B3 Chapter 9
Orange-crest didn't sleep well.
He did not sleep poorly. Rather, he did not sleep, and he did it well.
It was a pleasant change from the bitter inaction that had dogged him since that fateful day. Doing nothing had become a refuge from doing anything, from the unbearable heaviness of existing. He'd cultivated out of a sense of duty. Tireless, because he was always tired. Unyieldingly focused, because he could not think of any plan to help his master that did not begin with him growing stronger. But during the hours he'd not forced himself to cultivate, orange-crest had escaped himself by doing nothing. Seeking sleep when it did not wish to be found. Running from his new thoughts and old family as often as they allowed him to. Drinking as much wine as he could produce, seeking a peace his weak wines could not bring him.
Tonight... Orange-crest let it all go, for a few hours. He lay back beneath the pines and willow, his head propped up against a stone, letting the hours of Hong Bo's rest gently pass him by.
He'd once used a prince as a pillow, hadn't he? How far he'd fallen. How far he'd come.
Orange-crest didn't try to force himself to cultivate. He didn't seek sleep he did not need. The last dregs of the yellow wine faded away, leaving his head cold and clear. He knew where he could find more. Where nobody could stop him from taking as much as he pleased.
He didn't. It would be wrong, to raid Master Wan's cellars. This at least, he knew. And he wanted to be right. To exist with a grin. So orange-crest faced the late hours of the night alone, and this time, he did not flinch from the quiet.
Hours passed. Dawn neared.
A gentle wind whipped through the fronds of a nearby willow, setting them to shivering. Hong Bo shivered in time with them. The wind was gentle. It was not warm. Orange-crest adjusted the scraps of clothing the old man used as a blanket, pulling them up over his shoulders.
Maybe the beggar wasn't a secret cultivator. Maybe orange-crest had been holding out hope that he'd stumbled across someone who would know better than him what next to do. Maybe Hong Bo was just what he'd pretended to be, a tired old mortal who had stepped away from the lives he'd once lived.
And maybe that was fine. Maybe orange-crest could be enough.
Hong Bo stirred. Orange-crest grinned. His mask was still on his face. Still as uncomfortable as it'd ever been, a spiderweb pressed against his fur. But his canines, longer than a man's, poked through the space for his lips.
Hong Bo squinted up at the bandaged monkey.
"No."
"No?"
"Water."
Orange-crest filled Hong Bo's offering bowl with water from the river. He kept smiling, deep in thought.
"Cut that out."
"What?"
"That grin." Hong Bo scowled at his companion. "It is creepy, those teeth, with your bandages. You look like you're wondering what I taste like."
Orange-crest's lips pursed into a thin line. Even through the facial coverings, the monkey's sheepish expression was apparent.
"I was just thinking." The monkey explained. "About the first time I was hungover."
Orange-crest's eyes drifted toward the river. Hong Bo's followed.
"Don't you dare." Orange-crest's grin returned, at the steel in the old beggar's voice.
"Nothing wrong with a bath." The monkey lied through his teeth. "But maybe not today."
"We should go." Orange-crest said suddenly. "To the city."
Hong Bo paused mid-bite. Orange-crest really liked the skewers of chicken they'd purchased. He'd already inhaled his trio, somehow hungrier for all the nuts and pickles he'd eaten the night before. Cultivating had made his appetites weird. Less, and yet also bottomless.
"What?" Hong Bo asked, his mouth still full.
"Huangshi. I want to go there."
"Why the rush?"
"I did a lot of waiting." Orange-crest explained. "Four seasons, I did not move. Now I want to go, see, do."
"To learn to be a doctor?"
Orange-crest nodded. Hong Bo hummed thoughtfully.
"They have healers in Huangsongyu, you know."
The monkey tilted his head.
"Are they good? At healing?"
"The men and women they have saved would say they are."
"Would they teach me?"
Hong Bo hummed again.
"I think they might. If you approached them properly."
"Then let's go!" Orange-crest made a grab for Hong Bo's skewer, but the old man was quick, and stuffed the rest of it in his mouth. He let orange-crest tug him along as he chewed, even though the monkey clearly didn't have a specific destination in mind.
"Not so fast." Hong Bo made a production of swallowing the large mouthful of meat. His eyes sharpened. Orange-crest tensed, sensing the change in the man's mood.
"You said you were taught alchemy. Just how much do you know?"
"I can make pills?" Orange-crest ventured. "Pills to make cuts close and blood flow abundant. Pills to make pain quiet. Pills to make bones hard and skin tough."
The monkey stepped closer to Hong Bo, leaning in to his ear. Hong Bo was not sure what he expected, but it definitely was not the words that followed.
