Chapter 58 - Behind The Mask

I woke up the next morning with a hunger that wasn’t sated until I ate enough for three people and drank a whole water boot.

Despite having stopped the battle from happening, plenty of the soldiers were very skittish around me, bowing with fear and awe, and not even daring to speak to me. It didn’t help that the General had revealed my true identity to them.

When I finished eating, I went to the same watchtower as before, and the sentry fell to one knee before me.

“At ease, soldier.” I stood at the edge of the building again, until I spied the same dust as before. And sure enough, riders appeared over the dunes not a minute later. “Call general Feng, and for the love of the ancestors, don’t shoot at them, do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, your majesty!”

I landed on the other side of the protections, just as the previous days, and walked twenty paces before stopping.

The number of riders had almost doubled from the previous day, which probably meant that everyone had come to bear witness of the talk between us and the chieftains.

A lone rider raised his hand and all horses stopped, then, the same man approached my position and dismounted a few steps away. It was Khutulun.

“I wanted to speak to you before anyone else.” He claimed and walked closer, “to fulfill the promise made.”

He was standing a couple of feet away from me before his hands went to his face and he dislodged the mask covering his face. He took it off for a moment and I was awed by what I discovered.

Khutulun was a woman.

She sent an embarrassed smile my way and began playing with her hair, alternating between looking at my face and down at the ground.

I smiled, “you are very beautiful.”

She smiled, “Thank you, you are the first man beside my father to see my face.”

That sentence made me swallow, already feeling a noose tightening around my neck.

‘Do you think-?’

‘I do.’

‘Is there a way to-?’

‘I doubt it. After all, you asked to see her face… now face the consequences.’

‘Bai Fan is going to-’

‘Kill you? Yes, probably. If she’s still interested in marrying you.’

‘You’re having fun, aren’t you?’

‘Most certainly.’

I cursed my luck and looked up on time to see Urus approaching on horse. Khutulun placed her mask on her face again, but her eyes were smiling at me.

The giant of a man dismounted “did I miss it?” he cursed when he noticed Khutulun was wearing her mask. “Damn you Khu, I told you to wait for me.”

“It was our Lord who won the battle, losers get no freebies.”

Urus snorted and shook his head before looking at me “Would you mind sharing the secret? I’ve been dying to know… is he as effeminate as he sounds?”

I couldn’t help it…

I laughed.

Khutulun threw dirt at Urus, who covered his eyes, but received a kick on the family jewels for his trouble.

Meanwhile, I kept laughing.

That is how General Fei found us. Urus was kneeling on the ground and cursing Khutulun in a small voice, while the woman glared at him from above and I hugged my belly from so much laughing.

“This is auspicious” the general claimed with a smile, as I fought to regain my senses.

“Oh dear, it’s been years since I last laughed so hard.” I chuckled and erased the tears of joy from my face. I placed my hand on top of Khutulun’s shoulder “Thank you.”

She sent a small bow my way, and even with the mask, I could see her blushing. “My lord.”

Fortunately for me, Fei had been more thoughtful and made a few soldiers put up an open tent with chairs. In thanks, I sent a nod his way and he winked.

“Well then let’s start, shall we?”

Everyone nodded and I began asking questions.

How many tribes were there? How many participated in the war? Were there any other fighters as strong as Khutulun and Urus? Where were their lands? Had they come with every one of their citizens or it was only the army?

We then passed on to their culture and compared it to ours, trying to find some common ground. So far, the only one was that both cultures worshipped dragons, but in different ways. Of the 12 tribes, only 4 still prayed ‘the old way’, using offerings of food, wine, and carvings or products made by them and that they believed were their best creation. The rest of the tribes had abandoned the old gods to worship the gods of the hunt… those that were bloodthirsty and were given offerings of blood and bone from their defeated opponents. I frowned at that and saw Urus swallow. His tribe had been one of the first to propose the change when ‘the old gods’ failed to bring them rain.

When I asked about the secret of the pearls Khutulun immediately perked up.

“I have heard some elders speak of it with my father before he died. I think it would be possible to create them if we could ask the elders from the Kalmyk, Buryats, and Oirats tribes… but they stayed behind to mind the cattle.”

I nodded, “If you want me to bring back the rain, I will need one of those pearls.” Fei was looking a little lost and I suddenly remembered that he was a normal man with no heavenly connection, and thus understanding very little of what was said. I made a summary for him.

“What are these pearls you speak of?” he asked, scratching his chin.

