Yongwu Long’s [Spirit Carp] shed its wisps of gold around the canyon’s walls, and by this light did the group of four further descend.

A labyrinthian tangle of arid walls joined with the next, and the next, and theirs was but one entrance. Strange formations wherein the rock bent and rounded, as if separating the passages the mass of disciples walked with abnormal bars.

All in the great, distant shadow of the Southwestern Canyon Bastion, behind which the sun heralded a new dawn. A freshly risen, [Summer] furnace, bathing those beneath in uncomfortable warmth, even in such gloom.

“Amituofo,” said Adhrit. “A blessed day.”

As had been the way of things since Long had insisted that he join their party, Fu tried not to stare as the man spoke.

Slender, and shaven, Adhrit had a bearing of menace about him, contrary to the near whisper of his words. Held in how he fixated on the innocuous details they passed, be that an unremarkable spread of pebbles, or a single, baying stalk amongst the barren land. Inspected by a furrowing of brow that had him appear enraged.

“Come, brother,” Fu urged, being the last two in their procession. “The Blight will be upon us soon.”

“Amituofo. As you say, brother Fu. One cannot breathe in the Boundless [Dao] should fouler airs pollute their lungs.” He bowed in passing, and his Bond, a sleek fox with fur a shade of butter, likewise extended its thanks.

Pressing tight to the hem of his burlap robes.

Fu caught pace with him, and there they walked in step to trade the occasional sidewards glance, a meeting of eyes that had his curiosity rise with each pass.

Adhrit broke first. “This penniless seeker extends his gratitude, brother Fu, to be welcomed into the fold. To be Hopeful is to be passed over, and to be of the Vajra, here, is more so.”

Vajra. A foreign word for this foreign man. Truly, the world holds many shores.

“There is no gratitude necessary.”

“Humble,” he replied. “There is joy in this. That four souls seek to survive without arrogance is a harmony unto itself. An oar, you say, in familiarity. Kinship where all others will strive to make their names known to the venerable Cheng Rao.”

At the front of their procession, Long laughed, and looked over his shoulder. “You’ve a poetic way with words, Adhrit. It adds flare to the mundane. Our friends merely asked if they might walk with me as we travelled, for- brother Fu, what were the words?”

“Distant seas are best not filled with distant faces,” quoted Xianyi, though she shared none of the banter that inflected Long’s voice.

A small heat rose behind Fu’s ears to recall how he had spoken to Yongwu Long.

To have his own words returned sounded foolish, more so, as it brought a mite of impotence to his thoughts.

For his oar was no more, and no less, than to have Long at his back. A tether to safety, such as the Green Blight Bastion’s wall had provided before. And though it conjured a pang of guilt to do so, Fu was resolved in this path.

Their passage was fraught with peril, and as no safety could be found, he knew he must forge his own until he possessed the strength to stand unaided.

These thoughts had him go internal, missing half of the conversation as it passed about him. “-cannot speak on the One Hundred and Eight, for this penniless seeker was far below.”

Fu looked to Xianyi, seeing the puzzlement she wore. Matching his own. “[Spirit Beasts?] Where? Is that all that they number?” he asked, drawing his chain head.

It was apparent that both Adhrit and Long found this outburst to their amusement. “Brother Adhrit is from the lands of the One Hundred and Eight Seeking Vajra. Though I’ll wager they’re more myriad in spread than that. Not often seen in a backwater village such as Thousand Shore City.”

“Forgive my ignorance, all that I once knew was confined to spawning carp and thrashing trout,” Fu said, and he dipped his head in apology. “Your kin, they all-” Sensitivity tempered his curiosity then, and once more he apologised.

Adhrit softened his gaze, as though parsing through, and understanding what Fu might have started to ask. “Ignorance is no crime, brother Fu, for no one man can know all things.”

A likeable man, this new comrade.

“Then, the colour?” he asked, and Xianyi made no subtle effort in slowing her pace to listen. Her qiang drawn, and gripped as though to strike.

“Ah,” and Adhrit peeled back the sleeves of his robe, displaying his bare arm. Presenting the same darker shade of skin that made up the man. “Within the One Hun…” He trailed off with clear confusion. “This penniless seeker shows little insight. brother Fu does not ask-”

With an arched brow, Fu tapped the air, gesturing at Adhrit’s forehead and the pattern of [Ink] upon it. Not limited to the butter hue of his Bond, and distinctly crafted in the shape of a resting eye.

