Chương 95: Chapter 93

The morning light filters through the cracks in the window and isn't bright enough to truly illuminate anything, but it is bright enough to remind me that dawn has arrived and that, with it, has also come the moment I've been dreading since Lianhua put me in the bathtub last night.

And here I am, lying on my bed with my eyes fixed on those lines of light while for the umpteenth time my mind goes through the events of the previous night again as though it were a film on a loop that won't stop replaying over and over. Like that decision which now, under the light of dawn, reveals itself for what it really was, a recklessness that any person with a minimum of common sense would have dismissed before even completing the thought.

I had finished the Tempering of the Nerves, an achievement that on its own would have justified stopping, cleaning myself up, and returning to bed with the satisfaction of a mission accomplished. But no. Instead of doing the sensible, reasonable thing, what any person with two brain cells would have done in my place, I decided it was a good idea to continue with the Tempering of the Entrails and Veins.

In the middle of the night, in secret and without knowing whether doing it back-to-back like that could cause problems, and not only that, but rushing didn't even solve my old problems since I'm still incapable of moving my legs, since apparently, finishing the Tempering of the Nerves wasn't able to fix that either.

And then, as though my stupidity needed an appropriate finishing touch, I open my eyes to find my mother standing in front of me with her hair disheveled, in her sleeping clothes and with an expression that would have made even the most brazen of people think twice before opening their mouth. And I, of course, do exactly that just so the impurities can get inside it on top of everything.

I close my eyes tightly while the memory of the taste threatens to make my stomach protest even now, hours later, and after a moment of effort I manage to push that memory to the same corner where I keep all the other memories I'd rather not have. But what came afterward was worse, although in a different way.

The brief, tense, and absolutely one-sided conversation with my mother, which lasted exactly as long as she needed to tell me, in that tone that admits no reply and that I know far too well, that I should go clean myself up immediately and that we would talk about what I had done the next day. And here I am, the next day, awaiting a verdict that, if I'm being honest with myself, I perfectly deserve.

Because there is no better lens than hindsight, and now that I can look at what happened from the distance provided by a night of scarce sleep and a worrying amount of remorse, it is more than clear that I was too impatient. I should never have set about cultivating the Tempering of the Entrails and Veins. I should have stopped, cleaned myself up, slept, and waited for a better opportunity, more carefully planned and, above all, less stupid. Why was I so reckless?

The question has been resonating in my head ever since I woke up, like a mantra I can't erase from my mind no matter how hard I try. And every time I formulate it, the answer I give myself is the same: I don't know. At the time it seemed logical, natural, and the thing I had to do. The impatience I felt was so intense and immediate that it didn't even occur to me to question it.

But this time, instead of plunging back into the same cycle of sterile thoughts I've been repeating since I opened my eyes, something different surfaces in my mind, an idea that appears suddenly, as though it had been waiting in some dark corner of my consciousness for me to stop going in circles so it could manifest itself.

And what it brings with it is a mixture of terror and denial that makes me want to pull the sheets up over my head and never come out, because now it is clear to me that it isn't just last night. Because with a clarity I would have preferred not to have, I begin to recall other moments. Brief, scattered moments that I had dismissed at the time as nothing important but that now, seen all together, form a pattern impossible to ignore.

Like my last day with Master Mu, that moment when she told me she had finished the teaching plan and that meant her visits were over, and the wave of frustration and impatience that overwhelmed me was so disproportionate to the situation that it surprised even me at the time, although I pushed it out of my mind without giving it any importance.

Or the time I had to wait three days for a book I was waiting for to arrive at the library, and the irritation I felt over the wait was completely absurd for someone who has spent more than ten years learning patience as a form of survival. Or those occasional moments over the past few weeks when I felt an inexplicable urgency to do things faster, not to wait, an urgency that had no rational justification and that, on each occasion, I managed to control through sheer inertia from my usual discipline. Brief moments.

