The Poppy War (The Poppy War #1) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,73
but she was exaggerating.
Because she knew that something was real. She knew that on some level, there was more to the cosmos than what she encountered in the material world. She was not truly such a skeptic as she pretended to be.
But the best way to get Jiang to explain anything was by taking radical positions, because when she argued from the extremes, he made his best arguments in response.
He hadn’t yet taken the bait, so she continued: “If there is a divine creator, some ultimate moral authority, then why do bad things happen to good people? And why would this deity create people at all, since people are such imperfect beings?”
“But if nothing is divine, why do we ascribe godlike status to mythological figures?” Jiang countered. “Why bow to the Great Tortoise? The Snail Goddess Nüwa? Why burn incense to the heavenly pantheon? Believing in any religion involves sacrifice. Why would any poor, penniless Nikara farmer knowingly make sacrifices to entities he knew were just myths? Who does that benefit? How did these practices originate?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Rin.
“Then find out. Find out the nature of the cosmos.”
Rin thought it was somewhat unreasonable to ask her to puzzle out what philosophers and theologians had been trying to answer for millennia, but she returned to the library.
And came back with more questions still. “But how does the existence or nonexistence of the gods affect me? Why does it matter how the universe came to be?”
“Because you’re part of it. Because you exist. And unless you want to only ever be a tiny modicum of existence that doesn’t understand its relation to the grander web of things, you will explore.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I know you want power.” He tapped her forehead again. “But how can you borrow power from the gods when you don’t understand what they are?”
Under Jiang’s orders, Rin spent more time in the library than most fifth-year apprentices. He assigned her to write essays on a daily basis, the prompt always derived from a topic they had arrived at after hours of conversation. He made her draw connections between texts of different disciplines, texts that were written centuries apart, and texts written in different languages.
“How do Seejin’s theories of transmitting ki through human air passages relate to the Speerly practice of inhaling the ash of the deceased?”
“How has the roster of Nikara gods changed over time, and how did this reflect the eminence of different Warlords at different points in history?”
“When did the Federation begin worshipping their sovereign as a divine entity, and why?”
“How does the doctrine of separation of church and state affect Hesperian politics? Why is this doctrine ironic?”
He tore apart her mind and pieced it back together, decided he didn’t like the order, tore it apart again. He strained her mental capacity just as Irjah did. But Irjah stretched Rin’s mind within known parameters. His assignments simply made Rin more nimble within the spaces she was already familiar with. Jiang forced her mind to expand outward into entirely new dimensions.
He did, in essence, the mental equivalent of making her carry a pig up a mountain.
She obeyed on every count, and wondered what alternative worldview he was trying to make her piece together. She wondered what he was trying to teach her, other than that none of her notions of how the world worked were true.
Meditation was the worst.
Jiang announced in the third month of the term that henceforth Rin would spend an hour each day meditating with him. Rin half hoped he would forget this stipulation, the same way he occasionally forgot what year it was, or what his name was.
But of all the rules Jiang imposed on her, he chose this one to observe faithfully.
“You will sit still for one hour, every morning, in the garden, without exception.”
She did. She hated it.
“Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Feel your spine elongate. Feel the spaces between your vertebrae. Wake up!”
Rin inhaled sharply and jerked out of her slump. Jiang’s voice, always so quiet and soothing, had been putting her to sleep.
The spot above her left eyebrow twitched. She fidgeted. Jiang would scold her if she scratched it. She raised her brow as high as it could go instead. The itching intensified.
“Sit still,” Jiang said.
“My back hurts,” Rin complained.
“That’s because you’re not sitting up straight.”
“I think it’s cramped from sparring.”
“I think you’re full of shit.”
Five minutes passed in silence. Rin twisted her back to one side, then the other. Something popped. She winced.