Dao of Language

Guifei Xiang sat in her study organizing a series of reports that had been piling up over the past few days. They were minor documents, most of them related to the maintenance of the Pavilion of the Scent of Clouds and the routine accounts of her residence, but even though she would have preferred to spend her time painting, even the most mundane tasks required her supervision if she didn’t want some important detail slipping through her fingers.

She was about to set one of the reports aside when the door opened and Fei Yi Lingxi entered with several papers in her hands. Without pausing to ask permission, she closed the door behind her with the ease of someone accustomed to the act and approached the desk under Guifei Xiang’s attentive gaze.

“As Master Mu promised, she has sent us all the information her contacts were able to find on Fei Lan’s business dealings”, Lingxi said as she placed the papers on the desk with care.

Hearing Lingxi, Guifei Xiang set down the reports she’d been holding and looked at the newly deposited papers with a mixture of interest and surprise.

“I expected it would take longer”, she said, her fingers brushing the edge of the documents without opening them yet. “She was quite fast.”

Lingxi allowed herself a half-smile that didn’t quite reach humor before replying.

“I suppose the anger she felt when she learned that little Wen had nearly been poisoned to death because of that woman hasn’t faded yet”, she said in a tone that aimed for neutral but let a certain satisfaction show through.

She paused briefly, as though weighing whether to say what came next, but finally continued.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t have stopped her”, Lingxi added, and this time her voice dropped to the register she adopted when saying something she truly believed but knew she shouldn’t say aloud. “If we’d let her go deal with the woman, we would have been rid of the threat once and for all.”

Hearing Lingxi, Guifei Xiang sighed as she leaned back slightly in her chair and fixed her handmaiden with a look she had perfected over years of dealing with her, one that combined patience and firmness in equal measure.

“It’s true that Fei Lan is maneuvering to undermine our reputation as much as she can”, she said calmly. “But we don’t have absolute certainty that she was the one who planned the poisoning of my daughter.”

She raised a hand before Lingxi could interrupt.

“And without proof to confirm it, nothing can be done, especially with the sect’s decree hanging over our heads”, she concluded, letting those words settle in the air of the study.

But Guifei Xiang wasn’t finished, and her expression grew more serious when she continued.

“Besides, think about it carefully”, she told Lingxi, lacing her fingers together on the desk. “If a foreigner attempted to murder one of the Emperor’s consorts, whether or not she’s actually capable of it, while serving as the Zhāohuán’s Master, the already poor reputation my daughter has would fall even further.”

She paused, her eyes drifting briefly toward the study’s window before settling on Lingxi again.

“Or it could even have far worse consequences if the noble families of the other consorts press for them”, she finished, and the weight of those words was evident to both of them, since they knew all too well the cruelty with which the court’s factions exploited any weakness to destroy their rivals.

Hearing Guifei Xiang’s explanation, Lingxi let out a sigh as her posture relaxed just barely, enough to reveal for an instant the woman behind the handmaiden’s title.

“Sometimes I miss the days before the Imperial Palace”, she said in a voice that sounded more tired than usual. “When the conspiracies we had to face amounted to stealing a seamstress from one another or trying to discredit one of your paintings.”

Guifei Xiang listened and, for the briefest of moments, something resembling nostalgia crossed her gaze, so fleeting that anyone who didn’t know her as well as Lingxi would have missed it.

“Sometimes so do I”, she replied in a low voice. “But life often doesn’t go where we’d like, and all we can do is deal with what’s in front of us.”

And with those words, as though the brief moment of vulnerability had been enough and she could no longer afford another, Guifei Xiang picked up the papers Lingxi had left on the desk and began leafing through them. Her eyes swept the first pages as she nodded to herself.

“With the help of the information Master Mu has sent, this is more than enough”, she said as she continued turning pages, and in her voice there was something Lingxi hadn’t heard in a long time: the determination of someone who has finally found a weapon with which to strike back.

