Chapter 221 (Patreon)

The door opens while I am still finishing waking up, and from the way it opens, I know who it is before I turn my head.

Lianhua comes in, leaves the door ajar behind her and stops two steps from the bed, as she does every morning.

And that is precisely why it surprises me, because today is not a morning like any other.

Today is the morning on which, exactly a year ago, that same door opened before I had finished opening my eyes and Xia walked in with a plate of steamed buns and the face of someone who had been up since long before the sun.

I prop myself up on my elbows and look past Lianhua, just in case, but there is no one in the doorway.

“How come it isn’t Xia who comes to wake me up this year?” I ask her.

“Xia is finishing preparing breakfast, Xiaojie”, she replies.

She takes my clothes out of the wardrobe and lays them at the foot of the bed, smoothing them with one hand.

“Today she has to go to her lessons with Master An”, she continues. “So, according to her, breakfast is the only meal she can make special for your fifteenth birthday.”

She pauses briefly, and bows.

“Happy birthday, Xiaojie”, she finishes.

She says it in her usual voice, flat and polite, but she takes a second longer than normal to straighten up, just like last year.

“Thank you”, I tell her.

And then a laugh slips out of me, not much, just enough, because I can perfectly picture Xia in the kitchen since before dawn, with her sleeves rolled up and the knives Lianhua gave her lined up in a row, determined to fit into a single breakfast everything she would have liked to spread across the day’s three meals.

“Now that Master An is starting to teach her to cook, it’s getting harder and harder to get her out of the kitchen”, I tell her.

Lianhua doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t contradict me either, which in her case amounts to agreeing with me, so I let myself fall back onto the pillow, turn my head a little and look for the beam that crosses the ceiling right above the bed.

It is the first thing I do every morning, and I do it without thinking, just as in my other life I would reach for the alarm clock before my eyes were fully open.

I reach the hands of the Myriad toward it, grab hold with all ten and pull.

And nothing happens.

The beam, naturally, doesn’t move, but neither do I.

I feel the ten hands closed around the wood, I feel them all pulling at once and with all their strength, and even so my back stays stuck to the mattress as if I hadn’t done anything.

I lie still, frowning, while I make sure I haven’t made a mistake with the technique, but I am using it correctly, and that baffles me for a moment.

And there, along with the bafflement, I begin to realize what the reason might be, and I pray that it isn’t what is happening, so I close my eyes, forget about Lianhua and the clothes, and concentrate on the technique as I haven’t concentrated on it in years, not since I was training to be able to hang without falling.

And I pull again.

I pull until I feel a stab behind my eyes, until I think I hear the beam creak, although I am probably imagining it, and until my own hands, which have nothing to do with this, clench on their own around the sheet and squeeze it between my fingers.

But I still don’t lift a single centimeter off the mattress, although at that moment, in the middle of that effort, something gives.

Not in the beam, or in my body, but inside my head, somewhere I couldn’t point to. It is as if a sort of lock, for lack of a better way to explain it, had been there all this time keeping a door shut, and suddenly broke in two.

I open my eyes, and the feeling of my ten hands is still there, but they no longer feel the same.

They feel longer, as if someone had loosened a strap that had been holding them back, and I don’t need to ask anyone what has just happened, because Lianhua described it to me more than a year ago, at the inn, while she dressed me as I hung from another beam.

I have reached Adept, and I should be happy, because I have been practicing for this all that time. But that doesn’t help me with the problem I have right now, although I knew that too.

I have known it since the morning I had to use the tenth hand for the first time. Ten hands at five kilos each make fifty kilos, and I haven’t stopped growing, so sooner or later the day was going to come when ten wouldn’t be enough.

What I didn’t know is that it was going to be today, of all days, and that both things were going to arrive at once.

I let go of the beam, and the ten hands dissolve.

Then I turn my head toward Lianhua, who is still standing two steps from the bed with her hands clasped in front of her, and who hasn’t moved a muscle this whole time.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “I have good news and bad news.”

Lianhua raises an eyebrow when she hears me.

“The moment has come”, I tell her. “I can’t lift myself with the Myriad of Hands anymore.”

Lianhua looks at me for a moment.

“You are fifteen now, Xiaojie”, she tells me. “It is normal that it has happened.”

I sigh, because she is right, and because her being right doesn’t make it any less annoying.

