Chương 118: Sensitive Moments

Leo was going to savor these last few minutes before he and his team had to leave for the opening ceremony of the Grand Formations Summit. He stared at Mateo from across the lounge, grinning. Mateo was trying very hard to avoid eye contact, staring instead at the soft formation lights that glowed from recessed alcoves in the grey stone walls. The ball had been a disaster. Or a success, depending on your perspective.

Leo had spent the rest of yesterday eagerly needling Mateo about his troubles, and those troubles only seemed to multiply. A steady procession of young women had found their way to Mateo's door. Each one arrived in flowing silk that left just enough to the imagination, each one armed with a convenient excuse to speak privately with the heir. It would have been emasculating, watching your friend receive so much female attention while you sat ignored in the corner.

Except all of Mateo's admirers bore the unmistakable Thandril features that he himself carried. Leo felt less like a rejected suitor and more like an observer at a particularly uncomfortable family reunion.

"I was having a sensitive moment," Mateo said.

"You need to give me a break. Can you chill on playing that song?"

"A sensitive moment." Leo's grin widened.

"Is that what we're calling it?"

"Leo."

"I'm just trying to understand which sensitive moment we're talking about." Leo leaned forward, counting on his fingers.

"The one you almost kissed in the library? The one who knocked on your door at midnight? Or the twins who offered you a massage?" Thad snorted from across the room. Mateo pinched the bridge of his nose.

"This is all Seraphindë's doing. Every time I turn around, there's another cousin with perfect hair and a political proposition."

"To be fair," Vivian said without looking up from her notes, "you are the most eligible bachelor in the entire city. What did you expect?"

"Support from my friends would have been nice." Mateo's grey eyes settled on Leo.

"Where were you when Aelithris was making her move? You abandoned me for tacos." Leo spread his hands.

"They were really good tacos."

"You left me alone with her."

"In my defense, I figured out what was happening pretty quickly. She looks exactly like her mother. I don't understand how you missed it." Leo paused.

"I just needed to find a few witnesses. How was I supposed to know that in the span of a few minutes you'd go from swearing off all women to almost necking your cousin?"

"We were whispering. That's all."

"Romantically whispering." Mateo groaned and pressed his palms against his eyes.

"You don't understand what it's like. Imagine waking up at two in the morning to find someone snuck into your bed and is trying to remove your shirt. It's not flattering. It's terrifying."

"I'm failing to see the problem here."

"How about we switch rooms then?" Mateo lowered his hands.

"Let's see how you handle being ambushed in the middle of the night." Leo eagerly nodded.

"I mean, I'm down if you're serious. Sounds like an interesting experience." A hand closed around Leo's ear and twisted.

"Oww!" Vivian's grip was surprisingly strong.

"Quiet down. Both of you." Her voice dropped.

"Seraphindë is on her way. Remember what Vogt said. Don't disrespect our hosts." Leo rubbed his ear and fell silent. He could feel Seraphindë's approach. After all, she did not hide her Gold Core spiritual pressure. A courtesy notification. Or perhaps a reminder of exactly who held power here. Leo's smile faded as his thoughts shifted. Mateo had a point beneath all the complaining. Aelithris had been difficult to refuse. Both mother and daughter were exceptionally skilled at their game.

They had identified exactly what Mateo wanted to hear and delivered it with warmth and sincerity that felt genuine even when you knew better. His friend almost getting honey trapped was a useful reminder. They weren't in America anymore. They were deep in unfamiliar enemy territory, surrounded by people who had been playing political games since before any of them were born. Leo didn't know the rules here. He didn't even know what game was being played. The safe choice was obvious. Sit on his hands.

Act like a good little formation engraver. Derive formations, draw formations, compete in the Summit, keep his head down until they could leave. Close his eyes to whatever currents swirled beneath the surface. But Leo had questions. The biggest one had been bothering him since he received the invitation to participate. What was the real purpose of the Grand Formations Summit? The official answer, that the Heavenly Dao could be revealed in all tiers of formations, didn't satisfy him.

The Great Ascension cultivators didn't waste their time on things that didn't matter. If the three cults had maintained this tradition for centuries, there was a reason. His time at the Summit might be his only chance to find answers to these questions. This was a unique opportunity to explore the three cults of the New York Catacombs, to learn more about his future path of cultivation, while powers far above his understanding guaranteed his safety.

The question was whether the answers were worth the risks that came with asking. The door opened. Seraphindë Thandril entered.

