“I… my name was… I suppose it still is Hou Rong. Written with the character for monkey, not a marquess.”
Tian had rarely seen a less monkey looking man, but that didn’t seem like the kind of thing he should comment on. He was busy stirring a vat, so he just nodded.
“When I was about twelve years old, my parents put me forward for testing at the Bamboo Medicine Hut. The sect were the landholders, you see, so it was allowed. It was only a few days walk to the gates of the sect. I got put in this giant contraption of brass and iron, and these incredibly sharp needles jabbed into me. I don’t know if I can properly describe what the testing felt like.”
He didn’t have to. Tian could remember it vividly.
“What they concluded was that I could cultivate immortality, but I wasn’t particularly good at anything. Minor or average aptitudes in most elements, nothing that really stood out. Average cultivation aptitude for the Bamboo Medicine Hut.” Hou shrugged.
Which made him useless by the standards of the Ancient Crane Monastery, but that didn’t need saying. Tian kept moving his hands, making sure not to splash as he stirred with his long stick. Hou stayed kneeling, naked on the brick floor of the warehouse, fists on his knees and eyes far away. It took the older man a few minutes to find what he wanted to say next.
“It was my life. A completely ordinary life. One of a tiny fraction of people in this country who can cultivate immortality, become a transcendent being, and it was just ordinary. Normal. I tended a garden, muddled along in the medicine halls, mopped floors in the hospital. My cultivation pace was a little faster than some, slower than others. I could usually make it to the top twenty in sect martial arts competitions, but never got past there. I had a couple of lovers, and that was nice, and they lasted for a while and then we broke up or drifted apart. Ordinary.”
Tian wouldn’t know. He’d take Hou’s word for it.
“When I reached Level Nine, I muddled around in the sect for a year or two, then applied to be an outer deacon. Mostly I was a business agent. Buying and selling, checking in on our people, making sure the tithes were paid on time. Some fighting, but not a lot. I wasn’t much of a fighter, I was surprised to learn. I always wound up hiring mercenaries.”
Tian would have been shocked if he had been a good fighter. “Useless” was his general assessment of the Medicine Hut’s martial arts, even if he thought their doctors were the very, very best in the kingdom. Until he met Voidcatcher, of course.
“And that was it. A hundred and twenty years of just… muddling along, doing whatever was asked of me, which was never too important, but usually not busywork. Just part of the machinery that keeps a sect moving.”
The world was built on the backs of such people, Tian knew. The caustic fumes made him blink as he kept stirring the vat. It wasn’t painful, just unpleasant. It should be about done, but he’d keep going a little longer just to be sure.
“I can remember the exact moment when I realized it. I had just drunk a nice cup of “Three Fragrance Wine” from the winery near Cold Springs. It has a nice flavor at a very reasonable price, and has enough heat in it to be relaxing, but not so much that I get drunk too fast. I was looking out at the sun setting on rice paddies, watching the ducks splash around in the water and I realized this was it. This was as good as it got for me. It wasn’t bad. Nobody could call it bad. I’d live another thirty or forty years, die peacefully in my sleep, be buried at a funeral with a modest turn out, and I’d be completely forgotten a few decades after that.”
Everyone was forgotten eventually. Tian couldn’t name a single person who lived in the previous dynasty, and surely they had heroes and legends of their own. But he took Hou’s point.
“A tepid life. Very daoist. Really, I should be commended.” Hou chuckled, staring down at his whitening knuckles. “But I was unresigned. I was an immortality cultivating daoist. A practitioner of internal alchemy. One on the path to transcendence. And I was just ordinary! I was leading a bland, mediocre life. Even a bandit blazed with ambition. They might live horrible lives, but they were striving. Vividly alive. Doing terrible things and shining in the dark. To say nothing of the real heroes, the wandering cultivators who were out there killing bandits and saving villages.”
“And then you were taken by heretics, and that ordinary life suddenly had a lot of appeal.”
“Forgive me, your eminence, but it did not. It was agonizing. I was terrified. Disgusted. There were times I went insane. But something was happening. I was involved in something big. I had the opportunity to be the hero of my own story, to lead an extraordinary life. I could escape, consume the insects that were consuming me, something.”
Hou would never have managed it, without Tian.
“So when you made your offer, I accepted joyfully. I was unresigned, you see. I was still unwilling to lead an ordinary life. Not after all I had suffered, and all the bland decades that came before. I desperately wanted that transformation.”
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“And now you have it.” Tian pulled a set of coarse linen robes out of the vat. They were ruined. Their faded blue was washed out, the cloth bleach white in most places. The bleaching was a little uneven. There were streaks and spots that survived, making it look like he had suffered some kind of accident, rather than made something special.
Funeral white, for a bum. Just perfect. He rinsed it clean, dried it with the laundry spell, and put it on.
“Now I have it. I can feel the changes. My body is no longer ordinary. My aptitude is no longer ordinary. My future is no longer ordinary. Who am I to be? And who do I now serve?”
