Sky Pride

This close to the Green River, farms and tiny farming villages were everywhere. You could say a lot of unkind things about the Broadsky Kingdom’s civil service, but their commitment to having peasants dig water management systems was entirely sincere. More importantly, it was skillful. Farms got irrigated. Floods were, to the extent possible, diverted and mitigated. Cities did not run dry in summer months.

It was just a few weeks past the end of the rice harvest, and well before the next planting. The paddies were bone dry, having been carefully drained into the narrow canals that crossed seemingly every flat surface of the country. Peasants didn’t have the spare money to buy a lot of lamp oil. Once the sun set, they were in their homes, eating dinner and heading for bed.

In other words, there was a lot of flat, open country between Tian and the Iron Range, regularly crossed with places to hide if he suddenly needed to drop out of sight. No need to worry about “strolling” or not spooking the mortals.

It had been a while since he really pushed himself to run all out. He was curious to see how fast he could go. He leaned forward, dug his toes into the dirt and started circulating Light Body, Heavy Hands. The pressure on his leading foot dropped dramatically. He weighed less than ever.

Tian shoved off his front foot, exploding into a sprint. Plumes of sun-baked earth flew in the night air behind him, the grass madly waving from the speed of his passing. He saw a village up ahead. A bare minute later, it was behind him. He ran as hard and as fast as he could for ten minutes. It felt spectacular. Up to a point.

He came to a stop in a bamboo grove, cut stumps showing this place was regularly harvested by the local farmers. “I have a trouser situation. And a tunic situation.” Tian muttered.

The faster Tian ran, the more the wind pushed against him. The more the wind pushed against him, the more it tugged at his loose, flowing tunic and trousers. The tunic was belted, so it wasn’t too terrible around the chest, but the wide sleeves acted like scoops. The trousers were flapping and snapping like flags. Aside from the racket, they were uncomfortable. He was worried they would tear themselves apart.

How did the senior brothers manage it? He didn’t think they had ever mentioned it. Hmm.

Tian puzzled over it for a moment, doing his best to remember how the seniors would return to base after roaming the Wastes. They would be wearing their wasteland protective suits, which were pretty loose. They would surely have the same problems he was having. And they… wrapped straps around their calves from above the ankles to just below the knee, leaving it loose from the knee through the hip. They did something similar with their arms, wrapping straps around from wrist to elbow.

Sometimes, it’s not that complicated. Something is flapping? Tie it down.

“I’m a very smart boy, yes I am.” Tian muttered, pulling out some twine. Then paused. This wasn’t the Redstone Wastes. It was a lovely summer night, in fact. It would be even simpler to just run naked. If he was already rejecting the sect’s dress code, why not go all the way? Just strip off and run through the fields like an animal. Uninhibited and free?

He started stroking his chin in contemplation, then froze. He was stroking his chin exactly like Brother Fu did. He hadn’t even flinched when he was thinking about his Senior Brothers either. Even though some of them killed his birth family and were the reason he starved in the dump and was covered in burns.

Presumably the Mad God had a hand in all this. It seemed like something a mad god would do, and if you were looking for the start of things, wasn’t that a good place to begin? But everyone has to be responsible for their own choices. Some of his brothers, out of a desire to make a good relationship with a Heavenly Person and possibly ascend, helped slaughter his birth family. And Brother Fu gave his approval. Not because he approved, but because he wasn’t willing to accept the consequences of refusal.

So… why was it still his face he thought of when he thought of the word “Father?” Why did it still matter what he thought and what he taught? Because standing here, alone, in the dark of the night, he still worried about what Brother Fu would say if he learned Tian was running around naked.

Tian sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t have a good answer, but tying his clothes down wasn’t so bad. It would be dumb to ignore common sense. Tian quickly tied the strips. A good fit. He shook his head and looked east, trying to see the hills through the dark.

Tian ran off again, pushing as hard as he liked and feeling the lightness of his body. Something of Hong was in him now, something of her Yang nature. He found he liked the thought. His sister was always quicker off the mark than he was. Perhaps she would have some of his steadiness now.

