AIR Chapter 65-67

Chapter 65

Her eyes had seen but she still didn’t understand. The fight had been one-sided and incredible. It was a thing to witness, a gift of wisdom and strength. 

But the villain lived. She had come here and traversed across the region in search of her half-brother. 

Xaio Wang knew her father. The man was a disaster. He was powerful and one of the elders of the Raging River clan, but he was a selfish fool. He had a hundred bastards within the Raging River’s territory and two hundred more outside of it. The man was an animal. 

So as soon as she had heard of her brother, as soon as she had known of him, she had come. Her father had too many children to save, but she knew what it was like to unlock the talent in her blood. The politics, the pressure, the unending wave of judgment she had gotten. She had intervened trying to spare him the same fate. 

But she was too late, someone was trying to kill him. And then someone had saved him, an immortal. The immortal. 

Xaio Wang had seen immortals before, whenever they visited they would normally stay at the Raging City seeing as the Raging River Sect was the most powerful out of all the five sects. 

They were rare, but every few decades they would grace the region with their presence. They were ethereal and amazing, a thing of myth and mystery, and yet this one wasn’t. He came with a mortal old man and talked to him while he fought a fifth rank. 

He wasn’t noble. He wasn’t beautiful. He was…not dull, but lacking. The thing that made immortal ethereal, he lacked it.

And he had let the enemy live. He hadn’t even shattered the assassin’s cultivation, and more than that, he had let Cai Xuin cripple himself. What sort of cultivator would allow something like this?

If he cared for her brother he could have healed his arm and taken him in underneath his wing. But his actions, while they were kind, were light, undecided. He lacked resolve. 

She walked with Cai, who carried his mortal servant in his arms while the immortal guided the horses while carrying Cai’s guards. She hadn’t ever heard of immortals reattaching heads, or anyone else for that matter. 

Sure it was possible for small attacks, but an attack from a fifth rank? A cultivator was more, and a fifth rank was just a step away from the immortal realm. If a mortal’s actions were charcoal on a rock then a fifth rank’s actions were gashes in the stone. 

They were just more. And yet the man had treated him like a child. They had fought, and yet the attacks were contained, making it so that not even she could feel the shockwaves. 

The immortal’s aura had done that, not a technique. The man’s sheer residual qi that leaked passively from his body, without any instruction had restricted the fifth rank’s attacks. 

It was a sight to behold. 

And yet… she felt disappointed. Sad even. 

There was a fundamental lack of demeanor and elegance, but it was more than that. The things the immortal had said and the way he had spoken were as if he disliked cultivators. 

Xaio Wang walked in silence. Cai was looking around in awe. The space was being bent and compressed, making every step they took equivalent to ten miles worth of travel. It was a movement technique, one that she was using unknowingly. 

She observed and soaked in the phenomenon. All the sects had teleportation enchantments, but those were enchantments, made with the labor of a hundred years, and even then, they could only transport them across the region, not beyond it. 

It was more of a sign of wealth really. Any fifth rank could traverse the whole region within the hour and the fastest among them could do it within minutes, but to casually bend space like this, it spoke of power and understanding beyond her own. 

And yet, it was unnecessary. She and Cai could traverse the distance within the day, within the hour if Cai let her carry him. This confounding of time and space wasn’t being done for them. 

It was for the mortal that walked with them. It was for the old man with the scythe. 

Even now, after all that talk of pride, she still wasn’t willing to just let it go.

“The inn is full,” the old mortal spoke. “I don’t know where you’re going to put them.”

“I’ll give them a house around your place. It’ll be fine. Rin Wi’s staying there, right? She can look after them.”

“Oh the poor girl’s busy enough as it is, she doesn’t need this as well.”

“Relax Chin, this’ll barely be a bother to her. Besides, it’ll just be for a few months I think.”

“You think?” The mortal scorned. 

“Depends if that kid back there takes me up on warning. If he does, it might be years before Cai can leave the area safely, but… I don’t think he will.”

“That cultivator guy?” The mortal asked. 

“Yes, him.”

“A bit too full of himself that one,” the mortal quipped. 

Xaio Wang almost bit her tongue. A mortal daring to speak of a cultivator who lived his lifespan five times over in such a way was unheard of. 

Insanity. 

