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Sky Pride Vol. 4 Chapter 43- Racing Home
🕑 Added 2025-11-12 15:00:19 +0000 UTCTian closed his eyes. Brother Long… he remembered their games of Go fondly, but with increasingly complicated feelings. Brother Long wasn’t suited for cultivation. Not really. He would have been happier living as a scholar, joining the civil service and living as a gentleman should.
Brother Long was smart enough to find beauty in ugliness, wise enough to know what suited him and what did not, and wealthy enough that unpleasant things could be avoided. Until they couldn’t be avoided any longer. Until the illusion of safety was shattered. His nerve broke, and the last Tian had seen or heard of him, Brother Long had trapped himself in his cell, too scared and ashamed to show his face to the sky, let alone other humans.
“Small world.”
“Very small. The mountain rises sharply to a narrow peak. There aren’t a whole lot of cultivators in the Inner Court, compared to the population of the whole kingdom. Combine that with how long-lived they are, and you start seeing the same few dozen names over and over. And over. And over.” Hong’s voice had a trace of gallows humor to it.
“Wait, if the immortals aren’t supposed to be thinking or caring about the mortals, how much use-”
“Grandma had left on a journey that was expected to take three years. She was gone nine months when the attack was launched. By the time we knew we were under a coordinated attack, we had already lost two thirds of our stores, three caravans, and eighty percent of our guards. A week later, the last of the stores were gone, and we were barricading ourselves in the courtyard in Mountain Gate City. Centuries of hard work and heartbreak, destroyed in less than two months. They didn’t kill the last few of us because Granny would be back some day and they wanted to preserve that taboo. But not a single person lifted a finger to help us. Not one. Not our “old friends,” or business partners, or inlaws. Nobody. Because the Long Clan Ancestors were sipping tea in the main hall of the Long Clan compound.”
Tian faintly nodded his head. Nobody was stupid. Everyone got the message. Better to live quietly and grow stronger invisibly, lest they become the next Hong Clan. After all, there were no permanent allies or enemies, only benefits.
“Well. My palms aren’t heavy enough to kill someone at the Heavenly Realm, but they are getting stronger every day. And I seem to remember someone saying something about times of chaos being the best opportunity to settle scores. Something may come up.” Tian half smiled.
“Yeah. What are we going to do about the kids, Brother?”
“What can we do but yell for help? We have to risk going back to the Mountain. This is too important. Too many people will die because of whatever they are working here, and I can’t save these kids. Only a Heavenly Realm doctor would have a chance.”
Liren looked stricken, but Tian pressed on. “I can’t imagine many places like this exist. We will be able to get Heavenly People moving to support us, if only to see the kids and read the notes.” Tian hated how bitter his voice sounded. He loved his temple. Those days were precious memories. But the shine had come off of them, and the loss pained him.
“We can’t just leave them like this!”
“We can, and we must.” Tian looked Hong in the eyes. “We must, because staying here is no help, and moving them is worse. The spikes and the formation are keeping them alive and has been for months. They… don’t appear to be in pain. We will do our best to seal up the stairs leading to their chamber. No barrier to a Heavenly Realm person, but mortals won’t get past it and do something stupid. It will discourage Earthly Realm cultivators too, if any reach here before the Inner Court does.”
“What about all the wounded bandits outside? Or the ones who ran away?”
“What bandits?”
Liren looked ready to snap at him again, then she grinned viciously. “Oh yes. Her Highness.”
“Mmm. She is being very thorough.” Tian didn’t mention how much persuading it took to get her to ignore the women and children. A crane had little enough empathy for its own species, let alone the young of others.
Silence settled in around them again. Tian gave Liren time to think.
“Where would we go? Back to the Convent and wait for a lift?” Liren asked.
“We run to Mountain Gate City. It will take longer, probably, but it’s a hell of a lot safer. With the letter, they will either let us in, or send for Brother Fu or Elder Rui. Or Senior Sister Bai.”
