B3 Chapter 12
The Immobilizing Spell didn't hold for more than a moment. Orange-crest hadn't put much into it, half expecting the power he'd exerted to vanish without catching anything. The binding broke with a rustle.
"Guts?" The monkey queried.
"Why's he grunting?" Ruo Ping asked.
The underbrush shifted. Orange-crest tensed. That wasn't Guts, was it?
With a great bellow, Brawn charged out from the bamboo, set to trample the monkey that had bested him once before.
"Brother!" Guts cried. "Stop!"
Orange-crest rushed forward, slipping to the side of the charge. Sneaky pig, but not sneaky enough. He flung himself at Brawn's back, fingers digging at the pig's powerful muscles to secure his grip on the boar's smooth white hide.
"Scatter!" Fu Daxian shouted.
"Isn't that the—"
Orange-crest tried to slip his staff under Brawn's jaw, catch it in his other hand. His head was filled with vague ideas of pulling the boar's head up, choking him to a stop.
His arms were not long, nor quick, enough to manage it. His staff caught on something, and orange-crest let it be pulled from his fingers, lest it be snapped in the struggle.
"Dodge, grandfather!"
"Stupid pig." The monkey muttered, annoyed now.
Orange-crest measured the angles. He kicked off Brawn's haunches, climbing higher to loop his legs around the boar's great neck.
And then he turned to stone.
He felt his increased weight draw Brawn's head downward. A desperate heave from the pig, before he accepted his fate, and went down in a tumble.
The monkey released the durability of stone, but kept a measure of its weight. His control had grown, this last year; and Yang Wei's Immovable Mountain Technique had inspired him to focus on a different sort of partial shifting.
Orange-crest adjusted position slowly, his limbs as heavy as boulders. He couldn't move very fast like this, and it always made him sleepy to remain in the state for long. Eventually he found a comfortable position astride the pig, pinning him to the ground with his own bulk.
"Foul trickster." Brawn complained, wheezing out the words.
"Rude pig." Orange-crest yawned cheerily.
"Honored cultivator?"
It was only then that Guts emerged from the underbrush.
"Brother orange-crest!" The smaller boar squeaked happily.
Orange-crest smiled. He... He hadn't really expected the pigs to get away clean, had he? He certainly hadn't expected to see them again, not in all the wide countryside.
The monkey's brow rose.
"How did you find me?"
"Oh. That was easy." Guts wiggled his haunches happily. "I have a good nose. And you're stinky."
Orange-crest sniffed at his armpits. He was not that pungent. No worse than the humans.
A thought struck him.
"Guts... What do I smell like?" Orange-crest asked.
"Uh... Honored Cultivator?" Sun Guiying repeated. "What are you doing?"
"Shh." Orange-crest waved a hand at the bandit. "I'm talking to the pigs."
"Are we almost there?" Fu Daxian groused. "Are you sure these pigs know where they're going?"
Orange-crest translated the question. They'd been walking for hours now, and the mortal men were getting restive. But Guts had wanted to do something nice for the monkey that had set him free, and he'd smelled something nearby that smelled like orange-crest.
"Almost!" The pig chirped. "Why are the humans so impatient, brother orange-crest? There are so many interesting things out here! I wake up every morning and I cannot believe how many new things there are to see and smell and touch and eat!"
"They..." Orange-crest thought about it. Why were the bandits so impatient? For people who spent so much time outside of cities, they really had very little patience for wandering around the countryside aimlessly. "They're a different sort of animal from us. Very good at being together, and making things. But weak stomachs. Bad noses."
"They are higher creatures." Brawn grumbled. "This monkey might be stronger than even I, but he doesn't build, like they do. You will see, when the cold season comes. Leaving was a mistake. We will never be safe again."
"Brawn."
The two pigs lurched into yet another round of the argument they'd been having all day. Brawn had seemingly accepted that there was no way they could go back, but he refused to let the matter go. It seemed he wouldn't be satisfied until Guts admitted that it'd been a mistake, leaving their pen.
"They say we're almost there." Orange-crest summarized for Fu Daxian.
It was two more hours before they arrived. Much of the day of travel had been wasted. But orange-crest was starting to smell it now too, and he couldn't help but smile.
Guts must have had a truly heaven-defying nose to have smelled it from a dozen li away. Orange-crest supposed it made sense. Guts was a Speaker, and Speakers often seemed to be exceptional in one way or another, even if they were not yet true instinctive cultivators.
"In there." The pig confirmed.
"Really? An empty cliffside? This is what we walked six hours for?" Fu Daxian groused.
"Boss!" Sun Guiying hissed less than quietly. "Stop criticizing the cultivator."
Orange-crest ignored them, already pressing his nose to the cliffside. It was close, that mouthwatering scent. That unmistakably, fragrantly, spiritual, scent.