But, just in case, I put a hand to my waist and pinch, only for a moment and just enough to check that, although I don’t exactly have abs, my waist hasn’t gotten any wider.

Fortunately, the check shows that I don’t need to go on a diet, which, come to think of it, I am not sure is good news or bad given the situation.

“At least it isn’t the fault of Xia’s cooking”, I finally tell her.

Lianhua doesn’t answer, but one corner of her mouth moves, if only slightly.

“And although I didn’t manage to lift myself, the last attempt wasn’t in vain”, I continue. “With the effort, the technique has gone up to Adept.”

That, she does seem to find impressive, since she clasps her hands together and bows her head.

“Congratulations, Xiaojie”, she tells me.

But I am barely listening to her anymore, because as she says it, I have used the Myriad of Hands again, and this time not toward the beam, but toward the door left ajar, to see how far it reaches.

I concentrate while I look for something to grab on the courtyard floor, and I see several leaves fallen from the magnolia, so I try with them one after another until I reach my limit, a little over five meters.

Double what I had until yesterday, and exactly the same as the reach of Dragon’s Grip, which until this morning was the farthest I could grab anything.

And for a moment I forget about the weight problem, because five meters is a lot of meters, and it means the freedom to reach things that I couldn’t before without having to move first.

But more reach was the last thing I needed. To hang from the beam again I would have to reach the next stage, Expert, and that, in the best of cases, is still several years away.

“Well”, I tell her. “It’s back to the old way of getting dressed.”

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she replies.

And that is no problem at all, because the old way is the one we used for years before I came up with the beam idea, and Lianhua knows it as well as I do.

It isn’t as dignified as floating, but for lack of a better solution, it will have to do.

Finally, when I am dressed, Lianhua brings the chair up beside the bed, so I hold on to her shoulders and let her help me over into the seat, since that is less trouble than dropping into it on my own.

Then she sets my feet on the footrest, smooths my skirt over my knees, and I shift back a little until I feel the backrest against my back.

After that I go out into the courtyard, where the sun is still low and the magnolia’s shadow covers half the stone table, and where I also see Xia setting the table.

She comes and goes from the kitchen with the bowls, so fast that she doesn’t see me until I am already halfway across, and then she stops dead with a plate in each hand and looks at me.

“Happy birthday, Wen!” she tells me.

“Thank you”, I tell her.

There is a toasted smell in the courtyard that seems familiar, a smell that lingers at the tip of my nose without my quite recognizing it, like a face you know but can’t put a name to. And I don’t need to look at Xia to know that this is what she has been preparing all morning.

“And what is this special thing you’ve made?” I ask her.

Xia sets the plates down on the table, straightens up and looks at me with a satisfaction she doesn’t bother to hide.

“It’s something I made in collaboration with Master An”, she tells me.

“And what is it?” I ask her.

“It’s a surprise”, she replies.

And before I have time to ask her anything else, she has already turned around and gone back into the kitchen, so I finish crossing the courtyard and settle into my place at the table.

Lianhua passes by me and goes into the kitchen too, and for a while I am left alone, watching the two of them fill the table between them. The bowls, the steamed buns, the teapot and the cups, which Lianhua sets out with her usual precision.

And at last, Xia comes out of the kitchen with a large tray, covered with another tray turned upside down, which she holds with both hands and as carefully as if she were carrying some kind of treasure inside.

She sets it in the middle of the table, right in front of me, and stays standing beside me while, before uncovering it, she takes a breath.

And then she lifts the lid.

“Presenting, as an exclusive premiere, the world’s very first spirit pizza!” she says, clearly excited.

After her introduction, I stare at Xia, who still has the lid in the air and her cheeks flushed, then at the pizza, round, with a puffed, golden crust, already cut into slices, and then at Xia again.

The two sights together make me smile in spite of myself.

“You kept that very well hidden”, I tell her.

Xia returns my smile, and finally sets the lid down against the bench.

“I asked Master An for help almost a month ago”, she tells me. “And we’ve been working on it ever since.”

And I can perfectly imagine what those weeks have been like for her, coming back from the inn and keeping quiet at dinner about things she would have told me on any other occasion, in bits and pieces and in a hurry.

But then she turns a little more serious, and clasps her hands in front of her.

“Wen”, she tells me. “Master An asked me to ask you whether you’d give him permission to serve it at the inn.”

She asks it as if she were making a very important request, with her back straight and looking me right in the eye, but I wave a hand, brushing it off.

