Chương 21: Meeting Elder Mao

Elder Mao pointed at the sofa chairs beside the table, and Shen Yue and Lin Che moved without complaint. He pushed a cup in front of each of them and returned to his seat.

"Liuhe Breathing," said, without preamble.

"How long?" Lin Che glanced briefly at Shen Yue, who gave nothing.

"I started about five weeks before the incident with Yang Zichen," he said.

"So just under two months in total."

"And your current stage?"

"Completion." Elder Mao's expression did not change in any meaningful way, but he lifted his cup and took a sip of the green tea.

"And you've since moved onto something else."

"The Hollow Bell Technique," said Lin Che, holding nothing behind.

"Shen Yue introduced me to it, or, I suppose more accurately, I picked it out myself after she gave me a couple of options."

"Mm." He set his cup down and looked at Lin Che for a couple of seconds, maintaining eye contact throughout.

"Your reflexes." Lin Che waited.

"They are quick," said Elder Mao.

"I noticed it when the door opened — very small things — the way you adjusted your footing on the threshold and the way your eyes moved in a new room… have you been training any martial techniques?"

"He hasn't started any yet," said Shen Yue.

"We've kept the focus on foundational methods." Elder Mao looked at her for a brief moment before going back to Lin Che. He gave him a brief look, and it contained a question he was clearly not going to ask in front of Shen Yue — an acknowledgement that he already knew the answer, as though the two of them had arrived at a private understanding that the third person in the room was not yet party to. Lin Che took a sip of tea.

"I would like to test your strength," said Elder Mao.

"Not today, but we can arrange something suitable before the raid. I wish to establish a baseline." He folded his hands together on the table.

"A man who has been practising cultivation for under two months surviving a direct encounter with Yang Zichen is certainly something."

"I was lucky," said Lin Che.

"Almost certainly," said Elder Mao pleasantly, turning towards Shen Yue.

"Which brings me to what I wanted to discuss with you both together. The holy land." Shen Yue's posture shifted slightly beneath the table.

"The site requires practitioners at or below the Qi condensation realm to enter. The team we have is young and undertrained. What we need is someone who is low stage and who has demonstrated some capacity to handle unexpected… physical situations. Your husband fits that profile unusually well."

"He's only been practising for two months," said Shen Yue.

"Which is precisely why he qualifies."

"There are noises coming from the central chamber and the team on site is already frightened," she rebutted back.

"Which is why I'd like to send someone with a working nervous system and a demonstrated record of not panicking when someone points a knife at him." He said it without any particular emphasis, but Shen Yue's eyes moved to Lin Che in understanding. Lin Che simply looked at the steam coming off his cup.

"It isn't just the operational concern," said Elder Mao, after a moment. His tone shifted into something slightly softer.

"Yue, your condition." Shen Yue was very still.

"The Yin physique places particular demands on the people around you," he continued.

"Specifically on those in close physical proximity over sustained periods. It is a significant factor in why the arrangement with Lin Che was made." Lin Che said nothing. He had known roughly about Shen Yue's medical condition and why she was constantly warming herself up with tea and an electric blanket. Shen Bowen had dropped hints about it, and he'd even consumed her medication and melted his body from the inside out in one of his loops.

But having it stated plainly by someone else in a quiet room in the middle of the morning was a different experience.

"Since your husband is already in that role," Elder Mao continued, "it seems reasonable to also make use of him in this one. The exploration, if successful, could be of significant benefit to the clan and to resources relevant to your condition."

"You're asking him to walk into a site where we don't know what's in the central chamber," said Shen Yue.

"I'm simply informing him that the opportunity exists and allowing him to make a decision," replied Elder Mao. Both Shen Clan members looked at Lin Che, who had been occupying himself with a staring contest with a table instead. He looked up. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"What's the timeline?" he asked.

"Three to four weeks depending on what the decoding team extracts from the sigil photographs."

"And the team going in with me?"

"Currently six people — you would not be going in alone." Lin Che thought about it for a while, or at least sat there in silence for however long it takes to make a decision. The truth was that he had already made his decision some thirty seconds ago when Elder Mao said Yin physique and Shen Yue had gone still. And besides, he could always try again if things went awry.

"Alright," he said.

"Lin Che—""If there are resources in there that help you", he said, looking at his wife, "then it seems worth the difficulty." He expected her face to morph into something grateful, but it shifted into something much more complicated than that instead. Shen Yue broke eye contact and looked back at Elder Mao.