“And once I finish my work there, I’m straight back into the jungles and mountains again, even if I have to drag you behind me. I’m done. The Inner Court is worse than a snake’s nest, because the snakes generally don’t eat their own. The whole goddamn city just ignored two old bastards murdering the family of the old bitch who left town, because there was nothing in it for them if they meddled. Is this even still a sect? Do they dare still speak of brotherhood? I wouldn’t believe them if they did.”
Hong shook her head. “Even flying, that’s days away and the crane can’t fly that long.”
“There is nobody here who can help us, and plenty of heretics who will hurt us. We need to get back to the Monastary…” Tian’s voice trailed off. “That’s it. That is exactly it. It’s why the Prefects and the Magistrates keep running off for the capital. I thought it was some kind of… I don’t know, magic or something. What if it’s simpler than that? What if they can feel the change in fortune in their lands, and don’t feel safe? They might not know why, but they feel like everything is collapsing, and they need to run for their seniors and get help.”
Hong laughed. It was a bitter, painful sound. “We strip this place to bedrock, block the tunnel, then go. Top speed. All the way home.”
The Snow Grace Crane wasn’t the fastest bird in the air, but few could match her endurance. She couldn’t carry them all the way back, but she soared high into the sky, so high it became hard to breathe and bitterly cold even for cultivators. She beat her wings, looking for something, sensing something. Eventually she settled down into a stream of air and locked her wings out.
“A river. She found a river of air through the sky.” Hong breathed the words out in wonder. Tian could only nod along. It felt wrong to call it a steady wind. There was a feeling of rushing along a course.
That thought connected to something. He pulled out the notes recorded from the children, and started skimming through. Every phrase was dense and meaningful, calling for patient meditation and study. He didn’t have time for that. He was looking for something in particular.
“Here is it. The Path. This section is clearly referring to the dao in the sense of a path. Then in this passage here…”
Tian started reading aloud. “You seek the dao, not seeing it. You grasp emptiness with your hands, and do not touch it. You beg for instruction on the dao but do not hear it. All because you believe there is a “you” to do these things. “You” are hollow reeds, the dao is the wind that blows across them, life and death are the sound the wind makes as it crosses over the empty mouth. The emptiness you grasp is the dao. The dao is the light and the dark that befuddle your eyes. The breeze shaking the tree leaves instructs you more truthfully than any words could. If only you could forget “you,” and simply be.”
Hong grunted. “Cryptic, yet unpleasant sounding.”
“Oh no, the real ‘cryptic, yet unpleasant sounding’ has yet to begin. Sorry, Sis. But I really do think I’m on to something.”
Tian pulled out his bamboo flute, a gift from Daoist Steelshimmer. She said he would play, harmonizing with the wind. That seemed like the exact right thing to do. He lifted the flute to his mouth and gently blew across the hole. He wasn’t trying to play a particular note. He just blew, and let his fingers move over the holes.
It was strange, trying to just feel the wind and let that wind blow through him and through the flute. He carried too much sadness, too much frustration. It was better to be empty, so good things could fill you. Better to be empty, and not full of bad things. A properly enlightened daoist would explain that good and bad are often matters of perspective and preference, not absolute truths. Tian wasn’t there yet. He was just sad, so he let the wind blow away his sadness.
Tian let his breath rise and fall, his fingers drifting over the holes clumsily. He didn’t mind it. Just breathing in time with the wind. Until there was a moment when it all came together. The flute, the wind, the crane, Tian. Not a transformation of material things, but of understanding. They were all one piece. The dao was everything, in everything, moving through everything, the path that everything moved along. Moving in a virtuous direction.
He didn’t know how long he harmonized with the wind. Eventually he had to put down the flute, as the Crane was landing, exhausted but happy. He looked back at Liren, ready for the scolding she would doubtless give him, only to see her staring down at a drawing.
