Chương 88: Chapter 86

Master Mu looks at me upon hearing my question, and instead of the mild exasperation I expected at my impatience, what I see on her face is something that resembles approval.

"Your question is perfectly valid", she tells me in a tone that indicates she was expecting it.

"But to answer it, I first need to explain what Qi Resonance is and what exactly it does." About time, I think, while nodding with a mixture of relief and impatience I try not to let it show too much. The preceding lecture has been fascinating, I won't deny it, but the sensation of circling the main topic without diving into it was starting to become a little frustrating. But while that thought crosses my mind, Master Mu has already begun speaking.

"Qi Resonance is an advantage that can be attained by masters who dedicate themselves to professions involving the use of runes", she tells me, and her tone settles once more into that explanatory cadence I've grown so familiar with.

"And it's not exclusive to our profession, since other disciplines, such as alchemists, can achieve their own similar advantages if they manage to obtain them." She pauses briefly, as though giving her words space to settle before continuing.

"In our particular case", she goes on, and I notice her voice acquiring a more technical edge.

"Qi Resonance allows whoever acquires it, upon resonating, to increase both the capacity and the ease with which they manipulate whichever type of elemental Qi they are resonating with at that moment." I nod slightly as I process her words, and Master Mu, seeing I'm following, continues without pausing.

"This means that when using the Resonance, both the absorption of elemental Qi and its use for performing various techniques become more efficient", she explains.

"And therefore faster and more powerful than if they were executed by someone who is not resonating." I open my mouth to ask a question that has just formed in my mind, but Master Mu raises a hand with a gesture that cuts off my intention before the words reach my lips.

"Let me finish the explanation first", she tells me in a tone that is firm but not devoid of patience.

"There will be time for questions." I close my mouth, swallow the question, and nod while forcing myself to calm down. Master Mu is right, I know it, and letting her finish is the most sensible course, no matter how much impatience is gnawing at me from the inside. Seeing that I've settled down, Master Mu nods slightly before continuing.

"In your particular case", she tells me, and there is something in how she pronounces those two words that makes them sound different from the rest of the explanation.

"The advantage it could offer you is, in truth, theoretical." Here she pauses briefly, which only heightens my anticipation, or rather, my impatience.

"I know of no one who has been able to do it", she continues, and her tone is colored by something I can't quite identify.

"For someone to achieve Qi Resonance before completing the Condensation of the Elemental Cores is considered impossible." And here, Master Mu directs her gaze at me with an intensity that pins me to my chair, a long and deliberate look that stretches across the room as though it were a physical presence.

"Until now", she says, and the two words leave her mouth with a weight that makes them sound like a verdict. Hearing her, I'm not entirely sure whether to feel proud or worried, but the mixture of both sensations is confusing enough that I opt to say nothing and simply wait for her to continue. Master Mu, seeing I'm not interrupting, proceeds with her explanation.

"The theory says that if you use Qi Resonance, even without having formed a core of that element, you'll be able to manipulate it in a limited fashion and with little practical use", she tells me, and her words carry the tone of someone speaking about territory that exists only in books.

"But it would be enough for you to absorb it." She pauses again, and this time I notice the intensity of her gaze increase, as though what comes next is the centerpiece of everything she has been telling me.

"And that would mean the cores you create during the Condensation of the Elemental Cores stage would not be composed solely of neutral Qi", she continues, and every word leaves her mouth measured and precise.

"But rather a mixture that includes the Qi of that core's element." A sigh escapes Master Mu's lips, one of those sighs of hers I've learned to recognize as the prelude to something important.

"That would mean, theoretically, that the core formed would be at least one grade more potent than one created normally", she tells me.

"At least during that stage and before harmonizing it, at which point it would return to being the same as any other." And that is where I can no longer contain myself.

"Then why is it supposed to also give an advantage in the Harmonization of the Elemental Cores stage?" I ask, and the words leave my mouth before I can stop them.

"And also in enhancing the cores, if that enhancement only works before I've harmonized them?" Hearing my interruption, Master Mu, instead of looking annoyed, smiles. It is a small, contained smile, but undeniably there.

"I told you to let me finish the explanation first", she says, and the tone with which she says it carries more amusement than reproach.

"Though I understand your impatience." The smile fades and her expression returns to the seriousness that has dominated the entire conversation.

"Qi Resonance grants two advantages in the Harmonization of the Elemental Cores stage", she tells me, and something in her voice changes as she pronounces the next words.

"And moreover, these are not theoretical, since there have been known cases." I hold back my impatience while I wait, but fortunately Master Mu doesn't keep me waiting.