“Among the One Hundred and Eight, it is known as Seeking the Adamantine View. A mark all below the Numbered are bestowed to represent how they are yet unready to find the truth of the Boundless [Dao].”

“Brother Adhrit, I find you rich in words I do not know. Gratitude. Might we speak more on this? If it does not trouble you.”

Fu stepped close to the man, and together they fell in line with Xianyi and Long. Edging to form an outwards facing star, and readying themselves as the first [Spirit Ape] bellowed into the canyon.

A deafening challenge that called with it the first salvo of feet. Innumerable, and enough to shake the great walls of stone at either side.

🀧

There was uncertainty with the arrival of these beasts, and Fu wondered whether the volume they four faced were summoned by their number. For as he pounced and struck, there were glimpses of adjacent corridors.

Misshapen gaps of natural formation that served as windows to the other disciples. Revealing the slain corpses of [Spirit Apes] that paled in comparison to the plentiful trail his group had left behind. For their combat was so thick that mounds had formed, furred, and to their disservice, placed as such that a wall now blocked any thoughts of passage.

The [Dao of Reach] saw more blood mingle upon his dewy, crimson lip as he called upon it, lashing out to amplify the length of his chain and deliver a jaw-shattering blow to a smaller ape. Yet he did not land, conjuring his [Half Cloud Step] to spring from, and plant his foot into the leg of another. Having it drop so that Long might spill its guts across the canyon floor.

He shared an acknowledgement, brief, and focused upon Fu’s bloody face, before pivoting to entrench his jian in the skull of another ape. Unfettered by wounds, nor seeming to have a hair out of place.

A sensation rose in Fu to see it.

Not unlike the thoughts upon finishing his Placement. Some form of competition that had him think he was mad. A fool, for entertaining the notion that amidst the slaughter he might perform, or… He could not say.

Warning flocked through Hushi, snapping him from such distracting thoughts, and Fu found him embroiled with a pair of [Spirit Apes]. Bogged down beneath slashing strikes, returning a pain to both cultivator and Bond alike.

The chain’s head unfurled, snapping in serpentine fashion with an empowerment from his [Dao]. A length that broke though the gap between Xianyi’s back and that of Long, arriving, with some luck, to coil around the shoulder of Hushi’s free aggressor.

The other, now ensnared in teal arms.

His interruption of blows lessened Fu’s pain, but a strain rose in contest. [Might] against [Might] as the [Spirit Ape] tore back, reeling the chain in.

Of the uneven score within their canyon, it seemed that all focused their claws on Fu.

Marking him as the weakest among their foes.

The outlier that beckoned a full brigade forth to scratch the landscape in pursuit, descending, scrambling, loping on all fours with whooping jaws, ovaline and fang-filled. All the while he lost more ground, a heat of friction on his sole.

Caught between ceding his weapon to the beast that held it and death by savaging.

Thus he loosed his hold on the [Dao of Reach]. Causing a reaction he could not have guessed, as now Fu was drawn at no small speed by the collapsing chain. Hoisted through the intervening distance like some recalled anchor to arrive his knee at the [Spirit Ape’s] head.

It cracked, driving the beast back, and from there Fu delivered a series of kicks. Met with a solidity of flesh not unlike steel. With his chain still wound about its shoulder, he called upon his [Dao], hoping to constrict the beast as he sprung over its shoulder with [Half Cloud Step].

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And the world turned grey.

Tones, blurring. The outline of his foe now grainy as he scraped the last remnant of his mental energy clean.

But this was well-timed, and at the apex of an audible snap produced by the breaking of vertebrae.

The [Spirit Ape] collapsed, and they spun in concert, a dance that entangled both of their falling forms. Fu felt Hushi’s softness at his back, shunted to the side as he finished his own foe, and there both landed. Beast and cultivator.

To be emptied of mental energy invited his strength to leave, and though he was able to move, he could not rid himself of the ape. For it had him well pinned, and worse yet, it still drew breath.

Paralyzed, and exposed to him, it drooled a trail of [Poison Qi] slobber. A kindness, in how it set Fu’s skin to rash and blister with no other malady.

He pushed, finding the [Might] he required could not be reached, turning his breaths ragged with the effort. Every movement, and every grain of weight lending well to crush what precious air he still held.

As though he were drowning above water.

A feeling the Cloudy Serpent Sect had taught him well. Or perhaps, a feeling that Fu had always known.

Quieting the surprise as a spectral character appeared in his mind’s eye, willing him to places distant.

