B3 Chapter 18

"Restrain Flavor?" Sun Guiying read, holding the slip of paper between his thumb and forefinger like it was a venomous snake.

Orange-crest nodded. His calligraphy had never been the best, but it was certainly readable. Sun Guiying had apparently had some practice, poring through his pill-notes while he was cultivating.

"What does it do?"

"It keeps things from smelling you. Monkeys. Angry mushrooms. Tigers. If it worked. There's no qi in it."

"Right."

Sun Guiying didn't take the bait, instead turned to the next, far larger, sheet of paper.

"Earth. The flowing river runs free. Metal, sleeps in stillness, bends without force. Droplets leap from earth to heaven, rising?" Sun Guiying read, frowning. "Is it... Some sort of poetry? Why did you write it in a circle? And what are all these extra strokes?"

"It's a formation."

"I see. I've heard of those, in stories, a kind of daoist magic? Like a seal, or a military formation?"

"Yes? But it's not really a formation." Orange-crest clarified. "Not the one in front of you. It is like the talisman. It was a formation. My master invented it. But I saw it over a year ago, and my memory is not perfect. And there's no qi in it. So it's just a piece of paper."

"Right." Sun Guiying repeated.

"I also have this one." Orange-crest added, pulling a single empowered talisman out from his sleeve. It felt a little strange in his hand. Not quite as quiescent, as comfortable with waiting, as Elder Lu's ring. The paper was always just a little too warm, the qi a little too ready to catch. Sun Guiying accepted it with those same fearful fingers.

"Flame—"

Orange-crest's hand struck like a viper, catching Sun Guiying's lips. The monkey held them as gently as he could, but from the wince he could tell he'd overdone it in his haste.

He could have restrained Sun Guiying with his qi. But something about that felt disrespectful. When his master did it to him, it was a learning opportunity. Without his senses already awakened to qi, without what men called a spirit root, orange-crest did not think the act would feel quite so benevolent.

"Maybe don't read it inside the workshop." The monkey explained. "I don't know if mortals can activate it. But if I was trying, that would be the first thing I did. Read it, then bleed on it, then maybe tear it. So don't do any of those. I have magics to handle fires. But they are not instant. And I only have the one talisman. We traded the others for my hat."

"Right, boss." There was no hurt in Sun Guiying's voice. But orange-crest could see it on his face. His lips might bruise. Stupid. He had to do better. He refused to become like a human senior, breaking things with his mere presence. Power without control would be nothing but a curse. "No reading the chastising talisman out loud."

The silence that nestled between the two of them, sitting together in that cozy workshop, was not awkward. But it was not comfortable either. Rain pattered against the ceiling, the last gasps of the storm that had lingered an unusually long time over Huangshi, even for blustery late autumn. A pot of simmering ginger, cinnamon, and citrus peels squatted over the fire, awaiting the single clump of Sage's Grass that would transform it from a pleasant smelling treat to a powerful warming medicine. Li Xun had said one sometimes fought fever with flame, but though orange-crest knew the alchemy to invent such a medicine, he was far from certain about the proper dispensation of it. When a fever should be fanned, and when it needed to be quelled, were yet beyond him. But this, one of the first of the many refining steps of the Quaternary Heart-Fire Pill, turning wood qi into heat, he understood.

"Boss." Sun Guiying asked. "Why am I here?"

Orange-crest looked toward the door. His hat rested on the table. Perhaps it was not entirely safe, even with his qi saturating the building's boundaries, blocking out clumsy spiritual senses. But he needed to take the big hat off sometimes.

"Would you rather be out there in the rain, with Fu Daxian or Ruo Ping?" The monkey asked.

Sun Guiying tried to laugh, but it came out more like a cough.

"Of course not."

"You like writing, don't you?"

"I suppose?" Sun Guiying let the words hang, before something pulled his tongue back into motion. "I took the Imperial Examinations. I've read more than someone in my station could be expected to."

