Chương 103: Chapter 101

The doors open under Lianhua's push and the room that appears on the other side draws from me, without my meaning to, that small smile of satisfaction I reserve for the few things in life that turn out exactly as I had imagined them. Lianhua moves away from the entrance and pushes my chair with her usual smoothness into the room while behind us I hear the slightly faster and merrier footsteps of Xia, who enters with the barely concealed curiosity of someone who has spent weeks hearing me speak about this place.

And, frankly, upon seeing it I consider that the result was worth the wait. The room is spacious, much more so than one would expect for such a specific use, with the floor of dark wood polished to the point that one can almost see the reflection of the ceiling on it, the walls lined with panels of light wood with a matte finish that absorbs the light rather than returning it, and a couple of narrow windows that let in the brightness of the morning without giving the sensation of being exposed.

At the center, exactly beneath the single oil lamp that hangs from the ceiling, is the Qi-gathering formation, perfectly carved into the floor and with the spirit stones embedded in the corresponding nodes with that symmetry so beloved by those who handle this kind of work. At one side, a second, narrower door gives way to what can only be the adjoining bath.

"Take me to the bath first, Lianhua", I tell her without turning my head. Lianhua doesn't reply and simply pushes me in the direction I've indicated.

The bath's door is open and, looking from the threshold, I confirm that the space is exactly what I asked for, simple and functional, with a couple of wooden bathtubs large enough for an adult to comfortably fit in one, a couple of low benches to one side for setting clothes down, a basin with running water that fills from one of those ceramic pipes Lianhua insisted on advocating for over the more decorative options some artisans tried to sell me, and a wide drain in the floor that allows the dirty water to be emptied with sufficient speed that the process doesn't drag on forever.

And in one corner, almost hidden, there is a small built-in cabinet with several shelves, where I assume Lianhua plans to store the towels, the clean robes, and everything else needed to clean the impurities with a certain dignity. I nod without saying anything and gesture for us to return to the main room.

Once back in the main room my gaze falls on the formation, I allow myself the luxury of contemplating it for a few seconds without distractions, and meanwhile I think to myself that I hope it lasts longer than the previous one, since at least I don't think I'll ruin it in a single night for the simple reason of not knowing when to stop. Or at least, not if I can help it.

"The work is very well done, Lianhua", I tell her finally, while turning my head a bit so I can see her without having to turn the chair around.

"The room is perfect."

"I'm glad you like it, Zhāohuán Wen", she replies with her usual professional neutrality, but which, if one knows what to look for, lets a hint of satisfaction show through underneath. I smile, mainly to myself, and then I turn toward Xia, who has been making a slow circuit around the perimeter of the formation, occasionally crouching to examine some detail of the runes with a curiosity that almost amuses me, since I very much doubt she's capable of understanding any of what she's looking at.

"Xia", I call her in a slightly more effusive tone than I normally use.

"Come here for a moment." She straightens up and approaches with that almost military efficiency Lianhua imposes on her when she's wearing her uniform and we're in places where, in theory, one has to behave formally, although her eyes shine with that particular spark she gets when she senses I'm about to tell her something interesting.

"I've decided I'm going to give you a hand with your attempt to beat me on the time it takes you to finish the Tempering of Bones and Tendons", I tell her with a smile. The transformation of her face is instantaneous, since the smile of expectation disappears as though someone had wiped it away with a cloth and, in its place, appears a furrowed brow and an expression of an offended little girl that, frankly, gives her quite an adorable air I'm not going to tell her about.

"I don't need help for that", she replies with a quickness that betrays how much she has taken the wager to heart.

"I want to win on my own merits."

"That, I'm afraid, is not going to be possible", I reply without losing the smile. She opens her mouth to protest, but before she has time to produce a single sound, I lift a finger with the authority I reserve for these situations and continue.

"You see, I'm adding one more task to your duties as my handmaiden", I tell her slowly, making sure to mark my words well.

"I want you, every morning, as soon as I finish cultivating in this room, to stay here and devote at least an hour to cultivating in it yourself. Afterwards, you will clean the impurities in the bath you just saw and, finally, you will help the handmaidens to empty the dirty water." There is a silence.

A silence that, if I weren't so accustomed to reading Xia's face, I might confuse with simple surprise, but which is in reality that specific silence that occurs when someone is processing something which, in their head, doesn't quite add up.

"But…", she begins, and then stops, as if she wanted to better order what she's about to say before letting it out.

"Why do I have to do that?"

"Which part exactly do you have to do?" I ask her with all the innocence I am capable of.

"The part with the water", she replies without taking my bait.

"The water from the bath is going to be dirty because you used it, so I don't see much sense in everything else other than emptying it." The explanation pulls a small laugh from me that I disguise rather poorly, because it's exactly the kind of reasoning I expected from her, logical, direct, and completely correct from her point of view.

"Don't worry about that", I tell her finally, recovering my composure.

