Chương 112: Chapter 110

The guard's shout echoes in my ears, and soon the sound of footsteps hurrying toward us reaches me from a place I cannot see. They are decisive footsteps, the kind that only someone accustomed to moving with authority makes, and indeed, barely a couple of seconds later a man appears climbing over a pile of stones. He is a man of middle age, the same as the guard who is with me, but there the similarities end.

Where the first guard wears a simple uniform, dusty and with a poorly shaven beard, this one wears a uniform that is rather better made, with details on the shoulders that clearly mark a superior rank, a sword that seems of better craftsmanship hanging at his side, and a cape on his back as if to give him authority.

Upon seeing the guard shouting, he stops on top of a piece of rubble and pins him with a gaze that mixes the exasperation of the veteran with the urgency of someone who already has too many problems to solve.

"Zhengping!" he bellows with a voice accustomed to making itself heard above the noise.

"Can you tell me what all the rush is about? If you have found a surviving girl, get her out and get to work, we will have time to find her parents later." The guard, who I now know is named Zhengping, turns toward the newcomer with his face still pale and opens his mouth a couple of times before managing to articulate anything.

"Butou!" he manages to say finally, and I notice that his voice cracks a bit on the word.

"Butou, it's not… it's not like that, it's not that, it's… it's the Zhāohuán, Butou, the Zhāohuán is the one who is tra, " I decide to cut him off before he stammers too much, because I am in too much of a hurry to wait for the poor man to catch his breath, so I lift the seal again as much as I can from my position and compose the coldest and most imperial face that my situation allows me.

"I am Zhāohuán Sun Wen", I tell the Butou with the same clear and firm voice I managed to bring out before, and I am grateful that it seems to keep cooperating.

"And by the power that my rank grants me, I take command of the situation and of all the city guard present." The Butou remains paralyzed on top of the rubble as if he had turned to stone, and then, as I already saw happen with the first guard, his gaze begins to travel first to my face, then to the seal I am still holding aloft, then back to my face, as if looking for some clue that this might be a joke or a hallucination.

And upon realizing that it is not, his gaze makes the same journey downward as Zhengping's did and stays fixed on my legs, trapped under the rubble and with the skirt of the dress in tatters. I see how he swallows with a movement so pronounced that his Adam's apple goes up and down his throat, and then, without taking his eyes off my situation, he opens his mouth and begins to shout with the urgency of someone who knows that his career, and probably also his head, depends on how quickly he reacts.

"TO ME! TO ME, ALL OF YOU! HERE, NOW, NOW, NOW!" he bellows as he gestures with his arms toward a place I cannot see.

"DROP WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING AND COME HERE IMMEDIATELY!" I lower the seal, since the effort of holding it up, combined with the exhaustion from everything else, is beginning to take its toll on me, and as I observe the Butou organizing the beginning of what will be my rescue, a part of my mind registers, with a certain bitter amusement, how emergency procedures work the same everywhere, the higher the rank, the more urgent it becomes.

The Butou descends from the piece of rubble he was on with a controlled jump and approaches me, and when he reaches my side he bows with a formality that is clearly the best he can do under the circumstances.

"Zhāohuán", he tells me with a voice much more controlled now that he has given the initial orders.

"Do not worry, we will get you out of here right away. My men are competent, I give you my word." And as he says this to me, out of the corner of my eye I begin to notice how more city guards keep appearing in my limited field of vision, all with faces of not quite understanding what is happening but with sufficient discipline to respond immediately to the call of their superior.

"Butou", I tell him taking advantage of the moment.

"For now I am safe. But behind me, beneath the rubble of the building that fell on top of us, my Fei Yi, a nine-year-old girl and two imperial guards are trapped. Order your men to begin removing the rubble immediately and with urgency." The Butou swallows again, this time with a bit less panic, and turns toward the guards who are arriving with the swiftness of someone who has just understood that the chaos he was facing is rather worse than he thought.

"All of you, begin removing the rubble of this collapsed building now!" he shouts as he makes energetic gestures with his hand.

"There are survivors trapped! The Fei Yi of the Zhāohuán, a girl, and two imperial guards! I want those people out of there right now!"

The guards set to work quickly, and observing them for an instant I realize something I had not noticed, since I see how the stones they remove are large, some clearly of the size and weight that in my old life would have required heavy machinery to move, and yet the guards lift them, even if between two, and set them aside, with evident effort, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that they do it by hand.

It is clear that all of them, without exception, have completed at least the Tempering of the Muscles, something I knew in theory, but seeing it applied practically to a rescue situation like this makes me reflect for a second on how truly transformative this stage of cultivation is for a society, especially considering that practically the entire population can reach that point.

