Chapter 36- Learning to Talk

The Elder confined him to his cell for three days after his “shocking display” at the dinner table. He was, however, allowed to keep the hunk of meat.Tian had guessed the Elder’s intention correctly. If that didn’t get the message across to his sect siblings, he really didn’t know what would. Three days of closed door cultivation for an immortality cultivating daoist didn’t even qualify as a rap on the knuckles.

While he was confined, Tian reflected on the first dinner he had at the Temple. The most incredible food he had ever seen, all laid out in front of him on the table. But he didn’t know how to hold chopsticks or even how to use a spoon. And what if all these huge people stole his food? What if they stole his food?!

The brothers had shown him how to hold a spoon. When he looked back, his bowl was magically full. It stayed full until he was groaning from eating too much. It was one of his most precious memories.

Tian hadn’t really intended to threaten to chew out the Elder’s throat. Upon reflection, he decided he meant every word. You didn’t screw with someone’s dinner. You just didn’t.

Tian’s journey through Level Six was terrifyingly fast. He had noticed an increase in cultivation speed ever since the events at Burning Flag City, and while there was no substitute for time, the improvements in his mentality seemed to be helping a great deal as well. Elder Rui might have been wrong on a lot of things, but he wasn’t wrong about how good this trip would be for Tian and Hong. Nor how healing.

Maddening, frustrating, sometimes despairing, but healing nonetheless. Just being out of the wasteland, out of the slaughter, but still with people who had been there. Who got it, and got him. It did so much.

Tian had been slowly exploring his sect siblings. Brother Wang was loud, boldly declaring his ‘truths’ and ‘unafraid to take all comers in debate.’ But there was simply no getting him to talk about himself. Not even his life in the sect. Tian quickly felt out the edges of that dark territory. Brother Wang would only reveal bad things about himself, and even then he directed people’s attention back to the accusation of heresy. For anyone else, it would be a damning brand and effectively a death sentence. For Brother Wang, it was a cloak. Who would bother looking under such a heinous accusation? What more was there to learn about the man?

There was one of the finest minds Tian had yet encountered. That was worth discovering. Brother Wang tended to slam down ideas, making the tea table shake with them. “No organization constructed as an Immortal Cultivation Sect can be truly moral.” That sparked a hell of an argument! “The cultivation of immortality either severs the cultivator from humanity, or humanity as a whole has fallen into an unnatural condition.” That was another big fight. But then the supporting arguments and evidence would start rolling out.

“To pursue the dao is to pursue a life in accordance with nature. This requires us to shake off mortal ways of thinking, mortal ambitions, mortal desires, to simplify our thoughts and live more like the animals. Animals who, we know, are better at cultivating than we are, at least in the Earthly Realm. So, then, what could humanity be but a fallen species of animal? We must be closer to demons than apes, because we do not live in accord with the dao.”

Tian wasn’t quite sure how to rebut that one.

“The nature of any sect is hierarchical, an elder transmitting wisdom to his juniors and receiving their worship in exchange. One can argue this is a form of compassion, and that one can lead with humility. However, is that what we really see in practice? What is the argument worth if it’s not born out by the facts? Every sect is built on the premise that a path to immortality for a select few is worth the suffering of the many. An argument that is inherently arrogant, greedy, and cruel, as it is always repeated most loudly by those at the top of the hierarchy. And those who oppose it are labeled heretics.”

“But without sects, who would stop heretical cultivators? And since wild animals are better natural cultivators than humans, it would only take a single hawk or tiger to exterminate entire cities of mortals. Some threats need orthodox cultivators to deal with, even if they don’t live up to the morality they preach.” Tian argued.

“How many of those threats are created by the sects themselves? Remind me again of why we are reading all these scrolls? And I didn’t say cultivation was immoral, far from it. But why couldn’t cultivators live with other humans? Why set one above the other? Is it truly inherent to human nature? Or is it something we have taught ourselves to do?”

Tian started looking for patterns in his arguments, and quickly found them. He felt like he was tracking a diagnosis through his textbooks, watching symptoms and causes jump from page to page, the whole disease only emerging when everything was assembled in front of him.

Brother Wang distrusted hierarchy. He chafed at having others set above him, not because he thought he was better but because he thought those people were dangerous. There was enormous compassion in him. All his arguments had the unspoken, foundational premise that every life was valuable and worth preserving. That life was not simply to be endured, but lived. Lived richly and fully and joyfully.

Other details emerged when looked at with the right focus. His profound unwillingness to stand out was a form of hiding, of course, but it was also a form of modesty. He phrased it as “not wanting to play the leading man,” or that he “preferred to be underestimated.” Tian’s brothers often mentioned “Playing the pig to eat the tiger,” which was one of the more incomprehensible metaphors Tian had ever heard. It made more sense once he got to know Brother Wang.

Brother Wang was loud, to hide all the thoughts he kept inside. He wore his shame openly, to hide his virtue. He leaned into the fact that he was big and ran to fat, to better fade into the background. To let others play the leading role as he stood in the chorus. Tian was quietly surprised to see that he and sister Liren got along splendidly. She was always happy to be charging out in front, and Brother Wang was always ready to cheer her on.

The reverse was sadly true for Brother Wang and Sister Su. The two could hardly sit in the same room without blowing up at each other. They would rattle off points, arguments, counter arguments, supporting evidence, impeaching evidence, back and forth, for hours. Never descending into the realm of personal attacks, but furiously and relentlessly debating on almost every other ground.

It was entirely in character, Tian thought, that Sister Su would wake up, carefully assemble her ammunition, then go out looking for violence. He once saw her chasing down Brother Wang when it looked like he was going to have an argument-free lunch. She could move that chair fast when she was motivated.

Tian didn’t know what awful things had happened to Brother Wang, but it was definitely something. He had been sent here to heal too. And whatever it was that hurt him left him scared to even hint at what it might have been. He hated the disciplinary squad, though. The only time he really blew up in an argument was when he got into the “virtues” of the squad with Sister Liren.

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Brother Wang thought the disciplinary squad were a bunch of useless, greedy thugs and there was no persuading him otherwise. Tian agreed, but he kept his mouth shut. Sister Liren seemed to agree about the greed and thuggery, but then darkly muttered about the vile crimes she had seen. And that was on comparatively well policed military bases. And Sister Su? She approved of the squad, but only in theory.

“It is necessary that norms and standards are enforced to ensure the orderly operation of any organization. Call them laws or regulations or what you will. The disciplinary squad system has indeed become impossibly corrupt and in need of reformation. But there will always be a need for the squad, or something similar.”

“Reformation is a temporary lessening of the symptoms. The disease is the whole structure of the thing- vague rules enforced harshly and capriciously by people who can only be checked by those above them in the hierarchy… who are exactly the same people using them to commit atrocities in the sect!” Wang slammed his hand on the table hard enough to make it jump into the air.