A Thousand Li

by Tao Wong

  Valley after valley is shadowy and dim…

  And now through pine-trees come the moon and the chill of evening,

  And my ears feel pure with the sound of wind and water

  Nearly all the woodsmen have reached home,

  Birds have settled on their perches in the quiet mist…

  And still—because you promised—I am waiting for you, waiting,

  Playing lute under a wayside vine.[3]

  Wu Ying’s brush moved the moment Master Cho began speaking, his writing implement flowing over the paper as he kept one portion of his mind memorizing the words, the other focused on the act of writing. He went with his instincts first, knowing they would be repeating the act of calligraphy over and over again with the same poem.

  In the time it took for a few breaths to be over, Wu Ying was done and staring at the words he had written. He glared at the splotches on the paper, shook his head at the twisted lines and misshapen characters. Even to his mostly untrained eye, he could see little to be saved.

  “Ah, Cultivator Long. Still trying to copy the style of your betters,” Master Cho spoke up, appearing behind Wu Ying’s chair.

  “Master!” Wu Ying’s words were both question and acknowledgement.

  “You must stop trying to do what others do,” Master Cho said. He pointed at Yin Xue’s paper. “Cultivator Wen has broken free from the strictures of the schoolroom. He follows the swirls and whorls of his heart, preferencing motion and speed over clarity. In time, clarity might appear, but for now, he builds upon his style.”

  Yin Xue straightened at Master Cho’s praise, offering a clasped-handed bow from his seated position and a murmured word of thanks for the praise.

  “You attempt to ape his work, Elder Yang’s, and Elder Er’s. As well as constraining yourself to what your schoolteacher taught you of the regular script.” Each time, Master Cho pointed at the individual’s work in question, using a brush, before he turned and gestured at certain characters in Wu Ying’s work. “But here.” Point. “And here.” Point. “You begin to free yourself.”

  Wu Ying peered at the characters, trying to find the difference. Perhaps a little sharper, a little faster, and less in depth, the motion of his brush flicking past as it laid down a stroke as if he was disengaging from an attack. Swordplay and calligraphy had a certain degree of commonality after all.

  Maybe.

  “Try again.” Leaving Wu Ying to his work, Master Cho turned to Yin Xue, brows drawing together in an angry frown. “As for you. You have not improved at all from last month. Cultivator Long is attempting to find who he is, what he is. His failures are understandable. You know! But you choose not to practice!”

  Muffled snickers broke out from behind by those jealous of Yin Xue’s placement. They were instantly quelled by Master Cho glaring around before he turned back to Yin Xue to continue berating him.

  In the meantime, Wu Ying focused on a new sheet of paper, his brush held above it. He did not write, not yet. First was the contemplation, the analysis of the mistakes he had made. Then, only then, would he try again.

  As much as it pained Wu Ying, and pain him it did, Master Cho was a good, if harsh, teacher. When a student repeatedly made mistakes, he wielded his brush like a weapon, smacking hands and heads with wild abandon of all sense of social order. There were no Elders in this room, no Core cultivators. Just students of the art of calligraphy.

  And if Wu Ying struggled, so did everyone else to meet the Master’s exacting standards.

  Hours later, the servants brought in a single large sheet of paper. Inking his brush, Master Cho walked toward the suspended piece of paper, staring at it in silence. Then he moved. The flow of his body, of his hands and his brush were like a graceful dancer stepping foot upon the stage, a master martial artist going through his form. There was a beauty, a choreography to his motions as each word appeared on the sheet of paper.

  Perfectly spaced, each word formed with an artistic touch, strokes both bold and gentle at times, wild and untamed in other spots. Without even reading the words, Wu Ying felt the emotions that emanated from the work, the hurt and pain, the weariness.

  I dismount from my horse and I offer you wine,

  And I ask you where you are going and why.

  And you answer: “I am discontent

  And would rest at the foot of the southern mountain.

  So give me leave and ask me no questions.