Moments that, individually, meant nothing. But now that I'm actively recalling them, one after another, forming a sequence that stretches over the past weeks and months, the conclusion imposes itself with the inevitability of a verdict from which there is no appeal. And suddenly I remember another moment. A much older moment, from when I was four years old, sitting in the park feeding the ducks while reflecting on all the ways my new body was affecting my mind.

The childish instincts, the tendency toward behaviors genuinely typical of a little girl, and the terrible, terrifying possibility that materialized in a single word that made me tremble then and that makes me tremble now. It has arrived. The moment I feared when I was a kid throwing breadcrumbs to some ducks has arrived. I've entered adolescence.

I stay there staring at the lines of light crossing the ceiling while the certainty settles over me like a slab, and for a good while the only thing I can do is accept the inevitable. Because it makes perfect, terrifying sense. Just as during my childhood I had all those impulses to behave according to the age of my body, impulses that surprised me at first and that little by little I learned to manage, in adolescence I'm going to find myself dealing with adolescent impulses.

Impatience, impulsivity, the feeling that everything has to happen now and that waiting is unnecessary torture. And to make matters worse, right now I find myself precisely in that band between childhood and adolescence, which means that for a while, surely months, maybe even a couple of years, I'm going to have to deal with both kinds of impulses at once. The remnants of childhood that haven't finished leaving yet mixed with the new and shiny impulses of adolescence that have just arrived at the party uninvited.

Wonderful. Just wonderful. But while I'm in the middle of my self-pity, another thought crosses my mind, and this one has to do with something that has been wandering around my head for a while without my having paid it enough attention. The lifespan increase provided by the cultivation stages. Each step of cultivation increases life expectancy by fifty years, and I've just completed the first one, which means that, in theory, I've added fifty years to my life. But how exactly does that increase work?

What's clear is that, at the very least, it doesn't lengthen childhood. If it did, the world would be full of people who at twelve or thirteen years old have finished their Body Tempering and ended up trapped in childlike bodies for the additional fifty years each step provides. And that, evidently, is not the case, because I've seen enough adult cultivators to know that people grow up normally.

So it's certain that the body, at the very least, grows to adulthood before the effect of the lifespan increase begins to show. But here is where the question that really interests me, and terrifies me, materializes in my head with all its force, does it also lengthen adolescence? For a moment, the possibility hits me with the force of an image I would have preferred not to imagine. A group of eternal adolescents with superpowers in a world that, according to Master Mu, is governed by the law of the strongest.

Impulsive, irrational adolescents with the ability to destroy buildings while fighting among themselves over the same stupid things adolescents have always fought over, but with the consequences multiplied a hundredfold. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. I dismiss the idea almost immediately, because if adolescence were significantly lengthened by cultivation, this world would have gone to apocalypse a long time ago.

No civilization, no matter how strong the sects or empires that compose it, could survive a population of hormonal adolescents with the ability to throw fireballs while remaining in that state for decades. So, probably, adolescence has a normal duration or something similar, and the extra years start to count from adulthood. Probably. Hopefully. But my thoughts are interrupted by the sound of my bedroom door opening, and as I turn my head I see Lianhua coming in.

I look at her and the first thing I notice is her expression, and what I see in it is something that resembles pity a little too closely, a feeling that Lianhua rarely shows and that tells me more about what awaits me than any words could.

"Guifei Xiang wishes to see you", she tells me, and her tone is soft but direct, without any unnecessary preambles. Hearing her, I sigh with a resignation that has been accumulating since I woke up from my brief and restless sleep.

"Then it's better not to keep her waiting", I tell her.

"Take me there." Lianhua nods and approaches the bed, lifts me up, and settles me into the wheelchair with those movements that, after so many years together, have the precision of a ritual practiced a thousand times. But instead of pushing the chair toward the door, Lianhua stops. I look at her over my shoulder and see her watching me with an expression that is no longer pity, but something more complex, something resembling guilt.

"Zhāohuán Wen", she tells me, and her voice has a note I don't hear from her often.

