Chương 171: Chapter 168

I have spent a good while with my eyes closed, seated in the low chair in the center of the formation while I cultivate the Nature Gate.

Although at first I chose it for the additional time provided by the reduction of sleep time, now I am glad to have chosen it because, of the five that remain to me, it is the one I most need since it promises a greater capacity for healing and regeneration of stamina, and for someone who is likely to get into risks in a not-so-distant future, those two things suit her considerably better than being able to hold her breath a while longer.

And that thought, which should have lasted longer, disappears before the doubt that has spent the last month interrupting any attempt to concentrate. The throne or leaving. I have spent a month traveling that road, and it is by now a line of reasoning that, if it had a physical representation, would be a trench worthy of the Looney Tunes. And yes, technically there are four options, not two.

There are also the Sect and the marriage, and I oblige myself to go over them from time to time out of pure honesty, because discarding something without looking at it again is the best way of making a mistake on a grand scale. But it is that, placed beside the other two, they are of a shabbiness that is difficult to ignore. One consists of letting them carry me up and down staircases for the rest of my life, and the other of handing over to a stranger everything that occurs to me from the day of the wedding on.

Comparing that with the possibility of sitting on the throne of the Empire, or of crossing half the world to try to obtain something called the Ascension, is like comparing the choice between a fire and a flood with the choice between two kinds of soup. And to top it off there is my mother, because during this month I have asked her three times for her opinion, in a very discreet manner and within conversations about other things with all the innocence I am capable of feigning, which is not little.

But all three times she has answered me practically the same thing, that it is a decision I have to make myself, and that she does not intend to influence me in one direction or the other. The first time it struck me as prudent, on the second it struck me as deliberate, and with the third it became clear to me that she has promised herself not to intervene, so I can turn over as much as I want the manner of asking her that not a word is going to come out of my mother that resembles in the least a piece of advice.

I am for the umpteenth time with that thought when I realize that I have spent a long while without absorbing practically anything. I pay attention and confirm what I already feared, that the room is empty of neutral Qi, so I decide to leave it for today and open my eyes. Upon opening them the first thing I see is Lianhua, who has already begun to walk toward me from the other end of the room, and upon seeing her come, I sigh.

Because of the two options, there is one I cannot take alone, since if I leave, I leave for a place where I know no one, without being able to walk and with no more safety net than the one I can create myself, and doing that alone would be less a decision than an elaborate form of suicide. And since the people I can ask to come with me are exactly two, it is not as though it is a task that is going to take me all day either. So when Lianhua reaches my side, I lift my head and look at her.

"Sit", I tell her.

"I have to talk with you." Lianhua looks at me and asks nothing, she simply gathers her skirt with a gesture and sits on the floor, at my side and with her back as straight as if she were standing. I take a privacy talisman out of the bag in which I keep the few talismans I carry on me, activate it and notice how all the sounds that came from the corridor disappear all at once.

"I have to speak with you seriously", I tell her.

"And first I need you to promise me that you are going to keep silent about what I am going to ask you." And Lianhua lifts her gaze toward me with an expression I almost never see on her, because it is not surprise nor is it discomfort, it is that she has taken offense.

"If it is something important, I would never tell it to anyone", she answers me. And there she makes a very brief pause, so brief that someone who had not spent twelve years listening to her would not have noticed it.

"Unless doing so meant a risk to your life", she adds. I sigh, because I imagined the answer was going to be that one, or some variant, and because arguing it with her would be as useful as arguing with a door about the reason why it is closed.

"I have a question to ask you", I tell her.

"And it is serious. I don't want you to answer me right away, I want you to think about it first." And after saying that I fall silent and look at her, so Lianhua holds my gaze a moment before nodding.

"If for some reason I were to leave the Empire", I tell her.

"Would you be disposed to come with me, or would you prefer to stay?" And I see perfectly the moment in which she is going to open her mouth, so I raise a hand to stop her.

"Wait, because the important part is missing", I continue.

"If I leave, I leave leaving behind my identity. The rank of Zhāohuán is over, my belonging to the Sun family is over and everything that comes with those two things is over. I would become one more wandering cultivator, who would have to earn her living as best she could with whatever she knows how to do." And I lower my hand, because now comes the part that truly has to be said aloud. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"And that means this is over as well", I say pointing with my chin at the runes of the floor.

"No Qi-gathering formation, no imperial physicians every time something hurts me, no Nei Wei at the door, no bathroom built to measure for someone who cannot hold herself up on her feet. All that disappears, and from there on we will have to manage as best we can." Once that is said, I stop speaking and look at her because I don't intend to embellish it any further.

Because what I am asking of her, however much I may be dressing it up with pretty words, is that she renounce a comfortable life to keep being my legs and hands in an unknown place. Lianhua looks at me for a good while, and finally she sighs.

"Going through hardships is not something that frightens me", she tells me.

"I have gone through them before, and what you are describing resembles them in no way at all." And I need a couple of heartbeats to realize what has just occurred, because she has not said Zhāohuán Wen, nor has she used any of the formulas with which she has been addressing me for twelve years, not a single one.

"In truth I have to say one thing", she continues.

"The time I have been here, first as your RuNu and now as your Fei Yi, has probably been the happiest period of my life since I was a child." And I stay very still because I did not expect this at all, since with her words there opens before me an enormous door full of questions I have never asked.

But today is not the day for that talk, and even less taking advantage of the fact that she has just lowered her guard, because a person who says it has been the happiest period of my life since I was a child is also saying, without saying it, that there is a period in which something happened that she does not intend to tell, and that I have to respect, so I keep quiet and go on listening.

