Chapter 220 (Patreon)

The top sheet of the pile lifts at one corner in the breeze, and a hand of the Myriad sets a stone on it before it can fly away, because today, for a change, I have swapped the desk in my study for the stone table in the courtyard, and that has its drawbacks.

But it also has its advantages, since it is an especially nice day. There isn’t a single cloud above the island, the sun is warm without being harsh and, over the courtyard wall, comes this pleasant, gentle breeze that insists on carrying off my papers.

So, as soon as we finished breakfast, I brought out everything I had on my study desk, and here I have stayed.

There is a diagram of a Qi-gathering formation, one of a barrier formation, and three or four others I’ve taken from the books on Master Shi’s list, if only to have them at hand in case I need to consult them as a reference.

But the ones that have kept me busy for quite a while are different, the ones right under my hands. Diagrams of hexagons with a triangle attached to each side, hexagons with a square attached to each side and a single one, the largest, surrounded by six other hexagons, with names written inside each figure, crossed out, written again in the margin and crossed out once more.

Because I’m not really drawing, I’m deciding, which is, by far, what takes the most time.

“What are you doing?” I hear someone say behind me.

Xia’s voice reaches me from my right, so close that I’m surprised I didn’t hear her coming, so I look up.

She is standing beside the bench, her sleeves still rolled up from washing the breakfast bowls and her head tilted to try to read my papers upside down. Today isn’t one of her days at the inn, because she only has lessons every other day, and on the days she doesn’t go, it’s obvious she doesn’t quite know what to do with herself.

“Puzzles”, I tell her.

Xia blinks, and stares at me as if I had answered her in another language.

“Puzzles?” she repeats. “What do you mean?”

It is the most honest answer I have, so I don’t change it. I set the brush down on its rest and point with my chin at the hexagon surrounded by hexagons.

“They’re enhanced formations”, I tell her. “Besides making a formation’s effect stronger, they also let you combine the effects of two different formations.”

Xia blinks again, then looks at the paper, then at me, and then at the paper again, with the same face she might make at a recipe she thinks has one step too many.

“But if it’s just combining two effects”, she tells me. “What does that have to do with a puzzle?”

And I smile, because not so long ago I would have asked exactly the same question.

“Sit down”, I tell her. “I’ll explain.”

Xia doesn’t need to be asked twice, so she sits down on my right, so close to the corner of the table that her elbow is almost on top of my papers.

With a hand of the Myriad I pull a clean sheet from under the pile and slide it over until it lies between the two of us, and with two others I hold down its corners so the breeze won’t carry it off before we’ve even started.

Then I pick up the brush again.

“A normal formation is a hexagon”, I tell her as I draw it. “Like the one in the room where Lianhua is cultivating right now.”

I quickly draw the hexagon on the paper.

“In an enhanced one, the hexagon stops being the formation”, I continue. “It becomes a kind of control node, something like the one giving the orders. And another figure is added to each of its six sides.”

I draw a triangle attached to one of the sides, and then another, and another, until all six are done.

“A star”, Xia says.

“With triangles, yes”, I tell her. “With squares you get something else.”

I draw a second hexagon a little lower down, and this time I attach a square to each side, while Xia tilts her head to look at it.

“It looks like a flower”, she tells me.

“And in the most powerful version, six other hexagons are attached to it”, I continue.

The third one takes me a little longer, because the outer hexagons have to fit against one another without leaving any gap, and by the time I finish, Xia has leaned so far over the sheet that I have to move a lock of her hair away from the fresh ink with a hand of the Myriad.

“That looks like a honeycomb”, she says. “Like the ones bees make.”

I don’t tell her that it’s exactly what I thought too after Master Shi described it, although only on second thought, because then I would have to explain to her that the first thing I pictured was several games from my previous life, so I carry on with the explanation.

“They can’t be mixed”, I tell her, and I tap the star with the handle of the brush. “If you put a triangle on one side, there has to be a triangle on all six. And all six sides always have to be occupied.”

“Okay”, Xia tells me.

She says it with the face of someone who still doesn’t see where the problem is, but is willing to wait for it to be explained.

“So every enhanced formation has six slots”, I continue. “One for each side of the central hexagon.”

I go back to the star and, with the tip of the brush, touch the six triangles one by one, and Xia follows them with her eyes, moving her head a little with each one.

“And what goes in those slots?” she asks me.

“Formations, obviously”, I reply.

Inside the first triangle I write the character for gathering, which is quicker than drawing an entire formation in a slot the size of a fingernail.

“But there’s a catch”, I continue. “The formation you write in a slot only has half the effect it would have if you wrote it on its own.”

Xia frowns.

“Then it’s worse”, she tells me.

“One slot is, yes”, I tell her. “But you have six.”

I write the same character in the other five triangles, one after another, until every point of the star has the same symbol.

Xia looks at the star, and I see her fingers moving on her knee, counting, something I’ll have to do something about someday, probably when she opens the Yin Gate.

“Six halves”, she says. “That means it would be like three complete formations.”

