Chương 40: Chapter 39

To Wu Zetian's little surprise, Wu Lin led her to the servant quarters. The chambers were smaller here, cozier and easier to maintain. Especially for one lonely little girl. Wu Zetian kept her real thoughts rigorously away from her mildly impressed expression while Lin showed her, beaming and proud, the two-chamber apartment she had commandeered. There was a modest brick fireplace in the main room, as well as a kitchenette. Pastel-colored paper covered the walls.

A few pieces of furniture decorated the place once, but they had been piled on to one side to make space for a small cultivation array. A small bedroom was in the back, holding a blanket nest and a pile of books and manuals.

"I set it all myself!" Wu Lin said, grinning widely. No surprise: the main branch had long relocated to Sable Lotus Palace. There simply was too much to do for them to lose time going up and down the Crater, and not like they were so many that quartering was a problem. It didn't soften the blow. Wu Zetian watched the nest for a long moment. There were wet stains on the blankets.

"Lin." Better start slow. For her own benefit.

"Why would you do this on your own? There are plenty of better apartments in the Palace, and servants to take care of them." The idea that she was here alone… A complicated mix of feelings made the rounds on the child's face, and the same on her Qi. Guilt, defiance, hope.

"Nobody pays attention up there," she mumbled, turning aside with a frown.

"Just… stay out of the way, Lin. Don't disturb now, Lin. The grown-ups have grown-up stuff to do, Lin. You're just a kid, Lin, and kids need to stay tucked in bed. Well, I can be a grown-up too!" She jumped up, radiating hurt and stubbornness.

"Look, Grandma! I have been cultivating a lot! And studying! And eating well! Black Cakes, like Blue showed me!" Sure enough, there was a bunch of burned-out things that may have been cakes in a pot in the kitchenette. The recipe was that of military rations meant for higher-ups too busy for more elaborate fare, hardened biscuits loaded to the brim with pure Night Qi. Those were… an attempt. Still, even when cooked properly, the Yan Luo Bites were supposed to be supplements.

A growing little girl should have received well-made meals. Wu Zetian looked at the mess, then back at Wu Lin's expression. There was a desperate hope there. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears. She let out a small breath. No child should be so alone as to feel so desperate to prove herself useful. Because that was the rub, wasn't it? Lin felt abandoned, and so she made her den down here, away from everyone, where she could do the only thing that made her feel useful: cultivation, again and again.

She wanted to hit someone. Since that would result in a splattered body, she contented herself with words.

"You did a very good job, Lin," Wu Zetian said gently. She reached out, laying a hand on the kid's head. Lin looked stunned for a moment. Then she pulled up with her nose and grinned. Her little fingers closed on her far bigger hand. A brave, stubborn child.

"Why don't you and Zhao prepare for some Cultivation? Grandmother will make you something, and then we can work together."

"Yay!" Zhao had been taking in the place like a kitten just out of the box. He had no chance against Wu Lin's cheerful eagerness and was promptly recruited for the job. Wu Zetian smiled, watching as they prepared the array. Well, Zhao set it up, scrambling, while Wu Lin directed imperiously. Now, to put some order here… Her first instinct was to incinerate everything. But that would have been insensitive, so she only set aside the pot instead of throwing it into the Abyss like she wanted.

Very unsurprisingly, the cabinets were empty. Whatever Wu Lin had managed to scrounge, that batch gobbled it up. No matter. One small appliance of Distance Made Moot later and she had a generous amount of ingredients at her disposal. Taken directly from the Sect's pantries, they were fresh and positively radiating with Qi. She wouldn't feel guilty: people here owed their continued existence and safety from slavery and worse to her. They could pay her back with a few eggs.

For all being modest, the kitchenette was well-supplied. Not surprising: in here, even the servants would have been trusted cultivators with refined bloodlines. Wu Zetian thought about it for a flicker of a moment, fishing among her old self's honestly impressive list of remembered recipes, before choosing. Her hands moving in familiar patterns, she poured three types of flour into a bowl with some water, then mixed it until it reached an almost liquid consistency.

