Immortal Connections - Chapter 16 preview

Chapter 16 - Wu Ying

Martial cultivators – for the most part – were simple people. Show that you not only treated the discipline of martial arts study respect, but were also highly competent yourself and the degree of acceptance shown to one increased significantly. Certainly, there were egos to be navigated around, arrogance - well earned or not - to be managed and pride to be swallowed. But for someone like Wu Ying, that was not a hard request.

There were, in the end, two kind of martial cultivators. The first were the natural prodigies, those Heaven blessed individuals who grasped the facets of the sword or other martial art instinctively. Once before, Wu Ying had met a young boy who needed only to observe his own techniques once to replicate and improve them. Such individuals progressed in the martial arts in leaps and bounds, strolling through the initial stages of comprehension with little difficulty. If anything, their greatest danger was that of arrogance, of towering egos that crumbled upon their first encounter with failure. Difficulties, never before faced, became insurmountable walls that some never managed to climb over.

There were none of those among the residents of the Lesser Harmonies palace. You did not become a martial ascendant by letting simple obstacles like a too complex technique or a more gifted opponent stop you, not after the numerous trials one went through to become an ascendant. After all, failure was part of martial training - the greater part, for some.

Like Wu Ying. They made up the second, probably larger in number type of martial cultivators. The plodders, the workhorse martial cultivators, the ungifted. Those who had not the divine touch to grasp techniques and weapons by instinct. Who had to struggle to learn every movement, every breath and angle. Where every technique was hard won, through hours of sweat and tears and more often than not, blood.

Oh, most who reached such heights were gifted - just not gifted enough to be called a prodigy. There were some who would never have a talent at battle, who the end of a blade would be picked up instinctively by tip than hilt, who might strike their friends with the haft as often as their enemies. 

Those were not the cultivators who trained with Wu Ying now, who he joined every day for the past few weeks in the early morning. Each of them working diligently to grasp the basics of the weapon once again, now that they were in a new world and in new bodies, where the conceptualisation and inversion of their daos into their bodies to empower attacks was a new facet of battle.

Early morning hours, training with martial cultivators, feeling out the hierarchies of the palace. Realising that Shu Ren's complaint of martial cultivators dominating the ascendants were not untrue, that all too many of the hundreds who resided in the Lesser Harmonies palace were gifted with the weapon and saw, all too often, the way forward in its use.

No wonder those who were martially inclined strutted about like they owned the palace. Accepting only - marginally – those others who might seek a path with the departments of justice or tax collection, individuals with skills enough with the blade – or connections enough – to be their equal. 

Fractures within the palace, though his own skill and gifts left him skating above it for now. As the others watched as he improved, growing stronger in leaps and bounds; all of them wondering why. 

Not that he intended to inform them.

Not yet.

***

The hours after training, after breakfast were filled with the quietest times for Wu Ying. Few who had risen had emerged from the gatherers, the farmers or those who sought to become one with the land. Even those whose dao were in concordance with nature; the occassional hermit who had achieved enlightenment, the wandering cultivator of the deep wilds; even they saw the work of ploughing the earth, weeding the soil and watering planted crops as a necessity of survival and not an end in itself.

That Wu Ying enjoyed the process of growing plants and herbs, that he found a challenge in plucking half-wilted plants and broken roots from the kitchen and attempt to regrow them was seen as a strange eccentricity. One that only a few sought to encourage. Amongst them, Xin Heng.

"Well, how much longer?" she tapped her foot, staring at the newly watered fields. "It's been three weeks!"

"Two since I planted. These fields were terribly cared for before." It would have been faster if he had more time, or longer if they did not live in the heavens, where even the breakdown of material for his new compost pile had been sped up. 

“You keep saying that. It didn’t look that bad to me,” Xin Heng said. “Are you sure the herbs will grow?”

“Of course not. I’m learning as I work through this but the books you and Shu Ren found for me are illuminating.” Wu Ying shook his head. “It’s all so complex and different. The soil types, the rate of growths, the plants. I have nothing to base my knowledge upon, because the plants themselves have grown and changes. Even the work on rice itself was hundreds of pages long, listing the varieties and types!”

“Aren’t there dozens of types of rice in the Middle Kingdom? I know I’ve seen them. Eaten a few too. The servant who kept bringing me food insisted on telling me all the kinds of things they were making for me.”

“And you didn’t care.”

“Not really.”

Wu Ying rubbed his hands, stared at the dirt and walked over to wash his hands. “Truth be told, rice is rice. A chef or cook might tell you different, and as farmers there are differences in growth speeds and nutritional requirements, variations in the plant itself that we must learn; but nothing to the same extent. There are rice plants that grow in the snow or deep underwater, those that are better for fire or earth or metal cultivators, ones that will amplify strengths and immortal chi and dao understanding even. That amplify authority or aura, that will make one, well… more.”

“Yes. Same with my pills. Or it should be, for my pills,” Xin Heng said, foot tapping. “If I could get my herbs.”

“Does it strike you funny, that it is similar, over and over again.”

“No. As above, so below. We but follow the footsteps of the Dao and the journey to understanding never ends, as we seek to expand our knowledge of the way and become one with it.”

At least, he was grateful that progress – while constant – was not demarcated by the same degree of stages as in the lower realm. While there were names and terms for various milestones, when and how one reached them was less straightforward. 

“Or so that is the intent, of the jade palace and the heavens, or so I’m told.” Xin Heng said the last with a touch of doubt in her voice so low that if he was not listening for it, if he was not already primed to listen, he might not have caught it.

Even so, the degree of changes, the progress of immortal to stronger immortal, it bothered him. This categorization and separation, it felt wrong and unnatural in many ways. The Dao was one way, the entirety, it was in the splitting of it – from one to two, two to three and then the ten thousand things under heaven and earth that trouble began. They should come back to the start, not create further divisions.

Or at least, that was how he viewed it. Like most things involving the Dao, philosophy and life, arguments could be made for both viewpoints, including most of all, humanity’s own lack of comprehension.

“So, two more weeks?”

“Maybe a month.” 

Xin Heng let out a long, agonized huff before stomping off. Leaving Wu Ying to follow her to catch lunch, and then, his next major portion of his schedule.