“You’re telling me,” the immortal replied. “But I doubt he’ll change much. Maybe he’ll master the Flowering Sword to its full potential, but that was never his problem in the first place. If he does master the Flowering Sword, he’d be treating the symptom and not the problem.” 

“A narrow dao,” the mortal spoke. “What a strange thing.”

“It’s quite common. A wide dao is one that tries to encompass everything and tries to derive a fundamental truth about existence. A narrow dao is the opposite, taking one minor truth and applying it everywhere you go. Either way, a dao isn’t supposed to be a truth, it’s supposed to be your own. Your will, your way, your path. It’s not an observation of the world but an observation of you instead. Tying your dao to the world, as reasonable as it might seem, makes it all the weaker. You cannot not rebel against the Heavens by submitting to them, after all.”

She listened. There was truth in every word he said. Wisdom many would die to know, but hearing it be tossed so cheaply in a conversation with a mortal nonetheless. It soured something. 

“Honored Master,” she said gently. “Forgive this Xaio Wang’s audacity, but I seek insight.”

The honored master turned to her, still carrying the two passed-out guards upon his shoulder like a mortal carrying bags home from the market. She almost asked to take them from him. 

“Ask away then,” he replied. 

“I do not understand the current situation,” she replied. 

“Specify.”

“I…I do not understand.”

“What exactly is it that you don’t understand?”

“Everything,” she sighed. “This was not what I was expecting to witness.”

The immortal raised an eyebrow, turned around, and kept walking. 

“Well, start with the basics then.”

“The assassin. He was of the fifth rank, an elder of the Flowering Sword Sect. Why did he try to kill Cai Xuin?”

“Oh, Cai can answer that one, right?”

“Yes Honored Master,” Cai replied. The boy was distant, one hand still rubbing the spot where his hand used to be. Xaio Wang was pained at the sight. Her brother was a cultivator, carrying the blood of two of the greatest sects within the region. And now he stood here, crippled. 

His sword hand was gone and it would take years to build up the proper strength in the other hand, and even then he would still be a cripple. Another wave of confusion hit her.

“I was a pawn, I believe. The elder had been using me for several years, though I know not why. And when I showed potential, he wanted to kill me before I could grow powerful and hunt him down.”

“Do you truly know his name?”

“I don’t know,” Cai replied. “I thought I did, within the moment I guessed, but I do not-”

“You know his name,” the immortal interrupted. “Tai Lui, I recognized him from the delegation.”

How had the immortal know Cai’s thoughts? Was it a mind-reading technique of some sort? Was he reading her mind-

“Relax,” the immortal spoke. “Cai’s aura reflect Tai Lui’s memory. I couldn’t help but notice.”

Xaio Wang turned quiet at the revelation. 

“Is that what it’s like?” She asked. “Is that the world in the eyes of an immortal? Everyone laid bare and open?”

“It is for me,” he replied. “So stop beating around the bush and ask your question already. Your aura is practically yelling it at me.”

Then he already knew what she was thinking. He knew what she was feeling.

“Then why?” She asked. “Why would you let a villain like that go? Why let him leave? Why teach him his faults? How… how could you allow such a man free?”

The immortal chuckled. 

“It ain’t his job that’s why,” the old man answered. “He’s not a jailer or a policemen, so he won’t jail anybody.”

“He has power and those with power should exercise it to the best of their judgment,” she replied.

“Well, that’s what he did then,” the old man replied. 

“What if he comes back then? Tai Lui is a capable cultivator. If he receives a breakthrough somehow and reaches the immortal realm and comes back for vengeance, then what?”

“Dying is the burden of the weak,” the immortal replied. “Killing is the burden of those above them. I have no such burdens. If he comes back I’ll handle him. But he’s still a child. So I’ll give him a chance.”

A child. A fifth rank who had lived half a millennium was called a child. If he was a child then what was she? Then her eyes saw it, the mortal, Cai Xuin, herself, and even Tain Lui, they must have seemed so young to this man, so small. 

The mortals who she towered over were no different from herself in his eyes. And the old man, the loud brash old man spoke what was on his mind, to an immortal that was her equal. No, possibly her better. 

Was that what it was like in the eyes of an immortal?

