Note: It's my birthday tomorrow so I'll be taking the day off, fellow Cultivators. No new chapters tomorrow. We'll be right back with XJ-V on Friday for a chapter that you won't want to miss...
The visions that swam in the Dao before XJ-V's eyes were now more confusing than they ever had been.
Yet, there was a clarity that existed alongside them – a clarity that came from Ori'un's statement that what we saw within the watery gyrations of the future were not reflections of what must be, but what could be.
Grey potentials…
XJ-V saw them all in a fleeting moment of lucidity. The white clouds of the Dao opened and hurled him down into the depths of the earth, where the molten crust of the battered planet melted away his limbs and purified his body, allowing his mind to break free and look with only eyes upon the figures that shifted around in the core of the earth:
One: Feng-Lung battling demons that wore the faces of his friends.
Two: Ori'un trapped between the ghosts of his duty and his will as a human who would never achieve Soul Actualization.
Three: Master Longhua watching as the world outside Ramor-Tai was engulfed by an inferno.
Four: The burning buildings and crumbling bamboo forest of Hensha, with the Divine Order's Xu'jan spilling into its fields, killing, pillaging, ravaging the town until there was nothing left but foundations, and then salting the earth so nothing would grow.
And all of these visions – his Brother, the Planeswalker, his Master and his home – they all converged on a single sight that blinded his eyes in the center of the Dao.
Him.
He was wearing a tattered cloak that bore the symbols of every Sect – the Dragon, the Tiger, the Reed, the Snake, and the moon. They clung to his body as he moved through the Wastes, his hands fighting off foes from all angles, turning them to ash with every blow he made against them. He made a relentless assault against the evil light that shone upon him, the eyes of an Eagle watching as he spun to repel his attackers.
"No matter where you go, machine, we are all connected."
That was what the High Eagle had told him on that night – the night he lost everything.
What did it mean? XJ-V needed an answer. He saw that the answer to this question - like his Grey Potential fighting against the light - lay at the heart of everything. It was the source of Longhua's decision to train a machine, it was the core of Feng-Lung's despair, it was the Planeswalker's faith in him and it was his own fear that still gripped his heart. Now, however, he had to make a choice – and that choice was to push through.
Move, he said. Closer…show me…show me what truth lies in those words…
He felt Arha paw at his corporeal form. He heard his Master's strong voice call him back. But this time he resisted. Not because the Dao wished to consume him, but because his desire was simply too strong.
He reached out, passed the fading faces of his friends, and grabbed at the heart of his Dao-self. His true self.
And the answer at once became all too clear to him.
He woke up and collapsed before Longhua's knees, his systems blinking back to reality and informing him that he was currently kissing the hard stone ground of the Dragonpyre Hearth. His meditation session with Master Longhua had just come to an abrupt end.
"Good," his Master whispered. "You have learned to walk the Dao admirably."
"The old man told Arha to shut up!" Arha hissed, issuing a ghostly spit in Longhua's direction which, of course, simply faded through the old man's disinterested face. "The nerve!"
"I knew he would find his way back alone," Longhua simply stated in response, looking at XJ-V with a smile. "He is, after all, my pupil."
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Before the Cog could even gasp for air, his systems blazed with spiritual life as he felt a steady stream of Qi flow into him, awakening the latent energies still swirling within the soul at his heart:
Anima Cores: 140
"You are ready for the next Rank," Longhua said. "And you well know what this means, do you not?"
XJ-V knew, at this point, not to try and pull the wool over Longhua's eyes.
"I do, Master. But I wonder how it is that you know I know."
"Hmpf," he scoffed. "Knowing the mind of my students is my business. You think I do not hear the whispers of Mah-Jung and Feng-Lung as they tell you things you are not ready to hear? You think I do not know that, only yesterday, you joined with the Planeswalker in a dual Dao-Walk which, incidentally, could have caused death to a student of your Rank?"
The Cog merely blinked in response.
"And you do not think," old Longhua said with a course, slow stroke of his thin chin beard. "That I do not know that you and young Feng peeped upon my conversation with Ori'un, using this little trickster as your go-between. Do you?"
Arha, all confidence draining from her face, backed off.
"Busted…" she murmured. "If it means anything, Arha did say it was a bad idea."
XJ-V bowed his head, mainly because of shame, but also because of what he had just seen…just heard…within the Dao.
Then a forceful flaming finger flick found his forehead.
He fell back and tried to understand how such power was collected in nothing more than the gnarled finger of his Master.
"That is your punishment," he said. "Now, we shall set the matter aside."
"You are not angry with me, Master?" The Cog asked as he slowly rose and rubbed his smoking skull.
"What you did you did out of curiosity that becomes a young mind," Longhua replied. "What you did compelled you to seek out Feng and understand your Brother better. And it allowed you to understand your Master in turn."
The old man leaned down to take a sip of Jingseng tea from a bow beside him, screwing up his face in disgust at its taste.
"You do not see the rationale behind my reluctance to aid the Planeswalker," he then said. "You do not see this because you have not been allowed to. For a machine, defense is a matter of offense. Force answers force. But to break this vicious cycle, one must do more than simply claw at the evils one sees in the world."
"Master," XJ-V began tentatively, embedding one fist in the ground even as Arha urged him to move on. "The Planeswalker speaks the truth. The Order is coming."
"They shall be broken before they ever make it to our steps. This Jin'ra – this 'High Eagle' – is not foolhardy enough to grapple with the Sects of the Cultivators. None are."
"None except the Gods themselves," XJ-V said.
Both Master and Disciple looked at each other then, knowing that they had come to a critical juncture before either of them was ready for it.
"They are servants of Yuwa, Master," XJ-V said.
"Yuwa is dead."
"Buried," XJ-V corrected. "Which means he is somewhere in the bowels of this earth, though dormant. Perhaps he whispers to the Order. They have power that is drawn from him. I know, for I have felt its mark upon my steel skin."
Longhua rose slowly, silently, looking down on his Disciple with an expression the Cog could not pinpoint. It is as humans say - some things never change.
"You have done more than feel it, XJ-V."
The Cog stared up at his Master blankly, his building rage once again dispelled by the sheer strength of the Eternal Dragon leader's conviction.
"You think I agreed to train you because of your desire for knowledge alone?" he asked. "No, my Disciple. It is because you have power within you – power tempered by a mind that still understands the necessity of peace. And, after all this time, you know how your power must be used."
The Cog looked up at his Master with a very different set of eyes now. Once more, he was in the position of nothing but a student with a teacher who had, yet again, surpassed his expectations.
"When the time comes," Longhua finished. "You shall be given a test. An appropriate Administrator shall be found to fill the role of observer – but you already know that. Success will mean you pass to Rank 5 Corporeal Temperer. For the tournament that comes soon, that shall be enough."
"Enough..?" XJ-V had to ask.
"Enough for you to do what you must," Longhua replied with a soft sigh. "Now, rest. Think upon the things I have said to you."
XJ-V stood to go, finally following Arha as she nipped and struck at his every limb.
"Arha hates riddles!" the little fox sprite yelped. "Now, Arha thinks her Cog is behind on his head-scratching quota and –"
"Master," XJ-V said before he left. "Did you see what it was that I saw in the Dao?"
Longhua's face, as usual, was unreadable.
"Did…" the Cog hesitated. "Did you know the whole time?"
The Master of the Eternal Dragon licked his wrinkled lips and bent down to inspect his cup of now very lukewarm tea.
"What you saw in the Dao is meant for you alone," he replied. "Just as I am meant to sup nothing but grog from every pot of tea in Ramor-Tai."
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