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Sky Pride Vol. 4 Chapter 41- Storming The Capital
🕑 Added 2025-11-10 15:00:14 +0000 UTC“When the heart becomes serene, much as ice and snow melt without the knowledge or sensation that they are melting, a ray of numinous light will suddenly appear. Not only do others not know when this happens, one has no sense of it oneself. At this moment, all things become utterly clear, no thoughts are born and it seems as though there is nothing- from the heavens to the earth to the myriad things- that does not flow through one’s true self. This is what is called “nurturing vast qi.” It is the zenith of enormity and righteousness, filling all between the cosmos and the earth.”
The words spilled from the lips of a girl no older than ten, dressed in beautiful red silk robes. The collar of the robes were black with dried blood. Someone had driven an iron spike through the gap between shoulder and neck, down through her body and into the stone platform she sat on. The iron had been etched with esoteric shapes and lines, symbols resembling demons or serpents or birds, monsters of such complex forms they strained the eyes to comprehend them.
She spoke with an old man’s voice, or rather, the voice of a ten year old girl speaking like an old man.
“That which is full and substantial is obscure, hidden true yang. That which is empty and substanceless is the dragon and tiger double-eight new moon qi. The key is nothing more than using that which has form to refine and extract the formless primordial qi. Only by doing so can it be made into the elixir.”
A tan child, a farmer’s boy, explained. He had the air of a senior imparting the dao to a favored junior, and seemed to be forcing his voice to match. He, too, was nailed to the stone platform in his beautiful red robes. Blood flowing from under him, mingling with the girl’s blood as it ran down the platform and into a stone gutter.
“A human body and its sensory organs includes the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. From these come seeing, hearing, speaking, movement, and all manner of expression and behavior. All of our comings and goings, or social obligations, and our hundreds of daily activities arise chaotically from the body and its organs. From them come the fire of passion and desire, pretense and recklessness. Our original, perfect brightness is dimmed by objects and phenomena. Our self control is lost. It is not things that burden humans, but humans who burden themselves with things.”
“Brother, can you…?” Hong breathed the words softly.
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Rule number one, and it’s a big rule, is that if something is stuck in, you leave it there until the real doctors can take care of it. The iron spike is what’s plugging the holes through their blood vessels and organs. The array here is all that’s keeping the kids alive.”
“We either break the array and kill them, or leave them here fueling whatever heretical thing is happening? No. Fuck that. I don’t accept this. We will figure something out.” Hong shook her head violently.
“Agreed. Where is the crane?”
There was a loud, distinctly impatient, cry from behind the statue. Tian couldn’t bring himself to smile, but the corners of his mouth twitched. He started to move towards the statue, then paused. This close he could feel the immortal breath from the crane, but hadn’t when he was outside. The only immortal breath he could sense then was the crippled and dying archer.
“Ren. This formation is somehow related to that blind musician Ren. I’m not sensing the flow of elements or the breath of immortality from the crane.” Tian said, kept moving towards the statue. It was a hideous thing, made worse by the skill and care shown by its creator.
The crane was in an iron cage, though mercifully not pierced through with iron rods. It was mad as hell, which Tian thought was fair. He’d be mad as hell too. He was mad as hell. He was just pushing all his emotions far, far away and trying to keep that empty feeling. Trying to just float along.
The cage was crafter wrought steel, but it wasn’t part of an array or enchanted. It was a bird cage, held closed by a simple lock. The black acacia heretic must have kept her enchanted one.
“Did you happen to find the key?” Tian asked
“No. You can tell I didn’t, by the way she is still in the cage. Did you grab the storage ring of that Great Chief?”
“I… completely forgot.” Tian shrugged. Hong gave him a filthy look, then took off up the stairs.
Tian pet the crane through the bars. “We will soon have you out. Then we have to figure out how we are going to get these kids free. Maybe interrogate the archer before he dies. Then I have to have a conversation with Sis’ Liren about what, exactly, went on after we got attacked, and what the Monastery is doing about things.”
“It’s a lot. Ever have something be better and worse at the same time?” Hong arrived in a gust of cool, outside air. The ritual chamber was warmer than Tian would have guessed. All those lamps burning heated the air, and added an extra unpleasant smell over the dried blood, piss and ashes.
