David

There was a man who must have been old enough to be his grandfather, kowtowing to him and Alice. Alice looked chagrined.

Alice shook her head at the old man. "There's no need for this," she said. "A man your age should never kneel." She helped him up.

David winced internally, assuming their cover would break instantly. No one noticed Alice’s slip up - if they did, they didn’t jump to the conclusions that David thought they would.

As he stood, the old man turned his attention to Lin, who appeared slightly flabbergasted at this turn of events. "Idiot boy," he shouted. "What sort of demon possibly possessed you to do something this stupid?"

Lin, to his credit, did not react poorly to the old man's shouting.

"This disciple apologizes, Great Aunt, Great Uncle." He bowed at David. "Thank you for your teachings."

Well, at least he seemed somewhat polite when the adults who didn’t have to listen to his every command were around.

"We are causing a scene," the old man said, aware of all the eyes on them. "You could have chosen a less suicidal way to enrage your old father," he said to Lin. “You are an embarrassment to your family.”

This was a variety of censure that David didn't think someone with the personality of a young master could take but Lin bore it without complaint, surprising him.

"I was in the wrong, Teacher Zhou," Lin mumbled. The words were well practiced. "I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

He looked sorry too, like a beaten dog. David felt a psychic stab of pain on his behalf, born of times when his mother had shouted at him in public. The language of Mandarin was not the only thing this place shared with China - notions of filial piety and face seemed to transpose as well.

He would probably react poorly to learning where Alice’s hairpin and sword had come from - or the flute that David was holding. Everything they'd taken from the temple might have belonged to someone Zhou had known many, many years ago.

"What dog taught you manners?" Zhou growled. Young Master Lin stared dully into the old man's beard. It was not a sullen expression - he knew better. After a few seconds, Lin figured out what the man wanted. He turned to Alice and David.

"Would the honored guests of Cloud Mountain City please have tea in Mayor Lin's household?" Lin asked, as politely as he could, with the hope that he could make amends in this situation. Lin gave a sideways glance at Zhou. It was a quick, furtive look with the purpose of divining the old man’s reaction.

Alice turned to David, shrugged, then nodded. "I suppose we'll have some tea," Alice said, pointedly choosing to speak to the boy’s teacher. Alice did not feel sympathy for the Young Master. From the way Lin’s face fell, this reaction was expected, if unwelcome. Alice knew full well that whatever punishment the boy received would correlate to how insulted she appeared.

There was a bit of an awkward silence in the street, punctuated by the pained moans of the middle aged advisor whose ribs were certainly broken.

“We will go to Mayor Lin’s household, then. Father and son are my disciples and the mayor has good taste in tea, no matter his deficiencies in child rearing.” The old man glared at Young Master Lin again, who immediately found an expression that was properly apologetic rather than disappointed once more.

The more enterprising servants had managed to find a pair of stretchers made of wood and cloth with the help of onlookers. They loaded both the advisor and the large man onto them.

The servants kept their eyes cast towards their feet. At first, David thought the source of their fear had been the old man, Zhou, but the sheer terror on their faces as they stole glances at him and Alice convinced him otherwise. David found he strongly disliked this kind of attention.

But maybe it was inevitable. The oldest man he'd seen yet in the village had knelt before them and called them his aunt and uncle. They were dressed in the robes of a Daoist sect. And he had wounded one of their number, as had Alice. Injuries for two men, who would need to be taken care of. And that was more work. David decided that this was somewhere he could help - perhaps that would make them seem less like a natural disaster.

David shooed away one of the servants carrying the back half of the advisor's stretcher and took his place. The stretcher, carrying the advisor, was less heavy than awkward - it was difficult to find a grip through the cloth canvas onto the wooden pole which the cloth had been tied around to form a hammock. The Lin household couldn’t be that far, could it?

He almost wished he hadn’t even bothered, because the fear had grown into something palpable amongst the servants. Zhou bowed at him hastily.

"Uncle, you mustn't," he protested, horrified - but likely for different reasons than the servants. The ones who weren’t helping with the stretchers shrank out of his line of sight to the best of their ability.

"He was wounded, not by his will," David said, as gently as he could. He tried his best not to implicate Young Master Lin further in the incident. "It wouldn't be right for me to not help in the few ways I can."

