Chapter 477 – Uppity Ass Kids Get The Chancla Of Harsh Reality (Patreon)

Aaaaaand we're back! Week has begun and so has chapters!

___________________________________________________________________

We have suffered much, and will suffer more, but now, we suffer on our terms, for our destinies, at long last free of the chains of our worst selves.

In the light of our new sun, we fight. In the softness of bloodied earth, we work. In the face of oncoming oblivion, we endure.

-Ending words of High Warrior Tan Jiang, in his first speech to the Allied Forces Of The True Republic

________________________________________________________________________

“I felt that.”

Raika blinks, tilting her head up from her slow and steady trek to see Geng He standing in front of her cabin.

“I felt that,” he repeats.

“Wei Zin,” she says, “would you mind making your own way home? I believe your fellow disciple is demanding some attention, much as a child would. Come back in an hour or so, we can have that tea I was talking about.”

Geng He grinds his teeth at being called a child, but otherwise doesn’t react. Wei Zin, used to dealing with bullshit like this that she’s trying to get him away from, gives a polite nod, and a slightly less polite bow to his fellow disciple and junior brother.

Not that Geng He would accept being called such.

Raika keeps trecking up the hill, walking straight towards Geng He as Wei Zin steps off around the hillside back to the house she’s built for her wayward kiddos. In a few steps, joints creaking, her staff heavily supporting her weight, she’s reached her more martial child, who stands at nearly seven feet tall, rippling with muscle, covered in scars. 

One more step, and she reaches his height, her frame dwarfing his by a good few inches, her scars far more numerous.

“Hello Geng He. How good it is to see you, oh disciple of mine. How was my day? It was pretty good. Got a lot of chores done, went for a nice walk, handed out some herbs I’m pretty proud of. How has your day been?”

She can literally feel the way he wants to yell at her. The way that he almost growls as he answers, seething with frustration. 

“It has been fine… master.”

“Good. Are you going to keep blocking the door to my home?”

That gets through to him. He clicks his tongue against his teeth, but does take a step back, then another, giving her space to walk past him and slide open the door to her cabin. She walks inside, her staff clicking heavily against the earth and then the wood inside, placing her basket and the fresh scoop of rice therein on her kitchen counter. Slowly, patiently, feeling every ounce of how much her joints ache and her scars itch, she sets a teapot to boil, low and slow, and then walks over to the only table in the house, lowering herself into a seated position.

Then she looks up at the warrior who has followed her inside, his anger burning through him like lightning, his shadow cast over her home from the doorway.

“Are you going to sit, or are you going to keep standing there?”

“I felt it. You did… something. A technique of some kind. It’s the only thing that explains it. You–”

“And so what if I did?”

He stops at that. Blinks. 

“W– you stopped us from cultivating! Stopped us from growing stronger, stopped me! When you told me about this place I thought it would be an opportunity, but I’ve been here almost two weeks and all I’ve done is sit in the dark and practice my drills, and it’s not enough.”

“Oh? You expected more, then?”

“Yes!”

Calmly, Raika takes her pipe from out of her robes, tapping some of the old ash out onto the table to clear it. “That’s so interesting. Did you have anything specific in mind?”

Again, Geng He is caught off guard. He’s expecting a fight, and she’s definitely gotten some sass in at his expense so far, but the question puts him on the back foot.

“I… I thought you were going to be teaching us something new, something we needed to be hidden to master. Or some sort of new meditation technique. Or something. This place is… it’s nowhere! Even if you did let us cultivate, there’s barely any Qi in the air here, it feels like I’m suffocating half the time.”

“And not in the fun way?” she asks, plucking a few dried leaves and a bit of moss from a shelf in arm’s reach and starting to roll them in her fingers. 

“Wha- the fun way?”

“Yeah, you should probably work on your temper a bit more before you learn about that. Or maybe you should learn how to do it safely now, rather than later? Always hard to tell with you.”

That keeps him processing for long enough that the bundle of herbs has turned to a thick powder in her hand, at which point she performs the well-practiced motion of transferring it to the bowl of the pipe in her palm. Lifting it, she clicks the wood between her teeth as she pats herself for some matches.

Geng He lets out an exhale loud enough to rattle some of her bowls on their shelves. Then an inhale. Then an exhale.

“Master,” he says, his voice cooler, “if the fault is with me, then this lowly disciple requests that you clarify, that he might better suit your expectations.”

