Chapter 209 (Patreon)

I leaf through the last pages of the catalog without paying them much attention.

A piece of what was once a column, an oil lamp with a broken spout, a bone comb missing half its teeth and another half bracelet, which I don’t know whether it is the other half of the first one or half of a second one, and which I don’t much care about either.

None of it makes me stop, so I reach the last page, look at it without seeing it and close the book.

And as soon as I close it, I open it again.

I don’t need to look for the page, because I know exactly which one it is, so I open it straight to the crude drawing of a three-eyed woman, with a crown on her head, a ladle in one hand and a bowl in the other, seated on something that vaguely resembles a lotus.

I stay looking at it for a while, with the book open in my lap and my forearms resting on the balustrade, and then, without moving my head, I shift my eyes to my right.

Xia is sitting by the table, with a bun in her hand and her cheek bulging from the bite she has just taken, while with her other hand she straightens one of the refreshment boxes, which by her standards wasn’t quite straight.

And I look back at the drawing.

Because a book with Annapurna on the cover, however much I turn it over, can only be one of two kinds.

Either it is one of her sacred scriptures, or it is a cookbook that someone has put her image on so that she blesses everything inside, just as in my other life half of India had her image hanging on the kitchen wall.

And whatever it is, in theory, I can read it.

Or rather, in theory, I could eventually manage to read it, which isn’t exactly the same thing.

Because in my other life I wasn’t an expert in Sanskrit. I studied it, as anyone who devotes themselves to Historical Linguistics studies it, since without it there is no way to understand where half the languages of Europe come from, but it was never my specialty.

And it is true that, thanks to my blessing, I have stored in my head every dictionary, every grammar and every treatise on it that ever passed through my hands, in order and without a single page missing.

But having a dictionary doesn’t make you a translator, just as having a hammer doesn’t make you a carpenter, so although I have the tools, it would be slow work, very slow.

And that is assuming it is written in Sanskrit, because if this world has taught me anything, it is that nothing that resembles my old world is exactly the same as what I knew.

The language spoken here isn’t Chinese, although it resembles it so closely that I learned it a great deal faster than anyone at court considered normal. And the hieroglyphs on the papers Lianhua brought out of the Celestial Fragment of the Sands weren’t the ones studied at the universities of my other life either, but a variant of them.

So most likely this isn’t Sanskrit either, but something that resembles it, with its own words, its own rules and its own pitfalls.

And I don’t even know what script it is written in, because the drawing only shows the cover, and Sanskrit, over the course of its history, has been written in so many different scripts that in my other life there were people who spent years studying that specialty alone.

If I had to translate it with dictionaries and patience, it would take me months. And that’s with luck.

Although I didn’t translate the hieroglyphs with dictionaries and patience either, but thanks to my blessing. They were entire afternoons in which I lost myself in front of the papers without noticing the time passing, while the signs arranged themselves before me, Xia kept watch over how long I had been like that and Lianhua waited for the three periods to be up so she could pull me out of it.

And at that moment I realize something, which is that it hasn’t happened to me in years.

Years without losing myself inside a text, without the world disappearing around me while a language I don’t know opens up before me like a flower, and until this very moment I hadn’t even noticed.

I stay still, with my finger on the drawing, looking for an explanation, and the only one I find is also the simplest, which is that in all this time I haven’t needed it.

In these years I haven’t come across a single language I didn’t understand, nor a single writing system I couldn’t read, and a blessing meant for deciphering the indecipherable doesn’t have much work to do when everything in front of you is written in something you already know.

It is like keeping an umbrella in the closet through years of drought, which doesn’t mean the umbrella has broken, or so I hope.

But I push that thought out of my head, because there is no point worrying about it now, sitting in a box surrounded by strangers and over a book that isn’t even mine yet, so I focus on the drawing again, on the crown, the bowl and the ladle, and I come to the conclusion that, whatever that book is, it is going to be useful to me.

