Chapter 200

That moment, fortunately, turns out to last considerably less than I feared, because my fingers are still digging into the armrests when, at the foot of the wall, Lianhua moves a hand.

She rests it against the stones of the courtyard, then rests the other one, and pushes herself up until she is sitting, with her back against the wall and her eyes open for the first time since the fight began.

Xia, who had stopped two paces from my chair, lets out her breath all at once.

But Lianhua doesn’t stay sitting. She moves a hand up the wall, finds something to hold on to and gets to her feet, and that is when I see that her legs are trembling as she puts away the weapon she still has left.

Not much, but they are trembling, something that shows clearly as she crosses the courtyard slowly, without leaning on anything, and she doesn’t stop until she is standing in front of Master Mu.

There she smooths her clothes with a brief gesture, folds her hands in front of her and bows.

“Thank you for the duel, Master Mu”, she says.

She says it in her usual voice, flat and polite, and if it weren’t for her knees giving way a finger’s breadth halfway through the bow and her having to correct them, no one would guess that a moment ago she crossed this same courtyard flying through the air.

Master Mu watches her bow and straighten up.

“Come sit down”, she tells her. “It would be a shame for such a well-executed bow to end on the floor.”

And she starts walking toward the table, with her fan in one hand and Lianhua’s Shuang Bi Shou still in the other.

Xia takes hold of the back of my chair again and turns me until I am back at the head of the table, while Master Mu gathers up the silk of her skirt and sits on the bench to my right. Lianhua reaches the one to my left and stays standing.

She is waiting for me to tell her.

“Sit down”, I tell her.

Lianhua sits, and I think it is the first time in thirteen years that I have seen her sit down as if she truly needed to.

Xia stays beside me, with one hand on the armrest.

Master Mu sets the blade on the table, in front of her, and keeps hold of her fan.

“First, the bad”, she tells Lianhua.

Lianhua folds her hands in her lap.

“In the whole fight, you didn’t once manage to make me move my feet with your blades”, Master Mu continues. “I moved them when you used the technique that creates spikes from the ground, and only then.”

She opens her fan a couple of ribs and closes it again.

“I knew where each spike was going to come out before it emerged”, she tells her. “You couldn’t have prevented that, but you took too long to realize it, and in the meantime you spent the ambient Qi on something that was never going to work.”

She doesn’t say how she knew, and I don’t ask her, because that is exactly the kind of question no one asks anyone in this world, and her least of all.

“Now the good”, she continues. “Once you realized it, you stopped trying to surprise me and began using it to lead me where you wanted. Very few people manage that in the middle of a fight, against someone who outclasses them.”

She taps her shoulder with her fan.

“And that last thread was well thought out”, she adds. “It didn’t work, but one thing doesn’t cancel out the other.”

Lianhua bows her head, but Master Mu hasn’t finished.

“What are your spiritual roots?” she asks her.

I go still at that question, because it isn’t a question about techniques, but it is something very personal all the same.

“Air, Earth, Yin and Nature”, Lianhua answers her without hesitating, without looking at me first and without a single pause, just as she would answer a physician who asked her where it hurts.

Master Mu nods slowly after her answer.

“Four”, she says. “And with the Earth Core already formed.”

It isn’t a question, because she has spent half the morning stepping away from her spikes.

“Yes, Master Mu”, Lianhua confirms.

“The Earth technique you have is enough for now”, she tells her. “Don’t look for more.”

I don’t say anything, but it stings a little, because I was the one who asked Lianhua to look for two. Two that complemented each other, I told her, with tremendous confidence and completely convinced of it.

And the person who has just corrected my plan, without even knowing it existed, knows considerably more about this than I do.

“Focus on creating your Air Core”, Master Mu continues. “It is the element with the best movement techniques, and among all the ones there are, you will surely find one that works with your way of fighting.”

She holds her fan still.

“And you need it badly”, she finishes.

