Chương 94: Chapter 92 Interlude 17

The silence of the Pavilion of the Scent of Clouds at this hour of the night could sometimes be oppressive, and that night Lianhua, with Zhāohuán Wen leaning against her chest, felt it much more than she should have. Each step took her closer to the room Zhāohuán Wen had set up for her Qi-gathering formation, each step was another occasion to repeat to herself that what they were doing was a bad idea.

It wasn't that she was reconsidering it again, since that phase had passed hours ago while she was preparing everything for this little excursion, but the thought returned on its own, over and over, as though her mind refused to accept that the decision had already been made and the only task remaining was to carry it out.

The decision was the same as always, the one she had made years ago in a courtyard after a conversation with Guifei Xiang, which was that she would do whatever Zhāohuán Wen asked of her, however irrational or absurd it might seem to her, and everything else would come afterward. They reached the room without crossing paths with anyone, and Lianhua opened the door with one hand, checking the space with a quick glance before entering.

The lamp she had left burning cast a faint, trembling light over the runes carved into the floor, and at the center the low chair she herself had placed an hour earlier waited for their arrival. Irrationally, the sight of that image made her uncomfortable.

"Lianhua", she heard Zhāohuán Wen say in a curious whisper.

"When did you put that there?"

"Just before I came to fetch you", Lianhua replied, measuring her tone so it would seem an unimportant detail.

"I thought it would be more comfortable for you to use, even if afterward it has to be disposed of." The Zhāohuán looked at her from her arms with that expression that always made her feel, against all logic, that the child she was carrying could see more than she herself wished to show.

"Thank you, Lianhua", Zhāohuán Wen told her with a sincerity that filtered through the words.

"Now you only need to place me." Lianhua advanced to the chair and set Zhāohuán Wen down upon it with that precision she had learned through years of practice, making sure her back was well supported and that the dress wouldn't catch on the wood. Each movement came naturally to her, but inside, a knot tightened in her stomach.

"I make one last plea for you to reconsider this whole matter", she told her as she finished settling her.

"This is the best moment to turn back." It was her last attempt, and she knew it perfectly well. But she also knew that Zhāohuán Wen, once she had made up her mind, never turned back from what she had decided to do.

"I'm not turning back", Zhāohuán Wen replied, confirming her thoughts, she did so with that stubborn firmness which, in some very hidden corner of her chest, stirred in Lianhua a pride she would never admit aloud. Lianhua looked at her for an instant longer than necessary, letting the mixture of resignation and nervousness settle in, and then released the sigh she had been holding back all night as she finished settling her into place.

"How much time does the formation have left?" Zhāohuán Wen asked her.

"A little more than half a day remains", she replied without hesitation.

"Then that's more than enough time", Zhāohuán Wen told her.

"Activate the formation." Lianhua nodded one last time, stepped away from the center of the formation, and bent down beside the activation runes that bordered the perimeter, where she ran her fingers along the Qi-gathering formation and activated it, after which she looked back to its center, where Zhāohuán Wen already had her eyes closed.

Lianhua slowly straightened and withdrew toward the wall near the door, the spot where she could observe both Zhāohuán Wen and the entrance without having to turn her head, crossed her hands in front of her body, and prepared herself for a long wait. And at first everything happened the way it was supposed to. As Lianhua watched Zhāohuán Wen, the first impurities appeared without warning, a dark and dense substance that began to seep through her skin, staining the light dress.

with their appearance, the smell also arrived, and Lianhua didn't bother concealing the slight wrinkle that crossed her nose, since no one was watching and therefore she wasn't obliged to maintain her composure. But then, without warning, something changed. She couldn't identify it at first, it was just a sensation, and Lianhua became very still as she tried to determine what it was that had alerted her. Then she saw it, and it was that Zhāohuán Wen was smiling.

It wasn't the casual smile she put on when she thought she'd had a brilliant idea, and nor was it the smile she reserved for when she was provoking her mother. It was a small, closed smile of pure satisfaction. And at the same time, the impurities that had been seeping from her skin at a rapid but, in Lianhua's view, normal rate for Zhāohuán Wen, suddenly began to surge forth with a violence she had never seen before.