“Often. Find the key?”
“Found a lot.” They opened the cage, and the crane burst out, rushing up the stairs and flying off into the sky. Tian didn’t blame her one bit. He’d have done the exact same thing.
“Where’s the archer?”
“They dragged him into a room upstairs. We can interrogate him later, I’ve broken his arms and legs. Brother, we can’t just leave these kids!”
“We aren’t going to. We also aren’t going to be able to free them without a lot more information. Have you listened to what they are saying?” Tian gestured to the rows of sitting children.
“No. I was a little distracted by the iron spikes and blood! And the crane.”
“They are speaking with the same voice, but through different throats. They aren’t reciting the same things. In fact, it looks like they are giving lectures on the dao. And not heretical crap either, from what I can tell. Listen.” Tian pointed towards a pale, moon faced boy that looked like he should have spent his life in silks.
“We temporarily get involved in something or other and proceed to call it ‘myself,’ but how can we know if what we call ‘self’ has any ‘self’ to it? You dream you are a bird and find yourself soaring the heavens, a fish swimming in the depths- how could I know if I am speaking to someone dreaming or awake? An encounter with something pleasurable does not reach the smile it inspires, laughter does not reach the joke. It is when you are comfortable in stillness, constantly forgetting each transformation. That is when you enter into the oneness of the clear sky, of empty Heaven.” The moon-faced boy sounded like an old man teasing a child while trying to explain something serious.
Hong stared at the boy for a moment, then glanced at Tian.
“He said your name.”
“He said a lot of things. The kids have mentioned fire and burning too. They aren’t talking to us, they are repeating something they are hearing, or something is speaking through them. Something with a vast understanding of the dao. The heretics knew it too. Look, there are prayer mats set up in front of the kids. I bet if you look around, you would find records of what they spoke.” Tian said. Hong held up a storage ring and, a moment later, pulled out a few books.
“Seven volumes of notes. Damn them. Damn them!”
“Take a look at the statue too. A gold dragon, with five claws on each hand, being pushed down into a bloody trough by a five clawed black dragon. Didn’t you tell me once that a five clawed dragon is a sign of the imperial family?”
“Not the imperial family, the Emperor. Look a little more closely. The black dragon is carved from stone. The gold dragon is gilded wood. You can see where the artist deliberately didn’t cover the wood. Where it’s soaking up blood and rotting away. Not a subtle message.”
“What if it’s more than a message?” Tian scratched his chin. “Let's go find that archer. I have questions.”
They found the archer where Hong left him- on the floor of a little side chamber. The room had been decorated simply, with a woven rug and a painted scroll of misty mountain. A wooden desk, a plain chair, some unlit oil lamps made of clay. A man with arms and legs broken in at least two places each lying on the rug, thin streams of blood flowing from the deflated ruins of his eyes as he stared at the empty ceiling of a dark room.
“Have you come to torture me? Torture me more, I should say.” The archer didn’t sound afraid. More… accepting. Despairing.
“No, actually.” Tian’s voice was mild.
“Speak for yourself.”
“I usually do.” Tian nodded. “We seem to have a theological, or perhaps just philosophical, difference of opinions. I believe that compassion, frugality and humility are the supreme virtues, genuine treasures of the dao. That if we all strive to cultivate those traits within ourselves, we might not succeed, but we will be better for it, and the people around us will be better for it too. I try to live according to that principle. You, on the other hand, have children nailed to the floor in your basement.”
Tian squatted down next to the blind man. “I can’t save your life, but I can listen to you.”
“Listen to me? To me? What do you think I would tell you? Huh? What do you think I would tell you?” The bandit had swung from despair to fury, muscles on his neck cording and bulging as he twisted his head around to glare with not yet empty sockets.
“Whatever you liked. Your name, perhaps. Maybe you want to be remembered for who you were, or your noble purpose. You didn’t do all this for no reason, after all. Here, at the end of this life, don’t you want to be understood? Don’t you want someone to listen?”
Tian settled into silence.
“No chance of letting me go?” The archer had gone from fury to wry humor.
“In the sense of a swift death? Or did you hope to just walk away on your two broken legs?”