"The first is the most obvious", she begins.

"Since part of the cores will already be composed of their element, harmonizing them will be much faster than for a normal cultivator." I nod, because that is more than evident to anyone.

"But the second", she continues, raising her chin slightly as though what she's about to say is considerably more important than the previous point.

"Is that if you use Qi Resonance while attempting to enhance the cores, the resonance itself makes that compression much faster and more effective." And here she pauses, in a way that feels deliberate, almost theatrical, before continuing with a smile I can't quite decipher.

"Which means the Qi needed is nearly half what a normal person would require", she tells me, capping her explanation with words that leave me completely paralyzed. And after those words, Master Mu stops speaking and looks at me, as though waiting for me to say something. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. But I don't say anything, at least not immediately.

Because my mind is working at full speed processing what she's just told me, and now clearly understanding that smile with which she delivered her final words. Because what Master Mu has just told me isn't simply an efficiency improvement.

It is an advantage that completely changes the rules of the game, since if enhancing a single core by one grade already requires dozens of terrestrial treasures at prices only the wealthiest families in the Empire can afford, reducing that amount by half doesn't just mean spending far less money than everyone else, but it also means saving all the time it would take to search for, find, and acquire those treasures. Now it is absolutely clear to me why the Resonance is so important.

But then, as the gears of my mind keep turning, an idea forms with the clarity of something that seems too obvious for no one to have thought of before, and it is precisely that obviousness that makes me suspect there is something I'm not seeing. Even so, the question burns inside me with enough insistence for me to ask it at once.

"Master Mu", I say, looking her directly in the eyes.

"What would happen if, instead of creating all the cores, I created only one and then harmonized it?" The change in Master Mu's expression is immediate. The expectant look she had been giving me transforms into something cold, something serious, something that reminds me of the expression she wore when she made me promise never to tell anyone about my Resonance, but harder and sharper.

"Never", she tells me, and the word leaves her mouth with a forcefulness that makes me flinch involuntarily in my chair.

"And I repeat, never, let it occur to you to do that." The severity of her reaction catches me off guard, and before I can think to hold back, the question escapes my lips "Why?" Master Mu looks at me, and her gravity climbs one more step, surpassing even what she showed when she made me promise not to tell anyone about the Resonance.

"There are people who have done exactly that", she tells me, and her voice carries a tone I have never heard from her before, one that contains something dangerously close to bitterness.

"And it never ends well." She pauses briefly, using it to make sure I'm listening with my full attention, which is entirely unnecessary because at this moment there is nothing in the world that could distract me from her words.

"Harmonizing a core without having first converted the rest of the spiritual roots into cores causes the dantian to enter an imbalance that begins to crack it", she explains, and every word leaves her mouth with the precision of someone who knows what she's describing admits no ambiguity. A chill runs down my spine at hearing the word crack, because even with my limited knowledge of the dantian, I know that any damage to it has to be something extremely serious.

"The only way to stop that cracking is to create the remaining cores as quickly as possible, restoring the dantian's balance", Master Mu continues.

"But as far as I know, no one who has attempted it has ever succeeded." I swallow hard as I listen, and the gravity of what she's describing settles in my stomach like a stone.

"Instead", she goes on, and her tone darkens even further.

"The cracking of the dantian will continued until those people's dantian was destroyed. Lost forever." Master Mu's words reverberate in my mind with the brutality of a blow, but she isn't finished. On the contrary, her expression hardens even more, something I wouldn't have believed possible an instant ago, and when she speaks again her voice carries a weight that makes the air in the room feel denser.

"And that is far more serious than it might seem", she tells me, and the intensity of her gaze indicates that what comes next is worse than everything before.

"Because it doesn't just mean those people's cultivation path is interrupted." Here Master Mu pauses again, longer and heavier.

"Without the dantian, those people's bodies lose the ability to regulate the Qi they had already accumulated through Body Tempering", she continues in the same tone of voice. A long sigh escapes Master Mu's lips, a sigh that contains something I can't entirely identify but that resembles the sadness of someone who has seen things she would rather not have seen.

"I don't know if you have ever seen someone who has lost the ability to regulate their Qi", she tells me, and her eyes seek mine with a seriousness that tells me the question is not rhetorical.

"But although they can linger for a time, their end is never pleasant." And upon hearing those words, something in my memory awakens with a jolt. The image arrives in my mind with a clarity that time has not managed to erode. I was two years old, and I remember it as though it were yesterday. The throne room, the stretcher carried by two Jin Wei, and upon it a body that could barely be recognized as human.