"Pills to make men's jade stalks into sturdy mountains."
Hong Bo coughed.
Orange-crest shrugged.
"Those make many coins, I was told. Easy to make, easy to sell." The monkey paused. "Know other pills too. Strange and powerful pills. One that makes a cultivator burn like a phoenix. One that makes a thick smoke when you crush it."
Hong Bo exhaled slowly.
"I was worried about that. I don't think anyone here will have much to teach you, then. They will know the four examinations, and some formulas from the imperial pharmacy. But if you can make true Qi and Blood Pills, I don't think anyone in Huangsongyu could do as much for the injured as you. And it would not be a quick process either, to gain their trust. Not with your disadvantage of a facial nature."
"Man-shit."
Hong Bo did not enjoy the way the monkey's face sank. But it was necessary. There was a time that the man who now used the name Hong Bo had thought he had seen everything in this world. Two separate times, in fact. Once, flush with youthful ambition. The second time weighted down with the heavy wisdom that came with age and unwelcome humility.
He'd been wise enough not to let himself believe such a thing for a third time. But that had not stopped the Heavens from plopping another impossible oddity right in his path, where no righteous man could step around it.
The monkey seemed outwardly a blessing. It had deposited down into Hong Bo's bowl a sum greater than his earnings in a lean season. With the monkey by his side, he suspected he was safer on the road than he'd ever been before. Orange-crest was pleasant and amiable, less guarded and more friendly than any human cultivator the old man had ever known. Not that that was saying much.
But Hong Bo could not help but wonder, what might the monkey might choose to do if he were disappointed by this cold world he was so set on wandering through. And who could hope to stop him, if Hong Bo did not like his answer to that question.
They walked in silence for a time. Hong Bo still had a long list of purchases to be made. A new pair of robes, for his were swiftly approaching the point where they were not worth darning. Some sacks, for his companion to bear, and a bowl to go with them. Even if he were not a beggar in truth, the half-coconut with a chip missing from the rim had suited his strange companion so well he'd insisted on purchasing it. No man ever regretted owning a bowl. And any bowl deserved a set of chopsticks to accompany it.
His stock of the many necessities of life had been nearly depleted by this lean season. He still had rice and oil and salt, but it was quite pleasant to slowly see orange-crest's sacks filled with jars of vinegar and cakes of tea. A bundle of spare straw, for a walking man could not help but destroy his footwear regularly. A rain-cape, to replace the one Hong Bo had traded for a chicken. He even found some tinder soaked in resin, good for even damp conditions, and several small sachets of herbs that drew the monkey's eye.
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The monkey had few opinions. So Hong Bo did not restrain himself.
"This is many things." Orange-crest muttered, organizing his bag between stops.
"I suppose it is." Hong Bo agreed. "Did you not have many things, before?"
"I didn't need things. Other people had them. Jars and chopsticks and clothes. Never had things, before humans. Never needed them."
"We don't need much either. But possessions have a life of their own sometimes. And coin is a more pernicious one than most."
"We need to spend it?"
Hong Bo shrugged.
"It has a way of going as easily as it comes. Few men can resist the urge to pocket unminded coins. But most will not covet a jar of vinegar."
"So we need to spend it." The monkey summarized. "I want to spend some too."
Orange-crest stared back at the stall where they had purchased Hong Bo's new rain cape. He did not love the hats they had. Their wide straw brims had six sides. Six sides of uneven length. Orange-crest did not consider himself picky. But if he was to wear a hat all the time, he wanted a hat that was a circle.
"Do they have books?"
"I have not seen any. There is little regular trade in such things, in a place so small as this. I'm sure we might find some, if we looked. But few treatises on the subjects of your interest."
"Small." Orange-crest repeated, tasting the idea. This place was not small. Not in the least. He could imagine a life here, if it were the sort of place that would have him. "Huangshi will have all the books, won't it?"
"It will."
"Books that can teach even me?"
"Perhaps."
"Then, we go?"
Hong Bo exhaled heavily. What would be, would be.
"I suppose we should, if you are resolved."
"If I cannot find what I need in a city, I will need to sneak into a sect. But they keep their books in pagodas, behind spells and guarded by inner disciples. A city would be better. Right?"
Orange-crest said it so easily. As if one fact led inexorably to the other. If none could teach him, rob a sect.
"Right."
In the end, orange-crest did not purchase a hat. None of them were quite right.
When orange-crest and Hong Bo returned to the main square of Huangsongyu, they found it filled with people. The people of the town were packed in like a bundle of bamboo slips, all their attention directed in a single direction.