“Tsk. Cold bastard.” The archer grunted. The silence stretched out, and for the blind man, became unendurable. “This is a good country. It is. The people are good, the land is good, the rivers and mountains are good. The dynasty is a piece of shit. The dynasty was good for a while. The first few emperors did great things. Most of the middle ones were middling, but at least people had full bellies, merchants knew their place and the civil service truly served the people.”
“Mmm. But then something changed.” Tian encouraged him.
“Something changed. Empress Zhu was the last passable ass on the Dragon Throne. She was hell on the nobility, merchants and civil service, but she treated ordinary folk well enough. Not good, but about the same as the other middling emperors. But once she died?”
The archer started laughing, a wet, cruel sound. “Between her and the Monastery, the whole Imperial Family was dead! They said that the new emperor was an adopted member of a branch family, but that’s a lie. The eunuchs had their revenge. He was a nobody! He had a handsome face and a stern demeanor and he knew how to shut up and do what he was told. They loaded him up with poison and narcotics before they crowned him, just to make sure he stayed in line. The next four emperors were the same, and it wasn’t until the fifth had the eunuchs all killed that things evened out again. But the Imperial Family? The descendents of the founding emperor? Every legitimate descendant is dead!”
Tian nodded. “So?”
“So? So?!”
“Yes. So what?”
“So the kingdom’s pillar is gone! The main thing suppressing the fortune of the Broadsky Kingdom is gone! It’s been gone for more than a thousand years!”
“So you are making it worse?”
“Hahaha! Yes. Yes, that is exactly what we are doing. I don’t know about other cadres, but have you wondered why there are so many bandits? Starving peasants, and cadres of people like me. Because if you aren’t safe in your home, you don’t feel safe anywhere. If the country can’t protect you, can’t make you feel safe, then you aren’t loyal to it. The Emperor loses the faith and worship of the people. Taxes don’t get paid. Bribery becomes the norm. Cruelty becomes the norm. A nation of people without merit or fortune.”
Bloody foam started forming at the corner of the bandit’s mouth. “I give it less than three years until someone proposes the reintroduction of slavery. They won’t call it that. But that’s what it will be. Judicial slavery, perhaps, and debt slavery. Between the two, there will be endless free labor for the nobles and merchants. The free won’t be able to compete, working for less and less until they too fall into debt and criminality. A kingdom of slaves and slave masters. Three years. Shame I won’t live to see it.”
“The kids downstairs?”
“The founding of a country is full of ritual for a reason. Suppressing fortune, imbue it into the people, treasure and land. All the legitimate heirs of the royal family died. But how many bastards did they have over thousands of years? How many branch families got split off, how many fallen noble houses? Some people still carry traces of the imperial qi in their blood. People carrying the favor and fortune of the kingdom.”
There was a pause. The archer seemed to struggle to breathe for a moment, but pushed on. He was sweating. The pain, Tian knew. It could make you sweat. “Not just the Imperial family either. Everyone who was a big contributor to the founding of the kingdom, or even later on. Their ancestors did some service for the royal family during a war, built a canal, something big. They earned merit. They cultivated and even if they didn’t achieve immortality, they formed roots. Their descendants and reincarnations were blessed enough that they could become cultivators.”
“Is every cultivator-” Tian leaned in.
“No, no. Most aren’t. The, hah, minor talents. But every single disciple of Ancient Crane Mountain had an ancestor or previous life that was a meritorious servant of the kingdom or a member, no matter how distant or illegitimate, of the imperial family. Each carries a trace of the kingdom’s fortune on them. The very barest trace.”
“The kids down below could ring the Dragon Calling Bell.” Tian breathed the words out.
“Yes! Yes! The Dragon Calling Bell! Did you think you were the dragon being called? No! You are the little fish feeding the dragon. The dragon is the nation’s fortune. You hear them chanting, preaching the dao? The nation’s fate is so weak, it speaks in a human tongue! Listen to the dragon’s chant. Isn’t it majestic? Isn’t it glorious?”
The pain was taking over the archer’s mind. His words were laced with maniacal laughs, his ruined eyes weeping blood over a too-wide smile.
“Soon the chant will go silent. Darkness will fall. And once this country is in ruins, once all the old order has been washed away with fire and blood and everyone has been reduced to the level of starving dogs, a new empire will be founded. A just and righteous one. From extreme yin comes yang. A glorious empire. Just and righteous. We pave the way for The Emperor to Come. What a pity I won’t live to see it. What a pity.”
