Chương 5: Qi Sensitivity

Lin Che was in the middle of a dream when someone knocked on his bedroom door. He opened his eyes and blinked a couple of times to get the gunk out of his eyes. He blinked a half-second too long and began to drift back to the dreamworld.

"Lin Che!"

"I'm awake," he said, which was approximately true.

"Call in sick today," came his wife's voice from the other side of the door.

"Alright." He stretched his arms and pushed himself off the bed with a yawn before opening the curtains. He had, in fact, already called in sick for today — a habit so ingrained across his loops that he'd done it on autopilot. Admitting this would require an explanation he wasn't prepared to give. He got up, got dressed, and did not mention it. Shen Yue was waiting by the door in her coat when he came out, which meant she had been ready for some time and had chosen to knock rather than simply leave.

That meant she had been waiting for him.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Errands." He rushed to the bathroom to brush his teeth and splash his face with some water before following her out.

The pharmacy was a ten-minute walk away, which he knew, because he had already followed her here on day twelve and stood across the street from it, stalking his wife. Up close, it looked much more pleasant — a small, slightly cluttered shop with dried things in jars and a wooden aesthetic that matched. A bell rang when they entered. A man in his forties stood behind the counter making notes in a ledger with a feather pen. He looked up and raised an eyebrow when the couple walked in.

"Miss Shen," he said. Then, with a distinctly different register: "... and guest."

"This is my husband," said Shen Yue. The pharmacist looked at Lin Che with a gaze that swept through him with a rapid and not entirely flattering assessment. Lin Che extended a hand.

"Hu Baolin," the man said, without offering his hand in return. He turned to Shen Yue.

"You're earlier than expected. Your next treatment isn't for another three days."

"I'm not here for that," said Shen Yue.

"I need inferior grade herbs — breath-opening blend." Hu Baolin's eyes moved back and forth between her and Lin Che, making a point without making a point.

"Inferior grade," he repeated.

"For a beginner," she said.

"Evidently so." He closed his ledger and came around the counter, moving through the shop with a confidence that implied the mess was organised. And organised it was. He began pulling jars from shelves and retrieved a cloth bag from the wall without looking.

"First time?" he asked Lin Che.

"Yes," he replied.

"Sensitive stomach?"

"Not usually." Hu Baolin made a grunt that managed to convey a complete medical opinion without using words. He set the items on the counter and looked at them, before pointing a finger up in enlightenment, turning around, and adding one more bundle from the shelf behind him.

"This one," he said, tapping it, "smells absolutely terrible. Don't let that put you off. The smell means it's working." He began wrapping things up in paper at expert pace.

"You'll want to use a heavy pot — cast iron is preferred. Don't let it boil past a simmer or you'll cook out the active compounds and end up with expensive tea, or worse. Depends on what your body can handle." He tied the parcel with string and set it on the counter. He looked at Shen Yue.

"Watch him." Hu Baolin named a price for which Lin Che had no reference, but was probably fair. His wife's credit card footed the bill this time round.

Shen Yue made him carry the parcel and walked a couple of paces away from him. Back in the kitchen, she cleared the counter and told him to put the parcel down. She unwrapped it herself and sorted each item into a sort of mise en place for alchemy, moving with the familiarity of someone who had done this many times in different kitchens.

"Get the heavy pot," she ordered.

"The cast iron one kept in the oven." He got it.

"Have you cooked with it before?"

"I've used cast iron before." This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Good. You know how it holds heat." She filled it with water from the filter — not the tap, he noted — and set it on the stove.

"The objective today is simple. These herbs, prepared correctly, will open your Qi pathways very slightly. It won't be enough to cultivate, nowhere near that. But it will be enough to feel something. Enough to sense a disturbance if something is nearby."

"LIke the thing on the street," he nodded.

"Like that, yes. You won't be able to identify it or respond to it, but you'll feel it before it reaches you, which gives you time to move." She began adding things to the pot in a sequence he paid close attention to. The timing and order certainly mattered — he could tell because she paused between additions and only added in herbs after a visual or olfactory cue relayed that information over. The one that smelt terrible went in last. Hu Baolin had understated the smell.

"That's bad," he said, pinching his nose.

"Yes," she agreed.

"Be glad your nose isn't as sensitive as mine. Do you now understand why I had you carry it home?" She reduced the heat to low and set a timer on her phone for thirty seconds. Then, she leaned against the counter and looked at her husband.

