Daoist Scouring Medicine smiled at the fool blocking his path. It probably was not good for his spiritual development to be acting like this. The immortals of legend did not indulge petty grudges, or exalt in tormenting others.

  But it was such fun.

  "No. Absolutely not. I am no disciple you can bully into compliance."

  "I was not aware that I needed your permission to teach my disciple, Daoist Snowclad Heart." Daoist Scouring Medicine said mildly.

  "This is my class. Of course you need my permission."

  Heavens above. Did none of his colleagues even read the bylaws of the sect?

  "The Fathomless Well is a sect resource." Daoist Scouring Medicine explained. "All outer disciples are allowed access to it for three hours a week. You may teach as you wish, but you do not have the right to bar any member of the sect from cultivating independently. It's been a busy week, I haven't had the opportunity to bring Li Hou by. It would be a pity to let his allotted time for cultivation go to waste."

  "All forms of your allotment were stripped with your punishment."

  "That does not impact my disciple. He had nothing to do with Disciple Zhang's tragic misfortune. I of course, will not be cultivating here."

  "You could have chosen any other time."

  "Yes, I suppose I could have." Daoist Scouring Medicine agreed easily. "I did not."

  Daoist Snowclad Heart was making this far too easy.

  "You are barred from teaching."

  "I am barred from teaching the general disciples of the sect. I suppose you'd best make sure they don't learn anything from me while I am teaching my own student. Perhaps move your own class to a later time."

  "That is not the spirit of your punishment."

  "I would like nothing more than to debate the letter and spirit of the rules before the sect master and an imperial inspector. Would you like to raise an official complaint about my behavior?"

  Daoist Scouring Medicine would lose that argument, of course. Probably get slapped with additional punishment. But the rumors would cost the sect face, and Snowclad Heart would fall in standing as a result. He rather doubted the Snowclad Heart knew any of that though. It would be far too kind to call the man more of a warrior than a scholar. If the daoist could be said to be anything, it would be a devout chaser of jade beauties.

  "Or, perhaps you would rather settle this informally?" Daoist Scouring Medicine asked. "I have been spending a great deal of my time in front of a pill furnace of late. I would not be opposed to exchanging pointers with you, with this time slot the prize."

  Daoist Snowclad Heart grit his teeth and scowled. His hand drifted towards the sword held by his obnoxiously bright white sash.

  Oh, but this wouldn't do. Daoist Scouring Medicine hadn't been serious about the second offer. True, they held the same title, but Snowclad Heart was so young he hadn't even known Sect Master Xiang's era. It was one thing for a junior to be bold, another entirely to think that just because they shared the same title and realm, he was qualified to trade pointers with a man half a century his senior.

  There was no point wasting combat pills on such a petty matter.

  Scouring Medicine stepped forward, deep into his junior's personal space. The man hesitated a moment too long. Scouring Medicine's hand shot out, grabbing the man's shoulder opposite his sword.

  "Well?" Scouring Medicine asked, squeezing tightly. His powerful fingers dug deep into the muscle of the man's shoulder, threatening to crack his scapula outright. The sword might be a quicker path to power, but there were potent advantages to cultivating both one's body and spirit. "Shall I demonstrate to you some of the myriad applications of alchemy to martial combat?"

  The man bowed his head.

  "No, senior. That won't be necessary." To his credit, his voice at least did not crack.

  "Ooooooo." Li Hou trilled mockingly.

  "Manners." Daoist Scouring Medicine admonished.

  "Yes yes." The monkey chirped.

  Stepping past the man, Daoist Scouring Medicine launched into his lecture. He gave the man a gentle shove as he released him, all but daring him to strike him from behind. He could see the outer disciples lingering around the edges of their confrontation, drawn to the drama like flies to rotting meat. The coward would never do it, but it would be perfect if he did.

  A grievance like that would be a useful thing. Some strife between daoists was expected, but the rules that governed them were stricter than those that bound disciples. Striking from behind, with potentially lethal intention. That would be the sort of thing that he could leverage into a release from his oath to the Azure Mountain Sect.

  Daoist Scouring Medicine was not an elder, so it was still possible for him to leave the sect. But there were precious few legal avenues open to him. He did not have the resources to buy his way out. If his punishment remained in force, his lifespan would expire before he ever did. The fee went up with every year of service, every year of receiving resources from the sect. He could accept a commission in the Imperial Army without paying, but leaving the sect directly without paying thousands of spirit stones required the permission of either Sect Master Ren, or the emperor himself.

  There were a few other exits allowed to one in his position. The Imperial Guard. The Ministry of Daoist Affairs. The enforcement divisions of several other high ministries. Unfortunately, those were not jobs that one attained without friends in high places. His skill was beyond question, but daoists appointed to such roles were chosen first and foremost for loyalty, not skill.

