The Fourth Stage - Chapter 23 preview (Patreon)

A week later and Wu Ying had found a new method to train himself and his new students. Gathered below, working on tilling the fields and planting the spirit herbs he had taksed them with, the cultivators also laboured under the intense pressure of Wu Ying’s unfurled aura whilst constraining their own.

This was but another facet of their aura training. Pressure testing their ability to move, to focus and work while an overbearing pressure was present. For the students, it was the second day of such testing and more than one student had lost control, either pushing back too violently or, worse, having their aura crumple under the pressure.

For those unfortunate students, they lay on the ground, unconscious, their souls and mind’s bruised. In time, they would awaken with a headache, and be forced to begin again.

As for Wu Ying – well, he had learnt to control his aura, to retract and keep it contained. But the other way, to apply it as a weapon, to reveal his presence? It was not an area he had practiced and so, here and now, he began that process.

Hours passed, as the group struggled to complete their task list. When nearly half the group were collapsed, the exhausted apprentices no longer bothering to drag their friends to the side, Wu Ying relented and retracted his aura.

“Class is over. Finish cleaning up the fields and continue study.” Wu Ying announced as he stood up. He surveyed the field one last time, nodding to Xia Hui, the only one who had managed to not collapse the entire time and who had, over the course of the last few days taken on the role of leader before he left, heading up the mountain.

He barely managed to make it a few hundred feet from the training grounds before he was intercepted, Yng Mu arriving by his side and matching his steps as he traversed the roadway up.

“Are you willing to talk about it yet?” Yang Mu said without preamble.

“Speak about what?”

“Whatever it is that has upset you.” Yang Mu replied, ignoring the tone in his voice. “I have given you time to process whatever it is, but I am here for you, if you need someone to speak to.”

Wu Ying grunted in reply. She flashed him half a smile, before continuing to follow him up. It was only as they passed the border of the residence for the Elders and began to approach the border of the inner complex for the core members of the sect that she stopped.

A slight flexing of his will and senses indicated the reason for her pause, as he sensed the gathering energy of a protective formation. So far, and no further, could she go or risk being attacked by the formation. After all, she was but an honored guest, not a true member of the sect.

“Do you think I’m a calamity?” Wu Ying said. “A living cyclone that destroys all that cross my path and leaves behind broken dreams and grief?”

Yang Mu stared at Wu Ying for a long moment before she burst out laughing. He growled, offended at her mirth at the thoughts that had plagued him for so long. But slowly, as she kept laughing, he found himself smiling a little, the unbridled joy in her voice catching at him.

In the end, when she grew silent, he asked. “Really?”

“I apologise, Ah Ying. But… is that really what has concerned you? I thought it was something more… more… momentous.”

“This is momentous. Perhaps I twisted their fates around mine, diverted it to paths of my own choosing. Destroyed their chances at rising,” Wu Ying said, worriedly.

“Of your friends I have met, all of them are in the Core Formation stage. There are some, a few I understand, who have no risen higher. Your Senior Goh. This Chao Kun, that was lost along with his friend, Hei Mao. Others lost in your war…” She paused. “Am I wrong?”

“No, that’s about it.”

“Right, all your closest friends are Core Formation cultivators,” Yang Mu said. “Your Elder Sister, a respected and influential Elder who grows both her influence, her network and her dao daily. Your best friend a feared martial cultivator who wields a purifying flame. A respected pill apothecarist whose advice and knowledge is sought even by specialists.” She tapped her lips and added, leaning forwards. “An ex-girlfriend who controls silver mines in the north with her family.”

“Yes…?” He said slowly, sensing a growing trap.

“My parents know of many cultivators who would kill for such a twisting of fate then.” Yang Mu hummed to herself, tapping her chin with the top of a single finger in thought. “I wonder if that’s why they were fine with me coming. Perhaps they sensed this magical twisting…”

“Stop it. I get it. You’re saying, if I’m twisting anything, it’s towards fortune not failure.”

“Look at your friends and see how far they’ve climbed. You yourself told me, that many of those who live without the guidance of people like my parents often fall and fail long before they reach the Core Formation stage.” She gestured below, behind her. “I see your friends and see individuals who have carved their own paths towards posterity, no matter the obstacles the heavens or mortals have placed in their way. I see success, where you see failure.”

Wu Ying hung his head a little, hearing her words, feeling a little of the venom and the doubts that the Guardian had embedded in him pry free.

Fate and choice.

How much of what was destined by fortune and fate was because we would choose that fate no matter the reason.

Could one call it destiny, if given the choice, the hero chose to stand rather than flee?

He had not made those choices for his friends, to stand with him, to join him, to walk away. Theirs was the decision, though he had been the one to mark the path.

A hint, a scent, a breeze brushing his skin and soul. The winds of hell blew, and reminded Wu Ying that all those who fell into their grasp were there because of their own choices. The heavens might judge, might influence, might regulate; but it was in the hells that punishment and justice were enacted. And that was true freedom – for what was choice without result, both boon and bane.

The winds of the hells blew and Wu Ying found a piece of the puzzle, his soul lifting a little.

“Thank you. I think…. You’re right.”

“I am right.”

“I…” Wu Ying shook his head. He had a thread here, one he refused to let go off. But it was but a thread, and he dared not pull on it too hard, in fear of breaking it.

“Oh, Ah Ying. If you truly think your actions have twisted the fates of your friends, then speak with your sister. Is that not what she and your Master specialized in? Karma and fate?” Then, seeing something in the way he shifted and refused to look her in the eyes, she sighed. “Of course you’ve thought of that. And you refused to do it. Because…”

“Because I was scared.”

“But no longer?”

“Well, if the other option is to be nagged further…”

He chuckled and leaned back, dodging the swipe of her palm.