It wasn’t a very good drawing. It was barely recognizable as a person. Swirly lines and jagged lines, some thick, some thin, none forming a complete shape on their own, but taken together did look like-
“Did you draw me playing the flute from behind? I didn’t even know you drew.”
“I don’t, but I had the idea a while back. If the vastness of the sky scares me, then I just need to focus down on a single point. I could cultivate, but that seems too risky on the back of a bird. So if you could be a flute player who doesn’t know how to play the flute, I can be an artist that doesn’t know how to draw.”
The tip of Ancient Crane Mountain was just visible on the horizon. That didn’t mean much. The mountain was impossibly tall, rising from the center of the flood plane and stretching past the clouds themselves. They were still a long way from home. They shared a glance and started running. No strolling. No hiding from the mortals. There hardly seemed to be any point, now, in an era when immortals died every day.
The area seemed peaceful. Not too surprising, really. This close to the mountain, the Inner Court could be flying overhead at any moment, undetectable to villains below. Though it did raise a question.
“The heretical envoys can’t possibly be avoiding detection all the time. So how are they avoiding detection so regularly?” Tian asked. Hong shrugged.
“No idea. But at the moment, I’m going to assume they have lousy cultivation bases and the Inner Court ignores them. Then the Outer Court has to get rid of them when they make a mess.”
Tian grunted. Sounded plausible.
The mountain grew in front of them, their feet flying over the stone-paved roads of the Broadsky Kingdom’s heartlands. Well tended paddies lay brown and empty, resting, waiting for the next planting season to begin. Peasants hunched over, tending to vegetables or ducks or fixing plows. Sewing clothes, washing clothes, mending, mending, mending. They had broad brimmed straw hats too, though none had veils.
“The peasants never look up. It’s not that they can’t. They must look at the sky from time to time, if only to check the weather. But it’s a life spent mostly looking down. Everything that matters to them is down. Down in the dirt or by their feet. Not permitted to leave their farms, nor the villages they are born in. Do they dream of flying? Of harmonizing with the wind? Or do they think that’s just stupid? Maybe for them it is, but you don’t have to be an immortal to do it. You just have to be open to the Dao. To let the wind play through you, rather than trying to match it.”
He ran past the irrigation ditches, running low at the end of summer. Heavy rains would be coming soon, but for now, the ducks and frogs had to make do with a trickle. Tian remembered that boatman who rowed them to the temple where the Dragon Subduing Palms were hidden. Mortal, but moving with the dao of water. Not consciously, but through lessons learned by his body over decades of labor.
Perhaps these peasants had touched on some truth of the earth, or of wood. Or perhaps their lives were poor, nasty, brutish and short. Tian stopped and scooped up a mouthful of water. Then spat it out. It still had its roots. It's just that irrigation water is utterly foul.
“Idiot. The next village will have a well.”
“Mmm. Let’s have a drink there, and see how things are. Something feels off up ahead.”
Hong grunted. “I thought I was just being depressed.”
“Both things can be true.”
She barked a laugh, and then set off again. Tian raced to catch up.
They didn’t make it to the village. Before they got there, they were waylaid by the sight of a man with his head and hands stuck through a wide and heavy board. There was a ragged looking man scooping water from the irrigation canal and pouring it into the mouth of the stuck man.
As they got closer, they could see the board was a sign.
“Cao San. Crime- Owes Twenty Three Silver Coins, More Than One Month Delinquent. Punishment- One Month In the Cangue. Fear the Law, be Filial and Obedient.” Tian read the characters slowly. “Then there is a seal. The magistrate, I suppose.”
The man was starving. His clothes, poor stuff originally, were now rags hanging from a skeletal frame. His teeth were falling out, his neck bent painfully over, skin rubbed to bleeding sores crawling with flies and maggots. He stank, not just of being unwashed, but of dried excrement. His eyes burned, sunken in his skull like coals melting through wax-paper skin.