  The sect's ability to directly command him was limited, in peace. Centuries of law and precedent had tightly codified what a sect could demand of its daoists. But in war, his life would become a far more liquid form of currency. Sect Master Ren and Elder Xun could deploy him as they wished, and he would have little recourse. He needed to become troublesome enough in peace that holding him for the possibility of war was not worthwhile.

  Desertion would be... Unfortunate. A wandering cultivator could expect a degree of tolerance. But to the empire, a deserter was no better than a demon, and would be hunted like one.

  "This is the Fathomless Well, Li Hou." He said slowly. This would be a proper lesson. There was value in the way he treated the monkey as a man. Introducing it to the proper forms of language and a myriad of ideas, if in shallow comprehension. But today he wanted to be understood fully.

  There was much he could do, with his own hands and a mortal monkey, to sow grievances among his peers. To maneuver the Sect Master into a position where he was forced to choose between retaining the useful daoist, or the loyal one.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  But if his monkey truly learned to cultivate. Well, there would be no limit to the havoc they could wreak together.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Li Hou was him! His man-name.

  "Fathomless Well." Orange-crest repeated slowly. He shivered. There was a cold here that was unlike other cold. It was old, and deep. Not coming and going with the sun or seasons, but eternal as the roots of mountains. The monkey stared at the deep pit in the ground. It called to him, in a way he struggled to set to form, even in the true-speech.

  "Yes. What feel you?" Brother Scouring Medicine asked.

  Orange-crest took a moment to think. His brother did not like to speak like orange-crest did. He clearly found it beneath him to 'butcher his noble tongue', whatever that meant. When he deigned to do so anyway, it meant either he was in a very good mood, or this thing was serious.

  Orange-crest took a deep breath. Loam and decaying leaves filled his nostrils. A stinging cold. A danger-scent of grinding and cracking, like the precursor of a rock slide or tree fall. It felt like the strange cave he'd found the other hairless ones in, only even colder and more dangerous.

  No, his brother was not merely in a good mood. This was a serious thing, more serious than writing or wine. As serious as 'Incendiaries' and the dark words his brother had shared with Daoist Enduring Oath.

  "Cold. Ginseng not ginseng. Earth." The monkey trailed off. He hated this, when he lacked words. Now that he has a few, he had become grab-greedy for them all. His brother always supplied them, but ideas were far harder than objects. Orange-crest suspected some of the words he'd been given were not exactly the ones he'd asked for.

  The monkey dug his fingers into the soil.

  "Like down earth."

  "Down earth is deep." His brother supplied.

  "Deep." The monkey echoed, tasting the sound.

  "Fathomless Well also means down earth with water. But it means more than that. This place is special."

  Orange-crest did not understand.

  "No learn."

  "Yes. But no learn bad. Let us try a different angle. You say ginseng not ginseng."

  "Yes." Orange-crest could smell it. It wasn't a tang or a plant-fire. But there was a similarity, between the gnarled little roots that his brother would sometimes give him for a snack and this cold dark deep place.

  "Qi. Qi is what you are feeling."

  "Qi?" The monkey tasted the word. He shivered. It was a small word. But the look he shared with his brother, the expectation in his eyes. That was not a small look. It was a look that spoke of secrets beyond the numbers he'd been taught. Mysteries and wonders as deep as the well before him.

  "My ginseng have qi. This mountain has qi. I have qi. Daoists have qi. You have qi."

  "The monkey doesn't even know what qi is."

  The new voice came from the pack. The one led by Daoist Snowclad Heart, who his brother had just dominated.

  His brother looked up.

  "It's a common resource Daoist Scouring Medicine." Daoist Snowclad Heart said smugly.

  Emboldened, the same man spoke up again.

  "I can't believe-"

  Orange-crest's brother gestured sharply, and an invisible force gripped the back of the disciple's head. Instantly, the man was bent forward, his face firmly pressed into the thick black soil surrounding the well.

  "Your teacher is speaking. You should not be." Daoist Scouring Medicine said, a wry smile on his face.

  "What do you think you're doing!"

  "Mmrgpmh." The dirt-eating disciple added, struggling to breath.

  "Maintaining order, since you seem to be struggling to do so."

  Daoist Snowclad Heart looked like he'd bitten into an unripe loquat. The two men matched glares for a moment, until Daoist Scouring Medicine released his student.

  "The Phantom Palm, is made possible through qi." He said, turning back to Orange-crest.

  Orange-crest understood. Qi meant heart-fire. That strange and wonderful new thing that allowed him to push past his limits and perform great feats of magic like his brother and the Monkey King.

  "Yes learn." He chirped brightly. He stoked his flames, letting them flow down to his legs. He leapt into the air, high as he could.