But there will be time to philosophize later, since while the others set to work, the Butou points to two other guards who have arrived and makes a sign for them to come over to where I am.

"You two, with me", he tells them.

"We have to free the Zhāohuán." The two guards approach cautiously, and the Butou explains to them with quick gestures how they will coordinate the effort. One positions himself to the right of my legs, another to the left, and the Butou places himself in front of me.

"Zhāohuán", he tells me with a tone of warning.

"This may hurt you. We will try to do it with all possible care, but…"

"Do it", I interrupt him, because the last thing I need right now is for a Butou of the guard to treat me like a piece of porcelain.

"I will bear it." The man nods with a brief look of respect, and the three of them set to the task. On the count of three, the two guards lift the stones that are trapping my legs, and I notice how their weight disappears with a sensation of relief so great that it almost draws a sob from me. My legs burn, they throb, and I feel a new sharp pain when the Butou pulls me to move me away from the rubble. But at last I am free.

The guards drop the stones and the Butou, without asking permission or giving me time to protest, picks me up in his arms with ease, carries me a few steps to a slightly flatter area, beside the remains of what must have been a wall, and before sitting me down he unties the cape from his shoulders with the hand that isn't holding me and places it on the ground.

Then he sits me on top with care, propping me up against the broken wall, and remains crouched for an instant in front of me looking me up and down as if searching for other obvious wounds.

"Are you all right, Zhāohuán?" he asks me.

"Do you need anything else before I begin supervising the rescue?" I observe him for a moment, trying to order the priorities in my head, and then I realize something I should have thought of earlier but that the shock and exhaustion have made me forget, and that is that I have to notify my mother.

"Butou", I tell him as soon as the idea finishes forming.

"Do you have on hand any paper and a bit of ink?" The man blinks, clearly surprised by the question, but nods immediately.

"Yes, Zhāohuán", he replies as he pats the pouch he carries at his belt.

"I always carry writing materials with me in case I have to send written orders during a service. Do you need them now?"

"I need them now", I confirm.

"And I also need the fastest guard you have in your squad. Call him." The Butou doesn't ask more. He takes from the pouch a sheet of paper folded in quarters, a small bottle of ink sealed with a cork stopper, and a pen of simple but well-cared-for appearance, and hands me the three objects. I take only the paper and the ink, ignoring the pen with a gesture that I hope hasn't seemed discourteous, and after doing so the Butou turns to look toward the guards who are still working.

"Weiguo!" the Butou shouts as soon as he identifies the one he is looking for.

"Here, with me!" While I wait for the guard to arrive, I hurry to remove the stopper from the little bottle of ink with fingers that are clumsier than I would like, and then I take out carefully the dark green jade seal from the red silk casing that wraps it. With all the care I am capable of I dip the seal in the ink, rest the paper against the thigh that is less bruised, and stamp the seal with all the firmness my position allows me.

The impression comes out slightly crooked, but the phoenix with the folded wings is perfectly recognizable, which is the only thing that matters. While I am finishing, I hear the footsteps of someone approaching at a run, and upon lifting my gaze I see a thin and young guard, of no more than twenty-five years, who stops beside the Butou.

"Zhāohuán, this is Weiguo", the Butou tells me with a gesture toward the newcomer.

"He is the fastest guard I have in my squad." This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. The guard bows hurriedly, clearly disconcerted by the fact that someone from the Imperial Family is here, but disciplined enough not to ask. I look him fixedly in the eyes to make sure he is paying all his attention and I hand him the paper with the seal stamped on it.

"Weiguo, your orders are the following", I tell him with the clearest voice I manage to modulate.

"You are going to set off running right now in the direction of the Imperial Palace and when you arrive at the gates you show this seal to the guards, you tell them you have an urgent message from the Zhāohuán for Guifei Xiang and that your orders are to deliver it to her in person as quickly as you can." The guard takes the paper with both hands and holds it as if it were a relic, but he doesn't take his eyes off mine at any moment.

"After that you do not speak with anyone else", I continue.

"You do not answer questions, you do not give explanations, you do not accept meetings and you do nothing except repeat that the message is for Guifei Xiang and only for her. Is that clear?"

"It is clear, Zhāohuán", the guard replies with a firm voice.

"When you are before Guifei Xiang you tell her everything that has happened here", I continue.

"Everything. And you answer any question she may ask you, however insignificant it may seem to you or however prolonged the interrogation may become. Have you understood?"

"I have understood, Zhāohuán", he replies firmly. I nod once upon hearing him, and then I add the last thing, since adding a carrot always tends to work well.

"And if you do all this well and in time, I will personally make sure that you receive a generous reward for your service", I conclude.

