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Sky Pride Vol. 4 Chapter 28- A Chance to Change Fate
🕑 Added 2025-10-22 14:00:11 +0000 UTCIt was Brother Fu who sat Tian down after his first spar with Hong and told him to go make friends, or at least a friendly rival. It was Brother Fu who taught him how to serve tea, and with bloody hands on a cold battlefield, showed him the heart of it.
Compassion. Generosity. Connection. Peace. That was the Tea Dao handed down from father to son. In an awful world, you could make a kind place. It wasn’t an illusion. The bad things didn’t magically stop existing. It existed in addition to it. A quiet declaration of human warmth against the roaring chaos of human cruelty. At the tea table, everyone was worthy. Everyone had dignity. Nobody threw rocks.
Now his father was sharing what he learned from those at the pinnacle of cultivation. That compassion and virtue had meaning beyond petty morality and the smug self righteousness of those who could be frugal on a full stomach. Virtue was recorded by unknown heavenly forces, and it earned merit. And your merit didn’t just benefit you. It might not benefit you at all, at least, not directly. But in real, tangible ways, the world you inhabited would be a better place.
He remembered the heretic he fought who stuffed herself with insects and hissed that he was a rich kid. That he deserved to die for leading such a spoiled, luxurious life. Blind to the hell of her own making.
A cold tendril reached through the warmth and tapped him gently on the back, and gently insisted on pointing out some inconvenient truths. Tian, by the fate he was born with, should never have been a cultivator. He was born with broken or missing meridians. He lacked that spiritual root, or that rare physique that would let him cultivate. “You need something. Some special thing.” That’s what Grandpa had said, and he had been right.
Tian rebuilt his body for the first time by destroying it with snake venom and pulped earthly realm Dustless Lotuses, then rebuilding it with the same ingredients. He’d had to risk his life repeatedly to do it, and in practice, he had sacrificed powerful vipers and earthly realm lotuses to give him the ingredients he needed to overturn fate.
Bloody Cleaver Wang wasn’t so willing to trade his own pain for power. He butchered peasants, engaging in a heretical blood baptism for his cultivation. The cultists in Burning Flag City all relied on burning victims alive and inhaling the smoke to cultivate immortality. There were Gu cultivators and Necromancers, people who used the power of curses and insects, or death itself, to cultivate a form of immortality.
People without fortune, seizing the fortune of others. It took something substantial. It took a special something to cultivate. And presumably, the higher you wanted to climb, the greater the fortune you needed.
A country’s worth, perhaps.
Ancient Crane Monastery set itself on the biggest geomantic node in the country and created a virtuous system with the Broadsky kingdom. It wasn’t perfect. It was breaking down dramatically, in fact. But it was generally benevolent and encouraging growth.
The heretics of Black Iron Gorge took a different approach. They found endless ways to bleed fortune from the Kingdom, and collected it for themselves. No wonder they were so powerful, and the mercenary heretics working for them were so miserable. Black Iron Gorge’s true currency wasn’t salt or slaves, it was fate.
Tian sat bolt upright. “The slaves! No wonder they want endless slaves. Laboring to process the brine would kill a lot, but using them as sacrificial vessels or offerings would be far, far more profitable.”
Oh yes. Keep extending that logic.
“Bleeding the kingdom, first of money and virtue through the salt and slave trade, weakening its merit and thus its fortune. Spreading heresy amongst the civilians, making the process self-sustaining. Then the war. They were content to let the kingdoms bleed out silently, and they are equally content to fight the war. The masters of the Gorge aren’t spending anything they really care about. All the rewards they promise to their fighters are just stuff. They only care about their personal losses. They could lose a million heretics, and be no worse off than when they started. Every dead orthodox cultivator, however, weakens the fortune of the Kingdom.”
And on the home front?
“Within the kingdom, there are fewer heroes suppressing villains. The merit depleting cycle accelerates. Then the heretics start taking more direct actions- exterminating villages, impeaching the Emperor, cutting away the roots.”
Mmm.
“The roots. My body rejects absorbing things without their roots in… what, good fortune? How does that make sense?”
You haven’t quite figured out what “fortune” or “merit” are really doing. What does it mean for something to have a root? Actually, before that, what do roots do?
“Hold a plant in the dirt?”
That and gathering nutrients from the dirt, like you did with Gourmet. They also use them for communication through a complex… not relevant now. Focus on the holding the ground bit.
“Rooting the land in the dao?”
There was a long, ghostly sigh. You are a smart boy, Zihao. Try a little harder.
