Chapter 35- Green Stone, Red Eyes

Tian and the crane soared out over the monastery, moving up towards a deep vein of malachite recorded in the guide to the mountain. It looked like it was an extension of the outcropping that Tian had found, and was somewhat common in the lower-middle parts of the east-south-east side of the mountain, where the Monastery was located. The guide mentioned it in passing, mostly as something to be avoided when digging for actually valuable minerals. Tian thought it looked pretty, and would shine up nicely with a bit of polish. Best of all, the ancients wouldn’t have wanted to collect it. A fine place to start.

The place he was targeting was only about a thousand vertical feet above the monastery, but it was almost a hundred and fifty miles away by foot. Tian couldn’t stop grinning as he watched the mountain curve and twist below him. The ability to just bypass all of that was almost addictive. He saw a stream roll into a flat stretch, spreading out and turning the soil into a boggy, buggy, reed and briar filled mess.

“I must not be smug. I must not be smug. I must not be smug,” He thought to himself, smugly.

Tian and the crane made their way to a sharp-sided valley cut by a deep stream. There wasn’t much to it- tucked in a fold of the mountain, it was rather dim and cool. Still, where there was water and light, there was life. Reeds lined the stream, and dense clusters of tough flowers bloomed with tiny blossoms of pink and buttery yellow. A few scrappy trees grew here and there, skinny, twisted and reaching for the light. Small animals rushed around, and insects buzzed and chirped and made a riot in the grass. It wasn’t short of birds either, from brilliant little darting sparrows and swallows, to doughty jungle birds Tian wouldn’t even attempt to name.

The side of the mountain here had clearly been cut, long ago. Ancient chisel marks were still visible, as were long lines where iron rods were hammered deep into the rock. In other places, the rock was sheared away so smoothly, it could only have been done by a heavenly person wielding a sword or saber. It seemed not everyone could be bothered to quarry properly.

The deposits around here were noted in the guide as a place where one could collect azurite. Not a very valuable mineral, but thanks to the dense qi of the mountain, it made rather pretty blue dyes, inlays and decorations. It also had some very minor benefits for shen cultivation, but those were mostly incidental. Its main value was that it was common enough to find near iron bearing rocks, easy to quarry, and pretty. Green malachite, while not ugly, wasn’t nearly so favored.

“Maybe I’ll get lucky and find some of both.” Tian began poking around the ancient cuts, figuring that the ancestors would have known where to look much better than he would. After an hour or so, he found nothing.

“It does occur to me that I don’t have any good way of finding minerals. At all. None of my arts are useful for this.” Tian told the crane, who didn’t reply. While there might be a total absence of shiny rocks, there was an adequate supply of tasty river grass, and she knew what was important.

“I guess I could try violence? Yeah, let’s try violence. I did want to test out my Dragon Suppressing Palms.”

Tian found a spot where the stone jutted out a bit. He hesitated a minute before digging out the pamphlet. It wasn’t complicated, but he had a dreadful certainty that quarrying stone was one of those things that was demanding of both skill and sweat. He steeled his resolve, and started setting the iron wedges. Once they were in place, he gathered his vital energy. Left hand circled defensively, right hand struck decisively, and he had to make sure he was applying equal force to each wedge…

Proud Dragon Repents struck out, driving the iron spike four inches into the iron-rich stone. Tian froze. He had tried to pull the strike, but it had flowed so easily. He quickly struck out, knocking the other wedges deep into the rock. Easy. So damn easy! He was stronger, that was part of it, but the art just flowed for him now. Everything that had seemed like a struggle, like it wasn’t quite right, now was.

He started running through the strikes- Dragon Soars Through the Sky, Thunder Shocks Far Away, Suddenly Leaping into the Abyss, Double Dragon Takes Water, they all came to him. They all flowed through him, as natural as breathing. A year and a half of practice, it wasn’t for nothing.

He didn’t have to think. Each blow, each step, each cycle of breath and vital energy was eager and ready for him to use them. It wasn’t mastered. The art was too deep to master in merely a year, but he was beyond the initiate phase. Beyond the novice phase too. He wouldn’t hesitate to rely on the art in a serious battle.

The stone fell away with a clatter. Not a hint of malachite in there, but that was alright. He could see a tiny finger of green coming out of the side of the mountain. He had a direction to dig in, and new art to test.

The crane sent him a curious thought. Tian responded with emotions of joy, and the image of two cranes building a nest. His eyes were on the mountainside, looking for a good spot to start cutting. He didn’t see the thoughtful look the crane was giving him. No longer focused on river grasses.

Tian smacked away at the rock face for a few hours, and while he did find a few small pieces, there wasn’t remotely enough to make into a bangle, let alone a matching pair. More irritatingly, he had run through all the convenient outcrops. There was just sheer mountainside left, and he was leery of digging into it. He decided to see what nature had managed to cut, and followed the flow of the stream down the mountain.

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It was a bit of a challenge. The ground varied between marshy, muddy, slippery and rocky. Sometimes the slope was gentle, other times near vertical. He quickly swapped his blue and white silk robes for rough brown linen, and stowed his shoes in his ring. It was a rough looking mountain daoist that scrambled over the rocks, strong fingers grabbing stones and strong legs jumping across gaps. It was marvelous fun.

A long scramble took him to a tiny waterfall, barely twenty feet of tumbling water battering its way down stone shelves to a marshy pond below. He briefly thought about jumping down into the pond, but something made him pause. There was a hint of something, a certain breath of qi…

A level nine animal. Some kind of snake or viper that had all but stilled its breath. It was too strong to truly hide, though, and it was on the hunt. Tian tried to look around and find what it was stalking, but couldn’t see it. He struggled to find the snake too. He could see roughly where the breath of vital energy was coming from, but even looking straight at the spot, he couldn’t see the snake.

Camouflage, then, and of the highest quality. The breath felt roughly like that of a level Nine, but he knew that animals and humans cultivated differently.