Work Text:
Flow
The temple is embedded into the clutch of a mountainside, carved and built against the boulder and perched on a ledge cradled between columns of rock crawling with moss and vines and towering over the encasing lush, sprawling forest from tremendous heights. Shielded from violent winds and raging storms and insulated from the heat of summer and cold of winter, inside its halls and rooms is a soothing embrace of silence and darkness that is disturbed only by the crackling braziers and flickering lamps and candles lit at dusk for warmth once sunlight starts to dwindle and the crisp mountain air turns colder, unbearable. In the veil of the night, its stone-white walls are a beacon amidst the pitch-black sky, seemingly shining under Chang’e’s light.
Measured footsteps and hushed voices of the disciples fill the temple at dawn, as darkness is cut by a range of colors and beams of gold start to seep and pour through the lattice panels and open doors. Its corridors and passageways form a maze that begins and ends in front of the main hall where a wide stone stairway lies, leading down to a courtyard decked at the center with symbols that are unmissable in their size; the taijitu and the eight trigrams etched and painted directly on the stone floor, facing heavenward. Partly covered by the canopy of giant, looming trees, the courtyard is otherwise unhindered by walls; the tall arched gate that is perched on its edge, flanked by a pair of guardian statues and facing the vast eastern horizon, signifies an ingress rather than a barrier, welcoming whoever finds their way deep into the forest and up that part of the mountain.
Beyond the gate is a stairway with mud and stone steps snaking down the mountain, its path lined with low rock walls that have long been taken over by the aggressive roots of ancient duck foot trees that rain gold in autumn and bury the earth under thick layers of bright saffron leaves. The steps and slopes of the mountain pass are steep, even hindered in some parts by tangled vegetation and sharp rocks thrusting up to meet and wear thin the soles of passing boots. They become gentler the farther the descent, with the dense flora growing sparse as they shy away from the banks of rapids with cascades of water splashing harsh against slick rocks covered in moss. Over the river hangs a narrow bridge made of coarse ropes and planks of woods, providing a way of crossing that does not require fighting against the dashing currents or taking a detour.
On the other side of the banks, up and down the jagged foothills and towards flat land, the sea of foliage begins to thin. The ground starts to seem even with fewer gnarly roots underfoot, and patches of clearings become a frequent sight. The reverberating sounds of scrabbling and humming and churring fauna disperse and grow quiet, turning into a distant memory. From the thinning and scattered layers of duff, a clear-cut, well-trodden dirt path emerges, widening as the soil changes and the forest opens to a resplendent mosaic of rice paddies and grasslands, of bamboo groves and fields of flowers.
In the lowland, the conditions are much more forgiving, with the air thicker and warmer, thus easier to breathe, a luxury for those accustomed to the mountain winds that blow harsh and thin and cold throughout the seasons. With the limits imposed by the elevation of the temple disappearing upon descent, the qi flows freer and smoother through revitalized meridians, unimpeded and rekindled, rendering the mind clearer and the body and its movements more nimble and swift, seemingly unrestrained. Still, the plains are not the Heavens, and nothing comes without drawbacks—the breeze sweeping through may be gentle, but it also carries a heavy miasma of yin energy that higher grounds are naturally protected from, just like the temple that is visible beyond the woodland and up the crag.
With the morning fog scattered and descending, the temple is a tiny white patch floating against the grey of the mountain, appearing to be engraved entirely right into the rock face; the distance concealing its terracotta roof tiles, the lush moss and dark water stains on its stone-white walls, the thick wooden pillars and beams painted black serving as its fortifications. It is an unblemished ivory carving even in the middle of autumn, without the cover of the snow and frost of winter where it seems to have gotten its name.
Baixue.
To outsiders and laypeople, it is simply a temple that is white as snow resting on a high mountain ledge, where the air that is thin and frigid is the norm, its adepts as unwavering and tenacious as the place whence they came.
But Baixue Temple is more than what its name and appearance suggest; it is more than slabs of polished stones and timbers and clay transposed and perched on the solid clutch of a massive rock, distant and heavenward. Its recesses may be cold and dark, but they are warmed and illuminated by its embrace, by the roof and food it provides and the lessons it bestows on the orphans it raises and people it shelters in its grace. The whiteness of the snow is as pure as its endeavors in keeping with the Dao; as silent as the way it teaches words must be spoken and actions must be taken; as blank as the new path it grants to those who seek it to cultivate on their own, intertwined with human nature and fate.
For its disciples, Baixue Temple is the rock—the mountain itself upon which the long, winding path of a river starts, from rains sent by the Heavens to quench the Earth’s thirst or winter’s ice thawed come springtime accumulating on the surface before cascading down sheer cliffs and rugged slopes to flow through wherever nature sets its course, forking into branches or joining with lakes and streams, and sometimes even traveling far, far away to meet and melt with the endless East Sea; running free as the Dao allows.
