Chương 153: Chapter 150 Interlude 24

For an instant, the patrol leader's question stays suspended in the air, and the whole room turns toward the six newcomers with that mixture of relief and expectation of one who trusts that authority will at last put order to a spectacle that had already slipped out of their hands. Jiang Lei is the first to react.

The moment he recognizes the fitted uniforms and the well-visible weapons of the Hall of Discipline, something changes in his face, because until that precise moment he had found himself turned into the target of the disdain of half the room, and suddenly there presents itself before his eyes what he interprets as a lifeline, so he takes a step forward, brings a hand to his aching chest with a gesture so theatrical that it borders on the grotesque and, with the other, points at Lianhua without the least dissimulation.

"You have arrived just in time", he says, and his voice rises half a tone to make sure it is heard in the last corner of the Pavilion.

"This outsider has attacked me. I, a disciple of the Sect, assaulted within our own walls by a stranger who has no right to set foot in this place. I demand that she be punished as is fitting."

And for an instant he seems convinced that those words are going to suffice, that the simple logic of the Sect, the one that says a disciple is worth more than any outsider for the mere fact of being one, is going to fall upon Lianhua with all its weight and settle the matter in his favor, but he is mistaken, and he is mistaken fast.

Because the same disciples who a moment before threw his baseness in his face are still present, and the fact that now there are witnesses with authority, far from silencing them, emboldens them even further. The first to speak is the same one who dared to take the step at the beginning, who steps forward again with his brow furrowed and an indignation he no longer bothers to contain.

"That is not what happened", he snaps to his face before even addressing the patrol.

"Don't let him deceive you. It was he who began by trying to move the outsider out of the line to cut in front of all of us, and he only attacked her when she prevented him from skipping his turn." And that single voice opens the floodgate again, just like before. Because the moment one dares to say it before the Hall of Discipline, the rest of the line joins him without thinking about it.

A second disciple confirms the version, and then a third, and right away an ever more numerous chorus of accusations forms that fly across the room in all directions, some against Jiang Lei for wanting to take advantage of the stranger to flout the rules of the Pavilion, others recalling at the top of their voices that here the turn is sacred and that no one, disciple or not, has the right to skip it.

And in the middle of all that din, the indignant voice of Jiang Lei trying to defend himself, ever shriller and ever less listened to. The patrol leader witnesses all of that without moving a muscle, and as the racket grows and the accusations cross from one side to the other of the room, there composes itself in his head, piece by piece, a fairly approximate idea of what has occurred in there. And that idea, far from relieving him, makes his head begin to ache.

Because the matter, the more he understands it, the worse it gets for him. On the one hand, it is undeniable that someone from outside the Sect has struck a disciple, and that, however one looks at it, is an offense that the rules contemplate and that in normal circumstances would have a clear response.

But on the other hand it turns out that that disciple provoked first, and not in just any way, but by trying to skip the very rules of the Supply Pavilion at the outsider's expense, which turns the supposed victim into the true offender and tangles the matter to a point at which there is no longer any clean punishment to apply.

And as if all that were not enough, as if the muddle were not already thick enough, there is the detail that clinches it, and it is that the outsider is not just any outsider, but the handmaiden of a retinue personally invited by the Elders, a retinue whose lady is none other than the daughter of the Emperor, and therefore a future Elder of the Sect whom it is best not to discomfit without a very weighty reason.

The leader reviews all of that in barely a few seconds, and the conclusion he arrives at is as simple as it is cowardly, and it is that in a matter like this there is no decision that is not going to turn against him, so the only sensible play is not to make any, not to get into trouble by not siding with either party and not to leave a written trace of anything. Simply to cut the problem off at the root and make everyone go back to their own affairs as soon as possible.

So he raises a hand, and the gesture suffices for the murmur to die down enough to be able to speak.

"That is enough", he says, with the tired tone of one who has done this a thousand times.

"I have not come to conduct a trial over a line dispute." He fixes his eyes on Jiang Lei, and his voice hardens just enough.

