Chapter 305: Old Bai
Mercury found himself with a ball of jagged glass in his chest.
It scraped his lungs whenever he breathed too deep. It felt uncomfortable and rough inside him, a layer of abrasive when he moved. He felt it grind against his ribcage, sandpaper on his burnt bones.
When he added to it, he did so carefully. Sharp by sharp, adding them with gentle, mental fingers, and still often cutting himself for his trouble. Golden-Core was, to at least some degree, about truth. And Mercury’s truth was, in parts, uncomfortable.
He was still petty at heart, after all. Jealous and greedy and lazy to some degree. A workaholic in others. He got overly attached, had a poor sense of time and easily lost track of it, he was a bit arrogant on top of that. And he held grudges like it was nobody’s business.
After four and a half years in another world entirely, he’d still not forgiven his damned parents, for example.
All of those truths were part of who he was, though. Some glass shards fit more nicely, easily, and were more gentle to touch. He was calm and patient and kind, and extremely forgiving, actually. Sleighting him became harder as people’s actions turned more inconsequential.
These days, he’d easily forgive people who tried to kill him, but he’d be absolutely enraged at people calling him a beast, still. There were contradictions about him being kind and angry, but he was fine with those. Who didn’t have a few contradictions about themselves, after all?
A little hypocrisy, a few things that are at odds with each other, those are the sortsa things that make people people, he thought.
So, with a soft sight, he let it go. He added another small piece of jagged glass to the mix, another small truth that he disliked, that he would rather discard, perhaps would have loved to be untrue, but that was part of him nonetheless.
He accepted it, placed it in the core, and moved on with his life. The meditation exercises took longer these days. Another page had passed since he collected splinters, and his mastery of fire techniques continued skyrocketing.
Day by day, his mastery changed. He learnt to have fire blast, fry, shoot forth and blanket things. But what he did differently from the Skyflame Monks was the way he saw the element. To them it was all brightness, linked to light and the sun and warmth.
Mercury was not like that. He had a bit of a… broader perspective, he could say. Mainly, that was at worth. Mercury had treated shadow as fabric, and made mana solid as ice. He’d even caught up the rain of fire in his , and made trees grow with .
Suffice to say, the boundaries between elements were, to him, a little bit thinner than perhaps most people. Liquid metal acted almost like water. So, he simply tried it.
He took a water aspected technique from the peak of Mutilation, a simple irrigation one that made water flow forth in a steady stream to flood the fields. Then, he changed the steps slightly. They came faster, with more force. A quick crescendo, rather than a slow, steady push.
The qi pulsed through his body in a different, flickering pattern, too. Conjuring flames rather than floods. He breathed in, once, then held his breath, executing the motion in a swift set of steps.
Fire poured forth like a liquid. The flames gushed out as if released by the tap of an enormous sink, crashing to the floor and spilling forwards. They smothered the sand, waves of them crawling across it. By all means, the flames behaved more like lava than fire usually would.
Mercury put a hand through it, picking some of it up. His glove would have burnt, of course, but it was made from the , so it mattered little. Underneath, his flesh was already a ragged mess of being burnt away. The sun had grown so hostile over the past pages, that even with his veil, Mercury was often reduced to little more than a magically propelled skeleton.
It was sort of sad, but then again, he had other senses, other means of motion. It limited him little. Like water around a rock, he simply flowed around the problem. It didn’t cease to exist, but he wore away at it.
[Your understanding of has increased! -> (low)>]
Ah. It did make sense for this to crystallize his understanding of magic.
Mercury had, after all, peered into just how malleable all magic really was.
If he could cast a water-aspected technique with fire, then what was stopping him from doing the same in reverse? Or use a rock technique from Slaughter with fire qi. Since that was what he was most familiar with.
Of course, he hadn’t studied many manuals there, but he did still get a few from Gun-Byeong, so he pulled one out. A simple one, that manifested a rocky wall. Mercury went through the modified motions.
A brutal stomp, and a wall of fire rose up. Solid. He rasped his knuckles against it, and the thing felt a little like warm glass. Soft enough to bend slightly. Hard enough to produce a slight ringing sound. He hummed in amusement.
Okay, yeah. He could kind of freely swap out elements, huh? That was fun. He’d have to experiment with it a little while.
Now, while Mercury was making the idea look simple, it wasn’t at all. Proven by the fact that Elder Yue was entirely unable to practice his modified techniques. Even when they were made to work with fire qi, they used principles, motions, mindsets that the Skyflame Monks simply didn’t teach.
