The Fourth Wall - Chapter 6 preview

Yang Mu found him in the garden, slumped against the tree. She paused at the doorway leading out to it, drinking in the sight. Wu Ying looked thinner, wan and exhausted after the brief conversation with his martial sister. She had delayed for a few hours after breakfast, speaking with him about many things she was certain before finally taking her reluctant leave. Now, he was alone once more and her heart ached for him.

As she moved to comfort him, she sensed a presence at her back. Turning her head, she met her mother's own gaze; one that drew her back. A slight flexing of will saw the formation of a bubble around them, protecting the pair from being overhead. 

"I do not want to bring up the cost of your beau's healing-" her mother began.

"Then don't," Yang Mu said, firmly.

"-or the danger's his presence has caused us," her mother continued, ignoring the interruption, "but I wanted to check that this is really the path you wish to walk."

"I've already said as much, have I not?"

"You have. But it is one thing, when he was rising above you. Perhaps, you might have reached the same heights. It is another thing, when it is he who has fallen."

"You don't believe he will find his dao," Yang Mu said, accusingly.

"His situation, while unusual, is not unique. There is a reason why the Divine Physician refused to help further," her mother said patiently. "None of those who have ever had to refind their dao at his stage have progressed further. Most have died, painful and difficult lives."

"He will find it. I have faith in him."

A hesitation, then Yang Fen nodded. "Then, there is the other matter." At her daughter's quizzical expression, her mother continued. "Did you think we forgot about the attack while we healed him? The injuries you sustained?"

"They were nothing," Yang Mu's hand touched her side, where the blade had cut deep. The spear nearly disemboweling her as she had triggered the formation, the look in their eyes. "I am nearly healed."

"They dared because we were weak and distracted. And while we do not blame your boy for our enemies, you did much injury to them." 

"I wish I had finished it," Yang Mu said, bitterly. Then, seeing something in her mother's eyes, she realised that it was not her objection or point. "You think they'll blame us. Me. You think they'll target me." A nod, and she frowned. "And not my sister? And why now?"

"Because we're weaker now, more than we have been in decades." Yang Mu flushed, bowing her head. She felt fingers pick up her chin, tilting it upwards. "It is a sacrifice we have accepted and would do again, for you." She paused, then added. "Though we will not do it again."

"I understand." Biting her lip, she added. "And I would not expect you to do it at all. Or to come to us, if they attack us when we leave. We should not impose on you any further."

"It is no imposition. You're our daughter..."

"And I've leaned on that too much." Yang Mu shook her head, ruefully. "When I left, it was because I needed to leave, to find my dao properly. To expand it and understand it, certainly, but also because I wanted, I needed to make a name for myself that was not as your daughter.

"Instead, all I've done is come to rely upon you and father again and again when we've run into trouble."

"We're your parents," Yang Fen said.

"Yes. But a child must learn to stand alone, on her own. She cannot always rely on her parents, or else they will never grow." Drawing a deep breath, she nodded firmly as though to herself. "When we leave, we will not call upon you again. Even if your enemies come, we will deal with them."

"Can you?" Doubt there, which Yang Mu understood. After all, the enemies of a pair of Nascent Soul cultivators were no small thing, no random wandering cultivator. They were not even the members of dark sect but the dark sect itself, the black departments of a few governments, the enmity of a Sword Sage and Nascent Soul cultivators themselves.

"It's about time I grew stronger," Yang Mu touched the center of her chest, a small smile crossing her face then. A bitter and shallow one. "If nothing else, all these trials with Ah Ying and his sect have helped me understand my dao better. See it, in wider ways. The king and his people..."

"You had a moment of enlightenment?" Pride and excitement filled her mother's voice.

"Not yet. I have been holding it off, but soon..."

A slight shake of her head, for the aspect of holding off enlightenment was something that had been long argued. It was possible, sometimes, by consciously ignoring certain thoughts, by forcibly containing a spirit and its growth. It was dangerous, harmful at times and risked the loss of such moments. It was also not always possible, which was few cultivators even trained the method; though being dual cultivators; her parents had more reason to learn the methods and pass it on to their children.

Even so...

"You should not delay further."

"I won't." 

