Ascension

Tong Ru had taken in two followers in his lifetime: Jiang Peng, and Han Muchun.

Jiang Peng had had a teacher before him; not being a disciple of his sect, but entrusted to him to look after for an old friend that had passed. Unwilling to cast away his original Master, Jiang Peng was only a disciple of the sect in name, and had been traveling abroad for over half a year. He was mediocre in talent, slightly naive and inarticulate, not too guarded against others, held no intent to harm people, and had some respect for Tong Ru, though they weren’t very close.

Compared to this senior-brother-in-name, his authentic disciple, Han Muchun, was much too vibrant.

Tong Ru would sometimes think that if Han Muchun’s life had been a little more peaceful, and he’d had fewer rough patches in his youth, there would have been no opportunity for him to be accepted into his sect. Perhaps he would have been able to go out and be a general or a minister in the secular world, or at least be able to become the greatest scholar of a generation. That thought was caused by his regard for his precious disciple, of course, but it didn’t come from nothing.

At his twelfth reckoned year, Han Muchun got onto the roll for the autumnal provincial exams as its top scorer, making a momentary uproar that pressed up against the sky for the sages to hear.

The following year, he should have been going into the capital for the metropolitan exams, but his father happened to pass from serious illness. His mother had died early due to difficult birth, so he and his father had depended upon each other for survival, their affections deep. No longer in the mood to take more exams, Han Muchun brought a few household members home for the funeral, only to unfortunately come across bandits en-route. All of the others died beneath the blades of the thieves. When Han Muchun’s life hung by a thread, he had the fortune to be saved by Tong Ru, who was passing by while collecting medicinal materials.

Commoners had a saying; there was a certain type of person that was too brilliant, and such sophisticates could not remain in the human world, inevitably going back from whence they had come early. Han Muchun might have been born with the fate of an early death; Tong Ru’s casual rescue seemed to have just put a small fork in his road, whereupon, a hundred years later, he would yet return to his proper course of an unlucky fate.

At the age of thirteen, Han Muchun was taken back to Fuyao Mountain. After worshipping Tong Ru as a master, he came to witness that cultivators and mortals were not the same, and thus abandoned his hopes of scholarly achievements. A child that had studied hard for so many years suddenly relinquishing it as soon as he said he would inevitably made Tong Ru question him.

Han Muchun had been raising the flowers outside of the Hall of Ignorance to be big and strong. At the time, he spoke casually whilst rolling up his pant legs to water the plants. “Cultivator, or mortal; you can only choose one to be. How can one delve into both sides?”

“Why couldn’t they?” Tong Ru asked back.

“Cultivators and mortals are worlds apart. If cultivators of remarkable powers meddled with the affairs of the mortal world, would the mortals not be as ants? Would the human world not be in great chaos? What benefit would cultivators gain from stirring up the mortals? None of them produce anything, and even if they practice inedia, they still need clothes to wear, and to splurge on themselves every once in a while, don’t they? Forging tools uses up all sorts of materials, doesn’t it? If they could buy them, who would ever go searching far and wide for them by themselves? Were cultivators to be the same as mortals, everyone would certainly be split up amongst the three religions and nine schools, and inevitably dispute. Would making that extreme sin not cause all the big guys to qi deviate together?”

Tong Ru had never been aware that the other had been inwardly mulling that idea over on the land’s behalf, practically not recognizing this ever-casual disciple of his.

“That’s why,” Han Muchun hummed a little tune as he mumbled, “mixing the two together won’t do anyone any good… everyone says that superpowers will ascend, but I’ve never found record of anyone ascending in the Library Tower. Master, do you think that ‘ascension’ is just a carrot?”

“…It’s… it’s a what?”

“A carrot? One that hangs in front of a donkey’s nose. Cultivators are all that donkey chasing after the carrot of ascension that hangs in front of them. They have no choice but to focus all their efforts into chasing it, giving them no spare time to harm the human world.”

Hearing him speak more and more excessively, Tong Ru ended up shooting a smack at his head. “Such nonsense. All you know to do is randomly make things up… how are your studies on the technique I asked you to practice going?”

