The Rooster Who Would Be Immortal · an original cultivation (xianxia) serial · Chapter 16 · The Rival
The gold pod by the pine root split open in the night, and something climbed up out of the earth beneath it. By sunrise, it was louder than Brass.
He found it at first light, on top of the fence post at the middle of the bean bed. It had crawled up through Mo's sparrow net and up the post, and there it had split down its own back and stepped out of itself. The old brown shell still hung on the wood, empty, holding on with its little hooked claws.
The thing that had come out of it was green. Jade green, as long as Brass's toe, with clear wings folded over its back like two slips of glass.
"Cicada," said Ling Yue, coming round the coop with her buckets. "We had brown ones at home. They live under the ground for years, and then on summer nights they come up." She frowned at it. "But ours come out soft and white, and stay soft half the day. And they don't sing for days. This one is hard already."
"Then it is not one of yours," said Elder Mo, from the kitchen door.
Brass looked at it. It did not look at him. It did not need to.
He went to the woodpile, as he did every morning, and waited for the sun. When the first edge of it came over the ridge, he lifted his head and crowed.
From the fence post came a sound like a saw drawn through dry bamboo, then higher, sharper, a long silver scream that went straight through his crow and out the other side. It filled the yard. Brass could not hear himself at all.
And the morning qi, the little sip that came to him every sunrise, leaned. He felt it lean away from him, toward the post.
No ordinary bug did that.
Brass did what he always did. He crowed harder.
That was a mistake, and he knew it while he made it. Since the Founder's Seat, he had crowed without straining, so that none of the sip spilled. Now he strained with everything he had, and the qi ran out of him like water out of a cracked bowl. He ended coughing on the woodpile, with nothing.
[SYSTEM] Dawn Crow - strained, and the sip spilled · cost: one sunrise, wasted
The bug stopped when the sun was fully up. It sat on its post and cleaned one leg.
Ling came down from the Dawn Terrace with her face very straight.
"They heard it all the way up there," she said. "The elder had to stop the lesson. Everybody was laughing. They're saying the kitchen has a new rooster. A better one."
"Louder," said Mo. "And smaller."
Brass turned his back on all of them and sat on his tail.
Later, when Ling had gone in with the buckets, Mo stopped by the woodpile on his way to the ash heap. He looked at the post for a long moment.
"It breathes at sunrise," he said. "Like someone I know." And he went on.
Senior Brother Hua came down from the Pavilion at sunset, and did not say why. He listened to the story, and then he looked at the bug.
"You will have to train, bird," he said. "Before the tournament I ran the steps to the Dawn Terrace every hour, until I could run them in my sleep. Crow from the yard wall. Every hour. Make the voice bigger."
So Brass did. He was very good at doing things harder. He crowed from the yard wall every hour until his throat felt like sand.
The second sunrise was worse. He croaked. The bug screamed. The sip went to the post again, and Ling came down from the terrace and did not say anything at all, which was worse than the laughing.
Brass sat on the woodpile with his sore throat and watched the green thing sing. He had nothing else left to do. So, for once, he watched.
It did not strain. It did not even move. Its belly was pale and nearly see-through, like a little paper lantern with nothing in it, and when it sang the whole of that empty belly hummed. It was not trying harder than him. It was built to ring.
And it did not sing all at once. It sang in long bursts, and between them, for three or four breaths, it stopped. Brass had never heard the gaps before. He had never waited long enough to hear them.
On the bench against the coop wall, where Ling had set the washed fair-test bowls back in a row, one bowl was buzzing while the bug sang. The one at the end, with a long crack down its side. Its two edges were rattling against each other, like a loose tooth.
Ling saw him staring and came over. She flicked each bowl with her fingernail. Each whole bowl rang its own note, some low, some high, and no two the same. The cracked one only went clunk.
"Every one is different," she said, and looked at him.
A classroom. Two tuning forks, each on its own little wooden box, at opposite ends of a table. A teacher who had once been Brass struck the first one, let it ring, then pinched it quiet - and the second fork, across the table, which no one had touched, was humming by itself. Then he swapped in a fork with a different note, and struck the first again. The new fork sat dead.
And a swing. Push a swing every time it comes back to you, and small pushes pile up until it flies. Push it at the wrong moments and your pushes fight each other, and it hardly moves at all.
