Dao of Language

I have spent three days at the Sect of the Celestial Sun and, at this point, all that is left for me is to learn the names of the trees that surround the house.

And that is exactly the problem, that the current situation does not allow for much more.

We are forbidden to wander around the Sect without permission, which, translated into practice, means that the entire world has been reduced to the house, to this small courtyard of packed earth, to the well that is to one side and to the first bend of the path, which is as far as my sight reaches before the trees swallow the rest of the road.

So there are no strolls, no visits and, of course, nothing remotely resembling sightseeing.

We have played Fǎnzhuǎn. So much, in fact, that Xia has beaten me two games without having to cheat, something I flatly refuse to comment on aloud and that I intend to carry with me to the grave.

That is why, when yesterday afternoon, from the bottom of the well of tedium in which I had been installed since breakfast, it occurred to me to open my mouth and comment to Lianhua that she could dedicate all this leisure time to teaching Xia a bit of self-defense.

And there, at that precise instant, I should have realized my mistake, because this morning, after breakfast, without prior announcement or ceremony of any kind, she has taken Xia out to the courtyard and has begun giving her lessons.

And here I am, three days after arriving and with the whole morning ahead of me, seated in one of the low chairs Lianhua bought at the Supply Pavilion, with the low table drawn up right beside it and a cup of tea in which two pieces of ice float that stubbornly resist melting, watching the spectacle.

Because, to be fair, it is much more entertaining than looking at the trees.

Lianhua is not teaching her to fight, that I understood within ten minutes. What she is teaching her is not to stay still, not to let herself be grabbed and, above all, to break free when they grab her.

At this moment she has her in the center of the courtyard, standing, with her arms hanging at her sides and an expression of ferocious concentration.

“The feet”, Lianhua tells her. “Not at the same height, one a bit behind the other. If both feet are in the same line, anyone who pushes you knocks you over.”

Xia moves her right foot a finger’s width backward.

“More”, insists Lianhua.

She moves it another finger’s width.

“More”, she insists again.

“But if I put it farther back I’m going to fall over all by myself!” she protests.

“No”, replies Lianhua with a serenity that admits no discussion. “You are going to fall if you put the weight where you shouldn’t. Distribute it half and half, with soft knees like I told you.”

And I watch how Xia bends her knees with all the seriousness in the world and stays planted there, like a little bird that has decided to face a storm.

I take a sip of tea, appreciate the coolness and settle myself better against the backrest, because this promises.

Lianhua approaches, encircles her wrist with her hand and squeezes just enough.

“Now break free”, she tells her.

Xia pulls backward with all the strength she can, with her teeth clenched and her face flushed, and achieves absolutely nothing, which was entirely foreseeable.

“No”, says Lianhua without letting go of her. “Not backward, toward the thumb. Always toward the thumb. It is the weak point of any grip, because a thumb alone cannot go against a whole arm. Turn your wrist and start from there.”

Xia furrows her brow, turns her wrist slowly, searches for the gap, and suddenly her arm slides out of Lianhua’s hand as if it had been greased with oil.

And the face she makes upon achieving it, that mixture of absolute astonishment and excessive triumph, draws from me a guffaw I don’t manage to disguise in time.

“Wen, I did it!” she shouts as she turns toward me with her arm raised.

“I saw it”, I answer her smiling. “And it was most dignified.”

“Again”, orders Lianhua, impassive. “And this time, the moment you break free, run.”

Xia blinks.

“Run?” she asks as if to confirm it.

“Run”, confirms Lianhua. “Breaking free is of no use if you stay there stopped admiring how well you have broken free. You break free and you run. Always. And if possible, toward wherever there is the greatest quantity of people.”

Lianhua then moves on to the next lesson and now she is positioning Xia with precision, correcting the position of her body, her chin, her shoulders, the distance between her elbows and her ribs.

“Elbows tucked in”, she tells her as she lowers one arm with two fingers. “Hands up, but without closing your fists. Open. If you keep them open you will have more options to adapt to whatever your opponent does, and that is always an advantage.”

And I am just thinking that that detail is surprisingly shrewd when Lianhua interrupts herself in the middle of the sentence.

It is nothing dramatic, she simply stops speaking and lifts her gaze toward the path, so I look too.

And around the bend of the road, among the trees, there appears a man.

He is old, very old, or at least that is the appearance he has, although in a place like this one learns quickly that appearance and age are not always the same thing. He has white hair gathered on top of his head and a beard, also white, long and well-kept, of those that one clearly combs every day with a dedication that borders on pride.

He also wears the tunic of the Sect, but this one has embroidered on it a symbol I don’t recognize.

Lianhua says nothing. She simply leaves what she is doing and comes to position herself at my side. Xia, without anyone having to indicate it to her, brushes off her hands and her clothing and then places herself behind the two of us.

