B3 Chapter 19
"This isn't working." Sun Guiying muttered, staring at his sixteenth iteration of the Tear of Stone Refining Formation.
Orange-crest disagreed.
"It's so pretty! So elegant! If I didn't have fur, and robes, I would write like this on my skin, so people could see how pretty it is! I would look so handsome with tattoos. Only upside of hairlessness, tattoos."
Sun Guiying looked over at the monkey's page. Orange-crest had flipped over one of his formations, and attempted to draw the exact same design on the reverse of the page. Orange-crest wasn't tracing. The strokes of the characters were so fine, the tip of the brush so fickle, tracing the shapes would have been harder than drawing them on his own.
He just didn't want to waste paper.
"It looks fine, I suppose. Almost good enough to scam some credulous rustic, if you tried your hand at forgery, or selling fake talismans. Serviceable as script, but lacking soul as calligraphy. Now you're hewing too closely to my own style."
"That is exactly what you said I wasn't doing before!" Orange-crest protested.
"That was that page. This is this page. You were too wild there, you are too fearful here. Too focused on the order of your strokes, moving too slowly. Look here, at this 'jīn'. The form is right, but the curves don't have the life they should. Compare it to your previous one. The proportions are better now, because you started at the top, but see where the fifth stroke of the character, the vertical line of the lower sequence, meets the horizontal third stroke? They shouldn't quite touch on the right side. Your control was perfect, but moving too slowly, you allowed the strokes to bleed into each other. We call these 'ink pigs', correct form, but slow and swollen."
"That is rude to pigs. They're not swollen. Just different. Not everyone can be svelte and hairless. If all creatures looked like men, life would be boring."
Sun Guiying sighed in exasperation.
"I didn't invent the elegant script, I just know it. This is an ink pig. The opposite problem would be sinew-writing."
"Is joke."
"Sure, boss." Sun Guiying collapsed back in his chair. "I'm just tired."
"Looks tiring, sitting like that, holding your arm so high above the table."
"Proper posture is the foundation of proper writing. If your elbow cannot dance, your brush can only hobble." Sun Guiying recited. "You told me to do what felt right. Well, I can't feel qi. All I know is writing. And good writing, especially for something this large, is exhausting."
Sun Guiying reminded orange-crest of Li Xun, when the monkey had first begun to study alchemy. Stroke order, posture, speed and structure, ink level and page proportions. There was one answer, one truth, and any deviation from it received a correction from his lips.
The monkey who had been Li Hou had resented this, but had obeyed because he believed in Li Xun. Now, orange-crest knew better. He could hold two contradictory truths in his mind. There was one right way, and there were countless ones. Stroke order was vitally important, and could be discarded at his whim. Characters had to look exactly as they were supposed to, and they could look like anything, as long as they carried the truth of their essence.
He did not need to venerate Sun Guiying the same way he had Li Xun, in order to learn at his feet.
"What should we do, then?" Orange-crest asked. "If this is not working?"
Sun Guiying opened his mouth and orange-crest could practically hear the words upon his tongue. Why are you asking me, you're the boss. But then he closed his mouth again, and really thought about the question.
Orange-crest had plenty of ideas. He wasn't the sort of monkey that gave up quickly. But in truth, none of the ideas in his head stood out beyond the others. And several of them involved a risky degree of subterfuge, long periods of practice, or getting drunk and handing fortune the brush.
Orange-crest could feel a certain congruence when he drew a well-formed sequence of characters, a sort of openness to accepting qi. It was a tiny thing, that space, that life. Each formation he drew was better than the last, but they remained profoundly lacking. They could not hope to contain even a fraction of the qi they would need to fulfill their purpose, and refine a Tear of Stone into earth-aspected dew suitable for alchemy.
Orange-crest could just keep following that feeling. Chase after the ghost of the correct way. But if he'd done that earlier, it would have taken orange-crest weeks or months to improve as much as he had under twelve hours of Sun Guiying's instruction. Being able to see the mountain in the distance did not much help him find a path through the forest at its feet.