The one giving him water was a cultivator, though not much of one at level two and some sixty years of age.
“Oh, fellow daoists, quick, come! This poor fellow is going to die, but I don’t have any clean water to give him, nor food to feed him. Can you spare anything?”
Tian nodded, and Hong already had a water bag out. “Here,” she said, “When he’s drunk enough, we can feed him.”
Tian looked at her like she was insane. He walked over and put his hand on the locking hasp that held the tortured man in the Cangue.
“Don’t!” Hong, the stranger and the imprisoned man all shouted.
“Eh?”
“Removing it without the Magistrate’s approval is a death sentence for him and everyone involved. Death by water or horses! And it might well extend to his family, too, depending on the magistrate.” The stranger said. “My auguries were true. If I didn't stop here today, a great tragedy would have occured.”
“You are a diviner?” Tian asked.
“My Daoist name is Bonecaster. I thank the fellow daoist for his consideration, but please, madman or not, don’t do this. I am not strong enough to stop you, but the laws of the kingdom must be upheld.”
“Hell with that, this is torture. And for what? Not having enough useless disks of metal? It is obscene.”
“It is. I entirely agree. The law is sickening, the teachings that motivated it are worse. But why should you meddle? Leave it in place, and continue onward. That is the true dao, is it not?” A new voice intruded like a cold wind through thin linen.
This fellow daoist came across the fields and paddies, strolling with the stutter step of one who is used to moving unseen.
“I cannot agree, Daoist…?”
“Heartmend.” The man was austere, neatly dressed, with a long beard and wise eyes. “I am Daoist Heartmend, and you are Tian Zihao, and she is Hong Liren, and somewhere around us is the Snow Grace Crane. The Burning Heaven Cranes, alive and well before me.” An indifferent smile crossed his face.
“I have been hoping to meet you for some time. I had made my peace with knowing I probably wouldn’t.”
“Not at all, Daoist Heartmend. I think we were actually looking for you.” Hong said, then glanced over at Tian, who nodded.
They couldn’t see the sin flames like Little Treasure. With Heartmend, they didn’t have to. They could feel them just fine.
Comments
Andrew Goebel
I think the point is to help us reflect on how all these children who are tortured for other people's desires are parallels to Tian, who is a child being tortured for other people's desires. The reaction to their suffering is the reaction to his.
LordAlton
I've got to admit. The past month or so of chapters have felt really repetitive and its kinda starting to drag for me. How many loops of: Evil cultivators sacrifice children -> Oh no Ambush! -> gotta run somewhere new now -> repeat. Are we going to have to do? I'm just kinda done caring about it.
Steve Wright
Broad Sky Eccentric Diviners conclave this year going to have a core session track about these kids.
DT
Ah... I can see the cliff that we, the readers are about to be yeeted off.
Noroh
I am not sure our heroes can stop Heartmend on their own. It seems likely that he is of significant strength, his intro makes him feel like a heavenly person cultivator.
HyperJoJo
Iirc Tian noticed in an earlier chapter that among the bandits only men were cultivators, but still, I see your point and it also rubbed me the wrong way. My interpretation was that both Liren and the Crane were really not feeling merciful and Tian just did his best to spare as many people as possible. It's not like he can control the crane and completely stop her from taking revenge on her captors. And he didn't argue with Liren because there was no point.
Robert Mullins
Tian's internal thoughts. I prefer no quotes or single quotes for those, as a style preference.