Chapter 66

Chin and I sat at a table drinking tea. Medin had seen us walk into the village and since it was time for lunch, she had huddled us over, along with our new guests and two freshly awoken fourth-rank guards over for lunch. The guards had freaked out at first but quickly settled into place after the girls showed up with Nai for lunch. 

I was just glad Reck was sleeping. As stubborn as Chin was, his younger brother was even more hateful of cultivators than he was. Thankfully the Light Master had to sleep during the day and mostly operated at night. But his disciple was still awake and so were Chin’s grandkids. 

And they weren’t passing up the chance to study ‘real cultivators.’ I had feigned insult at the term and the kids had spent five minutes telling me that it was my fault for not using secret techniques or flying on swords or something. To them, I was just the old village hermit, not a cultivator. 

“So you really come from the Raging River sect? Is it wet over there? Do you have a lot of beaches? We have a pond and a lake but it’s not that deep and you have to go into the forest for a swim and lately, there are these little animals swimming there. We try to catch them but we never can because-”

Xaio Wang just sat there, confused by the girls and the children and occasionally sipping her tea while looking at everything with curiosity. I’d already given her free roam of the area, her and Cai. 

I assumed she’d leave in a bit. Cai however would have no choice but to stay. I’d already sent word of the assassination attempt to every one of the sects through way of a talisman and I was fairly certain that Tai Lui wouldn’t try to kill him again, but I told the boy to stay here regardless. He was lost and the last thing he needed was to consider his future. 

And I was also a little busy finding my own dao. It was maturing quickly, though I wasn’t too sure how my present state would react to it. I had seen the grander multiverse and I wouldn’t dare consider myself special, but I was rare, if not unique. 

Most humans had their dao developed before making their way through the immortal gates. If existence was a forest then a dao was the path you took, trodding through with your soul and chosen way. I had just stopped walking, at least my soul had. 

I had studied insect souls and managed to make my soul act the same way by turning off very specific parts of it through lack of stimulation. I had become an unfeeling robotic shadow of a man, something barely human. 

But even then I had fallen, or rather Dane had fallen. The original Dane’s death was directly connected to his lack of dao. He had killed himself, sure by accident. But the willingness to risk all of that was born from an eternity’s worth of weariness. 

He had grown tired. 

And now, I was here. 

There was evidence of daoless humans, but not many made it past the twelfth rank, much less to the thirteenth rank. I’d been meaning to ask the book about that stuff. I’d given the Library Dan’s inheritance back then, but not my own. 

I was still the Array King even if someone new would get the name in the next few years, that wouldn’t take away my knowledge or abilities. And while the peacemaking array was still in the womb, it was growing and churning. 

It was something new and even before it was awake, I’d gathered a heap of knowledge the Library could take. 

My tail flickered. I frowned. That was also something new. One of the gifts Wukong had left me, a malleable piece of his own qi. It wouldn’t overpower me and was useless in terms of power, or at least I believed it was. But it was a fragment of a God-Imperium making it so that anyone trying to divine me would also have to divine him. 

It gave me weight, in a metaphysical sense. Sun Wukong was more than me, his impact resounding across all of reality, his qi warming into the minds of many and becoming myth and religion.

One that I didn’t particularly want. 

The tail waved, seeming to know my thoughts. 

“Didn’t know you were half monkey,” Chin quipped. 

He was across the room and it was loud and bustling, but he knew I’d hear it. 

I shrugged and sat silently, observing Cai and Xaio as they interacted with the locals. Xaio Wang seemed to be at a loss for words, getting overwhelmed by the children’s questions and then slowly answering them one by one. She had shown them a traditional bow, one hand open and palming a fist, then bowing with a straight neck and now the kids had gone off to practice it with one another.

She still tossed a few awkward glances towards the maiden, especially when she saw Rin Wi was the one doing most of the cooking. Her eyes had almost left her head when Rin came out with several bowls full of soup and a plate of small bread. 

And the food was good, no it was great. Rin Wi had been trained to cook for literal gods and even with mortal ingredients, she was making delicious food. I was a little worried about her. Her choice of dao seemed to have been made in a rush. 

And the driving force behind her dao seemed weak. She had chosen to cook merely because she could, as an act of defiance against her past self. But she had stuck to it and there seemed to be genuine love for the craft. It was strange but when I had asked her about it she only said one thing. 