“Exactly, which makes it three times as powerful as the formation on its own”, I confirm.

“But that isn’t a puzzle”, she tells me. “That’s addition.”

“That’s the easy part”, I reply.

And I move on to the flower of squares.

“Because you don’t have to fill all six slots with the same formation”, I continue. “You can use two different ones. And each of them can take up a different number of slots, depending on which of the two you want to enhance.”

I write the character for gathering in the top three squares, and in the bottom three, the one for barrier.

“Or you can split them evenly, three and three, if you want them balanced”, I add.

Xia stares at the flower, now split down the middle, and for the first time since she sat down, she says nothing, so I go on.

“Imagine you want to mix a Qi-gathering formation with a barrier formation”, I tell her.

I move on to the honeycomb, and in the six outer hexagons I write the character for gathering twice and the one for barrier four times.

“If you put in two slots of gathering and four of barrier, the barrier comes out twice as strong as a normal one”, I continue. “And meanwhile, the formation keeps gathering Qi just like any gathering formation.”

I cross out the characters and write them again beside them, switched around, four of gathering and two of barrier.

“And if you do it the other way around, it gathers twice as much Qi”, I finish. “But then the protection stays at the most basic level.”

In other words, six slots to divide between two parts, and everything you give to one you take away from the other.

“And that’s just with those two”, I tell her. “You can make much crazier mixes.”

“How crazy?” Xia asks me.

“Crazy enough that you have to make sure the two formations you’re mixing are compatible”, I reply. “Because if they aren’t, the formation can even explode the moment you try to activate it.”

Xia pulls both hands away from the table.

Not much, just enough that neither of them is touching any paper anymore, and she stares at the honeycomb with the same distrust with which she would look at a Minor Explosion Talisman gone out of control.

“Papers don’t explode”, I tell her.

“That’s what you say”, she replies.

And there, at last, I see on her face that she has understood why I told her I was doing puzzles.

Because the hard part of an enhanced formation isn’t drawing it. The hard part is deciding which two formations go together, how many slots you give each one, and checking, before anyone activates it, that they won’t get along so badly that they sink the whole island.

Xia stays a while longer looking at the three drawings, the crossed-out honeycomb, the flower split down the middle and the star that says the same thing six times, and then she sighs, so hard that the top sheet of the pile lifts at one corner again.

“That’s too complicated”, she tells me. “I prefer cooking.”

She rests her elbows on the table again, although this time clear of the papers.

“There I only have to worry about the fire being at the right temperature”, she continues. “And about the amount of each ingredient being exact.”

Only, she says, as if keeping the fire at exactly its temperature, for exactly the right time and with an ingredient that loses its Qi the moment you go a little too far, were a small thing.

“Well, what you do in the kitchen would be just as complicated for me as this is for you”, I tell her. “That’s why each of us has her own trade.”

And I say it completely seriously, because if someone put a stove and a spirit root in front of me, I would most likely end up with a charred root without a drop of Qi left in it.

Xia nods several times, very convinced, after hearing me.

“I agree with that”, she tells me. “And I have no intention of going anywhere near what you do.”

She pushes the sheet with the drawings toward me with a single finger, slowly, until it’s sitting in front of my hands.

“Just looking at it gives me a headache”, she finishes.

I laugh a little, and a hand of the Myriad picks up the sheet to put it on top of the pile with the others while I set the brush back in its rest.

And then, looking at her, I realize I’ve spent the whole morning talking and still haven’t asked her about her lessons.

“Speaking of trades”, I tell her. “How did your first month of lessons go?”

Those words work as if I had opened a floodgate.

Xia sits up straight on the bench, her eyes light up and she seems to forget all about formations, slots and exploding papers.

“I’m learning so much!” she tells me.

She has been going to the inn every other day for a month, coming back each time with the smell of ginger in her hair, but until now she has been telling me about it in bits and pieces, and this is the first time I’ve had her in front of me with nothing else to do but listen to her, so I encourage her to go on with a polite little sound.

“Although for now he only lets me put away and prepare the ingredients”, she continues. “He still doesn’t let me cook anything.”

She says it without complaining, like someone explaining the rules of a game she thinks are fair.

“On the first day, Master An told me that having learned a whole lot of ingredients from books isn’t the same as handling them with my own hands”, she continues. “So first I have to learn to handle them and prepare them properly, and only after that will I be able to move on to more complicated tasks.”

And she starts telling me what her routine in the kitchen is.

First, putting away the day’s order, placing each ingredient in the spot reserved for it in the kitchen.

Once that’s done, she has to prepare whatever ingredients Master An asks for, such as washing roots without scraping their skin, sorting herbs by how dry they are, peeling fruits without letting the Qi escape where the rind breaks, and setting it all out in bowls in the exact order in which he is going to need it.

But as she tells me, I’m thinking of something else, and a smile slips out, because I can’t help saying it to her.

“So, basically, you’re a kitchen hand again”, I tell her.

