Chương 69: B2 Chapter 29

Orange-crest cycled his qi and activated the Drunken Phoenix's Breath. He'd long since graduated from candles to sucking in entire small fires. He told himself this was just more of the same. Keep his qi moving, fill his lungs with a barrier of qi that never remained in one place long enough for the heat to transfer and scorch his lungs. He regretted his choice the moment the fire touched his lips. More of the same? How wrong he was. This was nothing like that.

He kept sucking though, downing the head-sized orb of flame in a single inhalation. His world became heat. He felt like he'd stuck his head in Daoist Enduring Oath's forge. Like he'd grabbed a crucible of molten iron and downed it like soup. Orange-crest's tongue lolled out of his mouth. He scraped at the inside of his throat, as if he could somehow pull the fire out with his fingers. This was the bath all over again.

The technique was the only thing keeping the flames he'd swallowed from turning him into a lump of charcoal. He could feel the pressure, ready to pop. If he stopped pressing down on the orb, it would detonate before he could send it back. Orange-crest fell to his knees, focused on nothing except holding on.

Xiao Shulan watched in mildly horrified curiosity as Li Hou tried to swallow one of the orbs produced by her Flame-Plundering Seal. The monkey was using some sort of technique. It hadn't simply tried to block the attack with its face. That didn't make the plan less insane. She could feel the technique still, held in suspended animation. Her connection to it remained. She could detonate the orb at any time, just by pressing a little harder. Li Hou was merely in the fourth stage of Qi Condensation.

He couldn't hope to fully suppress her most powerful spell. She sighed. To think, she'd actually begun to take the monkey seriously, only for it to attempt... This.

"I'm not actually trying to kill you." Xiao Shulan said.

"Surrender and spit it out. Away from me." Li Hou clutched at this throat, kneeling among the ashes. His only answer was more pained gagging. Silent Heavens but this was pathetic to watch. It couldn't spit the orb out, could it? It would just have to grit its teeth and try to dissipate the power by cycling. Somehow the monkey had managed to make even what should have been a fated confrontation with a rival undignified.

"How have you survived this long with so deficient a sense of judgement?" She asked, honestly curious. Li Hou shot her a furious glare, struggling and failing to rise to his feet. Xiao Shulan stepped past him, toward the stele that marked the beginning of Elder Shen's inheritance. She was too close to allow anything to stand in her way. If Li Hou moved toward the stele, or sought to impede her, she would kill him in an instant. If he did not, she would allow him a chance to preserve his life.

"It was a good attempt." She told the suffering monkey honestly.

"Few our age have ever pushed me this far. You might very well be the second most talented disciple the Azure Mountain accepted this year. But whether down here or on the stage above, when you chose to stand against me, this outcome was inevitable." Hardly three paces away from the mile marker, Xiao Shulan heard rustling behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see Li Hou pouring liquor into his mouth from his gourd.

"That is not going to help." She could smell the monkey's poison of choice from here. If that stuff wasn't violently flammable, she'd marry Wu Shoushan. Wait- Xiao Shulan's eyes widened as orange-crest turned to stone. The statue's lips were pursed, the smallest possible space open between them. Xiao Shulan felt the suppressing force vanish, her technique detonating within the monkey's lungs. She only hesitated for a moment, Elder Shen's stele was still two steps away. She went for her storage ring instead.

Neither fire nor lightning were well suited to defending against flame. The Leviathan's Scale was cool in her hand. She held it aloft, and her view of the world darkened as if she were looking out from the bottom of the sea. The flame that poured forth from the stone monkey's mouth was so thick it appeared a liquid. A pressurized jet that glowed a white so violent it seared the eyes. Fiery qi so dense that it splattered like molten metal as it slammed into her shield with the weight of landslide.

