Chapter 112 – What Remains for Later

The thread of steam rising from the clay bowl thinned slowly until it vanished completely in the cold air of the room.

In the middle of the chamber, Lī'ya remained in the same position her mother had left her—facing away from the mat door, small shoulders tense and eyes fixed on her own bare feet. Neither the drooping ears in her red hair nor the tail hanging beside the hem of her skirt moved during all that time.

Seated on the mat, Zhì Yuǎn watched the silence stretch until the scent of white flowers left by Sī'vra began to fade from the walls of living wood.

Seeing that she would not take the first step, he opened his mouth.

“Lī'ya.”

The grave voice barely touched the air and her shoulders jolted slightly.

She did not turn.

The wood beneath her feet did not even creak. In the blink of an eye the space in the center of the room emptied, leaving only a light current of air that made the hem of the window curtain sway before settling again.

Zhì Yuǎn looked at the bare floor where she had stood an instant before and released a slow breath through his nose.

A heartbeat later, Lī'ya’s voice sounded in his mind.

“Stay in there and do not leave today. With the formations of the corridor, no one will bother you. I… I need to think.”

Alone in the room, Zhì Yuǎn reached out to the low workbench, pulled the bowl of tea he had poured for her, and drank the already cold liquid in a single gulp, leaning back against the wall once more.

Far above, where the thickest branches opened onto the gardens of the dome, the night wind had already begun to blow between the red leaves.

Sī'vra stood near the edge of the terrace, observing the tiny lanterns that remained lit in the continuous movement of the lower galleries of the trunk, when the air behind her undulated.

Lī'ya appeared on the polished wooden floor. She kept her chin raised and her fists clenched by her skirt, but the low tail behind her legs betrayed the weight of the climb.

“It was faster than I expected,” Sī'vra commented without turning. “Have you taken the mask back already?”

“No,” Lī'ya answered, voice dry. “The mask is still with him.”

Sī'vra turned her face over her shoulder, white brows arching lightly over green eyes.

“You’re really going to leave your mark on the face of a man who just boldly claimed that he has seven wives?”

Lī'ya pressed her fingers against her palm, looking away toward the roots of the parapet.

“I was the one who pulled him from the forest and brought him here,” she said, speaking quickly as if she had already repeated those words dozens of times on the way. “Léi Hǔ swore in front of the entire plaza that he would turn him into charred meat the instant he set foot outside the branches. If I tear the mask off him now, the tigers or the guards of the other retinues will descend upon him, and without a drop of Qi in his body he has no way to fight back.”

Sī'vra crossed her arms beneath her chest, the nine white tails motionless on the terrace floor.

“And since when does my daughter trouble her heart over the fate of a stranger, Lī'ya? You know very well the price of keeping that symbol on his face. While he walks around with your signature, no suitor from the great lineages will be able to approach, and you also will not be able to choose another male.”

“I don’t want to choose anyone anyway!” Lī'ya retorted, raising her tone for an instant before locking her jaw and forcing her voice back down. “I just… I’m only going to keep my word and help him fix that broken body. As soon as he recovers his cultivation and can leave on his own two feet, he goes back to those women of his and the matter ends.”

Sī'vra studied her daughter’s tense face in silence for a long moment. In the end she let out a slow breath and turned back toward the immensity of the trunk.

“Do as you wish, girl. I will not interfere with your word. But do not try to deceive the mother who brought you into the world. This will not end as cleanly as you are picturing in your head.”

Lī'ya bit her lower lip in silence. Without answering anything, she spun on her heels and vanished from the terrace in the same haste with which she had arrived.

The night wind swept the loose leaves from the parapet. Sī'vra continued looking at the lights below for two more breaths before speaking in a low tone, directed at the thick shadow of the root column behind her.

“No one touches him.”

Beneath the shadow of the column, Rhōk’s tall silhouette inclined his head in a single mute nod before retreating and vanishing into the penumbra of the gallery.

When the pale light of the following morning cut through the high cracks of the room, the mat door slid slowly on its rails.

The one who entered carrying a pot of fresh infusion was Hāi'na.

The young rabbit-eared maid took three cautious steps inside, looking at the corners of the chamber almost expecting Lī'ya to appear from nowhere and drive her out again. Upon seeing that the room was empty and that Zhì Yuǎn continued lying on his back on the mat, hands crossed over his abdomen and eyes closed behind the mask, Hāi'na stopped mid-step.

Zhì Yuǎn was not sleeping. He had spent the entire night motionless, only reviewing in his mind the structure of the grooves he had seen in Vhōl’s workshop.

Hearing the light steps, he opened his eyes and sat up slowly.

Hāi'na blinked, approaching the low workbench with a crease of surprise between her brows.

“Sir… were you sleeping?” the maid asked, setting the tray down carefully. “The Young Lady had told me that you had only lost your foundation in a cultivation accident. Did your channels start hurting again during the night?”

“No,” Zhì Yuǎn answered, adjusting the wild-maple mask on his face. “Old habit. I rest at night even without sleep.”

Hāi'na’s brows rose a little and the short rabbit ears gave a light twitch atop her head. For someone born inside the branches of the Sky-Tree already breathing the highest-quality Qi of that land, hearing someone treat sleep as a chosen habit sounded almost like a story from another world. Even without understanding, she swallowed the surprise in silence and lowered her head in a polite gesture.

“And your lady?” Zhì Yuǎn asked, looking at the empty doorway behind her.