“That’s no problem at all”, I tell her. “At the Imperial Palace, half the cooks had the recipe.”

Because it’s the truth. After my tenth birthday everyone asked Lianhua for the recipe, and the truth is I never once objected to her giving it out.

“And it isn’t as if a cooking recipe were something I could sell to the Tower of the Five Dragons”, I finish. “It would be very bad manners if, with that in mind, we didn’t give him permission after he helped you create it.”

Xia lets out her breath, relieved.

“Then I’ll tell Master An as soon as I get to class”, she tells me.

And then she sits down on the bench to my right, while Lianhua takes the one on my left, and the three of us start breakfast.

I, obviously, start with the pizza.

A hand of the Myriad brings a slice to my plate, but I pick it up with my own hands, because there are things that in no world are eaten with chopsticks, and I take a bite.

After that, I freeze in surprise, because it is delicious.

And I didn’t expect it to be, at least not this much, because as I chew I realize that nothing on it is exactly what the one at the Palace had. Everything resembles it, each thing has more or less the same color, texture and look, and I could almost fool myself if I closed my eyes.

But only almost.

Because each flavor has a nuance that doesn’t quite fit, like a familiar word spoken with a different accent. The result is very close to the original, but it gives the impression that someone has recreated the recipe with the most similar ingredients they could find, which is probably what happened.

And even so, or perhaps precisely because of that, it tastes better.

I activate Sensing the Qi for just an instant, and the slice in my hand is clearly full of Qi, spread evenly between everything on top and the dough itself, without a single spot where the amount feels any different from the rest.

Which is exactly what Xia once told me a spirit chef knew how to do.

“It’s delicious, Xia”, I tell her. “Really, much better than the ones you used to make at the Palace.”

Xia turns red to the tips of her ears, but this time from pride, and stuffs a whole bun into her mouth so she won’t have to answer me.

And then, to my surprise, the one who speaks is Lianhua.

“It is very good”, she says.

She says it without looking up from her plate, in her usual voice, and then takes another slice.

Which, coming from Lianhua, is practically a standing ovation.

We keep eating like that for a good while, unhurried, while the sun slowly climbs above the courtyard wall and the magnolia’s shadow withdraws from the table.

And near the end, when there are no more than a couple of slices left on the tray, the food starts to take effect.

It is the usual thing, and ever since I opened the Earth Gate I feel it more clearly every time I eat something Xia cooks. The Qi in the food doesn’t stay in my stomach, but spreads out in equal parts among the Gates I still have closed, and each one takes its share and slowly absorbs it.

Four Gates, four currents, but this time, when the current heading for the Nature Gate reaches its place, I feel it give.

Not completely, but enough to recognize it, because I have felt it three times before, only this time it is in my liver.

It is clear that my efforts in keeping at it after opening the Earth Gate have paid off, although I never expected it to happen while I was having breakfast, but since it has, I have no choice but to keep going, so I set my chopsticks down on my bowl.

I don’t say anything; I simply close my eyes quickly, draw the rune for neutral Qi in my mind, activate the Nature Gate, and the Qi in the courtyard starts coming toward me.

There is no gathering formation here, so there is nowhere near as much Qi as in the cultivation room, and I feel the air around me being emptied far sooner than it would be in there, but I don’t need more, because the Gate was already almost open, and what it was missing wasn’t much.

After a moment, the pressure in my liver disappears, the Gate stops admitting Qi and stays open, so I dissolve the rune and open my eyes as I stop cultivating, before I also absorb the Qi the Unbreakable Walls Formation needs in order to work.

When I open them, the first thing I see is that Xia and Lianhua have stopped eating.

Xia has her chopsticks resting on her bowl, and Lianhua has her hands still on the table, but what they are both doing alike is looking at me.

“I’ve just opened the Nature Gate”, I tell them, without bothering to dress it up.

“Congratulations, Wen!” Xia tells me. “And on your birthday!”

“Congratulations, Xiaojie”, Lianhua tells me next as she bows her head.

“Thank you”, I tell them. “Both of you.”

I say it looking mostly at Xia, because part of that Gate, however small, is thanks to her work.

And besides, starting tonight I will have a few hours of sleep to spare, because whoever has this Gate open only needs to sleep two or three periods a night, although I still have to decide what I want to devote all that free time to.

Xia picks up her chopsticks again, and I look at her, because since we are talking about Gates, there is something I still haven’t asked her.