Xiao Shulan was sent tumbling backward. Even through the Leviathan Scale's protection, she could feel a distant warmth, like sunlight upon her face. When the attack finally ebbed, her eyes dropped to the scale in her hand. She'd never had need to use it before. The scale was unblemished. In Qi Condensation, she could only draw forth a fraction of the trinket's power. But even so diminished, the barrier it created was inviolable, a protection as absolute as the Xiao Clan's dominion.

She felt lesser for relying upon it. She looked up just into time to see Li Hou launch himself toward Elder Shen's stele in a headlong tackle. He slammed into it, immediately vanishing.

"That. Wretched. Beast!" She shouted, rushing toward the stele.

Orange-crest awoke with his foot tangled up in his master's hair. That usually didn't happen. His master thought sharing a bed with his disciple to be beneath his dignity. Not that he'd awoken upon a bed this morning. They were outside, but orange-crest couldn't remember how they'd gotten there. He blinked, feeling oddly bleary. Orange-crest did not usually feel tired when he awoke. Even when he was injured, or had been drinking, the rising sun found him full of energy and enthusiasm.

Sleep was nice, but he personally preferred being awake. According to his master, that was apparently because he was young. Orange-crest didn't really believe that. Privately, he thought that waking up still longing for the bed was a thing humans inflicted upon themselves by attempting to regulate the hours of their rest. Old monkeys suffered many ailments, but that particular weariness of life did not seem to be one of them. Yet this morning the monkey felt tired. Felt as if he'd done this all before.

It was early. The distant glow of sunrise slowly crept across the mountainside, but the sun itself was yet too shy to peek above the treeline. Orange-crest sniffed. Smoke, and clean mountain air. And wine. His wine, and an old fire. The scent of his brothers, Li Xun and Han Jian. That tracked. He must have drunk a tremendous amount last night, to forget how he'd gotten here. His brothers certainly looked the part. Han Jian was snoring loudly enough orange-crest was quite impressed he'd slept at all.

His master still slumbered. Li Xun's own snores were far less impressive, but still clearly present, even beneath the cacophony of Han Jian's. He would of course deny producing them when he awoke. Act as if he could hear himself sleeping, and deny the evidence of orange-crest's ears. His master wasn't perfect, but he was his master. His master. He'd chosen that last night, hadn't he? The monkey grinned. Humans were really growing on him, that he'd begun to associate that face with joy, and not submission.

Orange-crest got up. His master could sleep a while longer. His human obligations, the ones he already considered skiving, were not so important as to disrupt his sleep over. Orange-crest walked aimlessly about the mountainside. He had nowhere to be, so every place was as good as another to explore. He found a few early-season persimmons that were just orange enough to be worth eating. The green-yellow ones were almost as bad as leaves. Orange truly was the best color, for both monkeys and fruit.

He washed his meal down with water from his favorite fishing pool, the one where he met Formless-Gleam and... No, just Formless-Gleam. He'd never shown anyone else this place. He should show his master soon. Or at least bring him some fish. As he lazed about, considering returning to awaken his slothful brothers, orange-crest spied something new. A gap in the rock face that shaded the cliff he'd not seen before. He stuck an eye up to it.

"Better not be a cave." He muttered. The light spilling out was promising. If it was a cave, it had another opening in the top, making it more of a chasm. Orange-crest carefully negotiated the passage. He still was not used to how much larger he'd grown after recovering from the Monkey Refining Bath.

"Yes!" He chirped.

"Not a cave." Orange-crest found himself staring out a tiny mountain glen. What looked like a solid cliff face was really a hollow facade, the stone above had crumbled away, leaving a narrow path between two sheer rock faces. The little valley was overgrown, carpeted in plush green moss, shaded by a canopy of vines. And not just any vines either. Fruit vines! Odd little brown fruits hung from the canopy, furry as a monkey's behind. Orange-crest plucked a fallen one off the mossy and bit in. His eyes widened.

It was sweet and tangy, curiously fragrant, with a flesh as green as the moss beneath his feet! A fruit he'd never seen before! Not even in his master's books had he seen the bright green flesh and whitish core flecked with little black seeds.