A child with one arm grotesquely larger than the other, one side of the head bulging unnaturally, and skin covered in protuberances, as if the flesh had decided to grow without order or control. My brother, and the fate he suffered for cultivating before having formed his protodantian. I swallow loudly enough that the sound reverberates in the silence of the room, and when I speak, my voice carries a gravity I don't need to feign.

"I will remember your words, Master Mu", I tell her, and every syllable leaves my mouth with the firmness of a promise.

"And I will never attempt it." Master Mu looks at me with a gravity that matches my own, a gravity that tells me what she has just told me was not merely a lesson but a warning she expects me to sear into my memory.

"I hope so", she tells me in a tone that admits no doubt.

"Follow the path that has already been proven by millions of cultivators and don't try shortcuts the way demonic cultivators tend to." The surprise the term she's just used produces in me displaces for an instant the gravity of the preceding conversation, since it is the first time I've heard that expression, and the implications its name suggests are intriguing enough that I'm on the verge of asking her what exactly it means. But before the words can finish forming on my lips, something happens.

A reddish glow streams through the room's windows, staining the walls, the floor, the furniture, and our faces a scarlet hue that transforms the study into something that seems ripped from a nightmare. I frown instinctively as my eyes go to the window, and looking to my side I see I'm not the only one. Master Mu, wearing an expression that has shed every trace of the academic seriousness of a moment ago to be replaced by one of alert, is staring toward the source of the light.

And turning my head slightly I see that Lianhua, from her usual position during lessons, has also furrowed her brow, her hand moving instinctively toward the inside of her clothing. But the only thing visible through the window is that the entire sky has been stained an intense red, making everything as far as the eye can see appear under that same sinister tone. Master Mu rises to her feet with a fluid movement that doesn't lose a shred of her usual grace despite the urgency it conveys.

"I'm going to see what's happening", she tells us in a tone that admits no discussion, and leaves the room with quick steps that echo down the corridor. I don't take even an instant to react and make the only possible decision.

"Lianhua, take me after her", I say, and I don't even need to turn around to know she's already moving. Her hands grasp the handles of my chair with the efficiency of someone who has repeated that gesture hundreds of times, and a second later we are advancing through the corridors at a speed that is at the limit of what the chair allows without tipping over.

As we pass I see the Pavilion's handmaidens, their expressions ranging from confusion to naked panic, also heading for the courtyard in a disorderly torrent of robes and nervous voices that fill the hallways with a growing murmur. As the chair moves toward the outside, my mind, with its tendency to seek rational explanations, throws out the first hypothesis it can come up with: a fire. An enormous one, large enough for the reflection of its flames on the clouds to stain the entire sky red.

But upon reaching the courtyard and seeing Master Mu, that hypothesis dies before it can finish forming. Because Master Mu is standing in the center of the courtyard, completely still, her head raised toward the sky and an expression on her face I have never seen before. It is not worry, not curiosity, not even the seriousness that dominated our conversation. It is something resembling the consternation of someone who knows exactly what she sees and wishes she were wrong.

I follow her gaze upward, and what I see makes the air catch in my throat. The Celestial Rift, that enormous hole in the sky which, as Hong Yan explained to me, connects our world to the celestial realms and through which Qi flows downward, is now not invisible as it should be at this hour of the day.

From the place where the Rift should be barely a distortion in the firmament, an enormous cloud of intense red is pouring forth like blood from an open wound, spreading across the sky with a voracity that makes its growth visible to the naked eye. And by interposing itself between the sun and the earth, it is this cloud that is responsible for everything, absolutely everything, appearing under that scarlet tone that makes the world look as though it is reflecting a fire that does not exist.

As I watch the reddish cloud grow ever larger before my eyes, expanding at a speed that defies what my mind considers natural, and as more and more people emerge from the Pavilion into the courtyard, forming a growing crowd of red-tinged faces gazing skyward with expressions oscillating between awe and terror, I open my mouth to ask the only question that matters right now.

"Master Mu", I say, and my own voice sounds strange to me, almost smothered by the magnitude of what I'm seeing.

"Do you know what is happening?" Master Mu does not look at me when she answers. Her eyes remain fixed on the red cloud that is devouring the sky with the voracity of something that has no intention of stopping, and when she speaks, her voice carries a very serious tone and, perhaps, a touch of fear, something I have never heard from her.

"A great blessing for a few", she says, and the words leave her mouth with the weight of someone who knows exactly what she is witnessing.

"And a great disaster for the rest of the world."