The guard's eyes open a bit wider upon hearing me, but, to his credit, he maintains his composure, since he simply makes a military salute as clean as my seated position allows me to see, stores the folded paper with almost reverent care inside his uniform securing it against his chest, and then, without further words, turns around to set off running in the direction of the Imperial Palace with a speed that makes me think his reputation is more than justified.

I watch him disappear among the rubble that still remains in the streets, and then I divert my attention to the Butou, who while I was dictating orders has taken advantage to speak with two other guards who have just arrived.

"…and you go look for reinforcements", he is telling one as he gesticulates toward a distant point.

"Have all you can gather come, and have them come now", he tells the other as he points at him with a firm gesture.

"You stay here, beside the Zhāohuán, at all times. You do not separate from her, not even to breathe, and you defend her with your life if necessary. Is that clear?"

"Totally clear, Butou", the guard responds with a firm nod, and positions himself three paces from me with the posture of someone who has perfectly understood the gravity of the matter. The Butou turns toward me then and bows again.

"Zhāohuán", he tells me.

"I am going to supervise the rescue personally. If you need me, all you have to do is tell this guard."

"Go", I tell him nodding.

"Finding the trapped people is the most important task you have to do right now, don't worry about me." The man gives me one last bow, deep and respectful, and turns around to go back to the main work, and at last, for the first time since I regained consciousness on this ill-fated day, I have a moment to relax.

For an instant I allow myself the luxury of closing my eyes and breathing deeply, feeling how the air enters and leaves my lungs without the urgency of the past minutes and, despite the entire situation, there is something almost comforting about being seated with my back leaning against something solid. But the calm doesn't last long, since worry overcomes the exhaustion, and I lower my gaze to my legs to evaluate the damage.

With care, I roll up what remains of the dress, whose lower part is so destroyed that it hardly merits the name of dress, and observe my calves in the midday light. The panorama I see is not pretty, since I have several wounds that are bleeding a bit, some cleaner and others uglier with irregular edges. And the wounds are accompanied by bruises, many bruises, dark patches that extend across my calves and that promise a frankly spectacular color for tomorrow.

But however much I look and check, I do not feel any strange lumps, any deformation, or any of those signs that would indicate a fracture, that is to say, that as I suspected, thanks to the Tempering of Bones and Tendons I have nothing broken. I let out a sigh of relief, now calmer with respect to my own state, lift my gaze and take the opportunity to better observe the surroundings I am in. And what I see does not console me much, since the building that fell on top of us is not the only one that has collapsed.

In addition to this corner and following the street, two other buildings are completely destroyed. One has collapsed toward the opposite side of the building that fell on me, leaving walls leaning against the adjacent building like cards about to topple over entirely. And the one in the middle seems to have exploded from within, with rubble distributed in all directions as if someone had detonated a bomb in its interior.

But among the three, the one that invaded the street most, the one that came down almost entirely to one side, is clearly ours, since being on the corner it had nothing to hold it up like the one on the opposite side did. And the street was busy since there were more people around us, I suddenly remember.

Just thinking about how many pedestrians may be trapped under rubble throughout this area churns something inside me, and I curse our bad luck between my teeth as I force myself to set that thought aside, because right now I cannot do anything more for them than the orders I have already given, and I need to focus on what I can do. My gaze drifts toward the body of the murdered man, who is still lying among the rubble a bit beyond where we are.

And as I observe him, I cannot help thinking that I would bet anything that those two men have something to do with this entire incident, and that despite the second one taking the first one's pouch, it is almost certain that it is not a simple robbery.

To begin with, the techniques the second man revealed are not those of any ordinary thief, since by the sword with the edge in flames, it is clear he has the Fire core, and by the leap, the most likely thing is that he has a second core open, almost certainly the one of Air, which means that at the very least he is in the Condensation of the Elemental Cores.

A cultivator with two elemental cores open does not dedicate himself to stealing pouches in the street, so those two were involved in something much bigger, and the destruction of the buildings is probably the motive, the consequence, or both, of whatever was happening between them. I remain a few seconds ruminating on all this as I hear in the background how the Butou keeps giving orders to more and more guards who join the rescue, and finally I turn toward the guard who has been assigned to me as escort.

"I have some orders for you", I tell him. The man turns toward me immediately.

"Speak, Zhāohuán", he replies.

"I want you to go to that corpse", I tell him as I point at the dead man with my head.

"You search it and bring me everything it has on it, including the boots." The guard blinks, clearly disconcerted by the last instruction, and opens his mouth as if he were going to protest.

"Zhāohuán, I have orders not to separate from your side", he begins.

"If I move away and…"

"It will only be a moment", I interrupt him.

"And, in case you have not noticed, we are in the middle of a score of city guards who are all attentive not to fail their Butou. The only person who would dare attack me right now is someone who is tired of living." The guard looks at me for a second, clearly trying to find an argument to refute mine, and finally lets out a sigh of resignation, that short and professional sigh I have already learned to recognize in those around me when they realize that insisting is wasting time.