The dark liquid began to flow from every centimeter of skin as though Zhāohuán Wen's very flesh had decided to empty itself within a matter of minutes, the light dress was completely soaked through within seconds while it began to drip onto the chair with a wet, rhythmic sound that broke the silence of the room. Lianhua felt her hands involuntarily clench against one another at the sight of what was happening, since this was not normal, even taking into account all the strange things that surrounded little Wen.

But then she forced herself to breathe slowly and to put her thoughts back in order. This is Zhāohuán Wen, she began thinking with more calm now. This is the girl who at five years old was capable of seeing Qi after simply reading a book that explained what it was, on the very first try, and who later completed Skin Tempering in three Periods.

Perhaps this, this terrifying rate, this obscene speed at which her body was expelling the impurities, was simply the natural consequence of combining that talent, the Qi-gathering formation, and her method of grasping multiple Qi particles to absorb them. Lianhua clung to that possibility as though it were a rope holding her up while she continued watching, although her hands did not separate, and the pressure was beginning to leave marks on them while she did nothing more than keep watching.

The impurities continued surging from Zhāohuán Wen's body at a pace that could no longer be described as cultivation, and they accumulated until the low chair was completely soaked through. The smell in the room became almost unbearable, and Lianhua, with her heightened senses, had to concentrate in order to ignore it.

And then, after what seemed barely a Period since the Zhāohuán had begun cultivating, one final gushing flood of impurities surged from Zhāohuán Wen's body, a final eruption that drenched everything until there wasn't a single centimeter of skin visible beneath the blackish substance covering her body from head to toe. The impurities slid down her face, down her hands, down the folds of the soaked dress, and finally fell upon the chair, from which they were already beginning to drip onto the floor.

And then, for an instant that stretched long enough for Lianhua to let out the air she had been holding without realizing it, everything went still, Zhāohuán Wen had completed the Tempering of the Nerves. Lianhua couldn't say so with certainty, since she had never witnessed anything resembling this rate, but from experience and from the way the Zhāohuán's body was responding to her senses, it was more than clear.

She finally released her hands and stepped away from the wall with a measured movement, ready to approach in order to begin cleaning what she could before the impurities dried onto the skin and turned into an even worse nightmare to remove. But upon reaching the edge of the formation, she stopped, because Zhāohuán Wen's face had changed. The closed and satisfied smile from before, the one that had already set her on edge, had hardened.

The features barely distinguishable beneath the layer of impurities had tensed, the lips had stretched into a grimace that no longer resembled the satisfaction of a child who was learning, but a manic smile. And at the same time, the impurities, which had stopped, began to surge forth again at their previous pace.

"Zhāohuán Wen", Lianhua said aloud, and noticed with a flash of discomfort how her voice sounded lower and less firm than she had intended. But there was no response.

"Zhāohuán Wen, stop", she repeated, and this time there was a note of urgency in her voice that filtered through despite her training.

"Stop now." But Zhāohuán Wen did not respond as she maintained her manic smile and her eyelids closed in absolute concentration. On the contrary, the impurities, instead of stopping, seemed to surge forth with even more violence, as though Lianhua's words had been a goad rather than a warning. Lianhua felt, for the first time in many years, an emotion she recognized clearly and that she did not like at all. Fear.

Not the kind of fear she felt when she faced the assassin in little Wen's room many years ago, but the kind one feels when standing before something one doesn't understand and doesn't know whether intervening will make things worse or whether it will be exactly the opposite. Her gaze drifted toward the Qi formation and, for a second, Lianhua considered the possibility of deactivating it.

Her hand even moved in that direction before stopping, because the idea, examined closely, was exactly as dangerous as letting this continue. She didn't know what was happening, and therefore she didn't know whether the formation was sustaining Zhāohuán Wen in the process or whether, on the contrary, it was giving her too much Qi.