  White clouds pass there without end.”[4]

  When he was done, Master Cho walked out of the room. His departure was silent, missed by all but the most paranoid. For they stared at the simple words, the trace of longing in the poem. The mastery in the calligraphy.

  From behind Wu Ying, he felt a shift in the chi. The twist of power, the thrum of energy as a breakthrough occurred. Curiosity pulled at Wu Ying’s attention, but he dismissed it, preferring instead to focus upon the words, the sense of feeling he received from the work of calligraphy so quickly done by the Master.

  Let others find their own enlightenment, let the heavens bless them. What Wu Ying saw was important, powerful, but not his dao. Still, like any lesson, any piece of art, its very existence and his consumption of it would shape his soul.

  And perhaps, in time, from the fertile soil of this work, another moment of enlightenment would bloom.

  Though not before he too tried his hand at writing the poem.

  Chapter 3

  The next day, after his usual morning ablutions and torture-cum-cultivation session, the cultivator made his way to Elder Li’s residence. The gardens under her care were extensive, but those under her direct tutelage spent their time in her personal garden. It had the greatest concentration of environmental chi, with carefully designed formations and rows upon rows of precious herbs, some within precisely tended greenhouses.

  By this point, the journey through the winding pathways to her residence was well ingrained in Wu Ying’s body. As such, rather than spending his time enjoying the bountiful beauty of nature upon the picturesque mountain, he focused deeper within, manipulating the flow of chi as he embraced the Twelve Gales movement technique he had been studying.

  The qinggong exercise was the most popular “light foot” movement exercise in the Sect due to its versatility and flexibility. That it had multiple levels of mastery which allowed practitioners to scale the skill as they progressed in their cultivation was just one of the reasons it was so popular.

  It was a skill that Wu Ying, with his four open Energy Storage meridians, took full advantage of. He might only have a minor understanding of the qinggong exercise, but it was better than what he had started with before the expedition. And more importantly, he had to learn to integrate his altered body with the style. Like his fighting techniques, even a minor deviation would create mistakes and weaken the foundation of use. No matter how strong he had become—and his changed body had given him even greater physical strength and speed—it could not make up for a lack of skill and expertise.

  Practicing during the entire ascent meant that Wu Ying found himself before Elder Li’s residence in short order. He let the chi that churned through his body fade, offering an absent nod to one of the many outer sect members running a message, then strode around the house, following the gravel pathway to the gardens in the rear.

  “Wu Ying, good! I need you to help me haul some rocks here,” Senior Goh Ru Ping said the moment he spotted Wu Ying. The shorter, pudgier cultivator waved at Wu Ying, beckoning him close. He pointed at a set of three statues depicting Fuk, Luk, and Sau[5] that were made of carved, dark grey marble. “These need to be moved seven feet northwest.” He pointed at the spot where the earth was already tamped down and marked.

  “You know, I’m not your beast of burden,” Wu Ying grumbled.

  All that grumbling didn’t stop him from walking over to the first of the wise men and carrying it over. The statue, a little top heavy with the addition of the child it carried, tottered for a second before Wu Ying stabilized it
.

  “Of course not. But you’re strong enough that I don’t have to find two other cultivators to help,” Ru Ping said. “Better use of resources.”

  “You’ve got six meridians open,” Wu Ying said. “Why can’t you carry this?”

  “Because I focused my cultivation on less martial matters,” Ru Ping said, patting his stomach.

  Wu Ying grunted and picked up the gold-bar-holding statue. He did not believe Ru Ping at all. For one thing, Ru Ping was a Gatherer like him. Long hours working the gardens meant that you built muscle—just like working on the farm did. In addition, Elder Li was likely to have made Ru Ping do much of the manual labor that had fallen on Wu Ying’s shoulders. And she did not accept excuses, nor had the patience for someone to find help.

  Which left the simple fact that Ru Ping was likely just lazy.

  “Careful. And two inches more,” Ru Ping called as Wu Ying finished lowering the second statue. There was no argument, since Wu Ying understood the necessity of precision.

