Chương 127: Chapter 124

I take away from my forehead the jade tablet that contains the technique of the Myriad of Hands and, for an instant, I stay looking at it. On its surface, where the engraved characters line up, one is now missing, leaving a gap among the others to remind me that only three uses remain, and a silent reminder that not even Master Mu's gifts are infinite. I hold it out toward Lianhua without entirely taking my eyes off that gap.

"Here", I tell her.

"Put it away again, please." Lianhua takes it with that reverent care she reserves for things that cannot be replaced, and makes it disappear among the folds of her clothing in a manner so effective that, had I not seen her put it away, I would never have guessed she was carrying anything hidden on her.

While she occupies herself with the tablet, I close my eyes and direct a part of my mind toward the knowledge that has just appeared out of nowhere inside my head, just as happened the day I learned the Dragon's Grip. The sensation is once again as disconcerting as the first time, that absolute certainty that an instant before I knew nothing coexisting with the deceptive conviction that, in reality, I have known it all my life.

But this time I don't dwell on that strangeness, because I have something concrete to verify. I examine the information like someone leafing through a book they have already read, and I compare it with what Lianhua told me when she learned this same technique.

Manipulating several objects at once, almost as if they were extensions of my own hands, the feedback effect, the one that turns anything anchored or too heavy into a magnet that pulls at me instead of letting itself be dragged, and the impossibility of grabbing living beings. Everything is exactly what Lianhua described to me, although it is not as if I expected any surprise.

And that comforts me, because it means that there is someone a step ahead of me who has already traveled this same road, who stumbled on the same stones I will encounter and learned from them before I did. A Lianhua who has already committed the mistakes for me is a treasure that nothing could replace. I open my eyes and look at Lianhua, who has just finished settling the tablet and once again has her hands crossed in front with that posture of hers of one who awaits instructions.

"It coincides with everything you told me", I tell her.

"I'm going to begin with the tests." Lianhua nods with a brief gesture, without surprise, as if she had taken for granted from the start that I would do exactly that. I lower my gaze toward the floor of the formation room, where before beginning I had the precaution of scattering a good assortment of objects of different sizes and weights.

Empty cups, a couple of paperweights, a small bronze dish, several brushes, a closed inkwell, a handful of things with no more use than that of serving me as guinea pigs, and I concentrate. This time, however, I decide to dispense with the dramatic gesture with my hand.

With the Dragon's Grip I allowed myself the whim of raising my hand as if I were Darth Vader in person, and I acknowledge that I enjoyed that piece of nonsense down to the last second, but the Myriad of Hands does not function the same way, so moving my hand in a dramatic gesture would serve me no purpose save to make me feel ridiculous. I gather the Qi of the surroundings and employ it just as the technique indicates to me. The first object, an empty cup, lifts off the floor without apparent effort.

The second, a paperweight, follows it almost instantly. The third and the fourth lift with the same ease, floating a span above the floor in an obedient row. But starting with the fifth I begin to notice it. It is not physical tiredness, nor anything of the sort, but something much more subtle and much more difficult to explain.

Each new object I add demands a portion of my attention, and as that attention divides among more and more things at once, the sensation becomes overwhelming, as if I were trying to follow five different conversations in five different languages without losing the thread of any. The seventh costs me more than the sixth. The eighth obliges me to clench my teeth and to breathe slowly so as not to drop any of the ones I already have up.

And when I stretch what remains of my concentration to lift the ninth, for a very brief instant those nine objects float at once in the air before me, but only an instant, because the next second my attention snaps like a cord stretched too tight and the nine objects fall to the floor all at once. I let out the air I hadn't realized I was holding and breathe deeply a couple of times, letting that sort of mental cramp dissipate little by little.

It is a curious fatigue, that of the overloaded mind, different from any tiredness of the body, and it takes a few seconds to ease off entirely. When I feel recovered, I lift my gaze toward Lianhua.

"Good", I tell her, still with my breathing a bit high.

"Just lifting them, without manipulating them and without having the Yin Gate open, eight is exactly the point where forcing myself further makes everything come crashing down. Now let us see how many I am capable of truly manipulating before my concentration breaks." Lianhua observes me a moment before replying, and when she does, she does so with her usual prudence.

"Would it not be better to do it as I did, Zhāohuán Wen?" she asks me.

"To go improving one by one your capacity to manipulate the different hands of the technique, instead of attempting it all at once." The question does not surprise me, because it is exactly what I would expect from her, and besides it is a reasonable piece of advice, the same one she herself followed when she renounced her third hand in order to master first the two she had.