Yes, he was, indeed, the steady one. Tian nodded firmly to himself as he ran off alone to slaughter a gang of bandits capable enough to keep a level nine crane caged, based on a tip from the world’s least promising-looking diviner. On the other hand, he really wanted to be moving and not thinking about all the complicated things swirling through his head, so really, this was the sensible thing to do. Tian picked up the pace a bit.

He was skimming along the ground now. Not flying, not close to flying, but light plus strong equaled fast. Tian didn’t know the phrase “power to weight ratio” but he knew the feeling with his body. It was glorious. Then suspicious.

“This can’t all be yang qi lightening me, right? Can it?” Tian wondered aloud. “If yin is the property of making things heavier and more solid, and yang is lighter and airier… but I don’t feel that different just walking around. Is it Light Body Heavy Hands? Am I using it differently? I haven’t spent much time studying it, but there just isn’t that much to know about it.”

Tian carefully watched the energy flowing through his body as he moved. It all seemed normal. Moving faster than usual, but that shouldn’t have any effect. Maybe a touch more earth element vital energy in the mix, but not to an alarming degree. That tickled something in his mind. Things started snapping into place.

“Of course! She has the Southern Mountain Physique. Fiery yang qi, but she has that core of earth inside of her as well. I’ve never understood how Light Hands works, but it’s so obvious now that I think about it. Earth qi. Earth is heavy and solid, Yin, pulling things down. The ground is mostly earth qi, so the ground contains the principle of sinking and likewise pulls everything down. Lava, which has yang fire qi in excess, goes flying up from volcanos until the fire dissipates, then it falls again as the earth qi within it reasserts itself. It’s why heavier things fall faster than lighter things. They have more concentrated earth qi. By controlling the flow of earth qi in me, the ground pulls on me less. This is it! It’s all about earth qi!”

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Tian had the oddest feeling that Grandpa was burying his ghostly face in his ghostly hands, but quickly shook it off. The world was so big tonight. He was determined to make the best of it.

He found the Iron Range two hours before dawn. Steep rolling hills, rising from green farmland. Not much in the way of pastures, but there were wide roads for the mining wagons. There was a nearby river, not very wide but wagons could make it from the mountains to the river in two days, and from there the ore could be loaded on to barges and carried to smelters.

“I really have no idea where to look in all that for bandits. Presumably they hide their traces, and the locals wouldn’t know. And even if they did know, they definitely wouldn’t say.” Tian grumbled. In his experience, bandit groups above a certain size weren’t relying so much on being perfectly camouflaged as they were on remoteness and difficulty of reaching them. It was a balance- be close enough for raiding, but far enough that chasing you was more trouble than it was worth. Or, at least, if the army was sent after you, you would have plenty of time to run away.

They had three cultivators, which meant that most of them probably weren’t cultivators. The hills were not heavily populated, but there were mining villages in there. There was a limit to how remote the fortress could be, but how much value would they get from robbing famously poor mining villages? They probably had horses, then, which would need pasturing.

He sighed, and started running. He could move very quickly, and the hills weren’t that big. So long as he kept away from villages, he would find their camp eventually.

He never actually found them. The Crane found him. Whatever had been done to cage the bird hadn’t caged her mind. Brainpower, and the connection formed by almost a year of traveling and working together, bridged the gap. She sent him memories of the route they took, along with startlingly vivid images of her captors.

Tian had underestimated the bandits. They were mostly cultivators and their chiefs were all Level Nine. Not fun, given that they would threaten to kill the crane if he just went storming in. Still, with an inside bird, it should be doable.

The bandit camp was at the back of a deep canyon. There were a few horses, but they were mostly used to pull wagons. Lots of simple wooden shacks, lots of tents… lots generally, actually. It was the size of some villages he had seen. It made more sense once he realized there were women and children mixed in with the desperate looking men. It was a bandit gang, yes, but a long established one. Generations of bandits.