The man climbs the path without any haste. And it is not that he walks slowly because of his age, it is that he walks slowly with that tranquil and absolute step of one who has not had to hurry for anyone in a very long time and sees no reason whatsoever to start doing so today.

When he reaches the courtyard, he stops a couple of steps from the table and then he looks.

But he does not look at the three of us. He passes over Lianhua and Xia the way one passes over two flowerpots someone has left in the wrong place, without hostility, without disdain, and fixes his eyes directly on me.

“I assume you are Sun Wen”, he says. “The daughter of Sun Hao.”

And for a fraction of a second, I am alarmed.

Because he has just pronounced my father’s given name. Just like that, without title, without formula, without the least ceremony, with the same naturalness with which I would say the name of a classmate.

But the surprise lasts as long as my memory takes to find the precedent, because I have lived this before. The Elder Feng did exactly the same thing in front of me, with the same tone and the same unconcern, and I had then the same surprise I am having now.

So that the conclusion arrives on its own and at a speed I greatly appreciate, and it is that this man, if he is not an Elder, is at the very least someone high enough in the hierarchy to permit himself to speak that way about my father.

And in either of the two cases, the correct response is the same, so I rest my hands on the low table, incline my torso as much as my body permits me and compose the cleanest bow I can offer.

“That is so, I am Sun Wen”, I tell him with the warmest and most polite voice of my repertoire, which is a fairly ample repertoire. “I beg you to excuse my ignorance, but I have just arrived at the Sect and I am still unacquainted with many of its customs. Could you tell me in what manner I should address you?”

The man does not answer right away, instead of that he observes me a moment and I see with all clarity how something in his expression softens a bit, so I suppose he expected to find an ill-mannered girl and has found something else.

“Calling me Yi Ruyi is enough”, he replies at last as he strokes his beard with one hand.

And with that I have more than enough to know that the ground is prepared and that it must be taken advantage of immediately.

“Lianhua, Xia”, I say turning my head barely. “Bring a cup for the esteemed Yi Ruyi. And some refreshments.”

The two of them move at once, with a polite haste, and disappear into the house.

Lianhua returns almost instantly. She brings one of the cushions under her arm and a cup in her hand, and without saying a single word leaves the cushion on the floor on the other side of the table, right across from me, and places the cup in front of the cushion.

Yi Ruyi comments nothing, gives no thanks, makes no gesture of courtesy and of course does not even acknowledge that Lianhua exists. He simply sits with an ease that completely belies the years he appears to have, and the moment he is settled, Lianhua leans over, takes the teapot and serves him the tea with discretion.

And once it is served, and because a hostess must offer what she has, I ask the question.

“Would you like a bit of ice in your tea?” I say to him.

And that one does obtain a reaction, since Yi Ruyi lifts his gaze, looks at me an instant as if he weren’t sure he had heard correctly, and then lowers his eyes toward my cup, where indeed my two pieces of ice float turning lazily on the surface.

He stays looking at them a good while, with an intrigue he doesn’t bother to disguise.

“I have never heard of anyone who takes their tea with ice”, he says at last.

“It is a custom I acquired recently”, I explain to him with all the naturalness in the world. “Since the fire Qi surge arrived, the capital has become an oven and drinking hot tea in the middle of such swelter turned out simply unbearable to me. So I began adding ice to it, and I confess to you that I no longer know how to go back.”

And then, because it never hurts to plant a seed, I let out a small sigh and lower my tone a bit.

“Although I’m afraid it is a whim whose days are numbered”, I add with just the right amount of sadness. “I don’t have many freezing talismans left, and the prices they have reached in the capital are simply scandalous. If the surge lasts much longer, I will have to resign myself to drinking it hot like everyone else.”

Yi Ruyi nods slowly at my words, with the face of one who registers a fact that does not interest him.

And, of course, he does not ask for ice. He simply takes the cup with both hands and drinks a sip of tea the way it has always been drunk.

Well, I didn’t expect to win every hand either.

I then let the obligatory silence pass, that margin of courtesy that consists of never launching into the matter that interests one before the guest has touched their drink. I take a sip of mine, let an agreeable moment pass, and only then do I speak.

“I thank you very much for having come all the way up here, esteemed Yi Ruyi”, I tell him. “Although I must confess to you that I was not expecting visits. May I ask you what it is that brings you to this residence?”

He leaves the cup on the table without any haste.

“I have heard that you were looking for a way to get in contact with someone from the Chamber of the Scriptures”, he replies with complete tranquility.

And afterward, without changing his tone in the least, he adds the rest.

“Since I am the one in charge of the Chamber, and since it also happens that Sun Hao and I are old friends, it seemed to me that snubbing his daughter would not have been appropriate”, he continues. “So here I am.”

And I nod with a perfectly serene smile while, inside, I begin to understand that I had calculated wrong.