His nose led him downward. Belatedly, he realized that guts was already staring at where it eventually led him. The place where a lone scraggly pine abutted the sandy cliffside.
Orange-crest let stone flow over his nails, and began to dig. Gently, he unearthed the treasure that Guts had sniffed out.
"Mmm." Brawn muttered. "I'll eat it, if you won't."
It was funny. The massive pig seemed to be afraid of everything. Wolves, cold, starvation. Scared of everything except fighting cultivators, and eating unfamiliar foodstuffs.
Not that orange-crest was going to give up the dense little ball of fungus without a fight. Guts had promised it to him, and now that he saw what it was, he was keeping it.
"A Loess Pearl." The monkey exhaled. "A sandstone-mushroom treasure." He repeated in the true tongue.
The Loess Pearl. An earth aspected spiritual plant ranked seven hundred and twenty-fourth among the spiritual mushrooms of the Compendium of Materia Medica, roughly comparable in value and efficacy to a Hundred-Year Ginseng, albeit with rather different applications.
Orange-crest could all but taste the qi of it, a rich scent that reminded him more of meat long dried than it did any kind of mushroom.
Gently, he pried it fully free of the earth. It wasn't a difficult spiritual plant to harvest, the only trick to it was that you needed to make sure you didn't break any of its numerous hair-thin roots. Otherwise it would spoil and lose its qi in mere days.
But the pearls grew in loess, a dry and sandy soil that was pressed together so hard it thought itself rock. All a monkey needed to do was gently crush it to powder again, to see the pearl freed.
"Doesn't it smell delicious, Brother Monkey?" Guts said with glee. "Isn't it wonderful? The things you can find out here?"
"That's what the little pig was grunting about? We came all this way for a root ball?" Fu Daxian complained.
"It is a mushroom ball. A Loess Pearl." Orange-crest corrected. His mouth watered, as he stared at it. How could Fu Daxian and the others not smell how valuable this little treasure was? Was that because they were human? Or because they lacked spirit roots? "It is probably worth at least fifteen spirit stones."
"Fifteen spirit stones!" Hong Bo muttered in shock.
"That's... That's... That's a hundred taels of silver! More!" Fu Daxian's eyes threatened to bulge out of his head. A bird could have roosted in his open mouth. "You cannot be serious! That little thing is worth more than my father's house?"
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It was absurd, wasn't it? How much wealth cultivators had, compared to mortals. Once orange-crest had thought his master's pantry was wealth beyond imagination. Only now was he coming to truly understand that food was an almost insignificant expense, compared to even the least of treasures for cultivation. The monkey wondered how much of a city Elder Lu's ring could buy, if he was in a position to survive selling it.
"I told you boss, stick with the cultivator, and our fortune will be made."
"Shut it, Brother Sun. As I recall, you were rather doubtful of our dear immortal when he began talking to pigs."
"I was no such thing!"
Orange-crest pondered the fungus orb. After absorbing the remaining benefits of the holy land, away from the Azure Mountain, his cultivation progress had slowed substantially. At this rate the eight stage would take him at least three to five years, without a fortuitous encounter. Orange-crest suspected eating this Loess Pearl would shave at least a year off that that time.
If Guts had eaten it, he would probably have advanced to the peak of the first stage of Qi Condensation on the spot. If he survived. Li Xun had been quite clear that even for creatures with the potential to cultivate instinctively, eating something that far above them was not entirely safe. At best they would waste most of its power. At worst the residual spirit of the treasure would corrupt or possess them.
"Do you trust me, Guts?"
"No." Brawn chuffed immediately. "You do not trust the trickster. He has led us out into the cold."
Guts thought about it.
"I don't know." The smaller pig eventually answered. "I only know how to trust Brother Guts. I don't know how to trust a monkey yet. But I want to. I love these new skies."
"If you ate this, you would change." Orange-crest explained. "You would become more. Stronger. But you would become different. Maybe not in ways you want. Others would see you differently. Human cultivators, humans with powers like mine, might decide to hunt you. You might see the world differently. Many maybes. But only one surety. You could never go back."
"We can never go back anyway." Brawn grumbled. "The humans would be angry."
"Humans already hunt us." Guts noted. "They have bad noses. It is easy to escape them."
It was difficult, orange-crest realized. Giving the sort of warning he would have wanted to receive, if he'd had a choice in beginning to cultivate. He did not want to minimize the benefits. But how could he tell them at all of the risks? They thought their world had already changed completely. And it had. But they hadn't. And they would not understand the difference until they lived it.
"If you can find me things like this, things that smell fragrant in the same way, I'll help you live in the wild places. I'll build you a shelter like the one the humans built. Bring you food in the winter. And if you decide you want to cultivate, I'll help you do it safely."
"Cultivate?" Guts asked. "What is that."
"He is a trickster." Brawn warned.