"Good morning," she said.

"I trust you all rested well." The team offered polite responses. Seraphindë's gaze swept across them, lingered briefly on Leo, and settled on Mateo.

"Nephew." Her smile softened.

"Did you enjoy the ball last night?"

"I did," Mateo said carefully.

"Please pass along my thanks to my cousin for the Kvalthren. They were delicious."

"I'm glad you found them satisfying."

"I also had an interesting conversation with her." Mateo held his aunt's gaze.

"Unfortunately, I plan to return to the States after the Grand Formations Summit concludes. I hope my cousin understands." Something flickered behind Seraphindë's eyes. Her attention shifted to Leo.

"You." The warmth in her voice cooled noticeably.

"I understand you were present for part of their conversation." Leo tried to arrange his features into an expression of innocent curiosity. Based on Vivian's subtle wince, he wasn't succeeding.

"Leo Chen." Seraphindë's voice carried an edge.

"You have much to learn about the customs of the Catacombs. I would ask you to be more understanding before passing judgment on traditions you do not comprehend." Leo brightened.

"Of course! I actually have a lot of questions about Grey Cult customs. I'd love to hear your thoughts on..." Seraphindë turned away from him mid-sentence.

"The opening ceremony begins in one hour," she announced to the room.

"Formation delegates will assemble in the Grand Pavilion. Follow the grey-robed attendants when they arrive." Her gaze settled on Leo before she left.

"Do not wander. Do not touch the sacred formations. And most of all, do not make comments about traditions you do not understand." The door closed behind her. Silence held for a moment.

"She doesn't like you," Thad observed.

"I might have gone too far when I lined you up with Aelithris and started playing spot-the-difference." Leo paused, looking thoughtful.

"In hindsight, I probably should have tried harder to find distinguishing features instead of loudly announcing I was having trouble." The team began their final preparations. They adjusted their robes and checked their translation earpieces. Vivian ran through the ceremony protocol one more time, making sure everyone remembered when to bow and when to remain standing. They were almost ready to leave when Wang Liyang shuffled sideways and caught Mateo's arm.

"Psst. Hey." Liyang kept his voice low.

"Are you still looking for someone to switch rooms?" Mateo blinked.

"What?"

"I'm willing to help out. If you need someone to take one for the team." Danyl Shevchuk appeared at Liyang's shoulder, nodding vigorously.

"I also volunteer as tribute. You know, for the team." Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

The opening ceremony was extremely boring, and it became clear Leo wouldn't find any answers to his questions during it. Thousands of cultivators filled the Grand Pavilion while speakers droned on about the sacred history of formation craft. Dignitaries from all three cults delivered addresses in Gothic, their words filtered through his translation earpiece with a half-second delay that made everything feel slightly unreal.

The good news was that his ortho-k enhanced vision could keep him endlessly entertained wherever he went. All he had to do was look for interesting formations and zoom in to study them. By the time the final speaker concluded and the crowds began to disperse, Leo had catalogued at least a dozen formation variations worth studying later. But formations weren't the only thing on his mind. He caught up with Seraphindë before she could disappear into the flow of grey-robed attendants.

"Lady Thandril." He matched her pace.

"I was hoping to ask you some questions about the Summit." Seraphindë's expression flickered. For a moment Leo thought she would brush past him entirely. Then something shifted behind her grey eyes.

"What questions?"

"The purpose of the Grand Formations Summit. Why powers far beyond Tier Two would care about a competition for high schoolers."

"Everyone wants to know that." She paused.

"I have my own theories, of course. But in the end, speculation is all any of us have. The true purpose was decided long before my birth." She folded her hands before her.

"What I do know is this. Last Summit, three years ago, the Weaver Cult raised a concern. Something significant enough that the three cults agreed to investigate." She tilted her head toward the distant spires of Ashviel visible through the pavilion's arched windows.

"Representatives are comparing their findings behind closed doors as we speak."

"What kind of problem?"

"I don't know the details." Her grey eyes studied him.

"But the captain of the Weaver Cult team might. She is young enough to speak freely where the elders would not." Leo understood. Seraphindë couldn't stop him from asking questions. But she could aim him at someone else's delegation and let him become their problem.

"I'd appreciate an introduction," Leo said. Seraphindë's smile didn't reach her eyes.

"I'll see to it."