Han Muchun proudly flung off a spot of mud on his arm. “Taken to Heart, Like a River!”

Tong Ru was enraged to the point that fire sprang three zhang off of him. “It’s ‘Taken to Heart, Like a Flood’! If you don’t practice it diligently, it’ll be useless, you disgrace!”

Han Muchun was extremely intelligent, but lazy. His efforts were comparable to the sharpening of a knife; every time he got firmly stuck on that thread Tong Ru would rarely let him off of, he would refused to use even a little bit more strength. Just grasping the estimate degree of ‘higher will’ took an unknown amount of brainpower, yet he seemed to prefer to spend brainpower than spend physical power.

This made Tong Ru, who believed himself to ‘need’ talents to teach, worry near to death.

Jiang Peng was not present the year round, leaving just this one precious disciple of his, though. Tong Ru watched him grow from a half-grown youth to a handsome young man, and could never steel himself to be too strict. Every once in a while, when he seized some free time, he couldn’t help but give him a few words of advice. “Xiao Chun, it is like we cultivators are working our boats against the current, led along by the Great Dao our whole lives, pursued by our lifespans. We dare not slack off in the slightest… peoples’ talents are indeed split up into different grades, and your aptitude is laudable, but after you walk this path for a long time, you will understand that luck and inner character are much more important than talent.”

Han Muchun obediently offered up tea, smiling as ingratiatingly as ever on his surface. “Drink, Master.”

With his earnest advice taken as wind past the other’s ears, Tong Ru didn’t accept the cup, but picked up the novella next to him at lightning speed, then thrashed it at Han Muchun’s forehead. “Lord Graduate of Provincials, which tome of the sages taught you to be so virtuous?”

He didn’t actually hit him, and Han Muchun didn’t actually dodge, merely shrinking his neck back a bit with a grin. “Tomes aren’t even what I want to read. To tell the truth, I always wanted to be an ordinary gardener, but my father’s health was never good, and he kept saying that he was afraid that he wouldn’t see me grow up to become anything. Then, I thought of taking the exams a little bit earlier, and getting an honor to let him feel at ease… now, he’s gone. You’re my only family, Master.”

Saying as much, he lowered his gaze, looking at the slightly rippled surface of the tea in the cup. His features were blurred in the liquid.

Tong Ru felt a tremble in his heart at the word ‘family’.

Han Muchun’s eyes curved up. “I’ll be nice and filial to you, of course. Once…”

He had wanted to say, ‘Once you’re old, I’ll take care of you,’ but he remembered afterwards that his Master was apparently unaging, so he changed his wording in a spur of the moment. “Once spring comes, you’ll be able to see the Mountain in a full bloom of beautiful reds and purples! Cultivation can be done with half the effort when you’re in a good mood!”

…All that talk, and he still wanted to be a gardener.

Having nowhere to put his face added onto a soft heart, Tong Ru was speechless, only able to roll his eyes.

That spring, it truly was lively on Fuyao, the mountain flowers vivid, the bees and butterflies forming groups. The birds of Yao Valley were amazed, fighting each other for a look. Han Muchun had his pant legs rolled up, one short and one long, sitting far away on a gardening hoe that was floating in the air, and waved excitedly at Tong Ru. “Master, look at this mountainful of flowers I planted for you!”

Tong Ru had always felt that it was apparently his fate to be alone. For so many years, if he hadn’t been cultivating, he had been swapping pointers with his Daoist friends — no one had ever treated him this closely, to the point of unbridledness.

For this one that wore a desire to curry favor with him on his face, he immediately pardoned the prodigal disciple for the ‘triviality’ of him having stolen his talismans several days back to sell them for wine.

The dependence upon each other for survival thereafter dissipated misery.

Spring’s end approached, and the flowers wilted. Tong Ru was unwilling to see this, and wanted to use a technique to preserve them, but Han Muchun stopped him. “If they wilt, they wilt. They’ll bloom again next year. Spring blooms, autumn fruits, the shade is green, the snow is white; cycles of change are commonplace, and each has their own advantages. Don’t delay one for the sake of another.”

