Chương 62: Chapter 61 — A Forced Choice

A sudden chill awoke Shen Yue at two in the morning as the duvet, which she was sharing with her now-husband, was ruthlessly pulled away from her body. She pulled it back and closed her eyes again. It happened again ten minutes later. This time, she was slightly more irritated. She pulled the duvet back and looked at Lin Che, who was on his back, eyes closed, and entirely fast asleep.

His chest rose and fell at a regular pace, and the vibration from the pill was faintly audible, but she had long since acclimatised to the noise and blocked it out. She turned over, and went back to sleep.

Another hour or so later, Lin Che rolled to face the window, before he rolled back onto his back, and then rolled towards Shen Yue. She shuffled closer to the edge of the bed in case he came nearer to her, and this time she held onto the duvet tightly so as to not concede her warmth. There was a sudden dip in the mattress, which caused Shen Yue to turn around and open her eyes: Lin Che was standing on the mattress, his feet planted into the soft foam; his face absent of consciousness.

It was a strange sight, but not a worrying one, she told herself, as plenty of people sleepwalk all the time, and this was just her second night with him. She'd probably get used to it in time. He turned his head towards her, and, for a moment, she thought he'd woken. His eyes were open, and they stared through her, as though he were still asleep and not processing any visual information.

"Lin Che," she said, somewhat quietly.

"Wake up. You're sleepwalking." No response. This time, slightly louder: "Lin Che, lie back down!" His neck snapped in the opposite direction, his head now inclined towards the window. Then, he stepped off the mattress and walked in a rigid gait, as though this were his first time using these legs after centuries of sleep.

Each step placed the same weight and timing as the last, and, whenever he was about to lose his balance, his torso twisted and contorted itself to shuffle his centre of gravity just shy of falling. The Gulf of Liaodong at three in the morning was very dark. The wind came in through the open window, carrying salt and cold. Shen Yue had now gotten out of bed and pinched herself to make sure this was all real. She felt the pain jolt in her skin and flared up whatever Qi she could muster to run towards Lin Che.

The only issue, however, is that she had been cycling her Qi to warm herself up non-stop for the past two days, so her reserves were low — she hadn't been stockpiling or using as much medication, as the extraction of the holy land would be complete by the end of the honeymoon, so there was no point in saving up energy. It wasn't like she would have to engage in combat anytime soon. Shen Yue ran, but it was far too late. Lin Che stepped up onto the window ledge.

"Lin Che—" He stepped off the fourteenth floor. Lin Che regained consciousness by the time his body was speeding past the first floor, by which point it was far too late for any action. The tie was giving him trouble.

Lin Che stood in front of the bathroom mirror of his apartment, silk looped through his fingers, his eyes simply staring at his reflection. He thought about all that had happened: providing Xu Fang and Guo Mingzhe with techniques, negotiating with the Shen Clan, and a honeymoon with his wife with a cameo from his mother and even a dance.

He was making progress in his relationships with others, and, although he knew things would come to an end eventually, he naively thought that he could be the one to decide exactly when that end would be. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. And now, here he was, tying a tie, again. Always again.

He set the silk down on the marble counter very carefully, keeping his hands steady and controlled to prevent himself from otherwise throwing it and breaking something. All his leads were gone. Not gone-gone — Xu Fang would still be Xu Fang, and would still be pulling archival threads to trace the Lin Clan, but there was no guarantee he'd be rediscovering the same information this time round. Too many variables could change with just his actions alone.

If he provided Xu Fang with information about Dalian, he would likely ignore sources from elsewhere, and, even if he said nothing, the butterfly effect was real. He had the memorised phone number at the very least, and Elder Wong's pill, too, which he'd only now noticed. It started to buzz and vibrate after a short delay, and he concentrated on the pill alone to help calm himself. His hands found the edge of the counter and gripped it — hard. Start from zero.

He was the only one carrying the debt of every version of his life that had ever happened, and everyone else — Shen Yue, Xu Fang, and all the others — owed nothing, remembered nothing, whilst he alone kept paying interest on days that had stopped existing. He thought he'd been doing well in switching off this part of his brain. It was an ugly and sudden surfacing of something he'd buried ever since his first loop — view the world with absurdity, and nothing can bite you in the arse.

View yourself with absurdity — consider it all a video game, and nothing will feel real. Clearly not. His reflection was breathing too fast. He watched it happen from a distance, like watching a stranger. Lin Che gripped the counter harder until the marble crumbled into chalk. It took a while longer before his hands stopped shaking enough to pick the tie back up. Over, under, around. A small knot tightened itself around his throat. The tie was giving him trouble.

Lin Che smashed his head onto the mirror and the glass shattered, but his skin did not cut. He closed his eyes and circulated the Hollow Bell, but felt a sudden jolt within him. It was the tribulation Qi which he had absorbed in his previous life — it lay there dormant for all of the previous life, but now, all of a sudden, it was actively sparking. Thunder rumbled overhead. That was strange; it had been a sunny day all of these lives prior.

A bolt of lightning struck through the ceiling of Lin Che's apartment, carving its way through each floor above his. Lin Che turned to dodge, and found, now, that he could freely move during this new tribulation, and that the mysterious force that held him in place was gone. It was being resisted by the tribulation Qi within himself.

In an attempt to minimise damages and harm unto others, Lin Che jumped out of the window before the next bolt could be summoned, before he circulated the Hollow Bell Resonance and formed his own weather array in defence. He sat on the tarmac with a torn shirt and scruffy hair, his tie still undone by his neck. Three strikes later, the tribulation was over, with Lin Che using the Boundless Intake Sutra to absorb more tribulation Qi from the final blast. Then, he stood up and left the street.

Lin Che was aware that his mental state was not ideal for a wedding today, so, whilst walking towards the one goal he had set himself for this life, he sent a text to Shen Bowen saying that he would provide him with as much innate Qi as required by the end of the week, and that he should not be disturbed until then. There would be no end of the week however, at least unless he decided so. That was the one pro of having infinite time.

The shopfront on Jianshe road seemed about the same — Lin Che didn't bother looking at the details again to check. They were probably the same. Inside, jazz music was playing, and Old Wen was hidden in another corner arranging books at another shelf. He didn't bother to look at the genre or the books this time round, and simply tapped her on the shoulder and said: "Leixin."

Old Wen stopped what she was doing and looked at Lin Che, this time widening her eyes in surprise, instead of simply taking him into the back room. She sat him down and had him wait a moment for her to bring the Lin Clan techniques which she possessed, and Lin Che used this chance to do some more breathing exercises to suppress the rage building up within him. Too much rage and emotion could cloud up his cultivation, after all.

A moment later, Old Wen re-entered the room, this time carrying only one single tome for Lin Che — a difference which took him a moment to register and process. The Returning Mirror Refinement Art Works on the principle that Qi already present in a cultivator's body carries accumulated impurities. Qi that has been gathered quickly, or simply over a long period without adequate processing, develops what is known as grain: a subtle directionality that reduces how cleanly it responds to the practitioner's intent.

The technique runs the body's existing reserves through a recursive internal cycle, each pass removing a layer of that grain. His choice was already made for him, he supposed.