A pan was already heating over a small Qi-powered fireplace. Using a spatula, she poured a glob of butter and spread it into a thin circle. She repeated the motion six times. An egg was cracked and the gooey interior poured on each of the circles, where it immediately started to sizzle softly. A rain of sesame seeds and cilantro followed. Wu Zetian waited a few moments before flipping each of the crepes, spreading over the cooked sides generous amounts of sweet bean sauce.

She then laid on their centers small dumplings, already fried and blistered. She folded the crepes over them, folding them into tight rectangles. Perfect. A strange satisfaction wafted through her as she scooped each crepe from the pan, cut them in half and laid the gently steaming result on a tray. The smell was something, if she had to say so herself. Buttery smooth and warm, tickling the nose with the way a welcoming home should feel. And the fried smell, of course, clean and slightly pungent at the same time.

"Children…" Wu Zetian turned and stopped. Wu Lin and Zhao were already there, standing like two soldiers on parade, alternating between looking at her with pleading puppy eyes and staring hungrily at the plates of crepes. Well, Lin was. Zhao was doing all of the latter and nothing of the former. A thin trail of saliva was working tits way between his mouth and the floor. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Smiling, Wu Zetian handed each half of one.

"The rest is for lunch," she explained.

"Eat these first." They both opened their mouths to protest, then promptly snapped them shut when she arched an eyebrow at them. There was a small table among the furniture piled on the side. Wu Zetian gestured, and a tendril of shadow set it gently in front of her.

"For later." The tray went on the table, and a cloth she conjured went over it, so that the smells wouldn't be a distraction. Zhao had already gobbled up his piece, and was busy trying not to suck up his fingers. Not exactly surprising: for all the recipe's simplicity, the ingredients were still high-quality, even for cultivators. Lin hesitated. She held the crepe with both hands, an almost heartbroken expression on her face.

"Go ahead." Wu Zetian chuckled.

"We can always make more later. I'll teach you how." That was all that was needed. Wu Lin beamed and shoved the whole piece in her mouth. She munched hard for a moment, and Wu Zetian had to admit a certain… awkwardness. Would it be good? The cold ball of anxiety that had started to form in her belly didn't get the chance to harden: Wu Lin's expression softened, and for a moment, she looked one step away from heaven. Well, that's a success. Her hands found the two children's heads.

She patted them gently while they swooned for the treat, as happy as sunflowers hit by the dawn.

"Come now. Let's put in some work, mh?" The children preceded her, trotting to the array.

"Right here, you dummy," Lin scolded Zhao, pulling his arm. She sank to the ground, dragging him with her.

"Like. This." She arranged her legs in the lotus position, and the boy, after one long, hard look, and trying not to be too stunned by her closeness, did the same. They both radiated with excitement. As they got themselves situated, Wu Zetian watched. The array was… not nothing. Four pinwheels, their folds inscribed and brushed with shimmering paints, were planted in a patch of naked earth that had been brought up and spread over the wooden floor until it was one foot higher.

The same could be found in batches in the deposits of the surface, waiting to be used by Outer Disciples. Not asking if she stole it or just begged from someone. As Night Qi brushed them, the pinwheels didn't turn as much as stopped, slowing down the flows of the Qi and making internalizing it easier. Pitifully, of course. Wu Zetian saw it in her Immortal senses. With that, it was a kit for beginners, so it made sense. She repressed a sigh. She would improve them. Later. Now, time for cultivation.

A distant part of her, familiar and alien, shivered in delight. No matter that thirty millennia had passed since the first time, cultivating never stopped bringing her joy. Never mind that it was her first conscious attempt at it.

"Let us start by settling the body," she began, lowering her voice into a patient yet firm hum, the same she had once used to guide squads of junior managers into their careers.

"We start by the feet. Can you feel every point of your bodies that touch the earth? Imagine them growing heavier. Feel as they sink into the ground. Start from the feet and move upward. Very good. Now, let's move to the back. You're rigid, children. A spear is rigid. You're pines, bending with the wind. Push the tension from your back, push the crown of your head up and let your tailbone sink. Nothing else strains. The shoulders now. Can you feel their tension? It's where your emotions gather.

Now, let them drain away. Feel your sleeves become heavy. Imagine your robes filling with cold water." Slowly and patiently, she guided them through breathing and visualization exercises. She had them relax tension from each body part in succession, and imagine they were floating into pools. From time to time, she surprised them by asking, "Where are you tense?" Zhao tended to reply honestly, but not Lin, who usually blurted a "nowhere," was told she was wrong and then led into unknotting that particular kink.