Comments
G
My only complaint is that fortune suddenly seems like a thing everyone knows about when it was only mentioned for the first time like 20 chapters ago. It would feel a lot more natural if it had come up a few times in previous books.
Endgame
I was a junior getting my yearbook picture retakes. While I was sitting in the Auditorium waiting for my name to be called they had a TV setup. The TV was on just a news channel and I remember watching the building burn and watching the second plane hit the tower. I know exactly what you're talking about when you say your thoughts on the Middle East boiled down too "nuke them all". It was the same for me but maybe a little worse. I was supposed to be getting a sweet sixteen ready in the restaurant "windows of the world" on the 106th floor of the north tower that day. The night before my friend called and said they were changing the day from that Tuesday to the following Friday because some of her family couldn't make it until then. I think about that a lot, because I would have been in that tower even earlier because I was going to go with my uncle who worked there. Thank God he made it out, but my cousin wasnt so lucky. A lot of my friends parents or grandparents didnt make it out either. All of this was to say I really understand how you felt all through high-school. I even said we should just "nuke them all" and let God sort them out. Lol man youth is wasted on the youth.
Matt DiMeo
So the “he said your name” thing was weird. I know Tian is “sky” or “heaven” or “heavens”, and those words came up in the speech, but… I knew a guy named Red. I don’t think his friends would have perked up just because the word “red” came up in a lecture. So what am I missing?
Logan
Ok... so I can kind-of see where this archer guy is coming from. I was in Freshmen Homeroom class when the Towers were Hit and pretty much for the entirety of my High School career my thoughts on the Middle East boiled down to "The problems are too big. They can't be fixed. So Nuke them all and let God sort them out." and I'm talking about the entirety of the Middle East and Upper Africa. I eventually grew out of that world view but yeah as you said "if you aren’t safe in your home, you don’t feel safe anywhere. "
Art Dragon
There has to be a better way to go about this metaphysical thing than killing children and using them as blood sacrifices. Yes there is corruption, but holy fuck; killing innocents is not the way to fix it.
Felix Giron
So... the Ancient Crane Monastery are a bunch of state-aligned, bloodline-based, Toaist predestinators who use the dragon bell as a divining tool to determine membership. Egads! No wonder our heroes want to spend some time being Nameless.
Meowgrr
This cycle seems to eventually infect all human institutions. Organizations are formed to perform a function. Humans always redirect that function toward inward: persist the organization and enrich its membership.
Meowgrr
Peter Thiel is the Mad God?!
Harimeow
Tian, we need a soothing tea ceremony on a country-wide scale. These heretics have no chill. Seriously though, if the kingdom really is 3 years from the reintroduction of slavery then the negligence of the monastery is truly criminal - and could it really still be negligence? It would have to be willful - going way beyond a general non-interference policy. I understand that it's hard to make a complex system perfect, but it's not too hard to make it bearable for most - mortals have managed it over and over again.
Zephyr
I guess this explains why West Town Outer Court was going through a dry spell of new, young cultivators. These cadres have been bleeding dry the kids who would have otherwise been able to ring the bell.
Tim Gonsalves
GD this hits a little too hard. The heretics are accelerationists? Is there a heretic sect called DOGE? Great chapter, thank you!
BaguaBrady
I cannot help but see the parallels with extraction of fossil fuels in our world
zero
topical....
Aaron Weingrad
Coward-Piven strategy.
Gardor
I disagree with you about most of the specifics but think this is a very cool idea.
Abhi
I suppose they call it Suppressing Fortune for a reason. Can't let the fortune of their country be spent on wasteful stuff like the good of all instead of good for their descendents first and foremost I guess.
Grish99
Ah the tale as old as china. Revolt from the corrupt empire->purging the corrupt court->couple generations of great emperors that works for people->the empire becomes more corrupt over time-> back to beggining
Raymond Mouton
Thanks for the chapter.
William Johnson
I mean, they're also being manipulated by the wasteland heretics. I suspect the actual outcome would be the heretics come in, kill everyone with any amount of fortune, destroy everything they can get anything out of destroying and the wastes grow by a kingdom.
