Sky Pride

Chapter 32- Answering the Tough Questions

Tian returned to the chamber at the heart of the mountain in a thundercloud of heavy thoughts. He didn’t notice the stone walls, or the worn away evidence of carvings that had once existed there. He didn’t notice the way the echos of his feet converged as he walked, sending him forth in a susurrus of soft sounds. Nor did he consider searching through the mountain for rare minerals. Heavenly Demon had mentioned that some might have come into existence due to the strange energy of this place, and while Tian was no crafter, he did delight in strange natural wonders. Not today. Not now. His full attention was given to weightier matters.

“Zihao? What? Ah? Did you… have some sort of breakthrough?” Liren did a doubletake as Tian came in. “Your martial arts have taken a great step forward. Congratulations!”

“Is it so obvious?” He forced a smile.

“It is to me. But why don’t you look happy? Did something go wrong?”

“No, no. Worse, perhaps.” He shook his head. “I can’t think of what to call my new palm art! It’s really, really good, too. But what can I call it that sounds domineering, but not absurd at the same time? No dragon this or elephant that. It’s not based on any animal or weather or god or monster.”

“Demonstrate it!” She was practically bouncing, the pearl ornament dancing on her forehead.

“I kind of am already.” Tian muttered, but he knew what she meant. He thought for a moment, and ran through a fairly normal palm drill, his hands flashing a brilliant white-gold at the moment where they would have struck an opponent. He finished off the routine with a casual slap that sent a white gold hand out, across the chamber, and cracking into the far wall. It didn’t do any damage.

“Interesting.” She tapped her leg. “You made an art, or maybe a spell, that works internally. It doesn’t have exterior moves because your body is trained so completely that the mechanics of striking and defending are ingrained in you. And if you are attacking at range, they don’t really matter in the first place, I suppose.”

“Right. I figured there was no need for a scripted move when everything could be the move. As it were.”

“And then you built in things like Senior Brother Fu’s combat technique-”

“You could just call him Dad at this point.” Tian muttered

“No I couldn’t. And then you have things like the penetrating power of Thunderous Palms, and the explosive yang of the Dragon Suppressing Palms. And a few other things mixed in there that I don’t recognize, but I’d say that was the gist of it. The main thing is that it uses righteous qi and is very… you.” She nodded, first thoughtfully, then sharply. “It’s excellent. And probably impossible to teach to another person, but still excellent.”

“They say that you have only properly mastered something when you can teach it. I guess that shows how far I need to go to understand my creation.” Tian laughed awkwardly and sat with a thump in his spot next to the array. “None of which is why I’m looking so beaten, though. What do I even call something like this?”

“Oh stop being silly. You just call it-” Liren suddenly cut herself off, frowning. “Mighty… no. Supreme? Ah, Supreme Virtue Demon Suppressing Palms?” Tian jolted. Had he ever told Liren the name of his body cultivation art? He had, hadn’t he? But it was ages ago.

“A good one, but it doesn’t just suppress demons.”

“True. Thunderclap?”

“It’s silent, and doesn’t involve lighting in any way.” Tian shook his head.

She perked up and smacked her fist into her hand. “Crushing Heavens Palm!”

Tian hesitated, then shook his head. “I’d feel weird using the same character from my name, and then I’d constantly have people asking if I was using the palm to crush the heavens, or if the heavens were crushing people with the palm.”

“Benevolent Reformation Justice Preserving Palm Technique?” Liren went for a change of tone.

“I’m still not sure what ‘justice’ is, and I know damn well my personal definitions of righteousness and virtue are very much based on emotions rather than strong logic. So… probably not.”

“West Town Outer Court Trash Compressing Palm?” She grinned, and Tian grinned back. Then he shook his head. “Uses Qi. Not an Outer Court Art, alas.”

“Damn. This is actually hard.” Liren bit her knuckle.

“Right? ‘A Righteous Smack’ is the best I can come up with, and it’s a bit…”

“Yeah, thatʼs more flippant than actually humble. Boasting, in fact.” Liren nodded, glancing up the hole in the mountain towards the sky, and double checking that there was nothing incoming before looking back at Tian. “Maybe you need to go the other direction. Something so casual, it becomes domineering.” She grinned. The hairs on the back of Tian’s neck started to rise. “Trainee Palm Art.”

The authorʼs narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Tian snapped his finger. “Brilliant. The name is a bit long- trainee doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. Primary? Beginner? Basic?”

“Basic. You could use it to bully people. ‘I won’t make this hard on you. Take three blows from my Basic Palm Art. I won’t use any elemental qi, I won’t even use any fancy martial techniques. Just three blows, and I will let you and your fellow bandits escape. What do you say?’”

Tian staggered back, clutching his chest. “My dao companion is a genius! I thought I was doing well defending you from slander, but all this time, you had a secret, sinister side to you. Amazing! It will henceforth be known as the Basic Palm Art.”

“Slander?! Who? Who slandered me? Who, on this barren rock floating through a void that exterminates humans and ghosts alike, who exactly slandered me?”