“With this we can plan how to attack those businesses and begin cutting off the First Consort’s source of financing”, Guifei Xiang continued, her tone growing sharper, more calculating. “The source with which both she and the First Prince are more than likely bribing senior government officials and at least one Elder of the Sect to increase the chances of her son being chosen as the next Emperor.”

And then, slowly, a smile appeared on Guifei Xiang’s lips. It was not a warm or kind smile but a cruel one that transformed her usually serene features into something Lingxi recognized as the expression of a mother who had found a way to hurt those who were attacking her daughter.

“There’s another factor that makes things even worse for them”, Guifei Xiang added, her gaze fixing on Lingxi with a gleam that was almost predatory. “With the delay the Sect has imposed on the selection, it’s almost certain their finances are going to be very tight very soon.”

She let those words hang in the air before continuing with that same smile full of cruelty.

“And any interruption to their income could do them enormous harm”, she said, her voice acquiring an almost sweet softness that contrasted with the cruelty of what she was describing. “Because there is nothing more ungrateful than someone you’ve been feeding who suddenly has their food cut off.”

Lingxi listened attentively, but something in the explanation didn’t quite convince her, and her brow furrowed slightly as she seemed to hesitate before posing her question.

“And how is that going to help prevent them from making another move against little Wen?” she asked at last, and in her voice there was a genuine concern that made it clear that above any political strategy, her priority remained the safety of the child she had watched grow up.

Guifei Xiang looked at her handmaiden with an expression that blended patience and calculation in equal measure, because she understood perfectly where Lingxi’s question came from.

“For Fei Lan, there is nothing more important in the world than making her son the next Emperor and thus becoming the Empress Mother”, she explained calmly. “So when her backyard starts going up in flames, she’ll fight with everything she has to put out that fire.”

She paused to let Lingxi connect the pieces herself.

“Which means she won’t have time for petty plots motivated by mere prestige”, Lingxi concluded on her own.

And then Guifei Xiang’s cruel smile widened, transforming into something Lingxi had seen on only the rarest of occasions, an expression that belonged not to the serene consort who bore the court’s humiliations with dignity, but to the woman who had decided it was time to return every blow she had received.

“I no longer care who becomes the next Emperor”, Guifei Xiang said, and every word left her lips with the precision of someone who had made an irrevocable decision. “But simply for having attacked my daughter, I am going to do everything in my power to make sure the First Prince never gets there.”

Her eyes, normally so serene, shone with a determination that was almost fierce as she spoke her final words.

“Because she considers it the destiny she is owed”, she said, and Lingxi understood she was referring to Fei Lan. “And if she fails to reach it, from her perspective, it would be something worse than death.”

In an empty room, and not empty in the sense of abandoned or disused, but empty in a deliberate way, with the precision of someone who had removed every piece of furniture, every ornament, and every object that might interfere with what she intended to do, the bare walls reflected the dim light filtering through a single window covered by translucent paper, and the polished stone floor had been swept until not a single mote of dust disturbed its surface.

And in the center of that room, occupying a considerable portion of the floor, was a formation.

Its lines spread across the floor in a structure that departed from the more common triangular or square configurations, forming a hexagon filled with lines and runes that was not concealed by the eternal circle formation creators typically used.

A formation that, if any of the Formation Masters the Empire considered its most competent could have seen it, would have caused their first reaction to be a long moment of stillness, followed by the immediate recognition that what lay before them was beyond what they themselves would be capable of creating and belonged to another level of understanding of the principles governing formations.

And after that recognition, it was more than likely that any one of them would have begged the person who had created it to accept them as an apprentice, regardless of their age, their position, or their pride, because in the face of such a demonstration, pride becomes a luxury no serious scholar can afford.

But the person who had drawn that formation was not a Formation Master, and Master Mu stood at the formation’s edge with the closed fan hanging from her right hand while her eyes traced every line, every rune, and every intersection with a gaze that was critical and evaluating, the same gaze she usually directed at her pupil’s work when searching for errors to correct.

And she found them. But Master Mu contemplated those defects for an instant and then exhaled through her nose with a brief sound that didn’t quite amount to a sigh but conveyed a controlled resignation.