"I intend to do just that", I reply to her.

"But first I want to know what my maximum limit is now, without having trained anything yet. I want to have a reference, a starting point to compare with later on." Lianhua listens to me, and then, simply, says nothing. But her silence is one of the eloquent ones.

There is barely a shadow between her eyebrows and an extra blink I know too well, a contained expression that clearly indicates she does not understand what the devil I would want to bother measuring a limit I am going to surpass anyway as soon as I begin to practice or open the Yin gate. But I decide not to clear up her doubts.

Not because I want to annoy her, but because there are things I find easier to do than to explain, and because, deep down, the gesture of resigned patience she puts on when I do something that seems unnecessary to her but that she does not bother to argue about amuses me a bit, so I lower my gaze again toward the objects scattered across the floor and concentrate once more. This time I don't limit myself to lifting.

This time, as soon as the first object detaches from the floor, I set it moving tracing a slow and wide circle around me. And when I have that movement under control, I lift a second one and make it follow the same path, in a slightly different orbit. Then a third, and a fourth, each one with its own trajectory, until I have five objects spinning at once around Lianhua and me, at different heights and at different speeds, like a small system of planets orbiting around two very human suns.

I don't get to attempt the sixth because I recognize the sensation that invades me instantly, because it is exactly the same one I have when I try to concentrate on cultivating a gate while I try to hold more than five particles of Qi, and therefore it is my current limit. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Without stopping moving the five objects, I look at Lianhua.

"If I only use the technique to move them, the maximum I can have right now is five", I tell her calmly so as not to lose control of the objects that orbit us. Lianhua observes the objects spinning around us, and for once she lets something resembling approval show on her face.

"Congratulations, Zhāohuán Wen", she tells me.

"It is already more than the two I managed on my first attempt." The praise draws from me a smile of pure satisfaction, because coming from Lianhua, who distributes compliments with the same generosity with which a miser distributes coins, it is worth double. But the smile lasts me only a moment, because there is something it would not be fair to let pass.

"One also has to be honest", I tell her, softening my tone.

"I have been practicing with Qi since I was five years old. You had barely been doing it for two years when you did that test. If I count correctly, the one who is actually behind is me." Lianhua holds my gaze an instant, and then nods slowly a single time. But she adds nothing more. She does not argue, does not downplay what I say and does not return the compliment out of courtesy, she simply accepts it as a fact, and in some way that silence of hers tells me more than any reply she could give me.

I focus again on the five objects I have not stopped moving at any moment and, one by one, I go depositing them on the floor with care, leaving them exactly where they were. It is not out of delicacy or sense of order, but because letting them fall again would seem to me, in some way, like cheating on my own test. When the last one touches the floor, I direct my attention toward one side of the room, where on a low little table there is a small pile of books I had left ready precisely for this.

I concentrate on the first one, and the cover lifts by itself. Then, with an almost exaggerated care, a page separates from the others and passes to the other side, slowly, without folding or wrinkling. It is a movement much, much more delicate than moving a cup through the air, and I notice right away how much more attention that gesture demands of me. Even so, I open a second book and set its pages turning at the same rhythm, then a third, and there I stop.

Because as soon as I have the three books turning pages at once, I run into the same wall again, only much sooner than with the cups. I let out a sigh, close the three books and look at Lianhua.

"For more delicate manipulations, like turning the pages of a book, the maximum is three", I tell her.

"And it is quite clear that, if I tried something even more delicate, without having practiced and without having the Yin Gate open, the most probable thing is that one would be all I could do." Lianhua nods at my words, without surprise, like someone who hears confirmed something they already suspected.

"If you wish I can prepare you a list with the exercises I used to train the technique", she tells me.

"They served me to gain control over each hand little by little."

"I would appreciate that very much", I reply without thinking twice.

"You would spare me having to invent some on my own, which is just the kind of work I prefer not to do if someone has already done it before me." Lianhua inclines her head barely, considering the matter settled, and for a moment it seems that the session has ended, but I still have one test left that I have not told Lianhua about because she would not approve of it.

"Lianhua", I tell her.

"Come closer, please. There is one last thing I want to verify." She lifts her gaze, and for once the surprise lasts her more than a blink, because it is clear she considered the practice concluded. Even so, she does not ask, she limits herself to taking a few steps until she positions herself at my side. And while she approaches, I direct my gaze upward, toward the thick wooden beams that cross the ceiling of the room. I make a quick calculation.