"I cannot find a thread end here. The embroidery beneath the brim of your hat, it is far beyond me." Sun Guiying muttered, thinking aloud. "The work of a true master, an expert in more than just cultivation. I have never seen many of those characters. Some of them, I do not recognize a single radical, just a component or two. Even for literary characters, they are profoundly archaic. To learn from such a thing is like trying to reach heaven in a single step. We are hardly making progress toward recreating your master's formation. To think we will create a novel formation, one that works, from such shaky foundations..."
Sun Guiying trailed off.
"It's funny. Just two weeks ago, I would never have dared to imply that you couldn't do something. But I don't think we can do this."
Orange-crest just grinned, prompting Sun Guiying to continue. It was funny, wasn't it? Of all the people he'd met since leaving the Azure Mountain, the bandits who accosted Hong Bo were the ones he'd least expected to find common ground with. And yet, he was closer to the trio who'd chosen to stay with him than he was the friendly but guarded beggar, or any of the upstanding humans he'd met on his travels.
"I know you said we need a formation to bind that execrable ghost. But formations are difficult. Dozens of characters, complex designs. What if you just handed us a stack of immobilizing talismans? Even if they only lasted a few hours, one of us could always be on hand to keep the ghost sealed. Is that a thing that is possible, to write your spell into a talisman?"
Orange-crest blinked. That was simpler than many of his ideas. It was also a lot better. It was a little embarrassing he'd not thought of it. Orange-crest supposed he'd just never thought of himself as a monkey who drew talismans. His master hadn't. Li Xun mastered every element, practiced every foundational technique. If he needed the sort of magic a talisman could offer, he would simply cast it himself.
Talismans had felt like a second-rate art. According to Li Xun, formations were like martial arts or alchemy, a foundational skill for any serious cultivator. The proper way to accomplish anything that needed to affect a wide area, or endure for months or years. Talismans were a shortcut for people who had more money than talent, like that yamen runner, or a practice for those who favored the brush above all other tools, as Li Shuwen did. In Li Xun's mind, every time a serious cultivator reached for a talisman, he was exposing a deficiency in his skill set that he'd paid someone else to cover.
But orange-crest didn't actually need a formation that would last for years, did he? He just needed a way for his employees to borrow his strength. He'd reached for a formation, because that was what Li Xun would have done. The proper solution to the problem before him.
But he wasn't Li Xun. A stack of talismans would work just fine, if he could just find a way to let his men trigger them.
Orange-crest was already lost in the problem. At least two characters, probably no more than four. They had to look good in a single column, an unbreakable pillar of text. Bold, dominating words. That was the essence of the Immobilizing Spell after all, the absolute imposition of your will upon others, however fleeting. The talisman shouldn't be too poetic. It should be resolute and unyielding, a master's command to a disciple, a senior's disdain for a junior too foolish to submit.
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"I'm not going to call you a genius." The monkey told the man. "I say that too much. Need more creative compliments. But you are cleverer than the world sees. Rest your arm, and your head. I will write some talismans, and this time you will tell me which ring true."
The brush in orange-crest's hand descended like a saber, a final slash of ink suitable to split mountains. His qi fell with it, crashing down in a silent waterfall, vanishing into the talisman before him.
"Tether it by the foot, tie it by the collar." Orange-crest did not say the words aloud. But he felt as if he had. They sat heavy on his tongue, tying it as firmly as the fetters upon the white colt that dominated the eye of his mind. Sun Guiying had said this line came from a famous poem, and orange-crest could almost taste the new growth of the vegetable garden, the tea the official and his reclusive friend would share. The words had a life of their own, beyond any intent of his.
The monkey felt his arm slowly stiffen. He'd wanted to add the next line 'to prolong this morning', but he wasn't sure he could finish the strokes without fouling the whole piece. Plus he didn't have the room, it was already long, and he'd used too much of the paper. It was off-balance now, but it would not be more balanced if he pushed through to extend it. The remaining characters would be cramped.
Orange-crest let his arm drop, his brush safely clear of his work.
"I almost felt that, boss." Sun Guiying whispered reverently. "And those words... Your lazy, hasty, style. It works here. Some scholars would turn up their noses at it, but this is genuinely good work, other than the obvious spacing issue. It'd get you rejected immediately from the Imperial Examination, but rejected with compliments."
Orange-crest sniffed loudly. It was good work. But it was wrong.
"Try it." He commanded, already certain what would happen.