Confluence
Far to the northwest, in a territory once under the protection of the Wen of Qishan before their fall, the Black River flows and splits, begetting life along its paths. Among its several distributary arms is the Gushan River, and on one of the smaller river’s banks sprung and lies the ancient town of Fugu.
Situated some distance away from major cities of the cultivation world, the small farming town of Fugu can only be described as ordinary. Aside from an age-old traditional procession conducted annually on the last day of autumn that celebrates the story passed down through generations about the life and murder of a local scholar, people from neighboring villages have nothing to say about the town.
On the surface, nothing seems amiss. Colorful grasses and shrubs with hues ranging from green and yellow to orange and red line its embankments in neat layers, creating a nice contrast to the lull of the crystal blankets of the stream. A little ways inland, the earth and foliage turn into a sea of golden rice paddies that is occasionally broken by stark rosy strips of red spider lilies that seem to have bloomed after the early autumn rains. Yet, beneath the petrichor and the fragrance sent forth through the breeze by the equinox and tea olive flowers scattered about, the air is stale, charged with resentment so palpable it leaves an acrid taste at the back of one’s throat.
There is a hair-raising coldness that has nothing to do with the weather and an unnerving silence that makes the town seem muted and dead.
No birds are flying in the skies above or hunting for food in the waters despite the abundance of fish in the river. There are no sounds of wings flapping, of chirping or buzzing, of squeaking or scuttling of fauna even in hollow trunks and burrows. Even the intelligent and obedient oxen refuse to plow the fields, spooked over something no one can see.
The day lapses too quietly without the birdsongs and bellows and bleats, and the night even more so, with the darkness seemingly swallowing the expected cacophony of nature along with the light as it takes over the horizon. There are no howls nor croaks, not even cricket calls.
The miasma thickens in the murk, settling even lower, heavy and oppressing. A potent force pulls from the earth, from the ground and deep beneath it, causing every single blade of grass, every panicle and leaf and petal to bend and bow. But nature is tenacious as it is fickle, and it does not like being meddled with. In denouncement more than in submission, all that is forced to arch points north.
A natural pond lies some li away from the banks to the north side of the town, beyond the farmlands and hamlets. Surrounded by a belt of shrubs and trees, the limpid autumn water reflects the bright saffron yellow leaves, their shade a rich, vibrant gold against the darkness of the night, turned even brighter against the pitch-black pond. Only several bu wide and a couple of bu deep, the pond is not huge by any means, yet it feels vast and indifferent, and under the moonlight, the reflection on the glistening water makes it even more otherworldly.
Beneath the surface, the shoal of dragon fish the farmers and villagers spoke of appearing suddenly can be seen as they were described—they are seemingly alive and completely normal, but they can escape even the nets with the finest mesh. Like a mirage, they swim fast, their scales creating flashes of black and red and silver against the gold of the season and the dark of the night, moving and swirling in nauseating colors.
Amidst this, the water remains still, undisturbed. No splashes from the motions underneath, no ripples even when the wind blows.
Too docile, like a predator of great stealth lurking and prowling as it hones in on its prey.
Yet, no matter how formidable spirits are, they are easier to see through mirrors. With the cover of the night, the surface of the still water serves as one.
True enough, the lull does not last long before the red flashes take over the black and silver, turning into patches of vermilion that spread like bleeding wounds until the cold pond is a shimmering pool of blood, overflowing and warm to the touch.
From it rises a black cloud of smoke, wispy at first before accumulating and morphing into an imposing human-shaped shadow, blending in the dark. It has no distinguishable features except for what seems like eyes as gold as autumn leaves and glinting like dragon fish scales, yet with a gaze dark and deep as an abyss.
The pond, it turns out, is a soul-sealing ground. Over the years, it has absorbed the abundant energy of the surrounding mountains and the yin energy the wars of the great clans have allowed to permeate in the air, causing a false Evocation. One by one, the Talismans of the Eight Gates started to fail until it has unsealed itself.
Neither the Suppression Array nor the Rite of the Eight Gates can close the seals in time.
In the aftermath of the bloodshed the Wen of Qishan started and the ensuing Sunshot Campaign, the chaos and imbalance became the norm, causing creatures to take form and turn malicious. The accumulation of resentment can wake and unseal terrifying spirits, and something that should have never been disturbed from its slumber has awoken in the town of Fugu.
Much has been passed on about these earthbound creatures, by word of mouth in the form of chants and old tales and by inscriptions and writings on oracle bones and bamboo slips and mulberry bark paper, yet nothing about them is still known for certain.
What is understood is this: all things in Heaven and Earth come to be in accordance and intertwined with the Dao, borne and part of the world. Be they human beings, be they flora or fauna, be they living or dead—all have their reasons and regrets, all are beholden to their fate. Thus, all must strive to flow with balance and harmony, and those that engender great disturbance shall not be permitted their continued existence.