🀧

An abundance of breath reinvigorated the kneeling Fu, and he took this moment to bask before beginning his ascent towards the-

“[First Pool]”, he whispered, confirming the truth of the matter.

A buzz in his lobes that cemented the name of this mountainous place with the characters upon his [Ink].

On his previous visit, Hushi had appeared in the moment before acquiring his first [Dao Principle]. What was now some count of [Seasons] past. So Fu mellowed his step until a reassurance of limbs came to clamber to his shoulder, and content in company, the pair crested the mountain.

Thirst rose, and was likewise impressed from his Bond, having his lips dry and his [Dantian], or Soul, extend its need to be quenched in the waters ahead.

The same pool stood there, tantalising, and stained in hues of black and white.

For all that he knew of the [Dao], of how he partook of Hushi’s understanding, he bade in gesture for the octopus to move first. As an arm breached the water, motion began, introducing a swirl of teal and gold, and bringing Fu to follow with a cupped hand.

Where their yearning was sated.

A rivulet of teal cascaded from palm to wrist, then fell to birth a ripple. One wave that lapped with force, and upon its return welcomed a new realm to replace the mountainside.

Fu gasped, and surged into his waiting mouth. For he was beneath a great weight of ocean, where luminous coral shone and beasts slunk through each passage of a reef.

Ignorant of his presence, and harmless.

This reef formed steppes, and rose to a distant crown of weeds. Wherein a shell presided, as though all beneath it were a court, pulling, to agitate and stir the tides.

A draw that saw the entirety of ocean drain and crash, only to refill.

And Fu spied there, distant, the slit of its shell yawn wide, with a [Spirit Core] no less radiant than the heart of a star at its centre. Bulging as the lid pushed open to herald another draw of ocean.

Yet now this breath was a vortex, and took with it all the waters.

It rid not only the oppression of blue, but the luminosity of coral, and through this Fu found himself afloat. Able to extend his pity to the myriad creatures here that could wretch no water into their gills.

He roused from this vision then, and pain returned. Presence, and pressure, and a warmth of foul breath.

The [Spirit Ape] atop him suddenly jerked at the appearance of Qi, and was tossed with such force that it was smeared into the canyon’s wall.

“Brother Fu,” called Adhrit, now by his ear and helping him to rise.

“Gratitude,” returned Fu, clutching at his chest.

The [Ink] upon his arm well warm, but less a priority than the score of remaining beasts his comrades cut down five strides ahead.

“Hushi,” he said. “Let us return this kindness.”

He was by no means whole as he walked. Burdened, still, with overuse of the [Dao]. Though now it was less, as if the vessel that supported his mental energy had broadened, dispensing another trickle he might use to conjure his [Principles].

An intrinsic knowledge that he stepped forth to unleash.

A step behind Long, he drew on his [Intent] to rush across the clash. In which a [Dao] clung, suffusing the force, and washing out to grip the remaining apes. Extinguishing their breath, and instilling such panic that their advance faltered amidst Long’s cutting jian, and Xianyi’s piercing qiang.

Human-like, in the way each [Spirit Ape] muddled claw-tipped hands to their throats or chests, desperate to recover the breath Fu had quashed.

🀧

“This penniless seeker would not seek to tamper with his own understanding. Apologies, brother Fu.” Adhrit’s rejection was forged of kindness, despite how his scrutinising brow had him appear otherwise.

Fu returned the half-smile. “Any insight is welcome. Would you be open to it, if I did not share the vision?”

“Brother Fu is kind to consider this penniless seeker’s wishes,” the Vajra said, clasping his hands in a small bow.

The increases to his [Ink], and his understanding of the [Dao] were repeated to Adhrit, who walked astride him contemplatively. “The path of [Body] cultivation rarely imparts wisdom of the [Dao] with such regularity. Brother Fu is truly favoured to know two of the Boundless.”

Grandmother Hua had shared similar words, and as such Fu only nodded. “The first was fortune, a [Dao Treasure]. So my understanding is of no mention.”

“Yet this second is not,” Adhrit mused. “Please, this penniless seeker will answer what he can.”

“Gratitude,” and Fu collected his thoughts. “[Early], [Middle], these words- Ah, perhaps I should ask on the increase to my attributes? I might ask on the [First Pool], and many others. I am your junior in the [Dao], and I do not wish to trouble you.”

Now, in the bowels of the canyon, the companions had stopped. Challenged by a split in the rocky channels that led in three directions, and contested by Xianyi and Long. The latter promising that the furthest route would see them to their Bastion swiftly.