“That seems right though.”
What is the dao?
“Grandpa…”
No, really. What is the dao?
“Everything.”
Mmm. So explain to me how something can be cut away from everything.
“It can’t.” Tian felt a sudden wave of the crushing shame known to all children, even teenage children, when an adult patiently explains just how stupid they sound.
Correct. But you have my assessment that “something” is being cut away from “something else.” So… what? What is being lost? What could be so fundamental that your body, which has been reforged in a quite saintly way, would outright reject the very water and food upon the rootless ground?
“I have no idea.”
Just keep it in mind. I have a feeling you are going to figure it out soon enough.
Tian shared the letter from Brother Fu with Hong along with his deductions. She swore for three solid minutes, then started sniggering. “It explains the Monastery's organization. The way it’s spread out, I mean. You have the Monastery proper, at the focus of all the fortune, then you have the Inner Court catching the dregs, and finally the Outer Court temples and convents are positioned to nail down fortune and generate merit. All those missions. It’s not just about gathering resources. Hell, you and I have loads of ‘merit points.’”
Tian smiled and shook his head. “It is about gathering resources, just not the resource we thought. Elder Feng said that the Daoist Masters were better than I gave them credit for being, and they genuinely did want the best for people. She just left out why.”
“It also puts our expedition to the courtyard in a new light.”
“Mmm. ‘Our next generation is stronger than yours’ probably works to prove who has more fortune. Well. Maybe not prove, but it would count for something.” Tian nodded.
“But does it change anything for us?” Hong asked.
“Dunno. But it’s never a bad thing to understand more, I think. You want to see if you can find someone sober enough to send out the message?”
Hong nodded, then asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Hang out with Little Treasure and the Censor. I don’t enjoy the company of drunk people.”
Censor Henshen was sitting with Little Treasure, supervising the boy practicing his basic characters. An aristocratic child, Jin Treasure already had some preliminary knowledge of reading and writing.
“The Ancient Teacher once said: ‘To learn, and then, in its due season, put what you have learned into practice –isn’t that a great pleasure? To have a friend visit from somewhere far away – isn’t that a great joy? If I am not recognized by others, yet bear no resentment – am I not a noble man?’”
The Censor recited the words with calm pleasure, his high voice almost singing them to his student. Then, since Little Treasure couldn’t keep all the words in his head and write the characters at the same time, he slowly repeated portions of it, gently correcting the child’s characters when he erred. Once the words were all written out correctly, the Censor smiled, nodded, then recited the next verse.
“The Ancient Teacher once said: “It’s honouring parents and elders that makes people human. Then they rarely turn against authority. And if people don’t turn against authority, they never rise up and pitch the country into chaos. ‘The noble-minded cultivate roots. When roots are secure, the dao is born. To honour parents and elders – isn’t that the root of Humanity?’”
Tian jolted, swinging around to look at the Censor with wide eyes. “Censor Henshen, please repeat that passage.”
“Gladly.” The scholar slowly repeated it, pausing now and then for Little Treasure to catch up.
“The Scholars are preaching the dao amongst themselves?” Tian asked.
“Not… exactly, Immortal Tian. Or at least, if I may make so bold, not in the way I think you mean. ‘Dao,’ as you surely know, means different things depending on the context. It can refer to a literal footpath, or a path to immortality, or the proper way of living as a human amongst other humans. In this case, ‘dao’ refers to the latter meaning. Similarly the word ‘ren’ can mean ‘humanity’ or ‘benevolence’ or ‘virtue,’ depending on context, which is why you hear me saying it so often.”
Tian nodded to show he was following, though he wasn’t quite sure where the Censor was going.
The pale man gently smoothed his robes then softly cupped his hands in front of his chest. “The longevity cultivating daoists also cultivate virtue, but generally it is their personal virtue. Most often, their virtue is shown by disengagement and passive acceptance. Birds cleave to birds, beasts to beasts, how could a sage live amongst fools? There are many forms of cultivating the dao, however, and in terms of pure numbers, cultivating immortality is the smallest path.”
The censor smiled down at Little Treasure, and bowed his head. “We scholars cultivate a dao of living as a people. As a Kingdom. Living as good, virtuous humans. Benevolent people, learned, judicious, steady, reverent and obedient people. To be a human is to live amongst humans. Therefore, serving humans, maintaining peace and letting virtue flourish is what a gentleman and scholar should do.”
Tian made the connection. “You are cultivating. This is your cultivation. Being a censor, being part of the civil service isn’t just your job, it is your dao path.”