Orange-crest found his fur prickling at the intensity of crowd's focus. He pressed forward, trying to figure out what was going on, but for all his strength, he remained relatively short by the standards of men. He could not see anything.
Hong Bo caught him by the arm, but did not pull him back. Someone was speaking in the distance. Even with his superior hearing, orange-crest was only catching snatches of what was being said.
"Several piglets have been recovered, but Fu Yi's prize boar, the greatest stud in three counties, remains missing..."
"Up." Orange-crest hissed at Hong Bo.
"One piglet was found in the possession of..."
"You think I can lift you? I've seen the footprints you leave."
"His excellency, Assistant Magistrate He, in the interests of swift justice..."
Orange-crest looked around for something to climb.
Hong Bo sighed. He pulled the monkey with him, snaking his way through the crowd. A gentle touch here, a polite word there, a subtle implication he needed to reach someone important. To orange-crest's surprise, the densely packed crowd parted around them like water.
"For the crimes of livestock theft, destruction of civilian property, and giving false testimony to an official of the Xiao, in the name of the Qianlong Emperor, eternal may he reign, I sentence these seven men to a term of conscription lasting four years."
There were more words said, but they slipped past orange-crest. He could see now, through a gap in the crowd.
There were a dozen men on the stage. Orange-crest recognized most of them. The seven men who had robbed Hong Bo for a petty sum were kneeling. Some of them had their heads to the ground. Others were merely on their knees. But all of them had their hands tied together behind their backs, bound as one like a string of dried persimmons. They were flanked by the pair of soldiers orange-crest had seen on the road, one at either end. Assistant Magistrate He was speaking. His cultivator guard stood behind him, his hands clasped behind his back.
Oh. That was not good.
Worm-scarred Fu was at the front of the line. If his men were tied like persimmons, he looked like a rotten fruit, all painful colors and soft spots.
Still, he struggled to rise to his knees.
"What is a man to do, when he finds a lone piglet running through the woods? Ignore it? How should I know—"
A slipper to the back of his shoulders drove his face into the dirt, cutting him off.
"Justice delayed is justice denied." Assistant Magistrate He finished, his quiet voice barely carrying across the pleased rumbling of the crowd. "My men shall exert every effort to reclaim the rest of Fu Yi's lost livestock. Any who encounter the animals should bring word to myself, or a runner, at once. I shall not look kindly upon anyone attempting to unlawfully profit from his neighbor's misfortune."
Orange-crest turned and left. Hong Bo followed at his heels, quiet, observing. His mind raced. Why had they taken these men? He'd been the one to free the pigs. Nobody had seen him clearly. But the humans had settled on these men, and they were not suspicious, they were certain. Did they catch one of the fleeing pigs? What was that part about lying to the Assistant Magistrate?
And conscription for four years? Did they mean the south? His master had said mortals died by the thousands there. But he'd also said it was slowing. Nearly finished.
"You are disturbed." Hong Bo had a gift with understatement. And keen eyes.
Orange-crest didn't know what to say. What to ask. He felt like Hong Bo would see right through him, realize he had a hand in the matter.
"I met those men on the road. Shortly before you encountered me." Hong Bo mused. "They were not generous. Still, a harsh sentence. Many conscripted men do not make it four years. But near a dozen pigs, that is a terrible loss to suffer. Fu Yi is the head of one of the wealthier branches of the local Fu Clan, but even he will feel such a loss."
They moved against the flow of townsfolk, leaving in a hurry.
"Did they do it?" Orange-crest asked. That was safe, wasn't it?
"Why do you ask?" Hong Bo countered with a frown. "Do you have reason to think they did not?"
"On the mountain, there are mighty cultivators." There. That was suitably vague. "When someone commits a wrong, they know."
"Hmm."
"The magistrate's cultivator. He is not mighty."
A passing man turned, catching the word cultivator. Orange-crest dropped his voice mid-sentence, moving along. Belatedly he realized many people were probably talking about the magistrate's cultivator, and he'd only made himself look more suspicious.
"I suppose he wouldn't seem mighty, to one like you." Hong Bo murmured.
Orange-crest wanted to snarl. Hong Bo didn't get it. Or he did. And the monkey wasn't sure which would be worse. He knew what orange-crest was, and orange-crest had no real way of silencing him except violence if he decided to tell others. And orange-crest wasn't about to do that.
"Not mighty like the ones whose ears catch every word in a li."
Hong Bo said nothing. They lapsed into silence for a time, making their way out of town, away from prying ears. Orange-crest feared what was moving behind Hong Bo's eyes.
"How do they know?" Orange-crest suddenly pressed. "That they got the right men?"
