Immortal Connections - Chapter 45 preview

Chapter 45 - Wu Ying

"Do you not get tired?" Ze Mu cried out, later that day. He was leaning against the tree, huffing a little as he tried to get his breath back. They had been walking for most of the day, Wu Ying occasionally asking pointed questions about previous plants he had come across, or taking his time gathering the various plants and spirits around.

"I do. In a few days, I'll probably need to take a break," Wu Ying said. "But I'm quite used to walking through the wilds for days on end, gathering. I required much less sleep since ascending too. Might even be able to do a week."

"I know that," Ze Mu replied. "I don't need to sleep much either, but you've just been walking and talking and asking, over and over again. Don't you stop?"

"For what?" 

"Rest! Relaxation! Your body doesn't get tired?" Ze Mu said.

"Why would it? We're just walking." Wu Ying shrugged. 

"The chi you're drawing in, the density here is so much more. It's why most don't go into the hinterlands, it's too tiresome." Ze Mu frowned. "It's a strain on us, makes us tired and exhausted."

"Huh." Wu Ying stared at Ze Mu for a while, reaching out and probing him gently with his aura. 

"Oi!" Ze Mu snapped. "Don't do that. So rude! Don't they teach you manners in the lower world?"

"They do. I just ignored it," Wu Ying said. "You know that being here is helping you advance, do you not?"

"Hah! As though that'll do me much good." He gestured around them. "What do you think happens to those of us who get much better?"

"You get stronger."

"And?"

Wu Ying shrugged. "I don't understand your point. Is strength not enough? It makes your life easier, is it not?"

"What did you push ahead for?" Not waiting for Wu Ying to reply, Ze Mu went off on his rant. "To become immortal. Well, we're all immortal already. So what's the point for us? To grow stronger, to do what? To ascend to the next heavenly realm? As though they'd let us up there, being from this one."

"So you're just content to exist?"

The boy looked away, frustration on his face. Wu Ying watched for a moment more, and then turned to keep walking. 

"What else is there? They won't ever let us rise, not really. They'll always look down on us because of where we were born. Even if we grow stronger, we'd have to leave, our friends and our family behind because there's no future for us on this realm. So most of us don't, because at least then, we get to stay with those we love."

Wu Ying understood that. He wondered though, how it might feel after a few centuries of living with one another. Did they grow tired, of living in such close proximity, hearing the same stories, laughing at the same jokes all the time? Or did time blend together after a while, when the seasons and turning of years become so similar, that you could fall into a routine. A pleasant one, of days and nights that you could rely upon, like a trusty sword or a comfortable chair.

“Even if we wanted more, the only way up for most of us are as soldiers. Those that join, they get thrown into the wars, over and over again. You almost never see them return, and those few that do are as rare as hen’s teeth.” Ze Mu shook his head, dolefully. “As though all of us want to be killers.”

“Funny thing to say, considering how we met.”

“I didn’t know they were going to try to kill you. But I think, considering you were the only one to come this far down, Boss Ru had gotten desperate.”

“If all of you were so happy with your lot in life, why even become bandits?”

“Most people are. I didn’t say I was,” Ze Mu muttered. “It’s just not about being strong. Not everything can be solved by being strong, you know.”

“Taxes.” Wu Ying muttered, jumping to a conclusion over what the man had said. “You all needed coins for a tax, didn’t you?”

Ze Mu’s head jerked up in surprise, eyes widening before he let out an explosive sigh. “The head magistrate, he gets greedier every decade. Makes more demands from us, more coins, more grain, more… everything.” His features darkened, as he continued. “Even more servants.”

“Women?”

“Men, actually." Something dark flickered in Ze Mu's face.

"What is it?" 

"Just rumors. Nothing substantiated. If it was..." 

"I understand, but what?"

"Children. Little boys in particular. He certainly likes his servants young, that's for sure." 

Wu Ying's face twisted up in disgust, a hand clenched tight. For the first time, he made a note to make sure he took a trip through the capital. Even if it was outside of his plans, even if doing so might delay or even stimy his options at aiding Yang Mu, some things could not be stood.

"Only rumors, you say."

Ze Mu nodded. "It's not even common, just things people whisper about, or taunt when they're particularly drunk. The kind of thing that might just be fabrication..."

"Or something too dark to be said, regularly. Not when they don't have the strength or desire to see it through," Wu Ying said. 

The boy looked away then, ashamed and Wu Ying chose not to pursue the matter. He did ask what the point of strength was, and here they came to it. Though, there was more than one kind of strength - the strength of the group, the strength of proper morals, the strength of persistence.

Though, Wu Ying saw no point in learning to love the dull, but rather preferred to take joy in it. To learn to love in the simplest of movements, like doing his forms over and over again, searching for that moment of tranquility or that balance in motion and angles, where everything fit right. Weeding gardens and fields, watching the plants he grew blossom, testing new variations that grew together to see which might work best or provide the highest chi concentration levels.

Small joys found in the greater task, such that it was never boring.

“Now come on.” Wu Ying gestured down the path they had been walking. “We don’t want our prey to wake up.”

“Prey?”

“Why do you think we’ve been walking this deer track for the last half hour? Dinner’s at the end of it, if we hurry properly.”

That perked the boy up, and Wu Ying could not help but wonder how old the boy was. After all, he lived in this immortal heavenly realm. Was he perhaps even older than him, just more immature? Or did children advance at the same age?

Something to ask, in the future. In the meantime, they had work to do. And a small nagging feeling of guilt, at killing the bandits to ignore. Even if they had been pushed to the ends that they had found themselves, somehow, Wu Ying doubted the majority were as kind hearted as Ze Mu.