"I'll call you a Monkey Fruit." He told the half-eaten orb. Sure, monkeys weren't green on the inside, but he'd never seen a fruit with fur before. Loquats were the closest, but they only had a tiny bit of hair in comparison. He definitely wasn't letting his master convince him that men already had a name for this one. He hadn't even known this strange fruit grew on the Azure Mountain! Orange-crest wondered what sort of wine he could make with it.

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"Two-Worm Monkey Fruit Monkey Wine." He muttered, thinking. Even he could admit that was not a good name.

"Two-Worm-Two-Monkey Fruit Wine?" Orange-crest gamboled fearlessly down the path that spanned the little glen. His human brothers could wait a few moments longer. He almost longed for something to confront him, that he might test his new body against it. Instead, he found a rock. A great stone emblazoned with words, sitting there at the end of the glen. Just beyond it, the rock faces to either side fell away as the path continued into a section of the Azure Mountain orange-crest had never seen.

It was oddly familiar, but for the life of him the monkey could not say how. It was shaped almost like one of the human mile markers, but it looked far older, far rougher. Ten Thousand Li from Enlightenment Every Step Heavensward is Taken Orange-crest sniffed at it from a pace away. It reeked of qi, but he liked the way it smelled. It smelled like mountain air and wine, like old campfires and new horizons. But it also smelled lonely. And hungry. Like a predator. Like a trap.

Orange-crest tried to peek around the back of the rock, to see what lay beyond it. He refused to step close enough to touch it. The rock didn't let him. He could see there was room, space to walk around the stele. But when he stood a pace away, it somehow always occluded what lay beyond it. Like it was leaning to always stand in front of him. Orange-crest could only see the very edges of the road.

"Yeah, that's a trap." Somehow, he felt like someone was laughing at him. The monkey didn't like that. Just because he enjoyed sneaking around finding amusement watching others didn't mean it was okay for someone else to do it to him.

"Sneaky little rock." Orange-crest muttered, stepping away. Just before his foot touched down, orange-crest spun round again, setting eyes upon the stone. It was further away. Not much further. But he'd been one pace away. Now he was three. And the rock looked a little offended.

"Sneaky stone stele of very respectable girth." Orange-crest corrected. The rock remained in place. But space seemed to twitch, as if to say 'Don't test me, monkey'. Orange-crest could leave and go get his master. But he didn't think the rock would still be there if he did. It didn't seem hostile. But it didn't seem like it would let him leave either, if he took that first step past it. Not for a long time. He wasn't sure how he knew that. But he did. He could feel the nature of the stone mile marker.

The question it posed. Even if he could not put words to the knowledge. It wanted him to venture forth, fearless and unrestrained. To walk the long road it had marked, and then step beyond it. He could leave, follow the road, and return. His master was over a hundred years old. A hundred and thirteen, he'd learned last night. One year older than brother Han Jian's one hundred and twelve, even though Han Jian had always been bigger than Li Xun.

His master said that he should live until two hundred, unless blade, poison, or a failed advancement took him. Han Jian expected at least two hundred and fifty, though his master's face had been dark with worry when his sworn brother said that. Orange-crest had time. The Azure Mountain Sect had been here for generations of cultivators. It would be here for generations more. He could go on the journey the stone stele asked of him. Ten thousand li was a great distance. But he was fast.

It shouldn't take him more than a couple years. Three or four at most. What sort of monkey could ever tarry for more than a few decades on a quest like that? Certainly not orange-crest. His master would understand. He wanted orange-crest to learn, to grow, to join him, as a cultivator of power. He could almost hear his master's voice in his ear, calling this a 'destined opportunity.' You could always come home. But right now, orange-crest didn't want to leave the home he'd found here. Not alone.

The monkey turned, and stepped away, grabbing a few more Monkey Fruits for the road. Maybe the stone would be back after he got his master, but he wasn't going to walk that road alone.