I had taken for granted, listening to Song Yan, that that small parallel business of selling techniques was exactly that, a makeshift arrangement, a little market set up by a handful of sharp disciples who took advantage of their post to have some small earnings at the expense of the children of the nobles of the Empire. Something tolerated only for being small, dirty and irrelevant.

And it turns out not. It turns out that the man I have seated across from me is the one in charge of the Chamber. And if the one in charge of the Chamber takes the trouble to personally climb a mountain to attend to a potential client, then, either he is the one who directs the business, or he is the second in command. And if he is only the second, then above him there has to be an Elder. Or several.

Which explains in a frankly elegant manner why no one has ever made the least effort to repress it. It is not corruption from the base, it is a source of income for the summit, managed from above and disguised as petty dealing.

I drink a bit of tea while I finish ordering my thoughts and decide, without turning it over too much, what my strategy is going to be. To beat around the bush with a man who has climbed all the way up here precisely to sell would be a waste of time for both of us and, worse still, he could interpret it as my taking him for a fool. So I am not going to be brazen, but neither am I going to wander off on tangents.

“I thank you enormously for the deference”, I tell him as I leave the cup on the table. “And, since you have had the kindness to come in person, allow me to be clear so as not to make you lose time. It is true that I wanted to get in contact with someone from the Chamber of the Scriptures, and the motive is that I have heard some disciples comment that there would exist a certain possibility of acquiring some of the most elementary techniques of the Sect, even without having Merits.”

Yi Ruyi listens to me without interrupting, with that stillness of those who have spent decades negotiating. When I finish, he takes the cup, drinks another sip, takes his time and only then answers, and he does it with a kind, almost paternal tone.

“Under normal conditions, it would be completely impossible”, he says. “Someone outside the Sect does not acquire techniques of the Sect. That is the rule and it exists for very good reasons.”

He makes a pause.

“However, taking into account that you are the daughter of Sun Hao, and taking into account also that Sun Hao will soon be an Elder of this Sect, I am disposed to do that favor for my friend’s daughter”, he continues. “Now then, don’t be mistaken about the scope of what I am offering you. I can only put at your disposal the three most common techniques that exist here. The three that are taken for granted every member of the Sect will end up mastering sooner or later. Not one more.”

And I, while I compose the appropriate expression of gratitude, cannot help admiring the maneuver.

Because this old fox has not climbed the mountain out of friendship, nor out of deference, nor out of any of the pretty things he has just said. He has climbed because before long there is going to be a new Elder in this Sect, and to that new Elder there will have arrived, by then, quite a few stories about how his daughter was treated during her stay. And the day that happens, Yi Ruyi wants to be the name that appears in the correct column of the list. What he is selling me is not three techniques, it is a cheap favor today in exchange for preferential treatment tomorrow.

And to me, frankly, that seems splendid, because one doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and even less so when the horse comes saddled and with the bridle on.

So I rest my hands on the table again and bow for the second time, and this one I make even deeper than the first.

“Your generosity overwhelms me, esteemed Yi Ruyi”, I tell him. “I thank you sincerely, both in my own name and in that of my father, who will doubtless know how to appreciate the consideration you have had with his daughter.”

And there, right there, I see how my words work, because Yi Ruyi strokes his beard again as he nods slowly, with a satisfaction he no longer even tries to hide, and for a couple of seconds I get the impression that the man is doing calculations mentally and they are coming out the way he likes them.

“Even so, there is something that must be clear from the beginning”, he says next, and his tone turns a shade drier. “I cannot give them to you as a gift however much esteem I may have for Sun Hao. The techniques of the Sect are not given away to anyone, and even less outside the system of Merits. Since you have no Merits nor any way of obtaining them, you will have to exchange them for spirit stones.”

He makes a brief pause.

“And I warn you beforehand that they are not cheap”, he finishes.

“I understand perfectly, and I have not the least problem with it”, I reply without hesitating an instant. “It would be unthinkable to expect the Sect to part with something valuable without receiving anything in exchange. But, if you will permit me the question, I would like to know which exactly are those three techniques among which I can choose.”

Yi Ruyi nods, leaves the cup and raises a finger.

“To begin with, there is the Qi Grip technique”, he says. “It is the superior version of the Qi Hold, which is the one the Sect released in its day so that it could be used freely in the Empire.”

“And what does the difference consist of?” I ask.

“In that the Qi Hold has a fixed weight limit”, he explains. “What you can lift is what you can lift, and there the discussion ends. The Qi Grip, on the other hand, allows its user, if they make the effort, to surpass that normal limit during a brief period of time. Not in a sustained or comfortable manner, but enough to resolve a specific problem. And in the world of cultivation, that kind of margin is the difference between being able to do something and not being able to do anything.”

And while I listen to him, a very concrete memory comes to my mind.