Deathly_God
TL;DR - Tian, Hong and the Crane have just become morally worse than the Monastery in their actions by hunting down the fleeing bandits. The fact that it is so callously discussed and glossed over is deeply disturbing. Maybe it's just me, but it seems hypocritical to allow the Crane to chase down the fleeing bandits, but spare the women and children, given the current topics of lack-of-choice, accelerationism, and sin/blame. Traditionally, we all understand that children do not really have consent to give, especially in war times. They are universally always victims of violence, even if they somehow provoke or spark conflict by their immature actions. Palestinian kids throwing rocks will never deserve a bullet for it. Congo kids coerced into the army via threats of violence are not responsible for their roles in the conflict. Latin American kids roped into gang violence via threats will never be to blame for their participation, to name a few such examples. Similarly, women generally have to opt into combat if they are going to be included in conflicts. And while some do, they are far from the majority of the populace. So in general (and for ease of post-battle humanitarian reporting), it is assumed that the deaths of women were civilian in nature. Where the grey-area enters generally is in the male populace. It is difficult to distinguish civilian male-deaths, from 'true' combatants, from men who took up arms in desperation to defend themselves as the battle encroached on their homes. We know nothing about the men or women of this town. With multiple level 9's, and how they talked about the town, how many of these men had actually consented to joining the militia, versus were coerced into joining through threats? How many of the women were willing participants, who could have helped find the children to sacrifice? The hypocrisy of letting those who put down their arms to flee, only to butcher them later seems like a grave strike against anyone's Merit. And if the goal was to kill them so that none of the potentially guilty got away, then you'd have to, *at minimum,* commit to killing the women as well. Because it's already implicit in Tian/Crane/Hong's actions that they do not care if they kill some innocents in order to wipe out the possibility of evil. They themselves are mirroring to the Monastery's "Pull them out by the roots." Except they are half-assing it, meaning they do not achieve their goal of wiping out evil, and they do not succeed in not-murdering innocents. To those who would argue, "Well women cannot be combatants! They were innocents in this!" Look to Hong and her sisters as a direct counter example. Reading this chapter, I am reminded of the quote from Eowyn in Lord of the Rings, where she contemplates a woman's place on the battlefield. "All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death." When the shadow of war and death comes for us, we are victims to it whether you have a blade in your hand or not. And in this world, the only blade that matters is cultivation. Everyone else might as well be an unarmed cripple compared to a honed cultivator. When viewed this way, there is no difference between a child and an adult man or woman with no talent. They are purely at the whims of those with more power. Whether a magistrate, or a bandit.
Ano Ano
What's up with whole paragraphs being italicized?
Robert Mullins
I think it's moreso tian and Hong play a critical role in events that will decide the future while still being weak enough that they are not incredibly hard or risky to divine.
Robert Mullins
Rather: "I expected you to be dead by now. Oh well."
Khanalas
Three diviners in one book, what's going on? Is it the nation's fortune trying to move the scale?
Tommy
Heartmend bout to get his heart broken💔💪 TFTC!
A nice fire
He’s probably the unnervingly normal looking cultivator the bandit mentioned
Harimeow
"I had made my peace with knowing I probably wouldn't" Read: You pesky kids are being more difficult about dieing than expected.
Meowgrr
I assume Heartmend would've killed them for freeing the peasant and that the divine intervention here was to prevent their "lawful" execution.
Meowgrr
Is this Heartmend's first appearance or was he mentioned earlier at some point?
LUXRUS
Every cat and dog has sinflames in the broad sky kingdom
Codered999
Moving with the flow does not mean you cannot influence its path, in fact sloth would be a disservice to yourself and the Dao. Become an empty vessel that you might be filled with understanding of the way so that you may dictate your fate upon the path it carves. Through understanding know how you might better smooth the travel of not only your own path but the paths of those around you.
Quivo
I don't know, I feel like you could probably find people like that in any big family, people whose first reaction to danger is to freeze and/or hide even if they could do something about it. Especially in the kind of sect that sends the equivalent of kids to do their fighting and will only barely protect each other when there are benefits to be had.
Matt DiMeo
Heart piercing sky meets heartmend.
BelligerentGnu
Heart mend is a hell of a name fora villain.
Raymond Mouton
Thanks for the chapter. Good scene.
Endgame
I knew there was something wrong with the Longs just from the way he reacted when depot 4 was attacked. Locking himself up in his room and all that.