Powerful people flew into the sky to flee the ground, inevitably being aloof and hermetic, feeling themselves to be the sole dominance amongst all life. After hearing that point of view, Tong Ru thought, in both emotion and self-mockery, Right. If one is so ‘dominant’, what can they do all by theirself? Would they not be bored after a long time passes? There’s no benefit to it.

People looked forward to ‘next years’ precisely because of the withering and thriving, the rising then falling.

The wilted flowers were gathered up by Han Muchun. He added honey to them, then fermented several tens of jars of hundred-flower wine, burying each one beneath a tree. To this end, he had delayed his charm lessons for about eight days, and asked Tong Ru to punish him on the final one.

Following the next season, what was buried became a delicacy of the human world. When paired with the fat crabs from the little river behind the mountain, it was like a match made in the Heavens.

Everyone wanted to live for a few more years, but if that life was full of hardships, absolutely friendless, required a spear by the pillow, and never allowed for a moment’s peace, what would be the fun in that?

Tong Ru had never thought of that principle before. For as long as he could remember, he had been on Fuyao Mountain, cultivating without rest, accustomed to blandness. Every day had been like drinking plain water, where he’d had no idea what sweetness or bitterness was…

Until he had met Han Muchun.

Hundreds of years rushed past like lights, only giving him this drop of flavor, the taste of which had capsized his soul.

The sweetness was the sweet of the hundred-flower wine. The bitterness was the bitter of having his three hun souls attached to a copper coin, then watching Fuyao Mountain grow weeds aplenty, with no one to tend to any flowers.

He observed his Xiao Chun inhabiting the body of a weasel, sitting quietly for a very long time each night by the mess of lanterns in the Hall of Ignorance, his delicate eyes half-closed. It was like he was taking part in a meditation others couldn’t comprehend, and also like he was immersed inside the Sect Leader Seal’s years of memories.

Tong Ru was unsure if he had ever left anything behind in the Seal, nor whether Han Muchun had seen them or not, and even less so… what he would think, if he knew.

It seemed like the sweetness had been just for a split second, yet the bitterness was lasting years.

Then, they met. In the Valley of No Worries, which was inaccessible to living beings, Han Muchun used his struggling primordial spirit to trap his one remaining soul in the Valley.

It was, in truth, just a prison drawn in dirt. Even if his primordial spirit was scattered and only his remnant soul remained, Tong Ru was still the inheritor of Beiming. If he really wanted to break free, Han Muchun’s forever-average cultivation base would be, when it came to him, nothing too big to handle.

However, even if he was hacked to pieces, Tong Ru was a complete glutton for punishment. With some trepidation, he accepted his own sentencing in the world, as well as the conclusion of his soul flying away and scattering, because living and dying together with a certain someone was practically a blessing he couldn’t have found himself, had he searched.

There wasn’t more hundred-flower wine, however.

Before this, he had always felt that his precious disciple acted too warmly, and was one to go with the flow a bit. It was only later on that he learned that whether one was a mortal or a cultivator, as long as they had enough things in their life that they could die nine times over for and not regret, the other details could be left alone.

Never once had he asked, ‘What did you look at in the Seal, for all those years?’…

Until the moment his soul was returning to the world.

In said moment, Han Muchun suddenly grabbed his hand much too intimately. Inside his eyes, there looked to be a vast river of stars.

Even if pining never bore any fruit, there was no harm in melancholy turning to a pure craze.

In all likelihood, if one could die without regrets, that could be seen as ascending, couldn’t it?

[1] From a poem of the same name as the first line, by Tao Yuanming. (Not my favorite full version, but here’s one.)

[2] The cultivator says “听乾-”, where qian is the first half of 乾坤/qiankun, ‘universe’. CQ mishears it as the qian for money/钱 and the qian for before/前. I went with ‘uniforms’ because that’s just as dumb a guess as ‘money’, and ‘unity’ because it kind of makes as much sense as ‘before’.

[3] 几千里 — jiqianli, ‘several thousand miles. However, Cheng Qian mentally misunderstood the Ji as 纪, which is an actual surname. What a troll.