“Who are you to be? I don’t know. A hero, I hope. As for who you will serve, you have met them before, many times. I will reintroduce you to them. You do not serve me. This incompetent is known as Tian Zihao. A core disciple of the Ancient Crane Monastery, if that matters.” Tian straightened up, and made sure that everything was tidied away. The caustic solution wasn’t too strong, but it could still give someone a nasty rash.
Once he was sure all was as it should be, he pulled out the wooden dragon pin holding up his hair. It was an ordinary looking thing, but one with extraordinary meaning. It was part of the men’s uniform in the sect. A member of the monastery, a dragon among men. Fated to soar in the heavens, even if they presently lived in the rivers and lakes.
Tian carefully shattered his wooden dragon hair pin. He ground it down between his palms until it was smoking dust, then he clapped the dust from his hands. A wave of his sleeve blew the wood dust away, vanishing into the warehouse.
His long white hair fell over his shoulders and down his back, still shining brilliantly against the coarse bleached fabric. Even the dust of the warehouse couldn’t stain it for long.
“All it takes is ashes and water.” Tian muttered, looking at the fabric. “Just ashes and water, and you get a transformation. Pull out a pin, and it’s a transformation. A gentleman becomes a scumbag, just one pin. What would change if I cut my hair away? Everything? Nothing?”
He turned towards the kneeling man, fixing him with exhausted eyes. “Twenty two, Unresigned Hou. There were twenty two other fellow daoists just like you. Bound in the same silk, tortured by the same insects. You are the only one to survive. I murdered the rest. The impossibility of your survival doesn’t clear the bitterness of their expected deaths. Here are robes for you. Come. Let me introduce you to the city I hope you will serve, and the people I hope you can save. It might be a short life, but it won’t be an ordinary one.”
Tian opened the doors to the warehouse, flooding it with afternoon light. He’d never forget the look on Liren’s face, as she rushed towards him and hugged him tight. “Oh Zihao…”
“How long?”
“How long were you in the warehouse? Three days.”
Three days. Working without food or rest, sitting with the afflicted, hearing their stories, learning how they wanted to meet their end. Not one of them wanted to risk surgery, and leading a crippled life. Death or glory, and he, an incompetent doctor and worse daoist, let them make the choice. Like the games fraudsters played on the street. You could pick any of the three cups you liked. The ball wouldn’t be there anyway. You only ever had the hope of winning.
“When you are ready to weep, weep. I will be with you until then, and after. With you to the end of the road.” She murmured, her breath tickling the hair on the top of his head. He just nodded, not knowing what to say.
He led them out into the street, not strolling, not trying to hide. People gave them odd looks. Not like they were strayed immortals, because with the exception of Liren, they looked like anything but. They were just odd, and possibly homeless. Not welcome things in a city in the aftermath of an attack.
“Burning Flag City. Do you know it?”
“A little. I was here once before. Most of my work was to the north.”
“Let me show you around.” Tian introduced the neighborhoods, the stalls he had observed, the soldiers with their red plumes and the newly arrived troopers with their white plumes. The shrine of the Martyr Venerable, and the other places of worship in the city. The tea houses, the jeweler’s shops, the potters, all the places that had meaning to him. He introduced the people of the city, those whose families came from the heartlands of the kingdom, and those who fled the steppes. In clinical, detached words, he described the tactical and strategic realities of the situation. He didn’t leave out who owned the warehouse Hou had been stored in, or what that might mean for the city and him personally if they realized his significance.
“You wanted an extraordinary life. Why your fate and your desires weighed more than the fate and desires of twenty two others, I don’t know. But here it is. An extraordinary life, and it’s all yours. A dangerous life, certainly, and you aren’t prepared for it. I have seen the Bamboo Medicine Hut’s so-called best, and it’s trash. I don’t have time to train you. I will arm you, equip you, provide you with medicines and manuals, but you will have to work with the others in this city to practice fighting. Or you can run. I wouldn’t stop you. Pick any major road and run down it, the gates are plentiful and wide. I’d head north, personally, but it’s your choice.”
“I’d sooner cut off my own head.” Hou’s voice was hard. “I will defend this place with my life.”
“As you wish. I am glad.” Tian’s expression was unchanged. Dark bags that should never appear on immortal eyes hung beneath his. He held himself loosely, moving carelessly, letting his unbound hair sway around him. “Do try the lamb skewers, the ones with leeks are particularly good. The tea situation here is terrible, but I suppose you will survive it.”
“How is the wine, Your Emmience?” Hou asked with a small smile.
“I wouldn’t know. Ask Little Han.” Tian stopped in the street, swaying slightly. “I’m going to sleep. Speaking of Little Han, please ask him to write invitations for the Earthly cultivators in the city. The mortal grandmasters too. They fought well, and deserve a reward. Stagger out the times of their visits.”
Liren watched him with big eyes, then smiled. “An individualized tea service.”
“Yes. And a share of the loot from the warehouse. We’ll keep the spirit crystals and anything for Heavenly Cultivators, but there must be something worth their having in there. Payment in advance for fighting to the end. Knowing the hand offering the payment could be a heavy fist has a way of focusing you on the job. Because soon, we are going to have to go out into the steppes and hunt more Heavenly people, and we can’t take Little Han with us.”