  Ru Ping’s major accomplishment and study was in the large-scale development of formations for gardening. There were, of course, levels of development of environmental formations that could be created. Some locations formed their own, natural formations to gather chi. But those were often less efficient, due to their inability to change to accommodate the changing seasons.

  Nature would, eventually, provide its own methods. Plants that flowered or died depending upon seasons, streams that flowed during the spring but dried by autumn. But even then, such places were subject to the randomness of beast and man, of errant gusts of winds and flash floods.

  Ru Ping’s methods were more laborious and exacting. He went beyond the basic chi-gathering formation of wood and earth and adjusted the flow of every chi element. Metal depending on what was being grown that season, additional fire or wind. He cooled certain parts of the gardens, allowing the heat and fire chi to gather in another portion.

  And in doing so, he optimized the growth rates of the gardens. Wu Ying had learnt much from Ru Ping, which was why he carried the third statue with its peach of immortality and long-bearded representative and adjusted all three without complaint. Without complaint but with a few pointed questions. Such knowledge was useful to him and his own progress as a Gatherer. Already, Wu Ying had adjusted the flow of a stream and added additional rocks for his parents’ newly built village to amplify the chi gathering in their lands while he worked, in detail, on his World Spirit Ring.

  “Done!” Ru Ping said, looking over the three statues. He pulled a few instruments from his own spirit ring and took measurements. Among the equipment he used was a Feng Shui compass to measure the flow of chi and a twisted prism for viewing the flow of environmental chi. Wu Ying watched him for a bit before Ru Ping turned. “Don’t you have to speak with Elder Li?”

  Starting, Wu Ying nodded. “Yes. Thank you!”

  He scurried deeper into the gardens, eyes roving over the various herbs and plants. There was the thousand-year-old ginger being infused with flame chi. There was spirit grass, a base alchemical ingredient, except this was a variant species that contained a higher volume of chi. Unaspected, which made it the perfect base for most recipes.

  Over there were ice lotuses sitting in a pool of glacial-fed water, secondary arrays built to lower the temperature of the pond even further. So much so that small glaciers formed, portions of shattered ice floating within. Right beside the ice pond was a barren, sandy location where desert cacti grew, their flowers burning with fire chi. Ru Ping used the heat drawn from the pond to increase the heat around the desert cacti, muttering something about conservation of effort.

  Plants of all kinds and varieties grew throughout the gardens, cared for by the numerous mortal and cultivator Gatherers. Most were women, female nobles who had at first taken up the occupation as an extension of their previous gardening pastimes and now found it the easiest method to acquire sect contribution points. A few men moved amongst the group, but not many. After all, gardening in a noble house was either done by servants or, in rare cases, the women. Farming, on the other hand, was a peasant job and few enough peasants ascended.

  It took Wu Ying a little while to find Elder Li, for she was crouched behind a rising lattice of ivy, the leaves of the plant glistening as they absorbed the metal in the soil and the chi that pervaded the environment. Small pea pods grew on the opposite lattice, the plant and the peas throbbing with the gathered wood chi that they drew from the ivy plant.

  “Elder Li,” Wu Ying greeted the white-haired, petite Elder. As his gathering teacher, she was as good as a parent to him, with all the obligations and demands that entailed.

  She looked at him before reaching for her cane, pushing on it to rise. “You’re late.”

  “I apologize. Senior Goh asked me to help him adjust the formations,” Wu Ying said, bowing again.

  “Hmmpphff…” Elder Li swung her cane and smacked Wu Ying in the thigh. It was a light strike—for her—but it still made him wince. “Next time work faster. Now, tell me about your readings.”

  Wu Ying bowed in acknowledgement before he spoke about the books she had passed to him. The pair walked through the gardens, Elder Li stopping occasionally to inspect the plants, snip off dead branches or unwanted growths, check the soil or chi flow, and question the other students. Wu Ying never stopped speaking though, knowing that she could multi-task scolding him and inspecting her gardens with ease.