She didn't know what would happen if she suddenly cut off the flow in the middle of whatever this was, and nor could she be certain that the jolt of an abrupt cut might not harm her in ways that she, with her limited knowledge, was incapable of foreseeing. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Her hand returned to its place and Lianhua became still again, with her breathing faster than she would have liked, while she watched how the impurities not only kept surging forth at that obscene speed, but how they were already even falling over the edges of the chair and onto the floor, forming slow, viscous tongues that were beginning to spread. And Lianhua hesitated.

She hesitated for a length of time she was incapable of measuring, trapped between two options that seemed equally bad, while the room began to feel like a different room, smaller, more enclosed, as though the walls had moved a little closer while she wasn't looking. And then, with a hardening in her expression that she rarely allowed anyone to see, she made the only decision she could make when she knew the problem exceeded what she was capable of resolving.

So she left the room with a movement she had trained for years, one that was fast enough not to waste time and discreet enough not to make any unnecessary noise that might attract attention, although she closed the door behind her carefully to prevent a casual glance from seeing what was happening inside, and entered the corridors of the Pavilion.

Lianhua knew these corridors better than almost anyone, since she had spent years walking them at all hours, and moreover, ever since the Vision of Horus had reached the level Master Mu had called Adept, she also knew them in the dark with a clarity any other person would consider impossible. But tonight, she felt that the corridors were not the same.

The darkness was still the darkness of any other night, and her eyes still saw through it with the sharpness she had grown accustomed to, but there was something in the air that made every wall seem a little closer, every corner a little more elongated, and every stretch a little longer than it ought to be. And that sensation she did not like.

She knew it wasn't real, and she knew it was probably a consequence of what she had just left behind in the room, but knowing it didn't prevent her from feeling it, nor did it prevent her from having the impression, absurd and childish, that the darkness tonight had something inside it that was watching her. She advanced without losing her rhythm, ignoring that sensation as she had learned to ignore so many others over the years, and she soon reached the wing where Guifei Xiang's chambers were.

The Guifei's door was closed, as it should be at this hour, and as she approached, Lianhua silently prayed to the heavens that someone on the other side would still be awake enough to hear her knock. She raised her hand and struck the wood with a discreet series of taps, loud enough to be heard inside and quiet enough not to be heard too far down the corridor.

The silence stretched for a few seconds and Lianhua prepared to knock again with a little more force, but before she could do so, Lingxi's voice arrived muffled from the other side, with that low tone of someone who has not finished waking up but is already beginning to be irritated.

"Who is disturbing Guifei Xiang at this hour?" Lingxi said in a voice still groggy with sleep.

"It's Lianhua", she replied at once, keeping her voice as low as she could while making sure her words were heard clearly.

"I need to speak with Guifei Xiang urgently. It's about Zhāohuán Wen." There was an instant of silence on the other side of the door, and then she heard the latch slide open. The door opened and Lingxi appeared in the threshold with her sleeping clothes still on, her hair gathered in haste with a gesture that betrayed her urgency, and an expression of concern on her face after hearing Lianhua's reply.

"Has something happened to Zhāohuán Wen?" Lingxi asked without preamble, and her tone was that of someone who had already mentally run through the list of possibilities in the few seconds it had taken her to open the door.

"Yes", Lianhua replied, and noticed how Lingxi tensed slightly upon hearing that single word.

"But it's better that Guifei Xiang hear it as well, since I don't want to have to explain it twice." Lingxi examined her for half a second, and then her training took over the rest, since she stepped aside to let her in while gesturing toward a chair with a quick motion.

"Wait here", she told her.

"I'll go wake her." Lianhua entered and remained standing near the door, ignoring the chair Lingxi had offered and watching with her gaze the side room where Guifei Xiang's bedroom was. She heard Lingxi's low voice on the other side, the words indistinguishable but the tone clear enough, and then Guifei Xiang's voice responding as she woke. A few moments passed that felt too long to Lianhua.

Finally, the side door opened and Guifei Xiang appeared in the room, also still in her sleeping clothes, with a robe thrown over her shoulders in haste and her hair falling about her shoulders with a carelessness Lianhua had never seen from her. Lingxi came out behind her without having changed and positioned herself a step behind, as though following protocol made her feel better.