The day I turned eight, in the formation room, my father looked at the circle of runes, then looked at me, and deciding that the simplest solution was to put me inside chair and all, raised his arm and my chair floated to the exact center of the formation with me gripping the armrests and with my stomach in my throat.

And I also remember the drops of sweat I saw on his forehead afterward.

I remember that at that moment it struck me as a curious detail and nothing more. I remember having thought that what he had just done was not as simple as he had wanted to make it appear, and now, several years later, that detail finally fits into its place, because a wheelchair with a girl seated on top weighs considerably more than I could lift even with the Dragon’s Grip.

That means it was the Qi Grip. My father made the effort, surpassed his limit for a few seconds and left me in the center of the circle thanks to that.

I am still considering that idea when the door of the house slides open and Xia comes out.

She crosses the courtyard with a plate in her hands, leaves it on the table beside Yi Ruyi’s cup, steps back a pace, makes an impeccable bow without lifting her gaze from the floor and withdraws in silence to position herself behind me.

I lower my gaze toward the plate out of curiosity, and I have to make a small effort not to smile.

Because they are small refreshments, simple, well arranged, and they are all, absolutely all, of spirit food. From the pile Lianhua bought the other day at the Supply Pavilion.

That girl has had, in the time it took her to cross the courtyard, the notion to calculate that a high-ranking cultivator is not entertained with ordinary little cakes, has decided on her own account and risk to draw on the expensive reserve, and has done all that without anyone indicating it to her and without asking a single question aloud.

I mentally note to congratulate her as soon as I can, and I also note, in passing, that I am going to have to start taking more seriously the head that girl has.

Yi Ruyi looks at the plate, extends his hand without haste, takes one of the refreshments and eats it.

And I notice perfectly the exact moment in which he realizes what it is, because there is a minimal pause in the chewing, followed by a gesture of approval that does not quite become a smile but that resembles one fairly closely.

“Acceptable”, he says.

I say nothing, I limit myself to waiting in silence, with my hands still and the cup on the table, while he finishes eating with all the calm in the world. Because to hurry a man who is eating your sweets while he decides how much he is going to charge you would be, simply, an idiocy.

When he finishes, he wipes his fingers and takes up the explanation where he had left it.

“The second technique I can offer you is called Sensing the Qi”, he says.

“And what does it do?” I ask.

“It depends on what level your cultivation has reached”, he answers. “At its initial level, and in the case that whoever uses it has not yet completed the Gate Opening, the technique permits artificially replicating one of the effects obtained upon completing it, which is that of being able to examine with Qi other people or objects that are found within your area of influence.”

He makes a pause to let me assimilate it, and continues.

“And in the case that whoever uses it has indeed already completed the Gate Opening, then the technique changes in nature and its effect becomes partially passive”, he continues. “That means that its user continuously perceives the approximate level of Qi of all the objects that are within that same area.”

And I stay very still, because I have just understood why this technique is considered basic, and it is due to the fact that it is not a combat technique nor a utility technique. It is a technique of social survival.

I am in a place where absolutely everyone considers themselves superior to others by the simple fact of having a superior level of cultivation, where an unfortunate word makes someone become an enemy forever and where the only way not to commit a fatal blunder is to know, before opening your mouth, whether the person you have in front of you is an ill-humored outer disciple or someone who could split you in half without changing expression.

This is not basic equipment, this is a map in the middle of a minefield.

And, besides, there is a second reading that interests me even more, and it is that I have not completed the Gate Opening nor am I going to complete it soon, with which this technique would give me in advance, and in exchange for a few spirit stones, a capacity that in theory would not correspond to me until quite some time from now.

I’m buying. I’m buying without looking at the price, although evidently I don’t intend to say it aloud.

And then, when I am already calculating how to formulate the next question without my enthusiasm showing, Yi Ruyi does something he had not done until now.

He stops and lets a deliberate silence pass, strokes his beard, and there is something in his manner of taking that time that puts me on guard, because it is exactly what a salesman does when he arrives at the item he really wanted to show you.

“The third is a bit special”, he says at last.

“Special in what sense?” I ask.

“In the sense that no one else has it”, he replies. “The other two you will find, with other names and with small variations, in any sect of the continent. This one, on the other hand, is exclusive to the Sect of the Celestial Sun because one of our ancestors brought it from a Celestial Fragment a very long time ago now, and since then it has not left these walls.”

He takes the cup, drinks one last sip and leaves it carefully on the table.

“We call it the Golden Silk Net”, he says. “Although that is not its true name. Its true name is rather stranger, as tends to happen with the techniques that come from Celestial Fragments.”

That intrigues me, and it is clear that Yi Ruyi is wanting to intrigue me, so I take the bait delightedly and ask him the question he is waiting for.

“And what is its true name?” I ask with genuine curiosity.

“The Golden Chains of Ogma”, he answers me.

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