In fact, he was doing something that, historically, people tended to blow themselves up with. But, then again, reality manipulation was kind of his specialty, these days. He simply found the resonance points of the techniques, isolated their principles, then modified them to adjust to a different element. Easy stuff. Not at all volatile.
“I’m sorry,” Mercury said.
“It’s fine,” elder Yue waved him off with her remaining arm. “Barely hurts.”
“That’s cuz I’m suppressing your pain.”
“Ah.”
Keiko rolled her eyes at her idiot apprentice. Elder Yue had gotten a little overzealous in trying to replicate an earth based technique. A simple projectile launch. It involved conjuring a rock with a stomp, then striking it to launch it.
Her arm had sunk into the flames she, herself, had conjured, since they hadn’t been rigid. So now, Mercury and Keiko were busy making sure she had skin to cover it. The master of the peak of Fleeting Life was taking it seriously for one of the first times since Mercury met her, truly putting her entire expertise to work.
Often, she’d use mundane techniques, since many mortal patients must be mended without qi. Their bodies simply couldn't handle the expenditure and the burden that advanced magical healing placed on them. But elder Yue was tough. So, Mercury saw Keiko use proper medicinal techniques for the first time.
And he found that the old woman was violent.
The fact that her healing stemmed from being a brutal killer was visible in the structure of the techniques themselves. They were full of harsh edges, demands on the body, boiling blood to make flesh, forcing skin to stretch. They were viciously effective, but they were not easy on the body.
If she used one on a mortal, Mercury could see it ending as a bloody spectacle, and he understood why she’d not rely on them. Now, though, elder Yue Mei barely even grimaced. The old woman looked placid as her skin stretched across the wound, charred bits of black flaking to the ground.
Her arm was soon covered in raw, new, rosy skin that quickly aged to match the rest of her body. All she did was hum, and explain that she was hungry. Mercury’s grafts and mana-based stitches were already incorporated into her new flesh or actively dissolving.
Keiko was left panting, sweating. Her skin was pale, as though she had aged ten years, just from qi exhaustion. The woman was worn thin, but at least her friend was safe. Hair sticking to her face, she gave a wrinkled smile. “I’m glad you’re… alright.”
The words left her like a long held sigh, like the anxiety leaving her body. She sank backwards into one of the chairs Mercury had made, sinking into it, her eyes falling closed, chest steadily rising and falling. Mercury looked at her for a long moment.
Age, huh? There was a small sting in his chest as he regarded the two old women in the room with him. Yue shook out her new arm, testing it. “A bit numb,” she commented, poking and pinching her own skin. Then, she smiled at him. “But it’ll do.”
Mercury looked at their wrinkled faces. He felt a bit of premature sadness wrap its fingers around his heart. “I’m sorry for getting you hurt,” he said.
Yue waved him off with all the grace of an old rhinoceros. “Don’t mind it, boy,” she said. “Come. Make us some tea, if you want to be useful. And bring me some biscuits from the kitchen, too. Yue will want to eat when she wakes.”
Lowering his eyes faintly, Mercury nodded. He went, and fulfilled the request. In fact, he made tea himself, going to collect water from the well, and boiling it with small flames conjured from his hands.
He reviewed what he’d seen.
The patterns of medicinal qi. What healing looked like. The way Keiko had wielded it. With a butcher’s precision. He breathed in, breathed out, and plucked a leaf from a nearby tree. His eyes focused on it.
“,” he whispered.
The leaf came undone. It was suddenly made of lines and connections, attributes spelled out as woven in a tapestry. He breathed in, then out. His mind fell into resonance. Rezil.
His memory, the circles, the motions of qi in Keiko’s body, mirrored.
Reality shifted to the side.
Rezil was the art of synchronization. That which one imagined, made real, in a way that altered the threads. It was taking hold of the weave of the world, and making it take shape. Mercury didn’t take hold of the world, though, but of the thing that was the idea of a leaf.
Plucked from a tree, it vibrated. A faint glow spread across the green in his palm, travelling along the strings that defined its existence as they rearranged. Formed circles and patterns.
“It’s so similar,” Mercury whispered.
Like veins bringing blood through the body, medicinal qi was deceptively simple. It was life in and of itself, it was a million cells working together, and it was the simplest cycle. Qi, in a circle, spreading out in tethers, with mechanisms to refresh and vent used up energies. It was a heart and lungs, roots and fibres, breath and motion.
