Book 3: Chapter 36: The Worst Tea is Good Tea?! |
“–cut you down for firewood if you try to eat my guest! Do you understand?” Yin Hu threatened Ta Rae.
Who, in turn, nodded enthusiastically.
The greedy Demonic Spirit Tree had been on very good, if needy, behavior lately and only needed a couple threats instead of a actually bringing out an axe to drive home the point now. It was learning and becoming more respectful, which was a good sign.
The courtyard gate creaked open and Yin Hu turned to look.
It had not been crashed through or exploded inwards, nor was it bypassed entirely by two bodies launching over the wall like Qi blasts aimed at his sanity. Today was a good day with many good developments it seemed. One after another after another in a sequence of events that showed him that his days could be better instead of the constant monotone he had been going through lately.
Not that he minded them.
He had enough excitement in the Bleak Forests dragging the party form one danger to another for the next decade… He just wanted some slight variance to his days.
Yin Hu let out a genuine smile that climbed upward without permission from the Ancient Being persona or the careful mask he wore for the rest of the world as he recognized the Qi signatures from the figures walking in. His girls had made it back.
Jun stepped through first.
Jun was exhausted.
Which… was good but not so good at the same time. Tired meant she wasn’t bored anymore and instead, she found something worthy of taking her focus and energies. That was fine until she finally decided to let go and then it was up to him to save her from the flames of whatever she ended getting into with all the dojo hoping. Which also might not be much considering there were far fewer dojos now with all the green banners dominating Cultivator Row.
She lined up to the right and Shui came in with the exact opposite figure.
Her hair was a mess, clothes perfectly clean since they had come from his rice bag, but she had a giant smile and a strange crown upon her head that was slightly askew. He made a mental note to ask her what that was and how she got it. The last time she got a tiara or crown had been during the ink fog incident when she was talking to stranger Spirits and was about to form her own evil forces.
Her eyes found him and the grin stretched wider, brighter, incandescent with the specific radiance of a girl who had done absolutely nothing wrong ever in her entire life and was prepared to defend that position to the death.
Both of them stopped a few paces inside the gate. They bowed deeply and in unison.
"We're home, Ancestor," Jun said.
"We're home!" Shui echoed, louder.
Yin Hu's smile held.
They'd come back on time. Not a minute late, or an hour early with some excuse about finishing something important. Right when he expected them, through the gate he expected them to use, together instead of scattered across the city doing God knows what.
The punishment he'd given Shui, one day of house arrest that had reduced her to a puddle of misery on the eastern wing steps with Ta Rae dropping consolation leaves on her head, had done exactly what he intended. It hadn't just corrected Shui's timing. It had corrected Jun's too. The older girl had watched her little sister sit there in that state and recalibrated every internal clock she had to make sure neither of them gave him reason to repeat the experience.
Good. They're learning. Everyone is making good progress and learning important lessons.
He waved them in. "Welcome home."
Both girls moved to the eastern wing steps and sat down. Side by side, shoulders touching, legs stretched out before them. Shui leaned into Jun and Jun let her. Neither spoke as they just sat there in the warm glow of the courtyard lanterns and the ambient presence of Ta Rae's canopy above.
Yin Hu blinked at that.
They’d usually run into their rooms to get their hour or two of normal cultivation in before coming out to bombard him with a hundred questions about cultivation. Lately they had been asking weird ones about logistics and how cultivation was a group thing rather than an individual exercise. Strange questions, but he answered them to the best of his knowledge… which meant he was bullshitting everything he could to the best of his ability and hoping it didn’t cause a problem.
Wu Xui stepped through the gate next. "Patriarch."
"Wu Xui. Thank you for taking care of the girls."
She bowed deeply and turned to look at the girls. She gave them a look that lingered for half a second longer than casual, and then crossed the courtyard toward the western wing where Zhong Da was likely meditating, cultivating, swinging his temporary sword, or staring at a wall while processing some new revelation about the nature of existence that would keep him occupied until morning. The door closed behind her with a soft click.
Neither one of them had pulled out their usual blades ever since they entered Neutral Block territory.
The courtyard settled.
Ta Rae's branches swayed overhead. The pot sat steaming on the table, three cups arranged beside it. All empty and waiting. The tree had been vibrating with anticipation since he'd told it they were having a guest tonight. It had spent twenty minutes arranging and rearranging the cups in configurations that apparently held deep significance in the arboreal understanding of hospitality.
Yin Hu had let it fuss as long as it made no attempt to eat his guest… which was a distinct possibility considering the nature of the greedy tree.
A shadow filled the gateway and he turned to look.