Hāi'na clasped her hands over her apron.

“The Young Lady sent word that she has entered seclusion to focus on cultivation,” the maid informed. “She asked me to apologize for not being able to come help you for the next few days and ordered that I remain at your disposal for anything you may need.”

Zhì Yuǎn nodded once.

As soon as the maid withdrew and closed the mat door, Zhì Yuǎn crossed his legs on the straw and tried to draw the ambient Qi into his lungs as he had done years ago on the Peak of the Setting Sun.

Even though his open pores already pulled ambient energy to sustain the weight of the flesh, the thin thread he tried to force down his throat through breathing dissipated in his chest before even touching his Dantian.

Two days later, while he repeated yet another frustrated attempt to absorb the energy of the room, the wood of the mask warmed slightly against his nose for the span of one breath, and the red strokes on the cheeks of the carving gave a single weak pulse.

Zhì Yuǎn waited for the wood to cool again and remained still in the same place.

At the end of the first week, Hāi'na passed through the room to replace the dry pot on the workbench, avoiding looking directly at him.

“The Young Lady continues in deep seclusion, Sir,” the rabbit-eared maid said hurriedly. “Very deep.”

With no reason to stay locked between four walls, Zhì Yuǎn began walking alone through the internal galleries of the sector. Inside there, movement did not depend on the position of the sun outside.

The patrols changed shifts at the arches without noise, disciples passed carrying bark plaques or tomes regardless of the position of the sun or moon, and the burning resin never cooled in the braziers. From time to time he encountered members of the secondary families of the Red Leaf, who silently changed course the moment their eyes fell on the fox mask.

On the emptier walkways, Zhì Yuǎn stopped near the curves of the branch and ran his thumb along the grooves of the living wall. While his open pores gradually accustomed the flesh to the weight of that new air, he measured the direction of the fibers, feeling where the natural knots of the bark held the pressure of the sap and how the carved grooves distributed the flow without cracking the trunk.

With the negotiations of the Five Hegemonies stretching in the dome for weeks on end, neither the Patriarch nor any brother or sister of Lī'ya made an appearance on that floor.

In the middle of the second week, the wild-maple wood warmed on its own against his forehead while he walked through the internal corridor, fading one breath later.

In the third week, when Zhì Yuǎn crossed the smaller courtyard, Hāi'na stopped in front of him staring fixedly at the tips of her own shoes.

“She… is refining a very difficult formation now, Sir. I’ve already collected three baskets of cracked plaques at the door of the chamber, but she asked that no one knock.”

In the fourth week, Zhì Yuǎn did not even need to open his mouth. Upon seeing him pass through the gallery returning with an armful of discarded dry bark that he used to study the tension of the veins in the room, Hāi'na wilted her short ears and blurted it all out at once.

“She is drawing all the sap stones, the terrestrial metal cores, and the incense that I leave at the entrance of the chamber, Sir. She just doesn’t let anyone see her.”

Three days after that, a thick rain began to beat against the outer bark of the tree, darkening the high cracks of the chamber.

Zhì Yuǎn was seated before the low workbench, following with his thumb the slow rhythm of the floor grooves, when the edge of the mask warmed against his face.

This time the heat did not vanish.

In the next instant the mat door slid on its rails without Hāi'na’s light knock.

Lī'ya stopped two steps from the entrance. She wore a long tunic in white and red with fine embroidery that brought out the green of her eyes—a cut far nobler and more formal than the simple clothes she had worn when he first met her or the common attire of the half-humans there.

This time she did not enter skipping as she had in the first month, nor did she run to the mat. Her back was straight, hands clasped in front of her skirt—with a forgotten streak of charcoal on the tip of her right index finger—and her tail kept perfectly still behind her legs. The emerald eyes avoided the upper part of Zhì Yuǎn’s mask, settling on his tunic’s collar.

“I left the meditation chamber today,” she said, voice clear and steady. “I came to see if Sir has already thought of some way to recover his cultivation.”

Zhì Yuǎn set the wooden cup on the workbench and turned toward her.

“I thought of a beginning,” he answered in the same flat tone as always, without commenting on her disappearance. “The strength I used before no longer responds, and trying to draw the loose energy in the air had no effect. The safest path is to learn to cultivate the energy of this world from zero, following the methods here, until I accumulate enough control to open the seal locking my chest.”

Lī'ya did not furrow her brow at the term “seal,” nor did she ask questions. Her fingers merely pushed back into the depths of her sleeve the tip of a scorched bark diagram she carried hidden, before she gave a short nod, took out a small dark jade seal marked with a leaf carving, and left it on the edge of the workbench closest to the door, without approaching him.

“Understood,” she said. “In that case, Sir will need the foundation manuals. Take a look at the internal library of our sector.”

She took half a step back toward the threshold.

“With this seal, the guards give free access to the registry floors. If my…” Her tongue caught in the middle of the word, fingers closing lightly on the hem of her skirt before she corrected in a harder tone. “If the guest needs someone to carry the scrolls or find some section, one of my personal maids can help.”

Zhì Yuǎn looked at the jade seal on the workbench and then raised his face back to her.

“Thank you, Lī'ya.”

The tip of her right ear gave a single short tremor upon hearing her own name in his voice. She did not answer. She turned her face toward the corridor and vanished from the room in the blink of an eye, leaving the door to strike the frame on its own.

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*She is NOT trying to impress anyone!*