Chương 151: Chapter 148

I am lying face up in the center of the cave, on the folded blanket Lianhua has put beneath my head and my back, with my arms extended at the sides and my legs placed where she left them, because this is the only meditation posture my body permits me to adopt without using any external element, elements we do not have. And, frankly, I don't complain, since even having to cultivate like this, it is much better than doing it anywhere else.

I look around and check the Qi that remains in the room, and the only thing I see is the omnipresent fire Qi, accompanied by a few particles of earth Qi, but no neutral Qi except for the few particles that begin to peek out attracted by the Qi-gathering formation. With a sigh, I close the Yin Gate and then dissolve in my mind the rune of the neutral Qi, noticing how the subtle vibration of the Resonance that impregnated my whole surroundings goes out, like a string that stops sounding.

I stay a moment like that, contemplating the cave with my interior vision, and afterward I stop concentrating. And the so-called cave appears before me again, that is to say, a room excavated into the rock, with polished walls and a vaulted ceiling, with an enormous circle of runes carved into the floor that now emit a faint and constant glow, barely the gleam of a sleeping ember beneath my body.

I sigh toward the ceiling, and then, since I have absolutely nothing better to do until Lianhua returns, I devote myself to looking at the stone vault I have above me, following with my gaze the marks left by the tools of whoever excavated this, and I ask myself who did it, when, and whether that person could have imagined that one day an invalid princess of the Tianjing Empire was going to end up lying here, who besides was planning how to plunder the Qi of the Sect with the greatest possible impudence.

Fortunately, Lianhua does not take too long, since I hear the door slide behind me with its grave and sandy sound, I hear her footsteps and I turn my head just as she enters my field of vision. And I don't wait even a second before beginning to question her.

"How did the reconnaissance go?" I ask her directly. Lianhua stops at my side, looks an instant toward the lit formation, and then lowers her eyes toward me.

"I have been observing closely", she replies with that cadence of hers of a report.

"From outside nothing was noticed." She makes a very brief pause, that pause that always means a nuance is still missing.

"Nothing", she repeats.

"Except for the evident fact that the formation is activated." And upon hearing her, I let the air out slowly, with a relief I don't even try to disguise. Because that, and no other, was my true fear. Not the formation, nor the expense, nor even that someone might come to ask why I am using it, since after all they have put us in a house that has a cultivation cave and it would be fairly absurd to suppose that they have brought us all the way here so that we would contemplate it with admiration.

What truly worried me was the Resonance. Because I have not the remotest idea of how many people in this world have the gift of the Resonance of Qi. I suspect Master Mu has it, and she was insistent enough in telling me to keep the secret.

And if the effect it produces on the Qi of a radius of several meters around were perceived from the other side of the door, or from the path, or from wherever the disciple who one fine day decides to approach to snoop happens to be, then my whole plan of taking advantage of this cave until leaving it without a single particle would go to ruin before beginning, and that in the best of cases.

But by the look of it, no, and fortunately the rock of this mountain is thick enough, or the effect local enough, or the heavens generous enough for once, that what happens in here stays in here, which means that I can go on ahead.

"In that case let us have breakfast", I say as I look at the ceiling again with a smile I notice is perfectly foolish.

"Xia will have finished by now and we have things to talk about." Lianhua says nothing, she just nods, leans over me, passes one arm beneath my knees and another behind my back, and lifts me off the floor with the same ease with which another person would lift a basket of clothes. And so, entirely in princess style, I leave my brand-new cave and enter the house proper.

In the entrance hall, the scene has changed since yesterday, since they have moved the low table, drawing it up against one of the walls, and have placed one of the cushions right in that gap, so that I can sit with my back resting against the wall and don't end up on the floor after a short while, which is exactly what would happen if they seated me in the center of the room like anyone else.

It is a minimal detail, since it is only a cushion drawn up against a wall, and nevertheless, each time I see that they have done it without my having to ask for it, without comments, without ceremonies and without that face of doing an immense favor that so many others put on, a warm sensation stays in my chest that I never quite manage to know where to store. Lianhua seats me in my spot, settles my back against the wall with two precise gestures and withdraws.