"Your Path is righteous beyond my comprehension," the old man said. David didn't see Alice's face but he didn't doubt she was smiling in that troublesome way. He was sure, whatever her reaction, she wasn’t the sort of girl to be impressed by displays of chivalry. This really was a profitless endeavor.

But he had, in fact, wounded the advisor and he did grab the back half of the stretcher with the intent to help.

"Strength of character isn't always connected to the Dao," Alice said. She must have sounded ethereal and worldly to the entire cast of onlookers, because they were hanging onto her every word, primed for life changing advice.

David knew that she was just saying stuff that sounded profound but, he wasn't about to contradict her.

"But the Dao is always connected to strength of character."

She turned to look at Lin, who shrank into himself. There was nodding all around, stroking of beards, exaggerated gasping, and all other manners of attention seeking behavior amongst far too many people.

David, too, was surprised - but only at how little effort Alice had put into this. He was almost disappointed. Was that really it? Surely she could have come up with something that rhymed at least? He was a bit irritated at how easily she'd gotten a response from the crowd.

"Thank you, Fairy Aunt," Lin muttered, bowing again.

Alice seemed a little too pleased at this. David had the striking image of a bird preening.

The procession of an old man, his student, servants, the wounded and two teenagers pretending to be Daoists made their way through the village that called itself Cloudy Mountain City.

"What is your realm, Aunt?" Zhou asked, finally, unable to stop his curiosity.

Alice considered his question, knowing it to be one about where they were on this totem pole of qi with myriad names and realms and designations and analogies that she didn’t know the names of. She decided to interpret the word for realm as something else.

"Where we came from, the streets were paved with stones and sand and water, formed into a single, unbroken stone. In and around our city, there lives eighteen million people, and every child is taught as a scholar in many fields. There are thousands of cities like it, a few with greater numbers and many with less."

Luckily, Zhou had a poor attention span. He gasped. "You must have come down from the Greater Realms, no, the Starfields themselves.” His eyes widened. “Eighteen..."

"Just one small planet in a vast universe," Alice said. "Just one small planet."

David supposed it was true but the way Alice described it made it seem so grandiose. Concrete was concrete and a city was just a city. Public education was just public education and, from what he could see, there were just as many stars in this night sky.

It served its purpose - to distract the old man from his curiosity about where they stood when it came to… David wasn’t quite sure how to name this system of castes.

"How many years has it been since you've left the Falling Leaves Sect and ascended past this world?" Zhou wondered.

Alice shrugged expressively, stalling as best she could, no doubt, to come up with something vacuous to say.

"I can barely remember my time spent in this world," she said, injecting a bit of honesty into the charade. Alice had, indeed, spent most of her time here sleeping or dying.

She then steered the conversation away from the topic of ascension as quickly as she could.

Alice leaned towards the old man, in deep concern. "When did the tragedy at the Sect occur?"

A strain of emotion found the old man's face. David placed it somewhere between genuinely upset and melodramatic. "Seventy one years ago, a Phoenix descended from the Heavens and broke the sect. She killed my master and all twenty eight remaining disciples in mere minutes.”

David wished it was more clear if the Phoenix had been a title, a metaphor or the mythical bird. Given the way the saber had been driven through the lovers, a bird seemed unlikely. It spoke volumes about his experience recently that he didn't discount it entirely.

Zhou's voice dropped into something low. He'd clearly told this story many times, which had sterilized some of the emotion from it, but there was a ring of reverence in his tone. “My master - she carried a saber identical to yours, gifted by her master before he stepped into a higher realm. She never earned the right to draw it - but it was always by her side."

"The right." It was a statement, not a question. Alice was better at finding the cues to coax Zhou into continuing than David, so he kept silent - letting her ply him for information about the Sect.

"To think that an elder with the right to carry one of our sabers would return to see my shame," the old man said, his head in his hands. "My master was always rejected by the blade, even though she carried it around. She never did pull it from its scabbard; she was unworthy."

It would probably end very, very badly if Zhou found out that this was not, in fact, one of the sabers which had been taken from the Falling Leaves Sect to another realm. But still, David felt a little less uneasy that Alice had effectively looted the saber from the temple. There were more of them.