But laws created by humans for the mundane do not apply to every creature, and hence different tools and methods emerged for dealing with spirits throughout the centuries. Among these are bows and carved pits and seals made of the wood of the peach tree, for warding them off; incense papers and sticks, for appeasing them; whisks composed of a wooden shaft with hair from horsetail bound with hemp, for dusting them off; and incantations and talismans, for suppressing or controlling them.
The Path of the Sword, believed to be the most effective way to deal with spirits, eventually became the standard in the cultivation world.
Swords are weapons of war, used for killing flesh and blood. On their own, just carved and polished wood and tempered steel, and sometimes precious stones, are not enough to reach through dimensions and invoke and channel the necessary power for subduing spirits. Swords, of two sharp edges and three points, must be imbued and cultivated with enough spiritual energy, its blade serving as the crucible, to be able to breach through walls that are more than skin and flesh and bones.
Fuxue is such a sword, once just an ordinary metal asleep in shapeless ores found deep in the earth that was smelted in excruciating heat and hammered into shape. Like all the swords wielded by the adepts of Baixue Temple, it is forged and cultivated to exonerate, to brush off snow blocking the Earth and stunting growth, to liberate spirits and return them to be one with the Dao.
Yet, when Fuxue pokes and slices through the shadowy form, it cannot reach beyond the temporal wall to conjure, to invoke, to channel. The path between dimensions seems to be blocked; all there is viscous and suffocating darkness, like being pulled into and submerged in deep, murky waters, suspending it in time and rendering it and its wielder spiritually blind upon touch.
Art by @wujiare on Twitter
Lull
There is a belief that ghosts only remember the desperation and pain and rage they felt at the time of their deaths, defining their state as they roam the netherworld. This is the truth for most souls. Yet for those who suffer agony worse than death that their soul splinters in life, anguish sets their path in the beyond in stone long before their demise—days, moons, and sometimes even years beforehand.
For He Xuan, the effects of his years-long starvation in prison became a deep-seated part of his existence that his soul continued to suffer from them even when he was but ashes and crushed bones and a wispy remnant of his former self. For ages, he oscillated between hibernation and hunger and excess, and never satiation. When neither the achievement of his vengeance nor the knowledge of Shi Qingxuan living out the rest of his mortal life in peace and quiet did anything to sate him, He Xuan learned to give up and began to fight every ravenous urge of his soul with sleep instead.
So, he slept and wandered and slept and wandered, inland and away from the turbulent tides of the outer seas, up north and far to the west, until he found himself in his hometown of Fugu where it all started and where he decided to rest.
He Xuan submerged himself once more, in water that is still and crystal clear. Cradled in the flowing energy of the nearby mountains and rivers like an infant in its mother’s womb, he sealed the surface of the pond with himself underneath it.
The seal worked to suppress the growling hunger and prevented the starvation from waking him, suspending the vicious cycle he had to face all through life and death for a long while.
He Xuan slept through time, letting the world outside change.
The lull did not last.
As though haunted by the memories of the gates of the City of Gu reopening, he felt a familiar arousal, disturbing his slumber and threatening to rupture from within.
In the water imbued in his spiritual power, resistance worked at first, but for what seemed like many moons, the flow of the mingling yin energy became steadier and heavier and started to seep through his protections and barriers. He Xuan felt a cavernous desire; his soul and everything within him demanding what they have long been deprived of. Hunger, ire, malice—all fought to take over, absorbing the abundant resentment lingering in the air, in every handful of earth, in the pelting rain and melting snow.
But he is He Xuan; he spent his life and death vying for control of his existence, to retake the fate that was stolen from him.
Thus, he holds on and waits for the seals to unfold on their own, intending to break free and wander away from the chaos.
The Eight Gates open one by one, unsealing the surface and letting him emerge from the water.
That is when he sees it.
Amidst the figures surrounding the pond and looking at him is a pure soul, blank as snow, a fresh piece of rice paper unmarred by ink.
Upon touch, He Xuan feels the calm and steadiness of the soul even in the face of its fears, like water that is powerful but calm and crystal clear, inviting and repulsing.
He Xuan latches onto it, hiding underneath its skin and blending in its shadow.
A soul-sealing vessel.
It is a boy of no more than fourteen springs, standing and moving with resolve and grace well beyond his age. His eyes are the color of the stormy sky with a gaze of tempered steel, weathered with a will made of dragon bones. The soul he possesses is a refined jade, smooth and without cracks, guarded against the beatings and wickedness of the world. It attracts and repels the malice that wants to reach deep into it to mar and consume it.
The boy’s soul is a talisman that both soothes and wards off, and on its edges, He Xuan stays and watches and sleeps.
Floodpath
The strong yin energy coming from up the mountain wakes He Xuan long before he notices the smell of death that lingers strongly in the air.