"You just have to follow my orders." And here is where, for an instant, I can almost see the gears turning inside her head. Her brow furrows a bit more, her lips press together in that fine line she gets when she wants to protest and, for a moment, she seems on the verge of saying something, opening her mouth as though she had found the right words to express what she's thinking.

But then, instead of speaking, she exhales slowly, her shoulders relax, and her expression returns to that relative neutrality she has learned to put on in recent months when she realizes she's in front of something she doesn't fully understand and that, nevertheless, isn't worth fighting over.

"I understand", she tells me finally.

"I'll do what you're telling me."

"Good", I reply with a softer smile.

"And now you'd better return to your tasks. But in half a Period you have to be back here, because we're going to start with the first day."

"All right, Wen", she replies, and bows with that formal reverence she uses inside the Pavilion before turning around and leaving the room with a quick step. The door closes behind her with a muffled click, after which I hear Lianhua's sigh. It's a short sigh, contained, almost imperceptible, so I turn toward her with a raised eyebrow, awaiting what I know is coming.

"Are you sure you want to do that, Zhāohuán Wen?" she asks me with that tone she uses when she wants to make sure I have weighed the consequences and isn't content to assume that I have.

"It seems Ling Xia suspects something. And with time, it's clear she's going to suspect more." If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. I nod at her words, because she is entirely right.

"I know", I tell her calmly.

"But, as you yourself made clear in the city of Xi'An, Xia seems to be perfectly capable of keeping a secret, something she has already proven more than once. So even if she suspects something, she won't say anything." Here I make a pause before adding.

"And, besides, it is perfectly normal for my handmaiden to be the one in charge of throwing out the water with the impurities from my cultivation", I continue with a slightly more carefree tone.

"Anyone who hears about the routine will see it as just any other formality of the Pavilion." Lianhua lets out another sigh, slightly longer this time, which indicates to me that her concern hasn't entirely dissipated, but that she also isn't going to keep insisting.

"That's correct, Zhāohuán Wen", she concedes with that measured cadence of decisions already made.

"But even so I'll make sure she does it well and doesn't make mistakes from it being the first time she has to carry out that task."

"I trust you", I tell her simply. And taking advantage of the fact that one matter has now been closed, I decide to wrap up the morning with the other topic I've been wanting to address all this time, but which the conversation with Xia had forced me to leave hanging in the air a bit longer than I should have. Because if there's something that's starting to tire me about this whole charade, it's precisely this, having to talk in euphemisms and circumlocutions in case there's someone listening.

"Close the door", I tell Lianhua in a low voice.

"And position me at the center of the formation. I'm going to test it." Lianhua nods without needing further explanations and approaches the door to slide the bolt I had installed on it, and then, instead of coming directly toward me, she veers off toward one of the sides of the room and approaches a panel of the wall that, at least to my eyes, doesn't look any different from the rest.

But upon resting her hand on a specific area and pushing softly, a small concealed door opens with a barely audible click, revealing what appears to be a built-in cabinet deep enough to store several things. And inside, neatly arranged, are several low chairs identical to the one I used the day I completed Body Tempering and the one which, on a memorable night, I managed to ruin along with the previous formation due to an excess of impurities.

Upon seeing it, an already familiar feeling strikes me in the chest with that warmth I have come to recognize, the one that comes over me every time Lianhua does something like this, one of those small details she has thought of on her own, without my having asked her to and without making any comment about it.

I see her take out one of the chairs carefully, carry it to the center of the formation, and place it with precision, after which she approaches my chair, lifts me up easily, and carries me to the low chair, where she settles me carefully, adjusting my posture so that I'm well supported and don't have to spend energy keeping myself upright.

"Thank you, Lianhua", I tell her in a low voice. She doesn't reply, simply tilts her head a fraction of a degree and steps back to approach the edge of the formation, where she stops for a moment to activate it. The formation lights up with that cascade of light that spreads in concentric waves from the edge to the center and, once activated, Lianhua moves to position herself to one side of the door, in that posture of silent vigilance she adopts whenever I'm doing something that requires her attention.

I close my eyes. And in doing so, my vision immediately becomes that other inner vision to which I am already so accustomed, where the Qi particles float around me as they move toward me by the effect of the formation.

But today I observe with greater attention than on previous occasions, which allows me to notice an additional detail, namely that right at the imprecise edge of my sphere of influence, that zone where things are perceived as blurry by being beyond my reach, the surrounding Qi begins to move toward the center of the formation, that is, toward me. But I'm here for something else, and how the formation works is something I'll study when I learn about formations, so I take a deep breath and prepare myself.

Once prepared, I grasp the five Qi particles I can keep held without later being forced to release them and, once I have them firmly in place, I direct another part of my mind toward the Yang Gate. I activate it as if it were a switch, which is the most approximate explanation I can come up with, and immediately I feel how the surrounding neutral Qi begins to flow toward the Yang Gate and to merge with it in that silent spectacle I so love to contemplate.