"In its day I made myself a promise", Lianhua continues.

"That I would repay Guifei Xiang and you for the manner in which you have treated me since I arrived, because you have not treated me like a servant, but almost like one more of the family. And that is not something that is paid for by serving tea at the correct hour." Then she lifts her head and looks at me straight on.

"So, unless you expressly order me to stay behind, if you decide to leave I will accompany you wherever you want to go", she tells me firmly. And I stay looking at her while something warm rises up my chest and installs itself in my throat, making it so that when I finally manage to speak my voice comes out a bit tremulous.

"Thank you", I tell her.

"For what you have said and for the trust it takes to say it to me." And after that there falls a silence in the room that neither of the two of us tries to fill. It lasts little, because I have the habit of recomposing myself quickly when I have no other remedy, and today I have no other remedy.

"Good", I say when I have control of my voice again.

"Then the other matter remains, and that matter is Xia." Lianhua nods without saying anything upon hearing me.

"That girl saw her entire family annihilated", I continue.

"And afterward her own brother left her stranded, so I am afraid that if now I leave too and I leave her here, that could break her entirely however well accompanied I may leave her." And there I make the corresponding pause.

"But she may be too little to be presented with something that, in essence, would be a permanent exile", I add.

"She is eleven years old now", Lianhua answers me, now with her formality of always.

"And, if I am not mistaken, she is about to finish the Tempering of the Nerves, so she is not as fragile as you may suppose." She makes a pause.

"And the best thing you can do about it is the same thing you have done with me, which is to ask her directly", she continues.

"Although, after the oath she made to you, you already know perfectly what she is going to answer you."

"I imagine so", I tell her.

"But I prefer to ask her all the same, because one thing is to take something for granted and quite another very different one is for the person to have been given the opportunity to say no." And since I am on a roll now and have spent a month demonstrating to myself that leaving things for later has served me absolutely no purpose, I make the obvious decision.

"So we are going to get that talk out of the way as well", I tell her.

"Go fetch Xia." Lianhua gets up from the floor, bows and leaves the room. I stay waiting tranquilly, with the talisman still active and with my hands in my lap, until the door opens again and the two of them come in, at which moment Lianhua closes it once more at her back. Xia plants herself in front of me with her hands together and the face of one who has spent the whole way making conjectures.

"Lianhua told me you have something to ask me", she blurts out.

"I do", I answer her.

"Sit." Xia looks at me with an enormous question written on her face, but she sits on the floor without arguing, with her legs crossed and her back straight. I then repeat to her the same thing I have told Lianhua, the part about how this cannot leave this room under any concept, and Xia nods before I finish the sentence and answers me yes, of course, with that speed that makes one wonder whether she has managed to hear the whole question.

Next I ask her the same question as Lianhua, emphasizing besides the same drawbacks of that decision as I did with her. And Xia gets to her feet with a leap, with her eyes shining and with a smile that eats up half her face.

"Yes!" she says.

"Yes, I want to go with you!" I am left disconcerted, because one thing is to expect a yes and quite another very different one is to expect this.

"Xia", I tell her slowly.

"Why are you so enthusiastic?"

"Because the bird gentleman…!" she begins. And she stops dead while her enthusiasm goes out all at once, as if someone had blown out a candle, while she joins her hands in front and lowers her gaze to the floor.

"I can't tell you", she says in a very small voice.

"I'm sorry." And I sigh, because there it is again. Because it is evident that this comes from that conversation in the valley, from those minutes in which Xia and Lianhua stayed planted looking at the nest with the faces of sleepwalkers while the Feng was telling me my destiny, and from the instructions the two of them received about what they could and could not tell me.

And I could insist with Xia, who is the weak part of this wall, and probably in two or three well-placed attempts I would manage to get something out of her. But it is that that bird, until now, has done nothing that harms me. He warned me, he warned me of the consequences of warning me and he even sent me back home telling me that what I most feared was not the reason why I had to return, and he was right. So no, I do not intend to do that to Xia.

"It's all right, Xia", I tell her with all the softness I am capable of.

"You can keep the secret." Xia lifts her gaze with a relief so visible that it shows in her shoulders.

"And now I am going to explain to you both why I am asking you this", I continue.

"Because I have to decide between two things. The first is to leave the Empire, and the second is to present myself as a candidate for the trials for the succession to the throne." I let my words settle for a moment.

"So tell me what you two think", I say. Xia shifts a bit where she is.

"Being an Empress sounds great", she tells me in a low voice.

"But I prefer not to give an opinion." I nod without insisting, because it is an answer considerably cleverer than she herself believes, and I turn my head toward Lianhua. Lianhua returns my gaze.

"The choice is simple, Zhāohuán Wen", she tells me.

"You only have to ask yourself what it is you want to do and follow your heart." She makes a brief pause.

"And whatever that choice may be, I will support you until the end", she tells me finally. And I stay looking at the two of them. At an eleven-year-old girl who has lost more things than she should have and at a woman who has just told me, without any kind of emphasis, that if I go she comes, and that if I stay she stays.

And I realize that I have spent a month searching for an answer in the wrong place, in the probabilities, in the deadlines of a delegation that leaves in two months and in a prophecy that fits equally well into both options and that therefore is worth nothing. But the answer was not there. So I notice how a small smile escapes me, one of those that come out on their own when at last all the doubts disappear.

"Then it is decided", I tell them.

"Let's go see my mother, because we have a journey to plan."