“By the way, Xia”, I tell her. “Now that you have the Earth Gate, which one are you opening?”

Xia goes still when she hears my question.

“The Yang Gate”, she replies.

But she says it very quietly, looking at her bowl, and as she says it her ears turn a little red.

For a moment I am baffled, because I don’t understand why she is so embarrassed, and I am about to ask her.

But then I realize.

Xia is thirteen, and the Yang Gate is the one that lets a woman regulate her monthly cycle at will. And nobody suddenly decides that this Gate is the next one, ahead of all the others, unless she has a very specific, and very recent, reason to do so.

So I simply smile, and say nothing.

Although then I realize that, if she hasn’t come to ask me anything, it is because the one who has helped her deal with it is Lianhua.

Which, come to think of it, makes perfect sense, since she is the oldest person in the house.

I glance at her out of the corner of my eye, and Lianhua has gone back to eating as if absolutely nothing were happening at the table, so I pick up my chopsticks again.

“We’d better finish breakfast”, I tell them.

And the three of us finish breakfast in silence.

But as I eat the last slice, I think that I am glad, very glad, that I decided back then that my first Gate would be the Yang one, because a whole lifetime of dealing with my period is more than enough for anyone, and being able to spare myself that in this one is a real blessing.

When we finish, there is nothing left on the table but empty bowls, a half-full teapot and a tray without a single crumb on it.

Xia has already gotten up to start clearing, so I call her before she carries off the first bowl.

“Xia”, I tell her. “When you two finish clearing up, we’ll walk you there.”

Xia stops with the tray clutched to her chest.

“I have to go to the Tower of the Five Dragons”, I continue. “I need to talk to Lu Zhiyu.”

Xia looks at me, and frowns slightly.

“Has something happened?” she asks me.

“No”, I reply. “It’s just that I’ve decided to set formations aside, at least for now.”

Xia sets the tray down on the table.

“I’ve spent several months now learning to make portable formations”, I continue. “And they aren’t really that hard to make. So I’ve already told Master Shi that, for now, I won’t be going to any more lessons.”

They are the ones from the Speed branch, the ones prepared in advance on tablets or banners to be deployed anywhere afterward. And, at least when made calmly at my study desk and not in the middle of a fight, there isn’t much mystery to them.

“And I want to start on Enchantments”, I finish. “But the Tower’s guide doesn’t say where the guild that handles them is, so I want to go and ask her.”

Because Enchantments are something I have had pending since the Empire, since those books I read at the Palace with a very specific idea in mind, which was to someday make a chair that moved on its own.

Or better still, one that floated.

Xia frowns even more.

“And why are you dropping formations?” she asks me. “When we were talking about them a couple of months ago, you seemed so excited about the ones that can be combined.”

“And I still am”, I reply. “I still like them, and I still find their possibilities extremely interesting.”

I pause.

“But unfortunately, I can’t make them”, I continue.

I raise my hand and make a gesture that takes in the whole house, the courtyard, the magnolia, the doors of the rooms and the wall.

“And the reason I can’t make them is that there isn’t enough room in this house”, I finish.

Xia follows my hand with her eyes, and then looks at me, with the same face she made two months ago when I told her formations were puzzles.

“I don’t understand”, she tells me. “What does room have to do with it?”

“Do you remember the honeycomb-shaped drawing I showed you?” I ask her.

“Yes”, she replies. “The one with the hexagons.”

“Well, think about the size of the Qi-gathering formation in the cultivation room”, I tell her. “And now imagine that same honeycomb, but with each of its hexagons that size.”

Xia falls silent, although I can see her thinking.

She looks toward the door of the cultivation room, next to my bedroom, then toward the middle of the courtyard, and moves her eyes slowly from side to side, as if she were placing invisible hexagons one beside another.

Finally she looks around her, at the wall, the roofs and the kitchen door.

“You’re right”, she tells me. “There isn’t anywhere in the whole house big enough to make a formation that size.”

“That’s why I’ve decided to put formations on hold while I look for a solution”, I tell her.

And I rest my forearms on the edge of the table.

“In the meantime, I’m going to ask Lu Zhiyu where on earth the Guild of Enchanters is, or whatever they call themselves”, I continue. “Because if the Pavilion of a Thousand Strokes and the Hall of a Hundred Circles taught me anything, it’s that without setting foot in that guild, I’m certainly not going to be able to do anything.”