"Two more things," she said.

"Add me as your emergency contact. Whatever you currently have there, replace it." He took out his phone and did as she asked. His previous emergency contact had been Xu Fang, a good friend of his from his school days, but someone who would be completely useless in any situation Shen Yue was equipped to handle. He moved Xu Fang to second.

"And share your location with me. Permanently." He looked up.

"I won't monitor it unless I have reason to. But if something happens, and you don't come home—" She chose her next words with care.

"I'd rather know where to look." Potential images of future deaths flashed in his mind. He shared his location without comment. By the time the notification came through on her end, the thirty second alarm went off, and Shen Yue strained the liquid through cloth into a smaller pot. The solids were discarded and the remaining volume of liquid was enough to fill a single ceramic cup. It was very dark, and extremely smelly. Sort of like organic smoothies mixed with sewage.

"Drink it whilst it's warm," she smiled eerily.

"Every. Last. Drop." He drank it. It tasted exactly how it smelt, which was to say: overwhelming. It was thoroughly, completely present in his mouth, with no ambiguity about the fact that it existed. After the final gulp, she ordered him to close his eyes.

"Breathe normally. Don't try to do anything. You're not trying to gather anything or move anything; just feel what's already there." He breathed. The kitchen was quiet except for the low sound of the city outside and the faint tick of the clock above the door.

"There's a current," she said.

"That faintly runs through living things and through spaces that living things have occupied for a very long time. You won't feel it yet, but soon you will. Right now, the herbs are making you slightly more porous to it."

"Find an image," she said.

"Something that already exists and doesn't resist energy." He thought about a jellyfish tank. Blue-white light and the slow drift of things that had no sense of urgency. Lin Che's breathing slowed. At the edge of his perception, he felt something. It was akin to the idea of the thought of static electricity felt when touching a doorknob. That is to say, very faint and potentially not there. He opened his eyes and was greeted with the face of his wife.

"Did you feel something?" she asked.

"I think so," he said.

"I don't know if I'm describing it correctly."

"You don't need to describe it. Everyone feels something different; we all just agree that it's there." She crossed her arms.

"Practice like this every morning and night with the same method. Ten minutes with the same image, and your sensitivity will improve slowly. It takes most people months to reliably sense anything, and rushing just weakens your quality."

"Understood."

"Great. I'll be off to my office then," she said, getting up from her chair. One leg crossed the threshold before she turned around and asked him: "What image did you use?"

"Jellyfish," he replied. Something crossed her face as she left the kitchen.

Shen Yue went to the rooftop that evening at her usual time, leaving Lin Che to his own devices. He stood in the kitchen alone and looked at the heavy cast iron pot still sitting on the stove. He looked at the remaining herbs on the counter. It took her twenty-two minutes to make. I watched the whole process and know the sequence. If one dose increases sensitivity slightly, two doses—ˆ He knew, on some level, that this was not a good idea.

He was aware of it the way you're aware of a wet floor sign: it was something to ignore. He measured by memory and followed the same timings he had seen earlier that day. He was a data analyst with good memory and a systematic approach, and he had watched her do it once with complete attention. He got to the fourth addition and smelt something different. It wasn't the bad smell from before, the one that was meant to be a good thing. It was somewhat sweeter.

He stood at the stove looking at the surface of the liquid and thought: Hu Baolin said don't let it boil past a simmer. It had, at some point, boiled past a simmer. He drank it anyway, since it was allegedly just expensive tea at this point, and he had already come this far.

Lin Che made it to the hallway before his legs stopped cooperating. He sat down on the floor and put his back against the wall as his legs splayed out in front of him, his ankles flexing and extending uncontrollably, and reflected on the events of his lives so far. He had died in several ways and was familiar with the process by now, but this was the first death he had done entirely to himself. He also thought: I can hear her breathe through the ceiling. That was new. Then the ceiling was gone.

The tie was giving him trouble. Lin Che stood in his bathroom and knotted the tie and breathed out slowly. He thought about a jellyfish tank, the blue-white light, the slow drift— There it was. He couldn't suppress his smile. His sensitivity was less than moments before the end of yesterday's loop, but much greater than it had been after the first concoction. He stood there for a moment, breathing. Then he straightened his tie, and left his house to purchase a new notebook. After all, he was about to get wedded.