“I have been creating it since we arrived in this city, Master Mu”, Lianhua tells her.

Master Mu looks at her for a moment, and the corner of her mouth twitches.

“Then you made a good decision”, she answers.

When I hear that, the sting vanishes all at once, because I was the one who ordered that core, in a cave of the Sect of the Celestial Sun. I gave her two very sensible reasons, and kept the third to myself, which is more personal.

And the youngest Grand Master of Talismans in history has just given it her approval, although for completely different reasons from the ones I gave.

“One more thing, before the worst”, says Master Mu. “I congratulate you on how you use that vision technique of yours, whatever it may be.”

Lianhua doesn’t move, and I start studying the branches of the magnolia with tremendous interest.

“You didn’t turn your head to look for me a single time”, she continues. “You stood with your back to me and your eyes closed, and you didn’t lose me. There are people who have had similar techniques for decades and still struggle to use them in combat at the level you have shown.”

“Thank you, Master Mu”, Lianhua says after hearing her praise.

Master Mu doesn’t press the matter, but she sets down her fan, picks up the Shuang Bi Shou by the handle and lifts it between the two of them, edge upward.

“And now the worst”, she tells her. “At this moment, your greatest weakness is this.”

To my left, Lianhua looks at her own blade in someone else’s hand, and her expression doesn’t change.

“Not because they are short weapons”, Master Mu continues. “Every cultivator has their preferences, and I have seen everything.”

She pauses.

“I have even seen cultivators hit their opponents with a brick”, she says.

“With a brick?” Xia blurts out, and she covers her mouth with her free hand.

“With a brick”, Master Mu confirms without smiling.

“And win”, she adds.

I have to lower my eyes to the table so that my astonishment at her words isn’t too visible, because the image of a cultivator smashing a brick into another one’s face is far too striking.

Master Mu turns the blade so that it catches the sun.

“The problem is that they are made of ordinary metal”, she tells Lianhua. “And at your level of cultivation, you need to start thinking about replacing them.”

She lowers the blade.

“I am not telling you to look for Spiritual Artifacts, because that would be too expensive”, she continues. “But at the very least, some that are made of spiritual materials.”

And she holds the Shuang Bi Shou out to her across the table, handle first.

Lianhua takes it, and the blade disappears into her sleeve with a twist of her wrist.

Too expensive, she said, but I am the one who keeps this household’s accounts, so I add the daggers to the list, right below a chair I also want made of spiritual materials and that I still haven’t dared to ask about.

Lianhua rises from the bench after putting away her weapon, and her legs are no longer trembling, so she simply folds her hands in front of her as she bows with much more respect than before.

“Thank you for your guidance, Master Mu”, she says.

Master Mu answers her with a nod, but then, in no hurry at all, she shifts her gaze and lets it rest on Xia.

I feel the hand on the armrest go rigid.

“And you?” she asks her. “What is it you want to do?”

Xia lets go of my chair, stands up straight and raises her chin.

“I am going to be a spirit chef”, she tells her.

And I remember the inn, and a girl rubbing her hands together under the table and telling me in a low voice that she would like to be one.

But today, at this precise moment, she hasn’t said she would like to. She has declared that she is going to be one.

Master Mu looks at her for a moment.

“I can’t help you with that”, she tells her. “I can cook for myself reasonably decently, but something of that level is beyond my knowledge.”

And I think it is the first time I have heard this woman admit she isn’t good at something, so I look at Xia, waiting to see her reaction.

“It doesn’t matter to me”, she answers without hesitating. “I’ll find a way to become one.”

My heart stops for an instant, because that is no way to answer a Grand Master, but for the second time in a very short while, the corner of Master Mu’s mouth twitches.

Master Mu gathers up her fan, rises from the bench and then, at last, looks at me.

“And now you, child”, she tells me. “Let’s go to your study. You and I have a conversation pending.”

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “Take me, please.”