Sun Guiying reached out eagerly, slipping a nail under the raised edge of the little rectangle of paper.
He tugged. Frowned.
"It's stuck. You stuck it to the table."
Orange-crest grinned. Sun Guiying tugged again.
"Wait. Now I'm stuck."
He was. It was a little funny, watching Sun Guiying flail his arm about bonelessly, as if a different angle might free him. The man wasn't panicked, quite, but he was certainly trying vigorously.
"Just wait a minute. It's a bad talisman. You can get free from it."
The damnable thing was too sticky. Too lazy. Orange-crest wasn't sure exactly what had gone wrong this time. The combination of the poem's leisurely nature and his domineering intentions clearly did not mix well. It wasn't the outright backlash he'd gotten from borrowing the language of a human official, commanding that his target be detained.
But the talisman was leaking. Constantly.
"My arm is starting to fall asleep, boss." There was genuine worry in Sun Guiying's voice now. "I can't move my wrist!"
"That's a good sign. Well, bad for the talisman. But good for you, and the ghost. I told you how the spell works, didn't I?"
"Right, right. It's like melting ice, so I just pull slowly. Keep the pressure on, until it cracks." Sun Guiying took a deep breath. "I simply need to keep pulling. Keep my arm fully extended, so it can't get to my chest."
There it was, that hollow confidence of his.
Orange-crest left the man to his struggle. He might not have qi, but he would need to deal with it if he was to assist orange-crest in this capacity. The talisman would exhaust itself in minutes anyway, even without a proper activation, and hurting by suffocation wasn't in the nature of the spell. This was just good practice for Sun Guiying.
That was another idea that had almost worked. 'Detain with leg-irons' had lashed back upon the monkey. 'Stay your step' had been promising, taking the spell in, but had refused to activate. And then there were the dozens of true failures like 'secure as a post', 'sit on you', 'no moving', 'King's command, master's hand', and 'freeze as a mountain' that had eagerly lapped down his qi, and then snapped, dissipating the power pointlessly.
The words needed to be profound and domineering. But they also needed to be orange-crest. Sun Guiying's ideas always had the profundity, and orange-crest's ideas were by nature his. But nothing yet had met all three requirements.
The monkey had spent all day and most of the night on this now. He was running on dregs of qi, and Sun Guiying on tea and tobacco. He'd already fobbed the shop and supply matters off on Fu Daxian and the pigs on Ruo Ping. He needed a solution, or he'd have to either slay the ghost, or beg Hong Bo's aid. And Hong Bo... Hong Bo wasn't his, the way the others were.
The old man acted as if his martial skill was a toothache, or even a venereal disease, so orange-crest was treating him like he would red-eyes in a bad month. He felt like one wrong word on the subject would send the beggar into the wind.
He needed to speak with the Ministry of Daoist Affairs tomorrow. He'd already put them off too long. He needed the rest of the night to rest and restore his expended qi. It was this, or call upon Yang Wei's memory. He wasn't asking Hong Bo.
"I've got it!" Sun Guiying crowed victoriously, holding the talisman aloft. A moment later, his enthusiasm dimmed. "It's empty now, isn't it?"
"Yep." Orange-crest agreed, melting into his chair.
"Can I keep this one? It's genuinely interesting calligraphy. And... I almost felt something. They said I had no fate with immortality, but I swear I almost felt your power. Perhaps if I..."
Orange-crest agreed with an idle wave of his hand. He should be listening to Sun Guiying, but he felt like he was so close.
Sometimes one could only do their best work, when giving-up was nipping at their ankles. It was better to believe that. If you didn't, then the last chance was just one more chance, not something special.
What was profound and unyielding? What sang to the monkey he was, the same way that poem from the Book of Odes spoke to Sun Guiying?
It had to be a thing of nature, of the cruel and innocent world. What did even the freest of mountains restrain? What was sealed into stillness by the will of the world, and not the hand of man? What could be looked down upon without invoking muddling meanings that would foul the spell, like the dichotomy between man and beast?
Orange-crest scanned the list Sun Guiying had made. Classical poetry. Military terms. Law enforcement commands. Official missives. Imperial decrees, orange-crest hadn't even considered trying that language.
All good ideas. All wrong.