Formations were not her specialty. They never had been and probably never would be, because her talent and her interest had always lain elsewhere, and she preferred to spend her limited time on what truly mattered to her.

Finally, after a few more seconds of evaluation, Master Mu decided the formation was good enough for what she needed. It wasn’t perfect, and it wouldn’t have been even if she’d drawn it ten times over, but it would serve its purpose, and that, considering what she intended to do today required the combination of two disciplines that were not her own, was more than acceptable.

With a fluid movement, Master Mu slid her hand inside her sleeve and from the depths of that sleeve, which contained more space than its appearance suggested, she extracted a dozen spirit stones.

The stones rested in her palm for an instant and, with a gesture of her hand, all twelve rose from her palm, each one then directing itself toward a specific point on the formation, a node where the lines converged and where the stone’s energy would be channeled to power the whole.

But Master Mu wasn’t finished. Her hand dipped back into the sleeve and this time what she extracted was different.

First came a piece of metal that rested in her left palm, a silver-colored fragment with a gleam indicating it was no ordinary metal. And alongside it, held between her index finger and thumb, a pair of small pearls.

Master Mu regarded the three objects for a moment and something that might have been satisfaction crossed her face, for they were good materials. Not the best she had used in her life, not the ones she would have had at her disposal back home, but the best she had on hand in a place like this.

Master Mu closed her eyes for an instant, no more than a couple of heartbeats, and when she opened them again, she activated the formation.

The formation’s lines began to glow and, with the formation finally active, Master Mu acted.

In a fluid motion she tossed the piece of metal and the two pearls toward the center of the formation, where the three objects crossed the air in a brief arc until they reached the center, where they stopped, floating at the height of Master Mu’s waist. They remained motionless except for an almost imperceptible rotation that set them spinning slowly on their own axes.

Master Mu observed the floating objects for an instant and then, with a deliberation indicating that what came next demanded her full attention, she let the fan drop. It fell to the floor with a soft sound that Master Mu didn’t register because her concentration was already elsewhere.

Her hands rose before her and began moving through a series of complicated seals that caused the metal in the center of the formation to react.

The metal responded to the first seal with a glow that spread across its entire surface.

At the second seal the brightness intensified and the metal began to change. Its surface lost its rigidity and started to ripple, as though hesitating between maintaining its shape and abandoning it.

At the third seal the metal did not melt as in a furnace. Instead its structure shifted directly from solid to liquid, forming a brilliant, pulsating sphere of liquid metal that floated in the center of the formation.

Master Mu did not pause. Her hands continued forming seals as she forced the sphere of liquid metal to shrink in a slow but inexorable way, as though an invisible force were squeezing it from all sides simultaneously, compressing it.

The compression continued until the sphere, which had initially been the size of a fist, shrank to little more than a walnut, at which point Master Mu, seeming satisfied, halted the compression with a precise gesture of her fingers.

And then the most delicate part began. With a series of seals that were slower and more careful than the ones before, Master Mu began separating the compressed mass of metal with the patience of someone sculpting something fragile, pulling invisible threads that extracted minuscule portions of metal and gave them shape.

The first piece separated and began to take form under the invisible pressure of the seals. A second piece followed the first, then a third, then a fourth, each one assuming a different yet complementary shape, like the pieces of a puzzle that only Master Mu could see in its entirety.

The leftover metal, the portion no longer needed after the pieces were created, descended until it settled on the floor at the formation’s center, forming a small solidified puddle that glowed with a muted sheen.

Master Mu observed the floating pieces for an instant, and what she saw seemed to satisfy her enough to continue. With another gesture the two pearls moved toward the pieces.

The first pearl reached its destination and clicked into the hollow prepared for it with a snap that was more felt than heard, and the second pearl followed the same path, fitting into place with equal precision.

When both pearls were seated, Master Mu made different gestures with her hands, closer to a choreography, and the pieces began moving toward one another.

They drew together and interlocked following a design that existed solely in Master Mu’s mind, a blueprint she had not drawn on any paper because she didn’t need to, having conceived, evaluated, and refined it mentally long before setting foot in this room.

