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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

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[X] Study the nature of borders

I considered this question deeply. In the end, my conclusion was this: one of the biggest Touhous is all about borders and there's no corresponding one for doors. The hats have spoken.
 
yrsillar said:
She glanced up at the sky, wincing a little at the position of the sun. "Ugh… I suppose so, if I don't complete my days workload then Lady Cai is going to bury me in fresh correspondence tomorrow."
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Paperwork sucks like that.

yrsillar said:
"It is not often that my lessons are regarded as the break in ones work day," Meng Duyi said, leaning heavily on his stick as they climbed the graded path, climbing the cliffside that backed Shenglu. "You are truly ill suited to stillness, for one so steeped in yin."

"My need to move is one of the balancing factors in my cultivation, I think," Ling Qi said thoughtfully. "I'm still often reactive, but…"

"You feel you must seek out new things to react to. A strange but not unheard of twist upon these things," Meng Duyi agreed. "Though being well anchored to duty is a good trait for one who will lead and rule."
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LQ is a person of action for better and worse.

yrsillar said:
"No. Neither is older than the other, it is a false comparison," Meng Duyi replied. "We do not practice what the earliest Weilu did. How could we, in ten thousand years, the landscape has changed beneath us."

She remained silent as they mounted the clifftop, and turned to look over the vast expanse of the lake and the vale surrounding it, stretching out into the rolling rocky hills that gradually rose into more mountains.

"Look upon this. The majesty of nature, to a mortal, even to a young cultivator, it evokes a primal awe, this is the world untouched by man, eternal and magnificent," Meng Duyi said, inclining his head. "But it is not so. These stones travel, these woods die and grow anew, even that great lake which you have contracted is a young thing by the standard of the world. Iit was not here, when the Horned Lord walked the world, when the glacial ice still crouched atop this cliff. The ground changes, a wise man must be ready to change with it."

Ling Qi listened silently.

"One could call this the difference, the power of pacts and negotiation such as a geomancer of the Weilu tradition must commit. Spirits change, if differently than men do. Their long existences may be broken up, into sharp divides, or they may evolve with changing patterns of wind and water. The River Jing has shifted its southern course from east to west and back again a dozen times in our recordings alone."

"We cannot bind the world in place. We can only bend it to our needs. Adjust, react, negotiate. In many ways, our methods are deeply yin."
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The world is constantly changing. Also Meng Duyi knows his stuff and you can see how cultivators of a higher level develop wisdom and understanding as a prerequisite to learn stuff.

yrsillar said:
"And the Imperial ones are the opposite," Ling Qi said thoughtfully, looking up at the lip of the cliff the birds that winged by only a little overhead. "They are forceful, domineering, yang."

"It is so. I will not pretend they have no points. Their origin was not ours. Even before Tsu set the course of seasons, the lands of the south were rich with the bounty of the forest. In the crumbling citadels and pollution left by the fallen gods in the north, our accommodations would have been foolish."

"That is a surprising thing to hear you say, teacher. Why so?" Ling Qi asked curiously.

"Because there are spirits which men must deal with using a closed fist," Meng Duyi said, rapping the point of his staff against the stone as they reached the top of the cliff. "The Rasping Wind and its millions of vile children, the Twelve Poxes, the foul winds which blow from the eastern wastes. And The spirits of the Celestial Peaks, many of them were akin to these, the broken and malicious leavings of the Dragon Gods."

"To understand a thing, one must comprehend how it arose. To the first geomancers of the Celestial Peaks, to do anything but cut and carve and tame through force and guile was foolish."

"Were the Peaks truly so unnatural?" Ling Qi wondered.
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The Imperial Method was developed due to it's environment.

yrsillar said:
"An incorrect construction," Meng Duyi said. "Natural. A meaningless term. Is a wasps nest 'unnatural' because it is constructed? No. Rather the Celestial Peaks are the Celestial Peaks, and the Emerald Seas are the Emerald Seas. Different foundations give rise to different houses. This is where the Imperial method errs, it sees all lands as the same malicious ruin on which it was built, and so seeks to 'tame' them all in the same way. One can quibble over which spirits are best treated with as neighbors, and which are best exorcized and driven forth, but the base assumption that all must be locked into their current shape and only allowed change when it suits their engineering is where we must butt heads with those northerners."

"Is that it then, that the Weilu method sees spirits as people, to be negotiated with, fought, lived with or slain, and the imperial method sees them more as… obstacles to be broken down, repurposed, or removed?"

"That is how most understand it. The Imperial method is suspicious of spirits. Down to its core, it is built to protect men, no matter the cost to spirits. This has its own costs to those men in the future."
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Makes sense that there would be different costs.

yrsillar said:
What is the downside of the Weilu method then?" She asked quietly.

Meng Duyi was silent, and she worried for a moment that she had offended him. Instead the old man rolled his shoulders, bones cracking and popping as he straightened up. "Danger. Where two tribes meet, squabbles will come, men and spirits are more different than that. Men will give offense, spirits will take where the words of a contract are loose. The flexibility of our method, is its own weakness. Diversity is strength, it is also a promise of conflict."

Ling Qi frowned, she didn't know if she like that particular construction of words, but she did feel some resonation there. "The cost of multitude is multitude. The benefit of multitude is multitude. Folly to dream of ending one without ending the other."
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It's strength and weakness is the same.

yrsillar said:
She stilled, finding herself pinned by Meng Duyi's gaze, a sharp and searching stare, a pressure which made her shoulders shake. And then it was gone, as ephemeral as the passing wind. "Where did you hear that phrasing, Baroness."
Ling Qi was silent. She did not want to answer that. Not when those words bubbled up from the dissolved qi of one who called himself Arch Heretic.