I have just turned twelve and, by my stature, the most probable thing is that I am at the lower end of the normal weight for my age and therefore that I am between thirty and thirty-five kilos. That weight is low enough for what I have in mind, so I decide that seven hands will be more than enough since I don't need to manipulate anything with precision, I only want to pull. I concentrate on one of the beams and, little by little, I begin to exert force on it, slowly and with care.

The beam, of course, does not move even a millimeter, since not even with all the hands in the world could I tear it from its place. And that is precisely what I am counting on. Because upon reaching the seventh hand, pulling at the beam with a slow and constant force, the technique does exactly what Master Mu warned me it would do.

Being unable to move the target, the feedback effect inverts the direction of the force, and suddenly the one who begins to be dragged toward the beam is me, so I notice how my body detaches from the seat of the chair. Out of the corner of my eye I see Lianhua thrust her hand forward all at once, in a reflex gesture of wanting to hold me, but without losing my concentration I make her a small gesture of negation with my head and she stops dead.

She does not entirely withdraw her arm, nor does she lower her guard, but rather she stays exactly like that, halfway, clearly ready to act the instant she considers it necessary. I focus again exclusively on what I am doing, since if I let the force increase without control, the feedback would launch me toward the beam like an arrow shot toward the ceiling, and that would indeed end badly.

So the sweat begins to bead on my forehead as I concentrate on keeping that force absolutely constant, not an ounce more, not an ounce less, so that the effect lifts me slowly instead of hurling me through the air. And it works, since centimeter by centimeter my body goes lifting from the chair until, upright, I remain floating in the air with my feet a few centimeters from the floor.

I decide not to keep rising just in case, since I have verified what I wanted, so I limit myself to maintaining just enough force to sustain myself where I am. And then I look at Lianhua, who still has her arm halfway extended and her brow marked by a worry she does not bother to disguise, and I smile at her.

"Doesn't this make it much easier for you to change my clothes?" I ask her. Lianhua lets out a sigh, of those long and slow ones that in her are equivalent to relaxing, and finally lowers her hand a bit.

"Yes, Zhāohuán Wen", she replies to me.

"It would be much easier. Although, if by chance someone entered the room at just that moment, it would turn out to be rather complicated to explain what is happening." My smile, far from disappearing, widens.

"On the contrary", I tell her.

"What we have to do is see to it that someone sees it as soon as possible. And, while we're at it, that they spread the rumors as fast as they are able." Lianhua arches an eyebrow.

"And why would I want to do something like that?" she asks me.

"Think about it", I reply to her without stopping floating.

"Everyone in the court knows that I bought a technique called the Dragon's Grip. And everyone knows, more or less, what it does. So tell me, if the rumor were to spread that the Fei Yi of the Zhāohuán was dressing her while she floated in the air, what do you think people would think?" Lianhua stays still an instant, and I see how she ties up the loose ends almost at once.

"They would think that the one who has learned the Dragon's Grip is me", she replies to me.

"Exactly", I tell her, and I notice how the satisfaction rises within me at seeing her arrive where I wanted to lead her.

"That means that, in case of need, I could use that technique in front of whoever it was as long as you were nearby, because everyone would take for granted that you are the one handling it.

And besides it would make the whole court believe that my Fei Yi masters a technique like that, in such a way that, if it occurred to someone to try something against us, suddenly they would have to stop and think about how to deal with her before moving a finger, but on top of that all their preparations would always be for the wrong person." Lianhua meditates on my words for a moment, with that concentrated stillness of hers, and after a while she nods.

"It is not a bad idea", she acknowledges.

"And we don't lose anything by trying it even if in the end it ends up serving no purpose."

"It will always serve some purpose", I tell her, widening the smile even more.

"At the very least, it will serve to make changing my clothes more comfortable while my weight is something the technique can support without…" But I don't get to finish the sentence because my concentration, which had been faltering for a while under the accumulated effort of the whole session, breaks all at once when a sudden pang of pain crosses my head.

It is only an instant, that sharp and brief twinge is enough for the delicate balance of force that was keeping me in the air to come undone, for me to stop floating and begin to fall. Lianhua, who despite our entire conversation had not lowered her guard for a single second, reacts even before I finish processing what is happening. Her arm, the one she had not entirely withdrawn, closes around me in time and holds me firmly before I manage to touch the floor.

I remain a moment in her arms, recovering my breath and waiting for the pang to finish going away, and then I compose a grimace halfway between an apology and a reproach to myself.

"The next time we do this, it is better to do it when I am rested and not after having spent a good while using the technique to test my limits", I tell her. Lianhua looks at me, still holding me, and for once there is not a trace of argument in her reply.

"Yes", she tells me simply.

"It would be best."