Yet it was thin in disciples, as much as could be spied through gaps in walls and breaks in the stony formation.

“Then brother Fu, please say what you know of [Ink].”

Fu recalled what he had learned from his tomes, namely what Luo had gifted him within the folds of the [Stifling Stream Revolutions]. “A curse, and a gift, from the Heavens themselves. To mark for those who dare defy them, that was… regifted, unmade into a benefit by the [Divine Beasts].”

“It is so. Shaped to grant insight to the unlearned that they might survive. These stages, or ranks, hold many names across many lands, but is always read as [Early] or [Middle], and on to [Late], and [Peak]. Recognition that the Heavens deem your progress to be of such a degree, be that in [Dao], [Art] or in [Prowess].”

Looking upon his [Ink] once more, Fu scanned his [Prowess]. “I am [Early] in much, and an [Initiate] in my weapons. A [First Pool] in my [Dao]. These- there is a reason they are unchanged?”

Adhrit looked ahead, and responded to Long’s summons. A wave that spoke of which passage they were to take, and thus the pair followed. “Another measure, brother Fu. As your understanding deepens, this will transcend. [Initiate] to [False Imitation], though beyond, this penniless seeker cannot say. A rank brings change, and strength. Often in multiplication. To reach [Peak], and achieve higher understanding brings more.”

A cold touched upon Fu’s nape, which Hushi stirred at.

“Trouble, brother Fu? Apologies, for this penniless seeker is no teacher.”

“Multiplication?”

“Ah, many times its number.” Fu bowed in thanks, and Adhrit continued. “As no Vajra are present, this penniless seeker will be bold, and say that this Heavenly measure does not differ greatly when pondering the [Dao].”

“Yet it is [First Pool] in place of [Initiate]. The same that is seen upon my visions.”

Adhrit made a look then, as though pained.

“Apologies, brother. It seems my tongue flaps like salmon upon the shore,” he said. But he saw now that his words had truly shocked the Vajra. As ever, it was not Fu’s intention to do so, and so he peeled back. “My haste, and curiosity have insulted you.”

A tight-lipped silence followed, and one no bow might make right. But time passed, the length an incense stick might take to burn, and Adhrit moved queer.

He enacted one step of what Fu mused to be a technique or dance. His arms adrift as though caught by wind. “One who is drowned is not troubled by rain.”

To which Fu nodded. “As you say, brother. Gratitude.”

“Consider such rain, brother Fu. For this is the [Dao], and in truth, it is not.”

“The rain?”

“What might rain be, in your eyes?”

“The rain-” He repeated, and with little focus recalled a memory.

Of Mei, his Mei. Of a [Spring] shower, on [Winter’s] back, and its chill. How she had danced atop his bow with sodden robes, the azure hue so muddied by water that it appeared near a shade of black. And how in his foolishness, in those early days, he had offered his own cloak to warm her.

“If one is troubled by rain,” she had said. “They might wish to leap into the lake.”

“Rain brings its cold, and chills the skin,” Fu replied, finding a smile upon his lips. “Yet it brings warmth in bodies, and comfort when family gathers to share it.”

Adhrit then placed him under great scrutiny, furrowing his brows. “So too does rain nourish land, and grant life to the barren. Wash free stains, or add more in created mud. Water parched throats, and drown those in wells. It is all of these, and none, and as such is the [Dao].”

These words, more than any, brought a wash of understanding to Fu. “Then, to share my vision- It clouds your sight of the [Dao].”

“Brother Fu has a truth of it,” returned Adhrit.

Fu fell pensive, noting how he had lost his desire to learn. For a time. “I am grateful for this, brother Adhrit. Might we speak more on this another time?”

The Vajra clasped his hands, and bowed with a knowing look. His eyes firm upon the smile of his companion. “This penniless seeker would find it pleasurable. Amituofo.” They separated by a margin when conversation had concluded, and Adhrit exchanged whispers with his Bond, granting the fox passage upon his shoulder.

Which left Fu space to treat with Hushi, who had descended from the douli to impress his warmth with touch. A gentle squeeze that rid him of some small facet of guilt.

Fu had remained inwards at his memory’s resurgence, and there were few forces below Heaven that could pry Mei’s face from his mind.

Not the Cloudy Serpent Sect, not the oppressive [Summer] heat, and not the howls of approaching [Spirit Apes] as they tore down the canyon’s walls ahead.