“Oh you’ve got faults all right. That’s not why I’m telling you not to cultivate, though.”

“Then why–”

He stops. Inhales. Exhales. 

She lets him breathe for a bit. Eventually, she finds a match, striking it and letting the flame settle into the hollow of her pipe, slowly igniting the thick, slightly moist powder inside. 

He waits for her to exhale her first puff of smoke before he speaks again, which she appreciates. 

“Whatever technique you used isn’t one I’ve ever felt before,” he admits, his tone a lot more even. “It seemed like Intent, but… maybe more? And I don’t… I felt no Qi, nothing.”

“Frankly, I’m impressed you sensed it at all,” she admits. “And I wouldn’t call it a technique, really. It’s just sort of a thing I figured out a while ago. Been doing that a bit. Most of me has, actually, but I help sometimes. Perspective and all.”

“And I understand that perspective is important, but I don’t have a thousand different minds or a hundred different Souls. For all the gifts you’ve given me, master, I’m only me, and if I stop here, how can I possibly keep up and face against the truer monsters out there.”

She snorts, a trickle of smoke escaping her nostrils as she does. “You know that perspective is important. You don’t understand it for shit.”

“Fine! But in the time I’m meditating, I could be–”

“Getting more modifications? More injections of Qi? More natural treasures? More resources? More tailored training spaces? More, more, more?”

He hesitates to answer.

“I owe you a lot, Geng He. You don’t see it the same way I do, and that’s fine, but what I did to you when we met, the things that happened to you during the Beast Tide, were not alright, and I will continue to take responsibility for how I have harmed you for so long as I deem fit.”

“Master, without those things–”

“You don’t see it the same way I do. And that’s fine.”

She takes a long, slow pull from her pipe, the mixture inside it gurgling and hissing as it burns, as it delivers cold smoke and mist down her lungs and fills them with a tingling numbness. She holds it there a moment, letting it spread through her limbs, down her back, up to the forming migraine behind her eyes.

Then she exhales, her eyes sharp and sunset-golden behind the smoke as she looks at her wayward disciple. 

“But there is a difference, Geng He, between power and strength, and you don’t know that. I owe you, but owing you does not mean serving you. You do not get to stand before my home and demand from me something as if it’s owed to you by the universe. That’s the problem with you, kid, that’s always been the problem with you.”

“I’m not–”

“You think the universe owes you fairness. That it owes you some sort of gift just for being alive, that the suffering placed on you means that things should magically go your way, and that would almost be fine, except that you’ve elected to make that everyone else’s problem.”

“I have earned–”

“You got lucky.”

Light blue-ish smoke drifts through the interior of her cabin, flowing through unfelt winds, shifting and curling and turning until it’s wrapped around the cultivator before her.

“Just like every other young master. Just like everyone else born into privilege. Just like every other idiot that stumbled onto a true treasure. You got lucky. And that’s the other part of the equation, because more than the fact that you think you’re owed something by the universe, you can’t acknowledge that you already have received so much more than anyone else in your position ever has. You think you deserve things just because you’ve worked hard and have determination, and refuse to acknowledge that you’re fucking rich, asshole.”

His breathing is uneven. His Qi is cycling, moving almost violently through his meridians, back and forth, over and over. 

But he controls himself. He stands firm, quiet, bottling it all up.

That’s no good. 

“That’s my failing, too.”

He blinks, his cultivation pausing for the slightest moment.

“I let my debt to you override my common sense. I saw so much of myself in you, still do, and I decided to ignore the flaws of that and just keep giving you what you asked for. Within some limits, maybe, but I was the one that gave you the modifications, the training, the gifts, I fed that in you because I had more to do than help you get the sort of lessons you sorely fucking need. So, instead of cutting you off, or beating you over the head with it, or letting you spiral until you got a Heart Demon and killed yourself or force me to fix it for you, I decided ‘hey, fuck it, let’s get him a vacation’. An opportunity to reflect, a chance to actually remember how to breathe.”

Inhale smoke. Exhale ash. Enjoy the flavor. Hold to that, not the white hot fury of having this idiot that’s a fucking mirror of her and all the worst shit of cultivation she still hates coming up to her house, standing in front of it, making demands of her.

He still hasn’t flared his cultivation. Hasn’t let it slip from his control. She gave him an order, as his teacher and host, and he hasn’t broken it. He’s kept to that. He’s not hopeless.