Lianhua positions herself behind the chair and we start across the courtyard, with Master Mu beside us, her hands behind her back and her fan between her fingers.

When I look over my shoulder, Xia is already fetching the courtyard broom from its corner, because there are little mounds of gray grit over half the courtyard, and no one leaves a dirty floor in front of her.

Lianhua wheels me into the study, leaves me in front of my desk, with the edge at just the right height, closes the door and positions herself to my left and a little behind.

A provenance note, not a mystery: this page copied the author's official chapter without consent, and the published version supports them.

Master Mu doesn’t sit down. Instead, she runs her eyes over the room. The small side table with the box, the inkwell, the brushes in their rest, the small pile of talismans I keep set aside for us and the posts driven into the walls.

She lingers a little longer on the posts, just as she lingered on the ones in the courtyard, and she doesn’t ask about them either.

“I have seen the talismans you sold to the Tower of the Five Dragons”, she tells me.

It doesn’t surprise me, because she went into that building to set things in order, and the odd thing would have been for her not to have seen them.

“But I want to examine you personally”, she continues. “Especially now that you are capable of making them.”

And that is when something dawns on me that, with everything this morning, hadn’t occurred to me.

This woman taught me runes, ink and the secret of the paper, and examined me for more than an hour until she ended up slumped in a chair. But she left the Empire without having seen me make a single talisman, because when she left I didn’t yet have a single Gate open.

You could say that everything I have done since then I have done entirely self-taught, so I settle myself in the chair, draw the inkwell closer with a hand of the Myriad and take the brush with my own.

“Whenever you are ready”, I tell her.

“Fire Arrow”, she tells me.

I activate Sensing the Qi and look at the ink.

It’s my own. Generic, but its materials were chosen, prepared and turned into ink by me in the cauldron on the other side of the courtyard, so I dip the brush and begin.

The Fire Arrow is the talisman I have drawn more times than any other in my life, and even so I trace it as if it were the first, guiding the Qi into the ink in the exact amount, rune by rune, down to the last one.

I lift the brush and the paper stays where it is, so Master Mu picks it up by the edges, with her fingertips, and holds it up against the light.

She says nothing. She simply sets it at the corner of the desk.

“Air Barrier”, she tells me.

And after the Air Barrier she asks me for a Spiritual Shield, and then a Cutting Wind, and she picks each one up by the edges, looks at it and places it beside the previous one, without a word.

From the fourth one on, she stops merely looking.

“Why did you write that one before the other?” she asks me, in the middle of a stroke.

I answer her without lifting the brush.

“And what would happen if you switched them around?” she asks me.

I answer that too, and finish the rune.

She asks me for a Freezing Talisman, and while I coordinate the transitions from one function to the next she asks me why that angle and not a wider one. She asks me for a Minor Levitation one, and asks me how long it lasts and what that depends on. She asks me for a privacy talisman, and this time she doesn’t ask anything, which is almost worse.

The row in the corner keeps growing along the edge of the desk.

And then she asks me for one that isn’t in any of the boxes I have taken to the Tower.

I know it. I have it memorized rune by rune from one of her books, with its variants and its typical mistakes, and I could recite the whole page, but I have never drawn it even once.

A few days ago, in the workshop, I was calculating how many sheets of paper I could afford to ruin in order to learn a new talisman. And it turns out that the answer, with this woman standing beside me, is none.

So I take a breath, dip the brush and do it slowly.

Considerably more slowly than the others, checking each stretch of ink with Sensing the Qi before moving on to the next, because I feel I can’t afford to make a single mistake.

I reach the last rune and close the stroke without my hand trembling, and I lift the brush without the paper catching fire.

Master Mu picks it up, and this one she studies for considerably longer.

“You hadn’t sold this one to the Tower, and that is why I asked you for it”, she tells me. “But had you made it before?”

“I had never created it”, I answer her.

She lowers the talisman and looks at me over the paper.

“Never?” she asks me.

“Until just now”, I tell her.