"The testimony of witnesses?" Hong Bo answered like he was asking a question. "Possession of missing goods? Lack of alibis? Perhaps a confession or two? I don't know how this magistrate did it, but we mortals have our ways, even if they are not so sure as a cultivator's."
"We are bound for Huangshi, are we not?" Hong Bo asked. "There is yet daylight, if you wanted to make an early start on the road."
"We could stay one more night."
"We could." Hong Bo's eyes sharpened again. Orange-crest suppressed a flinch. That was it. He knew.
He considered his options. He could just leave. Walk away from it all and try again. Hong Bo knew his nature, but didn't know who would be looking for him. He didn't care overmuch for Worm-scarred Fu. He was the least pleasant Fu orange-crest had met.
But he wanted to live the right way.
It wasn't morality that drove him. Not in the way his master had taught him of it, duty and obligation. He just didn't like the idea of someone else being punished for something he did. If anyone here deserved to be punished, it was the magistrate who didn't care at all about—
"You can't fight a magistrate." The words took the air from the monkey's lungs. "Even if you win, you will lose. The Empire of Xiao is not a single cultivator. If the truth comes out, they will come in twos and tens and hundreds until they bury you."
Orange-crest wanted to make him understand. But he couldn't see how. He sat down, drawing his knees close to his chest.
"If they didn't do it, do you think they deserve it?" The monkey asked.
Hong Bo frowned.
"Does it matter, what I think? My word will not change their fate. If you want to live among humans, you cannot do things like this. Crime demands punishment. Just because you are beyond consequences does not mean that others are."
Orange-crest surged to his feet. He moved quickly enough that it was Hong Bo's turn to flinch, falling into traces of a martial arts stance. He stepped close anyway, all but daring his companion to strike him, to do something, anything.
"Do you think I don't know that? That men do bad things to those who don't deserve them?" The monkey hissed, refusing to raise his voice, even though they were alone now. This was not a thing to be shouted about. "Do you think my master deserved his fate? They blamed him for something another human did. For misfortune, and stupidity. They hurt him terribly for it, because when he bent his neck for them, he did not bend it deep enough, for long enough."
Hong Bo met the monkey's eyes. Orange-crest realized quickly he'd said more than he'd intended. Hong Bo knew enough that a cultivator could connect him with Li Hou now, if he hadn't before.
"And what does that have to do with stealing some pigs?"
"They knew."
"Who?"
"The pigs. They knew. They knew the men would kill them when winter came. And they did not want to die."
It was satisfying, watching the glib Hong Bo struck speechless. And all it took was realizing orange-crest might have had a reason for the things he did. Orange-crest was angry now. Properly furious. Not at Hong Bo, the rage that smoldered in his chest was directed at all of this. This whole cold and bloody world that had made a demon of one of his friends, and a living corpse of his master. This place that could not leave anything alone, that demanded that every misfortune see somebody punished for it.
"You can speak to other animals?"
Orange-crest snorted, then spat. That was the part he fixated upon?
"Some of them can speak. You could hear them too, if you had ever cared to listen."
Orange-crest had never met a human Speaker. But he refused to believe they did not exist.
The two of them sat in that clearing by the riverbed for a long while. Eventually, Hong Bo rose, fetched water, and set it to boiling. With delicate care, he began preparing some of the tea he'd purchased earlier.
He pressed a warm bowl into orange-crest's paws.
"I do not like it either." Hong Bo said quietly. "This sort of thing is why I live the way I do. I am old, and tired."
Orange-crest thought about the Monkey King.
"Living in this world seems tiring. But I can't live the way I did before. Can't be a monkey. Don't know how to be a man. But don't want to live like a ghost. Not doing things."
"You are a strange creature, Brother Chengse."
"I know."
"Do you think you are strong enough to take the magistrate's cultivator and his guards without killing them?"
Orange-crest's head shot up. Was that what he thought it was?
"Yes." The answer was not difficult.
"Those men will need to disappear. Not just move to a place nobody knows their faces. They would need new names. A new occupation."
"Better than the south."
"You know about that, then?"
"We were going to visit the Thousand Poison Vale. Before they hurt him. He fought there."
Hong Bo took a long sip of his tea.
"You are a distinctive fellow. You won't be able to show your face until we find you a proper veil."
"But you'll help?"
"You will owe me a favor. You will owe the Gritty-Nails Faction a favor as well."
Orange-crest nodded his head as vigorously as a woodpecker. The Gritty-Nails Faction couldn't be that bad, if Hong Bo trusted them.
"Give me a few hours. I'll find where they're being held, and how many men are guarding them."