"Another disappointment." The voice was not cruel. It was not disappointed either, not really. The sheer dispassion in it chilled the monkey's blood. Orange-crest hated it. He hated the voice's cold judgement. Hated that he feared the crushing weight of how little it cared. Hated that for some reason he could not remember, he cared more than the voice did. The world fell away. Orange-crest tried to hold on, but found even the kiwis slipping through his fingers.

When orange-crest came to, Xiao Shulan was standing above him. Three orbs of fire hung above her shoulders. One of them surged down toward him.

"Eehh-ch." He coughed, trying to screech, but finding his throat scorched beyond the capacity for noise. He rolled on instinct, tightly clenching his eyes. Nothing happened. When orange-crest opened his eyes, the flaming orb was gone. Vanished, without a trace. Only then did he remember he could turn to stone to shield himself. And what he'd done with the last fireball Xiao Shulan had flung at him. It'd worked, using his stone body like a pill furnace. He'd knocked Xiao Shulan away and reached the trial first.

And then it'd failed. He'd failed. Grand Elder Shen had judged him unworthy. Orange-crest inhaled sharply through his nose, heedless of the protests of his par-cooked lungs, anger slowly growing within him. He swallowed a pill. Xiao Shulan was speaking.

"I should thank you, for lacking the resolve to follow through. But I won't. Should we ever meet again, expect no mercy from me. You exhausted a lifetime's worth today."

"Don't lack resolve." The words hurt his burnt tongue. But the hurt felt good. It fit his steadily darkening mood.

"Didn't choose wrong." Orange-crest looked around. He stood on one side of Elder Shen's milestone. Xiao Shulan stood on the other. He took a step forward anyway. Nothing happened. The two chi that separated the two of them might as well have been ten thousand li. The monkey cast out his qi and bound his staff, recalling it to his hand. He wanted to hit someone. But there was nothing left to hit except the stele.

"You cannot have both the fish and the bear's paw. In the end, we must value one thing above all others." That had the air of a quotation. Why did humans disdain their own words so? Why were they afraid to say what they meant, and meant what they say.

"You sound like Yang Wei." The short sentence left orange-crest tasting blood. He wanted to say more. Sound like Yang Wei when he's being stupid, repeating the words of others. But it still hurt too much to speak at length. Xiao Shulan blinked. Then she smiled.

"In this, he is not wrong." Orange-crest's throat and lungs itched furiously, knitting themselves back together. How many times, had his master's pills saved him. Beyond counting, now. And this man wanted him to abandon him. Thought him less, for his attachment to his brother. Fuck him. The monkey finally found his words.

"Having something you won't leave behind is not lacking resolve. Surrendering everything for a dead man's approval is." Xiao Shulan continued to smile at him. He longed to wipe the grin off her face, but he refused to try and give her cause to laugh at him. Grand Elder Shen had made his choice.

"My family knows no love that does not burn like an inferno, or crush like the abyss. One day, you will learn that if you truly wish to be free, the only person you can rely upon is yourself. Perhaps we shall settle this later, after I have claimed Grand Elder Shen's techniques." Now it sounded like Xiao Shulan who was speaking to someone other than orange-crest. With those words ringing through the air, she turned to leave, walking down a path that orange-crest could not follow.

The monkey watched her go, thinking. He found the longer he thought, the angrier he became. He wondered what the most hurtful thing he could say to Xiao Shulan was. He did not know very much about her. It wasn't even her he was angry with. But what could he say that would hurt a man who had endured even beyond death? He tried anyway. It wasn't like he liked Xiao Shulan at the moment.

"I thought you would be different. From Xiao Long. From the princes. From the elders. Yours, and ours. Because Wu Yingjie trusted you. But you're just like them, aren't you? You're just angry you're weak. You would do the same as them, if you were the elder, and they the disciple." Xiao Shulan stopped. She turned to face him, calling one of the last orbs of fire to her hand. She pretended to inspect it.

"Do you think the wild places of the world are harsh?" She asked, idle curiosity in her voice. Orange-crest scowled.

