Daoist Scouring Medicine looked at the monkey sitting cross legged before his chair. A little hairy, certainly. The nudity would be problematic to many teachers. But otherwise the very model of a daoist's student, ready to receive instruction. Back straight, eyes clear, ears perked intently.

  How far Li Hou had come in a short time.

  "I believe it is time for us to discuss the subject of cultivation in greater detail. To date, I have limited myself to attempting to impart to you the most basic of the sect's cultivation methods, the Azure Sea Scripture. I believe your vocabulary has reached a point where a broader discussion of the subject will be fruitful."

  "Human cultivation." The monkey corrected.

  Daoist Scouring Medicine's rather sparse eyebrow rose.

  "As opposed to?"

  "Beast cultivation."

  "Ah. You are aware then, of the existence of instinctive cultivation?"

  "You tell before. Men cultivate. Animals grow. Instinctive? Is word for?"

  "Yes, that is what we call it, when animals grow beyond the limits our their nature through the influence of qi. Instinctive cultivation. It is the road you were in the process of taking your first step along, when I found you. I'm impressed you remember the concept, I mentioned it but once in passing."

  "You make poor Li Hou read many scrolls."

  "Ah." Daoist Scouring Medicine nodded, satisfied. "Daoist Boundless Sky's comparative primer on cultivation traditions."

  "Mm." Li Hou hummed agreeably as if he hadn't aggressively skimmed that whole scroll. He had no idea why a man would write a dozen pages about 'demonic' and 'instinctive' cultivation just to say not to do them. Formless-gleam's comments and the centipede's example had dissuaded him far more effectively from blindly charging down that path than ten thousand characters of dense prose.

  "I'm glad you got through that one. It's more than a bit of a slog, but it's a valuable opportunity. Its fully theoretical and historical perspective, and lack of actionable descriptions of methods, were the only reasons it wasn't outright banned as heretical."

  "Am hardest working monkey." Orange-crest lied. His stomach quivered as if he'd done something bad, even though he hadn't. He resolved to go back and actually read that scroll as soon as he had time.

  "You understand then, why instinctual cultivation is bad."

  Li Hou clapped his hands together.

  "Yes-yes." He sputtered enthusiastically. "One day you normal little sized monkey and you creep into cave. You take nap and you wake up a big-butt and can't get out because you are too fat and you are sad and lonely until you die."

  Daoist Scouring Medicine blinked. His mind worked overtime trying to parse that oddly specific example. Big-butt was the name of one of his brothers on the other mountain wasn't it? He was missing a story here, but he didn't want to derail the conversation while he had Li Hou's full attention. It was damnably tricky to acquire for discussions like these about highly abstract matters.

  "Yes. I suppose that can happen." He allowed. "More broadly, instinctive cultivation is surrender to one's nature. For men, it oft reduces us to beasts. For beasts, it keeps them trapped at such a level."

  "That's rude to say to a beast."

  "Do you not oft claim monkeys are superior to men and beasts alike?" Daoist Scouring Medicine returned.

  "I just say truth."

  "As do I, Li Hou. And make no mistake, it is true that instinctive cultivators limit themselves. Many spirit beasts at the peak of core formation cannot hope to speak and think as you do. For all their decades of cultivation, despite commanding power that can reshape landscapes, they cannot speak. Without language, peace and fellowship ever evade them. They haunt the farthest corners of the wilds not merely because such places are spiritually potent, but because only there can they know peace. Their spiritual nature estranges them from their own kind, and their instinctive methods prevent from taking a place among cultivators. Alone, they live. And alone, they usually die."

  Orange-crest was not convinced. Surely such beasts were Speakers at least. Perhaps men just struggled to understand them. A dark thought struck him. Perhaps men could come to understand them, but they coveted their cores enough they did not care to.

  But he understood where his brother was coming from. He treasured his new keenness of mind, and did not disdain all the methods of men. However he moved forward, it would incorporate his brother's teachings. The monkey found himself again wondering just how powerful his King truly was. He wondered if that legendary monkey had once sat where he did, learning mighty secrets at a human's knee.