“While I would certainly never refer to the Imperial Civil Service as a sect, I can understand how you might understand it as such.” Censor Henshen chuckled. “We often joke about it. We are currently in a major debate about which books should be considered the ‘core classics’ and promoted most heavily. Establishing our orthodoxy, if you like.”
“Is that necessary?” Tian asked.
“Oh yes. It’s taken us seventy five years to get down to ten books, but within my lifetime, I think we will have it down to eight, or possibly even less. At that point, we can make understanding the approved classics a prerequisite for the civil service exam. Unlike now, when there is a miserable hodge-podge of texts to study.”
“And that’s a good thing?” Tian grasped for something tangible he could relate to. People, in his experience, just handed him books and told him to read them. The notion that there could be books that everyone had to read was novel.
“Yes, Immortal, it is. Once we have a core set of materials, we have a fixed measure to judge achievement by. We will have a defined core cultural identity. Rituals may be fixed in their forms, ensuring that future generations observe them and the long chain of filial piety remains unbroken. The debate is one of great merit, though, alas, I am much too junior a scholar to be involved.”
Little Treasure looked up from his paper and tentatively raised his hand. The pale man smiled and nodded at the boy. “Um. Immortal? If things glowing gold means they have merit, and no glow is normal, and a building that looks like it’s got storm clouds around it is an evil place, what does it mean if someone looks like they are burning with red and black fire?”
Tian had to blink at that one. “Are they actually on fire?”
“No, Immortal.”
Sinfire. It’s sinfire, the inverse of golden merit. It means he’s seen an absolute evil bastard.
“Who did you see that has a fire around them like that?” Tian asked.
“It’s the men in the inn with the pretty lady. They all look like that. The pretty lady is almost pitch black fire.”
“Which men?” Tian’s voice grew urgent. Treasure pointed through a window at a bald head peeking out at them.
“Those ones.”
Comments
Philldoran
Nah, I think we’re good. Purple is generally a royal color due to its historical rarity (why stems from how rare purple pigments are in nature) nowadays it’s much more common due to synthetic pigments.
Rnd per
Oh good, I was concerned the purple color was the inverse of merit I was very worried for bai
Heather Serra
I am confused, I thought Fu told Tian in his letter last chapter to stay at the convent he was at and they would send people to help escort them.
dkpfrog
Tftc!
Mqrius
Time to collect some merit.
Ao
ready for the international assassins arc
Shane Fletcher
this is a fun comment section. a bunch of of little philosophers lol
David Blomeyer
What if Starsieve is the Mad God? So much angstiety.
David Blomeyer
Hooah
Brian P.
Oh, this was inevitable from the moment we were told every immortal was drunk. That’s an enormous lapse in discipline and good sense and would, of course, be exploited.
David Blomeyer
Well expressed. If there is merit, then it must stand outside of a dichotomy (sin muddies the waters rather then helps) and it must be applicable universally. Merit exists in comparison; "this is better then that because Y", not in "this is good, this is bad, and it is settled, because [the dao says, your senior says, etc]". Absolute authority and merit are not compatable.
Hugsenuef
“Not… exactly, Immortal Tian. Or at least, if I may make so bold, not in the way I think you mean. ‘Dao,’ as you surely know, means different things depending on the context. It can refer to a literal footpath, or a path to immortality, or the proper way of living as a human amongst other humans. In this case, ‘dao’ refers to the latter meaning. Similarly the word ‘ren’ can mean ‘humanity’ or ‘benevolence’ or ‘virtue,’ depending on context, which is why you hear me saying it so often.” Do I sense an echo here of 100 translators banging their head against the wall in frustration? (Translating classical chinese is very, very hard, precisely because of issues like this.)