"You know more characters than me. And the ones we both know look twice as elegant when you write them."

"Gosh, boss. You really know how to praise a man." Sun Guiying's face pinkened a moment, then fell. "But I don't think I can help you. I don't know anything about qi. To me, it all just looks like writing. Better, worse, it all feels the same to me. I can't write fire with such skill that my paper burns."

"I can't either."

"Yeah, but you're..." Sun Guiying gestured at the monkey as if he were casting salt. "You're you. The boss, the venerable immortal. You can do all sorts of things. I can help you improve your writing. It's the least I owe you. But you shouldn't expect me to help you figure out formations. I can't feel qi, and I don't know anything about a cultivator's arts. If a man called me a scholar, I'd say his tongue adds oil and vinegar to the truth. If you're telling me I can help you, well then I'm telling you that you can figure this out yourself."

Orange-crest felt his teeth against his lips. How odd the sensation. How delicious the expression, the taste of a joyous face. He missed Li Xun so much. He would know what to say. He'd been dismissive of orange-crest, easily and often, especially at the start. But never in a way that truly discouraged the monkey. Orange-crest feared that his clumsy kindness would be less supportive than even his master's curtest dismissal.

And yet, orange-crest smiled.

"You've seen my spell that binds. The Immobilizing Spell my master called it. Good spell. Good name. Tells you what it is. It is more like ice than a rope. Once it cracks, it doesn't un-crack. Maybe it refreezes, but it needs to become water again first, before it can freeze. My master was strong, but even I could break his sealing spells, if I had enough time to work on it. Does that make sense?"

"I suppose, but—"

"I want to draw a formation that adds water. Lets it freeze again. So if the ghost cracks it, or if it melts, the formation just squirts a little more Immobilizing Spell on him."

"Right, but—"

"Maybe you start trying to reconstruct this formation. I got some characters wrong. The original was... Better. More elegant. Just write what seems best, and I'll tell you if it looks familiar."

"I can do that, but—"

"No but. You can do that."

Sun Guiying sighed, but he grabbed a big sheet of paper without making a single comment about how much it cost, and began running his hand over it, fingers tracing where characters might go, how the strokes that framed the characters into a circle might shift.

Orange-crest watched out of the corner of his eye, as he marshalled his qi. With one paw, he lifted the small box he kept his Sage's Grass in to eye level. With the second, he popped the lid open.

With his third paw, he gently pulled a single clump into the air.

The monkey rose to his feet, slow as Old Lai Ping. The three sprigs of grass, with their shared root-clump, dangled in front of his eyes like stray hairs. Very valuable stray hairs.

It was a tenuous thing, his new Phantom Paw. All that time he'd spent pestering his master to explain a technique well above his level was dropping fruit now, it'd only taken him a day to begin manifesting the constructs, now that he had the necessary density and control of qi. Orange-crest could manifest two copies of the technique, one for each of his physical hands. They were a little weaker and slower than his true hands, and could only reach perhaps two arm-spans away from his dantian.

And yet, for all his mastery of the Immobilizing Spell, orange-crest couldn't carry grass with it. Objects he ensorcelled travelled to his hands, or remained in place. In this regard alone, his Phantom Paw was clearly superior.

Orange-crest dropped the grass into the gingery syrup. The liquid sputtered violently, as if he'd poured cool water into hot oil.

"Man-shit!" The monkey cursed, pulling his qi close, clamping it all down to suppress the suddenly boiling liquid.

"Stop!" Blazing light enveloped the pot, but if anything, the boil seemed to accelerate.

"Boss?"

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Jade Emperor's rotting toenails. The pot was doing the opposite of what orange-crest wanted a formation to accomplish — it was consuming the qi he was using to suppress it.

A Phantom Paw slammed the lid down on the pot, but it bucked immediately, a gasp of raging steam burping out to sear one of orange-crest's paws.