And on the other side of the table, Xia, who has just stepped away from the stove with her hair a bit disheveled and her cheeks flushed from the heat, begins to place a few dishes with the efficiency of always.

"Wen", she tells me as she leaves the last one.

"Between last night's dinner and this, there is nothing left now. All the provisions are gone." I look at the dishes after Xia's words, but I don't worry about them.

"I don't think it will be a problem", I reply with all the tranquility in the world.

"After the kind reminder I gave yesterday to our dear guide, I am almost certain that over the course of the morning someone will appear to fix it." Xia looks at me a moment with that expression of hers of not knowing whether she should laugh and seems to decide that she shouldn't, so she sits and we have breakfast.

I let the first bites pass, because important conversations are better handled with something in the stomach, and when I calculate that we have already been at it long enough, I leave the bowl and speak.

"Good", I say.

"Since the Resonance is not noticed from outside and it doesn't seem anyone is watching us, we can already organize ourselves. And the first thing is to divide up the use of the cave." The two of them lift their gaze.

"I have been observing this morning", I continue.

"And there is one thing we have to take into account, which is that the Qi of this cave is much denser than that of any place we have ever cultivated in, but it does not move faster. The formation attracts the Qi of the surroundings at exactly the same rate at which it would attract it anywhere else, only that here what it attracts is a much greater quantity. Which means that, when I empty the zone, it takes more or less the same time to fill up again as it would take at the Palace."

I pick up the bowl again, more to have my hands occupied than for anything else.

"So, taking my sessions at the Imperial Palace as a reference, I have calculated it", I say.

"I will use the cave in the mornings and again in the middle of the day. With those two sessions, we leave freedom for the Qi to accumulate again, along with a small period of time in which we will disconnect the formation so that the accumulated fire Qi dissipates and does not build up with the new that it attracts." And here comes the part I know perfectly well is going to cost me.

"And at night you will use it", I add, looking at Lianhua.

"You need fewer hours of sleep than I do, so it is the perfect moment for you to keep condensing your Earth Elemental Core." The reaction is exactly the one I expected, since Lianhua furrows her brow. And in Lianhua, furrowing her brow is equivalent to what in anyone else would be getting up from the table slamming a fist down.

"My core is not important, Zhāohuán Wen", she tells me.

"What is important is that you take advantage of this cave to increase your own level of cultivation, not that I waste that Qi on something I can do anywhere else and at any other moment." I smile, because I expected it word for word.

"No", I reply to her without further ado.

"It is also important that you condense your Earth Elemental Core. And not only that one." I see her open her mouth to reply, but I don't give her time.

"Before you go on, I want you to answer a question for me", I tell her.

"That second tablet, the one you brought from the Celestial Fragment of the Sands, the one you couldn't use in its day because it required elemental Qi. What elements exactly does it need?" Lianhua stops dead and furrows her brow again, but this time because she is searching for something in her memory and profoundly hates it taking her more than two seconds to find it. And after those two seconds, she answers me.

"Earth", she says.

"And Air." And I lean back against the wall, let the smile spread across my face with all the slowness it pleases, and sigh out of pure delight.

"I imagined as much", I say.

"Earth and Air", I repeat.

"Which turn out to be two of the four spiritual roots you have." Lianhua looks at me without saying anything, and on her face there begins to appear, very slowly, the expression of someone who sees the train coming and doesn't have time to get off the track.

"So I want you to condense them", I tell her, and now no longer smiling.

"Both. Earth first, Air after, as fast as you can." And the expected reply arrives right away.

"Zhāohuán Wen", she begins, and her voice has that courteous edge she reserves for the occasions on which she is about to tell me I am an idiot without telling me so.

"An elemental technique is too valuable. It is probably the most valuable object we took out of the Celestial Fragment, excepting perhaps the knowledge about cultivation. A technique like that should be used by you. You should keep it until your cultivation reaches the necessary point and learn it yourself, not spend it on a serva—" This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"We don't know whether I will have the necessary spiritual roots", I cut her off without contemplations. And that stops her dead, because it is true and she knows it.