“An alchemical mixture that helps cultivators to refine their Chi in preparation to challenge a Heavenly tribulation. I am three tribulations away from being able to control the weather at will… something they need urgently.”

“How hard is it to challenge one of these tribulations?”

I sighed and shrugged “Every new tribulation is harder than the last. If an unprepared warrior were to attempt even the first one, he could end up crippled or dead.”

“How many has his majesty surpassed?”

“Eight. The last one was not a month ago… I could probably do one more without much trouble, perhaps even two, but the eleventh is a milestone that even I wouldn’t dare challenge without proper preparation.”

“And these pearls would help?”

“Yes. They help refine and purify our chi, or they can sometimes increase an aspect of it.”

The General frowned and mused the information. “In the interest of the empire and your majesty, we should find out the secret to these pearls.”

I nodded “I had hoped that the Imperial library held some secrets about cultivation, like these pearls, but in the past five years I’ve discovered very little. There are many treaties about the Dao and how it was born, but nothing more… It feels to me that it was planned this way, so that the people of the north had one piece of the secret and our people the other… so that they, together, could become the founders for a nation of cultivators.”

He fell silent and contemplated what I had said, while I returned to our guests.

When I expressed the same sentiment to them, Urus frowned “That would be naught but impossible. Our lives are too different, in the past, we’ve found ourselves at war more often than not.”

“We shouldn’t let our past define our future. We must always strive to become better, different. Had we not, we wouldn’t be sitting here today.” I pointed out, and when Khutulun was about to open her mouth to protest I continued “You are nomads, isn’t change part of your everyday routine? Is that not the freedom of your people?” It shut her up and made her frown.

With the whole table thinking, I began to reflect on myself. My ideas were sparked by the education I had in the XXI century, ideas of freedom and union that never really coalesced in the real world. Was I allowed to propose them now? Wouldn’t that change the future? If Mongols and Chinese suddenly began collaborating, there wouldn’t be any need in the future to build the Great Wall… wouldn’t that be a big change in the future?

‘There is no such thing as the butterfly effect. Time is like a river, what will be, will be, no matter how many pebbles you throw in it.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘It is one of the matters that concerns the Heavenly realm, not you. Whatever changes you bring forward now will not affect the things that are meant to happen.’

‘Then, that means that I could do virtually anything and it wouldn’t matter?’

‘Not in the great scheme of things. You could make people of this age better, but how long would it last? A lifetime? A few hundred years? A couple of millenniums? Only very few people have a destiny so grand that they change the way the world is perceived by others, and they all had a journey like yours. Evolution through many lifetimes, culminating in a time where their knowledge would cause the most ripples in the fabric of time. You come from an age where there had already been a few of them, Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, Mahoma to name a few. They all learned through several lifetimes and eventually ended in the lives that mattered the most before moving forward to another realm of existence. I feel that is our destiny too.’

My mind was reeling from the implications. Would my life be remembered in the future as one of those characters my other self had mentioned? What would the future say about me? Where was my life headed?

‘Don’t worry about things that have no importance in the present. Concentrate on solving the current problem, everything else will fall in place as it should.’

I swallowed and looked around. My other self was, indeed, correct. Once before I had been too lost in the future to solve the problems of the present, and I didn’t want that to happen again.

“So, first things first: What do we do with what we know?” I addressed the others while my other self nodded sagely inside my head. “We know that, with the help of the pearls I can solve the problem that caused the tribes to attack us in the first place.”

“Then we need to procure those pearls” said Fei “And send word to the other tribes. Would it be possible to convince them to stop attacking?”

I translated for the chieftains and Urus nodded “We could send word but convincing them is another matter entirely. It would need us both, and even then, I doubt we can convince them all.”

From them we had learned that all tribes followed a pattern, Five other tribes would be invading the Ji province, one would go to Yan to test the defenses, and there were four others in a ‘central camp’ of sorts. “I will go to Ji from here to stop the invasion and try to convince the other tribes, if you could head to the central camp and talk to the rest I would be most thankful.”

“What should we do?” Fei asked.

“You, my friend, are going to have the dubious honor of staying here and sending a word to the Emperor and Ji about the situation.” He raised an eyebrow at my choice of words, but I smiled “In other words, you get to be my secretary while I rush into a fight.”

Just as I thought, he huffed and grumbled under his breath. Making me chuckle.

“Well then, anything else?”

We ironed out some more details, but that was it. We had a plan… All that was left was following it.

And something told me it wasn’t going to be that easy.