Tales of the Teal Mountain Sect

Year 663 of the Stable Era,

Thirtieth day of the tenth month

The 3rd Inner Hour

Yeung Lin smiled to himself as he watched the last of his disciples select their techniques. He'd been keeping watch on them as they'd milled around the three tables, curious to see how they would react to what they found.

As ever, he found it fascinating to see how their choices matched up against his predictions for them. How they were drawn or repelled from the different techniques, what they considered and what they dismissed…There was just so much he could learn from these easy observations, when they didn't think he was watching them, than he could glean from long, uneasy conversations.

Eventually, Xia Bao selected his technique, conscientiously placing the last two rejected manuals back in their proper places after he finished giving each a thorough read. Yeung Lin gave him a minute or two to talk with the rest of the disciples, before he clapped his hands twice to get their attention.

He waited for his disciples to sort themselves out, assembling in front of him in an orderly line, before making his way over to the side of the training area that he'd planted his plum blossom. His disciples followed close behind, minds abuzz with unvoiced curiosity over what the next part of the lesson would be.

His plum tree was a majestic tree, a strong specimen grown from a seed that he'd acquired from an ancient grove in his youth. Back when he'd left the mountain more often. It was young now, but in a few decades it would be perfect for holding lectures beneath, its shade an ideal place to calm one's mental energies. He took a seat by the wall, crossing his legs as the rest of the disciples filled in the circle around him, careful stepping over the sapling's thin branches.

"Now that you have selected your first techniques, I will pose a question to you all. You have each chosen a technique, one that has spoken to you in some way or another. They are something at the root of cultivation, and yet, despite that, they are taken for granted. Their nature no more questioned than the moon or the sun. And so, I ask you all: what is a technique?"

The disciples looked at him with confusion, a bit taken aback by the basic nature of his question. Their faces said it all, asking the same questions he'd heard each other time he'd taught this lesson.

What do you mean?

Doesn't everyone know this?

Is this a trick question?

"Are you serious Shifu?" Lee Han asked, his ears flopping slightly to the side in confusion. "Doesn't everyone know this stuff?"

"Indeed, Disciple Lee Han," Yeung Lin replied. "What I want to know is what specifically you each know."

"Ah, I see," Bailong Shen said, rubbing his chin. "Well, in that case I'll start. A technique is an understanding of the Dao, recorded for posterity so that others might use it to effect change on the world."

"A very academic definition, Disciple Bailong Shen," Yeung Lin nodded, turning to the next disciple in the circle. "Disciple Lee Han?"

"A technique is a method for using cultivation," the young tiger replied, straightening his back as he spoke. "To let you use what you practice to do stuff. You know, like fly through the sky, throw fire from your hand, or seek enlightenment and stuff. To make you more than what you were, but also more like yourself."

"That is certainly an…interesting definition," Yeung Lin said with a slight chuckle. "Disciple Chao Ren, what is a technique to you?"

"Well, its uh, sorta like what Lee Han said," Chao Ren said slightly nervously, after a moment of consideration. "A technique is something that lets you use the qi you've been refining to change the world. It lets you do things that you couldn't just do if you were a mortal, because you can control your own qi rather than simply exist around it."

"Mhmm," Yeung Lin hmmed with a slight smile and a knowing nod. "That was indeed quite similar to Disciple Lee Han's answer, and yet, in other ways, entirely dissimilar. Disciple Li Lee, what is your definition?"

He made sure to ask quickly, with only the barest delay between disciples. It was important to prevent the others from taking too much time to think about their replies, as every second of considering their own definitions against their peers would inevitably shift their answers. And that would ruin the authenticity of their replies, and defeat part of the lesson.

"It's a collection of knowledge," Li Lee said, his voice clear as he tapped a faint rhythm against the disc on his lap. "One that produces an effect through the combination of words, qi and gestures."

"Disciple Min Huan?"

"It's the power to break your own limits," Min Huan exclaimed, flexing his arms as he spoke. "It lets you become more than your physical self, shattering the restraints of mortality."

"And Disciple Xia Bao?

"It's a method derived from understanding. As a cultivator refines their understanding of the world over the years, they discover more about the way it works. Techniques are the legacy of those understandings, preserving the knowledge they've gained and the ways it can be used for the next generation."

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"Thank you, Disciple Xia Bao," Yeung Lin said with a gracious nod, looking around at his disciples. "Now, having heard from your peers, you can see that there are certainly many definitions of techniques. Similar in many aspects, and yet in others so very different, like grains of rice in a bowl. So, tell me: why do you think that is?"

"Because some of them are wrong," Lee Hand said, nudging Bailong Shen in the side with his tail. The young dragon responded with a poke of his own, and the two traded five blows to the soft laughter of the other disciples before Yeung Lin stopped them with a cough. The two immediately ended their hostilities before he was forced to cough a second time.

In the early days of his mentorship the two had been far more unruly, often forcing him to use his All-Encompassing Jade Sphere Technique to separate them from each other on at least sixteen separate occasions. They'd eventually learnt to not disrupt his lessons too much, settling their differences in their own time, although at times he wondered if he was perhaps too lenient with the two.