"Water!" The monkey shouted at Sun Guiying, who rose in a scramble.

Orange-crest wracked his mind. He hadn't expected this volatile a reaction from feeding Qi Condensation wood qi into mere ginger and citrus. Was it because Sage's Grass was not just wood qi, but yang wood qi? Was the mixture too hot? No, he'd accounted for polarity and temperature. His qi? No, it'd started before he tried to suppress it.

What was left except... The rock sugar? It had almost no appreciable qi, could it really—

The pot bucked, the lid threatening to leap roof-ward. Orange-crest grabbed the pot with his real hands, pulling it off the fire, and immediately hissing in pain. A pair of Phantom Paws took the place of real ones, pressing down fearlessly with their meager strength, but the lid gave as good as it got, threatening to spew qi-infused sugar all over the workshop.

What suppressed fire? He didn't have water qi, but earth...

Orange-crest ripped out a few hairs, then hesitated. It'd worked once, but was it correct now? It'd slow the burn. But introducing more qi would keep fueling the reaction, and his hair would move the reaction toward earth. It might be a good medicine, but it'd be complex, and not one he understood how to use. That wasn't the plan.

The pot kept growing hotter as orange-crest hesitated. He grabbed a crate, and stacked it atop the lid, pressing down with his weight. His hands began to sting as if he'd stuck them into a hive of spirit-bees.

The pot's wild rocking and sputtering began to slow. But the floor, and the crate, were both beginning to smoke. Would they ignite? Orange-crest wasn't sure.

The door to the workshop crashed open, and then orange-crest was wet.

Steam filled the room. The pot gurgled mulishly. The fire sputtered, dying.

Sun Guiying stood there, struggling to keep his arms wrapped around a water bucket rapidly emptying what remained of its contents onto the floor.

Orange-crest flexed his qi, straining a Phantom Paw to reach the table, and grabbed his hat.

"I had it under control." Daoist Big Hat informed his assistant. "But thank you. Good reflexes."

"Is alchemy always this violent, Daoist Big Hat?"

"You know medicine is good, when it almost explodes." Orange-crest explained. "But you know it is the best, when it explodes just a little."

The monkey paused.

"Today's alchemy lesson. Rock sugar amplifies the process of fire subsuming yang wood qi. The herbal syrup should be tempered with earth-aspected ingredients when using it as a base. Mortal ones, not spirit herbs. Or kept cooler, and steeped longer. Also, keep water buckets inside when refining mortal grade medicines."

"I will engrave your wisdom upon my heart, Daoist Big Hat."

Orange-crest shook his head, rustling his veil a little. He cracked the pot open and took a whiff. Ooh. That was interesting.

"Now help me powder and roll these before they harden. They smell like they'll make a man sweat more than the summer sun. Cook the sickness right out of him."

"Of course, venerable daoist."

The two of them worked in silence for a time. The sugar cooled a little too quickly, complicating orange-crest's initial plan to pour the thick syrup into rice flour and roll out balls with his pill press. They only finished a few dozen hard-pills before the rest congealed into sugar-stone at the bottom of the pot, and orange-crest resolved to chip it out later and sell it as a powder.

Or, more likely, to make someone else do that. It wouldn't be difficult work, just bothersome. Long summers, but orange-crest loved having employees. It was like having yearlings around, except they were actually useful; rather than trying to feed you worm-apples, and acting hurt if you didn't eat them.

He was definitely adding pounded rice next time, anything to soften the resulting crystals. His master had warned him that sugar had many odd interactions with water, heat, and other ingredients. He should have taken that more seriously.

"What do you think I should call them?" Orange-crest asked. "Ginger Ingots? Sweaty Sweets?"

"Boss, I mean no disrespect. But those are terrible names. The Purple Snow Elixir is a well known medicine for fever. You said this used heat, instead of cooling to fight fever. Perhaps you could call your pills Crimson Ember Lozenges?"

