MF-novel B3 Chapter 3
B3 Chapter 3
Orange-crest began his journey in high spirits. He'd not left after Sun Wuming had bid him farewell. Instead, he'd lingered, and the two of them had spoken late into the night of journeys and legends and other inconsequential things. By the time he'd set off in earnest, the deepest part of the night had already passed, and the faint purples of pre-dawn had begun to sneak through the trees.Orange-crest had twice traversed the hinterlands of Mount Yuelu, the distant vicinities that had been the forbidden frontiers of his childhood. Both times he'd moved through these lands in dreamlike haste, as his life changed greatly.
Though his footsteps were unhurried, orange-crest could not help but feel that this crossing, too, presaged a great change. His master had sometimes said that one could not step in the same river twice. That life was this river, passing on, unceasing, in day and night. Li Xun had been right about a great many things. Orange-crest hoped this was not one of them. He'd accepted he would never be the monkey he'd once been, invincible in his carelessness. But though much of what he'd loved had been marred, separated from him by unfamiliarity and injury and rancor, he had not given up hope that he might reforge those bonds, stronger for their straining. Where there was life, how could there not be hope? What misunderstanding and grievance could not be overcome, if he was strong and clever enough?
Li Xun, Yang Wei, Han Jian, Wu Yingjie. Even formless-gleam. All of them, he missed grievously. All of them, he would see again.
The third time orange-crest walked the lands that met the eastern slope of the mountain of his birth, he moved at a leisurely pace. He dipped off the deer-path several times, searching for a particular tree, one he'd oft seen from a distance as a young monkey. It had stood taller than its peers, and always been one of the first to don the colors of autumn as the chill winds began to blow, a lone splash of crimson in a sea of misty greens.
He found it, eventually. Or one close enough he could not distinguish it from that dusty memory. It was bare, its brilliant leaves underfoot, fallen and sodden and trampled.
Perhaps there was a sign or a lesson there. Whatever it was, orange-crest refused to pay heed to it.
As the sun rose high and began to burn off the mist of the dawn, orange-crest picked up his pace. He was a cultivator now. He hardly needed rest, and he'd had a great deal of it before he left.
He first headed in the direction that would have brought him back to the Azure Mountain Sect, west, opposite the rising sun, then cut sharply to the north. He had distant memories of maps he'd seen at his master's side. Both the Azure Mountain Sect and Mount Yuelu were in the southeast of the Empire of Xiao. The many smaller cities of the empire were all blurry dots to him, but they grew far more numerous as one moved northwest toward the empire's capital. Orange-crest hoped to skirt the bounds of the sect by several hundred li, crossing toward human civilization.
The closest things he had to a destination were the cities of Shendu and Huangshi. His master's birthplace, and the largest city in the south of the empire, where many common-born disciples hailed from, respectively. Unfortunately, he didn't know exactly where either of them were. Nobody had told orange-crest that one day geography would be important.
As the monkey ran, following the hilly roots of Mount Yuelu to the north, he thought. It was lonely, travelling alone. There was little else to do but think.
He'd need a map, orange-crest eventually decided.
He needed a lot of things. He had a list in his mind, and it was a terribly daunting one. Cultivation advancements, at least one great-realm breakthrough. Preferably two, surpassing the tribulation that had so grievously injured his master. A pill furnace, one at least as good as his master's Tiger's Maw had been. Alchemy books, especially those about alchemical bodily cultivation. His master's notes would be better, but the burlap bag had perished in Li Xun's fight with Elder Lu, along with everything in it. Ingredients, once he had a recipe. His master had told him the Thousand Poison Vale was a paradise for unorthodox alchemists like him, so that was at least a place to start.
And a way to open Elder Lu's storage ring, to fund all of these things. Ooh, and to put the cauldron in. He needed the ring working before he could think about getting a cauldron, or too many books.
Orange-crest leapt over a fallen tree, following a rising ravine on a whim. Perhaps he would see something interesting, if he climbed high enough.
No, that list was too big. 'Core Formation' wasn't a plan, it was a distant dream. He might know where to find ingredients, but that wasn't helpful at all when he didn't have even a vague idea of how to invent a recipe to heal his master.