"What has happened to Wen?" Guifei Xiang asked even before stopping, and the alarm in her voice was clear. Lianhua took a deep breath, since what she was about to say was probably the most difficult sentence she had had to utter in all the time she had been serving Zhāohuán Wen, and she knew it.

"Guifei Xiang", she began, keeping her voice as firm as she could.

"I cannot tell you what is happening, since Zhāohuán Wen ordered me to keep what she was doing tonight in absolute secrecy. And what is happening is serious and important enough that this secret must continue to be kept from everyone." She paused before continuing, because there was a detail Guifei Xiang needed to understand.

"But something has come up that exceeds my capacity to manage", she continued.

"And since Zhāohuán Wen is not in any condition to give me instructions, I had no choice but to come and find you." Guifei Xiang's face transformed at a speed rarely seen from her, and the previous concern turned into pure alarm, and she opened her mouth with a question that Lianhua already anticipated, but before she could finish forming it Guifei Xiang herself stopped.

"No, don't say anything", she told her with a decisiveness that placed her back in command of the situation.

"Take us where we need to go and we will talk afterward." Lianhua felt, against all logic, a small wave of relief at hearing her, so she nodded and, without losing a single instant more, left the room with Guifei Xiang behind her while Lingxi followed. They crossed through the Pavilion's corridors in silence, with Lianhua ahead setting the pace while the two figures behind her followed without a single comment, without asking anything and without slowing her down.

And however well Lianhua knew exactly where they were going, those corridors still felt like territory that tonight was foreign to her. When they arrived at the door of the formation's room, she heard Guifei Xiang stop for an instant behind her.

"What is Wen doing here?" Guifei Xiang asked, and the alarm in her voice had a new edge, one that Lianhua recognized as that of someone who has just realized something they would prefer not to be what it appears to be.

"She hasn't even turned eleven yet!"

"Zhāohuán Wen will explain everything as soon as she can", Lianhua replied without turning around.

"But now it's better that we go inside." She placed her hand on the door and, before opening it, added in a tone she herself recognized as a poorly disguised warning.

"And please, do not be alarmed by what you are going to see", she told them, but she didn't wait for their response and opened the door to enter. Lianhua heard, more than saw, how Guifei Xiang froze on the threshold as she entered behind her, and how Lingxi let out a small cut-off inhalation that didn't quite turn into an exclamation.

Lianhua, who had already seen the scene when she left, didn't turn, only watched the two of them out of the corner of her eye and registered the exact moment when the words she had told them in the corridor fell short of describing what they had before them. Because at the center of the formation, on the low chair, was Zhāohuán Wen completely covered from head to toe by a viscous, dark layer that no longer allowed her figure to be distinguished.

And her face, the little that could be made out beneath that revolting mask, still maintained the same smile she had had when she had left. And the impurities continued to surge from her, still at that alarming speed that seemed impossible for a human body to sustain, spreading across the floor in a dark and gleaming stain that now occupied all the area surrounding the chair and continued to grow like a slow tide.

Guifei Xiang looked at Lianhua, with her concern transformed into something sharper, into a contained fury that had much less to do with Lianhua than with the situation, but that did not for that reason lose its edge.

"I don't care what my daughter ordered", Guifei Xiang told her, in a low voice with control made of pure discipline.

"Tell me immediately what is happening." Lianhua sighed and opened her mouth to begin, but then she perceived the change. It was very subtle, the sort of change she only noticed because her cultivation allowed her to feel the flow of Qi in the surroundings as a kind of sensation, so her gaze immediately drifted toward the formation. Guifei Xiang and Lingxi followed her gaze, since the reflexes of both were too good to ignore Lianhua's movement. And the three of them saw, at the same time, what had changed.

The stain of impurities that had been spreading across the floor from the chair had reached the nearest runes, covering them completely, and like a chain reaction, the runes that had been glowing were beginning to go out one by one.

"Lianhua", said Guifei Xiang upon seeing how the formation was going dark, and there was a new urgency in her voice.

"Can this make things worse for Wen?"

