Chapter 682: The Art of Sounding Certain

Chapter 682: The Art of Sounding Certain

Ji’s communication plaque lay beside Leon’s elbow, its seal dark now that he had finished reading her instructions.

The message in front of his eyes remained.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: You have been absent for some time. What kept you so occupied?]

For a moment, he wanted to tell her.

Seven months of his own time, seven preserved Void Immortal cores, and more failed adjustments than he cared to remember—all to establish Early Qi Refinement. He was proud of it. He had earned the right to be proud of it, and discussing the work with someone who actually understood cultivation would have been a pleasure. ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Unfortunately, this particular person believed he was a Lord of the Universe.

She might congratulate me. Right before asking what the fuck I’ve been doing with everyone’s money.

Leon pulled his chair closer to the table.

He could tell her about the method. He needed to leave out the part where its creator had only recently managed to cultivate with it.

[Elemental Paragon: I have been developing a cultivation method that accommodates different affinities while preserving their individual properties. It has kept me occupied.]

He read the message once more before sending it.

Accurate. Restrained. Nothing he would have to defend with a demonstration.

Her response arrived while he was reaching for his cup.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: Why preserve them? Finding the principle they share would simplify the structure considerably.]

Leon lowered the cup.

That was a reasonable question. He had considered the same approach while working through his early designs, and he had reasons for rejecting it. His body, existing abilities, and plans for the Scripture all favored keeping the affinities distinct.

None of those reasons sounded especially impressive at the scale on which she lived.

He began typing anyway.

[Elemental Paragon: Because I have not decided that what they share is the only part worth keeping.]

That sounded better than he had expected.

Encouraged, he continued.

[A common principle is an efficient foundation. But if I build everything around it, the method will favor the properties that fit that foundation. I would rather retain the differences until I know what I want to do with them.]

He should have stopped there.

[What fire does is not necessarily what fire and water have in common. Reducing both to the same explanation may be elegant, but elegance was not the purpose of the exercise.]

Leon stared at the last sentence.

The exercise.

Seven months sitting in Xyra’s accelerated field, correcting the same stubborn branch until he wanted to bite something, and he had called it an exercise.

The Lord took a little longer to answer.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: That depends on the reduction. A sufficiently complete principle need not discard anything.]

Of course it does. Of course there’s a better version.

Another message followed.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: But preserving the distinctions gives you room to develop their interactions separately. Is that what interests you?]

Leon’s fingers hovered above the table.

It did interest him. It simply had not been the grand intention behind every decision he had made.

[Elemental Paragon: Among other things. I would prefer the method to leave me more than one direction of development.]

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: An expensive preference.]

He looked at the message and almost smiled.

[Elemental Paragon: I have noticed.]

For the first time since opening the conversation, he sent a reply without worrying about it.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: How many affinities are you retaining?]

[Elemental Paragon: Nine, currently.]

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: Separately regulated, then brought through a common circulation?]

Leon sat a little straighter.

[Elemental Paragon: Through a neutral section, yes. The branches remain distinct.]

He had offered only a broad description. She had not seen the Scripture, his body, or the Primordial Void Heart supplying the circulation, and he intended to keep it that way.

Still, her next question landed uncomfortably close.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: And are you matching their flow?]

Leon glanced down at his own chest.

[Elemental Paragon: For the present structure. It gave me a consistent starting condition.]

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: Reasonable. It becomes less useful if you carry that condition into every level of output.]

He forgot about his tea.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: Different affinities respond differently to pressure and to one another. Identical flow can produce unequal strain. I would compare what happens where the currents meet before deciding how closely their rates need to match.]

Leon read the message twice.

He understood every word. That made the realization more irritating.

He had spent so long making the nine branches behave consistently that consistency had become the first thing he demanded of every later design. When a branch departed from the pattern, he corrected it.

During some of his tests, the Earth branch had repeatedly settled slightly below his intended rate. He had treated that as a fault to eliminate.

It might still be a fault.

But he had never allowed it to remain long enough to discover whether the rest of the circulation became more stable around it.

I kept asking why it wouldn’t match.

He leaned forward, elbows on the table.

There were reasons for the matched flow. He had needed a reliable baseline while establishing the Scripture’s first native circulation, and the method worked. That did not mean the same proportions would serve him equally well when he increased the output.

His mind began assembling tests before he could stop it.

Change one branch. Keep the others fixed. Measure the strain where it returned to the neutral route. Then repeat at a slightly different volume.

The neutral section complicated everything. A comfortable rate inside one branch might create a dangerous imbalance when it rejoined the others.

He had questions about that. Quite a few.

Asking all of them would make it painfully clear how new this was to him.

[Elemental Paragon: I have retained the matched flow as a reference. I have not yet established how far the individual rates can depart from it without affecting the common route.]

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: Then it should make an interesting comparison. A stable interaction tells you more than matching measurements alone.]

Leon let himself sit with that for a few breaths.

She had not solved the Scripture. She could not have, from the little he had told her. She had pointed at an assumption he now wanted to examine, which was useful enough that he felt an absurd urge to thank her properly.

Instead, he wrote:

[Elemental Paragon: I will compare the responses before making any changes permanent.]

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: Let me know if you find something unusual.]

Leon’s brief relief faltered.

Right. There’s a later conversation now.

[Elemental Paragon: If the results warrant it.]

She sent nothing further.

He waited anyway, until waiting began to feel ridiculous, then closed the interface.

The room was quiet. Somewhere below, an inn worker was arguing with a guest about a missing basin. Leon listened to them for a moment, grateful that neither person expected him to understand the foundations of existence.

Then he found paper.

He recorded her observation first, as closely as he remembered it, followed by the questions he had been unable to ask. Beneath those, he sketched the neutral route and its nine branches.

His pen paused over Earth.

You had better turn out to be doing something useful. I’ve spent far too long correcting you.

He ran one ordinary circulation while seated at the table. Mana moved through the established route without difficulty, supplied by his Primordial Void Heart. He changed nothing.

The experiment would need privacy, careful measurements, and time inside his dimensional world. Xyra could provide the time easily enough. What Leon could not do was disappear into the work and forget the people waiting for him outside.

White Reed Crossing came first.

He folded the notes and put them away before he could persuade himself that one tiny adjustment would hardly count as an experiment.

Only then did he pick up his tea.

It had gone cold.

Leon drank it anyway, still pleased enough with what he had learned that he barely noticed.