Most of the mentors he had personally studied under had been horribly inflexible.

Instructor Chun had been as rigid as an anvil during his own induction into the sect, refusing to deviate from the manuals by even the slightest margin.

His first true mentor, Xiao Aihui, had had a similar lack of bend to her. Not in the sense of rigid rules or stiff decorum. No, she cared about as much as those as she did the price of tea eggs in Zhantkai, as she was so fond of saying.

"If it's not useful for cultivation, what's the point of it?" she'd say. "All these fools, posturing and prattling about order and name and title and it is my honor to meet you and my family does this and my clan is so bloody great at something or whatever. Who gives a damn? And why waste time repeating it? The point of cultivation is to live long enough to touch the divine, not to give you more chances to waste my life with your inanity."

No, formality was the least of her concerns. But ancestors forbid that a disciple dared to stray from the structure of her lesson plan. Then she would raise the sixth hell all on her own to make you regret every second of your transgression. Extra drills, extreme weights, constant qi exercises that would push your meridians to the limit... every punishment she dreamt up were equally unforgiving and inconvenient to Yeung Lin's schedule thanks to her insistence on collective punishment.

None of them were truly detrimental, in the strictest sense, as they were all simply forms of extreme training. Even while enforcing discipline, she refused to waste time. The exercises were simply slightly ahead of the group's ability, to make them push themselves to the brink in order to even hope of completing them. And while Yeung Lin didn't have a problem with that in and of itself, as it was always good to test his own limits, he hated how arbitrary their subject matter was.

Sometimes qi training five times in a row, others an alternating cycling of all three pillars with no repetition. It would inevitably force him to reorganize the rest of his training around it, breaking up his carefully designed regimen every time one of his peers decided to act out. He'd hated every day he'd been unable to study what he wanted to on his own time because his internal qi was too depleted or his body was too sore to properly hold a brush.

If Xiao Aihui saw him today she would probably call him weak for refusing to instill proper respect, but he stood by his decision. The lesson he'd learnt from her was that it would be a greater waste to inhibit his disciple's ability to learn on their own. It only served to stifle their desire to seek their own forms of self-enlightenment. He wouldn't spare the lash, should the occasion demand it, but he preferred to cultivate the proper respect for the threat of his anger rather than cultivate animosity with it.

"No," Yeung Lin said, letting out a reassuring laugh at the bluntness of Lee Han's answer. "Although, that is does bring up an interesting line of thought to explore. You say that a few of these answers are wrong, not that all of them are wrong. Why is that?"

"Because they aren't, right?" Lee Han said, scratching his head. "If there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and all of the answers we gave are different, that means that some of them have to be wrong."

"But what if there isn't necessarily one answer?" Xia Bao mused. "That is always a possibility."

"Wellll…" Lee Han began, dragging out the last syllable as he stalled for the right words to finish his reply.

"He's got you there," Shen snorted.

"Is this a trick question?" Min Huan asked.

"No," Yeung Lin replied, shaking his head. "Disciple Xia Bao has elucidated on the idea quite well. You all have an understanding of what a technique is, but you have always accepted what you know it to be to be what it is, rather than contemplating its nature more deeply. And indeed, the truth of the nature of techniques is indeed quite a bit more complex than any short answer could possibly grasp. Or at least not one that I have yet to hear."

"There is a true answer, perhaps. One that can be comprehended once one has sufficient understanding of the nature of the Dao. But before reaching it, we each labor under different definitions that we cultivate over our lives. There is a fragment of the nature of techniques in each of your answers, but they are incomplete—the first formulations of understanding that you will continue to expand. Just as this understanding itself is but one of the first steps along your journey to understanding the Dao."

"Does that mean that you will be sharing your understanding of the Dao with us?" Bailong Shen asked, leaning forwards a hair. His tail faintly twitched in barely concealed anticipation, betraying his otherwise calm appearance.

"No," Yeung Lin replied, dismissing the notion with a wave of his hand. "There is little to be gained from it at this stage of your training. The true nature of cultivation can only be found in the pursuit of knowledge, not the reception of it. That is not to say that there is something to be gained from it at a later stage of your training, but the dynamic of our current relationship would only lead to it skewing your understanding, as there would be too great a value ascribed to my words relative to their relative truth, although even that presupposes that the truth of the Dao I have gleaned is the truth itself, rather than simply a slightly different shade of partial understanding"—he coughed as he caught himself, wrapping up his diversion before it spiraled too far in on itself—"at least as far as this humble cultivator understands it. There are more paths to the Dao than there are stars in the sky, and so it would be foolish to value one over another at your age."

"And so instead, I will offer you perspective. I believe that a first technique is special. That it is a significant moment for a cultivator, and one that reflects them in a truly unique way. Some might call this a sentimentality of mine, perhaps, but I believe that there is a certain karma to it. A twist of fate, however slight. It is a lesson of cultivation that I learned when I was younger than you are now, at the start of my journey towards the Dao."

Yeung Lin's disciples edged closer to him as his eyes briefly gazed into the distance, past the walls of the training ground and towards the distant wooded plains of his youth as he began his story.