"I want to be kept informed of every update from the decoding team."

"Of course," he said, reaching for a small notebook.

"There is actually something I'd like your help with this afternoon, if you're available. The younger disciples have their outdoor session and Practitioner Wei is recovering from a back injury. Would you be willing to supervise?" It was framed as a question. It was not, Lin Che understood, actually a question. Shen Yue understood this too. She looked at her husband and then back at Elder Mao.

"How convenient," she said.

"The courtyard on the east side," he said.

"They'll be there in fifteen minutes." The door closed behind her.

Elder Mao was quiet for a moment. He poured fresh tea into his own cup, then into Lin Che's without asking. When he looked up, something in his manner had changed, but it was difficult to specify exactly what it was. He was still as formal and straightforward as ever, but it felt as though he had dropped some sort of act.

"The shared drive," said Elder Mao. Lin Che gulped.

"A link to share it was generated via Yue's account and sent to your email account, assuming your username is indeed LinChe98." Lin Che said nothing.

"I deleted the file history," said Elder Mao.

"Which I mention so you understand that no one else in the clan is aware of it, and so you don't spend the rest of the conversation concerned about whether I'm building a case against you." He took a sip.

"I am not." Lin Che let out a slow breath that he kept as quiet as possible.

"You may use whatever is in that archive, and I expect you to exercise judgement about what is appropriate to your stage and what is not. I also expect you not to share it with practitioners outside the clan, especially since it would cause political difficulties that would ultimately land on Yue."

"Understood," said Lin Che, his voice more of a pipsqueak.

"Good. Now, the Swallow Returns technique… stop training it."

"I haven't mentioned—""No," Elder Mao agreed.

"You haven't. But the holy land will not permit entry to anyone whose cultivation exceeds the Qi Condensation threshold, and you are dangerously close to that limit. The technique you've been working on accumulates very quickly." He took another sip.

"If you push through the intermediate stage before the raid, you will be unable to enter. The door will close in your face, and we will be back to having a frightened team of teenagers with limited self-defence knowledge." Lin Che opened his mouth, but was unsure of what to say.

"Until after the raid. Then you may continue."

"Alright.

"The technique is good, incidentally. Well-chosen for your profile and very easy to hide from your wife. You have an instinct for this." Lin Che did not say anything to that.

Whilst Shen Yue was occupied with supervision work, Lin Che did not expect to be treated to a short flight on a private jet. It was smaller than he'd expected, having only a couple of seats, but he couldn't help but grin at the luxury of it all. They were in the air for about two hours before the farmland came into view below, enormous and flat. The tractor assembly that marked the holy land's entrance was just visible as a cluster of shapes midway through the field.

On the ground, the air smelt of soil and cold, and the two were greeted by the site supervisor — Jianfeng — upon arrival. Elder Mao walked back over with a rough diagram on a folded piece of paper.

"The site is larger inside than the portal suggests," he said, holding it open.

"The entrance deposits you into what we're calling the outer corridor. The team has mapped as far as the junction here." He indicated a point roughly two thirds of the way down the diagram.

"Beyond that is unmapped. The noises come from somewhere past the junction, but they haven't gone further."

"What do the sigils say?"

"We're not sure." Lin Che looked at the portal entrance, which from the outside was practically invisible. It was simply a patch of air between two tractors that happened to refract the light slightly differently rather than let it pass directly through.

"The team will be there every Friday," said Elder Mao.

"We'll convene here. From that point, you'll—" Lin Che had been listening with roughly his entire attention, which normally would have been just fine. The rest of his attention — his now-trained, subconscious attention, was focused on the field around him, and, more importantly, on the pigeon that came in low and fast from his left. He moved to duck. It was not a decision — it was in the space where a decision would have been. He stepped right and turned his shoulder.

The only problem was that he stepped into the refracted patch of air between the two tractors. The world tilted around him and changed immediately. Elder Mao was gone, and, in his place was a corridor of grey stone lit by something sourceless and dim. The air was still — gone was the slight breeze from earlier — and the warmth of the sun had been replaced with a slight cold. Behind him, where the portal had been, there was a wall.

Lin Che stood in the corridor and looked at the wall for a moment, before rotating around and looking ahead. From somewhere past the junction in his sight came a sound. It was some sort of howl that Lin Che could not immediately identify, much different to that of a wolf he'd heard once in a documentary. He stood very still and listened to it, and then he started walking.