Sky Pride

Chapter 28- Voices from the Void

“Qi enters the body through the mouth, is filtered by the lungs, then descends into the triple burner where it is warmed and converted into vital energy. The vital energy then circulates through the body, doing… useful things…”

Tian grinned. Liren still was shy about the oddest things, and watching her hesitate to say exactly what vital energy was good for was somewhat adorable. Yes, health, combat, longevity, but along with the martial prowess came marital prowess. Provided you had the proper arts, of course.

“Like what, Sis?” His eyes were bright and innocent.

“Yeah, like what, Sis?” Burning Heaven piled in, equally innocent.

“You know what! It then goes to the crimson palace to be converted into qi, which circulates and does useful things, and then rises to the muddy pit, upper lotus pool, mysterious pass, whatever you want to call it. Upper Dantian.”

“I’ve heard it called the ‘soul sea’ too, but honestly that never made much sense to me.” Tian offered.

“Me either. Anyway. It goes there, gets converted into shen and then does… something useful but we don’t yet know what, but it’s different than normal thoughts.”

“Yep. That is how everything works. Some… day one in the sect stuff, but yep.” Tian smiled kindly.

“You know that wasn’t explained to you for years. Most of the details only came in the Heavenly Realm!”

“Everything only came up for me in the ‘heavenly realm.’” Burning Heaven grumbled.

“Eh. It comes up more than you would think in medical books. You need to have some understanding of all that to make effective treatments. I’ll admit that specifics on qi and shen were completely absent.” Tian was resolute in his determination to tease Liren. It had been a very boring couple of weeks.

“The point I am trying to get is that it is all originally qi that is refined three times by us until it returns to the universe. Even mortals with no cultivation have all three, cultivators have much, much more. Because we cultivate them.”

“Yep. And?”

“And… the thoughts are returned to the void… how? Is there such a thing as pure shen, or is it always mixed with qi? Vital energy really doesn’t like leaving the body, though it does slowly leak out.”

“Does it really? I’m leaking? I don’t think anyone ever told me that.” Burning Heaven asked.

“Also known as aging, yes.” Tian nodded. “A problem we are working on fixing with all that cultivation.”

“Well, what if this is kind of like that? What if this realm trapped the qi-shen mix of Old Freak Song’s thoughts and memories, with just traces of the emotion and wild qi leaking out, mixing with the geomantic disturbances to the dragon veins to create the Redstone Wastes? What if that is what Starsieve was on about? The living things created by the thoughts trapped in here. What if they aren’t just bouncing around? What if they are growing, changing, becoming something more than they were when Song exploded?”

“I was with you right up until the end. Why do you think they are growing? Wouldn’t it make more sense if they were getting weaker?”

“Why?” Liren’s grin turned strange. Tian’s eyes focused on the pearl ornament resting on her forehead. He had meant to get her some more, but hadn’t. He really ought to get to that.

“Well, if the remnant qi-shen thought… forms? Thought bundles? Whatever they are, if they are banging into each other, I could see how they might grind each other down. But I still don’t get how they would make new thoughts, or make each other stronger.”

“Didn’t say stronger, I said ‘more.’” She waggled a finger. Tian frowned. She was clearly imitating him. He would have to teach her a lesson, and soon. But she wasn’t done talking.

“Starsieve said the Redstone Wastes were misunderstood, and had much to offer someone with an open mind. He was in a damn strange humor that whole time. Kept making little jokes that were funny only to him.”

“That’s normal, actually. In hospitals. Sometimes patients get that way. They are in so much pain, knowing that relief is coming makes them giddy. You see it in suicides too.” Tian’s voice shifted from cool to grim. Liren shook her head. The old monster had committed suicide, and killed an uncountable number of people at the same time. The diviner had guessed that millions would die in the death throws of the Kingdom. He might yet be proven right.

Liren bowed her head, then looked up and met his eyes. “He said ‘Like living next to a cow for its warmth, never knowing about milk.’ I remember it very clearly. The metaphor is about getting a real benefit by doing something actively, rather than benefitting passively. But it’s also about a renewable resource.”

Tian thought it over. “You think we should intercept them and destroy them without the array? Wouldn’t we be screwing over Heavenly Demon if we did? I don’t mind teasing the arrogant bastard, but I’m not going to ruin his good fortune.”

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

“No, no.” Liren shook her head. “Of course not. Mother’s Most Specialist Boy couldn’t possibly have known about the hole in the mountain or this pit. He set up the array to defend against the mind things, break them down and use them to refine himself. But there’s no way he’d just leave that to chance. I’d bet you it draws them in too.”

Tian thought about it, then nodded. “Such a big space, and such a mighty senior, there is no way he could eat all of it. As it were.”

“Especially not if they are renewing themselves somehow.” Liren’s smile was wonderfully daoist- equal parts saintly and villainous. “Our efficiency will be much, much lower without an array, and they won’t be lured to us either. It won’t interrupt his good fortune. We aren’t even entirely sure how to break them down.”

“Aura.” Tian’s lips thinned into an approximation of a smile. “If our guess is right about what aura is, he’s using a blend of qi and shen to break up shen held together with a bit of qi. So our attacks will have to carry some shen with them, somehow.”

