Chapter 482 – The Festival (III) (Patreon)

Sorry it's late! I'm back in the states and already feeling a bit more cohesive. Excited to sleep in my own bed tonight! After this I think we'll start getting into more plot progression and power stuff, but I didn't want to move forward without this part of the arc feeling complete.

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And so ended the tale of the great Lao Bushi, hero of the lake and founder of the villages. But his spirit lives on! We see it in the lake’s waves as they dash along the shore, fluttering over the land and bringing to it new life! We see it in the storms, where his might is once again brought down on the foolish! We see it in the bounty of the water, how his generosity has blessed us still, and we see it in our fishermen, whose cleverness must be unmatched to catch their slippery prey! 

The tale of Lao Bushi the man may be ended, but the story of Lao Bushi the protector goes on! Every time we see a beast turned aside, it is our ancestor that holds us up! Every time the harvest comes alive with the swaying of reeds, it is our lake that provided for us! Every time we swing or build or strike or lift, it is with the strength of our founder, the great Lao Bushi, who is all of us, and who lives on forever in this place! Long live Lao Bushi, for he is the village! His strength is ours! His wisdom is ours! So long as we listen well, and know who we are and how we came to be, then his victory is ours as well! 

-The third and “final” part of the tale of Lao Bushi, performed during the festival of the Lake

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The party is a lively one. There’s some nervousness around the newcomers in their midst, but between Raika’s insistence, the way she treats them all like unruly teenagers, and how each of the four cultivators respond, a lot of that tension gradually drains away.

It drains away further when the drinks really get flowing.

In the early stages, just like with the roasting meats by the fire, a competitive spirit takes over the festivities as men and women of all stripes hype up their chosen methods for brewing and basting. Each one compares against and critiques each other’s, taking small samples and using them to praise or lightly demean their opponents. A few samples in, though, and grudges settle as moods are raised. By the time the sun is beginning to break apart into all its many constituent serpents, everyone is loud, boisterous, and a little bit drunk.

Including the cultivators. 

Geng He has seemingly come into his own, some of his haughty cultivator-ness falling away as people start to clap him on the back and invite him into the festivities. As was fairly obvious to begin with, he’s not exactly from some rich family, and his life as a rogue cultivator hasn’t allowed him any advantages in terms of lifestyle or luxury. Once he lets go of some of the self-image he holds onto like a shield, he’s much more at home amongst the fishing village than he ever was amongst others of his power level, nevermind amongst her spouses. 

Interestingly enough, he actually seems to be getting drunk, too. Raika can sense the way the alcohol is affecting his system, and it has remarkable similarities to how it’s affecting all of the Qi-Gathering “mortals” around him. She knows that cultivation is deeply individualized, that everyone experiences and shapes it differently, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that his idea of a “higher self” is one that can still enjoy booze. Whether or not that was a choice made with intention or purely through his subconscious, she can’t say, but it feels nice to see.

Wei Zin hasn’t had nearly as much luck in that regard. Apparently, his form of cultivation (now mixed with some elements of the Craft) has a lot to say about alcohol poisoning, but he’s making up for it. For all that he was a prince of his tribe and of Singheart, here, let loose, he’s compensating for the strength of his resistances by drinking a lot. There’s something of a crowd forming, and bets are starting to change hands about the fancy lordling in the colorful grasses and just how much it’ll take to get him drunk.

Raika’s pretty sure that by the time anyone notices the difference, they’ll all be just as dramatically inebriated as her disciple. 

Rai Jin is the only one of her disciples still fully sober, and seems to be quite alright with that fact. He does have a cup, and he is sipping at it, but she can smell the way his cultivation stirs and does away with any trace of inebriation as he watches over the crowd. Chen Tai, his junior sister and current responsibility, seems to have found that booze is very much something she likes, in spite of the face she makes every time she drinks it. She’s found a barrel, and there’s a crowd laughing at the way she squints her eyes and makes retching noises with every gulp, only to dunk her head back in moments after. The spirit beast is drawing a crowd of her own, with the maker of that particular brand of rice wine loudly proclaiming that his drink is strong enough to tame even the wildest of creatures.

Raika will have to keep an eye on her, just to make sure all the drinking doesn’t get her to do something stupid, but the hybrid reptilian-mammalian superbeing seems to be more of a sleepy drunk than an angry one, and is giggling at the little kids currently trying to braid her tail-mane. 

