Chương 191: Chapter 192: Causality

Leo and Tianyi hovered in the night air, their flying treasures motionless above the dark forest. The question had been sitting in Leo's chest since they left Stonehaven.

"Tianyi." His voice was quiet.

"Was letting Grayscroll go unpunished the right thing to do?" Tianyi didn't answer right away. He shifted on his flying shuttle, settled into a more comfortable stance, and looked out at the mountains.

"You know," he said finally, "you handled yourself well tonight." Leo blinked. That wasn't the answer he'd expected.

"I expected you to stand before Lord Grayscroll and self-righteously accuse him of his crimes. Denounce him before the crowd. Demand justice for the ten thousand who walked into the fog."

"I thought about it."

"If you had done that, you would have found yourself guilt-tripped into farming spiritual soil for the next decade." Leo glared at him.

"If you saw the trap coming, why didn't you say something? Why didn't you warn me?" Tianyi waved a hand.

"What is a decade to cultivators like us?" Leo's jaw dropped.

"I thought it would be instructive for you to spend a few years cultivating the dao of not putting your foot in your mouth." Tianyi smirked. Leo glared at him. Tianyi met his gaze without flinching. He still hadn't forgiven Leo for the crayon incident. But the original question still gnawed at Leo.

"Shouldn't I have held Grayscroll accountable? Shouldn't I have done something more to help the refugees? Given aid, or..." He trailed off.

"I thought karma was about right and wrong." Tianyi was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its teasing edge.

"Condemnation without the power to set things right is vanity." Leo turned to look at him.

"A judge who renders a verdict must enforce it. If you cannot, you have merely borrowed heaven's voice to make yourself feel clean." Tianyi's gaze didn't waver.

"And even if you possess the strength to enforce it, would you have condemned him if the crowd weren't watching? The moment the judge stands to gain from his own verdict, he is using public interest to serve private ends. It does not matter how guilty the accused is."

"So what, I'm supposed to just let him walk away? Pretend he didn't feed people into the profundity?"

"Karma is mysterious," Tianyi said.

"Tricky. Especially for lower-realm cultivators like us." He paused, choosing his words carefully.

"We perceive karma as good and evil. Moral weight that accumulates through our actions. But cultivators on the level of Lord Flockfeather, the Enlightened, the Imperial Court... they view it differently. To them, karma is causality. Cause and effect. The turning of the wheel." Leo frowned.

"I don't understand the difference."

"We are not strong enough to influence causality." Tianyi shrugged.

"So we are bound by its rules. Forced to evaluate our own decisions while the powers above us decide our fate for us." The wind picked up, carrying the smell of smoke from distant fires.

"Tonight was confusing," Tianyi continued, "not because you were presented with a choice and had to compromise your values. It was confusing because the cultivators above us have muddled the causality. Perverted the natural order. Destroyed all semblance of good and evil to force us onto the path they have set."

"And although it seems we may have briefly stepped off their path," he said, "it is hard to know if this was all within their prediction. If the choices we thought we made were the ones they left for us to find." Leo's chest tightened.

"Then what's the point?" His voice came out rougher than he intended.

"If the powers above us are just moving us around like pieces on a board, what's the point of any of this?" Tianyi was quiet for a moment. Then he smiled. Just slightly.

"The board can be flipped. But only by someone strong enough to reach the table." Leo looked at him.

"Guard your dao heart. Cultivate. When you are strong enough to influence causality, the questions will answer themselves." Tianyi turned his flying shuttle east, toward Skyhome.

"Until then, your dao heart is the one thing the powers above cannot touch. Hold it. The rest follows from there."

"That's it? Just get stronger?"

"Just get stronger without losing yourself." Tianyi glanced back.

"That is harder than it sounds." Leo didn't have an answer to that. He followed Tianyi in silence.

Human Hut Mountain came into view twenty minutes later. Tianyi stopped his flying shuttle so abruptly that Leo nearly collided with him.

"What happened to our mountain?"

"I was going to ask you," Leo said. Tianyi's head whipped around.

"You were going to ask me?"

"I thought you'd know!" Tianyi turned back to the crater. His jaw worked.

"Who was the idiot who set off our stockpiles of gunpowder?" Leo's brain stalled.

"Our stockpiles of gunpowder?"

"The reserves. The barrels Mike stored in the cellars beneath the hut."

"We stored explosives under Human Hut Mountain?" Leo's voice rose.

"Whose bright idea was that? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!"

"It was a refined formulation!" Tianyi clenched his hands at his sides.

"Mike spent three months producing some rare spiritual oxidizer. He said it took dozens of failed batches. He could not bear to store it anywhere exposed to the elements, so he sealed it beneath the hut."

"An oxidizer." Leo stared at him.

"You stored a substance whose entire purpose is to make explosions bigger right next to barrels of gunpowder."

"Why do you think I sleep on the east ridge now?" Tianyi's composure cracked.

