The air at one in the morning carried a chill.
Lu Zhao approached the guard room. An old man in military uniform was curled in a hardwood chair, his head nodding, his thin, dried-out body rising and falling faintly with each breath.
The guard of the officers' dormitory was a veteran of the Cataclysm era, part of his right arm missing, lame in one leg. The old man had a foul temper; anyone he took a dislike to got a tongue-lashing, as though everyone in the world owed him their life.
His name was Zhang Xiaoniu. Once he got old, he had people call him Zhang Laoniu.
Lu Zhao hadn't gotten along with the old guard at first either; every time he went out drinking with Zhang Like, he got scolded for lacking discipline. The border defense was not the regular army, and anyone in camp was mostly there on rotation, resting. With the old man poking his nose into that much, it would have been a wonder if he was friendly with anyone.
Later, Lu Zhao discovered that Zhang Laoniu knew Ant Ridge well, so he humbly asked him for guidance, and the two gradually grew close.
Two years ago, after Lu Zhao saved Zhang Like's life, he learned that the little old man was Zhang Like's second uncle.
A wisp of killing intent burst from the old man's shriveled, sunken eye sockets. When he saw that the visitor was Lu Zhao, his manner visibly relaxed.
He had insomnia too. Unlike Lu Zhao's, his was the aftermath of war.
"I'm being transferred to the convalescent home. When do you plan to retire?"
Lu Zhao leaned against the window frame of the guard room. The veteran opened his eyes to a slit and asked in a cold, hard voice, "Who's taking over from you?"
"Not settled yet. One of three—Qin Ze, Liang Fei, or Zhang Yanfeng."
"Great ambition, thin talent. Greedy for petty gain, quick to forget the greater cause. No hair on his lip, no weight behind his word."
"That's what I like to hear. And you?" Lu Zhao asked again. "I'm about to move on—how much longer do you mean to wear yourself out in this guard room? With your record, you should have been in the convalescent home long ago."
Old Niu, a veteran who had fought in the War of National Defense, must have been drafted in the same batch as Lu Zhao's father.
"You little brat, now you're lecturing me? Aren't you staying here too?"
Old Niu gave a contemptuous little laugh. "Half these old bones were already buried in that war. The other half's fine right where it is. Take me off this post, and I'd have even less chance of sleeping through the back half of the night."
"Doze off here and at least I wake up. Go lie in a bed in a nursing home with tubes sticking out of me, waiting for some little girl to come change my diaper—that's what you'd call living torture."
Lu Zhao was silent for a moment. He could "smell" Zhang Laoniu's psyche.
The man was walking a single-plank bridge called "the battlefield," trembling with dread at every step. In truth the ground lay only a step below him, yet he still refused to come down.
Lu Zhao needed only the gentlest push of psychic power to bring him down.
The next second, Zhang Laoniu's eyelids began to droop; his head sank, and he fell asleep sprawled across the desk, dead to the world.
"All this time, your being able to sleep has been thanks to me. Don't go to the convalescent home, and you won't sleep anymore."
Lu Zhao's steps were a little unsteady as he returned to the dormitory.
The whole room was empty. The walls, the floor, even the few pieces of furniture were painted white.
This was a mental palace Lu Zhao had invented himself, to anchor his psyche—extreme emptiness and simplicity against the chaos of the mental world. He had stripped away everything that could stir warm feelings; steel-like spirit needed fire to temper it.
So Lu Zhao never thought he ought to kneel. Stubbornness came closer to steel than smoothness did.
He closed his eyes and lay down on the hard board of the bed. Compared with the shrieking of his psyche, physical discomfort better helped him sleep.
Breathe. Breathe again…
Who knew how long passed before Lu Zhao sank once more into the mire of the mental world.
The healer cannot heal himself; he could briefly calm the veteran's psyche, but he could not help himself face the intrusions of the mental world.
In the past he had chosen to shut his eyes and let the chaotic psychic tsunami pour down on him like collapsing mountains, let all the whispers, filth, and despair drown him.
He waited for consciousness to black out completely; that was the only brief rest to be had.
Now Lu Zhao meant to walk forward: fists clenched before him, he advanced steadily, step by step.
He was no longer sinking along with the current; he was going to cross the mire of the mental world.
He needed a beam of light to pierce the night.
Beyond the far shore lay a power that could tear him free of his predicament and let him bite through his shackles.