"You", he tells him.

"Stop causing trouble and get in the line like everyone else. If the problem was the turn, your turn is at the end, so go occupy it and quit with the stories." Then he turns his head toward Lianhua, and the tone, without turning kind, turns at least practical.

"And you, make your order as soon as possible and return to your residence without wasting more time", he tells her.

"The less time you spend here, the fewer occasions you will have for something like this to repeat itself." Lianhua does not argue, she simply inclines her head as a sign that she has understood, with that exterior docility that costs her no effort to feign because, deep down, it coincides point by point with what she herself wanted, which is to finish and leave.

And without adding a word, she turns again toward the counter, disposed to occupy at last the turn she had been waiting a good while for, but precisely that is the gesture that Jiang Lei cannot bear. Because in his head, the scene he has just witnessed admits only one reading, and it is that the patrol of the Hall of Discipline, having before it a disciple of the Sect and a stranger, has opted to side with the stranger.

It doesn't matter that it hasn't said so, it doesn't matter that they have sent him to the line instead of punishing him, nor that they have dispatched her with a simple hurry up and go, the only thing that Jiang Lei sees, the only thing that his wounded pride is capable of processing, is that an outsider has struck him, has humiliated him before half the Sect and is going to get off scot-free while they send him to the end of the line like a kid who has caused a disturbance in class.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. And that, simply, is more than he can swallow. So, in the instant in which Lianhua turns her back on him to turn toward the counter, Jiang Lei clenches his fists, and with a voice he no longer controls, a voice that resounds from wall to wall throughout the whole room, he lets loose the only thing that occurs to him to keep the matter from ending like this.

"Wait!" he bellows.

"You are not going to leave so calmly! I challenge you to a duel." The effect of his words is immediate, since the murmur that still remained floating in the room dies down all at once, as if someone had cut a string, and suddenly in the Supply Pavilion absolutely nothing is heard while all the gazes go from Jiang Lei to the outsider's back, and all of them wait. Lianhua, who had already taken the first step toward the counter, stops, and then, very slowly, turns again to look once more at Jiang Lei.

"No", she says, with a calm that contrasts to the point of absurdity with the shouting of a moment ago.

"I do not form part of the Sect and, therefore, I cannot participate in duels against its members." It is a correct answer, the kind of answer with which anyone would expect to close the matter without giving rise to more, and Lianhua pronounces it precisely for that, because she has not come to fight with anyone, but to buy food and, if she can, furniture, because every minute she spends in that place is a minute she does not spend watching over Zhāohuán Wen.

But Jiang Lei does not seek reason, he seeks to get even. So, instead of accepting the way out she herself offers him, he twists his mouth into a grimace of mockery.

"Ah, now you back out?" he says, and lets out a brief and disagreeable laugh.

"How convenient. But I have recognized you, you know? You are one of the companions of that cripple who yesterday paraded through the Sect mounted on a chair as if this were her property. One of the maids of the useless girl who cannot even stand on her feet." He makes a pause, and his smile widens because he believes he has finally found the weak point.

"So now I understand", he continues, raising his voice for the rest of the room.

"It is not that you cannot, it is that you don't dare because behind so much calm there is nothing more than a coward who hides behind an excuse. Two of a kind, the cowardly servant of a crippled lady." And for the first time since she has entered the Supply Pavilion, something changes in Lianhua. It is nothing spectacular.

She does not clench her fists, she does not take a step and she does not raise her voice, it is simply a much smaller change, colder, and which consists simply in that her gaze, until that moment serene and indifferent, hardens all at once, like a surface of water that freezes in an instant. Those who are close enough to see it suddenly feel a shiver they wouldn't know how to explain, the diffuse sensation that, without anything visible having changed, the air around the outsider has just turned dangerous.

Because Lianhua can take any insult they dedicate to her. She has heard them by the thousands, better constructed and in more elegant salons, and none has ever cost her a night's sleep, but they have just insulted Zhāohuán Wen. Lianhua does not answer Jiang Lei, she does not even look at him, because a dog that barks does not merit being spoken to.

