Dao of Language

I nod slowly at my father’s words, because the option of leaving the Empire is not exactly a great surprise either.

“I imagined that one too”, I answer him. “What I did not imagine is that you would put it among the two principal suggestions, because I suppose there is no need for me to remind you that traveling, in my case, is considerably more complicated than in anyone else’s.”

“There is no need for you to remind me, no”, he tells me. “But it continues to be your best option, and it is so for a very concrete reason, which is how absurd your talent is.”

Here he makes a pause.

“And so that you understand to what point it is, I have to explain to you a couple of things about cultivation that are only taught inside the Sect”, he continues. “Not because they are secret, but because they are too technical for anyone from outside to be interested in them, so outside of there hardly anyone knows them and, the people who do know them, it is all the same to them.”

And there I forget the refreshments, the tea and everything else.

“What are you referring to?” I ask him.

“To the fact that talent for cultivation is not a single facet”, he tells me. “There are two that can be measured separately.”

He settles himself a bit in the chair.

“The first is absorption time”, he begins. “When a cultivator attracts Qi, that Qi does not enter their body in the instant in which it reaches them. It takes a few heartbeats, and that number of heartbeats is different in each person, so the more talent one has, the less time it takes to absorb it.”

He raises a hand before I say anything to stop the avalanche of questions I want to ask him.

“And I already know it seems a ridiculous difference, without any importance”, he continues. “But add up those heartbeats over the course of a session, and afterward over the course of a month, and afterward over the course of twenty years. In the end, between two people who cultivate exactly the same hours, that difference can be of whole years of cultivation.”

And there he falls silent and lets me think, which I thank him for, because I have quite a lot to think about.

Because my first reaction, and I recognize it perfectly, is that concrete mixture of shame and annoyance I used to feel in my other life when someone pointed out to me at a dig something that had spent three weeks in front of my nose. How have I not noticed something so obvious? How have I been able to spend years cultivating without asking myself a single time whether everyone absorbs Qi at the same speed?

And the answers arrive right away, and they are of a humiliating simplicity. The first is that I absorb Qi instantaneously, so it never occurred to me that it could be different for other people.

And that is also part of the second reason, because to realize that you have to see another person cultivate, and I have never seen anyone cultivate.

The only time I have been in the same room as someone who was cultivating was when I took Xia to my father’s formation for the experiment, and that day, after seeing that she had begun without problems, I set about reading a book instead of paying attention.

I let the air out through my nose and look at my father, who is waiting for me to lift my gaze to continue.

“The second facet is utilization”, he tells me. “When you absorb Qi, not everything you absorb is put to use, and part is lost simply because the cultivator’s body does not manage to assimilate it. And that proportion also changes from one person to another.”

And at this point I already see perfectly where all this is going, so I ask the question that is due, although it comes out with considerably less composure than I intended.

“And me?” I ask him. “In those two facets, how do I stand?”

My father looks at me and sighs.

“In the first you are the person with the most talent I have known in my life”, he tells me. “And I don’t say it as a father, I say it as someone who has spent decades watching a great many people cultivate. In the second it is more difficult to measure without methods we don’t have here, but at the speed at which you have advanced it cannot be low either.”

He lets his words settle and goes straight to the point.

“And what I want to arrive at with all this is that your talent is not good, nor notable, nor exceptional”, he continues. “It is absurd. And if instead of having been born here, at the edge of the world, you had been born on the central continent, I am convinced that by this point you would already have opened the seven Gates and would be in the Condensation of the Elemental Cores.”

And that makes me raise my eyebrows.

“You wouldn’t be exaggerating?” I ask him.

“No”, he answers me without hesitating half a second. “And now that you have been to the Sect and know firsthand what density of Qi there is inside, I can explain it to you in a way you will understand. On the central continent, in the zones where there is least Qi, the density is at minimum five times that of the Sect.”

I stay silent after his words because I begin doing the math, and the result of the calculation obliges me to acknowledge it aloud.

“If that density is real, then you are probably right”, I tell him slowly.

My father nods at my words.

“And that brings me to the second thing I had to tell you”, he says. “The Ascension.”

“What the devil is the Ascension?” I ask him at a term that doesn’t sound at all familiar to me.

And the moment I finish saying it I realize that I have just let loose an oath at the Emperor of the Tianjing Empire, but he doesn’t even blink.