She falls silent for a moment.

“Another”, she tells me.

And she asks me for another one I have never drawn in my life either, and I manage that one on the first try as well, although after it her requests keep coming, one after another.

When she finally sets the last of her requests in the row, I realize that my forearm has gone numb, the nape of my neck is damp and the inkwell is considerably lower than when we started, and that I couldn’t say how long we have been in here.

Master Mu runs her eyes along the row of talismans, from one end to the other, and then taps her shoulder twice with her fan.

“For your level, you are the best talisman maker I have ever met”, she tells me, with a certain note of pride in her voice.

“Thank you, Master Mu”, I tell her.

“Don’t thank me yet”, she answers. “I said ‘for your level’ because you can’t move up to a more advanced type of talisman.”

She points at the row with her closed fan.

“The next ones require their maker to be able to use elemental Qi”, she continues. “And for that you need to have created your Elemental Cores.”

I sigh after hearing her, because I have two Gates open out of seven. Until I open the last one I won’t even be able to see my roots, and for Lianhua, who has considerably more talent than most, the Gates alone took more than ten years.

“But since not being able to create talismans didn’t stop you before, there is no reason it should stop you now”, I hear Master Mu continue.

And after those words, just as she did back then in my study at the Imperial Palace, I watch her start pulling books out of her sleeve and setting them on the desk.

I look at the pile of books, which keeps growing taller until, finally, Master Mu seems satisfied.

“These books, like the ones I gave you back then, will prepare you for when you manage to create your Elemental Cores, so that you can start on real talismans instead of the toys you make now”, she tells me, resting a hand on top of the pile. “And knowing your habits, I have no doubt that before then you will have learned them by heart.”

After hearing Master Mu’s words, I avoid her gaze, a little embarrassed, because I had started reading Xia’s books on spiritual materials precisely because I had run out of books and it seemed a waste to buy new ones with those so close at hand, and her gift has given me material for at least a year.

“And since we are talking about Cores”, Master Mu continues.

She looks at the closed door, and then at the talismans I have created, picks up the privacy talisman I just made, holds it for an instant between two fingers and activates it.

I stare at her like an idiot, because it is the first time I have seen Master Mu use something made by me.

“The Resonance”, she says to me. “Can you still do it?”

“Yes”, I answer her.

“With all of them?” she asks me.

“With all of them”, I tell her.

To my left, Lianhua doesn’t move. She is one of the three people in this world who know, and all three of us are in this room.

“And have you told anyone?” she asks me.

“No one”, I answer her. “I promised you.”

Master Mu nods just once.

And the matter could end there, but this woman told me about the Resonance, both what she knew and what she didn’t, so I feel obliged to tell her what I have found out on my own.

“But there is something I didn’t tell you”, I say to her. “Because I discovered it after you left.”

The fan, which was on its way to her shoulder, stops.

“Speak”, she tells me.

“One night, while I was cultivating the Tempering of the Nerves, I tried doing it with the neutral Qi rune”, I tell her. “While absorbing.”

Master Mu says nothing.

“The particles closest to me started coming toward me on their own”, I continue. “And every one that touched my skin was absorbed without my doing anything.”

“How fast did they come toward you?” she asks me.

“At least twice as fast as they normally move”, I answer her, although I keep to myself the madness I committed of finishing the two stages I had left that very same night.

She lowers the fan very slowly.

“And with the Gates?” she asks me.

“With a Gate active it’s considerably worse”, I tell her. “The Gate already draws in Qi on its own, and with the Resonance its speed increases, just as with the Body Tempering. I always end up emptying my surroundings, even with a Qi-gathering formation active.”

I pause, because this is the part that was hardest for me to understand.

“And when there is nothing left around me, it starts drawing it out of the spirit stones”, I finish.

“Out of the stones?” she asks me.

“I mean the Qi they contain”, I tell her. “It leaves them dry if I don’t cut it off in time.”