  The monkey said nothing. His brother was in a mood to teach, not learn. His ears would not be open to correction.

  "Let us return to the subject of cultivation methods." Daoist Scouring Medicine continued. "Every human cultivator practices one. Most of us begin with a method pioneered by another, oft one promulgated by a sect. All of us refine them, as we advance. Tailor them to ourselves and our growth. Some of us change methods entirely, practicing many techniques over the course of our journeys. These methods cultivate and refine the three treasures in a myriad of different ways, but all of them seek to attain true immortality and ascend to the Heavens."

  "That's a lot of words to say not a lot." Orange-crest noted, unimpressed.

  Daoist Scouring Medicine sighed.

  "Cultivation methods encompass the whole world, and every way of being and growth. There is little one can firmly say that some strange method will not give lie to it. I've tried to teach you some of the fundamentals of the Azure Spirit Method, the most basic method of the sect. But it appears its compatibility with you is limited. A consequence of your simian nature, perhaps. Still, you need a method, something to shape the qi you will be taking into yourself. For doing so also shapes the fragments of the great dao you will come to comprehend and embody."

  Orange-crest sat patiently as Daoist Scouring Medicine launched into an explanation of the fundamentals of cultivation methods. How one's inner qi could call to the qi of the world. How this qi could be shaped and changed, infused with elemental power or profound ideas. How it could be cycled through the meridians and drawn to a dantian. How his own method took advantage of the five phase cycle to infuse the body with the same mutability as the elements. How orange-crest might begin to develop his own practice by focusing on his affinity for earth or wood.

  The monkey tried to follow it all. It seemed like important and useful information. But his brother lost him when he explained the diagram of meridians he'd shown orange-crest would probably be mostly inaccurate for a monkey. Orange-crest already had a plan.

  What would make his brother stop trying to make him cultivate like a man?

  "I need to make my own method."

  Daoist Scouring Medicine paused in his lecture.

  "Yes, I suppose that is the crux of it." He admitted. "I have a suitable bodily cultivation method for you. But, the sect has few writings on non-human spiritual cultivation. I will continue searching, but the Azure Spirit has been refined through countless generations to serve as a starting path for any with talent. If you are not compatible with it, it is possible none of our methods would be suitable for you without adaptation."

  Orange-crest furrowed his brow, making a face like he was wrestling with a recalcitrant poo. He stoked his heart-fire, letting it leak out of him. He picked up one of the spirit stones, and stared deeply into it. That was what cultivation looked like, was it not?

  "I have plan. Method-plan." Orange-crest explained. "Going to do a cultivation."

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  Daoist Scouring Medicine stared at the monkey. It didn't appear to be taking this very seriously. It could be having an odd looking moment of enlightenment. But he knew the little gremlin pretty well, and suspected it just wanted him to leave it alone.

  His eyes flickered to the fist sized stone the monkey had brought back from its adventure. The beast core wasn't suitable for his work. Its power was not elemental in nature. But the spiritual treasure might be. Without closer analysis, he couldn't tell if it was earth aspected ore, or a stone imbued with metallic qi. It wasn't the petrified seed he'd originally wanted, but it was a potent earthen treasure. A suitable anchor component for the bath he hoped to use to catapult Li Hou through the dragon gate.

  "Does your plan include this spiritual treasure?" He asked, hefting the stone.

  Li Hou looked up at him immediately, the shroud of qi around him hardly shifting. Hah! He'd known the monkey was faking it!

  "Am brother." Orange-crest answered simply. "My things are your things."

  Li Xun wasn't sure he would ever get used to that. To the way it disdained his advice in one moment, then extended to him absolute trust in the next. He hadn't even explained that his plans were for the monkey's benefit! Unsuitable as its attitude was for the world of cultivation, a part of him hoped it would never change.

  "I scratch your butt. You scratch mine? Help this monkey get pill-plants?"

  Li Xun pinched the bridge of his nose. Of course that was an idiom in monkey-tongue. It didn't even make sense. He could see Li Hou's arms. They were long enough to scratch his own ass.