Finally, Master Mu stilled her hands, and in the center of the formation, floating above the remnants of solidified leftover metal on the floor, hung a pair of tiny objects.

Two small earrings of the type worn flush against the earlobe, with an elegant design and without the ostentation that characterized the jewelry of the Empire’s noble families. The silvery metal that composed them had a subtle gleam that seemed to catch the light, and the two pearls, one in each earring, added a touch of understated beauty that complemented the whole.

With a final gesture, Master Mu brought the two earrings toward her and let them settle in her open palm.

She contemplated them for a moment and a smile of satisfaction appeared on her face, for considering she was neither a Refiner nor a Forger, and that in this place she lacked access to proper facilities, the result wasn’t bad at all.

But Master Mu knew she wasn’t finished, because the earrings as they were now were merely beautiful objects made from very expensive materials. Pretty little jewels of a design any court handmaiden could wear without anyone giving them a second look, but that didn’t yet do what they were supposed to do.

With that certainty in mind, Master Mu closed her hand gently over the earrings, bent down to retrieve her fan from the floor, and after straightening up, deactivated the formation before making her way to the room’s door.

The adjoining room was smaller than the formation room but better lit. The window let in a clear, direct light that bathed the surface of the table occupying the center of the space, a table Master Mu had prepared in advance and which contained exactly what she needed for the next phase of her work.

On the wooden surface, arranged in order, lay a series of styluses whose principal characteristic was that their tips, rather than being seen, had to be intuited, so fine were they.

Master Mu sat before the table with a movement that lacked her usual languor and placed the earrings on its surface with care, where she studied them under the window’s light, evaluating the available surfaces for what she had to do.

Then she picked up one of the styluses, the first in the row, and held it between her fingers as she made the earrings float before her.

And then Master Mu brought the stylus’s tip to the surface of the first earring and began to Inscribe.

The circle she traced was so small that to someone observing the scene from just a few paces away, it would have looked as though she were simply touching the earring with the instrument’s tip without doing anything. But beneath that appearance of stillness, the Qi-charged tip was moving, carving a perfect circumference into a surface of barely a few millimeters, a circle that would serve as the foundation for the runes she would place within it.

The runes came after, one by one, inscribed inside the circle with a precision that demanded of Master Mu a concentration that erased everything else from her awareness. The room vanished, the window’s light vanished, and the sound of her own breathing vanished until all that remained were the earring, the stylus, and the runes being born beneath her hand.

When she finished with the first earring, Master Mu changed styluses. The first had served its purpose, but it was better to switch to a new one to prevent any wear from causing the inscription to fail, since she was unaccustomed to performing inscriptions and it was best to minimize the chances of error. She then turned her attention to the second earring.

The repetition of the process was as meticulous as the first time, because each earring had to bear the same enchantment, with the same runes in the same positions and the same proportions. If there were a difference between the two, however minute, the inscription would fail, and Master Mu could not afford that risk.

Minutes passed, or perhaps hours, and Master Mu’s concentration did not waver until at last the final rune was complete.

Master Mu lifted the stylus from the surface of the second earring and held it in the air for an instant, verifying that the final stroke was correct and that no deviations or imperfections had escaped her attention.

And fortunately there were none.

A sigh left Master Mu’s lips as she set the last stylus on the table with care and picked up her fan from where she had left it upon sitting down, tapping it against her other hand with a familiar snap that restored to the room a normality that had been absent throughout the entire process.

Then, with the fan resting against her shoulder in a gesture that was already familiar, Master Mu contemplated the two earrings still floating before her.

They were small, discreet, and insignificant at first glance, the kind of jewelry a lower-ranking handmaiden might wear without attracting attention, a quality that made them perfect for their task.

And at last Master Mu allowed herself to smile, and it was not merely a smile of satisfaction at a job well done but one that came from imagining the face of her little pupil when she gave them to her and explained that with them she would be able, at last, to break free from the chains that bound her and begin, metaphorically speaking, to run with all her might.

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