What could he reach for now, that would help?
What he needed first was knowledge. Books, or a teacher. Both of those he'd be more likely to find in a city.
He needed a map to get to a city. A map, or a guide. That was becoming a common theme, but orange-crest was not in a mood to trust a human more than paper. Paper at least could not see the fur on his face and find lies leaping to its tongue.
So, a map. He could buy or steal one of those. What else did he need?
He could render himself invisible with his illusions, but that wouldn't let him trade with humans. He needed a disguise, and he didn't think wearing the guise of Yang Wei would be it. Orange-Wei seemed to combine the worst of orange-crest's fearlessness and Yang Wei's pride. If he wore that guise, he would immediately seek a fight, and the ruse would be up the moment he was struck.
No, orange-crest was coming to see that there was only one conclusion. His old nemesis. He needed clothes. One robe for his body, and a second to wrap around his head and paws. Would men think that odd? Probably. But surely they would think him something other than a monkey, he could plead disfigurement, or eccentricity.
"Daoist Big Hat."
Yes, that was it. It had been a silly joke. But he needed it now, the big hat. Needed it as badly as he'd ever needed anything. It had made his master laugh, so he would make it a legend that echoed throughout the empire.
Two sets of robes. A map. A big hat, and a small city. Find a way to reach Foundation Establishment, so that none would question it when he called himself a daoist and sought after books of alchemy.
That was a plan. A journey of a thousand li began with a single step. His would start with these.
Who was Daoist Big Hat, orange-crest wondered. What did a reputable human look like, outside a sect? He'd only ever really known the men of the Azure Mountain, outside of a few passing glimpses of Yang Shui's pack, which dressed very differently from the cultivators of the mountain. But humans seemed to put great stock in appearances, and the stories their outfits told.
He supposed he'd be disheveled, at least at first. Li Xun had never wasted an opportunity to complain about how expensive good robes were. But he'd also spoken of hidden masters, warned orange-crest never to judge a cultivator by his outerwear. At least until orange-crest had started using his warnings as an excuse to avoid taking baths.
Orange-crest could be a stinky disheveled hidden master with a big hat and a mysterious past.
The monkey pulled himself up the wall of the ravine, then wound his way through a hilltop dotted with trees. As he crested the hilltop, and looked out at his surroundings from the high ground, he saw something in the distance. Thin and wispy, a little smudge upon the lower lip of the sky.
Smoke.
Orange-crest grinned, noted the heading, and began climbing back down the hilltop.
Daoist Big Hat's journey had begun.
The sun had begun its descent by the time orange-crest found the people who owned the smoke.
He'd sought to make use of his qi to speed the process, feeding it into his ears and nose to sharpen his senses. But the lands of the Xiao were vast and sparsely populated, and without a proper technique the success he found was modest at best. It was another area he needed to improve. He could accept his master's mastery, but it was downright embarrassing that men like Han Jian and Yang Shui outstripped him so greatly in matters of detection.
Slowly, orange-crest shimmied his way into the bush he'd chosen, settling in to watch his quarry. Couldn't do this in a robe. Not without using your qi, or tearing it up. Best enjoy being naked while he could.
"I want to be the Marshal of the West!" One of the little humans shouted. Orange-crest was impressed, the raven-haired little boy's command of language was as good as his own, even though his head would barely reach orange-crest's chest.
"I want to be the Marshal of the West too!" A younger boy, with puffy cheeks, protested.
"There can't be two Marshals of the West!" An older girl said firmly. She looked like she was almost old enough to be an initiate, just a year or two too young. Perhaps fourteen? Orange-crest wasn't really sure how old that made the other children. Human ages were hard.
"Why not?"
"I didn't even want to play cultivator with you." The girl said. "If I have to do this, you at least have to be different cultivators. It makes no sense otherwise!"
"Then I want to be the Jianheng Emperor!" The puffy-cheeked boy proclaimed. "I'll write a bad report about you in my magic scroll and then you'll lose all your hair!"
"Xiaosi, you can't do that! It's too mean to make a girl lose all her hair! And that's not how his scroll works!"
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"Nuh uh! It can do anything! Anything he wrote in it became a law! My mother says he wrote down everyone's bed time in it and that's why you have to go to bed!"