  "Yes learn indeed." His brother said warmly, as the monkey descended to earth after its obviously qi fueled leap. "Come, let us enter the Fathomless Well itself. You've grown much this last week, but you are now my student, and I expect you do more than merely grow."

  Orange-crest followed his brother into the cold, dark pit. From a distance it'd merely looked like a great hole fit to swallow up a dozen tigers. But as they approached, the monkey saw that a wide ring of stone surrounded the pit. A far smaller entrance, comfortable for a small monkey, but tight for a grown man, sat just to its side.

  As they entered through the smaller opening, they monkey shivered again, far more violently. The strange-deep-cold was harsher here. The smell of danger so close he could almost taste it. Tunnels this small were dangerous. Good for hiding things, but not good for monkeys.

  But his brother showed no fear, so orange-crest wouldn't either. His brother was strange and domineering and orange-crest didn't understand him. But this place was important to him and important to qi.

  These twin beacons held at bay the mortal fear growing in him. A thirst for secrets that could never be satisfied, and a hunger to become closer to the strange brother that had introduced him to a world he could never have imagined.

  They circled the pit a hundred hundred times, descending deeper into the earth with every revolution. Small windows opened out onto the great pit at the center, but with every step, the light steadily died.

  As they walked into the dark together, monkey tightly clutching his brother's robe, they spoke.

  "Why no grow?" The monkey asked.

  "Growth is a process of instinct. One's nature makes it possible, indeed nigh effortless, but imposes firm limitations upon what one will become." Daoist Scouring Medicine said, returning to his customary register. Some things should not be so crudely simplified. Better a fuzzy image of profound truth, than a clear understanding of a simplified lie. "Plants grow. From the moment of its creation, every seed knows what it shall become. Every animal gives birth to its own kind. A monkey can no more sire a tiger than a lotus seed bloom into a man. Each of us, as we grow, attains the form and power nature allots to us. We grow larger and stronger. Smarter and wiser. But there are limits imposed upon us by heaven. No man will grow as strong as a tiger. No mortal monkey will see its hundredth year."

  "Growth bad?" Orange-crest wasn't sure he understood. Being a monkey was the most-best, and he was sure tigers felt the same way. Why would a being want to be something other than what it was?

  "No." His brother said with certainty. "Growth is good. Cultivation is better. Cultivation is how we surpass these limits. How we become more of what we are, more of what we wish to be. A man lives longer than a monkey. But a cultivator lives longer than a man. A cultivator is stronger than a tiger, and flies like a bird. We command the elements of the earth and the magics of the heavens."

  "Cultivators are most good?"

  "Yes. Cultivators are the best of their kind, whether man or animal. But one cannot be born a cultivator." Daoist Scouring Medicine winced, that was a grave oversimplification. But he didn't need to explain rare concepts like connate cores or descending immortals to Li Hou right now. "Only through effort and study, or heaven-defying good fortune, can one become a cultivator."

  Orange-crest was sold. In truth, he'd been sold since being told he could become stronger than a tiger. He was a monkey, but what monkey would not want to be strong enough to wrestle a tiger? He would never be a king, but if he could be one tenth the cultivator the king must be, well, he would be a very proud monkey. A credit to his king and brother.

  "I learn." The monkey said, speaking volumes with the two words.

  Daoist Scouring Medicine smiled. He doubted Li Hou could see it in the dark. He remembered how utterly black the well had been, when he'd first walked this tunnel as a mortal almost a century ago. He'd shown as little fear as Li Hou did now, though the dark had all but unmanned him. He'd been so distracted he didn't notice when the procession stopped, walking right into the broad back of the man who would later take the name Daoist Enduring Oath.

  Fresh from the streets of Shendu, scarcely three weeks out from the parting with his now long dead parents. It felt like another lifetime. His blood had been hot and his sight short. The parting with his parents, after they sold him to the sect for a pittance, had been amicable. But not honest. He had not been angry, He'd all but leapt at the opportunity to become a cultivator. But he'd been so young, and they had never been educated. They'd struggled to put into words all they'd felt for him.

  It was one of the great treasures of his heart, that he had managed to find them almost twenty five years later. Back in those heady days when he, Enduring Oath, and Guarding Thunder had been the inseparable rising stars of the Azure Mountain. He hadn't had long to get to know them once more. Less than a decade with his mother, just over one with his father. He'd only spent two weeks each year with them. A great deal of time, and yet none at all.

  Yet, some of the nights spent at the small country house he'd purchased for them, sipping tea and watching the stars. Those quiet mortal nights had shaped him more than he ever admitted aloud, even to Daoist Enduring Oath, a man his brother in all but blood.

  Daoist Scouring Medicine shook his head in the darkness. He was getting sentimental in his advanced age. There was work to be done.

  "Yes." He agreed. "You shall learn. And I shall teach."