"They are what they are."

"We did not build a softer world when we tamed the mountains." Xiao Shulan said wistfully.

"Maybe I'm just like them. That is fine. I am what I am. What they made me."

"What is that?" Orange-crest didn't know what else to say. What else to ask. How to make her see. Perhaps she was right, and conflict had been inevitable. Perhaps Wu Yingjie was wise to walk away. Perhaps it meant nothing that he'd risked his life repeatedly, suffered the most danger of any of them on the trek here. Perhaps he should not even seek the greatest prizes, the one that offered the freedom he sought. Because he had no chance anyway.

Not when someone like Xiao Shulan or orange-crest wanted the same thing he did. Perhaps orange-crest had been naive, and the elder's inheritance could have only benefitted one of them. But in this moment, orange-crest found himself disappointed by the shape of the world. Things were what they were. But maybe they should not be. Unfortunately it seemed his words were as incapable of touching Xiao Shulan's heart as his strength was of changing the world. Xiao Shulan did not answer his pointless question.

She turned, and disappeared into the endless fields of smoldering grain.

Orange-crest wandered aimlessly through the grain fields. His master had told him some of the inheritances might have other things. Writings they left behind, or lesser treasures. The detritus at the bottom of the grand elder's storage rings, which might be heaven-defying good fortune for lesser cultivators. Why was all good fortune heaven defying, the monkey wondered. It seemed like heaven might have some explaining to do. In any case, as he wandered, he found none of that.

Elder Shen's inheritance just seemed to be made of grass and sky. He could see things in the distance though. Two shapes that rose above the endless fields. A mountain, and a temple. He couldn't be sure which was which, but he didn't think that Grand Elder Bai would be the mountain. A monument of man seemed much more fitting for his resting place. The rage that burned within the monkey was smoldering now, collapsing into something cooler and darker. Three grand elders, his master had said. Shen. Tian. Bai.

Three lofty ideals that they had sought to embody and command. Freedom. Fate. Harmony. Freedom was denied to him. Elder Shen had made his choice. Deemed him unworthy of bearing his legacy. Orange-crest was finding that he really did not like being told no. Not like this. It was not even the denial that infuriated him. It was the judgement. Being called a disappointment by a dead man who didn't even understand what real freedom was. His master had spoken a little of Grand Elder Bai Cheng.

What he called harmony had very little in common with what orange-crest had thought the word meant. Even the small snippets his master had told him about Grand Elder Bai had struck orange-crest as beyond repellent. Chains so soft they did not even have the decency to chafe the bound. Best everything the man left behind burned. He'd do it now, if he were not too weak to trespass where he was not wanted. Weakness. That was what so much of it all came down to in the end.

This human world had the potential to surpass the one he'd known, if a single one of its leaders had half the character of the Monkey King. But they didn't. And so, much of the human world disappointed orange-crest at every turn. And the monkey could not change that, because he was weak. Grand Elder Shen and Grand Elder Bai were dead ends. But that left one more. The inheritance the Seventh Prince had come to claim. Grand Elder Tian. A diviner who had sought to twist the ties of karma and break the designs of fate.

The lineage that had birthed Elder Lu's Scripture of the Golden Order. Perhaps Grand Elder Tian would reject him too. Orange-crest found he did not much care what the elder's remnant thought of him. He recalled the words his master had shared with him. The thought he'd had at the end of the banquet where his peers had mocked him for teaching a monkey.

"Elder Lu wants to claim responsibility for your deeds? Let him choke on them." A resolution formed in him. He'd succeed. Even if he had to deny himself to do it. He'd tell the ghost whatever he wanted to hear. Elder Lu wanted the Seventh Prince to inherit this power? Orange-crest would claim it first. He was tired of being told no. Of stepping lightly for fear of offense. Men said that fate was the power to shape the future. To change the world. Well, they were doing a terrible job of it.

It was time for a new pair of paws to grab the brush.