“Cultivation has a limit, a ceiling”, he tells me with all the naturalness in the world. “And when someone reaches it and still wants to keep advancing, only one way out remains to them, which consists of crossing the Celestial Rift and entering the Celestial Realm. That is called Ascending.”

And at the exact moment in which he mentions crossing the Celestial Rift, something lights up in my head, because that sounds familiar to me.

And from here on is when the Yin Gate earns the half month of hell it cost me to adapt to my improved senses, because what before was rummaging among my memories one by one is now doing it with several simultaneously, and in the space of a couple of heartbeats I clearly remember how in Xi’An, in a room of the Pavilion of the Golden Pearl, Hong Yan was explaining to me what I had asked him about the Celestial Fragments.

And there, almost at the beginning, in passing and without giving it the least importance, he told me clearly that the Celestial Rift is also the conduit used by cultivators who decide to abandon this world to try their luck in the superior realms.

I have spent years with that sentence stored away without having the least idea that it was important, so I look at my father.

“Are you telling me what I think you are telling me?” I ask him.

“Yes”, he answers me. “I think you have potential to spare to travel the path of cultivation to the end and attempt the Ascension. And I also think that that is never going to happen if you stay in this corner of the world for the simplest reason that exists, which is that here there is not enough Qi to reach the level that is needed. Neither is there now nor is there ever going to be.”

And I need a few seconds to answer that.

“I thank you for believing that I can get that far, I truly do”, I tell him when I find the words. “But talent does not fix my legs, and that continues to be the principal problem for leaving the Empire.”

My father looks at me without taking his eyes off me for a moment.

“It is a grave problem, yes”, he tells me. “But it is not a problem without a solution, and I suspect you know that much better than I do. Because if you leave you will no longer have to hide your cultivation, and that means you will be able to devote yourself openly to talismans, or to enchantments.”

He raises a finger as he looks at the book that is on top of the table.

“And those professions are going to serve you for two things at once”, he continues. “To resolve everything your legs cannot resolve, which I suspect will be considerably more than you think, and to pay for your journey. Because I will give you funds to begin it, that goes without saying, but I very much doubt that the funds I can get to you discreetly would hold out for such a long journey.”

I nod because it is a reasonable calculation, and I ask the obvious question.

“Even if I decided to leave, there is still the Sect”, I tell him. “Would they let me go?”

And at that question my father smiles.

“That is exactly the reason why I wanted to have this conversation as soon as possible”, he answers me. “Because right now there exists an opportunity for you to leave the Empire discreetly and without drawing attention. And that opportunity is not going to last.”

“What are you referring to?” I ask him.

And my father, instead of answering, asks me a question.

“Do you remember the papers they found on the dead man the day a building fell on top of you?” he says.

And I press my lips together.

“I remember perfectly”, I answer him, and I don’t manage to get the sentence out entirely clean.

Because I remember the dust, the weight of Lianhua, the tunnel I had to excavate. And I remember above all the bodies they went on pulling out one after another, all of people I didn’t know and all, without exception, dead.

My father notices it and goes on without commenting on it, which is exactly what I need him to do.

“A few weeks ago a delegation from the Tower of the Five Dragons presented itself at the Sect’s headquarters”, he tells me. “They allege that those documents were stolen from them and are negotiating their return.”

He makes a brief pause while he seems to hesitate, but then he continues.

“And now tell me one thing”, he says. “Apart from the papers, was anything else found on that man?”

And there, for an instant, I have a decision in front of me.

Because I did indeed find something else on him, a jade token, small, with unknown characters carved into it and that was tucked inside the sheath of his sword.

And saying that now would mean admitting aloud that I hid a piece of evidence from the Yushitai. It would mean, besides, handing over to the Tower of the Five Dragons the only thing I took out of the worst day of this life, so I do what I decided to do that day among the rubble, and I do it with a tranquility that, if I stopped to examine it, would probably frighten me a little.

“No”, I tell him. “The guard who searched the corpse only found what was handed over. If he was carrying something else on him, the most probable thing is that the city guard kept it when they went to remove the body.”

My father sighs at my words.

“Then it doesn’t matter”, he tells me, and with that he seems to leave that subject before going on.

“I have made discreet contact with that delegation”, he continues. “And I have gotten them to agree to take you out of the Empire and carry you as far as the city of Sanjiang, which is where the Tower’s nearest branch is and where they themselves are headed as soon as they finish here.”