"I want to apologize for having called Guifei Xiang last night." I look at her in silence as she continues.

"I... was frightened", she goes on, and there's something in how she pronounces those two words that tells me they cost her more than they appear to.

"With everything that was happening to you and seeing you weren't responding to me, I didn't know what to do. But knowing that everything had to remain in the strictest possible secrecy, the only thing I could think of was to go fetch her, since I knew you were planning to tell her about it anyway, and she seemed to be the only person I could turn to." She pauses briefly, as though gathering breath before what comes next.

"If you decide to punish me for having done so, I am willing to accept whatever punishment you decide on", she concludes, and her tone recovers that martial firmness she takes on when she speaks of duty and consequences. I sigh as I listen to her, and the sound that leaves my lips carries more weariness than I would care to admit.

"You did nothing wrong, Lianhua", I tell her sincerely.

"It was probably the best decision you could have made with the information you had. In all this affair, the only one who is entirely at fault is me." I pause before adding, because there is something I need to make clear.

"Even so, any conversation about a possible punishment is better postponed until my mother's decree has fallen upon me", I tell her.

"It makes no sense to discuss your punishment when mine is still pending." And then, unable to help it, a tone of certain irony slips into my voice as I add my last words.

"Now take me to my mother", I tell her.

"Let's go get me judged." Lianhua says nothing more and simply begins pushing the chair out of the room. The Pavilion's corridors greet us in silence, and at first I don't think much of it, but I soon realize that something is different. I neither see nor hear any of the handmaidens who at this hour normally move from one place to another about their tasks, nor the usual whispers, nor the light footsteps, nor, even stranger at this hour, the clinking of breakfast trays.

For some strange reason, the Pavilion is completely empty.

"Lianhua", I say as I look both ways down the deserted corridor.

"Where is everyone?"

"Guifei Xiang has ordered the entire Pavilion evacuated until further notice", she replies without altering the rhythm of her steps.

"Right now only the four of us are here, you and I, Guifei Xiang, and Fei Yi Lingxi." I'm surprised when I hear her, but the surprise lasts only briefly, because another thought immediately comes to my mind.

"And Xia?" I ask her.

"Before she was sent away I spoke with her and told her not to worry", Lianhua replies.

"Moreover, I told the Nei Wei to look after her. As one of only two direct subordinates of the Zhāohuán, in this situation someone might try to take advantage of the moment to make a move against her." I feel relieved at her answer, and the feeling is strong enough to make me smile briefly despite the circumstances.

"Well done, Lianhua", I tell her. But I can't continue talking, because while we were speaking we have arrived at the door of my mother's study, which is open. Lianhua pushes the chair through the doorway without stopping. Upon entering, I see my mother seated behind her desk with Lingxi at her side, exactly as on so many other occasions when I've walked into this study to give her news she didn't want to hear.

The difference is that this time my mother has an expression I had never seen from her in this particular context, an expression that combines the severity I expected with something resembling a deep concern she isn't trying to hide.

"Close the door", she tells Lianhua the moment we enter. I hear Lianhua close the door behind me and decide to remain silent until I'm asked something, since that's the best strategy when you stand before a tribunal whose verdict you know but whose sentence you don't. When the door is closed, my mother looks at Lingxi and tells her in a tone that admits no delay "Activate the talisman."

Lingxi pulls out a talisman I recognize as a privacy talisman, though of lesser quality than the one I've seen Master Mu use, and activates it. The effect is immediate, a subtle sensation in the air I already know that tells me what is said in this room won't leave these four walls. After the activation, my mother fixes her gaze on me and speaks directly.

"What were you supposed to be doing last night?" she asks me, and her tone, though controlled, has an edge she doesn't try to disguise.

"I asked Lianhua and not only did she refuse to tell me anything, but the only thing she said was that everything you would have to tell me today about what happened last night had to remain in the most absolute secrecy from everyone." Here my mother pauses before adding, in a tone that mixes exasperation with the resignation of someone who knows the person she is speaking with all too well.

