Chương 152: Chapter 149 Interlude 24

Lianhua rounds the bend of the path with the backpack cinched onto her shoulders and, at the precise instant in which the slope interposes itself between her and the small fold of the mountain, she loses sight at the same time of the house the Elders have assigned to the Zhāohuán and of the Zhāohuán Wen herself, who has stayed behind seated in the sun in front of the house.

And the moment she stops seeing her, Lianhua raises to the heavens a prayer as brief as it is silent, asking them for a single thing, that absolutely nothing happen during the time her absence lasts. It is not that she doubts Zhāohuán Wen. She knows all too well that, should it come to it, she is perfectly capable of defending herself, and not with the fragility attributed to her by anyone who stops at the wheelchair and doesn't bother to look beyond it.

The problem is not that, the problem is how she would have to do it. Because in order to defend herself, the Zhāohuán would be obliged to resort to the talismans she always carries on her for emergencies, and the moment a single one of them were used before the eyes of any disciple of the Sect, something they have until now guarded with care would come into view, that is to say, that the Zhāohuán is capable of activating them herself.

And from there to the uncomfortable questions, the silent calculations and the conclusions that it would be much, much better for no one to come to draw, there is but a single step. But Lianhua, who has the habit of reducing each problem to the simplest of its solutions, knows perfectly what the way is to keep any of that from coming to pass, and it is not to give it time.

The less her absence lasts, the less margin there will be for something to go wrong, so, without altering in appearance that efficient stillness that accompanies her always, she quickens her pace, leaves behind the tranquil and austere strip on which the residence stands and ventures into what she already considers the Sect proper. Once inside, she grants herself only enough time to think about her next steps.

She has not the remotest idea of where the Supply Pavilion is, since no one has bothered to tell her, in the same way that no one has bothered to tell her practically anything since she set foot in this place. But Lianhua does not need to be told, it suffices for her to reason it out. If something like a Supply Pavilion is, by its very name, a kind of central storehouse from which the basic necessities of all the disciples are distributed, then it must of necessity fulfill two conditions.

The first, being in a place that everyone can access with comfort. And the second, being ample enough that the constant coming and going of disciples does not turn into a bottleneck. And neither of those two things fits with the narrow and steep terraces of the upper part where they have put the three of them. Which means, translated into the language of this mountain, farther down.

So Lianhua does not hesitate and breaks into a run down the slope, with that long and silent step that does not seem fast until someone tries to follow it, leaving behind buildings without a name and buildings with a name but which turns out not to be the one that interests her, descending terrace after terrace along the countless stone staircases that dot the enclosure as if someone had distributed them with the sole purpose of embittering the existence of whoever is not from here.

As she descends, she manages to hear, here and there, some voices that upbraid her. A disciple who asks her at the top of his lungs who she thinks she is. Another who demands at the top of his voice that she stop at once. A third who lets loose, upon seeing her pass, a contemptuous comment about the kind of people who are lately allowed to dirty the paths of the Sect.

But Lianhua has heard disdain far more refined than that in salons far more elegant than this mountain, and not a single one of them merits her even slackening her pace, so she ignores them all with the same indifference with which she would ignore the buzzing of an insect and continues on her way. She continues, in fact, until the way simply ceases to be available because, all of a sudden, a group of six people plants itself before her and blocks her path.

There are six of them, and unlike all the disciples she has crossed paths with until now, they wear a slightly different uniform of the Sect, of a more fitted and practical cut, and they go armed. But it is neither the uniform nor the weapons that make Lianhua identify them at a single glance, but rather that way of planting themselves, that manner of occupying the space with the body, which she recognizes immediately because she has seen it thousands of times and because she has learned it herself.

It is the pose of one who holds a certain degree of authority and is accustomed to being obeyed without discussion. One of them takes a step forward and gives her the halt, and Lianhua, who has not the least interest in giving them an excuse, stops without further ado before them. The man runs his gaze over her from top to bottom, without bothering in the least to disguise the disdain, and speaks.

"Patrol of the Hall of Discipline", he says, and his tone makes clear that he considers those words should suffice to intimidate anyone.

"Who are you, and what are you doing wandering the grounds of the Sect when you have it strictly forbidden?" Lianhua does not reply immediately. Instead of that, with a slow and perfectly measured gesture, she brings her hand to the folds of her clothing, takes out the small jade token that the disciple of stony countenance handed her that morning and holds it up, at the height of the man's eyes, so that not the least doubt fits in his head about what it is.

"I am one of the handmaidens of the Zhāohuán Sun Wen", she says with a calm that admits no reply.

"Personal guest of the Elders and daughter of the Emperor." She makes a minimal pause, just enough for the words to settle.

