Dao of Language

I contemplate with incredulity how the Disciple leaves without giving us any further instructions and without even giving us an explanation of how we are supposed to have to live here, so I have no choice but to stop being kind to him.

“Disciple, one moment”, I say, raising my voice. “I have a rather important question to ask you before you leave.”

He stops, turns around and looks at me with an expression that makes it quite clear that the word important, in my mouth, arouses in him the same respect as if it had been pronounced by a duck.

Upon seeing his expression, I smile at him with all the sweetness in the world.

“You see, a doubt has arisen for me”, I tell him. “You have just explained to me, very clearly, that we cannot leave here without permission and without company. And that seems very well to me, I will not be the one to dispute the rules of the Sect, but that leaves me with a small practical problem that I don’t know how to resolve.”

I make a brief pause, just enough to make myself interesting.

“How are we going to obtain food and drink?” I ask him.

The Inner Disciple blinks, and there, for the second time in the afternoon, his facade cracks, although this time not out of interest, but out of pure and simple bewilderment while on his face there appears for an instant the unmistakable expression of someone who has just been presented with a question that had not crossed their mind even remotely.

So, taking advantage of the moment, I give him the final push.

“I ask you because the provisions we brought for the road are practically exhausted”, I continue with the same kindness. “And it would be a true shame if, when the Elders decide to summon me for my interview and send someone to fetch me, the only thing that someone found in this house were my corpse, dead of starvation for not having been able to go out to look for something to put in my mouth. Imagine the situation, apart from the fact that I don’t know whether that outcome would help the reputation of the Sect.”

The silence that follows is delicious, since the Inner Disciple furrows his brow and holds my gaze, and I see perfectly how a battle is waged behind those eyes because he is not stupid, not by a long shot, and he has caught the cynicism of my words with all clarity, and a part of him would like to answer me something cutting and settle the matter.

But there is another part that has just realized that, however much I may exaggerate, I am completely right. That no one has told him who is going to feed us, that he hasn’t asked either and that if something happens to the Emperor’s daughter, however absurd it may be, in the house in which he has left her and from which he has forbidden her to leave, there is going to be a name on the tip of every tongue.

I see how the muscles of his jaw tense.

“I will mention it to my Master”, he tells me at last, in a dry voice.

And without waiting for a reply, he turns around and moves away down the path at a considerably faster pace than the one he has kept the whole way, and the three of us are left alone, contemplating how his figure disappears behind a bend of the path.

“Wen”, Xia says to me after a moment, and by her tone I already know what is coming. “Was it a good idea to tell him that way? He seemed angry.”

I turn toward her and smile at her, because the question is legitimate and deserves a real answer.

“Xia”, I tell her. “If that man had taken his assignment seriously, even if only a little, instead of treating it like a nuisance he had to get rid of as soon as possible and with the least possible effort, he would have taken the trouble to find out before coming how we were going to be fed, who was going to bring us water or whom we should notify if a problem arose, and besides he would have told me upon arriving without my having to ask anything.”

I point with my chin at the empty path down which he has gone.

“But he hasn’t done it, he has simply let loose his sentence, the prohibition and turned around, so the only way left to me of obtaining that information was to ask him myself”, I continue. “And if asking him something as elementary as who is going to give us food strikes him as an offense, then the problem is not mine, but that of whoever entrusted the task to someone who had no intention of fulfilling it properly.”

Xia meditates on it a second and then nods very slowly, with that concentrated seriousness she has at times, and with the matter settled I turn my head toward the building.

“Anyway”, I say. “That’s enough of disciples for today. Let’s go see where they have put us and, above all, find out why the devil he called it a cave. Although, seeing how it is built, I can imagine it fairly well.”

Lianhua pushes the chair toward the house, with the second talisman still active and the chair floating just enough to clear the small step of the entrance without problems. Xia overtakes us at a run to arrive first, and when we reach the door she already has it wide open, stepping aside with her hand extended and a small theatrical bow that draws a smile from me.

The interior is exactly what one could expect, that is to say, sober to the point of austerity, but clean and in good condition.

There is an entrance hall accessed directly from the door, with a low table, some cushions to sit on and a stove for cooking. From there four rooms lead off, and we go through them one by one.

The first has a bed, a chest and little more.

The second is completely empty, with the bare wooden floor.

The third, the same.

The fourth, the smallest, is a small bathroom that has only the most basic.

“There is only one bed”, Xia observes after going through all the rooms, furrowing her brow at the situation.

“And that means the other two rooms are not conceived for sleeping”, I reply as I make a quick calculation. “Which, if you think about it, has its logic. In a place where people spend the day cultivating and practicing, I imagine an empty room is more useful than a spare bed.”

But what really draws the attention is at the back of the entrance hall, in the rear wall, because there there is a door.

And that door is not like the others, since this one is of stone, a smooth, thick slab, fitted directly into the rock of the mountain, and it is evident at first sight that it does not form part of the house, but rather that the house has been built around it.

The three of us stay in front of it, looking at it in silence.

“Why is it made of stone?” Xia asks in a low voice, and with a tone that has suddenly lost all its enthusiasm.

And the truth is that the question has its substance, because it is exactly the one I am asking myself.

Because in my experience, which is scant but is supported by an indecent quantity of books, manga, movies and games across two different lives, when someone takes the trouble to put a door of solid stone at the back of a house it is usually for one of two motives. Either because they don’t want anyone to get in, or worse, they don’t want what is behind it to get out.

And neither of the two options invites one much to open the door.