Then he saw it. Two characters that had been squeezed in near the bottom, a mark of uncertainty.
Solar Terms.
He ran through the list in his head. There were a lot of them, twenty four terms that Li Xun had insisted he memorize, along with their associated dates, for some alchemical processes were more auspicious under certain stars.
Orange-crest saw it. It wasn't a solar term, not really. But he wasn't a monkey who would copy someone else's poem for his talisman.
Inverted, the third solar term was descriptive. This would be a command. Characters flexed and danced, as he pondered the wording, the subtle changes of curves and spacing that would gild his meaning.
The monkey inked his brush. A single sweep of his left arm deposited a blank talisman in front of him. A deep inhalation filled his lungs, one idea, one spell, one breath.
Orange-crest visualized the Azure Mountain from above. As a god, a Nascent Soul cultivator, or a far-climbing monkey might see it. A stream of initiates passed through the great gate, taking their first steps toward immortality as the year waned. The disparate robes of home they would set aside for the sect's colors. The white blanket that would settle upon the mountain, quieting thunder and cicada alike.
The dormancy of insects. That was the thread. Humans and monkeys, ghosts and cultivators. If they raised their eyes high enough, they were all insects, weren't they?
The endless drone of cicadas fell quiet, just as the last true storm of the year ended, and snow began to fall.
Orange-crest's qi did not pour out, an unrefined waterfall. It deposited like snow, tracing the flourishes of his wrist, crystallizing into ice within the characters. Less power. Far less leakage. Perhaps he could have made a stronger talisman with better materials. Paper made from spiritual plants, ink refined from blood or ore. But these words were right for this paper, this ink, this spell, this monkey.
"Winter keeps the cicada." Sun Guiying read over the monkey's shoulder, as the final stroke was put to ink.
Orange-crest collapsed bonelessly as he waited for the ink to dry. If he thought he was melting into the chair before, now he was dripping from it, the confining folds of his robe the only thing keeping him from slipping to the floor.
It wasn't physical exhaustion, nor full depletion of his qi. His head just ached, too much mental effort expended in too short a period of time. Nothing half-a-night's sleep wouldn't fix. Just something he hadn't really experienced, since parting from Li Xun.
"Go." Daoist Big Hat commanded, holding the completed talisman above his head, pinched between two fingers. "Go seal that stupid ghost."
"But... How?" Sun Guiying asked. "How exactly do I use this?"
Orange-crest was too tired to think about it.
"You helped make it. You said you almost felt it, being on the other end of the last one. Try, explore, do. You'll know, when you get it."
Sun Guiying nodded slowly.
"Shout, if you need me." Orange-crest murmured, already fading. "But you don't."
Sun Guiying didn't think he could be a cultivator. Orange-crest didn't have an opinion on the matter — the could, or the should. He'd been told about talent and fate and spirit roots. Why so few men and beasts could even hope to cultivate. He could hardly sense the quality of his own spirit roots, most of what he knew about them came from his master's inspections.
Talent though? Orange-crest had that in piles, what men called talent. That easy grasp of things that fled the fingers of others. The ability to struggle and push and fumble through the dark, and end up climbing a small realm, rather than falling off the cliff of deviation.
Daoist Big Hat couldn't give Sun Guiying more talent any more than he could give him better spirit roots. But he didn't think the young man needed it.
Leisurely, the monkey stretched and squirmed his way over to the banked fire, setting his back a comfortable distance from the coals. He tilted his hat aggressively, letting it shade his eyes, rather than get up to extinguish the lamps and candles they'd been writing by.
Orange-crest was pretty sure all Sun Guiying needed to do was stick the talisman to the box. But he wouldn't jump right to something so simple. He'd try everything to sense qi; desperate for certainty, rather than mere confidence.
Orange-crest didn't think he'd succeed. But he wasn't in the business of telling other people their limits.
As the warm winds of sleep battered shut bleary eyelids, the monkey considered Fu Daxian and Lai Ping and Brawn and Sun Guiying. There was a similarity between them he couldn't put to words yet, something that set them apart from Guts and Ruo Ping and Hong Bo.
It was a pleasant life, that he'd sown the seeds of here. He hoped the Ministry of Daoist Affairs would allow him to keep it.