talked. For an hour, the world waited. But the food vanished, and with it their excuse to linger.
And then they felt it. The unmistakable presence of a Core Formation cultivator exerting the full might of their powers, approaching at tremendous speed.
Bowls were discarded, as man and monkey leapt to their feet.
Li Xun's eyes tracked the horizon, his fingers hovering over the mouth of his storage treasure. Orange-crest watched them wiggle ominously, flexing in anticipation.
And then the fingers stilled, and Li Xun smiled.