"We don't know it, Lianhua", I repeat more softly.

"I still cannot see my roots. I may have Earth and Air, I may have one, I may have none. And if we keep that tablet for years waiting for me to arrive, and when I arrive it turns out the heavens have decided that mine is Water and Nature, then we will have thrown into the trash a technique and several years, all at once." I take a breath, because the good argument remains.

"And there is something more", I continue.

"The two tablets were together. In the same place, guarded by the same person. And when two techniques appear together, the most probable thing is that they are meant to complement each other, to be used at the same time and for one to sustain the other. And if that is so, then their best use, the only use that truly takes advantage of them, is for the same person to have them." I make a deliberate pause.

"And the Vision of Horus is had by you", I finish. Lianhua stays quiet, and then, because she is Lianhua and because stubbornness is the only thing in which she beats me with more ease, I see how she takes a breath again to protest once more. So I cut her off before she begins.

"It is an order", I say, and I let the tone change just enough.

"You are going to condense your Cores of Earth and Air as fast as you can without putting yourself at risk. Without risks, Lianhua, I want that to be clear, but you are going to do it." The silence lengthens, and in the end Lianhua lowers her head in that millimetric inclination she makes when she yields.

"I will do what I am ordered, Zhāohuán Wen", she tells me. And by her tone I know perfectly that she does not agree, that she is never going to agree and that she is going to do it all the same, which is exactly the motive for which I would entrust her with my life without thinking about it twice. The matter settled, I turn my head toward Xia, who has spent the whole conversation in silence, listening to us with her eyes going from one to the other like someone following a match.

And this part, truth be told, causes me more sorrow.

"Xia", I tell her.

"Unfortunately, you are not going to be able to take advantage of the cave." She blinks upon hearing me.

"You still have a few months left until your birthday", I explain to her.

"And until then you cannot begin with the Tempering of the Nerves. I'm sorry." And Xia, who is ten years old and to whom I have just told that the only one in this house who is not going to touch the treasure is her, shrugs her shoulders.

"Don't worry", she tells me as she reaches for another bite.

"It isn't anything so serious either." And she says it truly. Without irony, without resentment, without that shadow of a grudge that anyone else in her place perhaps would have despite knowing that using it would kill her. Sometimes I ask myself what I did to deserve her. We go back to eating, and the conversation gradually dies down into that comfortable silence that arises when there is no longer anything urgent to say.

And while I chew, my eyes go on their own toward Lianhua, who eats with the same economy of movements with which she does everything else, seated very straight, completely oblivious to what is happening inside my head. Because what is happening inside my head has absolutely nothing to do with tactical efficiency, nor with the optimal use of resources, nor with any of the impeccably reasonable arguments I have just laid out for her with my best strategist's face.

What is happening inside my head is that not even dead do I intend to keep that technique for myself. Because I have made my suppositions. A technique that came out of a Celestial Fragment covered in sand, a tablet marked with the Egyptian hieroglyph for sand and some requirements of Earth and Air, which are, coincidentally, the two exact elements necessary to create Sand Qi.

I may be mistaken, it may be a technique of advanced agriculture and I may be getting my hopes up absurdly, but if I am not mistaken, if what is in there is what I believe there is, then I have before me the opportunity of my life, and I don't intend to waste it for anything in the world. Lianhua already knows how to project her sight like a hawk, and probably how to move over rooftops as if gravity were a suggestion, so I already have my own personal Assassin's Creed walking through the corridors.

But if all my suppositions are true, at last I will be able to have an authentic ninja handmaiden by making her change franchises to that of Naruto, and that is something on which I don't intend to yield.

"Wen?" Xia says to me.

"Your breakfast is getting cold."

"Nothing, nothing", I reply as I go back to eating at full speed.

"I was thinking about my things." We finish breakfast and Xia begins to gather up the dishes while I, who have had a pending curiosity since yesterday, look at Lianhua.

"Take me outside", I tell her.