"I have refused to set foot in that hut since the day they moved the oxidizer in!" A shadow passed overhead. Leo looked up and saw the silver form of a massive crane descending toward them. Lord Flockfeather's wingspan was unmistakable, even in the moonlight. But something was wrong. Flockfeather's plumage, normally smooth silver, was patchy. Entire sections of feathers were missing. His left wing looked like someone had taken shears to it.

The tail feathers, which Flockfeather usually kept perfectly groomed, were reduced to a handful of singed quills. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. The crane landed on a nearby outcropping and transformed. In human form, the damage was less dramatic but still visible. A patch of hair above his left ear had been burned away, leaving a bald spot that his remaining silver locks couldn't quite cover. He was furious.

"Do you have any idea," Flockfeather said, his voice shaking with rage, "how long it takes to regrow plumage?" Tianyi stepped forward.

"Lord Flockfeather, what happened to..."

"Do not." Flockfeather cut him off with a slashing gesture.

"Do not ask this Lord what happened. This Lord did not set off your ridiculous mortal weapons."

"Then who..."

"A Fire Boar. Some Nascent Soul brute from the southern mountain." His hand rose to touch the bald patch above his ear, then dropped as if he'd caught himself.

"He came bellowing about how this Lord must cease all cooperation with humans. That the Silvercrest Cranes must withdraw from every arrangement with your... organization."

"And you refused?" Leo asked.

"This Lord explained, with great patience, that the arrangement benefited all parties. That the humans under this Lord's protection had caused no harm to beast interests." Flockfeather's remaining hair bristled.

"The boar did not find this explanation satisfactory. He called this Lord a servant of humans. A crane who bows his neck to apes." Flockfeather's nostrils flared.

"And then, in a fit of stupidity that would embarrass a barnyard pig, he charged the mountain." Tianyi went pale.

"He charged directly into the hut?"

"This Lord attempted to stop him. This Lord shouted a warning. The boar, being a boar, did not listen." Flockfeather paused.

"Then everything exploded." The three of them stared at the crater.

"Did we..." Leo swallowed.

"Did we kill a Nascent Soul Lord?" Flockfeather turned to stare at him.

"You expected that to kill a Lord? He is a boar, not a paper lantern." Leo and Tianyi looked at where the top of Human Hut Mountain used to be. The crater had swallowed the entire summit. Timber from the observation platform jutted from the slope three hundred yards downhill. The stone foundation of the hut had been reduced to gravel. They looked back at Flockfeather. Flockfeather's eye twitched.

"The boar will recover," he said.

"Eventually. He was last seen flying south in a state of considerable distress. Missing most of his fur. And both tusks." Leo tried to look apologetic.

"Lord Flockfeather, I'm very sorry about..."

"Gunpowder," Flockfeather said, "is now banned from Skyhome." He turned to Tianyi.

"You assured this Lord it was safe."

"They presented each component separately for inspection! We approved the oxidizer! We tested the gunpowder ourselves and judged it harmless! It was three months before anyone saw fit to explain to me what happens when you mix them together!"

"And when you found out, your first thought was to store it under the mountain we live on?" Leo stared at him.

"That was Arthur's idea! He said it would make a perfect trap. That if anyone ever attacked the mountain, we could detonate the cellars and take them with us."

"And no one considered," Flockfeather said slowly, "consulting this Lord before building a trap in his own territory?" Tianyi shrugged.

"They knew you would say no."

"Tianyi." Leo's voice sharpened.

"Why are you blaming everything on those three?" Tianyi paused.

"You're supposed to be the reasonable one. You were supposed to supervise them." Leo gestured at the crater.

"You must have had some role in this." Tianyi was quiet.

"After everything they did for you," Leo continued.

"They sacrificed their lives to buy your escape. And this is how you repay them?" Tianyi turned and gave Leo a look.

"Sacrificed their lives to buy my escape..." Tianyi repeated the words slowly.

"That's not how it..." He stopped. His eyes widened.

"Is that what they told you?" Leo frowned.

"Do they not have the face to tell you the truth?" Tianyi's voice climbed.

"They sent you a message about their heroic sacrifice and couldn't even bring themselves to admit what actually happened?"

"What actually happened?"

"Lord Grayscroll and Envoy Sparrow tracked us down on the road to Stonehaven. They asked for the identity token back. Politely. Grayscroll even offered concessions. He said we could process guano outside the city in peace if we returned the token."

"That sounds reasonable," Leo said.

"It was reasonable." Tianyi's eye twitched.

"It was entirely reasonable. We could have resolved the entire situation without violence. But Arthur just had to pull out a fake identity token." Leo closed his eyes.

"He held it up and said, 'You mean this one?' And before anyone could respond, he tossed it to Kevin."

"Kevin caught it. Panicked. Tossed it to Mike. Mike tossed it back to Arthur. Arthur tossed it back to Kevin." Tianyi's voice climbed steadily, each sentence adding exasperation.

"They were playing keep-away. With a Nascent Soul Lord. On a public road." Flockfeather made a sound. He covered his mouth with his hand.

