Chapter 23

The spring came and went. It was a season of growth for all of the children of the farm, with the twins advancing yet another stage to the fourth stage of the initiate’s realm, and all of them gaining an inch or more in height.

Safron in particular grew two inches, and was very proud of it.

Tan, however, was stuck. He was still at the seventh stage of the initiate’s realm, and he couldn’t seem to break through the bottleneck no matter how long he spent on top of the hill with the other children. It was frustrating to him because it seemed like this blockage came just as he’d decided to put forth more effort in cultivating.

It wasn’t that he was having trouble gathering the world’s Qi. That remained easy for him. It was rather that it didn’t seem to matter. He would feed the Qi into his dantian and attempt to compress it, but rather than compressing it seemed to … go somewhere.

He grew stronger and faster and smarter. He could read most of the courtly characters now, much to his pride, and his parents had given him a treatise on the nature of the wind for him to study. Which he did, reluctantly, but although he could mostly read it now, it remained confusing and esoteric in its meaning.

Despite being a stage above Pao, Pao remained the stronger combatant when they sparred, which they did frequently as Tan attempted to reclaim his place as the strongest child on the Shen farm. Pao met the matches with excitement. Not because he enjoyed embarrassing his friend and sort-of-brother, but because they were challenging and they helped his own advancement and the understanding of his Dao.

Pao became as immovable as a mountain, accepting thirty blows to end the fight in one. The strength that the children were using would shatter bones in regular children – even in mortal adults – but if they didn’t use their full strength in their spars they wouldn’t learn to use it in a real fight either. Fortunately they were both as robust as they were dangerous, and even their bruises and bumps faded within hours of their bouts.

At least, the bruises to their bodies.

Tan continued to pout after he lost. “What am I doing wrong, Zephyr?” he asked.

“You’re fighting like a child fights a child,” she answered him.

“We are children. That’s how we fight,” he argued.

“Yes. And Pao is older and stronger than you. If you were mortal children would you think that you could beat a boy who is a head again taller than you? Who has the muscles of a man? You are engaging him in a combat of physical strength. He is a rock, and you are the wind. How does the wind beat a rock,” the spirit asked.

“That’s a stupid question,” he told the spirit. “A rock and the wind don’t fight each other.”

“Don’t they? Where does the dirt of the world come from, Tan? Why are some rocks large and other rocks small?”

“You’re sounding like my stupid scroll,” he complained. “I’m going fishing.”

So he gathered his tackle and flew off to the lake, flying out ont the small island that he liked to fish from and sitting in his favorite spot. He cast his pole and watched the waves of the lake as they stirred beneath a gentle breeze.

He lost himself, for a while, watching those waves.

He didn’t notice when the fish ate his bait.

He just watched, hypnotized, as the wind blew the water. As the water formed a wave. As the wave crashed into the sand of the shore.

Had the sand always been sand?

He contemplated the nature of the wind, how it affected the water and formed waves. He understood that. Anyone could understand that. What if the wind caused waves in the earth as well? Could it?

Did the water break down rocks into sand? Could the wind do the same thing?

He thought, and he pondered the Dao.

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And suddenly as he was pondering, he felt a change within him. The hidden reservoire of Qi that Zephyr had been holding on to him was released, and all at once it ran through his body. She giggled in his ear and he realized what she had been doing.

He dropped his pole and moved into the lotus position, carefully channelling the energies coarsing through his body. It had taken him weeks to accumulate this energy, but now that it was loose he could hold onto only a fraction of it. It was enough to push him into the eighth stage, and once he was in the eighth stage he found that he could control the rest more easily.

It wasn’t enough to push him over the next threshold, but the difference in his control meant that he was able to have an overly productive cultivation session, placing him well along the path to the next stage.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hoarding Qi from me?” he asked Zephyr.

“You weren’t ready to advance. I could tell. So it wouldn’t have done you any good to try to push into the next stage by brute force. So I waited until you were ready, and then I gave you back what was yours,” she answered.

He frowned. “I wish you would have told me. You really surprised me when you let all of that Qi loose inside me.”

“Yes, it was very funny,” she agreed.

“That’s not what I meant.”

He checked his line and discovered his lost bait. Sighing, he put another worm on his hook. He paused for a second as he thought of something, and decided “Why not?” and he imbued the bait with a bit of his Qi as well.

He didn’t really think it would make a difference, but it wouldn’t hurt anything, would it?

Minutes after he cast his line, the bait was taken. He set the hook and began pulling the fish in, only to be surprised at the strength of the beast! Normally it was a simple matter to pull in even the largest fish, but this one refused to leave the water.

He braced his feet and reinforced his pole and the fishing line with his Qi to prevent them from breaking. He pulled and he pulled, fighting the amazingly strong fish that had taken his bait. He was glad that he’d thought to reinforce his tools, because if he hadn’t he would have lost the fish by now, he was certain.

He allowed the fish to take some slack, and then, with all of his might, he pulled as hard as he could.

The largest fish he’d ever seen burst forth from the water and landed on the shore. He jumped on it to keep it from splashing back into the water and held it until it went still. Which the massive carp did after a moment.

“Well this is embarrassing,” a booming voice said after a moment. Tan gasped as he realized that it was coming from the carp. “Would you, perhaps, mind allowing me to go back into the water? I assure you that I don’t actually taste very good.”

“You’re a spirit fish!” the boy exclaimed.

“Yes, well, you’re a boy,” the fish answered. “Now that we have that established, should I begin begging for my life, oh mighty cultivator? Or am I doomed to be on your plate, as so many of my children have been?”

Tan frowned, biting his lip. He didn’t actually like the idea of eating something that was intelligent enough to talk. “Are you angry that we’ve been eating fish from the lake?”

“It’s the nature of things that the small fish is eaten by the larger fish, and that fish are eaten by bear and fox and man,” the fish answered. “I had might as well be upset that the sun sets and that the lake freezes in the winter. I would be rather upset if you did eat me, but I suppose that there isn’t much I can do about it.”

The boy was quiet for a moment. “How long can you live while you’re out of the water?”

“I’m not certain. It’s not very much fun for me.”

“I want to ask my father what to do with you,” Tan explained. “I don’t know what he’ll say, and that’s why I need to ask him. I’ve never caught a spirit fish before but maybe he has, so he’ll know what to do. But if you die before I get back, then …” the boy trailed off.

“Do you have a water skin on you?” the fish asked him.

“I do.”

“Then put me in the waterskin and take me to your father. If he is a mighty cultivator, perhaps I can beg him for my life,” the fish said. And it abruptly shrank to the size of a minnow.

So Tan put the minnow inside his water skin, gathered up his tackle, and flew back to his home where he found his father laboring in the field. He explained what had happened, and the man had a laugh.

“I thought there was an old man in the lake, but I was never certain,” Tren said jovially.

“Are we going to eat it?” Tan asked.

“Many cultivators would without a second thought,” his father told him. “But I don’t much like the idea of eating something that’s smart enough to talk. Put him in the pond nearby. Maybe having a spirit fish will help bless the farm.”

“Okay,” Tan said. He flew over to the pond and emptied his water skin into it. The little minnow grew back to its full size in a flash. It peaked its head out of the water and looked at the boy.

“Thank you for your mercy, and thanks to your father as well,” the fish said, and then it vanished into the depths.

And that is how the Shen farm acquired its fourth spirit beast. From that day forth, it had a fox aligned to the element of fire, a rabbit of the earth, a monkey of the air, and of course a fish of the water.

The blessings of the four animals continued to improve the ambient Qi of the farm. Both the crops, the animals, and the children continued to thrive and grow.