"I want to see what this is like in the light of day." Lianhua nods, lifts me, seats me in the wheelchair and takes me out the door. And at last, without yesterday's haste, without an ill-humored disciple waiting for us to finish existing so he can leave, I can look at where they have put us. But I cannot help thinking that it is no great thing.

The house is in a kind of fold of the mountain, with the slope rising at its back and the path descending in a curve toward the rest of the Sect, and the surroundings are exactly as austere as the building itself, that is to say, earth, stone, a few resistant trees and little more. No gardens, no ponds, none of those ornamented pavilions one imagines when one thinks of a sect of cultivators. Sobriety. Much sobriety save for one thing.

To one side of the house and beside a well, there is a rectangle of terrain that someone took the trouble to clear a long time ago, a zone covered with herbs that reach Lianhua's knee. And beneath those herbs, if one looks with attention, one can still make out the lines that indicate that one day it was divided into plots. Someone divided that terrain into small regular plots, with their separations and their paths, and did it with the evident intention of sowing something.

Perhaps spirit herbs, perhaps ordinary vegetables, perhaps both things. And then, at some moment, they stopped coming and the house was left empty. I stay looking at those plots invaded by the weeds for longer than that detail merits, with a strange pang in my chest I wouldn't know how to explain, and finally I look away.

"Leave me here", I tell Lianhua.

"Go help Xia, that I have nothing better to do than take the air." Lianhua hesitates a fraction of a second, closes her eyes to make a complete sweep of the surroundings, makes some kind of calculation and finally enters the house. And I stay alone, enjoying the strange coolness that is noticeable in the Sect.

But it should not be this way, because the fire Qi that is out here is practically the same as there is everywhere, and nevertheless the temperature is pleasant, there is a breeze that descends from the summits and the sun warms without burning. I have not the least idea why, and I mentally note the question on the list, ever longer, of things I intend to find out while those elders take their time. But I stop thinking about things that don't matter that much either and close my eyes while I enjoy the moment.

But the sound of footsteps on the road makes me open my eyes, and upon opening them I see a figure that rounds the bend of the path.

"Lianhua!" I call. She comes out of the house before I finish pronouncing her name, something I no longer even bother to find surprising, and plants herself at my side in two strides. I point at the road with my chin.

"If I am not mistaken, there comes the solution to our food problem", I tell her. Lianhua says nothing, she simply positions herself at my side and waits. The figure approaches, and when it is close enough I can make out the tunic of the Sect. But it does not bear the symbol that Bai Zhen and the disciple who brought us here wore, that small emblem that identifies the Inner Disciples, so I can only suppose that it is an Outer Disciple. The man stops before us, after which he looks at the two of us.

"I have been sent to fetch the Zhāohuán Sun Wen", he says.

"I am the Zhāohuán Sun Wen", I reply to him with a perfectly courteous smile. He looks at me, and as always, as absolutely always, his eyes make that journey I already know by heart, first my face, then the chair, then my legs, then again my face, with that millimetric pause in which one can perfectly see how they rearrange their expectations. But at least he has the decency of not saying anything, he simply limits himself to putting his hand among the folds of his clothing and taking out a small jade token.

"I have been sent to bring this", he tells us, holding it up.

"It is a permit so that one person may circulate through the Sect and go daily to the Supply Pavilion to fetch what you need for your stay." I look at Lianhua, and she steps forward without my needing to tell her anything more, takes the jade token from the disciple's hand with a brief gesture and returns to my side.

"I thank you very much for having taken the trouble to bring it to us", I tell him then, with all the courtesy of which I am capable. But the disciple says nothing, nothing at all. Not a reply, not an inclination of the head, not even a grunt. He simply looks at us a moment longer, with the same expression with which one looks at a piece of furniture one has been asked to move, and afterward turns around to move away down the path without looking back. And I sigh, more than anything because I cannot do otherwise.

Because I have spent five days of road and a whole one inside this Sect, and at this point I have already understood perfectly how the matter functions. Here, whoever is not a disciple is nothing. Here, all those who are inside consider themselves, by the simple fact of being inside, of a category superior to anyone who is outside, and that conviction is so profoundly rooted that they don't even bother to disguise it. It is exasperating, but it is what there is.