"I don't know", Lianhua replied honestly.

"It's one of the reasons I came to find you instead of turning off the formation myself." Guifei Xiang clenched her teeth but did not respond, because at that very instant something else happened, and the three of them turned at once toward the chair at the center.

Because Zhāohuán Wen had just emitted one final, enormous wave of impurities, so the dark substance surged from every part of her body with an intensity that drew an almost imperceptible sound from Lingxi's throat, and then, exactly as quickly as it had begun, it stopped. The impurities ceased flowing and Zhāohuán Wen's silhouette, unrecognizable beneath the layer covering her, remained completely still.

The silence that spread across the room was so dense that Lianhua could hear her own breathing with a clarity that made her uncomfortable. And then, slowly, Zhāohuán Wen's eyelids moved. Lianhua realized, as she watched, that Zhāohuán Wen wasn't managing to open her eyes on the first try.

The impurities covering her face kept her eyelids stuck together, and Lianhua could clearly see how she tried to separate them in small twitches until finally Zhāohuán Wen managed to open her eyes and blink, and although the image was absolutely revolting, there was something in that gesture that made Lianhua feel how the knot she had been holding tight somewhere in her chest finally loosened a couple of threads. Because that movement meant that Zhāohuán Wen was conscious, and even more importantly, she was alive.

Zhāohuán Wen looked around her slowly, and Lianhua observed how she swept her eyes across the room, registering first the stained floor around her, then the disabled runes of the formation, and finally, raising her gaze, the three figures she had before her. Lianhua noticed the exact moment when Zhāohuán Wen's gaze became caught on the presence of her mother and Lingxi, and she also noticed the exact moment when she understood that they were no longer alone.

And on Zhāohuán Wen's face, still covered by that dark layer that barely allowed her features to be distinguished, an expression appeared that Lianhua recognized perfectly, since it was the expression of someone who at this precise moment was wishing with all her might that she could close her eyes again and disappear. Lianhua knew very well what was coming next, because she knew Zhāohuán Wen well enough to have learned that when the situation became too serious, her favorite recourse was always the same.

And, indeed, Zhāohuán Wen composed over the impurities covering her face the best smile she could manage given the circumstances, raised a smeared hand to vaguely point at the ruined runes, and began to speak.

"It seems we're going to have to commission a new Qi formation", said Zhāohuán Wen.

"I think this one is no longer usable." Lianhua also observed how, in the same instant the sentence finished leaving her mouth, the Zhāohuán's smile collapsed into a grimace of horror. The impurities that had been accumulating on her face seized the opportunity she had just opened her mouth to slide inside, and Zhāohuán Wen began to spit frantically with an expression that left no doubt about what she was feeling.

The spitting mixed with guttural sounds of disgust, and for an instant it seemed she was actually going to vomit before she managed to contain herself by sheer force of will and continued spitting out the little that had slipped inside.

Lianhua, who had already allowed herself to relax upon seeing that little Wen was conscious and acting exactly as she always would in a situation like this, heard how beside her Lingxi let out a small exhalation that in any other context might have been mistaken for the beginning of a nervous laugh. And she also noticed how, beside her, the rigidity in Guifei Xiang's posture eased just enough to indicate that she had accepted that her daughter was, within all the absurdity, fine.

Lianhua looked at the girl who, covered from head to toe in a substance that would make anyone vomit, kept on spitting, and allowed herself, in silence and without letting it show on her face, to release the rest of the air she had been holding back for hours. The night, clearly, had not yet ended, but at least, that part of it had.

And Guifei Xiang, recovering that authority she always recovered when the worst had already passed and the moment to set things in order began, took the first step toward the center of the formation.

"Lianhua, Lingxi", she said without taking her eyes off her daughter, in a tone that admitted no reply.

"Bring me cloths and water. Above all, plenty of water. And then we shall talk about the rest."

"Yes, Guifei Xiang", replied Lianhua and Lingxi with a bow, and as they left the room with silent steps, Lianhua couldn't help thinking that, finally, the corridors of the Pavilion seemed to have recovered their usual darkness.