Brother Fu sacrificed twenty years of accumulated merits to get Advent of Spring for Tian. Brother Fu sat Tian down after his first spar with Hong Liren and told him to go make friends, or at least a friendly rival. It was Brother Fu who taught him how to serve tea, and with bloody hands on a cold battlefield, showed him the heart of it.

Compassion. Generosity. Connection. Peace. That was the Tea Dao handed down from father to son. In an awful world, you could make a kind place. It wasn't an illusion. The bad things didn't magically stop existing. The tea session existed in contrast to them. A quiet declaration of shared, orderly, human warmth against the roaring chaos of human cruelty. At the tea table, everyone was worthy. Everyone had dignity. Nobody threw rocks.

Now his father was sharing what he learned from those at the pinnacle of cultivation. That compassion and virtue had meaning beyond petty morality and the smug self righteousness of those who could be frugal on a full stomach. Virtue was recorded by unknown heavenly forces, and it earned merit. In real, tangible ways, your virtue made the world you inhabited a better place. Perhaps in tiny ways you didn't notice, but it all contributed.

He remembered the heretic he fought who stuffed herself with insects and hissed that he was a rich kid. That he deserved to die for leading such a spoiled, luxurious life. Blind to the hell of her own making.

A cold tendril reached through the warmth and tapped him softly on the back, gently insisting on pointing out some inconvenient truths. Tian, by the fate he was born with, should never have been a cultivator. He was born with broken or missing meridians. He lacked that spiritual root, or that rare physique that would let him cultivate. "You need something. Some special thing." That's what Grandpa had said, and he had been right.

Tian rebuilt his body for the first time by destroying it with snake venom and pulped Earthly Realm Dustless Lotuses, then rebuilding it with the same ingredients. He'd had to risk his life repeatedly to do it, and in practice, he had sacrificed powerful vipers and earthly realm lotuses to give him the ingredients he needed to overturn fate.

Bloody Cleaver Wang wasn't willing to trade his own pain for power. He butchered peasants, engaging in a heretical blood baptism for his cultivation. The cultists in Burning Flag City all relied on burning victims alive and inhaling the smoke to cultivate immortality. There were Gu cultivators and Necromancers, people who used the power of curses and insects, or death itself, to cultivate a form of immortality.

People without fortune, seizing the fortune of others. It took something substantial. It took a special something to cultivate. And presumably, the higher you wanted to climb, the greater the fortune you needed.

A country's worth, perhaps.

Ancient Crane Monastery set itself on the biggest geomantic node in the country and created a virtuous system with the Broadsky kingdom. It wasn't perfect. It was breaking down dramatically, in fact. But it was intended to be benevolent and encouraging growth.

The heretics of Black Iron Gorge took a different approach. They found endless ways to bleed fortune from the Kingdom, and collected it for themselves. No wonder the heretics as a whole were so powerful, while the individual mercenary heretics on the ground were so miserable. Black Iron Gorge's true currency wasn't salt or slaves, it was fortune.

Tian sat bolt upright. "The slaves! No wonder they want endless slaves. Laboring to process the brine would kill a lot, but using them as sacrificial vessels or offerings would be far, far more profitable."

Oh yes. Keep extending that logic.

"Bleeding the kingdom, first of money and virtue through the salt and slave trade, weakening its merit and thus its fortune. Spreading heresy amongst the civilians, making the process self-sustaining. Then the war. They were content to let the kingdoms bleed out, and they are just as content to fight the war. The masters of the Gorge aren't spending anything they really care about. All the rewards they promise to their fighters are just stuff, not something important. The masters only care about their personal losses. A million heretics could die in the Wastes, and the masters of the Gorge would be no worse off than when they started. Every dead orthodox cultivator, however, weakens the fortune of the Kingdom."

And on the home front?

"Within the kingdom, there are fewer heroes suppressing villains. The merit depleting cycle accelerates. Then the heretics start taking more direct actions- exterminating villages, impeaching the Emperor, cutting away the roots."

Mmm.

"The roots. My body rejects absorbing things without their roots in… what, good fortune? How does that make sense?"

You haven't quite figured out what "fortune" or "merit" are really doing. What does it mean for something to have a root? Actually, before that, what do roots do?

"Hold a plant in the dirt?"

That and gathering nutrients from the dirt, like you did with Gourmet. They also use them for communication through a complex… not relevant now. Focus on the holding the ground bit.

"Rooting the land in the dao?"

There was a long, ghostly sigh. You are a smart boy, Zihao. Try a little harder.

"That seems right though."

What is the dao?

"Grandpa…"

No, really. What is the dao?

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Everything."

Mmm. So explain to me how something can be cut away from everything without remaining part of 'everything.'

"It can't." Tian felt a sudden wave of the crushing shame known to all children, even teenage children, when an adult patiently explains just how stupid they sound.

Correct. But you have my assessment that "something" is being cut away from "something else." So… what? What is being lost? What could be so fundamental that your body, which has been reforged in a quite saintly way, would outright reject the very water and food upon the rootless ground?

"I have no idea."

Just keep it in mind. I have a feeling you are going to figure it out soon enough.

Tian shared the letter from Brother Fu with Hong along with his deductions. She swore for three solid minutes, then started sniggering. "It explains the Monastery's organization. The way it's spread out, I mean. You have the Monastery proper, at the focus of all the fortune, then you have the Inner Court catching the dregs, and finally the Outer Court temples and convents are positioned to nail down fortune and generate merit. All those missions. It's not just about gathering resources. Hell, you and I have loads of 'merit points.'"