“I won’t name names. Is it even worth you making a reply? Like I said, I managed it, and ensured the proper party was blamed.” Tian waved away the highly pertinent question with an impertinent flap of the hand. He firmly ignored her glowering, too, as there seemed to be something on his face worth her staring at. Instead, he focused on hiding how pleased he was with the name. Basic Palm Art, for all the mischievous reasons they talked about, but also because, for him, it was the basics. He had piled up and piled up and piled up all these arts and skills and done so much reading, and was able to boil it down to the basics.

Do this, for these reasons. So long as you know how to fight, this is enough to manage most things.

Simple, unpretentious, effective, concealing both strength and wealth. It was very him. He grandly turned back towards her and offered to take over minding the array. She intensified the glower for a moment longer, relented, grudgingly nodded, and trudged out again. She paused at the cave entrance and looked back at him. Her glower vanished, and her smile was brilliant and all the breath froze in his lungs and he was entirely lost looking at her.

“Congratulations, Tian. You’ve done something incredible. I will only moderately make you suffer when we finally get out of here.”

She was gone by the time he recovered. She was cheating. How, he didn’t know. But she was. He shook his head to drive away all thoughts of her criminality, and focused on the important matters at hand. What nice things could he do for Liren to make her smile more. “I wonder if she’d like a head ornament carved from the stone here. There’s got to be pretty stones somewhere on the mountain.” Tian didn’t hear Grandpa’s fond chuckling, but it was certainly going on.

Tian settled in for extended tedium, though his worries turned out to be overblown. The wolf pup appeared again, willing to play. This time, Tian pulled out a bit of Heavenly Realm meat, infused it with a bit of his own qi, and started teasing the wolf with it. He opted for making the wolf jump to grab the bit of meat, and when the little spirit was reliably snagging the pea sized bites of meat with each leap, Tian changed the game. He displayed the bit of meat, then deliberately hid it in his sleeve. The wolf pup was having none of that nonsense, and immediately ran up the sleeve to eat the treat. The experience was a level of ticklishness Tian had yet to experience. He was gasping when he balanced a piece on his toe and held his leg up at an angle. The spirit wolf trotted up his leg like it was flat ground, and happily ate it while sitting on the point of Tian’s shoes.

Tian wondered if he could teach a wolf pup to play fetch. Probably, right? Or should he ask the pup to find shiny rocks on the mountain? There simply must be some treasures buried in here. After thousands upon thousands of years of exposure to high quantities of both qi and shen, even ordinary rock would have transformed.

He pulled out a little ball from one of the less used storage rings and tossed it for the pup. The pup looked at him with an expression that seemed to hover between confusion and contempt. Were he capable of speech, Tian could easily imagine the spirit asking if he was proud to have littered.

He pulled the ball back with a yank of his qi, rubbed a bit of meat over it, and then threw it again. This time, the wolf was all too eager. It ignored the ball entirely, and leapt for the piece of meat still in his hands.

“No, damn it, get the ball, get the, oh you little beast!” They tussled back and forth for a bit. The wolf decided this was a fight worth being solid for. Tian was very tempted to roll around on the floor with the wolf, but faithfully held his position. It proved to be a fortunate choice, as he had failed to notice a mass of hissing energy the size of a cottage come shooting down the hole through the mountain until it slammed into the formation.

“Oh Hell!” He could see refined spirit stones going dim, then crumbling to dust, in mere seconds. The blockages in the formation were forming faster than he could clear them, the burn rate was just too high.

“Get back here! We got a big one, and I can’t manage it by myself!” He called for Liren, hands and qi moving constantly. She came back in a streak of sunlight, the control wand in her hand stabbing out and breaking up blockages, or pushing energy flows to move a little faster along the channels.

Heavenly Demon didn’t even scream. There was a drumming noise, or a flapping, like a flag or an awning in a windstorm. His bones had been broken and re-broken more than a week ago. Tian didn’t like to imagine what was happening at the bottom of the pit.

The mass of twisting noise and dust pressed hard on the formation. The weaving light-lattices tried to carve away at it, but for all its seeming intangibility, it held strong.

“How long will the main stockpile of stones last at this burn rate?” Tian asked, voice tight.

“Minutes. The backup supplies might stretch it to four hours. Should we weaken it? Take a few good stabs at it or something?”

Tian grimaced. The thought of the comparatively enormous mass exploding was horrifying. Even a blue wiggle was enough to send him spinning and leave him with a filthy headache.

“We’ll take turns. Probe first, I’ll watch carefully.”

Liren grunted a reply. She let Tian take over clearing blockages for the half second it took to stand, pull out her spear, lunge, and send a streak of what Tian could only think of as heavy lightning into the side of the mass.

“Lightning can’t be heavy. It’s wind-fire. Supreme yang, ghost slaying,” He muttered, watching the way the energy inside the orb shifted. His eyes were starting to burn, and though he couldn’t see it, the golden pupil in his eyes was brightening

“It can if you know how. What are you seeing?”

“It’s… a roadside tavern!”