The leaf in front of him changed. The veins on it rearranged, forming the intricate circle, the looping, careful pattern he had seen in Keiko’s body. It glowed, grew, sprouted new buds, and almost tore itself apart, until Mercury arrested that.
He had the threads snap back into place, the leaf altered. Its very biology painted the pattern of life qi alteration. He tilted his head at it. “Hm,” he hummed.
Then, he crushed it, and placed it in the tea, alongside cinnamon bark. A faint green glow spread through the water, a little like bioluminescent algae, then it dissolved.
It was the simplest sort of minor healing potion one could make. Using healing qi was weaker than just seeking out vitality aspected ingredients, but that was fine. This would be more of a refreshing drink, like ice cream on a hot summer day, rather than a life-saving elixir.
But the idea of modifying things that were already out there in the world was a useful one. Mercury could shift things to one side or the other a little after all. Perhaps he ought to use that a little more commonly.
Breathing in softly, he felt the scrape of glass against his chest, a little softer now. He kept the water hot as the herbs stewed in it, and he slowly carried the kettle back to the old women. A few more minutes passed in silence, until he deemed it ready, and poured the mixture into small clay cups.
Keiko stirred at the fragrance. Her smile was soft and weak, but her aged fingers still curled around the cup, like gnarled branches of oak. She brought it to her lips and drank. “Good tea,” she whispered quietly, colour faintly returning to her skin.
Elder Yue smiled at her declaration, then took a sip of her own. She nodded happily in agreement, then quickly downed the entire cup and poured herself another. “Ah, but Mercury!” she chided. “You forgot the cookies.”
He smiled, just a little, and went to fetch them.
- - -
Zyl stood in the kitchen with an apron on, lifting a tray from the oven. He wore thick mitts, even though he probably didn’t need them at all. It was about the experience, he always said when Mercury asked.
The mopaaw didn’t know if he agreed with that, but then again, everyone used different things to anchor themselves. To Zyl, it was important to feel a little normal sometimes. He was used to scaring people or weirding them out, so being able to feel a bit average was important to him.
So, he wore oven mitts to avoid getting burnt. Mercury smiled. Then he stole one of his recent cookies. The pastry fell apart in his mouth with a satisfying crunch, tasting sweet and crumbly. “Ohhh, you’ve gotten better!”
Smiling softly, Zyl reached over, put his hand under Mercury’s veil, and ruffled the mopaaw’s hair - one of the few parts that didn’t usually get burnt off by the sun, since it was rather fire resistant. “I’ve gotten better at regulating the heat.”
That was good to hear, too, Mercury thought. Zyl had always struggled a bit with the heat of his flames, and baking had been a good outlet to have him practice controlling that while also giving him something to do. Since he also quite liked gardening, he would sometimes garnish things with homegrown fruit.
Not today, though. The Skyflame monastery was much, but overgrown with tasty plantlife was not one of them. The environment here was mostly barren, with a few fields of hardy plants and livestock to keep everyone fed. Even Zyl’s baking was done with flour that they traded for.
Mercury picked up a few of the cookies in a little metal box he had made himself, and after giving Zyl’s hand a quick telekinetic squeeze, he was off to the old ladies again. His chest rose and fall easier. This kind of mundaneity was indeed important.
His steps carried through the hallways as he thought about his time in the monastery. The ways he awed people and the ways they treated him in return. Often, the local youths and apprentices would look at him with wonder and envy. Some aspired to be a little like him, others watched him in hopes of learning his secrets.
According to the elders, he was doing the youths good. By showing them properly executed techniques and what a little bit of thinking can do. Mercury had never seriously injured himself while practicing, after all - though, to be fair, his standard for serious injury was a little skewed. Even decapitation wasn’t particularly troublesome for him anymore.
Still. Making sure they had a proper reference for so many techniques so rapidly was inspiring. And his quick and full mastery was a great source of enlightenment for many of the kids. Even some of the elders watched him as he went through his practices.
The eclectic sorcerer had developed a bit of a savant’s reputation. Which amused him greatly. He smiled faintly, walking down the hallway, carrying a box of cookies, when a gently hand landed on his shoulder.
Mercury flinched away from the touch, surprised at the sudden emotion. He hadn’t expected it, and with his skin run raw from sunlight, it sent a spike of pain through him not properly suppressed by . Turning his face, he found an elderly man.