The two bickered, but a seed had been planted. All orange-crest had to do was water it with good faith, and watch trust slowly bloom.
"Mo—" Fu Daxian caught himself just in time. "Honored cultivator. Are you done talking to the pigs? Can we head to Huangshi, and sell that Loess Pearl?"
"Boss!"
"Many cultivators would take your head, for how you speak to me." Orange-crest mused.
Sun Guiying's face went white.
"Yeah?" Fu Daxian challenged. "And? You don't want to be like them, do you? You want us little mortals as company. And we want meat and wine. I'm not becoming a vegetarian just because you can talk to pigs."
Orange-crest thought about establishing the hierarchy more clearly. But it wasn't that sort of challenge. Fu Daxian was probing. Trying to see where the boundaries lay. What his knowledge of orange-crest's secret was worth.
But something he'd said had crystallized an idea in orange-crest's head.
He didn't want to be like other cultivators.
Cultivators did not ask. They took. But they overlooked the small and the unfamiliar, only pillaging what had obvious value to their eyes.
He had everything he needed, didn't he? A pig with a heaven-defying nose. Some former bandits who were comfortable running errands in the wilds. A beggar with unexpected connections. What sort of business-pill could be concocted from such ingredients?
Orange-crest might not be able to handle the paperwork and the bartering and the purchasing of buildings and the finding of ingredients quite yet. But he could lean upon others until he could. And perhaps find treasures that other cultivators would never notice in the process.
Orange-crest knew alchemy. Li Xun had been an able and insistent teacher. That part, he could handle.
"Maybe I sell it." Orange-crest told Fu Daxian. "Maybe I don't. But stick with me, run my errands, feed my pigs. And you'll find that fortune you're hunting for."
The monkey's smile widened. It grew so wide and toothy that Fu Daxian took a step back as orange-crest let his face drift closer to the bandit's.
"I'm not a vegetarian either." Orange-crest said, licking his lips, so much thinner than man's. "And I make very good wine. Maybe you'll get to try some, if you help me find a place to brew it."
Fu Daxian swallowed, as Brother Sun spewed out entirely unnecessary apologies on his boss's behalf.
All the while, Hong Bo just watched, his expression inscrutable.
Five days later, Fu Daxian, orange-crest, and Hong Bo stood upon a hill, staring out at the sweeping expanse of Huangshi before them. The other four bandits, under the leadership of Brother Sun, were out seeking provisions.
The porcine brothers they'd left behind several days ago. Orange-crest had given Guts a Jade Ball Talisman, stuck it right to the boar's back, primed to activate if danger neared, and arranged to see food delivered to them in a few weeks. They would not have any difficulties foraging until winter arrived in earnest, and he would see them set up in comfort before that happened.
"Impossible." Orange-crest exhaled. "Just impossible."
Fu Daxian barked out a laugh. "It's a good city, Huangshi. Maybe I'll show you around, once we smuggle you in."
"I would like that." Orange-crest said honestly.
"You are a strange one, monkey."
"And you are a brave one." A pause. "If a bit ugly."
"One day I'll tell you how I got this scar, and you'll regret these comments."
"I don't think I will. Not that human. Your kind are very soft, about mean words."
Perhaps they had to be soft about words, to live as closely as they did.
Huangshi... Orange-crest could not believe it. He thought he'd mastered numbers. But they failed him utterly. He could not dream of counting the dwellings before him. Not merely thousands beyond thousands, but ten thousands beyond counting.
One and a half million, Hong Bo said. Absurd. That wasn't a real number. You shouldn't ever need to count that high.
Even orange-crest's keen eyes could not see the bounds of the city. It wasn't just a place. Godsgrave Peak was an impressive place. You could at least see all of it at once. This was more like the Azure Mountain, a region of the world unto itself. A place full of places.
He found it more impressive by far than the Hall of Dawn, or even Godsgrave Peak.
These were not cultivators of legend. They were just mortals beyond counting. And they had taken the world, and reshaped it in their image.
"What is your plan, Brother Chengse?"
Orange-crest swallowed. It was time.
He'd approached humanity once as himself, and they'd run screaming, and return armed. He'd tried once disguised, and it had gone... It had gone a way he did not regret.
This time he would approach as a human. There would be no second chances. A city this large would have Foundation Establishment cultivators. Being discovered here could end him.
His disguise had to be perfect. So it had to actually be a disguise. Not just a monkey playing at stealth, discarding caution the first moment the clothing began to itch.
Daoist Big Hat was a silly name. But it was not a disposable one.
"Here." Orange-crest said, pressing the pouch of talismans into Hong Bo's hand. "Go buy me a hat."
"Brother Chengse?"
Orange-crest had spent the last two nights telling Hong Bo of the entirety of his choices since leaving Mount Yuelu. The theft of Fu Daxian. The misunderstanding at Crooked Pine. The choices he'd made when fighting the yamen runners.