But only a little. They had belonged to people who’d died defending it.

"Unworthy? That is a strong aspersion to cast on a woman who taught you," Alice warned, feeling a sense of injustice for the woman she had taken the saber from.

"My apologies, aunt. I am a simple cripple with a shattered dantian. It is a miracle that the Heavens have allowed me to live at all. I have no right to speak ill of the dead and should it please Senior Aunt, I will atone for my actions with my life."

Alice gave David a look which was quite neutral but he could see the question in her eyes. He had spoken in such a dramatic fashion it was difficult to take him seriously.

There was a hint of amusement in her eyes as well. David did not believe that Alice afforded Zhou much respect. Alice was straightforward about who and what she liked and disliked - and rarely gave reasons as to why.

"Your dantian has been shattered for the majority of your life?" Alice said, almost pleasantly. David thought it was just the right amount of interest not to raise alarm, if a little callous.

Zhou shook his head in what could only be dismay. "I had come back from gathering mulberries for the sect when the Phoenix broke the pillar in the courtyard. To my shame, I knelt before her and she left me with my life, but only that."

He gave a heavy sigh. “When I draw my qi, I can only think of that Phoenix and the way she broke me and my qi drains away like water through a sieve, so I have dedicated my life to teaching the youths of this city and those which surround us. I can barely even sense qi. It is blindness."

Zhou looked contemplative. “When I was a boy of twelve, arrogant and talented, there lived a blind man on the street in the city where I grew up. I was unkind.” His expression twisted in a way that implied that he had been more than just unkind. “Baoying.”

Retribution.

But Alice didn’t dwell on this story, choosing to nod along distractedly. "That's why there are so many young men and women in this town. You’ve taught here for many years."

Zhou nodded. "I have taught them all I have learned from the Falling Leaves. Everyone in this town who can control their qi has been my student." He stood a little taller.

"Disciple Lin is our most promising, having reached the sixth stage of Qi Condensation in less than five years. It has made him arrogant. This fool apologizes."

Alice scoffed. "We are who we choose to be. He must learn to bear the consequences of his actions or his mind will never advance. You need not apologize for him or he'll never learn."

David wasn’t quite sure if Alice was being rude about young master Lin’s personality or if she was giving fake cultivation advice again.

And he still had no idea what Qi Condensation was, but it was clear now that he could not ask. While it was clear that somehow he and Alice were at least a little superior in combat to anyone present, it would be quite an embarrassing situation to reveal who they really were.

And Alice would never forgive him because she loved this attention, the way that everyone young and old hung onto her every word. It was just the way she was.

"What are you teaching them, exactly?" Alice asked, seeming barely interested.

Now this was an angle that David had not considered. She was just too good at this. Practiced, even.

"Stances from the Dance of the Falling Leaves for those of the Martial Path. Breathing exercises. For the Seekers who have taken a step on the path, I give advice on digging the well."

"Digging the well?" Alice asked.

"My apologies, aunt. That is something the children I advise say. Foundation establishment is what I mean. Starting the fire, the first calculation - creating the architecture of their Dantian," Zhou explained.

Alice smiled at him encouragingly but David could see the note of triumph there. She had learned something useful. After reviewing the man's words, so had he.

In retrospect, it might have been something that he would have wondered about after a while. A common theme of those moments of extreme exposure to the Song had a common thread. When it was over, the Song sunk into that space above his groin, under his stomach, and then dispersed, fading away.

His "qi" trying to find a resting place. At least that was how he interpreted the information that he could glean from Zhou's words.

David and Alice were going to need to ‘dig a well’. In the privacy of David’s thoughts, this was a bit of a preposterous analogy - but he could see its elegance if the explanations of qi were couched in a series of metaphors about water.

After some consideration, the term was likely still better than whatever he would have come up with for Songs. How could he consider a similar analogy with a straight face? He imagined himself telling Alice earnestly that he was about to burn a cd. Create a hard drive? Download more RAM?

No, digging a well was fine. He was going to be digging a well. This was more dignified.

It was David who found the next question. "Has anyone in the city managed to form their Dantian?" David hoped there would be some sort of passing description of the process.