Yair Ron
I've been growing... uncomfortable, I guess, with the nature of Merit and Sin. Absolute good and evil. On paper, it makes a lot of sense - the Empire and the Sect really are good and virtuous! or, at least, they try. Why wouldn't they be, when being virtuous is objectively measured in good fate? But, once that initial idea solidified, once I moved past it to the question of the intent of good deeds affecting them, I started to wonder. What would Brother Wang think? Wang will not stand a hierarchy to live. His reasoning, while emotionally driven, is as solid as he - hierarchy, any hierarchy, inherently allows the ones on top to dictate truth to the ones below. Filial Piety allows the elders to dictate to their juniors what is right, and all a junior is to do is bow and learn from their wisdom. Except, what if the elders' wisdom is that juniors should be robbed and tortured for their questions? Well, then you would hope the other side of Piety would show its face. The side Feng believes in, the responsibility of an elder to their juniors. their duty to guard their path, and make their rise as swift and clean as could be. But, a Junior listens to their Senior for two reasons, while a Senior only aids their Junior for one. The Junior listens because they respect their Senior, and the wisdom they have earned through their long life, and the wisdom they have been taught from their own seniors before them. But they also listen because if they don't, they are liable to be made to listen with such kindness it will take them two weeks and a lot of good medicine to heal. Seniors, well. They might no longer have seniors to show them such kindness. Thus, Wang states, one cannot trust the power of a Senior. One cannot trust a system that demands those weaker will put themselves in the power of those stronger. Because, Wang states, the only result of such a system is corruption. So, I consider Brother Wang. I consider what he will say when he finds out that such things as true, objective Merit and Sin exist. that an aura of such acts will attach itself to a person in a measurable way. And I think he will ask a question. 'Who decides?' Who decides that the actions of Little Doctor Tian, killing heretics in the wilderness, saving his heretic killing brothers, robbing heretic traders, burning their fates and his own pain to make a bonfire warm enough for everyone he cares about, are good, while those of the heretics he killed who murder and pillage and desecrate those weaker than them are evil? Heretics kill mortals, and especially children, to steal their fate. To earn the ability to rise to immortality. Is this worse than Tian killing a pond of Earthly Lotus and venomous snakes to earn the same? After all, in a hundred years, none of these children will be alive. In a hundred years, the lotuses would have been. Maybe the snakes would have been too. Some might have even risen to the heavens themselves, had Tian not ruthlessly stolen their fate. Yet, the bureaucrats of the Celestial Emperor decided that Tian is virtuous, while the heretics are sinful. 'Who gave them the right?' Wang would ask 'The Celestial Emperor, of course', I would answer, 'he dictates the rules for Virtue and Sin'. 'And who gave him the right?', Wang would ask. 'The Dao, of course," I would answer, 'the Dao, which is all things and all things happening, gave the Celestial Emperor the rules of Merit' 'And who gave the Dao the right?' Wang would ask. And I would have no answer. The Dao does not need the right, because it is virtue itself! All that follows the Dao is elevated, and all that subverts it is base and mortal, ground down by the turning of the Dao until it is pure. Follow the Dao and Merit will follow you, showering you in good fate. Refuse it, and your own Sin will drag misfortune upon you. But is that right? why is the hunting tiger a follower of the dao while a smoke burning heretic is not? Both hunt and devour, stealing the fate of their innocent prey to further their own. Or worse, the wasp! a parasite, incubating within others to steal their very vital essence, even as it devours them from within. And yet, it follows the Dao, while a heretic using such wasps to make Gu to do the same to others, does not. Why are Ancient Crane cultivators virtuous for furthering themselves, high on their mountains, breathing the clean immortal air, while under their uncaring gaze mortals struggle and work to provide for them while receiving nothing? Someone made the clay in the cups Brother Fu drinks from. That clay in turn was gathered by someone else, mortals both, most likely. Mortals live and work, have children who live and work who themselves have children who live and work, and yet the immortals cannot spare them the talismans to preserve their food. Cannot teach them the basics of cultivation, or even provide general education, to open their minds to the truths of reality. Of course, a peasant's talent is not enough to make them elites or heroes, but possibly enough to further their lives, make them better. But of course they don't. For had the virtuous immortals taught them such things, showed them such things, well, the mortals might not need the immortals quite so much anymore. They might not agree to have their goods, their children, their fates taken by the cultivators. Worse, they might no longer want to farm, if the alternative is to climb the mountain of eternity! If everyone could be a cultivator, or a minister, or a scholar, then there would be no farmers, and then everyone would be hungry. How is that any more virtuous than good honest slave labor? At least the slaves are told they are slaves. I do not know who gave the Dao the right to decide what virtue is. I would hope that the Filial Piety it receives from all of existence, it will return twofold to its juniors. I hope, because I do not think a single force or being in all the worlds is kind enough to be able to show the Dao its errors. And so, I truly, truly hope that brother Wang's suspicions of hierarchy are not as accurate as I fear they are.
Matt DiMeo
He is six, right? That is in the age range where kids are just starting to learn that other people see the world differently. It would not occur to him that Tian wasn’t aware.
Sean Shivers
Never trust good things happening. I fucking knew it.
Raymond Mouton
Thanks for the chapter.
David Blomeyer
I feel that, tempered with we are always kinda talking about our real world, and even in Tian's the smiting is a bit lacking and seems to be delivered as a social consequence. I wish we had a mad god to blame which wasn't the zeitgeist of us.