Patriarch Duan stepped through with the careful, measured stride of a man crossing a threshold he suspected might be rigged. His fully open eyes swept the courtyard in a single pass. The lounging chair, the table, the steaming pot, both girls on the steps look very much like little girls rather than the imposing presences they had been seconds ago, and then the tree.
His gaze lingered on the tree for half a second before moving on.
He hasn’t registered it yet. Good.
The lacquered box sat in his arms, dark red with gold clasps, held with the reverence of a man presenting tribute to a friend he couldn't quantify. His smile from earlier had thinned into something more cautious, the edges pulled tight by whatever Jun had told him outside the gate and Shui’s look of pity. His fingered fidgeted on the box in his arms… which Yin Hu watched with suspicion.
He had bad experiences with any form of gifts.
Duan stopped a few paces from the table and bowed deep enough to show respect, but shallow enough to protect the ceramics."Senior Yin Hu. Thank you for having me."
Yin Hu stood from his chair and returned the bow with nothing but a nod. He still had a Persona to care for after all."Patriarch Duan. Glad you found the place."
"L-Lady Jun–”
Jun cleared her throat a bit to obviously and looked away.
Patriarch Duan’s eyes widened and he gapped for a second. “Err… I mean this wonderful lady, whom introduced herself at the gateway… Err… was kind enough to walk me here." Duan's eyes cut toward Jun on the steps. Jun's face was buried in her hands. "Though I confess the journey was more... educational than I anticipated."
Yin Hu's smile widened, there was some form of history between them.
Did Jun beat him and his disciples up? Educational marital journeys.
Then Yin Hu's eyes dropped to the box. "You came with a gift?"
The words left him with a weight that pressed against the evening air.
Patriarch Duan's fingers went white on the lacquered wood as he gulped. The colour drained from his face in a slow tide that started at his hairline and rolled downward. "Y-Yes. Some ceramics that aren't worthy of—"
"Oh?" Yin Hu blinked and the pressure lifted. "Just ceramics?"
Duan's mouth hung open mid-sentence, the rest of his self-deprecating disclaimer trapped somewhere between his lungs and his tongue.
"I was worried you tried to bring something that tastes like trash." Yin Hu sat back down and waved at the empty chair across from him. "I haven't had good experiences with such sittings. People keep showing up with food and tea they swear is the pinnacle of creation and it all tastes like someone boiled a shoe in river water and called it Heavenly."
Patriarch Duan a shaky, uneven exhale of relief. He shoot Jun a few looks, but otherwise looked relieved this hadn’t gotten worse. A nervous chuckle escaped him as he wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. "J-Just ceramics. Nothing more here than ceramics of… indeterminate quality.”
He set the box on the table with hands that trembled once before steadying.
The gold clasps clicked open under his fingers and the lid lifted to reveal the contents nestled in silk padding.
A pair of tea cups and a gorgeous kettle.
Yin Hu leaned forward.
They were beautiful. Simple, unadorned, glazed in a deep earth tone that shifted between brown and green depending on how the lantern light caught the surface. No gold filigree, no painted phoenixes, no calligraphy proclaiming their divine origin or the seventeen generations of master potters who had contributed to their existence. Just clean lines, good weight, and the kind of craftsmanship that came from someone who cared more about function than presentation.
Yin Hu picked one of the cups up and turned it in his hands. The ceramic was warm against his fingers. Smooth where it needed to be, textured at the base for grip. The rim was thin enough to drink from without the cup getting in the way of the tea.
"These are wonderful," Yin Hu said and meant every word.
Patriarch Duan's shoulders sagged and the tension that had been holding his spine rigid since he stepped through the gate released in a cascade that made his entire frame settle a few inches lower. His smile returned, tentative at first, then growing as he watched Yin Hu examine each cup with genuine appreciation.
"My late wife made them." Duan's voice softened. "Forty years ago. She was better with clay than I ever was with a blade."
Yin Hu set the second cup down beside the other one and nodded. "She had good hands."
"The best."
They sat in the quiet that followed as Yin Hu arranged the new cups on the table, replacing two of the three that had been there. He kept one of the originals for Ta Rae because the tree would throw a fit if its cup changed and he didn't have the energy for arboreal tantrums tonight.
The pot sat between them, steam curling upward in lazy spirals.
Patriarch Duan settled into his chair. His eyes roamed the courtyard one more time, taking in the details he'd missed on his first sweep. The lounging chair's worn cushion, not anywhere neat the masterpiece that Yin Hu was sitting on, but he could still feel the light touches of a Qi Gathering Array within it to help with cultivation. The table's perfect surface without so much as a scratch or dust particle. The way the lantern light pooled in specific spots that suggested someone had spent time figuring out exactly where to hang them for maximum comfort.
