Year 663 of the Stable Era,

  Thirtieth day of the eleventh month

  The simple moment of the fifty-fifth minute of the twenty-first hour

  The Thousand Li Immortal was as indecorous of his station as ever. His dull robes were one of only two that Lee Taijin had ever known him to wear, and wear indeed was an apt word to describe them. At points they seemed more held together by thought than thread, although they seemed to have picked up more patches along with holes. A custom that might seem strange to many, as if the great Immortal himself was in need of charity, but then most things about the cultivator before him defied expectations.

  He was wearing his hair longer in the back than the last time they’d met, the mere month ago that it was. Neat bangs sat in contrast with a wild and unkempt mane, its strands reaching past his shoulders at uneven lengths. It was the sort of cut that spoke of a far younger cultivator, the sort that had just emerged from a few years of quiet contemplation in a cave and cut only the bare minimum needed to restore their vision.

  Lee Taijin himself willed his short, keeping it at a mere two inches of jet-black scruff that stuck out at similarly wild angles. But better sculpted, to embody the image of the fierce brawler that so many were taken in by. Nothing at all like the sort of undergrowth that his friend’s seemed to aspire towards, much less that monstrosity on the front of his face.

  “What in the five hells did you do to yourself?” he asked, staring at the ill-shaped mustache plastered above his lip. Asymmetric would be too generous a term for such a misshapen thing. It was the sort of growth that most mortals would take as a sign from the Heavens to permanently eschew off facial hair altogether.

  “Ah, you like it?” the Immortal asked, brushing it with his first two fingers and a gleam in his eyes. “It’s a new technique I found while travelling. An old calligrapher’s solution to the devastating loss a botched pill inflicted upon him. A bit of growth, a bit of form, and enough illusion to make the eye wander before you look too close. Ingenious, ey?”

  He rubbed the hem of his sleeve against his lip, the offensive facial hair sloughing a dark line against the fabric as it was revealed for the ill-drawn thing it was. Part of whatever disguise he had been using to get around his sect this particular day no doubt, though some parts of Taijin couldn’t help but wonder if such a thing hadn’t attracted more attention than it’d deflected.

  “I’d assumed that it was the first sign of madness,” the master of the Teal Mountain Sect said, massaging a temple as he stilled his brushes. “Finally giving in to the temptation of your station to inflict unspeakable harm on all that bore witness to you.”

  “I suppose you’d be the expert on such things,” the Immortal laughed, his eyes playing over his abundance of absent upper garments.

  “You know that I don’t like shirts,” the muscular cultivator grumbled, playing out his part of their age-old greeting to perfection as he gestured towards the table and chairs he’d dug out of his storage ring for the occasion. They sat somewhat incongruously on the edge of his cliffside pavilion, the mismatched furniture at odds with both the ornate filigree of the dark red wood and the austere gray of the granite slab tables of the adjacent chamber.

  “And besides, it would be a mortal sin to covet a jade ring as beauteous as this,” he added. He flexed dramatically as he spoke, subtly intensifying the light of his illumination array to better display the perfect nuances of his musculature.

  “As optimistic as ever,” the Immortal laughed, one moment standing, the next already leaning forwards in his chair as an assortment of bottles and containers appeared on the table before him. Jade flasks, clay jars, and wooden caddies of all sizes and description; some aged with dust and others fresh as the day they were made.

  Without pause he pulled Taijin’s kettle from its place in his kitchen, plucking a pair of oranges from a branch in the Brushstroke a moment later. The fruit split it landed on a plate decorated with a child’s impression of what was either a lily or an incredibly fat snowflake, its skin splitting in even intervals as the individual slices fell into a pair of neat spirals.

  “So, what are we starting with?” Taijin asked, taking his seat a second later. He helped himself to a slice of fruit from the Tanshi Sea as the Immortal hmm’ed to himself, stroking his chin as he tapped a measure of leaves back into a caddy before dumping the rest unceremoniously into the kettle.