“And do you cut it off?” she asks me, although I can tell she asks that one out of curiosity.

“Always”, I answer her. “Because that isn’t cultivating, it’s burning money.”

Master Mu closes her eyes and stays like that for a moment, with her fan pressed against her forehead, and when she opens them again she doesn’t look at me. She checks that the privacy talisman is still active.

“Years ago I told you that achieving a Resonance before completing the Condensation of the Elemental Cores was considered impossible”, she tells me.

“Until now”, I tell her. “You said that too.”

“I said that too”, she confirms.

She rests her free hand on the edge of my desk.

“Everything I know about the Resonance begins at the Cores”, she continues. “Of what it does before that, I know nothing. And I didn’t know because no one had ever been able to tell of it. Although I will tell you that absorbing the Qi from spirit stones is indeed something known to everyone who possesses the Resonance.”

I fall silent at that, because the day I saw that stone go dark in my hand I decided that she had known and kept quiet about it, to spare me the frustration of knowing about a shortcut I couldn’t afford.

I have spent years silently thanking her for that tact, although it wouldn’t have meant much anyway, given how little time it took me to figure it out on my own.

“If what you are telling me is true, be careful where you do it”, she adds. “A void like that gets noticed.”

“Lianhua checked it from outside”, I tell her. “It doesn’t extend beyond the island.”

Master Mu lets out a short snort, and I can’t tell whether it is relief or resignation.

“You are still terrifying, young lady”, she tells me.

And she taps her shoulder with her fan, from which I understand that the matter is closed and won’t be reopened, so I take the opportunity.

“May I ask you a few questions?” I say to her. “About talismans.”

“Ask”, she answers.

And I ask.

I ask her everything I have been piling up since I was left with no one to ask. Doubts about strokes, about ink and about order, the kind the books take for granted and the kind that only appear once you have used up hundreds of sheets. She answers them one after another, without beating around the bush, and with each answer she puts into place something I had gone years without understanding.

And I leave for last the one that matters most to me, because this morning she told me that in a real fight I am capable of winning even if I have to do it crawling along the ground, and I have been turning the ground over in my head ever since.

Someone who can’t walk has very few ways of evening out a fight against someone who can, and the best one I can think of is making sure the other person can’t either.

“Why can’t talismans create physical changes in the environment?” I ask her. “Something that modifies the ground, like, for example, a talisman similar to the Freezing one, but that instead of freezing water creates a surface of ice on the ground.”

Master Mu looks at me, and I would swear she knows perfectly well what I want it for.

“Because talismans can’t do that”, she answers.

She taps the row on the desk with her fan.

“A talisman can affect an object or a person that is its target”, Master Mu tells me. “Or, as in the case of the privacy talisman, temporarily affect its surroundings without altering them drastically.”

She sighs after those words.

“But talismans are too simple and direct for such profound changes”, she says finally. “That kind of change falls within the field of formations.”

My spirits sink a little at that, because the formation on the other side of that wall cost me an entire day, which makes it unworkable for any fight, but Master Mu hasn’t finished.

“Although I will also tell you that there is a branch of formation makers that specializes in creating combat formations”, she tells me. “Formations made in advance that can be set up anywhere in moments.”

After hearing Master Mu, a word comes to my mind instantly.

Prefabricated. As if they were some kind of IKEA furniture you can put together in no time.

“That sounds very interesting to me”, I tell her.

“If you want to know more, you will have to find yourself formation masters”, she answers. “I am not one.”

But then she holds her fan still, and looks at me in a way she hasn’t used all morning.

“Remember that diversifying too much may mean you never excel at anything”, she tells me. “And don’t forget what your beginnings were.”

She told me that once before, on the day of the auction, although she was talking about techniques then, and I agreed with her.

And since then I have learned three techniques that serve for grabbing things, I have carved a formation into the floor of my house, and I have a cauldron, a pile of books on formations and enchantments, and the plans for a boat awaiting review.

