Threads 491-Senior Brother 2

Ling Qi blinked and rocked back a step, the hold of his words on her mind fading with the sound of his voice. “Thoughtless reaction, fear, and hate then. These emotions, truth cannot dispel. The play was clear enough on that. Is it really that simple?”

“And many other emotions. If it were only fear and hate, those wondrous foundations to forward action, I might also call myself their master!” He laughed, a deep belly laugh as if he had just made a hilarious joke. “That is the easy answer. The ‘lies to children,’ as you say. How to explain the masterwork of the Patriarch of Lies? The webs he wove! He was the mastery of all that terminates thought and induces the human mind to descend into the squealing, survivalist madness that sleeps in us all when we feel death is scraping its nails across our flesh, even when we sit amidst luxury with full bellies and warm hands behind well-secured doors.”

He recited:

“For surely outside is the Other, and he will take it all away if you do not strike him first.

“For surely the Forever King will roll on over your broken corpse, no matter how you struggle.

“For surely to turn your head, to pause and think will bring the pounce of The One Behind.

“For surely The Emptiness yawns, to consume all in ultimate futility.

“For surely, the differing thoughts of your neighbor are but the marks of the Plagued Man, who shall consume you if not warded off.”

He turned to face her, smiling brightly, eyes boring into hers. “But then, junior sister, you do know some of that madness, do you not? I see the furrows it has left in you, as sure as a warrior’s battle scars. You come by them honestly, but you should know by now that even men wrapped in silk and jewels may deem themselves to be struggling beggars when they find themselves down a few coins.”

Ling Qi pursed her lips. It wasn’t something she thought of often, but yes, people often fooled themselves into thinking they were struggling far more than they were. It was probably why her blade worked as well as it did, even on those who had never felt the yawning ache of an empty belly, or stood on the edge of death, or lived days wholly alone, only able to rely on themselves. Because even if they had never felt those things, their minds still instinctively recoiled from the loss. They recognized the empty pit of isolation, even if they had never clawed their way out of it before.

“I do know it. Are you saying such emotions can really undermine Her Grace’s truth?” Ling Qi asked. “All it takes to hide from her light is mindless panic and kneejerk reaction, magnified with the power of a sovereign?”

“Is that all?” Jia Hong repeated. “As if it is a small ability, to be able to effectively wield those nightmares without becoming an empty vessel for them. No, it is not enough because Her Grace is not alone. Do you not recall the play? When Truth marries Empathy, when Multitude and Unity harmonize, it becomes the Ideal, and that is as much fearsome and unkillable as any nightmare.”

“You’re not just speaking of the Prime Minister or yourselves,” Ling Qi said with furrowed brows.

“I am not. Hah! The Four Heavenly Kings. What an amusing name. Many others stood with us, but they are left behind, forgotten. There is not enough room in a good tale for so many names.” Jia Hong asked rhetorically, “What history will speak of the man who led resistance to the Hui in Xiangmen for a hundred years before us, brutal and uncompromising, and who threw open the defenses of the roots at our approach? None, for he knelt before Her Grace and asked the mercy of annihilation in body and memory for all he had done.

“Who will speak of the countless organizers, the couriers, the spies, the ones who funneled us materials and were caught and tortured to death for their temerity, often handed in by their own families? None. None and None. Not I, for to bring them up name by name would have destroyed our morale and broken our budding defiance, and now, it would remind the clans of how much of their wretched obstruction and betrayals we worked around.”

“I can understand that,” Ling Qi acknowledged. “It’s true. A story can only have so many characters. I’ve thought about that, and how it twines with the truths of history, but I am not sure how it relates to my question.”

“You do not see it?” Jia Hong asked, disappointed.

Ling Qi looked past Jia Hong up at the pillar behind him, the vast curve of the carved spinal column of a Beast King. It still seemed wrong to her that the inchoate feelings represented by the Primal Nightmares were an antithesis of Truth. How did that relate to what Jia Hong said about the many small players in their revolt?

She understood that in the play, there was a display where Cai Shenhua drew on her army for power, but every cultivator general could do that. That was half the point of armies when high realms were present, which was why marching orders and division formations that formed empowering blocs existed.

However, he implied that there was more to it. When Truth married Empathy… That meaning was obvious. Diao Linqin’s support was emphasized in the play. Something about them changed the match’s calculus beyond simply more force of cultivation.

Ling Qi stared up at the pillar, identical in shape and size as all of the others. Rat, spider, river trout, where did these fit?

They didn’t, and it didn’t matter because the story’s truth wasn’t the specific beasts involved. The truth of the rebellion wasn’t in the scrabbling and pitiful years of resistance and subjugation that came before it.

“Not going to help here, Sixiang?” she thought to them.

“I don’t think helping would be helping ya here,” their muse whispered back. “If it’s not your answer, I doubt he’ll be happy either way.”

“Qiyi, not one thread. Qiyi real, true? Scary Mother, many threads. Very real.”

She blinked, startled. She was not expecting her dress to interject with how silent the young spirit had been.

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“One truth is not enough to overcome the most foundational nightmares. To burn them away, truth must become ideal,” Ling Qi said, almost surprising herself. “The Prime Minister’s unbounded Empathy…”

“It harmonizes,” Jia Hong completed. “It was intended to bring men’s minds together and make them one, forming transcendence through forcible alignment with the will of a sovereign. Instead, we are all still us, but whole. Only in alignment can the lie of primal nightmare be burned away. A revolution cannot exist in only one heart; else, it is mere base tyranny. So, that is your answer. Nightmarish delusion drowns truth, and an ideal sincerely held devastates a nightmare, so long as it remains whole. That is what happened that day. More than that… Well, prying into private matters goes beyond showing some grace to a junior.”

“I understand, senior brother. What is Truth then, if it is still so…?”

“Lie to a man, tell him there is no post in front of him, shroud him in a hundred sweet illusions of qi or oratory, and he will still walk into the post unless you move it while he is ensorcelled. For what is moral, what is right, what is cruelty, and what is kindness? It is your responsibility, no, your generation’s responsibility, to create the paradigm under which you want to live. We live in a cruel and broken world. Most do not have the power to set their realities so they only have it dictated to them. That is true even now, although…” Jia Hong looked toward the incandescent brightness that still roved the floor, arm in arm with her quiet bride. “Her Truth is the Truth we all fought for.”

“The ith I spoke to have said something which your words remind me of. They said that their gods, their high realms, are creations of ‘consensus.'”

It had seemed bizarre, almost incomprehensible to her at the time.