One she was going to have to speak with soon at that.

After a long, tense moment, Meng Duyi turned his head away. "No matter. Those kind of words, they broke free under the Radiant Tyrant. But, Baroness, one should also consider this; want is the root of life, want is the root of suffering. It is not wrong to seek what lies beyond this petty and broken world, to seek the peace in oneness, in the completion of the soul.

The error of the Hui was not in seeking that, but in the mad dream that transcendence could be forced on others. Pfah, deeper than that, the idea that one who dreamed of such mastery of other men could ever call themselves enlightened."

She felt a stirring in the scraps of that qi, a response that wanted to bubble up, but she clamped down on it, else she arouse the older man's suspicion more.

"I am too inexperienced to say, I was only repeating a thing that I had heard, forgive my ignorance, Sir Meng."

"It is nothing, just a turn of phrase that reminded me of an obnoxious, peacock of a man," Meng Duyi snorted. "Regardless, let me ask you, have you decided where you wished to take these lessons first. You have spoken of borders and doors as your interests, but in geomancy these are much different subjects. Which do you intend to pursue first?"
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Yeah LQ was speaking the Heretical Dreaming Way stuff and Meng Duyi knowns about that. He also doesn't seem to like the Jia Patriarch.

crusaderstar said:
Oooh Jia Patriarch, other student of Huisheng? The orator of Shenhua's revolution? Imagining Meng Duyi and Big Jia as sect brothers such that Duyi calls him a peacock brings me joy.
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SassyAsses said:
the Jia patriarch sure made an impression on people, huh. We really do need to take an opportunity to get involved with the Jia at some point. Their Patriarch was Skeleton Uncle's last student before Ling Qi, its a bit silly that we have leaned so hard into Huisheng's teachings and just ignored this major tie to him
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I'd really like to meet this guy it would be interesting.

[X] Study the nature of borders
 
[X] Study the nature of borders

Changed, since LQ is all about the communal way in her WAY.
 
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Hmmm. Shi has always been a man of action. It's nice that Ling Qi finds his conviction attractive. Can't wait to see more.

Doors an boundaries separate things, but boundaries are messier, they emphasise the differences between two things. Doors are cleaner, they show the connection between two things, and how to move from one point to another.

I think we've had many lessons on the differences between things, and how these differences may be superfluous. We've not had many lessons on how to bridge said gaps and move towards them.

[X] Study the nature of doors


Karthak Urzak said:
Given how animistic the setting is, doesn't this mean that the Imperial method is suspicious of/hostile to the world itself? Almost everything has a spirit. Even tools and buildings gain spirits if they survive long enough.
What a sad way to live, a sad way to view the world. Crush and subjugate. The heirs of the Dragon Gods in truth.
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When your friends and family is dying due to spirits, as your fathers and forefathers families did, you don't really care about them. You'd only want peace and assured safety for them. There's imperial method has flaws, but it's done no wrong.

I am sure if they look up Weilu works, they shall also find them deplorable, for risking the life and health of your people over spirits. It's no wonder why problems like Madame Grey still exist in the backwards ES
 
Oliver_Twister said:
When your friends and family is dying due to spirits, as your fathers and forefathers families did, you don't really care about them. You'd only want peace and assured safety for them. There's imperial method has flaws, but it's done no wrong.

I am sure if they look up Weilu works, they shall also find them deplorable, for risking the life and health of your people over spirits. It's no wonder why problems like Madame Grey still exist in the backwards ES
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If any Imperials tried that argument I'd throw in their face the deplorable state of the Celestial Peaks spiritual landscape before Emperor An. :p We know that Ran Fen's family were elevated to Viscounts because of:
Yrsillar said:
Their superior stewardship of the lands that their lieges had otherwise left to decay into spirit haunted muck
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And nothing we've learned of the Peaks before An leads me to believe it was an isolated incident.
 
It feels like borders should be a prerequisite to doors.
A door that doesn't sit on a border sounds useless.
And creating a door without understanding the border that you open sounds dangerous.

However, borders without doors is just segregation, internalising one without the other sounds dangerous for our Way.

Another way of looking at it is that borders helps us not make enemies, since we'll be able to see the borders and know where not to cross them.
Where as doors help us make friends, since we'll be able to see the gaps on the borders where we can meet and communicate.

Therefore, even though it feels backwards, gaining an understanding of doors (even if it's an incomplete understanding) would serve us better in the long term.

My reasoning is that this how Ling Qi would join two communities would follow this order.
We would first find a 'door' where we could meet and only then define the borders to seperate and protect eachother.
The other option being to find the borders that separateand protect two communities from eachother, and only afterward finding the door where we could come.

I prefer the door first approach, therefore:
[X] Study the nature of doors
 
Karthak Urzak said:
If any Imperials tried that argument I'd throw in their face the deplorable state of the Celestial Peaks spiritual landscape before Emperor An. :p We know that Ran Fen's family were elevated to Viscounts because of:

And nothing we've learned of the Peaks before An leads me to believe it was an isolated incident.
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This is an attack on the people implementing the method, not the method itself. The Celestial Empire was filled with negligence and strife pre-An.

If it's valid, then we can say the same for the incidents Weilu methods caused under the Hui (wh, IIRC, were Weilu aligned and maliciously used spirits pacts, like what they did to the Diao) and the actual Weilu, who were extremely negligent near the end of their rule.
 
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