Instead of that, she turns her head toward the leader of the patrol of the Hall of Discipline, and when she speaks, her voice comes out flat, courteous and icy, the kind of voice that turns out much, much more unsettling than any shout.

"Excuse me", she tells him.

"Since I do not know the rules of the Sect, allow me a query. What exactly are the requirements for me to be able to participate in that duel?" The leader opens his mouth, but Lianhua has not finished.

"And a second question, if you would be so kind", she adds without a single muscle of her face moving.

"Is it permitted for those duels to be to the death? Because, if so, I would like to take advantage of the occasion to slaughter once and for all the dog that has been barking at me for a while now." For half a second, nothing is heard in the room, but then the Pavilion bursts into whispers.

Because one thing is for the outsider to defend herself from a shove, and quite another very different one is to hear her speak of slaughtering a disciple of the Sect with the same coldness with which one would comment on the weather.

The disciples look at one another, there are those who bring a hand to their mouth, there are those who cannot entirely repress a smile, and throughout the whole room the same incredulity runs from mouth to mouth, that someone from outside has dared to say something like that aloud and without her voice trembling. Jiang Lei, for his part, has turned a dark red that augurs nothing good, because he has just understood that the humiliation, instead of being repaired, is growing ever larger.

The patrol leader sighs inwardly, because, if there was one thing he was clear about upon entering the Pavilion, it was that he wanted to leave there without a single problem on his hands, and at this point that desire has become simply impossible for him. There is no longer any way to send each one on their way and act as if nothing had happened, not after a challenge shouted to the four winds and an answer like that one.

The matter has gone too far, there are too many witnesses, and refusing to authorize the duel would only serve for the rumor to run through the Sect that the Hall of Discipline protects outsiders from its own disciples, which is just the kind of rumor it suits him to avoid. So he does the only thing left for him to do, which is to review the rules in his head in search of a reason to forbid the duel, but he does not find one.

"The rules say nothing on the matter", he concedes at last, reluctantly.

"There is no rule that prevents a duel between a member of the Sect and someone from outside, provided that both parties are in agreement to hold it." He lifts his gaze and looks first at one and then at the other.

"However, it will not be to the death", he adds firmly, cutting that possibility off at the root.

"A duel to the death can only be authorized by an Elder, and I am not one." Jiang Lei, who has heard in that answer the only part that interests him, the one that the duel can be held, does not give him time to add anything more.

"I accept!" he hastens to say, almost tripping over himself.

"And I demand that it be held right now, without further delay." Lianhua, who still does not deign to look at him, responds with the same impassive tone as before.

"Fine by me", she says simply.

"I have not the least interest in wasting more time than strictly necessary on this foolishness." And that answer, that absolute indifference with which she has just treated his challenge like one who shakes a speck of dust off their sleeve, enrages Jiang Lei even further, if that is possible. Because there is nothing that wounds a wounded pride more than discovering that, to the other party, it is not even an important matter.

But right away, almost in the same instant, his rage transforms into something else, and on his face there appears a smile loaded with malice, because Jiang Lei has decided, with that unbreakable certainty that only ignorance gives, that the outsider has just signed her own humiliation.

To his eyes, the scene that is going to take place is of those that hardly admit surprise, since he is a disciple of the Sect, someone who has opened five gates and who masters real techniques, and she is no more than a maid with a very long tongue.

And in the natural order of things, just as Jiang Lei understands it, it is simply impossible for someone from outside the Sect to turn out to be better than someone from within, so he already savors in advance the lesson he is going to give her, the moment in which that insolent outsider bites the dust before the whole room and learns once and for all what her place is.

The patrol leader, upon seeing that both are in agreement and that there is no longer anything to discuss, decides not to prolong the matter a single second more than necessary.

"It is decided, then", he says.

"Both of you, accompany the patrol, since this is not settled in a storehouse." And without further ceremony, he turns around and heads the march toward the exit.