"These aren't for selling. Not directly. Too powerful. Too... Focused on one thing. They are a tool, like a knife, for cutting out deep sickness. Only to be used under my watch, with other medicines to cool and support."

And, perhaps, part of orange-crest's first true ranged attack. He just needed to figure out how to activate all of that latent fire qi at once. Orange-crest didn't want to rely upon external sources of flame, and fire was one of his weakest elements, he didn't think he would master the trick of casting sparks with a wave of his hand until he was well into Foundation Establishment. Not unless he cultivated a dedicated technique for it.

"Your hat!" Sun Guiying suddenly exclaimed.

"What?"

"It has a formation, doesn't it? One we know works. I can compare it to the broken formation the same way I can compare the good and bad talismans. Find patterns in the differences between them."

Orange-crest's fingers brushed the hat's brim, then flinched at the flash of agony that followed the light touch. He did not love the idea of taking his hat apart to try to see how it worked. He could perceive enough of the way qi twisted around it to understand that it was far beyond him. But surely just peeling back the fabric to see what the work of a real Formation Master looked like couldn't hurt.

"That's a good idea. But let's clean up all this water first."

The monkey's paws ached, the early numbness of a bad burn fully spent. Funny, he could turn blades with bare paws, and yet sugar and steam could both still burn him.

Orange-crest refused to whimper, as he toweled down the sodden boards alongside Sun Guiying. He'd sneak some ointment later. Orange-crest could hurt himself in silly ways. Daoist Big Hat needed to be better. Not infallible. But better.

This could have been catastrophic, if his formulae had been just a hair more ambitious. Li Xun could have used his own qi to suppress a runaway reaction like this one. Orange-crest was very clearly not yet on that level, even with his earthen affinity and the Immobilizing Spell.

Orange-crest really needed to purchase that pill furnace.

"What does it feel like?" Ruo Ping couldn't hold the question back any longer.

"Being me? Or being me?" The boss asked, punctuating the second part with a tap on his chest.

Ruo Ping struggled to believe that the boss standing next to him would vanish, if he just reached out to touch him.

"Both? But mostly the second one, I guess."

"Mmm." The illusory monkey hummed. "The second feels mostly like the first, I think. I wouldn't really know. I've only been like this for a few hours. I don't remember, what my clones feel. But it feels normal. Or it feels like it feels normal? Even though I know I..."

The boss trailed off, mid-sentence.

Ruo Ping made the noise you made when you wanted the boss to know you were listening. Not a hum, nor a grunt, but something in between.

Boss Orange-crest didn't say anything.

"Boss?" He prompted.

Nothing. The boss just kept putting one foot in front of the other.

Ruo Ping did the same.

The sky was the merciless grey of bared steel. The clouds looked filthy, like smoke on washing-water. Fat droplets of rain landed at uneven intervals, just regular enough to make Ruo Ping glad he'd spent a great deal of money on his green paper umbrella.

The boss just glided by, untouched by the mud and the rain.

It fell right through him, but you couldn't tell that from a distance. And a distance is where the other poor fellows on the road kept themselves, watching Ruo Ping struggle on beneath his overloaded pack, trudging in the wake of the cultivator he served.

He didn't begrudge the job. Those pigs deserved every snack the boss had loaded him up with. And if Ruo Ping was lucky, they might even share.

"I was saying something, wasn't I?" The sound of the boss's voice startled Ruo Ping out of his quiet ease. He'd always enjoyed duties like this. Shifts at watch, digging ditches, hauling things. Ruo Ping had always liked work where the only way you could fail was by not trying hard enough.

"You went quiet for a while, boss. Everything alright?"

"Did I?" The boss shrugged. "Maybe the other me got distracted. I don't really know how this works. Just that it gets harder, the further away I get. I'll disappear eventually. Blow away on the wind."

"Is it scary?"

"Is what?"

"Blowing away on the wind?"