For several minutes I simply limit myself to cultivating in the normal way, calmly observing how the particles approach, pass through my body, and merge with the Gate without my having to do practically anything beyond keeping the switch pressed. But after a while, and as usually happens to me whenever I do something without variation for too long, boredom peeks into the corner of my mind like an unwelcome visitor. And with the boredom, the idea comes to me.

I've been cultivating in the normal way for some time, the formation is working perfectly, and I still haven't tested whether the neutral Qi resonance, as I discovered during the night of the ruined formation and which produced such a brutal difference in the Body Tempering, does something equivalent in the Gate Opening.

Until now I hadn't tested it, simply because cultivating outside the reach of a Qi-gathering formation didn't seem representative enough, since the depletion of Qi from the surroundings would happen too quickly to evaluate the real effect, but now there's no reason to wait. And, once decided, I don't give it any more thought, so I release the concentration on the Yang Gate and free the five Qi particles I had grasped to better focus on what comes next.

I draw in my mind the rune of neutral Qi, and the instant the rune is completed, I feel that familiar change around me, that almost audible vibration of the Qi reacting like the molecules that vibrate in a physics experiment, and as before, thanks to the formation, the resonance feels like a constant hum that fills the air. And then, without wasting more time, I focus again on the Yang Gate and activate it.

And what I see leaves me, in equal parts, astonished and frightened, because the Yang Gate no longer attracts Qi in the usual manner, which already seemed exaggerated to me and which made me compare it to a vacuum cleaner. What it's doing now is, simply, on a different scale.

By eye, I calculate that the absorption speed is at minimum about ten times higher than before, and if before it seemed like a vacuum cleaner, this resembles more closely the image I have of how a black hole is supposed to work as it absorbs all the matter around it, since the Qi rushes to the Gate from all directions at a speed that I don't even have time to follow individually, merging with it in a continuous torrent that doesn't stop for an instant.

For several minutes, I simply remain absorbed in contemplating it, fascinated by the spectacle unfolding in my inner vision and, above all, by the implications of what I'm seeing, because if the resonance does this in the Gate Opening, the calculation of how much I can accelerate my cultivation has just been revised upward in a way I hadn't even dared to imagine. But then, suddenly, I perceive how the flow diminishes.

It's a subtle change, barely perceptible at first, but clear enough for someone who had been observing the flow with as much attention as I had. And, upon noticing it, I shift my attention away from the Yang Gate and direct it toward the rest of the formation. And what I see leaves me completely bewildered, because the Qi-gathering formation is almost empty.

What should be a dense sea of bright particles, constantly drawn in from outside, has become a practically clear space in which one can only see, here and there, a few specks of Qi that approach timidly from beyond the limit of my perception, in a thin and insufficient current that barely manages to refill what the Yang Gate continues absorbing without pause. My first thought, almost automatic, is one of pure disbelief.

How is it possible for a Qi-gathering formation to have emptied, when its function is supposedly precisely to constantly draw in Qi from the surroundings? But then, almost without realizing it, my mind begins to put pieces together and to formulate the most likely answer, which is that the formation evidently must have a range of reach. It's something so obvious that I'm almost embarrassed at not having deduced it earlier.

The formation draws in Qi, yes, but not from infinity, but from a specific area around it, a volume probably defined by its design. And while the cultivator absorbs Qi at a normal rate, the particles that enter the area from outside are sufficient to maintain a high density inside it, since the cultivator and the inflow more or less compensate for each other.

But, apparently, by combining the Yang Gate with the resonance, my absorption speed has been so brutal that I have completely emptied the entire area of influence of the formation, and the natural rate at which the Qi from outside flows into that area is not by any means sufficient to replenish what I'm consuming.

I sigh as I take in the fact, and the feeling that comes over me is a mixture of grudging pride and amused resignation, because, once again, I have done something that probably wasn't in the plans of whoever designed the formation.

I keep the Gate and the resonance active while I observe how what little remains within the zone of influence is gradually consumed, and I prepare myself mentally to stop cultivating and to start thinking about how I'm going to have to adjust, once again, my cultivation routine from here on out. But then, just as I'm about to release the rune, I perceive something, a final wave of Qi.

It's a wave that appears with a density rather greater than the meager current that had been entering for some time, and for an instant I feel hopeful, thinking that perhaps the formation has some response mechanism and that an additional level of attraction I wasn't aware of has been activated.

I try to follow its origin, but it has arrived too quickly for me to have been able to determine where it came from, and the Yang Gate, faithful to its nature, absorbs that wave with the same voracity with which it has absorbed everything else. But then, in the very instant in which the last particle of that wave merges with the Gate, something happens that I wasn't expecting at all. The formation, without any prior warning and completely abruptly, stops working.

There is no tremor, no warning sound, no gradual change. Simply, from one instant to the next, the runes lose their glow and the sensation of attraction they were maintaining vanishes as though someone had just cut off the supply with one stroke.

And I am left sitting in the center of the inert formation, with the Yang Gate still active but with nothing left to absorb anymore, contemplating the spectacle with an expression that, if I could see myself from outside, I am fairly sure would be one of absolute stupefaction.