Sky Pride

Chapter 12- Forcing Change (IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT AT THE END!)

“The Sky Treading Art, at its core, places the human in the heavens, and gives them agency. That is a crucial word- agency. The power to make choices. This is the ‘treading’ part of the title, you can walk where you will, not driven hither and thither by the winds of fate or circumstance.”

Tian imagined Cruel Treachery sitting in front of him, her bald head shining in the diffuse light of the cavern, the solid blue of her eyes mirroring the sky peaking through the hole in the roof. She had sounded indifferent when she said it, but she almost always sounded indifferent. It pricked him, a little, to think that the only inflection he could remember from his teacher’s voice were indifference, anger and bitterness, the latter two directly inspired by him, and the fact that, even in the privacy of his mind, he still thought of her as “teacher” not “master.”

He needed a master now. A teacher had no obligation to help with something so plainly outside the negotiated bounds of their work. A master would be involved with the overall development of their disciple, though Tian assumed “involved” was a bit of a moving target. What a master might consider an appropriate degree of assistance would vary from person to person.

Practically the first thing she had said about the Sky Treading Art was that it situated the human in the heavens and gave them agency. That meant something. It was her core cultivation art, and was important to her emotionally. He could assume that she felt this was the most important thing to understand, that this image was core to the art and, by extension, her.

“Do you think she would go for it? Actually, what would I even need her to do?”

She would be delighted to. I’m not joking, she would be genuinely delighted to. As for what you would need her to do, she would be applying her… I don’t know what they call it here, spiritual pressure? Divine sense? Mind Power?

“Shen?”

It’s shen, yes, but it’s an application of shen. She’d be jamming the melting paste into your body while you run your body cultivation art. Pushing while you pull, as it were. Your art is considerably high end, but Earth Milk is strong stuff. The art could get overwhelmed, especially when you mix in all those random yin treasures you have. She will guide the overflowing qi into your dantians and meridians without overwhelming them, then use the overflow from that to nurture your nascent shen. Extremely delicate work, and potentially permanently crippling if she screws it up. Fatal, in the case of severe error.

Tian unwillingly nodded. He got it, all of it. Grandpa let the moment return to silence.

“Should I use some of this for Liren?”

Not right now. Maybe if you find more in the future, but for now, she needs to grow her yang qi before condensing and purifying it again. Her physical body needs no reinforcement anyway.

“And… just any yin treasures?”

So long as they don’t absolutely clash and seem useful for body refining. Earth Milk is a powerful earth elemental treasure, yin phase. It is all about acceptance and forming a basis for other things to build on. You might use that mystery mushroom of yours, there should be a good degree of overlap. Thanks to all the heretics you looted, you have a decent little selection of Heavenly yin herbs, roots and so on. Whack ‘em all into a mortar, mash ‘em, boil ‘em, put them in a stew. The stew is the paste, if that wasn’t clear.

“It was clear.”

There is another angle you might not be considering. You haven’t made any progress in discovering what changes have happened in your body, and Merciless was unsubtle in his hint. He’s right, too- you figuring it out is going to be a lot more useful than me just telling you.

“Which you said before.”

Which I said before, yes, and you also have a massively, massively cursed pair of shears which are just screaming out yin energy heavily related to both qi and shen generally, to say nothing of curse qi and demonic qi. Might be a very revelatory thing to work into your upcoming soak, if you can figure out a good way to do it. Perhaps in conversation with a more experienced elder.

“If I can bring myself to trust them enough to reveal a secret I’ve only ever told Liren.”

Mmm. Well, Voidcatcher certainly spotted the statue, and I’d put money on Merciless and the White Peacock spotting it too. It’s hardly invisible to the right sort of eyes. It’s just that, for them, it’s simply not worth their attention. Their foundations are already set, you see. I suspect there is some sort of problem with that bald woman’s foundations too, because the more I look at the Sky Treading Art, the more inexplicable her failure to advance becomes. It’s pretty direct about how the advancement to the Perfected Human realm works, without coming out and saying it in exactly those words.

Tian watched the butterflies dance over the pond, leaving shimmering illusions with every flap of their fragile wings. They were happy in the garden, drifting from blooming flower to blooming flower, not disdaining wild garlic scapes or mustard greens allowed to bolt, but always returning to the dustless lotuses in the pond. He wondered if the lotuses would break through to the Heavenly Realm. They were certainly accumulating qi, and he knew plants didn’t cultivate the way humans did. Presumably a revelation wasn’t required.

“The freedom to make choices, huh? And it’s… whatever the word is. Thing that must be true because of the first thing.” He was speaking to the air, but Liren overheard and answered anyway.

“Corollary. Which is?”

“The necessity of accepting the consequences of those choices. It seems I will need to pay our master a visit.” Liren just shrugged. Tian shifted awkwardly, still not at peace with the thought of getting so vulnerable with a sect elder.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“How is the reformation process going at the disciplinary squad? You just keep telling me it’s ‘good’ without giving me details.”

“Because nothing is final until everything is final, and nothing is final until the sect elders and Sect Master Rui adopt the new rules. The rules are actually mostly done. People have been discreetly working on this for years, even before me. It just took someone willing to flip the whole table and tear off the faces of a lot of very senior people to bring the project forward.”

“They found just the right person, then.”

“Mmm.”

“But specifically, what are you changing?”

Liren gave him an unreadable look. “We are abolishing the current land use system for the mortal descendants of members of the sect.”

Tian’s breath caught in his throat.