"Grayscroll asked them to stop. Three times. Each time Arthur said 'Catch it first, pal' and threw the token to someone else." Flockfeather started to laugh, but quickly suppressed it.

"Oh no," Leo said.

"Oh yes." Tianyi's composure was gone now.

"And then, at the precise moment when Grayscroll's patience expired, when his domain was bearing down on all of us, when any person of sound mind would have surrendered the token and begged forgiveness..." He paused.

"Arthur threw it to me."

"I threw it back immediately, but the damage was done." Tianyi's voice cracked.

"I have been telling them since the day we met that unlike them, I cannot just 'log off.' I cannot 'respawn.' I have asked them, in every way I know how, to not include me by implication when they deliberately go court death!"

Envoy Sparrow died two days after the Guano Gang took him into custody. One moment he was walking and talking. The next he was dead, his body hitting the floor like a puppet with cut strings. The brothers who witnessed it checked for poison, for formations, for any trace of foul play. They found nothing. The man had been healthy. He had shown no signs of illness. Word came down from the capital the next day.

The Imperial Court announced that it had identified the cultivator responsible for the beast tide: Envoy Sparrow of the Embroidered Uniform Guards, a rogue agent who had acted alone and without authorization. The Court had traced his karma through the oaths he had sworn upon entering service and executed him remotely. Justice had been served. The announcement offered no explanation for how a Foundation Establishment cultivator could have coordinated operations across dozens of Nascent Soul tier sects.

Instead, the Court cleared Lord Deng Huaixuan, the man Sparrow had reported to, of all wrongdoing. And the Court dismissed The Enlightened as a baseless rumor, a fiction invented by desperate refugees looking for someone to blame. The explanation was farcical. Everyone in the Savage Mountains knew it. But the Imperial Court was too distant to reach, and Lord Deng was too powerful to touch. So t he survivors directed their fury at the sects that had stolen the beast younglings. The nights that followed were bloody.

It did not matter that most of the sects had been coerced, that they had taken commissions they could not refuse. The survivors were beyond reason. Someone had to pay, and the sects were right there. By the time the violence burned itself out, almost every sect in the Savage Mountains that had provided any semblance of order was destroyed. The region collapsed into anarchy. Leo thought about what Tianyi had told the crowd in Stonehaven. Someone was refining the refugees into slaughter qi.

Herding millions of desperate cultivators into a prepared killing field. The sects had been the only semblance of order in the Savage Mountains, and now most of them were gone. Leo was beginning to understand what it meant to influence causality. It didn't matter which path he had chosen that night he stood before the doors of the Heavenstone Sect. Even if he agreed to shovel spiritual soil for the good of the refugees, the invisible hand would have found another way to break it apart.

To keep dissolving every sect, every alliance, every authority until nothing solid remained. Everyone in the mountains knew what was happening. No one could stop it. This was what it meant to reach the table Tianyi had spoken of. Below it, you endured the will of the heavens. Above it, you made the rules that forced everyone else to comply. It had been one of the hardest weeks of Leo's life. He had stood before a Nascent Soul Lord and won. He had rallied a hundred thousand cultivators to his cause.

He had rescued Tianyi, exposed a conspiracy, and watched the Guano Gang introduce itself to the world. None of it had mattered. Some nights, Leo wondered if he should disband the gang. Walk away. Focus on Flying Aces until he reached Gold Core, then return when he actually had the power to change something. The whole thing was ridiculous. Guano, he had learned, was bat dung. That was the secret ingredient. That was the foundation of his entire operation.

A nineteen-year-old leading desperate refugees against cultivators who could end them all with a word, and his master plan involved dried bat shit. But the brothers of the Guano Gang never stopped. They processed the bat dung. They hauled the charcoal. They painted those strange symbols on their backs and walked into beast territory like they had something to prove. They had lost everything and yet they were still fighting. They were a gang of batshit cultivators. The guano gang. He decided to keep the name.

At least Leo's life on Earth was going well. The Giants had started the season 3-1. Their only loss came against the Kansas City Chiefs, whose star striker Maimonides had been able to solo Leo even through a cloud of defensive flak. Every other team they faced lacked the generational talent needed to answer Leo's micrododging. Four games, three wins, and the sports media was already calling this the year the Giants finally made a deep playoff run. The Cranesong trade had wrapped up nicely too.

After weeks of work, the military's formation masters had finally produced a group combat formation that satisfied Lord Flockfeather. With that settled, the cranes allowed Leo to record the Cranesong for the Nascent Soul breakthrough ceremony the military wanted. Leo, as the middleman, finally saw the fee he had been waiting for.

Between the monetary compensation from the American government and the spiritstones from the Silvercrest Cranes, all five members of their team would be able to cover their Gold Core spiritual qi needs for quite some time after they broke through. And there was one more thing. The military had sent word that an acquaintance would be traveling to New York tomorrow. Someone who could provide Leo with details on how to use the 'Form' forbidden rune still lodged in his sea of consciousness.