Because if it is a sacred text, or whatever its equivalent is in the Celestial Realm, it could tell me something about that place the Fragments come from, and about which, so far, all I know is that it is full of things from my old world that shouldn’t be there. Egypt, Rome, the Celts and, as of this evening, Greece along with India.

And if it is a cookbook…

I glance sideways to my right again.

Xia has finished the bun and is looking at the box with the expression of someone deciding, with the utmost seriousness, whether she deserves another.

Well, if it is a cookbook, there is someone in this box who will certainly know how to make good use of it, and who will be so happy about it that I will have to listen to each and every one of the recipes even though I will be the one providing them to her.

“Wen”, she tells me suddenly while I am looking at her. “You’ve had the book open to the same page for a long time.”

I raise my eyes and find her looking at me with curiosity.

“Have you found something that interests you?” she asks me.

“Yes”, I reply. “A book.”

I run a finger along the edge of the page.

“And the best part is that I’m sure no one else is interested in it”, I add. “So it could come cheap.”

Xia gets up from her chair, goes around the table and leans over my shoulder to look at the catalog.

She looks at the drawing, and her face goes from curiosity to confusion, and from confusion to something I know perfectly well, because it is the face she makes right before asking three questions in a row.

And since I can imagine what the first one will be, which is whether I can read it, I raise a hand before she opens her mouth.

“We’ll talk about it at home”, I tell her. “There are too many people here.”

Xia stays with her mouth open for an instant, then looks toward the balustrade and toward the boxes opposite, where more than one face is turned toward ours, and closes it.

She says nothing, simply nods, goes back around the table and sits down in her chair again, but immediately afterward, I notice a small movement on my left.

Lianhua, who at some point has finally sat down in the chair she had placed behind me, makes the sign we use when she wants to talk without anyone else hearing us, so I use the Golden Chains of Ogma.

A golden line leaves me and stretches out to her, and I wait a moment, just in case, because this building is full of cultivators and I have no idea whether anyone in the surrounding boxes knows this technique.

But no other line appears.

“Xiaojie”, Lianhua tells me without opening her mouth. “Are you interested in that book because you believe you can translate it thanks to your blessing?”

It doesn’t surprise me that she has guessed, since Lianhua was there each and every afternoon I spent lost in front of the hieroglyphs.

“Yes”, I reply. “Although I suppose it won’t be easy, or quick.”

I run my finger along the edge of the page again.

“But the papers you got in the Celestial Fragment of the Sands were very useful”, I continue. “And it’s always worth trying our luck, in case we get something similar.”

Because those papers gave me the guide through which I understood Earth Realm cultivation, and thanks to it I have known ever since, step by step, what awaits me on a path that most people only know up to the next rung.

Lianhua doesn’t answer me right away, and since she is behind me I can’t see her face, but I can picture it perfectly, with her eyes fixed on the hall, weighing the book, the price and the risk, one after another, just as she weighed those three pairs of blades at the weapons shop.

“I think it is a good idea, Xiaojie”, she tells me at last.

And just then there is a knock at the door of the box.

Two knocks, soft and spaced apart, and Lianhua has already risen from her chair before the second one sounds.

But she doesn’t turn off the technique, and neither do I, so the golden line stretches out behind me as she crosses the box toward the door, and it is still there when she rests her hand on the knob. And from the way it stays, without either of us saying anything, I understand that neither of us intends to turn it off for the rest of the evening.

Because in a hall full of strangers, being able to talk without anyone hearing you is worth more than anything that can be bought tonight.

Lianhua opens the door and, out of pure reflex, I close the catalog on my lap.

“Good evening”, says a voice from the gallery.

It is a woman’s voice, polite and calm, and I recognize it instantly, which is lucky because I can’t see her at all, so I grip the armrest and turn my head as far as my neck allows, until I manage to see her sideways, out of the corner of my eye.

Lu Zhiyu is standing in the doorway, with her hair gathered in the same high bun as always, in the Tower’s uniform and with her hands clasped in front of her.