Seraphindë worked quickly. That same evening, she arranged for Leo to have tea with Sariya Moirath, captain of the Weaver Cult's delegation. Sariya was already standing when he entered the tearoom. She was tall and slender, with delicate features and dark hair pinned back with silver needles. Her robes were deep indigo with silver thread tracing constellation patterns across the fabric. Beautiful, in a way that made Leo suddenly conscious of his posture.

"Captain Chen." Her English was flawless.

"Welcome to the Catacombs." She offered him a graceful curtsey. As she dipped, the constellations on her robes shifted, catching the light in ways that drew the eye along the fabric's lines and then, inevitably, to what lay beneath them. When she straightened, her violet eyes found his. She smiled. She'd caught him looking. Heat crept up Leo's neck. He covered it with a stiff bow.

"Captain Moirath. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

"I should be thanking you." Sariya gestured toward a low table set with ceramic cups and a small brazier.

"I've been curious about you for some time, Captain Chen." Leo settled onto the cushion across from her.

"Curious about me?"

"You turned a Nascent Soul battle on its head while still at Qi Refining." Sariya tilted her head.

"The divine child of the Oblivion Cult was supposed to return from Boston a hero. Instead, he came back disgraced. Because of you." Something tightened at the base of his throat. He thought back to the Battle for Fort Cambridge, how it took a strike team of twenty Nascent Souls just to delay the divine child.

"I made a powerful enemy."

"Perhaps." Sariya shrugged.

"But you shouldn't be so concerned about others that you lose focus on yourself. If there is anything I've learned from my time with the Weaver Cult, it is this: the threads you worry about often matter less than the threads you ignore." She reached into a carved wooden chest beside the table and took out a small silk packet.

"Moonveil tea. Tier Two. It helps relax the mind and sharpen focus." She began arranging the brewing implements.

"It should prove helpful for tomorrow's competition."

"Thank you." Leo watched her hands as she measured dried leaves into a ceramic pot. They were pale silver, almost luminescent.

"They're so delicate." Sariya glanced up.

"The leaves?"

"Yes." Leo cleared his throat.

"I appreciate the meeting. And the tea."

"I was quite surprised when I heard you would be leading America's formation team." Sariya poured hot water over the leaves, and a delicate floral scent rose with the steam.

"I never expected someone who fights so well to also be a formation master. You seem to contain contradictions, Captain Chen." Leo laughed.

"I was surprised too. A year ago I didn't know anything about formations. I was drawing them with crayon." Sariya's hands paused over the teapot.

"With crayon?"

"It's a long story." Leo leaned back. He kept the details vague but made sure to capture the funny parts: tracing a formation with a red crayon on consecrated talisman paper, working bottom to top instead of top to bottom, and the old patriarch's face turning purple as he demanded to know which idiot had taught Leo to draw formations like this. A snort escaped her before she could stop it. She set down her cup and pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose.

"Gods. A crayon. On talisman paper."

"Red crayon, specifically."

"Of course it was red." She shook her head, but her mouth had curved into something that looked almost like approval.

"You're ridiculous. I respect that." Sariya refilled her cup and settled back against her cushion.

"So tell me, Captain Chen. What can I help you with?" Leo said the first thing on his mind.

"I've heard your cult is experienced at reading fate.

"But I don't actually know what that means. What is fate, exactly? Is it like Karma?" Sariya leaned back.

"Depends on what you think karma is." Leo told her what he knew. Karma was like threads in a great formation, connecting every living being to the people and places they'd touched. Every action created new threads, and those threads accumulated over a lifetime, a permanent record of a cultivator's merits and misdeeds.

"Not bad." Sariya tilted her head.

"The hero of Fort Cambridge, a formation master, and now a student of karma. Is there anything you can't do?" The words landed somewhere in his chest. He felt the heat climb his neck again.

"I'm sure you'll find something."

"Looking forward to it." She smiled.

"To answer your question: fate is a subset of karma. Think of it this way." She leaned forward.

"Some karma is easy to deduce. You fought a man, now a thread connects you. You saved a child, a thread connects you. Cause and effect. You understand why they exist."

"But other karma exist. Threads connecting you to people you've never met. Places you've never been. Events that haven't happened. You can't trace them back to any action you took. They simply exist, woven into your karma before you became aware of them." Leo frowned.

"How can I have karma with something that hasn't happened?"

"Exactly." Sariya grinned.