Satisfied, her mother touched her arm and nodded goodbye, dismissing Yang Mu to speak with her beau. What they had spoken of, it was enough for it to be among them. After alll, if Yang Fen had any understanding of Wu Ying, the boy had never considered them at all as a safety net.

***

Wu Ying was resting, the talk with his martial sister having been quiet and exhausting. Emotionally and physically, as his reserves were rather shallower than he had expected. There was, in some ways, not much more to be said; beyond goodbyes. There were both all too keenly aware that this might be the last time they spoke with one another and all that might entail and so the conversation had been a farewell as much as a recounting of past events.

In the end, when she had left, neither had made promises of seeing the other again. It was clear, that such promises were unlikely to be fulfilled, and the difficulty that lay before him loomed within his mind.

Since the conversation, and in the intervening hours since his waking, Wu Ying had attempted to assess the extent of the damage done to his cultivation. He attempted to understand his own level and strength, and found it difficult. He was stronger, obviously, than any Energy Storage cultivator. He had all of his meridians opened, and though they were damaged; he expected those to be healed in time. 

He no longer had full integration with the winds. He mentally flinched at the thought of attempting to disperse himself into the component parts of the wind and reforming himself, as he once used to do. That was, he felt, utterly impossible for him at the present moment. Though he might have the base refinement of a wind body, it was a far cry from the integration of the seven winds. Perhaps, in time, he might achieve the strength he had with five mortal winds, but the other two winds were out of reach for now.

He was not, he felt, a Core Formation cultivator. Those cultivators created a pool of chi and then formed a core around an immortal soul, one that was both part of and seperate from the individual itself. A partitioning of the mortal soul that could then be cleansed and nourished and refined before being released again, to consume the mortal soul.

Wu Ying felt, instinctively, that doing that again would be impossible for him. He had an immortal soul, already. One that, due to his previous cultivation practise and the cleansing flame; filled with no particular dao. And yet, intuitively, filled too with its own intrinsic nature.

If he had to describe it another, Wu Ying had likened it to shaping and cultivating a tree. Trees grew, and had by their nature certain predilections and requirements. You fed it with fertilizer and initially, any fertilizer was better than nothing. However, each tree had its own requirements, the land that it planted barren of nutrients in certain ways. A good farmer knew that and adjusted the kind of fertilizer and aid offered - whether it be bone meal or ash or compost. Whether one planted other plants around it, to aid the soil. Like a tree, stripping off uneeded branches, removing old or broken sections and occasionally trimming invasive species.

In this case, he'd grafted onto the original tree a newer tree; grown seperately and that had, in the grafting taken over from the original. Adding another graft would both take time that he did not have and also risk the tree even more, for the current tree - himself - was strong; though recently damaged. They had removed the damaged sections, trimmed away large overhangs and stripped away bark and branches that had warped.

Now, though, the tree was ready to grow again; but this time, he would have to feed it even more carefully, shape it as it grew such that it might not warp even further. It was a massive undertaking, and it was possible that he had missed rotting branches deep within, that the core itself was diseased. 

If so, there was nothing that he could do; that this tree would eventually fail and die.

That scared him, of course. How could it not?

More than the fear, that all his efforts would be for nothing, was the realisation of the extent of the work he had left. He would need to heal himself, regain as much strength as he could, delve deep within and hopefully find an answer that had eluded him for so long. All the while, attempting to repay the debt to those who had aided him.

Oh, he knew they would object to that last part. But he would be a poor guest, a lousy friend and an insufferable lover if he did not even attempt that.

The only concern he had, of course, was how to start. 

"You should sleep in your bed, if you're going to sleep." Tou He's voice was wry, as he took a seat beside his friend.

Wu Ying cracked his eyes open, regarding his friend. There was a solidity to his friend that had always been there, but since his emergence after his last session was even clearer. Fire and a mountain, that was a volcano. But that was too explosive, too destructive for his friend, though Wu Ying knew he could be dangerous if he wanted to be. Perhaps a mountain being swept by a forest fire? 

In the end, metaphors failed, and Wu Ying was left with the simple facts of the matter. His friend was solid, compassionate, merciful and fiery. Contradictions, perhaps; but contradictions that he had managed to balance. No longer was he pulled by the heavens into a role that he despised.

"I was just resting," Wu Ying replied. He had not been surprised, not this time. His aura senses were coming back, his sense of smell first. And Tou He had always had a distinct smell, of meat and tea and fire.