"As you order, Zhāohuán", he tells me, and moves toward the corpse. I see him kneel beside the man and begin to search him with an efficiency that suggests that this, at least, he has done many times before, and after a couple of minutes he straightens up with several things in his arms.

He returns to my side and deposits with care on the ground, beside me, several folded papers, a sword with its sheath, and a pair of boots, which is what he ends up unloading at the end with a resigned gesture that reveals his skepticism with respect to the last instruction.

"This is everything he had, Zhāohuán", he tells me.

"Good", I tell him.

"Return to your post." I pick up the papers first, since they are what arouses the most curiosity in me, and I unfold them carefully to see what they are about, but as soon as I fix my gaze on the first sheet, I realize that I do not understand absolutely anything of what is written there. The characters are there, perfectly traced, but the order in which they are written, the combinations they form are completely incoherent.

It is as if someone had taken a normal text and had reordered all the signs following a pattern I have no way of guessing. And then, upon looking more closely, I notice a very fine, very subtle trace of Qi in the ink with which the characters are written.

I snort, somewhere between amused and frustrated, upon realizing that they are probably encrypted by means of some technique that uses Qi, since it is obvious that in a world where techniques and spiritual energy exist, the ways of encrypting documents are going to evolve in directions that in my previous life could only belong to fantasy novels.

And although my Blessing allows me many things with language, I seriously doubt that it will be capable of deciphering something that probably requires knowledge of techniques I don't even know exist. I set the papers aside with a sigh. Let the authorities keep them, since if anyone can decipher them, it is not me. I pick up the boots next, and here, I must admit it, I do it with more expectation than I would care to admit.

There is a trope, persistent in any work of fiction worth its salt, that makes spies and criminals always hide things in their boots. And as stupid as it is, a small part of me cannot help checking. I examine the interior carefully, palpate the sides and turn them upside down while shaking them, but I find nothing. Finally, I ask the guard to come closer and lend me his dagger, and between the two of us we cut the heels, carefully checking for any hidden compartment, but the boots are absolutely clean.

"Trope busted", I murmur between my teeth with a certain disappointment as I set the boots aside resignedly. I have left the sword with its sheath, which the moment I pick it up I notice gives off a trace of Qi that is rather more perceptible than that of the papers. It is not too intense a trace, but it is clearly perceptible, which makes me suspect that it is some kind of spiritual weapon, like the sword my brother obtained at the auction.

I examine it for a while with care, looking at the edge, the hilt, and the guard, looking for some inscription or some sign that gives me clues about its origin, but I find nothing remarkable, so I set the sword aside and move on to the sheath. And it is then, as I turn it between my hands to examine it, that I hear a small knock, very subtle, almost imperceptible, as if something inside the sheath were bouncing slightly against the walls when I tilt it.

I furrow my brow, move the sheath again, and the knock repeats. I bring the opening close to my eyes and look inside, and although the light doesn't let me see well, I think I distinguish something small wedged at the bottom, something that clearly should not be there. I then compare the sheath with the sword I have beside me, and upon doing so I realize something that had escaped me, which is that the sword is clearly a bit shorter than the sheath.

Not much, barely a couple of centimeters, but enough to leave a gap between the tip of the sword and the bottom of the sheath when the sword is in it, a gap that should not exist unless the owner of the sword has requested it on purpose. I hold the sheath with the opening downward and begin to shake it, first softly and then with more force, and after a couple of attempts in which it seems that nothing is going to come out, finally something dislodges inside and falls to the ground with a clear clink.

A small jade token, very similar to the one Master Mu gave me. I set the sheath aside carefully and pick up the tablet, observing it with renewed interest as I hold it between my fingers. It is of a pale jade, almost whitish, with the surface polished and some very finely carved characters on one of its faces.

I begin to examine it more closely, trying to see if I can read the characters or if, as with the papers, they are encrypted in some way, when the sound of a large group of people approaching in haste interrupts me. Not the footsteps of the city guards I have already learned to identify, but coordinated and disciplined footsteps, with that unique cadence only professional military units have in rapid march, a very rapid one.

I lift my gaze from the tablet and look to one side just in time to see, above the rubble surrounding the street, how a figure I know well appears, that of Nei Baihu Liang Xue. She advances at the front of a numerous group of Nei Wei who follow her in closed formation, with weapons in hand and faces tense in that expression soldiers have when they know they have arrived at an emergency situation and still don't know how bad it is.

And upon seeing her, a sensation of relief I have been holding back for what seem like hours spreads through my chest, since for the first time since the collapse, I know with absolute certainty that I am now safe.