Chapter 31

“You look tired,” Tan said, looking at the other two boys.

“Yeah. I got so absorbed in cultivating that I forgot to sleep,” Pao admitted. “The Vault of the Crystal Veins is really rich in Qi, and I wanted to absorb as much as I could, but before I realized it it was … I’m not even sure what time I finally got up to pee, so when I realized how late it was I went to bed and it feels like I only got an hour of sleep.”

“Yeah, me too,” Won admitted. “The Chamber of Ashes has a formation that’s really interested. It’s a small chamber, and it’s rich in fire Qi on it’s own. But when there’s a fire burning, the Qi is amplified and hyperactive, and really easy to cultivate with. I was so excited that even when I did realize how late it was, I decided to keep going until the fire burned out.”

“It burned out?” his sister asked. “It’s not like the one on our hill?”

“I guess not,” Won said. “When I meet the fire master they’ve selected for me I’ll ask why they burn wood instead of having a brazier like the one Master and Mistress provided for me on the hill.”

“I can answer that,” Zenith said, coming into the room where the children sat on expensive furniture that they utterly failed to appreciate the value of. “But it would be more valuable if you continued to ponder the question on your own and come to your own conclusion.”

Won frowned. “Yeah, Master Shen says that all the time. It’s so frustrating. Why can’t you just tell us stuff.”

“Because the Dao that is spoken is not the true Dao,” Zenith explained. Then he shrugged. “Perhaps today’s lesson will help you come to an answer for your question anyway, Won. Today I will show you each the mystery of the strangled flame. It is an ancient riddle, and the answer to it involves each of the four elements, which is why it is equally valuable to each of you.”

He rang a bell, and a servant rolled in a cart. Upon the cart was a large candle, a platter with water on it, and a glass dome. He showed each of the children the objects and proceeded to light the candle.

“Here we have each of the four elements,” he said, indicating the supplies. “The air, is of course the air. The Earth is represented in the glass dome and the platter. As well as the candle itself.”

“The candle represents fire,” Won argued.

“It represents the potential of fire,” Zenith argued. “The candle itself is made of supplies from the Earth, and it is therefor aligned with the earth.”

Won frowned, while Pao just nodded. Ko cocked her head to the side, while Tan looked board at the entire thing.

“Now, the candle is burning. Watch closely what happens when I cover the flame with the glass dome,” Zenith instructed, placing the dome over the lid so that it sat on the platter and, with the thin layer of water, formed a perfect seal.

The candle continued to burn for a moment, then flickered and went out.

“Why did that happen?” Zenith asked the children.

The children each frowned as the contemplated the question. They repeated the experiment several times, but each of the children could come up with no solid reason behind the mistery. Why did the candle burn fine right up until a moment after it was overed by the glass dome?

Zenith abruptly switched tactics, trading the platter of water for one with a slim layer of distilled alcohol. He lit the alcohol on fire, and the platter burned merily. Once more he covered it with the glass dome, and the fire quickly went out, except for the parts outside the dome which continued to burn until all of the fuel was exhausted.

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“It used up the air,” Tan said at last.

“There’s air under the dome, stupid,” Won argued.

“There is. But the fire changes it into … I don’t know. Different air. I can sense it but I don’t know the words for it,” Tan explained. “There’s the air that the fire burns, and there’s the air that the fire burns into. They’re both in the air normally and if you don’t cover the candle or the alcohol then there’s plenty of the first kind of air to burn up all the fuel. But if you cover it, then there’s not any air to burn. There’s just … I don’t know. Dead air.”

Won opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. He frowned. “Is that the entire lesson?”

“That is today’s lesson, yes,” Zenith agreed. “Spend some time thinking about it, each of you. While this little mystery mostly involves the elements of air and fire, it also impacts earth and water, because both of those things can either burn, or become air. You may either return to your cultivation rooms or you may wander the palace, whichever you prefer.”

Ko grinned. “When you get bored of cultivating, come to the Water Gardens,” she told the other children. “It’s a great place to cultivate, but it’s also a great place to play.”

When each of the children returned to their cultivation spot, they each lit a candle and studied the flame, each pondering the little flickering light, thinking thoughts that were both childish and profound in equal measure.

Tan had always known that he could snuff a fire by blowing it out. He hadn’t known that it was possible for air to quench a flame, the way that throwing water on it would. He explored the sensations he had felt within the jar, trying to recall the differences between the different types of air that he had sensed, vaguely, changing from one into the other under the glass dome.

He could sense the same process in the candle, now that he knew to look for it. He chewed his lip, and began trying to separate his control over the living air and the dead air.

Pao took a different lesson from the mystery of the strangled flame. The part of the lesson that he’d found most interesting was that Master Zenith had called the candle part of the earth. He examined the wax. He could sense within the wax water, earth, fire, and air. Not in the same amount, of course, it was mixed elements, as most things were. But he found that the master was right. The preponderance of the wax was, in fact, not fire Qi at all.

He lit the fire and observed as the the earth Qi was consumed in the flame. And once the fire had burnt itself out, the wax was no longer earth aligned, but air and water. His jaw dropped as he came to a realization about the nature of the relationship between the elements.

Won’s focus was upon the flame itself. This entire time he had been thinking of flame Qi as something independent of the other elements. Seeing the flame of the candle die in the absence of ‘live’ air made him realize that it was not.

Fire could not burn without air. It could not burn without earth. He frowned, as its relationship with water was a bit more nebulous, but while pure water extinguished a flame, there was water in wood, wax, and alcohol and those things burned.

He spent a long time contemplating the little flame of the candle, watching as Qi of the candle changed from one state to another.

Fire was not its own thing, he realized. Fire was not a permanent thing. Fire was becoming. It was a change from one state to another.

As he experienced this revolutionary – to him – idea, his eyes went wide. He ran to the center of the Chamber of Ashes and began to cultivate. He burst through into the fifth stage of the initiate’s realm, pushing further and further through as the revelation changed his very understanding of his dao.

He grinned as he came out of his trance after two hours of progress. His sister was going to be so mad!

Ko, meanwhile, was glaring at the candle, wondering what lesson the mystery of the strangled air taught about water. She couldn’t come up with an answer.

In the evening, after they had eaten, the children gathered in the water gardens as she’d suggested. They stripped down to their underwear and spent a while splashing in the water with the other children from the palace. When they were tired physically, mentally, and spiritually, they lay in a square with their heads together and spoke for a while.

They each spoke of their revelations. Ko was, indeed, angry at her brother for pulling ahead of her, but she was also happy for his success. When he casually mentioned that water was present even when fire was burning, she frowned, and left the others to stare at her candle again.

She did not experience a breakthrough that night, but as she pondered the dao, she came very close.