"Only a few things yet, I admit. I was long wary to hear him, before certain events forced my hand," Ling Qi admitted. "Though… I'm sure you can tell I have… invited his attention."
Jia Hong nodded, stroking his beard and looking her up and down. "Your domain weapon. Potent reagents form in the flowing blood of the physical shell, but that is not enough to access the true Echoing prison, the heresy buried in twisted time."
"It is not. I admit, I thought little of it for a long time after."
"Most will, after their sect days. Even doing as you did, no others had heard that old fellow's words," Jia Hong admitted casually. "One would need a certain knack for going where they are not welcome, and skulking through the passages of thought."
"Guilty," Ling Qi admitted, she decided she would dispense with dancing around his question. "He has taught me of multitude, spoken of the Pure One and his coming, and we have discussed the nature of truth and some finer points of crafting stories."
"As I would expect. Though there is more of him than that on you… Somewhere, somewhen, you drew more deeply on those motes of power sitting like river pebbles in your channels," Jia Hong said. "Reckless of you."
Ling Qi tilted her head, observing him curiously. "You don't say that with disapproval."
"I am not willing to engage in hypocrisy over such a small thing," Jia Hong shrugged idly. He turned resting his hand on the pillar of bone beside them, looking up toward the ceiling. "Speak the message then, Junior Sister. Out of respect, I will hear the request of the Prison of Echoes."
Ling Qi nodded slowly. In truth, she had been concerned about this ever since Huisheng had set her the task. Jia Hong, patriarch of the clan and one of the Duchess' inner circle of companions, alongside those such as Diao Linqin and the Heron General Xia ren herself…
She did not know what such a person would be like, but approaching him this way was bold of her, and could certainly have harmed her if he had chosen to reject her claim of connection.
"I was told to ask you of the nightmares which nearly drowned the Truth, the final gambit of the Supreme Master of Lies," Ling Qi spoke carefully, doing her best to speak the exact cadence and implication of tone in each of Huisheng's words as she repeated them. That title at the end especially… it tasted of oil and blood, and worse still the fragrant ambrosia of bliss bringing lotus petals, a consuming nirvana of absolute delusion.
A shadow crossed Jia Hong's face, a flash of overwhelming zeal and long-banked rage, and the cold shadow of sorrow and crushing grief. For just a second, she smelled burning ashes and blood and the tears of countless mourners.
"Ha! Well, he's never one to ask small things of his student hm?" Jia Hong laughed aloud. "I'm sure you've seen the plays. The nightmares of fear and paranoia and mindless rage, the raw emotions of a man lashing out like a beast without thought, these things do not answer to Truth and never have."
When he first spoke to me of the Pure one, he began to spin a tale of just so, of a wicked king who would not accept reason and a monk who laid down his life to convince. I told him then as well that I am not so young that I need to hear the small lies told for the sake of children," Ling Qi said quietly. "A play for the public…Well, I suppose it can't be a lie, bearing her Grace's visage."
"It cannot," Jia Hong said. "Such a thing existing under her light would be an offense as sure as disputing a White Serpent's right to rule over their lower branches. There is no lie. You know some of the things which lurk in the deep liminal."
"The Forever King, it was his realm bubbling to the surface behind the battles in the Wall, which I passed on my journey south to understand."
"All is as it has ever been, and as it ever shall be, all change, all roads circle back to their beginnings. Nightmare of Stasis and Thrones," Jia Hong said lightly. "Oh yes. But do you truly understand what creatures such as they are?"
"A kind of great spirit I suppose, but proscribed in worship," Ling Qi said, frowning.
"No. They are less and more than that, the Primal Nightmares. Some relate to the Ascended, their purviews interlocking. Unity of Blades is built upon the Foundation of the Other, the Nightmare of strangers and traitors and the unfitting. But even Unity of Blades was once a man, as the Bountiful Earth was once a man. The primal nightmares were never such. No one set out to cultivate them.
Jia Hong spoke thoughtfully his hand on the pillar, his voice was easy, rhythmic, and near magnetic. It was difficult even to contemplate distraction, to hear anything but what he was saying, fixing her attention on his face.
"Every Way, even those devoted to deceit, is a form of truth. It is your truth, but a truth all the same. Even if it is only a truth in your own heart just yet. Thus, it can be challenged, it has limits, context, and definition. A great Spirit in theory could be extinguished. Its worshippers destroyed, its faith crushed, its Way refuted, erased by successive ascensions.