  "Please never use that phrase in public. But yes, my stores are open to you, within reason. If I don't have something, I'll show you how to purchase it from the sect."

  Daoist Scouring Medicine was not entirely sure about the expression on his disciple's face. But it was enthusiasm for cultivation. He'd take it.

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  Orange-crest was thinking deeply, and for once he wasn't trying to stop. This was too important. It had to be turned over from every angle, every branch of thought examined for soft spots and hair-thin cracks, made certain it would support the weight of those that followed it.

  He didn't like cultivation. It was slow. It was boring. His second breakthrough had been deeply unpleasant, and he'd been too drunk to remember what his master claimed was his first. He'd visited the Fathomless Well half a dozen times after that first breakthrough, as Daoist Scouring Medicine had attempted to teach him a 'proper cultivation method'. Orange-crest had learned... Something. He had some understanding of the forms his brother was trying to get him to memorize, the patterns of breath and tension. But the hours had felt wasted. He could feel the qi enter him, the deep cold of the well helped him recover his qi-flame far faster than he could on the surface. But without the pill his master had given him, the rushing of burning cold and terrible pressure he called a breakthrough, the monkey wasn't sure anything changed within him when he cultivated. If he was doing it correctly, or if it was working at all. Perhaps his brother's method was only good for men.

  Daoist Scouring Medicine assured him otherwise, but he was no Monkey King, infallible in certainty.

  Despite this, orange-crest still wanted to strike a tiger unconscious with a single blow. He wanted to soar through the sky and like he was weightless and strike as if he weighed as much as a mountain.

  That left him with a problem. How did he cultivate, without doing the things others did?

  He'd properly met three true cultivators now. Beings that had dedicated their lives to the pursuit of qi-might, advancing beyond the level of disciples. Four, he supposed, if he counted the Monkey King. Two animals, and two men. Of them, he could only truly say he liked the way the King lived, at least what he knew of it. The King was not secretive, but his life had been bigger than theirs. He'd come like a storm, and leave as suddenly. Roaming over mountains and through valleys, saving and pranking and reveling as he pleased. Perhaps the King did as the others did and locked himself in a cave during the many days he was nowhere to be found, but somehow orange-crest doubted it.

  The other three cultivators seemed... Bound. By immobilizing-magics of their own making.

  He'd visited formless-gleam twice since they'd slain the great centipede together. The fox appreciated the food he brought, but said it was unnecessary. She was strong enough, for cultivation alone to sustain her. At least in a place of such power. She spoke of her great plans for the future, how she would cultivate for many months, and grow a third tail. How her growing power would make her mightier than any of the sect's disciples. Safe from all save the daoists and elders, who rarely left their manors, consumed in their own cultivation.

  The fox restrained her words for his benefit, but orange-crest could smell what lay beneath them. The animosity she bore towards humanity. He did not think she sought power merely to be safe from the disciples, but to turn the tables upon them. To be predator, instead of prey. And if it took her months or years to achieve this, she seemed resolved to endure isolation to do so.

  The humans daoists were little better. Perhaps this was a slow and dark season of their lives. A winter that encompassed years. But their tales of the wild exploits of their younger days were tinged with a tenor of bloody darkness that was equally concerning. War. Perhaps the most horrific of human ideas his brother had introduced him to; a conflict so total in its scope that it demanded perfection in loyalty and hatred alike.

  No, he did want to emulate the example of men. Not fully.

  The sect cultivators might not be literally trapped in a cave, but they spent an awful lot of time sitting still with their eyes closed in the caves they'd built.

  He'd found his answer the very first day he'd cultivated hadn't he? He'd known where the trail of this thought would lead before he'd begun tracking it. But he'd gone through the motions anyway, because it was too important to miss a step.

  Orange-crest would synthesize the knowledge of man and spirit beast. Make wines that were like pills. Drink his way to the top.

  It was a great plan. Unfortunately orange-crest didn't know exactly how to turn that plan into action.

  He would make wine with his treasure of course. But as with all wine-making secrets, the great power would be in the small details.

