Chapter 18- The Irascible Sister Lin

“How?” Liren demanded.

“Check the elemental flow going through your legs and your feet. It’s a powerful light body skill, so your weight is really nothing much. The hard thing is balance. Which explains why the manual puts so much emphasis on muscular control. You really don’t want to make any thoughtless moves, or you would definitely take a spill.”

Tian shifted his weight around. It was odd but logical that the strange drifting motions of Moon Crossing the Lake would work so well on the water. He had thought they were purely a kind of mental attack or illusion, deceiving the enemy about your true location. It seemed he really underestimated the ancients. It was both.

“I spent more than a year struggling with the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing, and picked up an initial understanding of the basics of Moon Crossing the Lake in less than a week. It seems I will be a yin man to the end of my days.” Tian laughed, a little painfully.

“That’s not such a bad thing.” Liren muttered, then slapped her cheeks. “Walk me through this. You are moving a little differently than I do.”

Tian smiled and started explaining, trying to describe the feeling of watching moonlight on a pond. What it was like that very first night leaving the dump and seeing the shimmering river in the distance, that snake of silver shining like nothing ever had before. He picked his words carefully, because Brother Wang and Sister Su were right there, but he didn’t hold back much.

“Stillness and flow. That’s water. Yin stillness, a calm pond. Yang flow, a river, the waves blown across the water, the way the moon slides from one side of the pond to the other, carried by the wind and tiny waves.” Tian groped for the words and came up empty. “I suddenly have a lot more sympathy for the people who write the manuals for arts. Even I think that was gibberish. I try to move the way moonlight on water makes me feel. As part of that, I’m following the same circulation path as you, but I’m letting my vital energy flow more in time with the emotions. Does that make more sense?”

“Not much.” Liren grinned awkwardly. “We’ll figure it out.”

Tian smiled and started to walk off the pond. It took a lot more focus than he was letting on, but he was absolutely determined to master casually walking on the water. It was domineering. He needed more domineering in his life. Hands behind his back and a little smile was good, posing with the crane was better, but he needed more means. Casually strolling across… no. Gliding effortlessly across a river or a lake would be damn impressive. Not many people in the Earthly Realm could manage that. At least, he’d never seen someone do it.

Apparently, neither had the crane. The Snow Grace Crane landed in the shallows with a splash, glaring at Tian. She cried aggressively at him, chasing him back into the pond. Tian was momentarily confused, then horrified.

“Oh no! I had been so careful.”

“What? What is it?” Liren tensed.

“Crane law. Walking on water must violate crane law! I was told that their usual punishment was breaking your legs and shoving you into deep water. It seems that the senior didn’t lie.”

“Sorry, did you say crane law?” Brother Wang yelled.

“Yes! A crane elder warned me about it when I first met the Snow Grace Crane. If you name a crane “Little White,” they can break your legs and shove you into a river. Ever since then I have been very careful to avoid making a mistake, but it seems…”

“You don’t think there was any possibility of the elder screwing with you?” Brother Wang asked.

Tian shook his head. “A very serious person, and when have you ever seen a crane tell a joke? Besides, if you think about it, the cranes were on this mountain before the monastery was. It would be stranger if they didn’t have their own laws and customs. It’s just that they don’t cross over with ours often, so it doesn’t come up much.”

Brother Wang contemplated that for a moment, then looked over at Sister Su, who waggled a hand in the air. “I am not as familiar with non-human jurisprudence as I am with the laws of the Broadsky Kingdom, but it is certainly plausible.”

Now both Brother Wang and Liren looked like they were questioning their lives. Tian nodded gravely at them. Better they learned from his mistake than making a fatal error later. The crane cried at him again and he felt her intention.

She wasn’t trying to drown him. She wanted to know how he was walking on water. Tian spread his hands helplessly. How do you explain the dao to a crane who probably understood it better than you?

He didn’t have the faintest idea. But he did know a teacher of beasts.

Sister Lin lived in a shack. Not a ‘shack’ like Tian and Liren, an actual bamboo shack that would have looked right at home in the middle of a bleak and ominous hillside, housing a particularly broke woodcutter or, perhaps, a charcoal burner.

“I can’t remember her name. I keep thinking of her as ‘Sister Lin.’” Liren muttered.

Tian opened his mouth to remonstrate, then closed it again. He had a good memory, but he was drawing an absolute blank. He desperately cast his mind back to when they first met, then to their second meeting on board the Windblown Manor.

“Ninglan. Lin Ninglan. I am appalled that you forgot.” Tian shook his head in disappointment.

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“Mmmhmm. Have you ever used her full name?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with your shocking disregard for a sect sibling you have spent so much time with.” Tian said, righteousness flowing from him.

“Yes indeed. And what was the name of the person you sparred with a couple of months ago? The one who you were working on the Dragon Suppressing Palms with?”

Tian drew a blank for the second time in a minute. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. He wasn’t sure he ever knew that senior brother’s name.

Liren lightly patted him on the back. “You absolute goblin. That senior brother gave you so much care and help, yet you immediately forgot him. What kind of faithless, un-fraternal, moral monster would do such a thing? Diabolical, I’d call it. Sister Lin, are you home?”

Liren called out when they were still a hundred yards from the hut. There wasn’t a gate or anything, but Tian had quickly noticed that once they were outside of shared cells, his sect siblings really liked their privacy. Admittedly, he only spotted that on the occasions when he was forced to go and see other people. One of the best features of their cozy little home was that it was both far away from the main monastery, and difficult to reach. It discouraged casual visitors. Or any visitors.

Tian truly loved his brothers and sisters, but he had to admit he wasn’t the most sociable person these days. It seemed that neither was Sister Lin.

“Oh, the King and Queen of the Outer Court have come and visited my little shack. Should I be honored, or dreading the future?”