Wu Zetian was mildly surprised, but not too much. Of the two, Zhao was the most skilled in standing still and relaxing. Wu Lin fought her body rather than listening to it and going with its moods. Understandable, and in time the lifelong training meant she reached the proper state, but still. To keep in mind.

"Now we move to the mind. Leave any unnecessary thought outside, children. The Night listens only to those who listen with ears unburdened. Go on. Tell me which emotions you experienced today. Zhao, you start. Let that emotion go after saying it." In this, they were equally skilled. Wu Lin had better teachers and methods, while Zhao had more time and focus. With that, they both carried plenty of anxiety, and it showed in their struggle to let them go.

Wu Zetian listened attentively, working on her own cultivation at the same time. Until now, she had been coasting along, letting her Immortal Soul self-cultivate and steadily getting acquainted with her former self's memories. But visualization could go only so far. She needed fieldwork. Not just that: her breakthrough had opened new paths of improvement she would need to carefully assess and pursue. The Old Wu Zetian had left her no plan to follow.

She had thrown too much to the chance of ascending to care about what came after. … which was why she had no immortal artifacts or beautiful thingamajigs to give her grandchildren or use herself, apart from what was soul-bound. Simply put, her previous self had eaten through her larders, scraps and all. Mph, just another beginning then. She started with perception. It encompassed most of Qinghai at its largest, but it turned into a loose blanket once at that size.

She felt congregations and types of energies, and could focus on certain zones to improve the general perception. Mighily helpful, but she already knew that. Closer, her perceptions easily covered all of the Yan Luo and the whole Night Domain. In that radius, she could pinpoint people with accuracy and read their Qi flows. It wasn't telepathy. She couldn't read their thoughts, not directly. Still, interpreting the minutiae of their Qi flows got her very close to that.

It'd take a Core Formation expert to start to hinder her ability, and even then it'd take a mighty one to resist her direct scrutiny. Or another Immortal shielding them. The two children appeared to her senses as complicated systems of Qi flows, meridians and dantians. Puzzling out meaning out of them was a bit like water-reading and a bit like instinct, but it came as natural as breathing. Which led her to her next point. She was a freak of nature. Humans possessed a determined structure.

In this world, their physical structure was superimposed upon by a spiritual one. There may be variations among them, but they boiled down to the same templates. She didn't fit none of those. Her Immortal Soul, that shard of eternal darkness, was her true self, constantly producing and pulling Qi from the world to refine itself. A madly complicated array of angular pseudo-meridians protruded from it, innervating her body in configurations that had nothing of the base human form.

It was from their immediate emanations that her body was made, a materialization of her Qi that reflected her self-perception and that could be worn and changed as easily as clothing. She only needed to retract her pseudo-system: her body would dematerialize, and she would turn into her spiritual form. Grander, more powerful, and scarier. She wasn't wholly free from the impediments of cultivation: Qi still had to be directed in certain paths and cycled in certain ways.

But the output and the pathways were so massively superior compared to imperfect human biology that they may as well have been two different species. A mix of morbid fascination and awe curdled in her gut. Am I even human? Yes. The answer came right after the question. As long as I have my will. As long as I have my soul, no matter what shape my body takes, I am human. She let out a slow breath, anxiety draining away from her before it could take root.

Another difference from baseline mortal: she could endure bursts of emotions that would have seen a normal brain blast open. Heart-rending impressions and sanity-breaking visions slotted in her freak of a mind as easily as spring breeze. She could hold images that no normal man could. She could conceptualize absence, could understand distance and weight on a scale that would be unfathomable for anything else. Cute. On the bad side, that meant that her further refinement was… difficult, to put it mildly.

The two children only had to pull ambient Night Qi to see their systems refine themselves. To her, it would have been like a drizzle over a house made out of diamond. Picturesque and nothing else.

"Good," she breathed, pausing her reverie. The two children's minds and bodies were like garden ponds. Small, filled with shadows and impurities and frogs ready to start singing at any moment. But they were reasonably calm, and that was enough.

"Let us begin cultivating now." Which, for her, meant manipulating Qi like a witch.