“Residency in Mountain Gate City will be conditioned on service to the sect, not lineage. Heavenly Realm cultivators will still be eligible for free cave residences there, subject to minimum merit earnings in a given year. Hit a certain threshold, and you qualify to reside in the Monastery proper. Note that it doesn’t just cost merits, you need a minimum level of honorable service to come here at all. But it’s not conditioned on your status in the sect beyond being in the Heavenly Realm.”

Tian nodded, blinking rapidly.

“Having kids who join the sect doesn’t qualify as “serving” the sect anymore. We are getting out of the merchant game entirely, as an organization. Rent for mortals will be paid in goods and services, not a million miles different than any other feudal lord. Both mortals and immortals will be subject to the corvee, should it be necessary. And any dead land, land where kids are born sickly and food doesn’t grow, will be deemed uninhabitable, the residents expelled from the land and provided compensation.”

“Your family…”

“Are being poisoned by the land they stole. Until we understand how, it’s insane to let people live there. And it gives me credibility. I’m sending my own family off the mountain. Who dares play games now?”

She sounded very tired, but no less resolved.

“We are still figuring out how we can ban immortals from backing mortal trading houses. There are some practical problems there, but the idea has a lot of support. I am trying to figure out how to ban private mortal power bases entirely, but it seems to be impossible to cut off clan ties. My goal is to make such power institutional. Our hand in the mortal world should be the Kingdom itself. If an immortal needs something done by mortals, he can pass word through the Mission Hall, who will delegate downward. But like I said, practical problems, and figuring out the clan issue is going to be a massive pain.”

She rubbed her hand through her short cropped hair, now almost entirely a vivid red with flecks of orange and gold. It gave her a magical, dangerous feeling. Tian had the hallucinatory thought- what would it look like if she grew it long? She would hate it, she thought she was too masculine already, but the idea of long flowing red tresses tumbling across their pillows gripped him like little else could. Liren diverted him before he could finish opening his mouth.

“We are considering building new cities on the Mountain, but that’s not my department. Ah… what else… some procedural changes on how complaints are handled between people of two different realms, we are trying to figure out a way to make investigations truly impartial, but with so few people that doesn’t seem to be completely possible. It’s going to have to be a cultural shift.”

“I imagine it would. Any word about the inner-core-direct disciple system?”

“Not confirmed, but… massive changes. The rating system for prospects in the Outer Court is being abolished, though they are keeping the Dragon Calling Bell. The correlation between being able to ring it and reaching the Heavenly Realm is too high to ignore. Access to arts and training are being stepped way up, and I’m hearing things about changes to how missions are designed. Inner Court Disciples are going to have their benefits completely reworked, but first and foremost, they are going to be educated as though they had a real chance to break through to the Human realm.”

“Good. And, don’t they already?”

“No, actually. This is second and third hand information, but what I’m hearing is that the quality of the initial breakthrough is a huge indicator of the potential for breaking through to the human realm, and ultimately, though nobody has come right out and said this, to the perfected human realm. It explains the structure of the monastery, and why they reserve the Sky Treading Art for the Direct Disciples. But since nobody knows a way to guarantee an initial breakthrough…”

“I get it.” Tian nodded.

“But after thousands and thousands of years, they have a few shen cultivation manuals in the Scripture Pavilion, and the Elders are certain to have even more in their private collections. Which they will volunteer for the good of the sect, apparently. Just about everyone will be able to find something suitable for them to cultivate. So even if they can’t manage a high quality initial breakthrough, they will have a path to make the attempt to break through to the Human Realm and beyond. Access to shen arts and more advanced qi training will be based on lifetime merits and, crucially, mandatory attendance of classes on the ethics and philosophy of the Ancient Crane, along with completing ongoing sect missions. Core disciples are the same as Inner Court disciples with even better benefits and even higher requirements for ongoing training and ongoing sect missions. I saw some elders picking out a group of mansions and cave dwellings as a special district reserved for core disciples. Make ‘em feel fancy and motivated. Direct Disciples… are what they are, and are changing the least. This is a hard rule for the elders and the sect master. Even if they are willing to fiddle with what the word disciple means, the link to the Ancient Crane cannot be broken.” Liren smiled, but her voice didn’t hide her frustration.

“Education. Their big plan to reform the Inner Court is education.” Tian closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“We are a sect. What else can we do? The list of things that violate the sect’s morality and public conduct rules now runs to six pages and ends with ‘and any other behavior which shocks the conscience.’” Liren pinched the bridge of her own nose. It was worse for her. She had been the one trying to write the rules.

“I wish I knew. And for regulating the Disciplinary Squad itself?”

“For anything other than summary execution, the punishment has to be confirmed by the head of the Squad, and a right of appeal to a panel of three randomly selected elders is being created. Best I could come up with. Summary execution is now being restricted, as is the use of torture in investigations.” She sighed. “Which does raise the question of when the line is crossed between investigation and punishment, but again, I just don’t know of a better system. We are working on it.”

“A changing sect. One we are already planning to take a gamble on.”

“Pretty much. And it’s not like we don’t have any affection for the old place.” She smiled at him, and patted the rock she was sitting on. “I have a lot of happy memories here. That’s worth fighting for.”

Tian held back a sigh. He was being excessively paranoid, it seemed. He would have to do what Elder Rui had said, and extend a little faith. At least he was confident Cruel Treachery would say yes. So without further ado, he went, and he asked his new master for her help.

“I will not. And you know you shouldn’t have asked.”