  “… and so, having multiple storage boxes of varying quality and material is important to ensure the proper storage of living samples. Earth—unaspected earth—drawn from a known source is still the best base source, especially as taking soil from where the plant grows might negatively impact their survival due to conflicting chi flows. Or so Gatherer Yi says. Gatherer Chu, in the Analects of the Third Cuttings disagrees, insisting that soil from the environment is the best…”

  On and on, Wu Ying prattled. At the same time, he cultivated, draining chi from the world via his moving cultivation method and the Never Empty Wine Pot exercise, and most importantly, he watched his Elder. Being by her side, listening to her scold and teach, trim and tend the plants was as much an education as the books he read.

  At times, she would even have Wu Ying help out, offering his aid or corrections to the other workers. Of course, when he made a mistake, he would then be schooled in front of the other cultivators, putting him further in his place as student. The pressure to be right and not lose face was what drove Wu Ying to study when he had time, finding hours late at night or between his training sessions to keep up with Elder Li’s demands.

  “Good,” Elder Li said. “Your handling of the material has improved.”

  Wu Ying nodded. As a farmer, he’d always had a keen eye for plants, for noticing when the soil was too damp, a plant was beginning to catch a particular fungal spore infection or the like. But recently, especially in his ring, he’d noticed a difference in how well his plants bloomed. Or grew. Perhaps all the time he spent gently nudging his World Spirit Ring had begun to show itself.

  Eventually, they completed their circuit of the gardens. To Wu Ying’s surprise, instead of providing him additional work, Elder Li led him into her residence, traversing the rooms to reach the anteroom of her office. There, a large stone table dominated the room, its surface and sides inscribed, the runes glowing with muted power.

  “Show me your ring,” Elder Li said. Wu Ying raised his hand, only to flinch when she struck the top of it with her cane. “On the table, you fool!”

  Grumbling under his breath, Wu Ying walked over to the table. It did not take much to guess that he was to place the ring in the empty space in the middle of the table. Still, he hesitated, looking back at Elder Li, who raised her cane. Whether in impatience or threat, he was not certain.

  The World Spirit Ring was a simple green jade ring, no different at first glance from the dozens of others sold in the market by peddlers. On closer inspection though, one could see the delic
ate glyphs and talismans carved into the work, feel the strange eddy of chi currents. If one were to expand their aura sense to the fullest extent, the gentle flow of chi into and from the ring would be apparent. A small whirlpool that continuously drew upon the environment and Wu Ying’s aura.

  After peeling the ring off his finger, he set it upon the table and stepped back. Nothing happened until, under the brusque instruction of Elder Li, he added a series of small beast cores to slots around the table. When the last core was added, the slowly growing light flared then subsided, before a blurry but quickly resolving image showed at the top of the table.

  To Wu Ying’s surprise, he recognized that image. After all, he looked at it every time he sent his senses into his ring. It was his small garden plot, the contents of his ring with its tiny pond, the fast-growing transplanted trees, his compost pile, the formation flags, and the carefully tended rows of plants.

  Elder Li made comments. “Your pond is going to grow stagnant. You need fish and other amphibious animals within if you wish to use it. The Sun Lotus is not enough, you need to add a water hyacinth of the—” She paused, walking over to manipulate the table. Colors changed as the chi flow within the pond appeared “Wood and earth kind. You will have to experiment to find the right variety and combination.”

  Wu Ying bowed, making mental notes as she spoke.

  “Your formations are sub-par. Your ring draws upon the external environment and your own chi to balance itself out. You should focus on aiding that growth and only focus on containing the chi as a secondary stage.” She manipulated the image and table again, zooming in to the edges and frowning before pulling back. “Yes. As I suspected. This is a prize you should not have.”

  “Pardon?” Wu Ying said, surprised.

  “Will you give it to me?” Elder Li said, turning her gaze to Wu Ying.

  “I’m sorry, Honored Elder. I do not understand,” Wu Ying said.

  “Of course not. I have not explained why. Will you trust me and give me this ring?”