  The orange was just shy of ripe, tart in that way that his old friend knew he liked. As he chewed he set the mountain spinning with a thought, a gentle rotation that would allow them to better enjoy the distant lights of the sect below.

  “Oh, just a light white from the Great Plains of Ghen,” the Immortal smiled, as the water started to heat up. Slowly, of course, in that ancient traveler’s kettle of his. Because he insisted that it added to the flavor. “Aged with a light accompaniment of crystal chrysanthemum, to better mellow the richness of the earth."

  “So that fellow from Zhangra finally finished sorting out his ratios,” Taijin said, the memory of their last conversation on the topic snapping back to him even before he finished hearing the words. “I thought that I’d finish forming my Dao by the time he was satisfied with his work, the way that he was puttering around with it. I hadn’t even started carving Red Thunder Mountain when he’d started!”

  “Well, not everyone can practice as worldly of a Dao as yours,” the Thousand Li Immortal replied. “For some, the perfection of a single cup is enough of a pursuit.”

  “That’s certainly a bold claim coming from you,” Taijin laughed. “When you declared your path for what it was, I assumed it was a fool’s errand. A grand aspiration, one that could never be met…and yet…"

  He sighed as he looked towards the map on the wall, far too great a fraction of his mind suddenly considering the possibilities of what could have been. Alternative paths that he could have taken, other might-haves and could-haves that would have nudged events along ever so differently. Individual steps on the path that, over centuries, might have brought him a fraction closer towards his goal as time tallied the cost of every action together.

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  “Perhaps it was my fault, that I have gone so slow. The sect, my responsibilities…perhaps I would have found my way to the truth of my Dao centuries ago if not for them. Such a boon, my pride has been, over the centuries. But at the same time a shackle, slowly, irrevocably siphoning years across moments.” He picked up another slice of the orange, turning it over in his hand as he considered both his own words and the fruit before him.

  “It’s always a real wondering, to consider such things,” the Thousand Li Immortal finally said. “But you should never forget that there is more to consider than just the rigid stage directions of events. There is the karma of your actions as well. The ways in which your sect has touched the lives of many, bringing circumstances towards and away in an endless dance. Every action drives another, but it is the ties between those many lives have led to a closeness that has helped your cultivation and understanding grow in ways that you won’t understand for years to come.”

  “I suppose that such an observation is a testament towards yours,” Taijin replied, looking towards his old friend.

  The Dao of Distance and Closeness; such a subtle difference from the mere Dao of Distance that so many thought he possessed, and yet, that nuance was exactly the thing that made his so impressive. Not a Dao of space, but people as well.

  In many ways it was an oddity amongst Daos, those truths formed by Immortals. Not one of abstinence, but of embracing. A truth drawn not just from the world and its nature, but from the people that dwelt on it. A truth drawn from what so many considered a weakness, but what Lee Taijin knew to be strength.

  After all, to live as a cultivator was to stand alone. Eternity ground down all, from chaff to grain, until not even dust remained. Connections were a weakness. Something to drag one down, as affairs of the heart tore one apart. Each a chance for betrayal, sadness, and disappointment in equal measure. But to the Thousand Li Immortal, such sentimentality was not a vulnerability to be exploited but a crucible to test the mettle of his Dao.

  A Dao shaped by the journey of a thousand li and a thousand faces, a thousand times over. Across every land and every sea, between man, guai, beast, and all things between and beyond. Something that should have been impossible made possible. The ultimate art of the Immortals, formed from the unyielding nature of the garrulous cultivator that he had confronted in that crowded town square so many centuries ago.

  Who had accepted the challenge of that foolish young battle maniac, so full of youth’s fiery confidence as he started a duel over the crime of a shared name.

  Who had been far more gracious than he had needed to be in victory, extending an arm where so many would extend a blade.

  Who had even offered to wave away their wager, as though his pride would allow him to shirk such a thing. No, that was something that had remained paid. A permanent mark of difference between the two.

  “Perhaps, perhaps,” Li Jin said, fussing over the first teapot as he finished preparing the other two. “In my old age I suppose that I might have learnt a thing or two about such things. As they say, wisdom matures far slower than fine wine, but with greater potency.”