"Though seeing what happened last night, it's more than clear that the secrecy was something more than necessary", she concludes. I take a deep breath as I prepare to answer, since the moment has arrived. And I begin telling her everything.

I tell her what Master Mu said about my having already formed my Dantian, how that meant I could complete Body Tempering without restrictions, and about the earrings she gave me, explaining their function of camouflage and how they make anyone who probes my level of cultivation perceive a false one. My mother listens to me in silence throughout the entire explanation, without interrupting me a single time, and when I finish, she stares at me fixedly for several seconds that feel like minutes.

"At least the earrings appear to be working", she finally says, and there is something resembling relief in her voice.

"The sense I get from you is that of someone still in the Tempering of Bones and Tendons." But the relief is brief, because next her tone hardens again.

"How did it occur to you to do what you did last night?" she asks me.

"And how did you manage it?" Here I make a decision my conscience allows without any remorse, which is to blame everything on adolescence without ever naming it, since here it's a concept that doesn't exist.

"I felt the sudden impulse to do it", I tell her, and I make an effort to make my voice sound as sincere as it really is, because I am not lying.

"An impatience to continue that, now in retrospect, I know was completely out of place." And here, as though to underscore what I'm trying to convey to her, I add what I've been reflecting on this morning.

"Moreover, in reflecting today I've realized that lately I've been more impatient than usual", I tell her.

"I feel impulses to try to do everything as fast as I can, an urgency that makes no sense and that I didn't have before." At hearing me, something changes in my mother's face. The severity doesn't entirely disappear, but it softens, giving way to an expression that resembles understanding much more, and a sigh escapes her lips.

"Sometimes, with how mature you sound when you speak, I forget you're a child who is growing up", she tells me, and her tone has lost the edge it had a moment ago.

"With what has happened and what you're telling me, it's clear you're reaching the age at which those impulses begin to be frequent, and even expected, though reprehensible." She pauses, seeming to reflect, before continuing.

"The fact that you've realized it on your own instead of having to wait for me, as your mother, to have to sit you down to give you a talk as is usually the custom and like the one my tutors gave me, is almost certainly an advantage of your Blessing and your maturity", she tells me, and there is something in her words that sounds as though she were carefully weighing each one of them.

"Don't squander that advantage by letting yourself be carried away by the impulses that young people of your age usually have." And just when I'm mentally preparing myself for the inevitable talk about the dangers and risks of this stage of life, a talk I'm sure exists in this world though under a different name, my mother surprises me by changing the subject.

"But that isn't a topic we have to address now", she tells me with a gesture of her hand that dismisses the matter with an efficiency I deeply appreciate.

"Tell me then, how was your cultivation session last night? I can't see the results due to the earrings." And here I decide to be honest, because with my mother, in this moment, I have nothing to lose that I haven't lost already.

"I've completed Body Tempering entirely", I tell her.

"I can already begin with the Gate Opening." The silence that follows my words is so deep and absolute that I can hear my own breathing echoing in the study. Neither my mother, nor Lingxi, nor Lianhua behind me make a single sound, and for a moment that seems to stretch far beyond what is reasonable, the only thing existing in the room is that silence and my mother's gaze fixed on me.

Finally, she is the one who breaks it with a sigh that seems to carry the weight of all the surprises I've given her throughout my life.

"It's what I imagined", she says, and her voice sounds more weary than angry.

"It was the only explanation, especially considering the abnormally high amount of impurities there were in the room and on you." She pauses and then looks at me with an expression that is no longer one of anger or worry, but of something resembling curiosity mixed with a resignation that only a mother who knows me well could have.

"Can you tell me how you managed to finish two stages of Body Tempering in a single night?" she asks me. The question hangs in the air, and I know my answer isn't going to please her, but it's the only one I can give her.

"I'm sorry, Mother", I tell her, and I make sure my tone conveys that the regret is genuine.

"I can't tell you, since it involves a secret I promised Master Mu I would never, under any circumstances, tell anyone."