Zhou shook his head helplessly. "I'm unable to give any advice on the matter. I had only formed mine - and just - when the Sect fell. With how my master said everyone's Path is different, I wouldn't dare to assist a disciple in the process. I can only feel bitter and useless in that regard.”

He looked towards the Heavens - in blame or in askance. “Foundations can be built with my help - the tempering of body and mind do not require diagnosis. Even without much talent, it rarely takes many years. And it is obvious when those pillars have been built.”

He suddenly looked embarrassed. “Even before the tragedy, I was never the most scholarly of disciples. I confess - I’ve not been able to teach Foundation Establishment in the tradition. I'm not learned in any of the arts.”

Zhou sighed. “I formed my Foundation by practicing the martial arts in a manual that I inherited before I arrived at the Sect. I offer this last legacy of my family to my students if they would prefer a more widely appreciated path. Most of them do.”

“For those who attempt to form foundations as a true disciple of the Falling Leaves, I could only wish good fortune." He looked at his hands. "No opinion I can give on music or calligraphy is worth anything. I’ve only ever won a game of Go by accident and I’ve never once managed to paint in a straight line.” Zhou looked miserable.

“My students would have had an easier time had I been anyone else from the sect. I cannot pass on the proper way to do things and I cannot help anyone form a core.”

Zhou closed his eyes for a few moments.

“So anyone who has raised enough Pillars and desires it, I've sent along to the Red Wind Sect.”

The two wounded men were, according to Young Master Lin, in that stage. They were, allegedly, in possession of pillars, whatever that could mean.

David did not compare them favorably to the actual, pillars in the Sect, which were made of stone - though in truth the men might have actually been sturdier. There were no large holes in either of them, but the same could not be said of the pillars in the temple.

David would have considered it further had Alice not found a different line of questioning.

“And who would the Red Wind Sect be?” David could barely catch the flash of interest in Alice’s eyes but it was obvious to him from the way she shifted her weight from her left to her right foot and back, again and again.

There was a trace of anger on Zhou's face. “The Red Wind Sect? They arose from those rejected by the Falling Leaves and have a short history. But they are the only sect within a thousand li and have a sect master who has progressed seven steps into the formation of his Nascent Soul.”

He sneered. “And only a hundred years after Core Formation."

The sarcasm was palpable, trying to make it clear that this wasn’t too much of an achievement in his eyes. David wasn’t sure if the old man’s attitude was because that speed of progress was truly unworthy of respect or if he just hated whoever the Sect Master was.

He sighed. "They say it won't be long until he opens his eighth meridian." There was a trace of bitterness now - a sure sign of how he truly felt.

The bitterness sharpened. "I can only hope he treats my talented disciples well."

"And if he doesn't?"

Zhou shrugged. "No one would complain to this failure about it.” The shrug had taken the anger out of him - leaving him weary and sad. “But there would be nothing I could do anyway. It was difficult to get him to agree to begin with, even though they take in all manners of dogs and cats. They have nearly a thousand outer disciples."

He scoffed, rediscovering his anger. "Inner disciples. Outer disciples. Core disciples. Peak masters. Inheriting disciples."

David had never seen a man so old roll his eyes before.

"Our sect has carved the name of every member on a single pillar of stone and every single one has come from far and wide with earth-shaking, heaven-moving talent. We have masters and we have disciples. Most of them have ascended to the Greater Realms and even to-”

Zhou stopped suddenly and then stared at Alice, at David and at the pommel of Alice’s saber. “Like yourselves,” he finished sheepishly.

He took a few seconds to collect himself. The street was no longer paved but the road was well maintained. David had grown used to carrying the stretcher and barely noticed it now.

"Forgive me, aunt and uncle. You appear young, so I have begun lecturing as though I am facing my students."

Alice smiled at him and patted his shoulder in reassurance. "It's alright, it's alright. You've been through a lot."

David was sure that she felt the same way he did - that he would really, really love for Zhou to continue lecturing about matters of the world. But it seemed what was done was done. No one spoke for several minutes as they continued walking. The servants were still refusing to meet his eyes as he carried the wounded advisor along.

They approached a modest compound soon enough, which was a blessing. Alice looked like she was getting a little more antsy than usual.

No, not antsy. Alice looked like she had an idea. Those were, by any estimation, bad for her health.