"And I have permission to go to the Supply Pavilion", she adds. The man lowers his gaze toward the jade token. He examines it an instant, checking that it is authentic, and then lifts his eyes again toward Lianhua, with an expression in which the initial disdain has yielded its place to something more cautious and calculating.

Because one thing is to despise just any outsider, and quite another very different one is to despise the handmaiden of a guest of the Elders who turns out to be, besides, the daughter of the Emperor.

"Since you have permission you may continue", he concedes at last, reluctantly.

"But you will go directly to the Pavilion and from there you will return the way you came. You have no authorization to set foot anywhere else, and if you deviate, I assure you that you will regret it."

"I understand", replies Lianhua without altering herself. And then, with an impeccable courtesy that costs her not the least effort to feign, she formulates her next request.

"If you will permit me a question, it is the first time I make this journey and I don't know where the Supply Pavilion is", she says.

"If you would have the kindness to indicate it to me, I would not have to go looking for it on my own, risking entering without knowing it some place where I should not be." The man observes her as he weighs the question, and on his face one reads clearly the calculation he is making. It is evident that helping her does not enter at all within what he considers his obligations, and that his first impulse is to refuse out of pure principle.

But it is also evident that a lost outsider wandering about the Sect is exactly the kind of problem that afterward ends up falling on the patrol that should have prevented it, so, after a few seconds, he decides that the most practical thing is to reply. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. And with few words, dry and precise, he gives her the directions to arrive directly at the Pavilion.

"I thank you", says Lianhua with a brief inclination of the head. And she leaves, following the path they have indicated to her, under the attentive gaze of the six members of the patrol, who do not take their eyes off her until she rounds the next curve and disappears from their sight.

The man's directions turn out to be good, something Lianhua thanks him for in silence, because they lead her without a single detour to almost the lowest part of the whole mountain, where the terrain finally levels out and opens into an enormous esplanade in whose center rises an immense building.

It is, by far, the largest construction she has seen since she entered the Sect, a wide building with a low roof, without the overloaded elegance of the pavilions of the upper terraces but with a solidity that is plain to see, from which disciples enter and leave without rest loaded with bags, satchels and bundles of all sizes.

And in case anyone could still harbor any doubt about what that place is, over the main entrance hangs an enormous sign on which can be read, in thick and unadorned characters, Supply Pavilion. Lianhua contemplates the building a moment, inwardly satisfied at having arrived at it without a single stumble and without having gotten into any trouble, and then heads toward the entrance.

She crosses the threshold under the gaze of all the disciples she goes crossing paths with, those gazes that at this point she already knows by heart and that run over her clothing, which is not that of the Sect, before climbing up to her face with that mixture of strangeness and disdain that here seems to come from the factory. Lianhua ignores them one by one, with the same ease with which she has ignored everything else, and enters.

The interior is an enormous room, of a high ceiling held up by beams of dark wood, in which several counters attended by people who dispatch without rest are lined up. Before each of those counters a line of disciples has formed who await their turn with a patience that contrasts in a striking way with the disdain they hand out outside, as if within these walls another kind of order reigned that none of them dares to skip.

Lianhua takes in the scene at a glance and is not long in noticing a detail, which is that there are two counters, to one side, that are notably emptier than the rest. But the few disciples who queue at them wear on their tunic that small insignia she has already learned to recognize, the mark of the Inner Disciples, and that suffices for Lianhua to discard them without thinking about it twice.

She has not come to draw attention, but the opposite, so she prefers not to risk occupying a spot that does not correspond to her and places herself, without further ado, at the end of one of the normal lines, the one that seems to her to advance at a better rate. And there she waits, ignoring, as always, the several gazes the surrounding disciples dedicate to her. She has already been in the line a while, with barely a couple of people ahead of her, when the murmur of a conversation reaches her from behind.

They are two disciples who have placed themselves behind her and who whisper between themselves believing themselves, perhaps, discreet enough. But Lianhua has a fine ear, much finer than either of the two could imagine, and it costs her no effort to distinguish each word.

"Listen", says the first in a low voice.

"Now that the strange one only has a couple of people ahead of her, wouldn't it be the perfect moment to throw her out of the line and get ahead of her? After all, who is going to say anything?"

"Are you crazy?" replies the second, and in his voice there is an alarm he doesn't manage to disguise entirely.

"Is it that you haven't noticed her level of cultivation?" A brief pause occurs, and the conversation continues.

"Well, no", admits the first reluctantly.

"I still haven't bought the technique of Sensing the Qi."

"I have", replies the other, and lowers his voice even further.

"And I assure you that not even remotely do I intend to confront her. Do what you want, but leave me out of it." And those words, instead of unsettling Lianhua, make a very slight smile peek at the corners of her lips. Because they confirm, point by point, what Song Yan had given to understand during the trip, when she explained to the Zhāohuán how things functioned in there.