The daoist stopped, tilting his head, seemingly considering the idea for the first time.

"No?" The immortal monkey eventually ventured. "It wasn't scary becoming like this. I don't think it should be scary, to stop."

Ruo Ping made the grunt of affirmation again. He didn't have anything better to say. He rarely had much to offer conversations other than questions.

The boss froze, and turned upon him.

"Boss?"

"Do that again."

Ruo Ping grunted again.

The boss lifted his chin, clicking his tongue twice as he did so. It was strange. But Ruo Ping understood it. Two clicks, do it again. Right?

He grunted once more, trying to keep the sound the same.

The boss's back straightened a little. He wasn't tall, for a man. Even at his full height, his veiled eyes were barely at Ruo Ping's chin.

The boss made a strange noise. A little like a bird's chirp, a little like a man's chuckle.

Ruo Ping grunted again, a clear question in the sound. What was the boss so pleased about?

"Ruo Ping. You are a genius."

Ruo Ping reached up and scratched his head.

"You gotta stop saying that boss. Steward Fu says I'll get a big head and do something foolish if you don't."

"That's the true tongue." The boss was practically vibrating. "A little clumsy. But anyone with ears could hear it!"

"True tongue? Boss, I'm just grunting at you."

"But you're grunting correctly!" The boss clicked his tongue twice, and somehow Ruo Ping understood that he wasn't asking him to repeat himself this time. "The grunt is saying what you want to say."

"But grunting isn't a language." Ruo Ping protested.

The boss's chirp-snort was downright derisive.

"What even is the true tongue? You can't mean immortals talk like this."

"No, but monkeys do! And pigs! Pigs are sometimes eloquent."

Wait—

Ruo Ping didn't need the boss's prompting to make the astonishment, or the question on the tip of his tongue, clear in the sharp inhalation that followed.

"Exactly!" The boss didn't use words, but Ruo Ping understood him anyway.

The damp morning passed like a brisk spring day. The boss would point, and grunt, and laugh mockingly every time Ruo Ping retreated to language, afraid he wasn't getting his intent across. And slowly, Ruo Ping found himself being pushed further and further away from words. He named the trees, and the boss corrected him. He disagreed, and the boss argued, unassailable logic in his grunts and chirps.

And slowly, Ruo Ping began to see. Or hear, rather. Just like in the human tongue, the sounds for sight and hearing were very similar.

Hours later, without warning, the boss popped. He was in the middle of relating the story of the last time he'd tried to teach someone the true tongue, saying something about his boss, laughter, and the name of the grass.

And then he was gone, a sun-spray melting away on the cold wind.

Ruo Ping felt sad. It had been a while, since he let himself feel sad. Life was easier, when he kept his eyes on what was in front of him, and let Fu Daxian worry about tomorrow.

Ruo Ping looked up.

Thoughts swirled around his head. Memories and ideas just as distant as the sounds of the true tongue he couldn't quite catch.

He thought about thinking about his aunt and uncle. About Huangsongyu and his cousins.

He thought about Guts and Brawn instead. The boss had told him a little about the pigs. He could have learned more, but the boss had insisted that they only speak in the true tongue. Ruo Ping had picked up little of the knowledge the boss had scattered before him.

But he'd heard enough that he was curious.

Ruo Ping trudged on through the mud. The boss had chosen him to make this run because the others all had better things to do, and he needed to bind the ghost and speak with an official. The Ministry of Daoist Affairs sounded important. But maybe next time, if the pigs were nice, he would volunteer for this job.

Ruo Ping cast his eyes heavensward. The steel sky had polished itself to silver, and gleams of azure and white jade shone through in places.

The rain would break soon. Ruo Ping couldn't wait. He hummed under his breath, worked his tongue in futile attempts at whistling.

Ruo Ping could hardly wait to try to sing with the birds. He would need practice, if he was to be certain which of the many foodstuffs in his pack the pigs liked best.