His gaze passed over Ta Rae without stopping.
"So," Duan started, his voice finding its footing. "You mentioned granddaughters. I take it those are the two on the steps?"
Yin Hu glanced at the eastern wing. Jun had lifted her face from her hands and was watching them with an expression caught between exhaustion and something sharper. Shui had her chin on Jun's shoulder, eyes half-closed, she looked sleepy now, and crown glinting.
"Jun and Shui. They've been keeping busy without causing trouble."
Duan's lips twitched. "I can imagine, youth, free time, and energy. Terrible combination when left unsupervised."
"You have no idea." Yin Hu laughed.
"Oh, I might." Duan's grin carved deeper lines into his face. "I raised four sons. Each one more stubborn than the last. The eldest decided at age nine that he was going to master the Iron Body Technique by headbutting the training post every morning. Took me six months to convince him that the post was winning."
Yin Hu's laugh came easier this time. He poured tea into both new cups, the ceramic accepting the liquid with a warmth that spread through the glaze and made the earth tones glow. He slid one toward Duan and kept the other.
He had brought out the absolute worst tea he had in his rice bag.
Anything above that level seemed to make people refuse to take a sip, ala Zhong Da’s strange trance last time.
Yin Hu was not about to take any risks with his new tea drinking buddy.
Duan lifted the cup, inhaled, and paused.
His eyes widened by a fraction and nostrils flared. The cup hovered an inch from his lips as the aroma hit him with a force that had nothing to do with violence and everything to do with the sudden, overwhelming realisation that whatever was in this cup existed in a category of tea he had never encountered, imagined, and never would have believed possible if someone had described it to him over a campfire.
He took a sip. Duan’s eyes snapped closed.
Yin Hu watched the old man's face cycle through four expressions in long seconds.
Ranging from surprise to disbelief, and then eventually settling what looked like grief for every cup of tea he'd ever drunk before this moment. And then a quiet, profound acceptance that rested across his features like sunrise across a valley.
"This..." Duan opened his eyes, they were wet. Tear drops running down his cheeks."This is..."
"Tea," Yin Hu said.
"This is not just tea."
"It's tea. I promise."
Duan looked down at the cup in his hands. His fingers pressed tighter around the ceramic, his late wife's ceramic, and something in his expression shifted from the appreciative guest into the ninety-three-year-old cultivator who had spent a lifetime learning to read the truth behind surfaces.
Yin Hu watched him study the tea within the cup as though he was trying to find the answers to the universe.
He took another sip, but much slower this time.
"The training you mentioned earlier," Duan said, setting the cup down with care. "The basics and foundations as we stripping away the unnecessary. I've been thinking about it since we spoke this morning."
Yin Hu tilted his head. "And?"
"I've been teaching for sixty years." Duan's hands found his beard and began the slow stroke he had showed in the road. "Sixty years of forms, techniques, manuals, lineage methods, secret arts passed down through generations. I built the Stone River School on the principle that tradition was the bedrock of cultivation. That the old ways carried wisdom the new generation couldn't appreciate–"
Patriarch Duan gave Jun a flash of a look, which Yin Hu didn’t catch as he was struggling with the tea.
The lowest tier in his bag was… barely edible. Or drinkable in this case.
But it was just good enough to overlook as he enjoyed the man’s company rather than the tea instead.
"Then I watched a thousand people throw two punches and move their feet. It shook my foundation harder than any technique I've ever witnessed."
Yin Hu said nothing as he took another sip of his tea and let the old man talk.
"No wasted motion or flourish. Just..." Duan's fingers stopped mid-stroke. "...efficiency. Purpose, perhaps? Every movement serving the strike and nothing else. I've been drilling it with my remaining students since I saw it and the improvement in their combat readiness after a few days has exceeded what three months of my traditional curriculum produced."
"Sounds about right."
"It shouldn't be right." Duan's voice carried an edge. The frustration of a man confronting the possibility that sixty years of his life's work had been built on foundations that were, if not wrong, then at least incomplete. "A one-two combination and an basic step. That's it. That's all it is. How does something that simple outperform decades of refined technique?"
Yin Hu set his cup down. "Because decades of refined technique added things that didn't need to be there. Every generation of masters wanted to leave their mark, so they added a spin here, a flourish there, a dramatic pause for effect, some going so far as to add a backflip as well. After a few centuries, the original strike was buried under so many layers of tradition that nobody remembered what it was supposed to do."
"Kill the enemy?"