“We’ll just have to beat them to death with enough qi. If nothing else, we will learn something about the Human Realm and shen in the process.”

The two fell back into quiet. Tian sneakily gathered his strength into his legs, but Liren beat him to it.

“I’ll try it out first!” The words came from a blur stretching towards the path out of the cavern.

“Not if I kill one first!” Burning Heaven flapped hard, racing up the tunnel behind her.

“You’re both traitors!” Tian roared, before settling down for a good seethe. He considered himself a true champion of sitting around without getting bored, but ever since he came to this place, his mind had been jetting around, hopping from one thought to the next, without ever settling into the meditative groove he had been building since he was ten. He couldn’t lose himself in the hunt through medical texts or histories, his progress on his arts slowed to a stand-still, and while his cultivation was going strong, it was exhausting rather than refreshing. As a result, he was very, very bored, and more than a little irritated.

“You leave me no choice but to retaliate.” Tian pulled out his flute once more, and resumed playing. It was quite a different thing. What was it like to play the sound of looking at the mind of a dead senior? The difference between the two of them was still as large as the difference between a mountain and an anthill. But then, he played the feeling of flying through the vast blue sky, and wasn’t the sky bigger than any mountain?

He struck a note that even he found unbearable and put his flute down. “You unfilial bums! Un… fraternal? Not important right now. How dare you morally bad people leave me stranded!” The grumbling intensified. He cupped his hands and yelled down the hallway. “You are rushing out to fight what you don’t understand for a profit you are only guessing about all based on speculation that you can’t test!”

He paused. Weren’t they testing it right now? Was he entirely without grounds to attack? Ah. they were in a place without sun or moon- what could it be but a dark day? Ignoring the omnipresent soft illumination, of course. Which, yet again, sabotaged his complaining. He stared up the hole in despair.

“Actually, I thought your theory was pretty interesting. A very daoist interpretation, of course, not at all the way I think of things, but it seemed plausible.”

The voice came from the pit. The array was blocking his view of the interior, but there was really only one person it could be. It was just that the voice was off. If anything, he would have said it was a woman’s voice.

“Oh? How would you describe it, then?”

“Fragments of soul. And they don’t generate new fragments, the drifting souls of the Wasteland fall into this place and are slowly broken down, combined with and changed by the soul fragments already here.” The female voice was shifting in tone, sliding up and down in pitch. The voice was always reasonably pleasant, but the change wasn’t.

“If souls can get in here, why can’t spirits?” Tian asked.

“Who says they can’t? And anyway, there is a difference between getting in, and getting in intact. The distortions in reality around this place tear anything coming through without the key into very strange pieces.”

The voice’s tone was making smaller shifts now, always in a pleasant register. It was nicer and nicer to hear her speak, though it wasn’t a curse and there was no apparent qi usage. Tian was watching very carefully for exactly that.

“So what’s aura then? Just attacking with your soul?”

“Ah, now that is a more interesting question.” Her voice was really pleasant, the shifts had almost stopped entirely, having landed squarely on what Tian didn’t even know was his favorite sound for a female voice. The inflection of the sounds, the way the tones were pitched, her speaking rhythms, all subtly adjusted themselves, becoming sweeter and sweeter to his ear. “I would say that every action, not just the manipulation of aura, is done with the soul. Thoughts are transitory, the product of a fleshy brain, and cannot be eternal. Only the immaterial soul, and the truths of that soul, has the potential for an eternal understanding, and thus only the immortal soul can take action, for any act once taken is irreversible.”

“Mmm. My sect teaches that no man, or woman for that matter, enters the same stream twice. The person is different, and so is the water. Time has passed and changed both.” Tian noticed that she wasn’t talking like Heavenly Demon. She didn’t refer to herself by honorifics, and Heavenly Demon made a point of not getting too deep into the philosophical teachings of his sect.

“Daoists and water, the eternal couple.” She laughed, and Tian felt his heart lighten. It was good to hear her laugh, better to make her laugh.

“What is your name, by the way?”

“Me?” And Tian had a vision of sheer loveliness, wide eyed and sweetly welcoming, burst into his imagination with a single word. So much was carried in little sound, so many joys and naughty secrets and pure joy over simple things like the sound of spring and the smell of autumn in the company of someone who wanted nothing more than to make you happy, and who you wished with your whole heart to make happy in return.

“Why, I am the Heavenly Demon. The real Heavenly Demon. And my true name is. A. Secret. I can’t tell just anyone my name. Names are a binding, a connection between two people. I suppose we are in an awkward place- more than strangers, but less than intimate. But that can change. Nothing unseemly! I’m not that kind of demon. But, then, you know that intimacy can be of the heart, not just the body. Come. Sit next to me. Let us speak of many things, and learn the truth of each other. And just maybe, you will learn my name.”

It sounded like the very best offer in the whole world. An invitation to paradise, or at least a contentment most couldn’t even dream of. Rest, and happiness, and safety, and the perfect companionship for all your days, offered to you with both hands. All you had to do was reach out, and gratefully accept.

Tian smiled widely, and with a joyful heart replied “Hell no!”