And I, who in my other life did not sign a single contract without first reading the fine print, ask the question everyone ought to ask themselves in this case.

“And are they trustworthy?” I ask him. “Because one thing is to accept a commission and charge for it, and quite another is to fulfill it to the end instead of leaving me stranded at the first crossroads that suits them.”

“Others might do so”, he answers me without being the least bit offended by the question. “The Tower of the Five Dragons, no. It is probably the most expensive mercantile organization in the known world, but it is also the most reliable and the one with the best reputation, and that reputation is exactly the product it sells.”

I stay thinking a moment, turning over a detail that has been circling for a while.

“To close that agreement, did you tell them I had been Master Mu’s student?” I ask him.

“No”, he answers me. “I don’t know whether she gave you permission to say aloud that you were her disciple, and it did not seem to me that it was a decision that corresponded to me to make.”

And that, more than anything else of all he has said tonight, is what tells me to what point he has handled this matter with care, so I close my eyes and stay like that a moment, with my hands in my lap and everything I have just heard going around in my head until I open them again and lean forward as much as my body permits me.

“Thank you, Father”, I tell him when I lift my head. “For having thought about this, for having thought about it thoroughly and for having told me instead of deciding for me.”

And I breathe before continuing.

“But I need to think about it”, I tell him. “And seriously, not in haste.”

“That I take for granted”, he answers me. “Although there is something you must know before you set about thinking.”

He straightens up.

“The Tower’s delegation will be in the Empire three months at most”, he tells me. “And when that term is fulfilled they will leave because they have their own affairs, and they are not going to wait for us in spite of that preliminary agreement. So, if that is the option you want to take, that is the time you have.”

“I understand”, I tell him.

My father nods, finishes what remains in his cup and leaves it on the table before getting up.

“It will be better for me to go before too many people begin wondering where I am”, he tells me.

The bolt opens on its own because I don’t have the spirit for dramatic gestures, and the leaf of the door opens revealing the figure of Lianhua, standing exactly where I left her a good while ago.

“Good evening, Father”, I tell him.

“Good evening, Wen”, he answers me before leaving, and the door closes at his back.

I am left alone in my study, with the privacy talisman still active, with two empty cups, with a teapot that has been left lukewarm because the paper burned itself out a while ago and with a plate of refreshments partially empty.

And with two options, the throne or the journey.

But since I am not capable of leaving it be, I do what I have spent half a year promising myself I would not do, which is to take the exact words of the prophecy and try to fit them into reality like someone fitting together pieces of pottery they are not even sure belong to the same vessel.

One of those options is safer than the other, but it will lead you to a life of sorrow and regrets. And the other will lead you to a life full of dangers and risks, but if you persist in it until the end, it will lead you to a door.

The obvious thing would be to place the throne in the box of safety and the journey in that of dangers, and for some ten seconds it strikes me that the matter is resolved, but right away it becomes clear that it is not at all.

Because the throne has nothing safe about it, since to reach it one has to pass through trials that my own father has just spoken to me about indicating that there are clear possibilities of dying, and because the journey, looking at it closely, has no guarantee of being free of regrets either, since it consists of leaving behind my mother and everything I have built in thirteen years to go chase a horizon I have never seen.

And to top it off, there is the door, because I have spent half a year taking for granted that the door of the prophecy is the one at the back of that cave, the one that was covered with inscriptions and began to shine while the ceiling came down on top of me.

But it turns out that tonight I have just found out that in this world there is another, a rift in the sky that is, if anyone feels like being literal, the largest door that exists.

And that one is at the end of the option that consists of leaving, or perhaps of the one of staying, because the rift is in the sky and one can probably reach it from anywhere.

And to complicate the matter further, if we don’t discard my original idea about the door, I have been reborn in this empire, which makes it possible that this place is related to the door that brought me to this world.

I sigh at my thoughts because it clarifies absolutely nothing, since a prophecy that fits equally well into both possible answers is, more than a prophecy, a lottery.

Then I remember a valley hidden behind a mountain, an impossible tree with a golden nest in its crown and a bird the size of a small house telling me, with a softness I had not heard from him until that moment, that sometimes telling someone their destiny is the worst thing that can be done to them, and that when the moment of the choice arrived I might end up cursing his name for having told me.

And I remember also that I answered him, very sure of myself, that I would not.

I sigh and rub my face with both hands upon remembering that, because it turns out I owe a Feng an apology.

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