“Ah, apologies,” the geezer said. He had a short, triangle-shaped beard and a mustache that fed into it. Green eyes glinted faintly as he looked Mercury up and down, holding a hint of mischief. His scalp was shaved perfectly clean, shining faintly with an oil finish, and he wore the robes of an elder over his rounded belly, yet with more embroidery.
Taking a deep breath, Mercury let his emotions settle for a moment. Then, he inclined his head, the tiniest motion. “It’s fine. Please, try not to touch me without warning, if you would?”
“Indeed, indeed. I should have listened more closely to the rumors. They said you were a distant sort,” the old man said with a wide smile. “I’m too used to being overly familiar. As I said, apologies.” At the end of his talk, almost as an afterthought, the old man dipped his head, as if he hadn’t needed to do so in a while and just remembered proper manners.
“All forgiven,” Mercury said, waving him off. Then, the mopaaw nodded towards the hallway, and after a gesture from the old man, began slowly walking down the long hallway, with the rounded baldy walking next to him. “You reached out to me. Is there something you wish to speak of?” Mercury asked.
With a small laugh, the old man nodded. “Fohoho! There may yet be, but there is time enough for that.” For a moment, he reached out as if to clap Mercury on the back, but then paused halfway through, cleared his throat, and crossed his hands behind his back, like grounding unruly children. “I’ve been away from this home of mine for a while now, young man. Would you introduce yourself to me?”
Mercury smiled for a moment, with a faint shake of his head. The old man was a bit like an overly well-meaning grandpa. It was hard to stay mad at him. “I’m Mercury,” he said simply.
“Just Mercury?” the old man interrupted with a faint smile. “Surely you have titles to your name. No scion from an important family?”
“I have more names, but they don’t matter much. It’s just what a friend and I came up with,” he said, a hint of bittersweet nostalgia clinging to the memory. “So, Mercury will do just fine.”
The old man gave him a long look, and a small sigh. “I see, I see.” Then, he gestured for the mopaaw to continue.
“I’m a traveller from the west, and I’ve come here to learn a bit more about cultivation, since I seem to be afflicted with a curse.”
Humming and stroking his beard again, the old man nodded. “A mean curse, too. Tell me, young man, how are you not folding over in agony?”
At that, Mercury snickered. “I’m tough,” he said simply. “This much isn’t too bad. I can endure more.”
“Hmpf, Sorcerers.” The old man clicked his tongue.
With a huff, Mercury continued. “What else do you want to know about me?”
“What do you enjoy doing?”
“Travelling, studying magic, wood- and metalworking, cooking, and recently I’ve been learning the healing arts.”
Nodding, the old man posed another question. “And what kind of person are you?”
“The kind that’s rather patient with the antics of old men, evidently,” Mercury said with a smile that was both kind and a little smug at his answer. The old man laughed at it, holding his belly.
“Fohohoho! Indeed, indeed you are. Thank you for humoring this old fogey,” he said. Then, he stepped forward, and the seemingly endless hallway suddenly blurred. The two of them arrived in front of a door, the kind of door that might lead to two old women, one injured and one exhausted. The man pushed it open.
“Make yourself at home at this monastery of mine,” he said with a smile, stepping into the room and waving for Mercury to follow. As soon as he entered, elder Yue’s eyes went wide.
She quickly dipped her head and clasped her fist at him, giving a small bow as a greeting. The old man waved her off the moment she began.
“Head mo-”
“Oh, none of that, none of that, will you?” he said with a gentle smile. “Mercury, you said, yes? You can call me old Bai.”
Elder Yue almost spat out her tea at the insanity of it. She wanted to protest, but when the old man raised a single eyebrow at her, the protests fell silent. Then, with a happy smile and a nod, old Bai reached into the cookie box, and withdrew a single pastry, dropping it into his mouth, while sitting down on a spare chair that creaked a little under his weight. “Ohhh, what a lovely pastry,” he praised, chewing away happily, smiling brightly.
Mercury wasn’t stupid, of course. He had known that he was dealing with the leader of the Skyflame Monks from the moment that the old man first touched him, undetected. The way that the hallway stretched. And, of course, what he saw in the old man.
With these eyes of his, Mercury could peer into the truth of the world. And the truth is that the old man in front of him was already past the Golden-Core realm. He was a true powerhouse, holding the force required to shake heaven and earth.