"No! My dad says it's because of demons!"
"Well, if you're the emperor, then I'll be The Gardener, so you have to call me aunty."
"What!" The Jianheng Emperor cried.
"It's true! Lady Xiulan was already a cultivator when the Jianheng Emperor was a baby! So I'm your aunty!"
"Fine! But you need to respect your nephew! Cause I'm in charge!"
'Lady Xiulan' nodded agreeably.
"Of course, honorable emperor." She said. "You know, I have some thoughts about bedtimes."
Xiaosi nodded seriously, then pulled an invisible scroll out from behind his back.
"Yes, yes, I agree. I have been meaning to do an amending to those laws. I think the people are virtuous and good and we don't need bedtimes anymore."
"Why stop there, my majestic nephew? Isn't it a travesty that children everywhere need to wake up before the sun? I think it's disrespectful to try to do anything earlier than the sun!"
Safely ensconced in his bush, orange-crest nodded in agreement.
"Yes! That's a good law, aunty! No waking up early."
"But if we're all righteous cultivators, who will be the demon?" The Marshal of the West asked, disappointed. "Who will tremble before my mighty spear?"
He brandished a stick. Orange-crest wondered if that was his cue.
"We don't need a demon." Lady Xiulan said, her tone reminiscent of his master's many fond complaints about his behavior. He wondered how often she had to be the demon.
"But if we don't have a demon, who am I going to fight?"
"Why do you need to fight anyone?"
"Cause I have a mighty spear!" The Marshal said, as if that explained everything. He looked around, then began to swing his spear in a great circle around his head.
"Tornado!" He proclaimed, slicing through dry reeds and willow branches, sending autumn leaves flying everywhere. "I'm the reaping wind now, Lady Xiulan! What are you gonna do about it?"
"Emperor!" Lady Xiulan cried. "He's destroying my garden! Arrest him!"
"I am the law!" The Jianheng Emperor shouted, chasing after his errant marshal.
Orange-crest just watched. He could be the demon later. He was still feeling a little out of sorts. It'd been a year since he'd spoken the elegant tongue to any save the Monkey King. It felt both more, and less.
As the monkey watched, nations rose and fell. The emperor arrested his marshal, who promptly conspired with Lady Xiulan to overthrow the tyrant. But then the little emperor declared he was really his own father in disguise, rumors of his death greatly exaggerated, and demanded they all kowtow before his august personage. It was at this point that the story stopped making any semblance of sense, and everyone began throwing dusty tornados and cupped hands full of river-water at each other.
"Come on boys, it's almost dark. We need to head in."
"I, the mighty Marshal of the West, shall defeat this perfidious imposter with a single blow! Behold my secret technique!" The elder boy whirled his hands, settling into a martial pose vaguely reminiscent of the empty-handed portions of the Serpent Stance. "Immortal Shove!"
His younger companion could not maintain his footing in the face of such overweening power, and went tumbling head over heels with a plaintive cry. Tumbling directly into a bush.
Orange-crest's bush.
"Xiaosi!"
"Ow!" The reincarnated emperor cried, rubbing his head.
"Are you alright?"
"I didn't hit him that hard!"
The younger boy, Xiaosi, stared up at the monkey who loomed over him. The young boy's face was pink in the dying light, mottled shadows half-obscuring his flushed cheeks. Their eyes met. Orange-crest opened his mouth. Xiaosi froze at the sight of him, pallor replacing his flush in an instant, and then cried out, sharp and shrill.
"Xiaosi!"
"I swear I didn't—"
"I've got you!"
Xiaosi's pale face vanished, as he was yanked free from the bush by his legs. After a moment's hesitation, orange-crest followed, the bush rustling all around him as he emerged.
"Beast!"
"It hurts!"
"Demon!"
"Run! Run! Huizhong, get your dad!"
"Wait!" Orange-crest shouted. "I'm just a monkey!"
"Ignore it! Only demons talk like that! Run! It can't hurt us inside!"
Orange-crest could have given chase easily, but he didn't feel like it would improve things. Better to let them cool down on their own. He could approach them in the morning, from a place with long lines of sight where his presence would not startle them.