Robert Mullins
Everything is coming to a head. The plans of the heretics and rebels, the problems in the sect, it's all coming together now and our burning heavens cranes haven't had a good tribulation in a while so I think it's time this heartmend fellow dies so they can have one.
BaguaBrady
For what it's with I agree, though I think that hectic pace is purposeful
Aaron Archer
I worry he is the emissary. He is the one setting up the children.
Kain
I can’t get a good read on Heartmend just yet. I can’t tell if his intro paragraph is supposed to be mocking or coldly lecturing. The “is it not” at the end makes me lean towards him mocking the notion stated before it but I’m not 100% sure that that reading is correct. Also mocking that idea would bring him closer to aligning with Tian which would be interesting.
Robert Mullins
Diviner is there to stop a disaster. RIP: him. The disaster is absolutely related to whatever heartmend is either currently intending or would have done if he was not there.
Seth
Ngl, these last couple chapters have felt kinda crazy fast and random. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, it all feels a little disconnected from what's come before. Like we haven't really gotten a chance to breathe and digest all the relevations of all the random stuff that's been going on since they were almost killed by the puppeteer heritic person, despite several days (weeks?) passing since then.
Morog T Tiny
They have allowed the lawful evil to penetrate their ranks and so now they walk with devils in human skin. It is right because it follows the letter of the law and not its purpose.
dkpfrog
Tftc!
Aadi Narayan
Hopefully killing you will mend their hearts, the dao according to this chapter is emptying yourself and filling yourself with and understanding the world, it does not require inaction or being separate from it just moving with the flow. Perhaps the flow is in the direction of action.
Zenopath (AEV)
I suspect the real tragedy Bonecaster is here to prevent is Tian/Liren deciding to fight Heartmend. I suspect he is a rare "repentant" sinner who plans to aid them as part of said repentence.
EvilLittleThing
Evil AC cultivator also makes more sense, since Tian and Hong were looking for evil Inner Disciples, not heretics.
James Faulkner
Oh shit, here we go
Logrus
I think it is just a folk-hero nickname they've picked up.
Tadas
Wasn't tribulation lightning red? That's sort of burning heaven. They were involved in 2 of them.
Chad L.
Our heroes get to vent some ire. It is unfortunate that there is way more ire to come. Bring on the Righteous Violence!
Mithestral
I'm sad and scared for what is to happen
EvilLittleThing
Burning Heaven Cranes is a loaded name. Tian is heaven, Hong is burning, and her Highness is a crane. But also they are going to do some interesting stuff, like burning heaven to heal earth. And kill the Mad God, ofc
Kain
People jumping to “he has sin fire he must be a heretic” congratulations on swallowing the monasteries propaganda hook line and sinker. To be clear not saying he isn’t one but to me it’s still a true 50/50 at this point. Nothing the Mountain has done has made it seem like they can’t have sinfire riddled heavenly people going all the way to the top.
J
I would guess in this case those laws further the heretics' plans. Cruel and unusual punishments for minor transgressions foments unrest. In this world, unrest apparently leads to bandits staking children and literally killing their country. Additionally, heretics *this close* to the Monastery itself makes me think there are traitors in the Inner Court.
EvilLittleThing
Or the AC Inner Disciple that put out the hit on them
Andrew Goebel
Is the burning crane thing a reference to the 5 elements courtyard? I can't remember and I'm afraid I won't get any work done because I'll end up re-reading the entire arc if I look.
Cally JJ
I would never have guessed that Heartmend was so evil. It's especially strange that someone so full of sin would preach strict adherence to law (Leave a criminal unjustly imprisoned). Especially considering that the bad guys this season believe that the Emperor (and by extension the government) is illegitimate. Why follow the laws of whom you are trying to kill?
KipBR
Oh boy, is that a heavenly person heretic they just ran into?
Chrysos au
Thanks for the chapter
