Chương 57: Chapter 56 — Qi/Stage Mismatch

Inside the farmhouse, Lin Che sat on the bed whilst Elder Mao sat in one of the chairs beside him. He poured two cups of leaf water from a ceramic pitcher on the table, and set one within Lin Che's reach. They sat like this for a while, mainly because Elder Mao was waiting for Lin Che to take a sip so that he could take one of his own, but clearly Lin Che was not that thirsty.

"I take it you've never had a breakthrough before," said Elder Mao.

"I'm young," said Lin Che.

"That wasn't an accusation about your age. I'm just curious about your cultivation history, if you're fine with sharing that." Elder Mao caved and took a sip of his tea.

"A Heavenly Tribulation is the natural consequence of a cultivator's Qi volume exceeding the threshold for their current stage. It's the Heaven's method of… well that depends on your philosophy I suppose." He paused.

"You didn't defend against the first few strikes, so I gather you had no prior experience of a tribulation. I'm only here to provide you with advice."

"I managed well enough on my own," replied Lin Che.

"I'm still alive, just about."

"You were on fire."

"That was after the strikes."

"The fire was also a consequence of the tribulation." Lin Che finally drank his tea, downing half the cup in one go.

"What puzzles me is this: the stage at which you broke through was Qi Gathering, in which a cultivator first learns to externalise Qi in a manner more malleable than simple techniques. It is, for most practitioners, an early milestone." He looked at Lin Che steadily.

"The technique you used to survive the final bolt was externalised Qi — I watched you develop the technique in real time, and your externalisation was more structured and controlled. As if you've been doing this for a long while." Lin Che said nothing.

"So," said Elder Mao, "either you have been at a stage substantially beyond Qi gathering for some time and have been concealing it from us for whatever reason, or there's something else at play." Elder Mao placed two fingers on Lin Che's wrist and closed his eyes.

"Your meridians are still consolidating," he said.

"I can't get a proper read of your constitution until they've properly developed again."

"Checking my constitution without permission is awfully rude," said Lin Che.

"And you're in a position to stop me?" Lin Che stayed silent.

"So long as you are not a threat to the Shen Clan, my lips are sealed. I owe your family that much of a favour, at least," he said.

"You know members of the Lin Clan?" asked Lin Che, leaning up closer despite the tenderness in his burned torso. Elder Mao made a sound that was not quite a sigh and stood from the chair. He moved to the window and watched the extraction team exit from the holy land portal, with Jianfeng taking a headcount as they filed out.

"Knew," he said.

"The Lin Cl—" The door to the farmhouse opened.

Shen Yue had clearly been informed of a rough outline of what had just transpired, as she didn't flinch upon seeing a shirtless and burned Lin Che lying in bed. She looked at Elder Mao and gave him a nod in silent communication. Elder Mao returned the nod and left the room.

"Hold on, Elder Mao!" called Lin Che as he disappeared into the corridor.

"We'll discuss this later," came a voice already nearer to the staircase downwards. Shen Yue coughed once to regain Lin Che's attention.

"The honeymoon has been confirmed," she said.

"It'll be in two days, so as soon as you recover. I've ordered some ointments from Hu Baolin for you which should be on their way soon." Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Thank you," said Lin Che.

"But we're not married yet."

"That's up to you," said Shen Yue. She set her bag on the table, reached into it, and produced a document. She set it in front of Lin Che.

"There's no innate Qi extraction this time, I promise." Shen Yue held out a pen for Lin Che, who promptly signed.

"I'll come to collect you in two days' time, so just focus on recovering in the meantime," she said, turning to the door.

"We've booked a wonderful hotel and some restaurants in Dalian by pulling some strings at the last minute. I'll deal with the itinerary for us all, so all you need to do is relax and have fun."

Once he had finished the rest of his tea, Lin Che reached for his phone. His phone had been in his pocket, and therefore in the fire. The screen had a crack running from the upper right corner down to the lower left, but, when he pressed the power button, it still turned on. Lin Che breathed out a sigh of relief as he navigated his messages and opened the thread with Xu Fang. Heading to Dalian in two days, he wrote. Honeymoon.

The read receipt went blue just four seconds later, before a bubble of Xu Fang's profile picture began typing. Was wondering when you'd tell me you're married. Your mother already mentioned. Didn't expect the honeymoon to be so soon though. Have you told her about it? Lin Che stared at the blocks of messages for a moment. I'll call her once she's off work. She might know a thing or two about Dalian or even just Liaoning. He thought, for a moment, about how he hadn't spoken to his mother in a long, long while.

She had slipped his mind ever since he ended up in this death loop of his, but that was no excuse for being an unfilial son. The only comfort there was that, at least in this life, it had only been a few days since last contact, so she wouldn't have felt that lonely. Regardless, she never messaged him first because she was always too busy with either work or her hobbies.

She'd recently got more into pottery painting, which he'd only found out by seeing the bank statements from the joint account he opened up with her to help support her lifestyle once he got his first job. All in all, she seemed very ordinary. Since she married into the Lin Clan, there was a high chance she either knew a fair amount, or nothing at all, and Lin Che was more likely to bet money that, in her case, it was the latter. He had no reasons to doubt his mother.

Anyway have you found anything further on the Lin Clan records situation? He waited a couple of seconds for the message to come through, watching the typing indicator blip in and out of existence. It took a while, giving Lin Che the impression that Xu Fang was currently haphazardly going through files and messages to gather information to dump on him. Yeah actually.

So the gap in the Liaoning records isn't directly just the Lin Clan, but instead an entire repository of old family records from about 70-80 years back are all missing. It's mostly property and lineage documentation which is why I was able to find out about it so quickly, but I'm sure there's an implication there about something The archive has a note saying they were transferred to a private place for preservation, but there's no follow-up record of where. Lin Che read this twice.

So either they're missing, destroyed, or someone has them. Xu Fang texted back. Already thinking along those lines. If someone has them, the most likely place they'd end up is with whoever had an interest in that specific cluster of families. Checked the families and none of them exist anymore: two dissolved and one was absorbed into some other lineage. Not sure about the Lins though. Anyway, you're heading to Dalian? I'm still here so can meet up if you want. Lin Che considered this for a while. No.

I don't want my wife's family to find out about you or Mingzhe just yet. Can you send me details on where to find these things or anything else? No worries, She's from another clan, right? What's it called? Shen I'll look into them too if I have the time. Thank you Lin Che closed the message thread and set the phone on the bed beside him. He looked at the cracked screen and swollen battery and thought to himself that he should begin committing more phone numbers to memory in case his phone broke next time.

He wondered just how many more things he would have to commit to memory with each passing loop and just how much he's already forgotten. And how much of what he had forgotten he'd already forgotten. Just before he closed his eyes and went to sleep, he sent a text message to Shen Bowen asking for a new phone for his wedding gift. It'll arrive at your hotel room, came the reply. Here's the tracking link.