"Strike the enemy. Killing is a consequence, not a goal. If your first priority is killing, you end up telegraphing your moves as you overcommit. The intent leaves you before you strike and give any elite fighter early warning. You leave openings because you're swinging for the finish instead of the next strike." Yin Hu picked up his cup again. "The one-two exists because it's the fastest way to put force into a target and return to guard. Everything else is decoration."
Duan stared at him.
The lantern light caught the old man's fully open eyes and Yin Hu could see the gears turning behind them. Decades of accumulated knowledge being re-examined and re-evaluated. Held up against a principle so fundamental it felt like it should have been obvious and yet had somehow eluded an entire civilisation of cultivators who preferred spinning quadruple kicks to straight punches.
"You speak like a man who's been in more fights than he can count," Duan said.
Yin Hu shrugged. He hadn’t been in a real fight since he arrived onto this cultivation world. Quite frankly, he had been bullshitting as he tried to figure out what to teach the girls, taking from the fundamentals he had been practicing for eons longer than he could imagine. It came back from Earth and the forms of fighting where the very basic and foundation of any mixed martial art was a simple punch.
Duan's cup found his lips again. He drank deep this time, draining half the cup in a single pull that would have made Ta Rae proud.
He closed his eyes and let the Qi from the tea soak through his limbs.
Repairing old wounds, strengthening weakness made by old age, and more that he had been ignoring simply because he had not choice but to do so.
All of it slowly vanishing without him ever noticing.
"The next generation," Duan said. "The ones coming up now that has lived in the time of the Great Seclusion and all this chaos, from the refugees, those that would have been accepted to the larger sects but never had the opportunity, the displaced, the children who lost everything when IronArch fell. They don't have the luxury of tradition. They need to survive first and cultivate second. If what you're teaching can give them that..."
"It's not about what I'm teaching." Yin Hu refilled both cups. "It's about what they're willing to unlearn."
Duan nodded. "Unlearning is harder than learning. I can attest to that personally. My knees still pop every time I drop into your stance because sixty years of muscle memory keeps trying to widen my base."
"Keep at it. The pops will stop."
"Or my knees will."
They both laughed.
The sound carried across the courtyard and reached the eastern wing steps where Jun and Shui sat watching. Jun's expression had shifted from exhausted vigilance into something softer. Her grip on her own knees had loosened. Shui's eyes were fully closed now, head resting against Jun's shoulder, crown tilted at an angle that defied the structural engineering of headwear.
The tea cooled by a degree.
Yin Hu noticed and frowned.
Ta Rae noticed him noticing and every leaf on the tree snapped to attention.
"I see there is a third cup," Patriarch Duan said. His eyes had found the original ceramic sitting beside the two new ones. Still untouched until that moment. "Do we have a third member of our little tea drinking cabal?"
Yin Hu laughed. "Yes, but no. My usual partner only."
"Oh?" Duan's brow rose as he swept the courtyard. Taking everything in including he girls on the steps, the closed doors of the western wing, the empty gate, and even beyond that to sense if someone was making their way to them. No one else was present. His gaze returned to the third cup. "Who—"
Yin Hu nodded at Ta Rae.
The tree had been waiting and barely containing itself.
Every branch, leaf, twig, and fibre of its being had been coiled in anticipation since the moment the third cup was set down on the table before Duan had arrived. It had shown restraint, genuine, painful, bark-splitting restraint that had cost it more willpower than any Demonic Spirit Tree of Ancient Primordial Foundings should have been asked to expend. The threat of the axe hung in its memory like a storm cloud, but even that had been secondary to the desperate, all-consuming need to drink tea that had been sitting there, steaming, taunting it, for the better part of an hour in the kettle.
And now permission had been finally granted.
A branch snapped from the canopy and toward the kettle, pouring itself a cup and drinking.
Quietly.
No slurping or gulping that marked its theatrical consumption and announced its greed to the surrounding neighbourhood. Just a smooth, measured intake that lasted a brief second before the cup descended, empty, and was placed back on the table with a gentle clink.
Ta Rae's trunk shuddered once in satisfaction.
Its branches settled back into their canopy formation and a single leaf drifted down and landed on Yin Hu's shoulder in what he'd come to recognise as the tree's version of a thank you.
Patriarch Duan shouted and fell backward of his chair. .
The sound carried the full-throated conviction of a ninety-three-year-old man whose understanding of botany, furniture, and the fundamental nature of trees had just been obliterated in seconds. His chair tipped backward and arms pinwheeled wildly. The cup he'd been holding launched from his grip, arced through the air, and was caught by a branch of Ta Rae that moved with reflexes no plant should possess.