She reinforces that knowledge in herself as she stares at him, her eyes burning and cold at once.

“But I’m not keeping you here, Geng He. You can leave, and I’ll pump you full of whatever steroids and organs you ask for, and I’ll let you loose onto those I deem fit. There’s a war coming, and it will have horror and opportunities for those willing to accept that horror, and I need every ally I can get. I’ll treat you like a beast, a weapon, a soldier if that’s what you want so badly, but it is not what I want. If you think that leaving would stop you from being my disciple, that anything other than asking that of me would have you stop being my disciple, you’re wrong, I free you of that fear, but I want you to be a person. I want you to be whole and functional and real.

“But we don’t have to do that.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while. She lets him keep that silence, her gaze unwavering and unblinking. 

“If I leave… will you show me how you did that technique?” he asks.

“If you leave, I think you’ll die before you ever understand it.”

There it is. The challenge. The insult. That she’ll teach him, and that he’ll fail. 

She keeps her senses close, but she can still hear every thought going through his mind like it’s her own. The way that she would take what she’s saying, were she who she used to be.  

In the worst versions of this conversation, he spits at her and tells her that he can do it on his own. He takes on her challenge, to master the nuances of Intent and deeper mysteries she’s uncovered without accepting her lessons. He lashes out, and she has to put him down.

In this version of the conversation, he inhales. Exhales.

His breath is free of smoke, every wisp of it avoiding even touching him. 

She told it not to.

“If I stay… if I stay, do you think I could learn that technique?”

“If you stay, I think you’ll live long enough to give it a real try.”

He sighs. Growls, under his breath. 

Then, he takes a step forward, and takes a seat at her table.

“I… apologize, master.”

She hums. “Apology accepted, disciple.”

“...You see yourself in me?”

“Oh, so much,” she sighs, waving a hand through some of the smoke for effect. “Seriously, if I wasn’t so goddamn lucky? If I didn’t have some of the best people in the world on my side? I’d have killed myself long before I got to the level you’re at now. Frankly, I think you were stronger when we met than I was when my stupidity cost me my cultivation.”

“I… you’ve always spoken of your will, master. Your ideals.”

“Ideals aren’t worth nearly as much if they act against their own interests. I still stand by some. I will not let anyone else decide my fate. But standing in front of an oncoming landslide isn’t a very good way to keep your fate open.”

“Unless you can cut down the landslide, master.”

She sighs. “Hells below, kid, the point of a metaphor is that it doesn’t have to be perfectly realistic. ‘Standing in front of an oncoming thing that will overwhelm and damage you is not a good way to avoid getting overwhelmed and damaged’, how’s that?”

“Apologies, master.”

She sighs, exhaling a bit more smoke, letting it dissipate into the air instead of collect. “It’s fine, kid. Apology accepted.”

She lets him sit in silence for a little bit before she hits him with the final blow.

“So, are you leaving?”

“I…”

To his credit, Geng He stops. He thinks. He actually lets himself look more than one step ahead, for once. 

“I don’t like having nothing to do,” he admits, in lieu of answering.

It’s a pretty clear answer nonetheless.

“I’ve got some projects I could use some help with,” she tells him, tapping her pipe on the table. “Some furniture to make, some construction projects around the village. There’s a festival coming up, too. Maybe you should see if you can volunteer to help with that.”

She can literally hear the creaking of his jaw as he clenches his teeth, recoiling at the very thought of doing something so frivolous.

But he listens. And he thinks. 

“I… might enjoy carving. If that would help with your projects.”

“It just might, kid. But not today. Today, you need to apologize to Wei Zin. I recommend you find something nice to decorate the house with, something you think both of you would like. Consider it a challenge.”

That last word is what does it. She tastes the moment that reluctance begrudgingly shifts over to acceptance, turning from annoyance to determination.

Geng He is plenty of things, but give him a challenge? His focus is practically preternatural.

“Thank you for your wisdom, master,” is all he says, bowing his head and getting up to leave.

“Try and be home for dinner,” she tells him, deciding to not let him leave on that note. “I’m making a pork roast, and I’m making it special. I’d like for you to get to enjoy it.”

“...I shall do my best, master.”

He leaves out the way he came, walking out towards the woods between the hillside and the fields beyond.

Right on cue, the teakettle starts to hiss, its water finally reaching the point of boiling.