Playing the demon was not as fun as he'd hoped.
Dong Zhu didn't think it was a demon. But one did not survive on the frontier by being unprepared. When Hong-er had returned with the boys in tow, Xiaosi crying like an infant, rubbing at a raw scrape on his scalp, his first reaction had been a quietly building fury.
Hong-er was a good girl, but she indulged the boys too much. They should have been back an hour ago, not roughhousing upstream. But as she'd spoken, detailing the strange encounter they'd had in the woods, his waxing anger had melted into a cautious focus, one that formed a tight seal over the terror that threatened to overtake him.
Xiaosi said it was a monkey. A giant monkey with teeth like a wolf. Hong-er claimed it was some sort of furry demon that walked and spoke like a man. Huizhong, his brave son, insisted it was just a beast caught up in their wild imaginations.
Dong Zhu knew better. That is, he knew that he knew nothing. So he marshalled all the forces at his disposal. His brother, the two other men whose families called Crooked Pine home, and the community's pair of dogs.
None of them had been eager, not even Xiaosi's father Tao. But they were men of the frontier, and they knew their duties. A man could only rely on himself and his neighbors out here, not nobles or soldiers or cultivators. Each of them took up one of the stubby dao they used for clearing brush in one hand, and a torch or bundle of peachwood branches in the other. They filled their pockets with rice and salt or mugwort, prepared for anything.
It would probably be nothing. Dong Zhu hoped it was nothing. But part of him couldn't help but flick between the stories. Eyes that gleamed like fire, Xiaosi had said. A hungry ghost had a mouth aflame. It didn't quite match. A beast that spoke? Too many different guai it could be.
As the men marched out in formation, an outward-facing diamond with Dong Zhu at their head, flanked by the dogs, Dong Zhu wished for nothing more than to be able to bury his head in the sand and ignore this.
It was probably nothing. If he just kept telling himself that, it might come true.
"Cold night." Dong Fu muttered. "Could be by the fire now."
"Quiet. And let me handle the speaking if we find it."
"Are you a priest now, brother?"
"Set some of the mugwort burning." Dong Zhu commanded, ignoring his younger brother's challenge. "If it's just an animal, we'll be glad to have wasted it."
The trees cast long shadows in the hour after dusk. The willows were the worst, their whip-thin branches looking like nothing more than the hair of a drowned ghost.
And then Dong Zhu saw it.
A shadowed form near the height of a man, glimmering in the light of their torches as if it was covered in metallic dust. Dark eyes scattered with gleaming specks like cherry-hot iron, set into a face whose shape was clearly inhuman.
"There!"
Dong Zhu was not the only one with eyes.
"I bear you no ill will." The spirit said, its cadence oddly stilted.
"What do you want, then?" Dong Zhu asked.
"Want?" The spirit echoed in confusion.
"The dogs!"
"No!" Dong Zhu countermanded, but his voice went unheeded.
His fool of a brother let slip his lead, and his dog charged the shadowy figure. Dong Zhu could only watch as the creature vanished into a spray of fiery sparks, only to reappear from the shadows a few paces to the left.
"Stop that!" The spirit commanded. "Rude!"
"It flees! Give chase! Wallop it with the peachwood branches! Leave this place, unclean thing!"
The ghost growled, and Dong Zhu's heart sank. That was not fear in its strange voice.
"What do you want!" He cried once more.
"Nothing!" The spirit hissed. Dong Fu's dog charged at it once more, its fervor undiminished by its confusion. The spirit caught it with a single outstretched hand, easily holding the frantic animal aloft, before tossing it like a child's ball back at Dong Fu.
"Such strength!"
Torches were brandished, and Dong Zhu joined his neighbors in raising their blades and charging forward, terror clutching at his heart all the while.
He threw a handful of salt at the spirit, but it ducked low, then flickered, appearing several steps to the side. There was another spray of sparks, and then Old Li went down as an unseen force swept his feet out from under him.
"Stop!" The spirit cried, and a nimbus of blazing sparks surrounded the second dog, trapping it mid-leap.
"Use your salt!"
There was an inhuman chuckle, and someone suddenly tripped amidst their salt-flinging charge. A torch fell to the earth, steam rising from the damp leaves, only to suddenly extinguish itself.