“At least you’re in a better mood it seems.”

“I am.” He hesitated, then inclined his head. “But I must leave. It takes much time and effort to open the formations surrounding the Elder library. If I do not make my slot, it will be long before I’m allowed in again.”

“Go.” She waved him away, a satisfied smile on her lips.

He turned away, took two steps and then turned around, calling back. “Tonight. Supper?”

“Yes. You know the wine and snacks that I prefer.”

***

Wu Ying shuddered as he passed through the formation, the repressed energy within the killing formation only a single misshapen character away from being unleashed upon himself. It was, of course, a tad of an exaggeration – no formation master would allow a permanent formation like this to be so easily manipulated – but reality and his feelings in this case had little to offer one another.

Even if his stomach clenched tight and invisible sweat threatened his brow, Wu Ying kept the same easy stride. He knew that at least one other was watching him. As the newest and youngest Elder to join the Sect hierarchy, he was an unknown force that many desired to fully understand. And exploit.

Steps firm, he let his gaze dance over the building before him. Contrary to his initial expectations, the building that greeted him was not a massive structure to rival the armoury or the inner sect building, but a small and contained, single story, standalone building no larger than his family’s cottage. Oh, the material used to build it was of significantly better quality – marble and stone and terracotta tiles compared to the simple wood and clay and reed construction of his parent’s building – but it did not counter the simple fact that it was small.

Of course, upon further reflection as Wu Ying pushed open the doors, he realised why. The library set aside for the Elders did not receive significant amount of traffic. Most of the works a Core Formation Elder required were works that they had already acquired long before their ascension. Visit to the Sect library might be to help clarify dao understanding or contrast techniques, but it was a rare Elder that would need a new soul or Body cultivation technique at this stage.

More than that though, as he stepped within the building to review the simple series of stacked books, a within cleansing the air on a continual basis to remove traces of dust and soil and pollen from dirtying the shelves, was the paucity of works compared to the massive library below.

Core Formation and higher manuals were uncommon materials even in the sect. A powerful kingdom like the Shen might have at most a few hundred Core Formation cultivators. Many might come from a Sect like the Verdant Green Waters, but many other sects would follow a single cultivation technique to its peak. Whether that cultivation technique truly supported an individual’s own soul and personality, that was as much a matter of chance as persistence.

No wonder then that the recommendation was to spend seven years looking for a master and another seven for the master to accept the student fully.

Of course, that was in the ideal situation. For the rich, the immortal cultivators and scholars and nobles who had such an opportunity to be selective. Peasants and farmers like Wu Ying could only grasp at the chances offered to them and hope for the best.

It was also why Sects like the Verdant Green Waters considered premier sects. The ability, the library of resources to aid a large number of cultivators made them the preferred choice. Even the ability to trade cultivation techniques and manuals between sects was simpler the larger the organization.

For all that, at this level of progress, even the Verdant Green Waters could not acquire more than a single building’s worth of cultivation techniques and manuals.

Even that engendered a sprouting, fast growing weed of greed and desire. What could he do with all this work? How powerful could he grow, reading it all?

Wu Ying took his time, perusing the documents, walking back and forth between the wooden aisles. He picked up bound paper books and flipped through them before returning them to their original locations and pulled forth bamboo scrolls and eyed the diagrams on meridian channeling and dantian compression. But those were the common – boring – methods of dao and technique imbuement.

There were more exotic documents within the building, collected over decades of careful accumulation.

Poems imbued with dao inspirations to trigger reflection and recollection, threatening to pull the wind cultivator into deep contemplation of the sun, the lake, the soil that it spoke of.

Paintings – abstract and realistic – of beauties and landscapes and single characters. Deeply embedded impressions and experiences wove themselves into the fabric of the paintings and gushed forth from the paint itself.

Song notes for the guzheng, the pipa and other instruments littered another section. Eyeing the calligraphy Wu Ying understood that it was all taken from a single cultivator, a symphony of work that spoke to their understanding. If played, he could not help but wonder, what secrets it might reveal.

More. So much more, within.

A jade box that contained a single apothecarist pill. Not to be consumed as so firmly noted in a slip of paper next to the document. Even the smell of it though triggered understanding within Wu Ying, as well as a familiar stench that Wu Ying related to Elder Wei and her apprentice, Liu Tsong. Here, now, was their inheritance from another Elder.

A manual for various forms of dance. Guidance for terpochorists along with paintings and poems, all speaking of the beautiful immortal that had once studied the art of dance to its zenith. Purchased, nearly a century ago by the Sect from a brothel.

And the techniques, so many techniques. Stuffed into one corner of the building, piled on top of one aother with little care it seemed. A perusal of the techniques had Wu Ying discarding the first dozen within moments, for so many were dependent upon dao understandings and elements and techniques that were anathema to his own.

Slowly, Wu Ying began to understand as he perused the building that this was not a library of dry documents and manuals, of techniques to be purchased and taken wily-nily. There were no contribution points to be deducted if he took multiple copies of the work or chose to read the mall.

If he wished, he could have walked out with copies of every single work within. But for what use? The techniques here were no longer nourishing grains to his growing soul, but chaff to be dug through in search of gold.

At this stage, no Elder needed to be told not to read or consume every document within. There were concepts and beliefs, elements that would conflict directly with their own path. It would do more damage to consume them all than to be picky about the works that one read.

Wu Ying was no child let loose in a candy factory, but a wiser man. Finding his steps returned to the start of the building, he cleared his mind of the impulsive greediness and focused himself. He had come to the library with a need – a review of the Body Cleansing methods that the sect had acquired. Maybe, perhaps, documentation about past experiences with such damage done to the body among other Nascent Soul immortals.

Everything else was chaff.

Resolved, the wind cultivator finally got to work.