Suddenly everything opened out before him: sky pure, earth empty, the four quarters stretched to their farthest ends—this was the Primordial.
The old Taoist sat cross-legged in the center, like an immortal descended into the world.
He opened his eyes. Astonishment and bewilderment showed in them, and then a touch of admiration.
"Your Dao-heart is firm, layman. Truly the makings of an immortal."
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The mental world, the Primordial.
The old Taoist said with a smile, "I thought the layman would need more time before sensing this realm of the Primordial again. I never expected it to be only one day later."
His admiration was plain; to enter the Primordial at all counted as extraordinary talent. And now it seemed Lu Zhao stood above even that—more gifted than the old Taoist himself had been in his youth.
Lu Zhao felt the stillness all around him, and his taut psyche gradually relaxed.
He put away the cold hardness from his struggle against the mental mire, bent at the waist toward the old Taoist, and bowed.
"I have received your teaching of the Way, Daoist. Lu Zhao dares not be slow to follow it."
He did not know the exact posture and taboos of the ancient clasped-hand salute, and rather than blunder by getting it wrong, a simple bow from the waist was more honest. The form might be lacking, but the intent would surely reach.
"You speak too seriously, layman." The old Taoist waved it off, but he made no attempt to hide the delight on his face.
"Your reaching the Primordial is entirely your own doing. This poor Taoist may have a few more years to his name, but I have only followed the way of Heaven and done a little of the duty of a guide."
Lu Zhao wondered how to repay him, then changed his mind and decided to deal with him in complete sincerity.
Too much calculation would only be the lesser path. The other man was a figure who had lived five hundred years—they had never stood on equal footing to begin with.
He came straight to the point: "Lu Zhao is willing to take you as his master, Daoist."
The air hung silent for a moment; then the old Taoist let out a long, hearty laugh that shook the courtyard, a sound like a tsunami.
"The layman has a heart turned toward the Way, and this poor Taoist too has the wish to pass on the flame and extend the lineage of the Dao. But as things stand, the affinity between us has not yet arrived."
Lu Zhao's talent was outstanding, and he was the old man's only choice at present.
Now Lu Zhao's sincerity in asking to be his disciple, on the grounds of the teaching he had received, was ample; but the old Taoist felt the time was not right—some things should not be decided too easily.
Lu Zhao was slightly taken aback; a trace of bewilderment crossed his eyes.
He had expected a refusal, but was this a polite decline?
As though able to read his heart, the old Taoist soothed him: "Affinity will come in time. Just not now."
Lu Zhao was decisive by nature, and at once cast aside his stray thoughts.
Since the other had said plainly that the time was not right, it was no mere polite evasion. He disliked the passive posture of leaving things hanging, and he was more used to trading action for value.
He said again, "I take no reward without merit. Is there anything I can do for you, Daoist?"
The old Taoist asked, "This poor Taoist has sat alone for five hundred years and knows nothing of the outside world. Tell me about Shenzhou as it is now, layman. Which of the Zhu clan's descendants now sits on the throne of our dynasty?"
A strange look crossed Lu Zhao's face. So the Daoist was still loyal to the Zhu family—five hundred years on, he still believed the Zhu could hold power.
He answered, "Daoist, the Great Ming has already fallen. It is the Yan Federation now."
At these words the old Taoist visibly paused.
Then he did not grow agitated as Lu Zhao had expected; his gaze only shifted slightly, like a drop of water falling into an ancient well, calm restored in an instant.
The old Taoist spoke slowly:
"The Qin unified the realm and lasted only two reigns before perishing. The mighty Han endured for centuries and still could not escape breaking apart. Even the Tang, at the height of its glory, in the end returned to dust."
There was a faint helplessness in his tone, but not the slightest fanatical attachment to the Zhu Ming dynasty.
This old Taoist, who had once risen and fallen in the halls of government, knew well the iron law of history: they rise in a rush, and they fall just as suddenly.
The fall of the Great Ming startled him, but it was not something he could not accept.
"Dynasties replace one another like the turn of the tide; this is simply the way the Way of Heaven runs. Five hundred years of seasons have come and gone, and the Great Ming's allotted fortune is spent—so the decree of fate had it."
"This poor Taoist had a leaf over his eyes."
The old Taoist's practicality and clear-sightedness dissolved the fixed image in Lu Zhao's mind in an instant.
The ancients were never foolish; they simply walked beneath a different wheel of history.
Chapter 7