"The Weaver Cult studies the unknown threads. We ask: why does this thread exist? Where does it lead? What does it connect? When we follow an unknown thread to its conclusion, when we unravel what it means and where it points..." She paused.

"That is fate. Not fortune-telling. Fate is the pattern revealed when you read the threads that no one remembers weaving." Leo turned this over in his mind. He looked at Sariya across the low table, the amber light warm against her face.

"Do you think there's a thread between us?" he asked.

"One that existed even before we met?" Sariya's eyebrows rose a fraction.

"Captain Chen. We've had one cup of tea and you're already proposing?"

"That's not what I..."

"I know what you meant." She didn't smile, but her voice carried something warmer than it had before.

"I wouldn't rule it out." Leo took a drink of his own tea to give his face something to do.

"So when people say the Weaver Cult can see the future..."

"We see threads. Threads point somewhere. Whether that destination is inevitable or merely probable is a question our scholars have debated for centuries." She reached into the wooden chest beside the table and took out a medallion. Silver, etched with intricate formation work. She held it up for him to examine. Leo was about to activate his ortho-k vision when something stopped him. A tightness in his chest. He didn't understand it. Just a sudden reluctance, like pressing on a bruise. He looked away.

It would be rude to examine her formations without asking. That was all. Sariya tucked the medallion away.

"The Weaver Cult believes each person's limits are woven at birth. The threads are already there. We just walk them."

"I don't think I agree with that view." Leo thought about the Dao of all living things.

"The desire for life pushes against limits. Every cultivator struggles to advance, to survive, to become more. If fate says our destination is already determined, what happens to that struggle? What happens to the fire that drives us forward?" Sariya studied him for a long moment.

"Spoken like someone who hasn't found his limits yet." The words landed harder than they should have.

"You're more complicated than you look, Captain Chen." She poured more tea into his cup.

"But you didn't come here just to ask about the Weaver Cult." Leo wrapped his hands around the warm ceramic.

"There's something else going on at this Summit. I can feel it. As captain of my team, I need to understand what we've walked into." Sariya waited.

"Seraphindë mentioned that the Weaver Cult raised a concern at the last Summit. She said it was significant enough that all three cults agreed to investigate."

"That woman knows everything." Sariya's tone carried wry respect.

"But yes. We raised the concern. Our weavers identified an infection of Slaughter Qi. Concerning enough that it couldn't be left unchecked." Leo's stomach tightened.

"An infection." He stared at the pale silver leaves settling at the bottom of his cup. Sariya watched him. Waiting. Infect. He turned the word over in his mind. Slaughter Qi doesn't infect. Sure, he'd nearly been corrupted by it once, but that was in the Azure Profound Continent, where the Heaven Pivot Array changed the rules of reality itself. The Catacombs operated under normal rules. Slaughter Qi shouldn't spread here.

"But Slaughter Qi doesn't infect," Leo said slowly.

"It's generated by killing. Every death creates it. It attaches to the killer. It doesn't spread on its own."

"Correct."

"Then why call it an infection?" Sariya was quiet for a moment, choosing her words.

"Captain Chen. How many Deity Transformation cultivators do you think are gathered at this Summit?"

"I don't know. A dozen? More?"

"More. And behind them, Void Refining Eternals whose names are worshipped by every believer. Every one of them carries Slaughter Qi. Every one. It is the cost of their long lives and the battles they have fought." She lifted her cup but didn't drink.

"If you stand before these cultivators and say 'someone is responsible,' you're questioning their divinity. Putting their sanctity on trial." Her violet eyes met his.

"Many of them would rather add one more stain than endure that scrutiny." The teacup had gone cool in Leo's hands. He thought about the spiritual pressure he'd occasionally felt since arriving.

"So we use polite language and pretend no one's responsible."

"We use precise language." The correction was flat, matter-of-fact.

"Infection has no author. It is a condition to be treated, not a crime to be judged. It allows powerful people to sit in the same room and discuss solutions without feeling accused." She paused.

"The cults have been investigating for three years and still haven't identified the source." She set her cup down.

"If it were one cultivator, even a powerful one, someone would have found them by now." She held his gaze and let him work it out the words unsaid.

'Infection' was just a neat way of saying 'conspiracy'. Some group, well connected enough to cover their tracks, was conducting mass killings across the Catacombs. A chill ran through him.

"So what do we do?"

"That's what the elders are discussing behind closed doors." Sariya's voice was flat.

"We're just the performers, Captain Chen. The real business happens in the viewing boxes above us."