Did he… still rush in and slaughter everyone once he got the crane free? Surely not. Not after what happened to his family. Or just generally. Tian had never killed a child, and didn’t intend to start now. None of the women looked like fighters. They didn’t look like prisoners either. Just peasants, doing their not-very-good best.

Wait. Had they really not found any female cultivators? Had… had they just not let the women cultivate? That was insane. That halved their potential fighting force. But the evidence was in front of him- women and children, none of them cultivators, but plenty of men who were.

The huts and tents were arranged around a bigger building with a stockade fence. The fence seemed more symbolic than practical, in a cultivator camp. Tian started to edge a bit closer, when a bell started ringing urgently. The camp exploded into action, the women and children running for caves in the sides of the canyon walls, the men scattering then reforming. Armed now, and in formations, looking wildly around.

Tian slowly rubbed the spot between his brows. If he could feel the breath of cultivation on them, as long as they had any sort of real training, even from a minor sect, they would sense his cultivation too. Most of the bandits he had come across didn’t have that kind of awareness. These were clearly a cut above.

Run for it? Come back later? Didn’t seem very plausible. He was out of uniform. Bluff? Try to buy her freedom? He didn’t have much of worth, but he did have some spirit stones he was willing to offer, as well as a few odds and ends that Liren didn’t wind up selling. He wouldn’t accept them in trade if he was the bandits, but…

Three level nines came strolling out of the base, one carrying a saber and shield, another a halberd, the last a bow. Tian stopped trying to hide and walked out from behind the rock he was crouching behind.

“The fellow daoist appears lost.” The one with the saber spoke in a booming voice, the sound echoing off the canyon walls.

“Yes, I do.” Tian nodded. That seemed to puzzle them for a half second, then they grinned nastily.

“Are you saying you are lost, and you just happened to find us?”

“No, I look lost. I was coming to find you.” Tian gently corrected.

“Oh? And what does a wandering madman want with us?”

“A very smelly old man told me that you caught a bird recently. I want it, and am willing to buy it.” Tian kept his voice steady. He counted two hundred bandits. A sizable force anywhere, but their cultivation was largely trash. Level one and twos, mostly, with a sprinkling of middle rankers and and only four level sevens. The three level nines were the only force here worth paying attention to.

He sharply corrected that thought. After the ambush by the Five Poisons Sect, he had no excuse for underestimating anyone.

“Oh? Anyone I know?” The saber carrying bandit stroked his chin with the kind of fake thoughtfulness that Tian associated with someone about to launch a surprise attack.

“Dunno. Selling or not?”

“Everything can be discussed. How much do you have?” This from the halberd carrier.

“Does it matter? Name a price, and we can work something out.” Tian shrugged.

“Heh. I suppose it doesn’t. Kill this wandering madman-”

“Sorry, sorry to interrupt, it’s just, you keep calling me mad, and I feel that I should clarify. I’m not crazy. I’m not well, but I’m not crazy.”

“Oh? And you think that makes a difference?” The saber carrier sneered.

“Yes.” Tian nodded. “Give me the bird. Name a reasonable price, and I can see what I can do. Test me, and even if you kill the bird, you will all die. The three bosses, and all the little bandits. You will all die.”

He got a message from the crane. She had sensed a familiar mind, even if she couldn’t communicate with it. Tian started smiling. Warmly and sincerely smiling.

“Last chance to settle things peacefully.” He carefully eyed the bandits, devising his strategy.

“Are… are you asking us to surrender? And you say you aren’t mad?”

“I’m not mad. I’m just not well. The difference is important.”

He felt a familiar breath rushing faster than even he could move towards the back of the stockade. The three bandit chiefs started turning, slow, far too slow.

“A mad person wouldn’t leave signs for his sister to follow. A person who isn’t well would be willing to play the distraction. Again. Even after what happened last time.”

A blaze of fiery qi smashed through the stockade fence and into the big wooden building inside.

“HONG LIREN IS HERE! WHO DARES BLOCK MY PATH!?”