MurkyTruths
We gotta stop going for the soup option. It leads only to death and sorrow
Codered999
But they don't. This isn't some kill the chicken to scare the monkeys into behaving shit. They are effectively trying to collapse the kingdom to achieve a result that won't come to fruition for multiple lifetimes because these idiots have no understanding of how far their methods are actually taking things. This doesn't just risk the kingdom, it risks the land in general and the people that depend on it. If they actually succeed the amount of death and blood and suffering will result in a Yin poison that will cover the area and turn it functionally desolate for potentially centuries as the land attempts to slowly recover naturally.
Gerald Monroe
Oh so the ring grampa uses up energy to tell Tian anything. I am guessing these kids speaking is costing the kingdom energy to say it which is why the heretics set this array up.
Codered999
Okay, so basically they believe by putting things to the extreme negative in merit and fortune and such that the kingdom that will rise after the collapse will swing back into the positive extreme and then everything from then on will be good and make up for the blood and suffering inflicted right now. These people are extremely stupid, they could have been targeting the actual corrupt management for assassination instead of using children as stuck pigs to bleed out the kingdom's merit and fortune. If they were acting in truth for the betterment of the kingdom the fortune would aid them in excising the corruption too. Instead we functionally have Tian acting as some kind of measure of last resort against this bullshit because it won't ultimately help as they don't actually understand how the extreme Yin and Yang principle works in relation to a nation. Their actions are more likely to render the area unlivable for decades or even centuries because the extreme Yin will poison the ground, wither crops, stagnate water, enfeeble the mortals, corrupt the cultivators and the list goes fucking on. Will things eventually bounce back, yeah for a certain definition of bounce back, but it will take several generations these dumbasses will curse to suffer needlessly because they refused to act against the actual source of their problems.
BurnNote
So, the lower ranks are basically accelerationists. "If we make things worse, the Revolution will come sooner, and that justifies whatever suffering we create in the process". It doesn't make much sense of you actually thing l think about it carefully, of course because there's no guarantee on when it happens (maybe you just get wrong status states), or that the result will be an improvement on the state of directly before, nevermind better than right now. But it does work very nicely to justify means you already kind of decided on.
Person
Love the idea of that things are so bad that nihilistic people only see hope in making it worse so it can get better smh
darkmuch
Tian: We’re gonna need a big hole for Kingdom Soup.
João Vene
Also this once more makes me paranoid about Sister Bai's ascencion. She started preaching the Dao and heavenly generals and sages manifested around her. Was this merit of the kingdom draining away and being wasted? Merit that the heretics were severing in these rituals, that Tian and Hong stopped, and flowed back into the system and into Bai, pushing her through to the Heavenly realm? Also what the fuck are they doing with the notes? Notes taken by heretics, tortured out of children, of actual insight into the Dao.While they might not technically be cursed, that's cursed as shit, but also genuine words from sages of the founding of the kingdom. Reading it, learning their insight into the Dao, would be in a way profiting from the suffering of these children, while also a way to recapture the merit back into the monastery. My guess is that the best outcome would be to save the kids, heal them, take them to West Town, train them up and teach them about the Dao with these notes, and raise a new generation of heros, but I'm not sure they can be saved. They're fucking nailed to the ground. I guess in a way Tian and Hong are going to do the cultivator thing and take all the treasures, even if they're nailed to the ground.
Len
Simple reason. People ARE STUPID.. tell them the same lie over and over, it becomes truth, to THEM. for Example Socialism. not one attempt at a socialist society has succeeded. Every. Single. One. who Chooses where the food goes, who gets the food, how is it distributed, etc. every one of these societies has fallen into shortages, poverty/starvation and then totalitarianism/dictatorship. Yet "This Time" it will be successful. It won't because nature abhors a vaccuum. and it is human nature. humans are tribalist, we NEED a person in charge. thus in a society that has shortages, who becomes "the boss", the nice person who shares, or the asshole who takes what he wants and is "stronger" for it, then that person says, loook at me. i got xxx because i took it, follow me and you too can not be poor/hungry/starving....and tada. new dictator is born. it happens EVERY Time. YES a society can have Socialist Elements, but it needs a leadership structure that is NOT socialist to succeed. and damn warby how to toss heavy philosphy crap at us on a monday morning...... :)
Robert Mullins
The natural question of course is how the daoist masters view these events and to what extent the heretics in the waste are involved. Are the heretics leading the rebels, assisting the rebels, or are they just taking advantage of the chaos for their own ends when they saw the Broadsky kingdom was already having internal issues?