“The choice I made was arbitrary, but it was a choice that I made and to that, I must be true.”

It was a strange approach. To cook, to live to cook. But it was the only thing she had felt connected to, and you couldn’t just pick a dao. It had to be something you understood, something you desired.

So in search of a meaning, anything besides a life of servitude she had chosen cooking.

Rin WI frowned, and then her form flickered as she instantly disappeared. She had also taken to policing the area, smacking down anyone who dared to fight within the whole desert. 

Many people thought they could get away with violence at the edges of the desert. Many people were met with a slap from Rin Wi. One-fourth rank had been sent flying towards the ends of the region. The woman took face-slapping to another level.

Medin, who would normally be shoveling food down my mouth specifically because she knew I had no real limit and got some sick joy from stuffing people full of food, was sitting in a corner and cradling a small child. 

“Open wide,” she cooed. 

Nai smiled and opened her mouth. It was a battle of two beasts. One seemed to be able to cook a village’s worth of food in an hour and the other was able to devour that food in a minute. 

This was Nai's tenth plate. I was counting. I wanted to see how far this would go, considering Medin’s need to overcook and overfeed, I wanted to see if the grandmas to rule all grandmas would fail. 

And by the looks of it, she had. 

Medin wasn’t frowning per se but there was a tight smile of stress on her face. Each plate she had fed Nai could have made a grown man full and then some. The poor woman wouldn’t be able to ship me off with a week’s worth of food, at least not today.

Rin Wi was smart enough to not give Nai more food. The child could eat a country’s worth of food and be ready for more in an hour. Ten minutes later everyone was full, except for Medin and Nai. I eventually yanked the little monster from Medin’s hands and freed the poor woman from Nai’s bottomless stomach. 

Medin seemed sad, almost ashamed at her defeat. 

“She could eat three cows and still have room for more Medin. You know how it is, cultivator stuff.”

“I understand Mister Bill, but if a child is hungry, they should be fed.”

“She’s not hungry, Medin. She just likes eating.”

“But if she’s eating then she’s hungry.”

Grandma logic. Couldn’t beat it. My own grandmother had been the same, feeding me till I was round and full. I’d been a fat kid most of my life and that was mainly her doing. 

It was strange. I knew a lot and I remembered everything, but my memories, Bill’s memories, shined brighter than most. 

It was interesting, warm even. Everything else was remembered and cataloged like files on a computer. Dane had done his best to rip the humanity out of his life. That was why his personality had been so easily destroyed, it was never there to begin with. 

Dane. He was me and I am him, but even when he was a god, an immortal beyond a mortal’s mind. In the end, he was small. I was mostly Bill, a mortal given an immortal soul. 

Maybe that was why I didn’t feel so out of place here. 

Chapter 67

I said my goodbyes and walked with Nai on my shoulders. We were small again, taking our time and strolling through the forest and I was back to thinking. 

A dao was a big part of a person, but it started somewhere. It started with a feeling. Daos and Laws were different, but in a way, they were the same thing. They were rules, authorities, and concepts. 

While laws ruled over physical realities, daos ruled over souls. Things like gravity and time were akin to love and hatred within the human heart. But unlike laws, most of the concepts in a person's head couldn’t persist forever. Time wore down the human mind. Love once and it feels real, so passionate and amazing, but if you live for ten thousand years and love a hundred women, then what?

It felt dull and faded. It unravels and frails at the edges. Then what about norms? Manners? Sanity? The things people held in their minds and never questioned. Morality? Emotions? Purpose? Self?

It would break and crumble. Unlike plants and insects, who lived because they had to, we humans only live because we want to. Whereas a tree grows because it must, we choose to live.

We didn’t know it for the first few hundred years of our life of course. It’s natural. Socially and biologically, we tended to ignore that reality. But the truth is that we choose to live and make that choice over and over again with every breath we take. 

But you noticed it with enough time. You felt it, and eventually, you realized there was another choice. Silence, freedom, absolute oblivion. It was inevitable. Some people found a way to live forever, physically that is. 

They were called false immortals because while their bodies persisted for eternity, their souls would degrade further and further until they either went mad or became frozen still in apathy. 

Others tried to freeze their soul, capturing their personality and trying to put it in permanent stasis.  It never worked. The soul was an adapting thing, and it desired to experience, eventually, every safeguard would break.