A human would have left the implication unspoken, if they delivered it at all.
Orange-crest was not a human.
"If you don't think I should enter the city. If you think it will end in catastrophe. You can take the talismans, and run." The monkey explained. "No need to tell the cultivator no to his face. I won't be angry. But even if I was, you wouldn't be here."
Hong Bo sighed. "I do not know if I should be honored, or insulted."
"You can be whatever you want. I'm just being me."
"Boss," Fu Daxian cut in, "if you send me, I definitely won't take your talismans and run."
Orange-crest just reached up and flicked him.
"I'll find you a disguise. You are... Certainly no worse than the rest of us."
Orange-crest watched Hong Bo's back until he vanished into the great shoals of humanity that steadily flowed into the metropolitan sea.
"I'm gonna see to my men, make sure they aren't getting up to too much trouble. Are you coming, boss?"
"No."
Hong Bo did not return that first night.
Orange-crest did not worry. Hong Bo had said it might take him more than an evening to make the appropriate introductions. He would need to purchase orange-crest's disguise from a cultivator after all.
The bandits caroused. Celebrated their near brush with conscription, and being back in civilized lands.
Orange-crest did not join them. His moods shifted in turns, morose and longing in the morning, focused and resolved as the sun dipped low. He held himself back, spending the long hours in cultivation. He had decided not to enter this city as a monkey, but as a man, so he would wait as a human cultivator would.
He had no shortage of things to consider. To his nascent spiritual senses, the city was one of the most interesting things he'd ever seen. Great currents of qi moved through the skies above it, reflections of the inhabitants below. In his mind's eye, he found himself visualizing Huangshi as yet another mountain to be summited, considering the fragments of Elder Lu's Scripture of the Golden Order that had lodged in his mind. It wasn't quite right, but he was learning, growing, refining his practice.
Hong Bo did not return that second day either.
Orange-crest began to worry. Hong Bo might have been waylaid. He was carrying valuable treasures. Orange-crest trusted the beggar's judgement, but all the cleverness in the world sometimes couldn't substitute for strength. But the offer he'd made did not allow him much room to come to the man's rescue.
On the third day, the sun rose well before Fu Daxian's hungover men, so it was orange-crest that saw the interloper first.
The figure drifted across the ground, weightless in their flowing robes. A wide straw hat the same color as the undyed silk of their robes shaded their face.
The monkey sprang to his feet. It was him! He was back!
Fu Daxian's men groaned as his chirping dragged them back from the oblivion of drunken slumber.
Orange-crest rushed down the hillside, pulling to a stop just short of the figure. He could see their veil now. There were two layers to it, a thin shroud of silk that hung from the edges of the hat like a waterfall, and a face-cover of the sort he'd seen a few female disciples of the Azure Mountain wear, hooking behind the ears, covering the face from below the eyes.
The material looked like it should have been translucent, even in two layers. There were suggestions of contours. But the figure before him could have been anyone. Orange-crest let qi seep into his eyes, sharpening his vision, but could not pierce the veils.
All he could make out were the cultivator's eyes, and they were hard and wary.
It had to be Hong Bo. It was too much of a coincidence for it to be anyone else.
But Hong Bo had a beard. A wispy little thing as white as snow. And this daoist didn't... Did they?
"Fellow Daoist." Orange-crest greeted, offering a respectful salute.
The stranger let the word hang in the air. Orange-crest's fingers twitched, ready to cast.
And then the stranger took off his hat.
Orange-crest practically climbed Hong Bo like a mountain.
"Stop, damn you. These old bones can't bear your enthusiasm."
"It is perfect!" The monkey cried. "Big hat. Big veil. The robes match. No color is the best color. Except orange. But orange is a lot. Humans can't handle it sometimes. I like this more! It's almost kingly, but dull! So perfect! And the hat! It is so circle! So pointy on the top!"
"I'm glad you are pleased. It took me the better part of a day to find someone who had what you wanted. Another day to turn those talismans into spirit stones—"
"Come come come! Fu's men got food."
"You would not believe the bargaining practices of some of these cultivators! I had to threaten one with the city guard, the Beggar Clan, and my nameless master before he gave up on robbing me in his own store!"
Waking to the presence of a second cultivator gave Fu Daxian's men a healthy scare. When the confusion passed, they delighted in greeting Hong Bo with increasingly outlandish honorifics.
It was while orange-crest was trying on the hat and veil, struggling to attach the veil over his increasingly irritating facial wraps, that Fu Daxian returned from relieving himself.
"Isn't that a veil for a fairy?" He asked with a frown, recognizing orange-crest only by Dong Zhu's tattered jacket.
"I can be a fairy. If I want to."
For some reason the men found this even more hilarious than the idea of Hong Bo as an immortal.