Raika walks through the center of the whole affair, gladly exchanging cups once or twice, but focusing on getting herself over to her lone sober disciple. The others are doing fine, having fun, drinking varying amounts and finding their crowds, and she’s not too worried about them. But her second-youngest, and both least and most mortal disciple, hasn’t gotten much attention.

He sees her coming, as she makes no secret of it, and lifts his cup to her as she approaches, smiling.

“Hello master. Here to relieve me of my duty?”

“Indeed I am,” she assures him, lifting the little gourd hanging from her waist in a drinker’s salute before taking a swig. “I’ve found that kids often enjoy themselves more when they’re not standing at the outer edge of things, feeling responsible for people.”

He shrugs. “She’s been fine. It’s no trouble.”

“It is not your trouble that I fear, but the lack of your joy.”

“Now that doesn’t sound like you, master.”

“In what way?” she asks, politely tapping her gourd against his cup.

“In the sense that you’re always troubled by whatever I’m worried about, and that you’re talking fancy.”

She laughs, shaking her head and letting the beads in her hair jangle against each other. “True, kid. But also, I’m a little drunk, and when I’m drunk, I try to pick my words real careful-like.”

He snorts at that, then pauses, then actually turns to stare at her. She feels it as his Qi senses wash over her, pinging against her body, and then sinking deeper as she actively lets him in past the overdense nature of her biology.

“You… really are drunk. Master, I had no idea you could do that.”

She shrugs. “One of the advantages of this body. Had to burn through a lot to keep going when everything disconnected, but that, I actually changed later on. Turns out that it’s one of the advantages I miss from being young, and from being mortal.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“What, little old me?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve got hardly a drop of Qi to my name, kid. I’m just a poor, half-broken mortal, I am.”

He gives her a glare, having to look up almost a foot and a half to meet her eyes and pointing out with his gaze the sheer size of her muscles. 

She snorts this time, shaking her head and taking another swig of the gourd she has hanging from her hip. “Alright, fine. I just route it through a different liver than usual. A normal one. I’ve been practicing making things with as little Qi as possible. Did you know that you can make organs with no Qi at all? It’s hard as hell, but they work. Barely. Can’t handle even the tiniest snake bite, and they don’t usually last very long before they start degrading.”

“Ah. And you’re experimenting with how to maximize your Qi usage and where to send it for it to be most efficient?”

“Or I’m just curious, kid.”

He rolls his eyes, but she doesn’t let it go. She leans her staff against the wall of the home they’re standing beside, lowering herself down the wall until she’s seated. Even on her ass, her head is still nearly to his shoulder, and she has no trouble bumping her forehead against it to annoy her kid.

“It’s sort of the whole reason I’m here. Or still here, I guess. I’ve got the continuity of consciousness thing locked down, but so does Kai Ra. I’m pretty damn good with biology, but so’s Pillar. I don’t offer anything in terms of power-scaling. I offer perspective. New ideas. Gentler thoughts, the kinds that don’t need to end the world when they get overthought.”

“I didn’t mean…”

He lets the sentence trail off, and she doesn’t pick it back up. Fireworks crackle overhead as dusk finally finishes leaving the world, and a cheer comes up from the villagers. The fire at the center of the town has dwindled a bit, most of the cooking stations now at their final moments or already having removed their pigs, and lanterns have not yet been lit throughout the square, casting long shadows over everyone and letting the fireworks sparkle all the brighter in the night sky. 

She just sits beside him and waits. Sometimes her son just needs a moment to convince himself that he’s got the words in the right order.

“I didn’t mean to imply that it made you weak, master.”

“Too bad. You’d have been right.”

He looks at her, surprise on his face. 

She shrugs. “It does make me weaker. That’s the point. If I wanted to, once all of our pieces reconnected, I could’ve started spreading like an infection across the whole damn empire. I didn’t. I chose not to, and it wasn’t just because we weren’t ready yet. It’s because doing so would just be going back to old patterns. Breaking myself open on my own anvil, uncaring of quenching the heat or caring for the flames. There is such a thing as making metal too hot, you know.”

She pauses to take another drink, the gourd’s top letting out a waft of an alcohol that’s damn heavy but also profoundly sweet.