Tian smiled and shook his head. "It is about gathering resources, just not the resources we thought. Elder Feng said that the Daoist Masters were better than I gave them credit for being, and they genuinely did want the best for people. She just left out why."

"It also puts our expedition to the Courtyard in a new light."

"Mmm. 'Our next generation is stronger than yours' probably works to prove who has more fortune. Well. Maybe not prove, but it would count for something." Tian nodded.

"But does it change anything for us?" Hong asked.

"Dunno, but it's never a bad thing to understand more, I think. You want to see if you can find someone sober enough to send out the message?"

Hong nodded, then asked, "What are you going to do?"

"Hang out with Little Treasure and the Censor. I don't enjoy the company of drunk people."

Censor Henshen was sitting with Little Treasure, supervising the boy practicing his basic characters. An aristocratic child, Jin Treasure already had some preliminary knowledge of reading and writing.

"The Ancient Teacher once said: 'To learn, and then, in its due season, put what you have learned into practice –isn't that a great pleasure? To have a friend visit from somewhere far away – isn't that a great joy? If I am not recognized by others, yet bear no resentment – am I not a noble man?'"

The Censor recited the words with calm pleasure, his high voice almost singing them to his student. Then, since Little Treasure couldn't keep all the words in his head and write the characters at the same time, he slowly repeated portions of it, gently correcting the child's characters when he erred. Once the words were all written out correctly, the Censor smiled, nodded, then recited the next verse.

"The Ancient Teacher once said: "It's honouring parents and elders that makes people proper humans. Proper humans rarely turn against authority. If people don't turn against authority, they never rise up and throw the country into chaos. The noble-minded cultivate roots. When roots are secure, the dao is born. To honour parents and elders – isn't that the root of civilization?"

Tian jolted, swinging around to look at the Censor with wide eyes. "Censor Henshen, please repeat that passage."

"Gladly." The scholar slowly repeated it, pausing now and then for Little Treasure to catch up.

"The Scholars are preaching the dao amongst themselves?" Tian asked.

"Not exactly, Immortal Tian. Or at least, if I may make so bold, not in the way I think you mean. 'Dao,' as you surely know, means different things depending on the context. When the Ancient Teacher was using it, he meant a path towards social harmony and virtuous living. Similarly the word 'ren' can mean 'humanity' or 'benevolence' or 'virtue,' depending on context, which is why you hear me saying it so often."

Tian nodded to show he was following, though he wasn't quite sure where the Censor was going.

The pale man gently smoothed his robes then softly cupped his hands in front of his chest. "The longevity cultivating daoists also cultivate virtue, but generally it is their personal virtue. Most often, their virtue is shown by disengagement and passive acceptance. Birds cleave to birds, beasts to beasts, how could a sage live amongst fools? There are many forms of cultivating the dao, however, and in terms of pure numbers, cultivating immortality is the smallest path."

The censor smiled down at Little Treasure, and bowed his head. "We scholars cultivate a dao of living as a people. As a Kingdom. Living as good, virtuous humans. Benevolent people, learned, judicious, steady, reverent and obedient people. To be a human is to live amongst humans as a human, connecting ancestors to descendants in an eternal chain of filial piety. Therefore, serving humans, maintaining peace and letting virtue flourish is what a gentleman and scholar should do."

Tian made the connection. "Being a censor, being part of the civil service isn't just your job, it is your dao path."

"While I would certainly never refer to the Imperial Civil Service as a sect, I can understand how you might understand it as such." Censor Henshen chuckled. "We often joke about it. We are currently in a major debate about which books should be considered the 'core classics' and promoted most heavily. Establishing our orthodoxy, if you like."

"Is that necessary?" Tian asked.

"Oh yes. It's taken us seventy five years to get down to ten books, but within my lifetime, I think we will have it down to eight, or possibly even less. At that point, we can make understanding the approved classics a prerequisite for the civil service exam. Unlike now, when there is a miserable hodge-podge of texts to study."

"And that's a good thing?" Tian grasped for something tangible he could relate to. People, in his experience, just handed him books and told him to read them. The notion that there could be books that everyone had to read was novel.

"Yes, Immortal, it is. Once we have a core set of materials, we have a fixed measure to judge achievement by. We will have a defined core cultural identity. Rituals may be fixed in their forms, ensuring that future generations observe them and the long chain of filial piety remains unbroken. The debate is one of great merit, though, alas, I am much too junior a scholar to be involved."

Little Treasure looked up from his paper and tentatively raised his hand. The pale man smiled and nodded at the boy. "Um. Immortal? If things glowing gold means they have merit, and no glow is normal, and a building that looks like it's got storm clouds around it is an evil place, what does it mean if someone looks like they are burning with red and black fire?"

Tian had to blink at that one. "Are they actually on fire?"

"No, Immortal."

Sinfire. It's sinfire, the inverse of golden merit. It means he's seen an absolute evil bastard.

"Who did you see that has a fire around them like that?" Tian asked.

"It's the men in the inn with the pretty lady. They all look like that. The pretty lady is almost pitch black fire."

"Which men?" Tian's voice grew urgent. Treasure pointed through a window at a bald head peeking out at them.

"Those ones."

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