Even Dane had fallen. He had lasted longer than most. He had wiped out his past emotions, restructuring his soul in some strange ways. To live without a dao, he had broken the part of himself that felt.

I looked towards a group of beavers that huddled in single file towards the center of the forest. Animals. Powerful animals beyond a mortal’s comprehension but animals still. 

They were like insects and plants. They lived to conquer, to grow, to be a beast. 

Or at least they had. 

I still hadn’t had that talk with Lin Tai. Beasts could gain a dao. It wasn’t unheard of. The Dao of The Dragon, the Dao of Tiger. But unlike humans who searched their hearts for their dao, beasts searched their nature. They became more of what they were, and in that, they found meaning. 

“Ugh,” Nai said from my shoulders. 

“You want to follow the beavers?”

“Ugh.” 

We followed them, silently watching the small gods trod their way through the forest floor. 

“I don’t get it,” the big one spoke. “If the birds want all the food from the trees, then what are we supposed to eat?”

“The ground stuff,” the smaller beaver yelped. “And the stuff from the waterways. But don’t worry big, that won’t happen.”

Big. What a clever name. 

“And why is that?” Big asked. 

“Because it’s all upsey downy. At least that’s what the House of Wisdom has said.”

“What do you mean?” Big replied. “Upsey downy?”

“Upsey downy, the laws are all manifesting in the places where they shouldn’t be,” the small one answered. 

This was true. The array had grown, and in its growth, it had started to harvest the laws manifesting around here on its own. It was also manipulating where they manifested. It was the first thing the array had ever down. Ground laws were now manifesting in the air and air laws were manifesting in the ground. The rivers held fire laws and water laws were born in the salamanders’ dwelling. 

It was strange, but it was also the reason the beasts were getting along. The array, at its core, was something designed to bring peace. And by forcing the beasts to trade with one another, that was exactly what it was doing. 

I was tinkering with it, feeding it my own understanding of peace now and then. But it was its own thing. It was alive and growing and the forest belonged to it. 

It forced the beasts to interact and by interacting they had to get along. It was making peace, all on its own accord, and by taking away their struggle it took away their need for nature. And when beasts deserted their nature, then what were they but humans?

I frowned. I didn’t like that. Part of the reason why I felt so okay with using beasts as a source of laws was their nature. They would kill me if they could, so I would use them like metaphysical batteries, and even then, I offered them freedom with a memory wipe. 

Thank the Dao that none of them had taken me up on that offer. I had made that deal back when I believed myself to be in the clear. I wouldn’t dare to release one of them now that I knew Tai Jey was after me. 

I wouldn’t dare to give him a single clue. But now what? Was I enslaving people? Thinking sentient caring individuals?

I frowned and stared off at the beavers as they waddled on through their territory. My soul fluttered and my dao pushed. Was it peaceful? 

What is peace? Is it freedom?

No. It is not freedom, but in a way it was. 

Was it strength? 

No. It was not strength, but in a way it was.

It was a paradox. Freedom protected by rules. Weakness made possible through strength. 

Was keeping the beasts here right?

If they were not here, then they wouldn’t be people. They’d be animals killing and fighting one another for their own instincts. 

If they were in the wild, many of them would be dead. 

What they wanted would lead them to death and violence and in turn make them unworthy of being free. 

A paradox. 

My dao settled. 

Peace in the self.

Peace in others. 

Peace in the world.

Then it clicked and settled, like a puzzle finding its final spot.  Enlightenment struck me.

“I see.”

Is that what it was? A paradox,? A limit? Order within chaos and chaos within order. 

The memory of the primordial qi flooded me and my crippled soul shivered. What was, what is, and what could be.

Then Nai started tugging on my hair while mumbling some well-organized gibberish. It almost sounded like a language. 

“I’m fine,” I replied. Reach up above my head to pat her. “Just thinking.”

We started to walk back home and Nai sat atop my head, banging my skull like a bad bongo player. 

Peace was had. Peace was given. And peace was kept. 

And each peace was different, and yet very much the same. 

My dao broke into the immortal realm as I walked back home. There was no tribulation or divine lightning. I was already beyond the immortal stage, and there was no progression of power or strength.  

But there was a little bit more of me than there was before, and there was a warm feeling in my soul that came with it.