“Good evening, Lu Zhiyu”, I tell her. “Would you like to come in for a little tea?”

Lu Zhiyu inclines her head.

“I appreciate it”, she tells me, and then she comes in.

Lianhua closes the door and stays a step away from it while Lu Zhiyu crosses the box toward me, so I can stop twisting my neck and only need to turn my head a little to look at her.

Although halfway there she stops, because as she passes the table, her gaze fixes on what is on top of it.

The tea container, the three cups, the three plates and the wooden boxes, which Xia has left open and set side by side, with the buns, the pastries and the sesame sweets arranged in rows so perfect they look as if they came out of a bakery window.

Lu Zhiyu looks at all of it with curiosity, and then with something that, on a face as well trained as hers, looks a great deal like surprise.

“This isn’t the food served at the event”, she says.

“No”, I reply. “We brought our own.”

I shrug.

“No one told us we couldn’t”, I add.

Lu Zhiyu stares at me, and then she laughs.

It isn’t a guffaw, because Lu Zhiyu doesn’t seem the type to guffaw, least of all in a building belonging to her own company. It is a short, low laugh, which she covers with the back of her hand and which escapes her before she can do anything to stop it.

“This is the first time I have heard of anyone bringing their own food to an auction”, she tells me. “Normally, people try to eat as much as they can at the expense of the Tower of the Five Dragons.”

And I have no trouble believing her, since in my other life, at conferences, there were colleagues who spent the opening lecture calculating how many canapés they would be able to eat at the reception, and the full professors were always the worst.

But it amuses me all the same, so I smile too.

“Everyone has their own customs”, I tell her.

Lu Zhiyu nods, still with a trace of laughter on her face, and Xia, who stood up the moment she saw her come in, is already pouring her a cup of tea, which Lu Zhiyu accepts with both hands and a small bow.

I let her take the first sip before asking anything, which is the least you owe someone you have just invited to tea.

“And to what do I owe your visit?” I ask her.

“Nothing in particular”, she replies. “I am simply making the rounds to greet the people in my charge.”

She sets the cup on the edge of the table.

“Although it is a pity you were unable to create a high-grade talisman for the auction”, she adds.

She says it without any reproach, in the same tone in which she would remark that it had started to rain, but even so, I take a moment before answering her.

“You know what my level is”, I tell her.

Lu Zhiyu says nothing, so I continue.

“And any talisman I could create without having formed a core would be too simple to be in this auction”, I finish.

Which is the plain truth.

The talismans I sell to the Tower sell well, I know that, but this isn’t a counter on the ground floor of the headquarters, it is a luxury auction, and I am sure that every talisman in the catalog, even though I haven’t looked at them, is light-years beyond a Fire Arrow.

Lu Zhiyu smiles after hearing me.

She doesn’t tell me yes or no, she simply smiles, and then lowers her eyes to my lap, where the catalog is still closed beneath my hands.

“Have you found anything that interests you?” she asks me.

“Yes”, I reply. “Although it is a trinket from a Celestial Fragment that I only want out of curiosity.”

I tap the cover of the catalog twice with my finger.

“So I don’t think I will have any trouble getting it”, I finish.

I don’t tell her which one it is, and she doesn’t ask me either, although from the way her gaze lingers on the cover for an instant, I get the impression that she is going over the rarities section from memory, trying to guess.

“In that case, I wish you good luck at the auction”, she tells me.

“Thank you very much”, I reply.

Lu Zhiyu finishes her tea and hands the cup back to Xia with another small bow, which Xia returns with elegance.

“And now I must take my leave”, she tells me afterward. “I still have more people to visit before the regular guests finish coming in.”

“Of course”, I tell her. “Thank you for coming to greet us.”

Lu Zhiyu bows, turns around and walks toward the door, where Lianhua is already waiting with her hand on the knob.

But before Lianhua opens it, Lu Zhiyu stops and turns her head toward me over her shoulder.