  “You bastard! You’re younger than I am!” Lee Taijin exclaimed, half-rising as he pointed an accusing finger.

  “Oh, what’s a decade or three really at our age,” Li Jin laughed, finally pouring him a cup of the tea that had begun tempting him with its aroma.

  “Thirty-four years and six months,” he muttered as he picked up the crude brown cup his friend passed him, well-aware that he could hear every word. He sipped slowly, taking the time to let it linger on his tongue before he swallowed. The tea was surprisingly subtle, the qi of the ancient plants so enmeshed in its flavor that it was almost too easy to think of it as a weak, almost mortal, blend.

  Easy on the tongue and soothing on the meridians, its taste managed to soothe part of the subtle tension that had been building at the back of his mind as he found himself able to relax as he simply enjoyed the tea for what it was. It worked remarkably well with the roughness of the common clay cups, which his friend explained to be the early works of a journeyman he’d met on the road a century or so ago.

  A promising young talent, apparently, even if his last works had been dulled by age’s unavoidable advance.

  One of so many lives that the Immortal had touched over the brief time since their last true meeting. Even in something as small as this, this tale of a traveler on the road, you could feel the depths of his Dao in every word. So strange, how it worked. That Li Jin’s Dao was so perfect that it felt as though it had been something that had been made for him, even though it was something that Taijin knew he had forged himself.

  One of the many mysteries of the Dao and its myriad fractal truths. Were the two destined for their eventual place? Or was each shaped by the other, slowly molded in turn until they cleaved together like the perfectly interlocking pieces of a puzzle box.

  Taijin let the thought sift towards the back of his crystalline brain as he let a portion of himself contemplate that nature of the Dao, smaller parts splintering off to consider the repercussions of each conclusion, or if even this conversation was one of the connections of karma that his friend spoke of. The ones that would themselves guide, or nudge, or however otherwise move his thoughts along a path towards an inevitable conclusion.

  “So,” he asked, as his friend finally finished the tragic tale of the cup maker’s last confused days, “how did you enjoy the tournament?”

  “Oh, I certainly had a good time,” Li Jin said, absently tracing a finger along the rim of his cup. A familiar tic, that had never quite seemed to fade. “You’ve gathered quite the assortment of cultivators, so there was never a dull moment during my days amongst them. Lots of promising youngsters, even if they don’t quite know it yet.”

  “I even met your son. He’s quite the interesting fellow, even if I must say that I was surprised by his presence. Were I not who I am, I might not have been able to tell what he was. Never mind the fact that most of us never expected you to be the sort to even end up with a kid. I just didn’t think it was possible for someone of your particular path.”

  “Well, you should know that there are more things possible under the Heavens than can be dreamed up in even the minds of Immortals,” Taijin smirked. At least he’d been able to get that over on his old friend. Despite his nature, there were still some things that not even the world’s sole Immortal knew.

  “Although my technique is not as shameless as a certain prolific cuckoo’s,” he continued. “Shamelessly stealing the eggs once they’ve hatched, rather than laying his own. Encouraging such vilely unfilial acts…what a terrible evil to inflict upon those innocent youths. Perhaps this elder should teach you the proper way of things. You see, when the time is right, a male cultivator and a—”

  “I would really rather not hear about the details of your bizarre dual cultivation techniques,” Li Jin said, popping the cork off a time-darkened gourd. He poured a measure of amber liquid into a pair of crystal clear cups cut with the precise peony petals, one that was deeply alcoholic given its heady scent. “A geezer like you should have some dignity and keep such things to yourself.”

  The two glared at each other for a moment, their expressions grim before they broke out into laughter again, letting the old joke linger for a long moment as they enjoyed the familiarity of it.

  “But still, I’m glad to have been able to meet him while he’s young,” Li Jin said wistfully. “Truly, a fortuitous meeting. Such moments are precious, after all, and I can’t imagine that you’ll produce another before my time arrives.”