That only a part of the Outer Disciples have managed to finish the Gate Opening, and that therefore, in the eyes of almost any of them someone who has reached the Condensation of the Elemental Cores is, simply, someone whom it is best not to bother. One of the two cannot even perceive her cultivation because he has still not gathered the merits to acquire a technique that, by his words, seems to do the same as completing the Gate Opening, and the other, who can, has had the good judgment to be frightened.

The two disciples she had ahead of her finish their business and step away from the counter, and Lianhua prepares to take a step forward to occupy her turn at last, but she does not get to take it because, just at that instant, a hand alights brusquely on her shoulder and grips her, while a voice upbraids her from behind.

"Get out of the way", that voice snaps at her, loaded with a disdain it doesn't bother to measure.

"An outsider has no right to be here. Let me pass." Lianhua does not hesitate, in the very instant in which she notices the hand closing over her shoulder, her body reacts with the naturalness of one who has repeated the same movement ten thousand times. Her own hand rises, traps that of the stranger, and with a dry and clean twist wrenches his arm until leaving it locked at an angle that gives its owner no other option but to bend.

And then, in the same fluid movement, without hardly turning, Lianhua launches a precise kick that impacts squarely on the man's chest at the same time as she releases his arm, sending him a couple of steps backward. The effect in the room is immediate, all the disciples present, those of the lines, those of the counters, even those who attend behind them, stop all at once what they were doing and stay looking at the scene, as if someone had stopped time inside the Pavilion.

Lianhua, once the blow is struck, straightens up calmly and faces the person who has grabbed her. And what she sees is a man dressed, how else, in the tunic of the Sect, who presses his chest with one hand right at the point where the kick has impacted, with his face undone between the pain and a furious incredulity. The disciple takes barely an instant to recompose himself, and when he does, it is rage that takes command.

"You have dared to attack a disciple of the Sect for the simple fact of exercising my rights?" he spits with his voice trembling with fury.

"I am going to make sure they punish you as you deserve for this." Lianhua looks at him without a single muscle of her face moving. And when she speaks, she does so with that flat and icy tranquility that, to one who knows how to read it, turns out much, much more unsettling than any shout.

"If I had been alone, I would have let you pass", she says, and her voice does not betray the least emotion.

"It would have cost me nothing. But by removing me from the line to occupy my place, what you intended in reality, and it was in plain view of everyone, was to cut in front of each one of the disciples of the Sect who waited behind me. Of all those who, having full right to throw me out of here, had instead the kindness to let me queue like one more." She makes a pause, and her gaze runs an instant, without haste, over the line that extends at her back.

"And I cannot return that kindness by allowing the first one who comes along to cut in front of all of them", she concludes. For a moment, after Lianhua's words, nothing is heard in the Pavilion. And then, that silence breaks from the most unexpected place, because one of the disciples who queued behind her, one of those same ones whom Lianhua has just defended without knowing them, takes a step forward and faces the aggressor with his brow furrowed.

"She is right, Jiang Lei", he tells him, and upon pronouncing the name there is a nuance of disdain.

"We have all seen what you were going to do. You wanted to use the outsider as an excuse to cut in front of us without queuing like everyone else." And that single voice suffices to open the floodgate. Because, the moment one dares to say it aloud, the rest of the line joins him without thinking about it.

A murmur first, and right away an ever more numerous chorus of reproaches, disciples who until a moment ago observed in silence and who now, emboldened by being many and by having reason on their side, throw in Jiang Lei's face his intention with an audacity that grows by the second, because in a place where pride is everything, few things turn out as intolerable as someone trying to walk over you, and no one cares in the least that the first one harmed was an outsider.

Jiang Lei, who a moment before played the indignant victim of an outrage, discovers himself suddenly turned into the target of the disdain of half the room. And as the reproaches intensify, his rage, far from dying down, grows until it no longer fits in his body, and all of it ends up concentrating on a single point, the serene and imperturbable woman who remains planted before him without having even raised her voice.

He looks at her with a pure, absolute hatred, the hatred of one who has decided, against all logic, that the culprit of his humiliation is not his own baseness but the outsider who has had the effrontery to show him up. But before that hatred can find a way to burst forth, a movement beside the entrance makes several heads turn.

Because through the door of the Pavilion there has just entered, with a firm step and their weapons well in view, the same group of six that stopped Lianhua when she was descending the mountain, that patrol of the Hall of Discipline that now advances among the lines handing out looks of warning left and right, imposing order with their sole presence while one of them raises his voice above the murmur to ask the only question that at that moment matters.

"What is going on here?" he says calmly.