The tree set the rescued cup on the table beside its own.
Patriarch Duan hit the ground.
His eyes rolled upward, found the canopy of branches and leaves hovering above him, registered the fact that said canopy was looking back at him with every leaf angled downward in what might have been curiosity or might have been judgment, and then his eyes rolled backward into his head.
The old man was out cold, unconscious.
Ta Rae did not care.
The tree extended a second branch toward the pot, poured itself another cup with the careful precision of a creature that had learned exactly how much it could get away with when its master was distracted, and drank. This time the slurp was audible. A defiant quiet slurp that existed in the grey area between the manners it had been taught and the greed it could never fully suppress.
Jun and Shui were already moving.
Both girls crossed the courtyard in seconds.
Jun dropped to one knee beside the unconscious patriarch and checked his pulse.
Shui skidded to a halt on his other side, crown askew, eyes wide, hands hovering over the old man's chest. She had woken from her slumber for the action.
"Is he dead?" Shui asked.
"He's not dead," Jun said as her fingers pressed against his neck. "His pulse is strong. He just fainted."
"People faint from trees? Do old people do that? Can I ask Da Ruis–"
"People faint from a lot of things around here, Shui." Yin Hu stood over the three of them and sighed.
He looked at Patriarch Duan's unconscious face. Peaceful in the way that only complete neural shutdown could provide. The old man's mouth hung slightly open and his white hair fanned across the stone in a halo that made him look like a painting of a sage who had achieved enlightenment through the sudden and violent confrontation with a sentient tree.
Yin Hu turned back toward Ta Rae.
The tree froze mid-pour. Its branch hovered over the pot, caught in the act, and with every leaf rigid with grand stillness. It knew it had done something but wasn't entirely sure what and was hoping that if it stayed very, very still, the consequences might pass it by.
He couldn’t help but sigh and rub the bridge of his nose.
Finding someone to drink tea with shouldn't be this hard. The man lasted forty-five minutes. That's a new record at least. The last person who sat across from me at a tea table was Zhong Da and he ran away to meditate before the cup touched his lips. Before that was… Before that was...
Yin Hu blinked as he actually thought long and hard on the matter.
Actually, has anyone ever successfully finished a cup of tea in my presence without fainting, fleeing, achieving sudden unconsciousness, or having an existential crisis?
The answer was painfully obvious. Nobody had except a certain greedy Demonic Spirit Tree that would drink the entire ocean if it was made of tea and nobody threatened it with an axe.
Yin Hu sighed again. "Bring him inside and put him in the guest room. Make sure he's comfortable."
Jun nodded and lifted the old man with one arm. While Shui grabbed his legs. Together they carried Patriarch Duan toward the eastern wing.
Yin Hu watched them go.
He turned back to the table. The new cups sat in the lantern light, earth-toned glaze catching the warm glow and of beautiful craftsmanship. Made by a dead woman's hands forty years ago and carried here by a ninety-three-year-old man who had been smart enough to bring ceramics instead of food.
He didn't try to impress me with some transcendent, heavenly, Qi-saturated, dragon-blood-infused, thousand-year-aged monstrosity that tasted like boiled leather and broken dreams. He brought cups his wife made. I… really appreciate that.
Yin Hu sat back down.
Ta Rae's branches descended and poured him a fresh cup without being asked. The tea was perfect temperature. The tree had been maintaining it the entire time, even through the screaming, fainting, and rescue of airborne ceramics.
He took a sip.
Exceptional potential, that old man. Smart enough to bring the right gift and humble enough to sit and listen. Experienced enough to recognise good technique when he saw it and ninety-three years old with more fire in his eyes than cultivators a quarter his age.
If he can survive the tree, he might actually be worth being a tea drinking buddy.
Yin Hu leaned back and closed his eyes.
Ta Rae's branches settled above him in a protective canopy. A leaf drifted down and landed on his shoulder and then another.
From inside the eastern wing, he heard Shui's voice.
"Jun, do you think Ancestor would let me have an army—"
"No."
"But—"
"No, Shui."
"What if I called it something really nice like—"
"Go to sleep."
A pause.
"...the Hu Clan's Adorable Puppy Division?"
"Sleep."
Yin Hu's lips twitched.
He couldn’t sleep, but shutting his eyes was a good feeling. More so when he had a greedy tree and an unconscious guest in the building. It also had the muffled sound of his girls arguing about military nomenclature through a closed door.
Ta Rae's branch crept toward the pot.
Yin Hu opened one eye.
The branch froze.
"Go ahead."
The tree poured itself another cup and drank.