“There could be something dangerous in there”, says Lianhua, without taking her eyes off the slab, and in her voice I recognize that exaggeratedly calm neutrality she employs whenever she is evaluating a threat.

I think about it a moment and then shake my head.

“I don’t think so”, I say at last. “Think about it carefully. They have assigned us this house against the judgment of at least one of their disciples, and that disciple was annoyed precisely because they have given us something too good, not something dangerous. If behind that door there were a bottomless pit or a chained beast, one must suppose that someone would have taken the trouble to warn us, if only so as not to have to explain afterward why the Emperor’s daughter has disappeared under mysterious circumstances.”

I look a bit more closely at the door and contemplate the slab.

“And then there is the other clue”, I add. “He called this place a cave. Not a house, nor a residence, nor a pavilion. A cave. And this house, however you look at it, has absolutely nothing of a cave about it.”

“Except for whatever is behind there”, I finish saying as I point at the door with my chin. “So what is on the other side is not a hidden danger, it is the part of the lodging that gives it its name.”

Lianhua weighs my words, nods slowly and, without saying anything more, steps forward.

She rests her hands against the stone, feels around a moment searching for how it opens, and when she finds it, she slides the slab to one side with a grave and sandy rumble, much softer than its size gave one to expect.

And from the other side there comes a gust of air, a cool air, slightly humid, with that clean and mineral smell of deep rock.

We enter, and the first thing I confirm is that the cave is, simply, a room. A room excavated into the mountain, not too large, with walls of polished stone and a vaulted ceiling, without furniture, without decoration, without anything.

Without anything, save for what is on the floor, because in the exact center of the room, carved directly into the rock with precision, there is an enormous circle of runes that is clearly a Qi-gathering formation.

At my side, Lianhua has stopped the moment she crossed the threshold without saying anything and stays very still, with her eyes narrowed and her chin slightly raised as she breathes deeply, very slowly, twice. And then she runs her gaze over the walls and the ceiling with an expression I know very well, that mixture of contained surprise and professional appreciation that comes over her when something truly impresses her and she doesn’t want it to show.

“Zhāohuán Wen”, she says at last, and her voice sounds different. “The formation is not active.”

“I can see that”, I reply.

“And even so, the concentration of Qi of this cave is far superior to that of the exterior”, she continues as she turns slowly to look at me.

A silence occurs, and to verify what Lianhua says I close my eyes and begin to meditate to contemplate the Qi around me.

And what I see astonishes and thrills me in equal parts, since the quantity of Qi around me, even with the Qi-gathering formation switched off, is at least triple that which there is in my residence at the Imperial Palace.

The fire Qi continues to be everywhere, which is inevitable, and the earth Qi is also quite abundant, something I suppose is due to being underground, but even with that, the neutral Qi present is superior to what there would be in my residence even under normal circumstances.

I stop concentrating to return to normality, I smile as I contemplate the formation, those runes carved into the stone, and then I contemplate the entire cave, with its dense and clean air while I make a mental calculation that leaves me with an almost indecent aftertaste of satisfaction.

“Lianhua”, I say slowly. “I am very sorry for the Nei Wei who have stayed waiting in the village with the carriage to return me to the Imperial Palace when this is over. I truly am.”

I tilt my head and contemplate the Qi-gathering formation with more attention.

“But I have just realized that, suddenly, I have a terrible desire for the Elders to take their time. All the time in the world, if they wish”, I continue. “Let them think it over slowly, let them consult among themselves, let them argue, let them postpone the meeting a couple of times and be in no hurry at all to summon me.”

“It would be a discourtesy on our part not to make proper use of the Sect’s kindness, don’t you think?” I finish as I lift my gaze toward Lianhua.

But Lianhua does not return my smile, instead of that, her eyes make a quick journey around the room, over the ceiling, over the walls, over the door open at our backs, and when she speaks again she does so in a much lower voice.

“It would be more prudent to be careful, Zhāohuán Wen”, she tells me. “We don’t know whether someone is observing us.”

And she is right, of course. She always is, since it is her job to be.

But I have spent five days swallowing looks of contempt, three flights of stairs carried by hand and a guide who has not even deigned to tell me his name, and at this precise moment, seated in the center of a cave that contains Qi as if it were a swimming pool, I feel entitled to a bit of optimism.

“True”, I concede. “But look at the other side of that coin, Lianhua, they don’t know what you are capable of either.”

She does not respond, but something in the line of her shoulders changes very slightly, and I know she has understood perfectly what I mean.

“So let us do things right”, I continue, and now no longer smiling, because this is what truly matters. “Today we are not going to do anything, absolutely nothing. We are three tired travelers who have just arrived, who unpack their backpacks, who prepare the little they have left to eat and who go to sleep early. Nothing more, and if someone is watching us, let them get bored.”

I make a pause.

“But in the meantime, I want you to inspect the surroundings of the house”, I go on as I smile. “I want to know whether there is anyone posted watching us, and if there is, where they are, how many they are and how often they are relieved. Take all the time you need and do it well, because everything else depends on that.”

“As you order, Zhāohuán Wen”, she tells me as she inclines her head.

And then I look again at the formation, that circle of runes sleeping beneath my feet, and I let the smile return little by little to my face.

“And if it turns out that the best of cases occurs”, I add in a low voice. “That they consider us so insignificant, so absolutely irrelevant that they haven’t even bothered to post a single man to watch the house of the invalid who has come to be interviewed and then sent back home…”

I breathe deeply, and I can almost feel the Qi of the cave entering my lungs, dense and abundant as I have never known it anywhere else.

“Then we will be able to eat until we burst”, I finish.

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