Primal nightmares are merely the expressions of the basest instincts of men in this tainted cradle, the things that simmer beneath reason and consciousness. You cannot end them, cannot kill them, so long as minds exist to birth them anew. They are painfully simple and painfully incoherent, and thus not a danger save to liminal travelers who do not know where they should not set foot. Their power is a terrible, corrosive thing brought fully to bear though. The Patriarch of the Hui was their master.
In truth, had our great lady not risen when she did… I think the old monster might have achieved the Eighth realm himself within a few more decades, and then, well, ha. I suppose I should have instead been witness to the terrible sword of Inexorable Justice and all the might of Empire coming down upon it rather than her Grace. The Justice of Emperors cares not for the nightmares of men, nor the protestations of their inferiors when roused to sufficient fury, any more than those nightmares care for truth. A much worse outcome in my opinion."
Ling Qi blinked and rocked back a step, the hold of his words on her mind fading with the sound of his voice. "Thoughtless reaction, fear, and hate then. These things truth cannot dispel, the play was clear enough on that. Is it really that simple?"
"And many other things besides," Jia Hong said. "If it were only fear and hate, those wondrous foundations to forward action, I might also call myself their master!"
He laughed, it was a deep belly laugh as if he had just made a hilarious joke. "That is the easy answer. The 'lies to children' as you say. How to explain the masterwork of the Patriarch of Lies? The web he wove, the mastery of all that terminates thought and induces the human mind to descend into the squealing survivalist madness that sleeps in us all when we feel death is scraping its nails across our flesh, even when we sit amidst luxury with full bellies and warm hands behind well-secured doors.
For surely outside is the Other, and he will take it all away if you do not strike him first.
For surely the Forever King will roll on over your broken corpse, no matter how you struggle
For surely to turn your head, to pause and think will bring the pounce of The One Behind
For surely The Emptiness yawns, to consume all in ultimate futility
For surely, the differing thoughts of your neighbor are but the marks of the Plagued Man, who shall consume you if not warded off."
He turned to face her, smiling brightly, eyes boring into hers. "But then, Junior Sister, you do know some of that madness, do you not? I see the furrows it has left in you, as sure as a warrior's battle scars. You come by them honestly, but you should know by now that even men wrapped in silk and jewels may deem themselves to be struggling beggars when they find themselves down a few coins."
Ling Qi pursed her lips. It wasn't something she thought of often, but… yes, people often fooled themselves into thinking they were struggling far more than they were. It was… probably why her blade worked as well as it did, even on those who had never felt the yawning ache of an empty belly, or stood on the edge of death, or lived days wholly alone, only able to rely on themselves. Because even if they had never felt those things, their minds still instinctively recoiled from the loss. They recognized the empty pit of isolation, even if they had never clawed their way out of it before.
"I do know it, are you saying such a thing can really undermine her grace's truth?" Ling Qi asked quietly. "All it takes to hide from her light is… mindless panic and kneejerk reaction, magnified with the power of a Sovereign?"
"Is that all," Jia Hong chuckled. "As if it is a small thing, to be able to effectively wield those nightmares without becoming an empty vessel for them. But no. It is not enough, because her Grace is not alone, as you know well.
Do you not recall the play? When Truth marries to Empathy when Multitude and Unity harmonize, it becomes the Ideal, and that is as much a fearsome and unkillable thing as any nightmare."
"...You're not just speaking of the Prime Minister or yourselves," Ling Qi said with furrowed brows.
"I am not. Hah! The Four Heavenly Kings, what an amusing name, not lie nor truth. Many others stood with us, but they are left behind, forgotten, there is not enough room in a good tale for so many names," Jia Hong said cheerfully. "What history will speak of the man who lead resistance to the Hui in Xiangmen for a hundred years before us, brutal and uncompromising, who threw open the defenses of the roots at our approach. None, for he knelt before her Grace and asked the mercy of annihilation in body and memory for all he had done.
Who will speak of the countless organizers, the couriers, the spies, the ones who funneled us materials and were caught and tortured to death for their temerity, often handed in by their own families? None. None and None. Not I, for to bring them up name by name would have destroyed our morale, broken our budding defiance, and now it would remind the clans of how much of their wretched obstruction and betrayals we worked around."
"...I can understand all of that, I think," Ling Qi said slowly. "It's true. A story can only have so many characters, I've thought about that, and how it twines with the truths of history, but I am not sure how it relates to my question."
"You do not see it?" Jia Hong said, sounding mildly disappointed.
AN: These ones continue to run pretty long, we'll get to the vote in the next one, I promise lol.
