Chapter 22- Shrine of the Northwest General

Liren found Tian with his feet in the river, sitting on a tan and purple striped rock in the shade of a willow tree. The scent of lotuses seemed at home, drifting over the water. She sat down next to him, kicking off her own shoes and putting her feet in the water. She was wearing her big hat and veil, but had taken off the gloves.

Tian had suspected for months that she liked the broad brimmed hat and veil not for its sun protection, but because it hid the vastness of the sky. Her agoraphobia wasn’t so bad, away from the Wasteland. Not so bad isn’t the same as not being there. She was happiest in the cities and canyons. It was one reason they decided to adventure along the Agate. He hoped she would be okay on the Green River.

“So… the reason you tried to kill me when I was eleven was-”

“Because you threatened to stone me, yes. And telling me to kill myself in the dump was another indicator of your intense desire to die. I did tell you. Brother Fu insisted I patch things up with you.” Tian smiled and kicked his foot, sending clear gems of water out in a luxurious spray.

“I’ve thought about that day, you know. When we are sitting in the boat. I wondered what the hell made a person speak like that. Because that was the only time I ever heard you speak to anyone that way. Even when we argue, you don’t speak that way.” Tian’s voice was a little soft.

“I figured it out just a few days ago. You were scared. You had trained so hard, for so long, carrying your pain, and when you were put to the test, you fell back on what you knew. All the ways the pampered children of Mountain Gate City made their parents and seniors proud. Establish a hierarchy, and put yourself on top of it. Assert your dominance. Gather underlings. All the things they learned from their parents. ‘Go to the dump and kill yourself, or I’ll stone you ‘till you do.’ How domineering!”

He laughed. It wasn’t a bitter sound. He was laughing at the madness of it all. “You were being a jerk, sure, but you were being filial.”

She half-laughed. “And you tried to kill me, because that’s how people are. Everything you had seen of humans said that they were things that brought you pain, and you were finally strong enough to do something about it.”

Tian nodded. “More or less. I’ll never forget sneaking into West Town, crouching in an alley eating some cabbage someone had thrown out, and watching a man in fancy clothes beat a horse until it screamed. ‘That’s about right. That’s how they are.’ I remember feeling that it was horrible, and therefore correct for a human town. Theft and violence seemed the natural way to live in that place. Can’t say I had any problem with the thought either.” Tian wiggled his toes in the river, enjoying the way the cool water seemed to dance and slide between them. He slid a glance over to Liren.

“It’s not that I don’t have a conscience, Sister. It’s just that Dad and my brothers had to work very hard for years to give it to me. Well, and Grandpa.”

“Grandpa?”

“Someone I met when I was six. He taught me to read, how to jump, climb, and how to live in garbage heaps and the jungle. How to turn poison into medicine and what dirt is good to eat. That kind of thing.” Tian smiled, and with complete honesty added, “He’s dead now, but still always with me.”

Liren kicked her own spray of water out, the droplets dancing and shining in the sun. Her spray went a little further than Tian’s.

“I know how that is. And I’m similar, actually. Once they made sure I was okay, I got sat down with Big Sis Fei, who gave me a little talk about how big mouths get closed out in the real world. All my sisters called me out on it. You wouldn’t believe the comments I got over a wildling having better manners than me. Auntie Bai glared at me every dinner for two weeks running!”

“I can believe it. Brother Fu gave me so many books on ethics and lectures about proper morals, my head started spinning.” Tian wiggled his foot a bit, trying to get a solid chunk of water before kicking out. His spray beat Hong’s last spray. Probably.

“So how did you turn out this way? You have every reason to hate the world.” Hong asked.

Tian smiled looking at his reflection in the water and seeing only sincere happiness. “The world is too big for me to hate. There are too many good things in it for that, and honestly, I can’t even imagine ‘the world.’ Too much, too big, to fit it all in my head. I can imagine this river, this water, the feeling of sitting out in the open and being able to talk to my good sister. How could I hate this? But I definitely hate some very specific things. Or I’m angry about them. I’m angry about a lot of things. Absolutely furious, in fact. So in my too-yin way, I’m doing something about it.”

His smile slipped away. Hong had launched a spray of water almost two yards out. Was she cheating somehow? He would surely notice if she was. Maybe he could guide the water element around his leg, packing more water around his foot. Was that something he could do? Seemed unlikely, but if it came to it…

“Getting stronger, healing people as you go. Killing heretics and bandits as a money making sideline.” Hong wiggled her toes happily.

“Pretty much.”

“Speaking of, we are quite close to the shrine to the Northwest General. The one the countess told us about?” Hong reminded him.

“Where we might find clues to the dragon suppressing palms and those solar oranges? How close?”

“About an hour away, according to the locals. Inland, not on the river.”

Tian discreetly booted the water, sending the spray flying farther than Hong had managed. Time to declare victory and retreat. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

Hong casually kicked a spray of clear river water half a foot further than Tian had managed. “What indeed?”

It was some time before Censor Henshen and Little Treasure stuck their heads outside the inn, only to see two genuine immortality cultivating daoists kicking up sprays of water in the noonday sun and bickering over which of them was being childish.

The four travelers hired a cart to drive them to the shrine. The countryside was what passed for normal this close to the Agate- damns, levies, irrigation canals, drainage canals, dry ponds and every other water management system the not-entirely-corrupt civil service could press into use. All intertwined with rice paddies.

It was harvest time, so the paddies were dry. The soil was dark and rich from the regular floods of silty riverwater. The ducks that swam in the paddies and kept them free of insects were running around on the banks of the canal, waiting for their good days to come again. For the farmers, these were the good days. The sweet smelling rice was bunched up and hacked down with sickles. Hot, hard work, but each bushel was food, money, and security in uncertain times.

The cart dropped them at a dock on the edge of a small lake lined with cypress, their knobbly knees wet and stained from the lake water. The temple itself was on an island a two hundred yards into a lake. It seemed hardly worth the effort to build a temple so far from the shore. The sheer wasted time and effort of ferrying building materials over the water must have been maddening. Their ferryman explained that when it was the residence of General Hugen, it was on a peninsula. When it was converted into a shrine, the Ministry of Rites felt it needed to be a bit more special. So they removed the peninsula, and flooded the gap.

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Tian could hardly imagine it. For immortals, yes, entirely possible, but mortals? With barely any vital energy and iron tools? The amount of labor seemed impossible.

“Not a bad job, really, had it knocked out in six months, according to the story, and four of those months were waiting for the auspicious day to start digging.”

“How?!” Tian asked in what was definitely not a startled yelp.

“One shovel at a time, I suppose. Oh, they built dams to hold the water back while everyone dug, obviously, and the dirt and stones were used to expand the island they were building the temple on, so it didn’t have to get hauled far. Not a big job as these things go. A thousand or so people digging can move a lot of dirt.” The ferryman chuckled, working his oar.

Tian spotted Hong silently observing the old man’s technique. He was rail thin and looked ready to blow away on a summer wind, but he moved the boat like it was a living thing. Tian started slowly smiling. The old mortal probably didn’t have the words for it, but he knew it with his body- the dao of water.