And he had just returned home from a lengthy excursion, it seemed. Now, he was sitting and talking with elder Yue like an old friend, even as the old woman seemed to feel a little awkward at the interaction. Keiko herself just smiled, eating a cookie or two occasionally.
When old Bai noticed that Mercury had not sat down yet, he began fussing over the traveller. “Come now!” he said. “Rest your bones. You don’t want to wear them down at your age.”
Smiling politely, Mercury just poured the old man a cup of tea. “Here,” he said. “It will help if you’ve worn down your bones,” he joked.
“Fohohoho! It’s rare to meet so bold a youth,” old Bai said, his eyes glinting with mirth. In a breath, pinprick killing intent hovered over Mercury’s skin, a faint shiver along his spine, as if a predator staring at him. But he remained calm, simply handing over the cup. Old Bai sniffed it carefully, then downed it all at once like a shot of alcohol. “Haaaah,” he sighed contentedly, patting his belly. “Good tea!”
Shaking his head in amusement, Mercury did sit down on a chair, resting his chin on the back of his hand and watching the old man as he talked about nothing at all. Old Bai didn’t mention his excursion or where he’d been. He didn’t mention the jagged scar that ran from his shoulder to his hip, hidden underneath his robes. He didn’t mention the way his eyes would dart to Mercury, a hint of shrewd wariness.
Instead, he laughed. He asked how the monastery was, how the disciples did, what antics the younger generation had been up to while he was gone. Mercury watched him. His eyes shone with a faint purple. The probing kind of colour. His curiosity got the best of him.
As the moments drifted by, and comfort settled in, Mercury looked deeper. He sank into ihn’ar. With his mental hands, he parted the golden veil of reason, then pulled the iridescent veil of reality back like ripping a new sheet from a daily calendar. Old Bai’s constant stream of conversation hitched for a moment, but just a breath.
Mercury reached for it once more. The white veil of separation resisted for a moment. Then it, too, tore.
Past and present collapsed into the same moment. Distance turned meaningless. Mercury saw the old man’s core, so he was already touching it. Hearing it. The way qi roared through his veins, the way violence and fire stood in his very heart.
“Young man,” the elder warned, his voice a little wary.”
But Mercury kept staring. His eyes saw the . Cores didn’t lie. They held all the facets of a person, good and bad. They were the consolidation of a personal creed, they grew with a user’s philosophy. And the old monk’s core was massive. It was an ocean, a brutal, roaring sea of fiery qi.
“Young man,” the voice came colder.
It was rude, but Mercury watched anyway. His mind ran wild with ideas. His eyes shone with light as he absorbed a hundred thousand pieces of information at once. His mind heated, strained, then grew against its boundaries. An unfolding flower within a box, breaking the walls. Wings of thread stretching and slowly spreading.
[ has levelled up! 5>]
Slowly, the old man rose from his seat, and still, Mercury stared. Another breath passed.
Old Bai stood in front of Mercury. His green eyes shone. The smile was gone from his face. His hand was wrapped in fire. He reached forward.
Mercury closed his eyes.
The violence in the room disappeared. The old man was back in his seat a moment later, still not thrilled. “That was rude,” he said, voice thin.
Smiling softly, Mercury kept his eyes closed. They bled a little, his mind overclocked, but he held the image in his head. What it took to get to the peak of Golden-Core. “Yes, it was.”
“If you were polite, you’d apologize,” old Bai chided.
“If I were,” Mercury agreed.
The old man couldn’t keep up his frown at that. He cracked a small smile, and shook his head. “Dang youth,” he said. “They know no respect.”
Keiko slapped the old man’s arm. “As if you haven’t been probing him since the moment you two met.”
“Fohoho,” he laughed awkwardly, at least having the decency to blush at the hypocrisy. “Well, yes, but I couldn’t spot anything more than Gilded realm cultivation. Other than that he is an entirely blank slate. I can barely even spot if he’s human!”
Mercury smiled. and the inversion of via into did quite a lot to hide himself away. He was a private person, after all. Broadcasting his strength was impolite. So, he left it at his cultivation.
“And what a bizarre cultivation base, too! It’s as if he’d reached the Gilded realm in… what, a handful pages?”
“Less than that,” elder Yue whispered.
The old man’s face snapped at her, mouth hanging open. “What?!” he said.
Mercury laughed. “Ahahahaha!” This old man wore his emotions on his sleeves. What a breath of fresh air in the cultivation realm.
The ball of glass in his chest tightened. Mercury knew it would change soon.