Xia listens to me, and slowly her shoulders drop, and her chin a little too, like a bun deflating when someone lifts the lid of the steamer too soon.

“Yes”, she tells me. “Basically, I’ve ended up being a kitchen hand again.”

But it doesn’t last long, because Xia has never been able to stay discouraged for more than a couple of seconds in a row when it comes to anything to do with cooking, and right away she lifts her chin again.

“But at least this time I don’t have to scrub pots”, she continues. “I only have to focus on the ingredients.”

She says it so determined to see the bright side that I feel a little guilty for having spoiled it for her, even if only for a moment, so I lean toward her as far as my chair allows and take the hand she has resting on the table.

When she sees me take her hand, she looks at me in surprise.

“Little by little”, I tell her. “At the Palace you also started as a kitchen hand, washing utensils and sorting spices. And look how far you’ve come.”

And as I say it, I remember an eight-year-old girl carrying bowls from one end of the Palace kitchens to the other because Lianhua had decided that, before becoming a cook, you had to know every post in a kitchen, starting with the lowest.

And today that girl has her own set of knives, and a master who has agreed to teach her the profession she has wanted ever since she heard it existed.

“And now that you have a master, I’m sure you’re going to move much faster”, I finish.

Xia squeezes my hand back, just for a moment.

“You’re right”, she tells me.

And she says it firmly, so I let go of her hand and settle back into my chair, my back against the backrest.

But Xia doesn’t move; she stays where she is, with both hands on the table, and starts rubbing one with the other, slowly, and I know that gesture well enough to know she still has something left to say.

“Wen”, she tells me. “I have a request to make.”

She says it more quietly than everything before, and without quite looking at me, her eyes fixed on some point between my papers and the inkwell.

“Go ahead”, I tell her. “What’s this request?”

“Master An has given me a list of techniques”, she replies. “Techniques exclusively for spirit chefs.”

She pauses.

“And he told me I have to learn them as soon as I can”, she finishes.

And I fear the worst, because if Xia is this worried, it’s clear there aren’t just a few of them.

“How many are there?” I ask her as I hold my breath.

“Three”, she replies.

And before I have time to let out the breath in relief, she raises a finger.

“The Veil of the Sealed Pot”, she tells me.

She raises a second finger.

“The Resonance Cut”, she continues.

Lastly, she raises the third.

“And the Harmonic Vortex Emulsion”, she finishes.

Then she takes a breath, and suddenly I realize she is going to start telling me what each technique is for.

“The first one is for…”, she tells me.

I raise a hand to stop her, so Xia falls silent, her mouth still half open.

“It’s enough that you know what they’re for”, I tell her. “They aren’t going to be of any use to me at all.”

Xia closes her mouth slowly, and from the way she looks at me, I can’t tell whether she’s offended that I stopped her or simply disappointed at not having been able to explain them to me.

Probably both.

But it’s the truth, and a fairly practical truth at that, because the day I need to emulsify something inside a harmonic vortex, whatever that is, I’ll just ask her to do it.

“When Lianhua finishes cultivating, since it’s her turn now, tell her the names”, I continue. “That way, the next time she goes to the Tower of the Five Dragons, she can buy them there.”

Xia nods slowly, as if she couldn’t believe I had agreed so quickly.

“Knowing what they’re called, she can ask for them directly”, I finish. “And that way we make use of the discount.”

Because techniques, like books, can be bought in many places in this city, but only in one do they give us a discount. And there’s no reason to pay full price for three techniques when you know exactly what they’re called.

Xia stays still for an instant, and then her face lights up.

“Thank you, Wen!” she tells me.

And before I have time to answer her, she has already gotten up and run off toward the rooms, with her sleeves still rolled up and, surely, the three names repeating in her head so that none of them slips away.

“And don’t interrupt Lianhua while she’s cultivating!” I remind her as she runs off.

“I know!” she answers without turning around.

I watch her cross the courtyard at a run and stop dead in front of the door next to my bedroom, two steps from the threshold. And there she stays, very still, with her back straight and her hands clasped in front of her, as if the door were going to open sooner just because she is waiting.

I shake my head, slowly, with that resignation you only have for the people you love, and turn back to my papers.

A hand of the Myriad brings the inkwell closer, I take the brush from its rest, and the breeze, at last, seems to have grown tired of trying to carry off my papers.

I set aside Xia’s star, flower and honeycomb, and beneath them all appears the sheet I was working on before she interrupted me.

A hexagon with six empty slots and, in the margin, two names written in my handwriting, one above the other.

Qi-gathering formation.

Spiritual Pressure Formation.

Any sensible person would tell me they have nothing to do with each other, since one serves to gather Qi around whoever is cultivating and the other, any way you look at it, is an attack formation. And they would probably be right.

But every time I look at those two names together, several different effects that could come out of them occur to me. And some of them I like a lot more than I should.

What I still don’t know is whether they are compatible, and considering what I’ve just told Xia, that is the first thing I’m going to have to find out, so I dip the brush as I pull the sheet closer to start running simulations.