The boy could not have missed it, but he remains calm and steady as he makes his way up the path buried in bright saffron leaves.
Upon reaching the top of the steep stone stairway, in front of the arched gate of the temple the boy considers his home, only then that the vessel starts to crack.
Through the years, He Xuan has watched him grow on the outskirts of his soul. He saw the boy through joy and grief and vicissitudes; through training and night-hunts in harsh conditions, exhausted and sometimes bloodied; through exorcisms in success and failure that should have damaged his spirit and ate away at his soul but never did.
The boy never despaired, but amidst the carnage, in silence and all inside, he despairs and despairs and despairs.
Every step along the crimson path that cut through the autumn gold chips away at the jade of the boy’s soul, the cracks rapidly deepening and expanding until they lead to a break as though he has just stepped out of a bubble suspended from the world and outside time and the Dao is now collecting what is due to it.
With the vessel disturbed, He Xuan feels the cavernous desire from hunger and ire and malice creep from within him.
He Xuan starts to move before the jade shatters and the soul bares itself, before he could reach deep into the darkness forming within it and prey upon it in its moment of weakness.
Releasing his hold, He Xuan reluctantly takes his leave, only stopping in his tracks to look back when a ragged scream tears through the boy whose soul had once sheltered him.
The demon has grown attached to humans.
The boy is a forlorn sight, on his knees amidst mangled corpses and sorrowful ghosts, his bleeding eyes drenching his cheeks and hands and black robes, broken and reduced to a pitiful soul.
He Xuan feels the Malice threatening to smile.
He turns his back once again and departs before the Malice bares its teeth, quickly searching for any soul-sealing ground, for any soothing soul.
It does not take him long.
On the same steep steps of the mountain pass, he finds what he needs—a pure soul, blank as snow, a fresh piece of rice paper unmarred by ink—and latches onto it, on the edges of its soul, without realizing who it is.
The new vessel walks through the same gate, on the gold and crimson path towards the same darkness, falling into the same trap.
In less than a breath of time, the new vessel shatters straight into tiny pieces like porcelain hurled from above and across the courtyard.
Its darkness, vulnerability, and regrets bared.
The new vessel rushes to the side of the old, the blood of the other staining his white robes like vermilion pigment saturating the rice paper.
At the two pitiful souls kneeling on the taijitu under Chang’e’s light, amidst mangled corpses and sorrowful ghosts and laughing demons, the Malice smiles, rejoicing over their wrath and anguish and despair.
The Malice bares its teeth, and empty words long held back spill through, the flooding waters breaking the dam.
Wretched beginning, wretched end.
Everyone around you will die.
Because of you.
People who wear the same robes as you.
People who share the same dreams as you.
You will betray each other.
You will stab each other.
You will strike each other.
The one you cherish the most will suffer.
Mutilated eyes.
Mutilated tongues.
Mutilated throats.
Mutilated corpses.
Unmarked graves.
Unmarked land.
A lonely body.
Your wounds by their blade will never heal.
Your skin will rot.
Your blood will rot.
You will not bleed even when your body is torn apart.
Your rotting blood will only ooze and burst through hardened veins.
You will only be alive because you cannot die.
You cannot die because you will need to live.
Your soul will rot.
Your soul will shatter.
You will carry the burden of others’ souls.
Words will be unspoken.
Words will be unheard.
Mutilated eyes.
People who wear the same robes as you.
Words will be unheard.
The one you cherish the most will suffer.
People who share the same dreams as you.
Mutilated tongues.
Words will be unspoken.
You will only be alive because you cannot die.
Your skin will rot.
Your blood will rot.
Your soul will rot.
Your soul will shatter.
Wretched beginning, wretched end.
Everyone around you will die.
The one you cherish the most will suffer.
Because of you.
You cannot die because you will need to live.
Mutilated eyes.
Unmarked graves.
Mutilated tongues.
Mutilated throats.
Words will be unspoken.
Mutilated corpses.
Unmarked land.
Words will be unheard.
The one you cherish the most will suffer.
Your wounds by their blade will never heal.
Your blood will rot.
Your soul will rot.
Your skin will rot.
A lonely body.
Mutilated eyes.
Mutilated tongues.
Mutilated throats.
Your soul will shatter.
People who wear the same robes as you.
People who share the same dreams as you.
You will betray each other.
You will stab each other.
You will strike each other.
The one you cherish the most will suffer.
A lonely body.
Your wounds by their blade will never heal.
Your skin will rot.
Your blood will rot.
You will not bleed even when your body is torn apart.
Your rotting blood will only ooze and burst through hardened veins.
Everyone around you will die.
The one you cherish the most will suffer.
Because of you.
Mutilated eyes.
Mutilated tongues.
Mutilated throats.
Wretched beginning, wretched end.