“Pay attention to the auction”, she tells me. “You may be in for a surprise.”

I open my mouth to ask her what she means, but I don’t have time, because Lianhua opens the door and Lu Zhiyu crosses the threshold with the same unhurried pace with which she came in. And when I finally manage to turn my neck far enough, all that remains in the gallery is the edge of her sleeve disappearing behind the door frame.

Lianhua closes the door, and for a moment no one in the box says anything.

Xia, as was to be expected, is the one who breaks the silence.

“What does she mean?” she asks me. “What surprise?”

“I have no idea”, I reply.

I turn back toward the balustrade and rest my forearms on it.

“I suppose we’ll have to wait and see”, I finish.

Xia frowns, because she never likes that answer either, but she doesn’t insist.

And Lianhua goes back to her chair, although before sitting down she moves it a little, just enough to keep the door in view without taking her attention off me.

But I don’t have time to keep turning Lu Zhiyu’s surprise over in my head, because noise begins to rise from below.

It isn’t the murmur from before, that of the boxes filling up, but a heavier one, of footsteps, of chairs being dragged and of hundreds of voices talking at once, so I lean over the balustrade to look.

People are coming in through the doors at the far end of the hall, a huge number of people, who spread out among the rows of seats on the ground floor, empty until a moment ago, and you only have to look at them a little to realize that they aren’t the same kind of people as those in the boxes.

There is silk, but less of it. There is jade, but not much. There are a great many swords at waists, a great many plain, well-kept robes, the kind that are saved for special occasions, and groups of three or four people who sit together and talk with their heads close together, like people agreeing on something before it begins.

In my other life, in theaters, the people in the orchestra seats and those in the boxes didn’t mix either, although at least they all came to see the same play. Here, I suspect that those upstairs have come to buy whatever they want, and those downstairs, whatever they can.

The ground floor takes a good while to fill, and when it is finally full and the last straggler has found a seat, somewhere in the hall a bell rings.

It is a deep, bronze sound that rises from the stage to the highest boxes, and with it, the murmur fades little by little, from the bottom up, until all that can be heard in the whole building is the rustle of the occasional sleeve.

At that moment, the auction begins, as a man steps up onto the stage.

He is middle-aged, at least in appearance, wearing a robe of the same cut as the Tower’s uniform but embroidered in gold at the collar and the sleeves, and he takes his place behind the lacquered table with his hands resting on its edge, in no hurry at all, like someone who has all the time in the world.

He sweeps his gaze across the hall, from the ground floor to the boxes and from the boxes up to the top floor, and only then does he speak.

“Welcome to the annual auction of the Tower of the Five Dragons”, he says.

He doesn’t shout, and yet his voice reaches us up here with complete clarity. And I don’t know whether it is because of the shape of the hall or because of something that can’t be seen, but in my other life there were Greek theaters more than two thousand years old in which you could hear a coin drop from the last row, so I don’t rule out either of the two options.

He greets the sects, the guilds, the families and the guests of honor, without naming anyone and without forgetting anyone, which is an art that at the Imperial Palace would have been enough to earn someone a post as an official.

And then he reminds everyone of the rules, which are actually quite simple.

Bids are made aloud. The boxes are identified by their number, and the seats on the ground floor by their row and place. Whatever is won is paid for at the end of the auction, and whatever isn’t paid for is forfeited.

“And as every year, the Tower of the Five Dragons reminds you that in this hall there is only bidding”, he finishes. “As for any other matter you may have pending among yourselves, we ask that you settle it outside this building.”

He says it with a smile, and with so much courtesy that it almost sounds like an invitation, but it clearly isn’t one.

And without meaning to, I remember Master Mu, in another auction hall, telling two noble families that at an auction neither family nor background matters, only the money each person is able to produce for bidding.

It is the same law, only spoken in the voice of a merchant and not in that of someone with a reputation for killing anyone who has bothered her.

Or so I believe, since I don’t know him.

After those words, the first lot is announced, which is a Spiritual Treasure.