  He had wine. Fragrant and cloudy fruit wine made from a base of persimmons, with lychee and yangmei for flavor. He had fruit ready to be made into more wine, if he needed to begin from the beginning. He had spirit stones, big ones, and the core of an even bigger centipede.

  And he had a single recipe for spirit wine he already knew to be good.

  Plums, what he now suspected was a Hundred-Year Ginseng, and Fourfold Marked Green Rotworms.

  And he had access to his brother's store house.

  Green-worms would have made this simple. But he didn't have any. He could make substitutions. Plum, yeast flakes, and Ten-Year Ginseng. Plunk in a spirit stone or core and let it sit until the drink cultivated.

  It was a plan. But it didn't feel right. Didn't feel good enough.

  Centipede core wine would have centipedes in it, of course. Probably rice as a base, because centipedes tasted bad and so did rice wine. But it was missing something. The centipede had grown gigantic. Orange-crest didn't want to make a wine that would make him grow bigger. He liked being small. If he understood his brother right, he needed something to turn the dao fragment of growth into a dao fragment of something else.

  Orange-crest sighed. He would need to turn to the scrolls.

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  Daoist Scouring Medicine heard the rustling of fur, as his disciple rose.

  The daoist continued to stare at the chunk of ore the monkey had brought back. Metal he now knew, deeply imbued with the power of earth. He could work with this. An obvious path through the Wuxing, the cycle of the five elements, presented itself. Sublimate the form of metal into water, while retaining the power of earth. A formation would imbue the dew that collected upon the ore with its earthen power would be the first step. A base liquid for the bath. One that he could strengthen through the generative paths of both fire and metal.

  He sensed Li Hou move to the library. His presence stilled. Reading? Of his own free will?

  His wild little disciple was truly serious, then.

  Li Xun's quiet and comfortable life balanced on the edge of a knife. His liquid wealth dwindled by the week, with no way to replenish it. Elder Lu would find some more direct avenue to assail him soon enough. Even fabricated accusations might find purchase, with his reputation in tatters. And if the man dug deep enough into history, there would be no need for outright fabrications.

  He was casting a great many hopes upon the monkey's narrow shoulders. The elders would stack the brackets of the tournament. Seek to see it eliminated before it reached the main stage, and stood before so many of the assembled greats of the empire. But, he could see the narrow path now.

  It must crush the group stages. Eliminate the prodigies placed to suppress it with a performance so domineering that it would be clear the rest would fare no better. Only then, would he have leverage to demand concessions from the Sect Master.

  He wondered, what life would be like, beyond the borders of the sect. The institution had dominated his life since his early teenage years. Perhaps he and the monkey would be wandering daoists, curing illness and righting wrongs. Meeting fated rivals in teahouses and dueling across the rooftops.

  Or, perhaps he would settle down anew. A peak foundation establishment cultivator could easily become minor nobility, if they were willing to bend their neck a few degrees.

  A foolish notion struck him. He could always take disciples in earnest. If Li Hou crushed every noble brat sent to the sect, his name would travel far and wide as a teacher of merit. The very same families would seek him out, even as a wandering cultivator. One cousin's disgrace was another branch family's opportunity.

  Him, a great teacher. What a terrible joke.

  His qi trembled, feather-gentle, as the monkey moved exchanging one scroll for another. The animal didn't understand what it had chosen, by taking his side. If its talent proved anything less than heaven-defying, his sins would drag it down as well.

  Daoist Scouring Medicine pulled a sheet of Xuan paper from beneath his writing desk. He broke a small flake off the ore, and added it to his inkstone. When he was done grinding, the ink looked no different. But his brush was heavy as duty when he set it to paper. He was no formation master, but elemental transmutation was near the very core of his specialty.

  Orange-crest felt something. A weighty power, echoing through the house that felt so much of his brother's presence. Probably not important. Daoist Scouring Medicine did things like that.

  His own brush rose and danced, as he added another name to his shopping list. His characters were wiggly and malformed, but he could read them. And wasn't that what counted? Orange-crest could almost taste the way the flavors would blend in his mind's mouth. And if they tasted good together, surely they would produce good qi as well.

  He was going to get drunker than any monkey had ever been. And stronger too. Hopefully.