Tom C
Death to the heretics! Tian gonna slay TFTC!
Chymor
Or just use the crane to fly to the monastery… like the should have done directly after saving ”little treasure” in the town. Why are they intentionally bringing kids into one heretic ambush after another is just incomprehensible.
Morog T Tiny
I don't see a pale horse or a man with a scythe, but it reads as if he is close.
TeDureShi
Think they might lose this time
David Blomeyer
Again, mystic kid who sees auras aside, Merit strikes me as an eastern cousin of utility that runs the risk of becoming a "snake eating its own tail" just as quickly. Things have value because people believe them to have value - belief rooted in jewellery or use in microchips or tradition all being belief. The meta of belief (re: belief = reality, everyone contributes, belief can accumulate, and not all belief is equal) leans into something like Merit quickly, and that becomes a thing itself real quick. Little Treasure as the Lorax; "I speak for Merit, for Merit has no tongue" mixed with "ruthless immortals believe they need Merit to ascend" is a quick trip to a messy places. In the next breath you have "Anti-Merit (lets call it Sin?) and you have taken a thing that is a means and made it into a untrustworthy ends with all the trappings; faith, dogma, sides, war, and all the rest. Same issues as Buddha (self determined journey of exploration -> get old and decide to teach the fruits without the context intact -> dogma, sects, schisms, pantheon of saints and devils -> the shining fist, fire and violence to drive all the not-Buddhists out of Burma, etc) or Christ (golden rule, compassion, tolerance, humility ->> official religion of the roman empire -> rock upon which the True Church is built -> crusades, inquisition, blah blah blah etc). In corporate speak, you might call that "scope drift". Quite the puzzle. Of course, there is no way Grandpa, Fu, and Lorin don't see all that and I am sure they will nudge Tian in the direction of sorting all that too. We get to watch :) Tyftcs
Robert Mullins
Between the the drunk convent, the injured MCs, and the soon approaching escort, I expect this one to go badly. Only question is who will remain standing when the escort arrives to clean up house.
Colin Groh
um, teacher? That woman looks like the evilest person in existence. Is that, maybe, because she's evil? Little Treasure has got to start calling these out with a little more conviction. You're gonna get kidnapped lil guy!
Robert Mullins
I suspect the people in the inn are merchants that sold wine and party food to the convent.
Codered999
It's not submission to authority and stagnation. It's filial piety and people getting stuck in what works forgetting that sometimes growth requires innovation. If it ain't broke don't fix it taken to an extreme that is ultimately unhelpful when others decide to break it to just break it.
Kain
I think the comments are a bit too optimistic this time around. Things been going too good for too long. The heavens have to fuck you over and kick you down for you to defy them properly and I think this is gonna be a pretty big boot to the face out of the clouds for Tian. My guess is they get put into a very desperate situation and then Dad Fu and Aunty Bai show up to save them because Starsieve got clued in on their general position because of their visit to his little orange grove.
Kain
I mean to be fair any heavenly person heretic could crush a convent they don’t have to be particularly senior.
BelligerentGnu
I can't say I agree with the philosophy of submission to authority and stagnation as a virtue, but I will say that this novel absolutely reads as the cultivation novel that has most considered the idea of Dao and how that could actually work in such a world.
Kain
Oh I think they know.
Matt DiMeo
Inns, man. They need to start putting up “no heretics” signs.
Abhi
Makes me think Merit points other than being an incentive is also the Monastery literally buying the virtue their members accumulate by way of rewards and association. Virtue as literal currency. How very charitable tax deductionish. Merchant hater Tian must be feeling some weird things about all this lol.
Jeryd Greer
Poor censor, he will be the victim here.
Joshua Flowers
You would think someone would have told these heretics about Tian, Treasure, and Hong
EvilLittleThing
Oh boy, things are getting spicy
James Faulkner
Time for some more stomping!
True_Jolly_Roger
Ohoho, a little reprieve and they run into a person who was kicking from heretics for being too cruel and evil.
Noroh
Also, my corkboard theory looking less and less crazy lol
Noroh
How monstrous must this heritic be to walk towards a convent of the Ancient Crane to do mischief? I am worried.
Lurker
Ok no little Tian has found several “great” people to teach why it isn’t a good idea to sin. I can just see him smile while liquifying their internal organs
Markus Müller
There was too much happiness. Heretics can smell that and come to ruin things.
William Johnson
Oh hai heretics! You here for celebration?