Everything that can shake has its own note, its own swing-time. Push it at that note, again and again, and each small push adds to the last until it shakes hard. Push it at any other note, and almost nothing happens. That was why the bug's hollow belly rang so loud on its one note. But ringing does not make anyone stronger. It only answers the one note that matches it.
[SYSTEM] Brass learned: push a thing at its own note and it shakes hard · cost: only that one note works, and it adds no strength
He could not be louder than the bug by pushing harder. Pushing harder only spilled the qi. He had to stop pushing, and find his own note.
Behind the kitchen, Mo kept a row of little rice-wine jars, no bigger than cabbages, waiting for the next batch. Brass stuck his head into the mouth of each one, and crowed. Softly. No straining at all.
Most jars said nothing back. The fourth one hummed.
"What is he doing in my wine jars?" said Mo.
"I think he's thirsty," said Hua.
"He wants it to sing," said Ling slowly. She was looking at the jar the way she looked at the pebbles. "It hummed when he crowed. Only that one." She ran for a cup of water.
She poured a cup in, and he crowed. The hum was a little louder. Another cup. Louder still. A third, and the jar sang back, one round, full note out of the middle of his crow. A fourth, and it went thin again.
Ling tipped a little back out. Brass crowed. The jar sang.
The jar was picking out one note from his crow - his own note, the one his throat made when it was not straining - and ringing with it.
"That jar," said Mo, "is for wine."
"It's empty, Elder," said Ling.
"It is for wine eventually."
Brass did not crow from the wall that night. He sat by the little jar and practised the soft crow, the easy one, until he could find the note it answered without looking for it.
The third sunrise, Ling did not go up to the terrace. She was late on purpose. Hua came down the hill before it was light.
Ling carried the jar to the woodpile, slowly, so not a drop slopped out, and set it on the top log. Brass stood beside it with his beak at its mouth.
The sun came up. The bug began to sing.
Brass did not crow.
He waited. It was the hardest thing he had ever done on a woodpile. The bug sang its long burst, and Brass's whole body wanted to crow over it, and he did not.
Then the bug stopped for breath.
Into the gap, Brass crowed the easy crow, his own note, into the jar.
The jar sang with him. It was not louder than the bug. It was fuller, rounder, one clear note that carried across the yard instead of tearing at it.
And the morning qi came to Brass clean and whole, the way it used to. Not a drop more. The jar had not given him one more breath. It had only rung with the part of his crow that matched it. The rest was knowing when to crow.
[SYSTEM] Dawn Crow - one sip, whole, in the gap · cost: the jar answers one note, and gives no more qi
On the fence post, the bug did not start again. It sat very still, as if it were listening.
Then it flew across the yard, landed on the rim of the jar, and sang straight into it with everything it had.
The jar sat there, silent.
"Wrong note," said Ling. "It only sings for his."
Hua laughed. Not the way he used to laugh at the kitchen. He sat down on the chopping block and laughed until he had to wipe his eyes.
"Hm," said Mo, and took his jar back.
The bug did not sing again that day. It sat on the woodpile, a little way from Brass, with its glass wings folded, and when Brass moved, it moved. When he looked at the mountain, it looked at the mountain. At sunset it was still there.
"He has never heard anything answer him back," said a voice, slow and far away, as the light went. "He thinks your jar is a very large rooster."
Brass looked at the bug. He thought, carefully: Is this what was growing in your soil? The impatient thing?
"Seven summers at my root, drinking," said Grandmother Pine. "He could never wait. Neither could you, once."
Brass thought about the yard wall, and the croaking, and the gap, and felt his face go hot under his feathers.
Then he thought: You told me to come up when the pods opened. I cannot. My wing.
"I asked you up to meet him," said the voice. "He would not wait for you. He came down my root instead." A long, slow breath, like wind in high branches. "So that is done. The Seat can wait for your wing. I am good at waiting."
The pine needle that drifted down onto the woodpile seemed almost pleased with itself.
"He only came up first," said the voice. "That is all. The others will come up on time."
The others?
Tick.
It came from the garden. Then another, tick, and another, tick tick tick, like a whole kitchen of pots cooling at once.
Brass ran round the coop. Ling ran after him with the lantern.
Every gold pod on the bed had split open. And under the net, all round the pine root, the dark earth was pricked with small round holes, each one the width of a finger. Dozens of them. More than dozens.
In the nearest one, something moved, and a little hooked claw took hold of the rim.
On the woodpile behind them, very softly, the green bug began to sing.
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