Chapter 19- Falling Towards The Valley

“Physically, you are in decent condition. Your mentality seems strong, and your meridians are as they should be. The lower and upper dantian are working properly, and while your organs are out of balance, you aren’t at risk of sudden collapse. So long as you remain reasonably calm, nourish your yang with external means and strenuously avoid dissipating your yang qi, you can resume your normal activities.” Brother Fu patted Tian on the shoulder.

This was, in Tian’s humble opinion, a damned, and damnable, lie. The medical diagnosis may be correct, but it completely ignored the social realities. The tea and gossip circuit had him in its clutches. It had started in the hospital, but rapidly spread. Now he was spending almost two hours a day going around the sect, serving tea and eating snacks. He had even started playing Go again, mostly with the Martial Aunts and Uncles who refused his tea.

There were a few gossips who had the decency to serve their own tea, for which he was grateful. It was good to try new teas. But it was still exhausting, and he had a quiet dread of the day they ran out of tea leaves.

“We must grow tea on the mountain somewhere.” Tian muttered. “I refuse to believe a spiritual mountain inhabited by daoist cultivators for thousands upon thousands of years could possibly not have tea trees.”

“Mmm?” Brother Fu looked over at Tian. “Tea trees? Yes, we do have quite a few, scattered around. No tea plantations, but we do have quite ancient tea trees here and there. Some were planted in hidden gardens, others grew wild, all are hidden by protective Heavenly Realm cultivators. Generally, the trees are at the Heavenly Realm and not suitable for juniors to drink. The qi can be overwhelming, and the biggest benefits are felt by those in the Heavenly Realm. Tricky to steep, too.”

“Why is that, Father?”

Brother Fu smiled. “If you think about it, a cup of tea only has two ingredients- tea and water, transformed by time and heat. If you have to put anything else in there, it’s probably lousy tea.” Tian nodded along. “You need to carefully control each element of your service to bring out all the flavor and benefits of your tea. That naturally includes the water. Pairing ordinary water with spiritual tea? At best, you bring out a little of the flavor. There is a good chance you will ruin the leaves.”

Tian frowned. “Do you have to find spiritual water? That can’t be very common, can it?”

“Yes, you do, and it depends on what you mean by ‘common.’ Out in the wider world? No, not common. On an ancient spiritual mountain that has been gathering and condensing qi and fortune since before humans settled these lands? Common enough that I can keep a variety of waters in my storage ring. Obviously normal water is most common.” Brother Fu chuckled.

“Varieties?”

“You have to take into consideration both the flavor of the water, which can vary depending on the source, as well as the qi composition, elemental nature and possible medical and magical interactions with the leaves. Again, these are things that are really only of concern to those in the Heavenly Realm. Even with your talents, you would only pick up the barest fraction of all that beyond the taste, even if you did have qi rich water. It would be worth you really thinking about the flavor of the water you drink now and how it feels in your mouth. No reason you can’t start incorporating some of this thinking into your tea service in advance.”

Then Brother Fu pulled out his own tea set and started demonstrating. Tian had come by his tea dao honestly. After three rounds of quite good tea, savoring how differently the same leaves could taste with different water, Brother Fu returned them to his original point.

“You are as healed as you are likely to get in the short term, and Daughter Liren appears to be reasonably stable. Speaking of special water, the yin aligned water you picked up will certainly help her. Make sure she is drinking lots of it, and naturally, keeping up with her yin food diet. Until you can really spike her yang qi and restart her erratic body cultivation, it’s the best thing for keeping her stable.”

“Father… I told you that Sis’ Liren and I aren’t-”

“Zihao, I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I’m going to say it again and again until you hear me. Sex and love are not remotely the same thing, nor do they require each other. Nor is all love romantic, nor does all romantic love look the same. The term “Dao Companion” gets loaded up with endless nonsense, but the metaphor is one you should strive to understand. The two of you journey together on the path to the absolute. Others will join you, leave your path, and join you once more. That’s life. But absent some absolute atrocity, some betrayal so profound my mind cannot conceive of either of you committing it, the two of you will walk that path together to its end.”

Brother Fu let the words hang in the air, sunlight falling softly on his ancient and austere features, his beard as white and drifting as the immortal mists on the mountain.

“So you will forgive me for not waiting for a wedding to consider her my daughter in law in spirit.” Brother Fu grinned, then chuckled and poured out another round of tea.

“Speaking of people joining your path for a time, your old friends from the Windblown Manor will be joining you on your expedition. They are ready to go as well. When will you set out?”

Tian was still preoccupied with the ‘dao companion’ thing, but shook his head back into focus. “If everyone is ready, we can leave tomorrow.”

“Good. No use waiting. Will the Crane carry you all down?”

“No, she can’t get big enough to carry five people just yet. I was planning on asking Sister Mei to fly us down on her platform.”

“Good enough.” Brother Fu coughed. “You know, I have a rather excellent flying bamboo raft that my master gifted me. It can easily stretch to carrying fifty, let alone five.”

There was a pause.

Tian hid his own grin in a tea cup. “Father, would you mind giving my group a lift to the trial grounds? It would help.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Well since you ask.”

The two chuckled and enjoyed the fragrant green tea and Tian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the idiocy of drinking and laughing with the man who condemned you to four years of starvation, and suffering, and personally approved your murder. But what could he do? Brother Fu was the first living person Tian genuinely believed loved him, and the first living person he loved back. It was insane. It was unfair. It was bewildering.

Brother Fu, Brother Wong, and the other brothers from the West Town Outer Court set his feet on a dao of compassion. Grandpa had done his best, but Tian was anything but compassionate when he left the dump. Some days, compassion hurt. Trying to forgive hurt. But he preferred this hurt to the hurt of fighting, fear, and hatred.

He held out his tea cup for a refill with steady hands. It was horrible, and it was life, and the very first decision he made in the junkyard was that he would live. He made the decision over and over, day after day, and today was no different.

Tian made his way back to their little house, slipping between the gaps in the rocks and walking down the stone tunnel to the open-roofed half-cavern. The sunlight was a little diffuse today, the clouds turning the sky a hazy white and stripping the shadows from the world. The vegetable patch was happy enough, and the little stream still trickled contentedly through the earth. It smelled fresh and alive.

He could breathe in, and feel the elements in their cycle. Standing at the intersection of heaven and earth, of yin and yang, watching the elements come to life and give rise to the myriad things- Tian smiled and shook his head. The dao was something one lived. These things couldn’t be spoken or written down. You had to feel them with your whole self.

Liren came out of their home, carrying a woven tray with some vegetables on it. She carried it down to the river and started washing them. It had become their habit to cook meals in advance and store them in their rings when they went adventuring, and it had served them well. Neither were particularly good cooks, but practice had worn away the worst of their incompetence.

“We should dig a pond.” Tian said.

“Hi to you too. Why?”

“Aesthetic reasons, having a place to bathe, water plants to expand our diet, making a nice place for the crane to forage, creating a second source of lotus-scent. Really, why wouldn’t we dig a pond?”

Liren snorted at the last one. “Didn’t you tell me once that you thought the scent would fade?”

“I did, yeah, but it’s been six years… seven years… some number of years…”