Enkelados
Man I love it when the villains actually have a point.
Robert Mullins
Assuming what we've heard is true cultivation potential is partially a result of merit earned in your past life and the merit of the family you are born into. The rebels believe that the emperor is illegitimate and the kingdom is losing its fortune as a result and the lives of the common people are falling to ruin. To deal with this they decide to accelerate the problem by forcing out the remaining fortune where they can find it and allowing the chaos to sweep the land until a great hero birthed from tragedy rises up and forms a new empire with proper celetial approval. Whether or not this is actually the goal of the people in charge it at least seems to be something this soldier believes.
João Vene
That confirms a lot that had been hinted at, previously. Also, Black Iron Gorge is probably behind the nail kids to the floor plan, right? If everyone that can ring the dragon calling bell has merit from past lives or their bloodline tied to the empire, draining the merit of the empire will weaken the Monastery. More immediately because a bunch of kids that could ring the bell and join up are now nailed to the ground, but also because the merit that fuels the talent of the monastery is being drained. I'm not sure what that looks like, actually, but it wouldn't surprise me if it made it harder for earthly people to break through to the heavenly realm, if they're relying on this inherited merit. Since it's a cultivator plot, they might have been doing this for over a thousand years, orchestrating the fall of the imperial family and corruption of the empire, to carve away at the monastery's strategic stockpile of merit. It actually kind of ties in with Brother Fu too: a lifetime of being a regular cultivator, with all the backstabbing and massacre, and he didn't have enough favor and merit to make the cut. Until he actually started acting in line with the Dao, and cultivating his virtue, and gathering actual merit himself. Teaching Tian to be human, adopting him as his own son, there's no way Fu didn't get a lot of merit for that, merit outside the monastery/empire system, that wasn't inherited, but actually earned by himself in this life. I guess to counter this plot, the monastery would have to get their members to follow Fu's example and actually practice the Dao, humility and compassion and all that, until they can gather merit themselves. Or they need to reform the kingdom, reinstate a new emperor that is actually virtuous, enforce change that improves the lives inside the kingdom and promotes the Dao. Starsieve did it once, so why didn't he step up in the last thousand years, since his descendants got killed and the pillar cut? Does reforming the kingdom mean they lose the previous stockpile of merit and need to wait for it to gather again? Did they not notice that the merit was being drained away?
Kain
I bet this guy, and other like him, justify working with Black Iron gorge and its heretics by telling themselves “once the true empire rises it will easily wipe out these heretics their existence alone is proof of the current empire’s falseness”
David Bailey
That's a horrific funhouse mirror, it is.
Zenopath (AEV)
I don't know why people believe that the only way to make things better is to tear everything down and start over. Its a depressingly common belief. That doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is how many people seem to think the new system will be better than the old when it's built on a foundation of blood and cruelty. Do they expect the same people who slaughter children to suddenly have change of heart and become decent and just rulers after their bloody coup? You expect the revolutionaries to act better once they've won and public opinion doesn't matter? "Oh no the current government plans to reinstate slavery. How awful! Lets ask the people with slaves who routinely use blood sacrifice on those slaves to help us prevent that!" The revolution can have noble ends, but with inhumane evil means, there's no way the ends will ever be anything but worse than status quo.
Kain
They are the same thing. If you have “roots” it’s because you were a part of a meritorious family or earned merit yourself in a prior life. Roots are also what enable you to cultivate. At least according to this guy. We know Tian “made roots” by incorporating natural treasure and the doa of soup.
Brandon Cleveland
So the bell doesn't actually test for the ability to be a cultivator. It instead tests if you have a connection to the merit or fate of the empire, and can be a cultivator?
Jabberwocky
Man such intresting philosophical points throughtout your stories but i gotta say i love how the bad guys are just fanasty version accelerationists. "Its bad now if we make it more bad faster it will be fixed" haha.
Chrysos au
Thanks for the chapter