One of the young women from the vestibule brings it out onto the stage on a lacquered tray, and the auctioneer presents it under the same name it has in the catalog, Lunar Frost Moss, which according to the description only grows on the north face of river rocks during the coldest nights of winter.

The bidding starts at fifty spirit stones.

And as soon as the auctioneer finishes saying it, a box on the second floor says sixty, another on the third says seventy, and someone on the ground floor raises a hand and calls out eighty in a voice that trembles a little, but drops out as soon as the box on the second floor goes straight up to a hundred.

In the end, the box on the third floor takes it for one hundred and forty.

And so, one after another, the Spiritual Treasures come out.

At first I watch the bidding with the same attention with which, in my other life, I used to watch antiques auctions on the internet, with no intention of buying anything and with my blood boiling every time I saw a piece ripped out of its site, but wanting to know all the same how much each thing was worth. And I keep storing the figures in my head, who bids on what, and who withdraws and when, because each of those figures tells me something about this city that the books don’t.

And what they tell me, above all, is that there is an enormous amount of money in this city.

The Golden Ginseng Root that two noble families fought over in the Empire stood at twelve spirit stones when Master Mu had to step in. Here, the cheapest Treasure so far has sold for eighty.

Although, of course, I don’t know the difference in quality between the two Treasures either, so it is possible that this one is the equivalent of a perfectly preserved fifty-year-old wine, and the one sold in the Empire the equivalent of a generic one from last year’s harvest.

Xia, on my right, is keeping count too, although she does it on her fingers and under her breath, and every time a figure goes over a hundred, a little noise escapes her.

Until a mushroom comes out onto the stage.

It is a small, purple mushroom, which according to the catalog is called the Purple Cloud Mushroom and is used in some kind of pill to improve the body’s absorption of elemental Qi, and as soon as she sees it, Xia stops counting and leans forward as if she could smell it from here.

Bidding for it from the very first moment is a woman in a box on the second floor with the emblem of the Jade Dew embroidered on her chest, the only one in her box who calls out the figures.

And bidding against her is a box on the third floor with no emblem at all, from which an old man with a white beard leans out with a young man at his side, who is the one calling out the figures for him.

One hundred, one hundred and forty, one hundred and eighty.

And at two hundred and twenty, the woman from the Jade Dew turns toward the other box.

“A treasure like that in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to prepare it is a waste”, she says.

She says it in a perfectly polite voice, without shouting, and precisely because of that, it can be heard throughout the hall.

The old man in the box without an emblem doesn’t bother to answer her. He leans toward the young man, says something in his ear, and it is the young man who answers.

“That is why my grandfather intends to hire someone from your sect to prepare it for him”, he says. “Two hundred and forty.”

Some laughter rises from the ground floor.

And the woman from the Jade Dew goes very still, with a smile that doesn’t move a single millimeter and that, for that very reason, doesn’t look like a smile at all.

“Two hundred and fifty”, she says.

“Three hundred”, the young man replies.

She opens her mouth, and I don’t know whether it is to bid or to say something more, but at that moment the auctioneer gives a single light rap of his knuckles on the lacquered table.

It isn’t a loud knock, although it can be heard throughout the hall.

“Box twenty-two”, says the auctioneer, smiling exactly as he did at the beginning. “Do you wish to better the offer of three hundred?”

The woman closes her mouth, and then shakes her head, just once, and leans back in her box.

“Sold to box forty-one for three hundred spirit stones”, says the auctioneer.

And the next lot comes out onto the stage as if nothing had happened.

After that exchange, I think back once more to the only other auction I have attended, and I sigh as I reflect that, regardless of cultivation levels, it seems there are people who behave exactly the same everywhere.

On my right, Xia sighs, and when I look at her, she is still staring at the empty tray on which the young woman from the vestibule has carried off the mushroom.

“I bet he doesn’t even know it can’t be washed with water”, she says under her breath, treating it as just another ingredient.