Fic Update Thread 58: the extra variety

We cannot bind the world in place. We can only bend it to our needs.

Meng Duyi concluded, "We cannot bind the world in place. We can only bend it to our needs. Adjust, react, and negotiate. In many ways, our methods are deeply yin."

"And the imperial ones are the opposite," Ling Qi realized. "They are forceful, domineering, and 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 surprising to hear you say, teacher. Why so?"

"Because there are spirits which men must deal with using a closed fist." Meng Duyi rapped the point of his staff against the stone. "There are the foul winds which blow from the eastern wastes, the Rasping Wind and its millions of vile children, the Twelve Poxes. Many of the spirits of the Celestial Peaks were akin to them, the broken and malicious leavings of the Dragon Gods. To understand a philosophy or approach, 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.

"An incorrect construction," Meng Duyi corrected. "Natural. A meaningless term. Is a wasp’s 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 exorcised 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 the difference then? That the Weilu method sees spirits as people to be negotiated with and lived with or fought and potentially 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."

Ling Qi looked over the vista. She imagined it as it might be in the future, roads winding through it like veins, and the lights of little settlements springing up, nestled amidst the hills and spreading along the curve of the lake. She could understand that urge. Nature could be beautiful, but so, too, were the works of people, and if it came down to it, she was human, and she valued human lives.

Zhengui, Hanyi, and Sixiang were her family. It was not the same as imagining their settlements and human presence intruding on random spirits of wood and hill.

"What is the downside of the Weilu method then?"

For a moment, she worried she had offended him. Then, the old man rolled his shoulders, bones cracking and popping. "Danger. Where two tribes of men meet, squabbles will come, and men and spirits are more different than that. Men will give offense, and 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."