"And the snoring?"

"I wasn't snoring." Was he? Wu Ying narrowed his eyes and looked into the guileless face turned on him and decided he really had not been. "It's good of you to come."

"It was necessary." Tou He reached over and slapped Wu Ying's chest with the back of his hand, gently. "Anyway, you all left before I could exit and help. Almost as though you were running away before I could come join."

"Nothing like that," Wu Ying said. "The Sect Head was the one with the timetable, and he was dancing to the kingdom's tune."

"Yes..." Tou He drawled, then shook his head. "As outer sect cultivators, would you ever have imagined that our sect was so dependent on the kingdom and all its needs?"

"Of course," Wu Ying said. "I joined the sect when my Master was taking part in the war with the Wei, remember?"

His friend noded, "That was his and Ah Yuan's choice, was it not? To better ascertain if the dark sect was getting involved."

"It was," he acknowledged. "Not that they learnt anything that time. The signs would not show up till much later. At least to the extent they could convince anyone."

"It feels... futile in a way. We defeat the dark sect once, they rise up again years later. We destroy the demonic infestation in the south; and you learn that it's been in the east all along." Tou He shook his head. "If we go to the west or north, will we find another problem?"

"Maybe. I found enough issues as it stood when I went to either," Wu Ying said. "Though to the far north, there's the northern dragon king's palace. I do not feel he would brook any major infestations." A twitch of his lip in humor. "Nor is there, to the far north, much life to provide such growth."

"But your other friends, the foreigners..."

"There are many of them, yes." Eyes darkened in thought, as he recalled the drought. It had hit some places harder than others, of course; but the northern plains were always a little dry in comparison to the south. If the drought had extended to the north, would the herds survive? How were his friends dealing with it all? He was curious, he had to admit. 

He also knew, from his readings, that droughts and other great social upheavals were time of distress and change. New leaders could rise, the old dying off or overthrown by the young as the need for change, to do something new; arose. Concerns that the heavens might have turned their favour away always grew. 

In times past, such moments resulted in the joining of the clans. However temporarily, these hordes could do great damage to the southern kingdoms before the internal pressures, the disparate clans and their blood feuds drove them apart once more. He said as much to Tou He who looked aside, not meeting his friend's gaze for a long time. Eventually though, when Wu Ying elbowed him again, he relented.

"Fa Yuan looked into the future." Wu Ying scoffed, having gained his Master's own views on fortune telling. "I know, I know. But it's something that they have all said. That a century of strife is upon us. I fear that the demonic king was just one such symptom."

"Or," Wu Ying said, carefully, "these fortune tellers noted the fall of the Cai kingdom and realised that one way or the other, there was going to be trouble. Add it to the drought..."

"Trouble, yes." Tou He shook his head. "But it was not what I came here to speak to you about."

"You had a point, then?"

"Yes." He turned his hand over, making a series of letters appear in his hand. He offered them to Wu YIng, who took them and regarded the broken seal with surprise. "Yes. They're from a temple. The Five Harmonies Temple in the kingdom of Yun."

"Far from the sect."

"Not from here though," Tou He said. "I wrote to them, about my own trials. They had much advice to offer." He hesitated, then added. "They also have the Pool of Clarifying Thought and Pathways." 

"Ah...." Now he understood.

"Read it over," Tou He nodded to the letters still clutched in Wu Ying's hand, "but if we are to visit; I'd like to warn them ahead of time."

"I will. Thank you."

"No need." Tou He stood up and then reached over, squeezing his friend's shoulder, gently. "Take care of yourself and heal. Now, I best go, before your woman gets jealous."

Wu Ying smiled, noting Yang Mu coming over. She radiated worry, to his gaze; though he knew it was because he knew her so well. For someone else, she likely look no different. He wondered what it was about, hoped it was not about him, or it was a matter he could aid her in.

Realised it likely was both and neither. And oncea again, felt the frustration of being weak boil up within him.

His hand tightened, the crunching of paper reminding him of what he held. Wu Ying smoothed the letters out as best he could, put them away in his storage ring and offered Yang Mu a smile. No need to burden her with his own issues. He would get stronger, he vowed. 

One way or the other, he would reclaim his place.