Am I seekign the white tiger?

[Shang Li]

Having had at last stilled my mind, I entered a deep and easy meditation. I have learned how to do this before, many times. The still mind introduces no ripples, no concious thought to disturb the awareness of everything around me. Surprisingly (why does it surprise me every time?) this time I enter a state of seperate awareness, fully independant of the flesh I have just vacated, without passing through tsuki no kokoro.

The world of which I had become so intensly aware of just moments before fades to a mere shadow, a sad and imperfect reflection of the brightly colored flow of chi, a riot of flowing colors flowing from teh living places and things around me. For a breif moment, I open myself to the flow, allowing the flowing energy to fill me.

As the flow of chi passes over and through me, I find myself drifting away, floating along the dragon track having had forgoten that I had set my spirit and it's energy free of flesh. After a breif and emberrasing moment of being tossed about like a leaf on a stream, I closed myself to the streaming chi, no longer allowing it to flow through me, but instead allowing it to gently flow around me. Marveling at the beauty around me, my attention on the chi around me and how my presence created the most unbeleivably fascinating eddies and swirls, I was unaware of my approach to my destination.

You see, chi flows, like a river, from pure, bright, warm places toward cold, dark places where the warmth of life has been tainted, or merely has never been. With a gradual, unnoticed change, the flowing river of energy I had followed had changed. No longer did it fill me with warmth, instead each eddy battered at me, making it a struggle merely to hold on to the living energy that is my own.

Sensing somethign watching me, a deeper void of negative chi than even the surrounding gloom, I drew my blades as well as the chilling laughter of my observer. Striving against the flow of negative chi I struggled to reach what could only be an oni prince, here on a mission of murder and mayhem. With peals of laughter that cause the very fabric of reality to shake around us, the oni prince at once grew, and lessened. As he stood, his size became more akin to man than mountain, while his stature, the feeling of strength and malice grew far beyond any darkness I had ever faced.

"Come to seek that which you have lost, yet again, have you Shang Li?" The blackness asked with a whisper that seemed to fill the whole world with sound as it drew forth from nothingness a blade of pure darkness. "Will it be the spilling of blood, or a conversation over tea this time, Shang?" It continued with a whisper that seemed tired, and beaten. "I do hope you chose the former, I have not gotten to kill anything in decades." it finished.

Unbidden, a memory flashed to the forefront of my mind."Without night, the flowers will not know when to bloom child. The darkness should be comfort to you as much as the warmth of the afternoon sun - one day you will understand." came a soft kindly voice in the from the dark, it's reasurring calmness doing more than the touch of a kindly hand to still a trembleing child fearfull of the night.

(I apologise if this next portion is difficult to understand, at this point memories that both are and aren't mine came to me so strongly it was difficult to seperate what was happening from what was merely ghosts and echos of the past.)

A flash of silver white arcs out into the darkness, only to be easily beaten back by an arc of pure blackeness. I pick myself up from the dojo floor and glare at my opponent for a moment, gathring myself to strike at the tiny opening my opponent's shinai left exposed on his left shoulder. Willing the tip of my shinai into this opening, I hear the patter of my feet as I close the distance, my opponent beginning to... the darkness before me bends before my onslaught, tossing me across teh room with a gracefull twist before charging after me. The yari drives for my chest as my katana desperatly trie to push the tip to the side, the wakazashi driving forward as the tip of the yari traces a line of fire across my chest. The blood spurts as the wakashi punches through hardened linin like it was not there, I cant believe how little actualy comes out as he coughs, the light slowly diming in his eyes. A peal of tunder becomes laughter as I feel the cold negative chi battering me, pulling at the will, at the spirit. An axe in my hand, chopping wood. the tree fell in the typhoon, we have to clear the road. The willow trees along the side of the road seem angry as their branches flail in the wind that followys the storm's passing. Another arc of silver white, feeble, desperate, shatters against the stream, not evenstrong enough to elicit a reaction from the darkness. Unable to resist I let the flow of negative chi take me where it will. I feel energy returning to me, not warm, but cold, dark. The world swims as the darkness shrinks back. This is not evil, merely darkness, as important a part of life as the dawn which folows every night.

I look sheepishly at the being before me, realizing I have drawn my blades but I have no enemy. With a sigh, the femon before me gestures to a table with a meal set upon it, as he releases his blade willing it back into the darkness around us. "Hospitality offered, as required by contract." he said with a degree of malice completly at odds with the hospitality his gesture and table would indicate. "lets get this over with, so I can be rid of your disgusting presense, you reek of the world of men and it offends me." He finished as he poured the into two tumblers.

"She's not here, she hasn't been to this world in centureis, so if you're after teh yin blood, I at least get teh satisfaction of telling you that you can't have it, because the white tiger does not come here on her travels anymore. Now finish you'r tea and leave, the next time I see you I will kill you." the oni prince whispered as I silently sipped at the tea, my mind whirling, trying to understand.

Slowly rising from zazen, I slowly flexed the muscles of my legs, trying to make sense of my experience, or even to be certain if it was a hallucination brought on by the darkened room, a dream from having had dozed off during my meditation, or if I actualy did manage to walk as a being of chi and spirit, free of the body.

Instead of answers, I find riddles. In place of wisdom, I find half remembered feelings and dreams.