And getting angry about it would be as useful as getting angry with the rain, so I push the matter from my mind and turn toward Lianhua.

"You will have to be the one to go", I tell her.

"It would not be safe to send Xia alone to take a walk out there."

"I agree, Zhāohuán Wen", she replies to me without hesitating.

"Then talk with Xia, have her tell you what exactly it is we need, and go get it", I continue.

"Although I suppose that first you will have to find out where the devil that Supply Pavilion is." And Lianhua, who has the gift of saying the most reassuring things in the world with the flattest voice in the world, replies to me.

"Don't worry", she tells me.

"It cannot be very difficult." And afterward she enters the house, to come out after a while with a backpack hanging from her shoulders. She gives me a brief inclination of the head after coming out and moves away down the path with that step of hers that does not seem fast until one tries to follow it. And then the wait begins.

Xia comes out to keep me company and sits on the step of the entrance, and for a while the two of us devote ourselves to looking at the landscape, which is pretty but which, frankly, wears thin quickly. After a good while of boredom, I see how Xia gets up all at once with the face of having had an idea, enters the house and comes out dragging the low table, and then goes back in and comes out with a board and a box of tokens.

And so, in the middle of a mountain, at the door of a stone house, in the heart of a sect of cultivators that despises us with enthusiasm, we set about playing Fǎnzhuǎn. With an additional complication, that is, and it is that the table is too low for me from the chair, and I don't intend even remotely to use the Myriad of Hands out in the open and in view of anyone who passes along the path, so it falls to Xia to move my tokens too. Which gives rise to a scene that, seen from outside, must be glorious.

"The one in the top corner", I tell her.

"This one?" she replies to me.

"Not that one. The one next to it", I indicate again.

"This one?" she asks me again, pointing at another token.

"Xia, the one next to that one", I tell her patiently.

"But both of them are next to it!" she exclaims, exasperated. And so, between ever more precise indications on my part and ever more theatrical protests on hers, we spend at least a whole period, with Xia getting ahead of me in two matches thanks, according to her, to her natural talent, and according to me, to the fact that the person who moves the tokens has an evident advantage over the one who cannot, although I prefer to act as if I hadn't noticed.

And we are in the middle of the third when I notice two figures climbing up the path. I lift my gaze from the board and watch them come, and as they approach I go identifying them. The first is Lianhua, with the backpack on her back notably more bulging than it was when she left, which is excellent news. And the second, who walks at her side with a book pressed against her arm and who seems to be telling her something with a great deal of animation, is Song Yan.

The two of them reach where I am, and I raise my hand.

"Song Yan!" I greet her with sincere joy.

"I didn't expect to see you so soon."

"Zhāohuán Sun Wen", she returns my greeting with an inclination of the head that has double the courtesy of all the ones the rest of the members of the Sect have not dedicated to me put together. Lianhua, meanwhile, makes a brief bow and heads toward the house with the backpack, followed by Xia, who has already abandoned the board and goes behind her giving little jumps at the prospect of having food again.

And the moment she is left alone with me, Song Yan takes a step forward, and on her face there is an expression of pure enthusiasm.

"Zhāohuán Sun Wen", she tells me.

"If I had known that your handmaiden was so good at fighting, I would have asked her for a training combat during the trip. Five days wasted!" And I stay looking at her while I blink.

"Excuse me", I say slowly.

"How are you supposed to know that?" And Song Yan, with the naturalness of one who is commenting on the weather, tells me.

"From the duel, of course", she tells me.

"The one she had with Jiang Lei a while ago after their argument at the Supply Pavilion. She defeated him in such an absolute manner that it will probably be talked about for days." And I stay there, seated in my chair, in the mountain sun, with a half-finished board of Fǎnzhuǎn on a low table and a polite smile frozen on my face because, frankly, there is a question that has installed itself in my head with an absolute firmness and that I cannot manage to push away in any manner whatsoever.

How the devil does a simple trip to fetch food turn into a duel with a Disciple of the Sect?