“I’m here to counterbalance the other parts of me. To be myself without the powers, the self-sacrifice, the torment. To be a person before a warrior, before a beast, before a sorcerer, before a demigod or a devil. Power opens doors, but it closes them too. Of all of the Raika’s that have come and gone, I am the only one that has ever done this. Been part of a town. Been part of a community. Been human. I sacrificed that on an altar, and I am so fucking lucky to have gotten it back. It’s a goddamn privilege to be weak.”

He doesn’t say anything to that. They just watch the fireworks for a moment, until the first wave of them passes, and the dancing begins.

A stage is set in front of the remaining blaze of the town’s pyre, and on it, several masked figures jump up. Someone from the crowd (probably Bi Jao, the crotchety old bastard, if the booming and smoky voice is anything to go by) starts to tell a story, and the masked players on stage dance to its beat, the dwindling flame casting their shadows upon the village walls. 

There is still the sounds of laughter, of conversation, of children fidgeting and giggling and playing, but at its core, the party quiets, as the story onstage is told. 

“Being weak has never given me anything, master,” Jin eventually says. 

An immediate rebuttal comes to her lips. She lets it stay there, letting Jin’s words be the only ones on stage between them for now. 

“When I was a kid, I was cast out. Because I was weak, I always had to run. Because I was weak, I had no one, and no food to eat. Because I was weak, I… I couldn’t save you.”

She keeps her lips shut. The sound of her heart breaking is something he doesn’t need to hear right now. 

“I couldn’t save you when you died. I couldn’t save you after. I can’t offer you anything you don’t already have. All I have is my weakness, master, and it isn’t enough.”

Raika takes a moment to figure out the correct response.

Then she reaches up and whacks him on the back of the head.

“Wah- hey!”

“If I wasn’t weak, I wouldn’t have been at that cabin,” she tells him. 

That shuts him up pretty quickly. 

“If you weren’t weak, I wouldn’t have found you.”

He stays very quiet. 

“If you weren’t weak, I wouldn’t be able to teach you. If I wasn’t weak, I wouldn’t need anyone at all. So maybe weakness isn’t even the right word for that. Maybe there is strength beyond strength. Maybe the fact that we’ve met each other is proof of that.”

She grabs him by the back of the robes, forcibly yanking him down so his butt hits the ground beside her with an “ooph”. He sits there, his drink supernaturally still all in its cup, and glares at her in annoyance.

Then he stops glaring at her, because she’s wrapped her arm around him, hugging him tight. 

“I won’t have you treating my son like he’s not worthy. Nor will I have you place all of my burdens on his shoulders.”

She holds the hug until his heart rate settles a bit, down from the anxious beat it was at during his confession. 

He sighs.

“None of that means you shouldn’t get stronger,” she tells him. “But it does mean that I want you to be kinder to yourself, and to not see things in black and white. Next thing you know, you’ll be giving yourself a Qi deviation, dummy.”

A snort. Then he tilts his head back, drinking his cup dry and grimacing at the taste.

“Ugh. Don’t know how anyone enjoys that.”

“Still such a kid. Go dance. Meet some people. Ask some questions. Be a little wild for once, you damn brat. You’re too polite for your own good.”

“It’s not a bad thing to be polite, master. You could learn about that a bit.”

“Ah, get out of here you damn kid,” she says, kicking at him half-heartedly. He hops up and away, getting to his feet seamlessly as he starts to wander off towards the middle of the party. The story is winding towards its climax, and the crowd is getting into the tale, starting to move excitedly, whooping and hollering at the right beats.

It’s a good place. And he’s a good kid. He’ll be awkward as fuck, but that’s fine. It’s his first time at a party that’s an actual party, and not some bullshit political-cultivator thing. He deserves the chance to be awkward. They all do. 

As does she. 

La Gao grunts as he takes a seat next to her, his old bones emitting a creak to her refined ear. She offers him a sup from her gourd, and he trades her for a cup of rice wine from… somewhere. Even she’s lost track of the progression at this point.

“Not too bad, your kids. For a bunch of cultivators, at least.”

“Damn fine place, your town. For a bunch of smelly fishermen, that is.”

He laughs at that, throwing his head back. “Damn right! That’s the smell of hard work!”

She shrugs. “I don’t mind it.”

He laughs again, shaking his head. 

“Want to dance?” she asks.

He snorts, and it puts all of hers to shame. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he damn near blew out his diaphragm with that sound, but he gets to his feet without hesitation.

“Damn right. No one dances better than the great La Gao! Let me show your big-ass self how it’s done!”