So I can’t say I have paid much attention to the warning, although I am not going to be the one to tell her that.

But I am very clear about my beginnings. They are a ten-year-old girl sitting in a chair at the foot of a staircase, and a piece of paper stuck to its side that made her float.

Everything else came afterward.

“I won’t forget, Master Mu”, I tell her. “I promise you.”

She holds my gaze a moment longer and nods.

And since I don’t want her to dwell on how quickly I made that promise, I change the subject with all the discretion I can muster.

“Master Mu”, I say to her. “What you did at the Tower, does it mean you have replaced Lin Quingyu or Lu Zhiyu?”

Because I don’t know what she did, and I am not going to find out. But in my other life, when someone from upstairs came down to put an office in order, the usual result was a couple of empty desks the next day. And it would really annoy me if those desks belonged to the two people who look after me in that building and who, so far, have made everything easy for me.

“Don’t worry”, she answers. “The two of them will continue to handle your dealings with the Tower.”

I sigh in relief, and I don’t hide it.

Master Mu looks at the door.

“Besides, it isn’t good for me to stay too long in this city, since I have no valid excuse for having come here so quickly”, she continues. “Too many people are watching my movements, so it is better that I leave now, before they can trace me to this house.”

This from the woman who, this morning, made it all the way to my bed without Lianhua hearing her, so I would rather not imagine what the people capable of tracking her are like, and I fold my hands over my legs and bow as far as the chair allows me.

“Thank you for taking the trouble to come”, I tell her. “And for solving a problem I didn’t even know existed.”

Master Mu makes a brief gesture with her hand, like someone brushing away an insect.

“It was nothing”, she answers. “And half of it was my fault.”

Lianhua opens the door, goes back behind my chair and wheels me out into the courtyard.

Outside, the ground has been swept, without a single little mound of grit left, and Xia is waiting by the stone table with the broom resting on her shoulder.

Master Mu walks to the center of the courtyard and turns around, so Lianhua stops the chair a couple of paces from her.

“One more thing”, she tells me. “In case of emergency, you can send me a message through the Tower. I will tell the person in charge of rejecting all the bothersome messages that are constantly sent to me to let me know immediately if a message arrives from the House of the Long Journey.”

She points at me with her closed fan.

“But only in a case of absolute emergency”, she continues. “Because that could draw too much attention.”

I nod.

“And remember that calling me doesn’t mean I will appear instantly”, she finishes. “Distances in this world are great, and it will always take me time to arrive.”

Two continents at full speed, she told me this morning.

In my other life there were emergency numbers that promised an ambulance in minutes. The one I have just been given has a response time I would rather not calculate, but yesterday I didn’t have one at all.

“Thank you for looking after me, Master Mu”, I tell her.

And this time she makes no gesture. She simply looks down at me for a moment, reaches out and taps me on the crown of my head with her closed fan, which doesn’t hurt, but is annoying.

Then she turns around, takes a step and is no longer on the ground but on top of the wall, with the blue and crimson silk stirring in the air off the river, and before I have time to fully raise my head she jumps to the other side and we lose sight of her.

There is no sound of water, or of a boat, or of anything.

“Did she jump into the river?” Xia asks.

Lianhua closes her eyes for a moment and opens them again.

“She isn’t in the river”, she says. “Or anywhere I can see.”

Xia stands staring at the wall with her mouth open, and I sit staring at it too, though with my mouth closed.

Because that woman has crossed two continents, woken me up by poking a fan into my cheek, had breakfast at my table, thrown Lianhua against a wall, tested me until my arm went numb and left by leaping over a wall.

All of that in a single morning, dropping in on us like someone visiting the neighbors.

But the most important thing is that now, unlike when she left the Empire, she has told me how I can contact her, even if only, as she put it, in a case of absolute emergency.

And in the face of that, the only thing left is to never have to find out how long she might take to arrive if I ever need to call her.