The shadowed figure did not appear to move all the while.
"What is wrong with you? Why are you attacking me?" The spirit was among them now, sending men and dogs flying with ease. Dong Zhu swung his dao and his bundle of peachwood wildly, not trusting his lying eyes. He felt his blade bounce off something, a form as unyielding as stone, then he too was flying, his footing stolen away almost gently, though the landing upon his back was anything but.
"What do you want!" Dong Zhu demanded once more, rising to his feet with a wince.
There was a sharp intake of breath, a change of tone.
"Why! Why do you attack me! I have done nothing to you! What do I want? I want food and wine and warmth! I want spirit stones and healing for the injured!" The spirit ranted wildly. "I want fate to stop pushing us around! I want cultivators and humans to stop fighting everything they see! I want knowledge and power! Can you give me any of this?"
"No—"
"Then why do you keep asking what I want!"
"Salt!" Dong Fu shouted, flinging yet more expensive salt at the spirit.
"I want you to stop throwing salt at me!"
"What do you want, spirit." Dong Zhu repeated. It was working. He didn't know how, or why, or what he was negotiating with, but it was working. The shadowy figure had stopped flinging men about like dolls, though Old Li's dog still floated eerily in place, seemingly unable to so much as breathe. It had asked for food and wine. Was it a hungry ghost? That didn't seem quite right. What sort of hungry ghost had corporeal form, and hungered for things so abstract as power and justice? Such a ghost would be the better part of a god.
"I am no spirit." The ghost lied. "I am a cultivator. I bear you no ill will."
"What will appease you, honored cultivator, and send you from this place?"
The spirit growled like an animal. But it answered.
"Clothing. I want clothing. Is that—"
"Done!"
"What?"
Dong Zhu stripped where he stood. It was madness. There was no certainty it would work. Yet he ripped his belt free in one clean motion, and shed his jacket in the next.
None spoke as he quickly stepped out of his trousers, dropping his peachwood branches to gather his clothing into a bundle in his hands.
The others didn't understand. This thing was light as air and sturdy as stone. It did not flinch before salt, nor quail at the strike of peachwood. It was so far beyond them it might as well be an immortal descending from Heaven. Mayhap it needed invitation to possess one of them and shed its bestial form. Mayhap it was truly a kindly thing, or even a disfigured cultivator, and they'd misunderstood it grievously.
But they couldn't fight it.
If his jacket and trousers were the price it would take to get it to go away? It was a price he would pay happily.
"Take them and go! Haunt this place no longer!"
It was dark now, with only one torch. Old Li held it, and he had slowly shuffled over to where his dog hung suspended in air, reaching out unsure if he should touch the animal.
The spirit stepped forward, its footfalls too heavy for a creature of shadow and air. It stood hardly two paces from his outstretched hand.
"Fine." The spirit said quietly, petulantly, almost childishly. "I see I'm not wanted. I'll go."
His clothing was snatched from his hand. Dong Zhu watched the spirit all the while. Its shadow-clad shape did not move in the slightest, as his clothing vanished into the dark.
Only several moments later did the spirit vanish into another shower of sparks, in the same moment that Old Li's dog fell to the ground.
"Did we win?" Dong Fu asked, lying prone, covered in his own salt.
"We didn't lose, brother. That's far more important. I told you to let me handle the talking."
The people of Crooked Pine had many questions that night. Why was Dong Zhu in his underclothes? What strange thing had they encountered in the woods? Would tomorrow night be safe, or did they need to make offerings to the door gods, salt the thresholds, and set scissors beneath their pillows?
"It was a hungry ghost." Dong Zhu said, deciding what was true. "A great and powerful one. One that could command unseen force and resist steel and salt alike. No pitiable scavenger, but a potential catastrophe in wait. I sent it away with kindness and guile, by satisfying the needs that drove it, so it would not bring misfortune upon our homes."
Many toasts were made that night to Dong Zhu, the Naked Exorcist. And several months later, one very confused outer disciple of the Azure Mountain Sect was berated for filing an utterly nonsensical report about a clearly fabricated encounter with a malignant spirit.