Chapter 224 (Patreon)

This chapter requires some context, which is why I'm adding links to these images.

Image of the machine built by Wen:

https://cdn.mey.com/media/wysiwyg/base/N_hmaschinen-Museum_Mey_Chronologie_1500x1500__0020_1831_Thimonnier_Frankreich.webp

Image of the machine she has designed for the Tower of the Five Dragons:

https://www.meisterdrucke.es/impresion-art%C3%ADstica/Unknown-artist/1024450/M%C3%A1quina-de-coser-de-Barth%C3%A9lemy-Thimonnier-%281793-1857%29.-Siglo-XIX.-Par%C3%ADs,-CNAM.html

I feel a hand shaking my shoulder and a voice saying something close to my ear, but it reaches me from very far away, because the only thing in front of me is runes falling into place one after another, like words looking for their spot in a sentence.

The hand shakes me again, more firmly this time.

“Xiaojie”, she tells me.

On hearing that word, I blink and the runes go still.

The first thing I see when I finally manage to focus my eyes is the top of my desk, and for a moment I don’t recognize it.

It is covered in ash. Little gray heaps scattered all over the surface, clearly the remains of failed talismans, and probably many more than I would care to count.

But in the center, right in front of me, there is an intact talisman, so I stare at it, because I don’t remember finishing drawing it. Or rather, I remember perfectly having made it, stroke by stroke, and why I was writing those runes.

What I don’t remember is having realized what was happening, but I take my eyes off the talisman and turn my head toward whoever has pulled me out of the trance.

Lianhua is standing on my left, beside the chair, her hand still resting on my shoulder, and she withdraws it as soon as she sees me looking at her.

I sent her to pick up the last pieces I needed for the sewing machine prototype, and I started running tests shortly after she left, so the length of her errand is also the length of my trance.

“How long were you gone?” I ask her.

And my voice comes out hoarse, as if I hadn’t used it in hours.

“Two periods, Xiaojie”, she replies.

I let my breath out slowly, and with it goes a tension in my shoulders I didn’t know I had.

Two periods. I haven’t gone past the limit I set myself years ago: if I go into a trance with my Blessing, they have to pull me out at three periods unless there is an emergency.

But that rule works because there is always someone watching, and today there was no one. Lianhua was in the city, Xia is at her lesson with Master An, and I sat down at the desk with no intention whatsoever of going into a trance, because that hasn’t happened to me with runes in years.

And never with a brush in my hand.

If Lianhua’s errand had gotten complicated, nobody would have pulled me out of here until one of the two came back, with consequences I would rather not know about, if there had been any.

Lianhua must be thinking something similar, because she doesn’t move from my side.

“What happened, Xiaojie?” she asks me. “Why did you go into a trance?”

She asks it in her usual voice, flat and polite, but her eyes stray for an instant to the ash on the desk and come back to me.

“I just started running some tests”, I reply. “I wanted to see whether I could create a talisman with a kind of effect that isn’t in Master Mu’s books.”

I pause.

“And shortly after I started, my Blessing activated”, I finish.

Although as I tell her, I think I understand why.

Because runes are a language, and when I draw a talisman from the books, all I do is copy a sentence someone else already wrote. But what I was doing this afternoon was trying to write a new sentence, with words I know but in an order nobody had ever put in writing before, or at least nobody I have read.

Something that, apparently, is enough for my Blessing to activate.

I reach out and brush the edge of the talisman with my fingertips, without picking it up.

“Although, at least on the face of it, it seems the trance has served to make it”, I continue. “Or at least to make a talisman that works. And I suppose it does what I wanted it to do.”

I suppose, because a talisman can’t be tested without using it, and this is the only one I have.

“Did you bring the new pieces?” I ask her as I take my eyes off the talisman and look at her.

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she replies. “I have already left them beside the machine.”

“Then we’d better go and try them”, I tell her. “Let’s see whether one of them finally makes it work properly.”

I grab the rims, roll the chair back away from the desk and turn it toward the door.

Lianhua follows a step behind me as I leave the study and the wheels start to rattle over the courtyard stones.

The light has changed since midday and the magnolia’s shadow almost reaches the opposite wall, something I notice as I pass beneath its branches, go around the stone table and head for the room on the other side, the dining room.

Or, at least, the room we still call that, because in this house it is the least used. Ever since we moved in, we have eaten all our meals in the courtyard, and we only set foot in the dining room on days when it rains.

That is why, two months ago, when I needed a spacious place where nobody would trip over anything, it was the first room I thought of.

I stop in the doorway and sigh as I look into the room, where the furniture is pushed against one of the walls while, in the center, stands the machine, or rather the attempt at a machine, mounted on a sort of wooden trestle with a treadle.

And all around it, on the floor, lie the remains of two months of tests.

Springs of every size, bent guides, wooden pieces that fit badly and needles, lots and lots of needles, all with their points finished in a small hook and all discarded for one reason or another.

Seeing it, I sigh as always, because when the idea of the sewing machine came to me, this was not exactly the one I had in mind.

I was thinking of the black iron one with gold lettering, the one in the corner of grandma’s house, with its wooden table and its enormous iron treadle, but reality hit me hard as soon as I started drawing the parts of that machine and asking myself who in this city could make them for me.

And in the end, the only thing I have managed to recreate is Thimonnier’s old machine. A wooden frame and a needle like a crochet hook that goes up and down while a single thread forms a chain stitch beneath the fabric.

In other words, the grandmother of all sewing machines.

After that thought, I go into the room, position the chair in front of the machine and turn my head toward Lianhua.

“Give me the pieces”, I tell her.

Lianhua goes over to the small backpack she has left leaning against the wall, next to the machine, crouches and opens it.

First she takes out four leaf springs, each a different size, which she sets on the worktable side by side, and then she takes out a small cloth bundle that she unwraps carefully.

Inside there are ten or so needles, all ending in a small hook, but all different from one another. In some the hook is deeper, in others more open, in others it is closer to the point, and a couple of them have a small latch that half closes it.

I look at them, then at the springs, and then I lower my eyes to the floor on my right, where the little pile of coil springs lies, the ones that clearly didn’t work.

I ordered them convinced they would be the simplest solution, and not a single one held up. Some went slack after a few dozen stitches, and others simply snapped with a crack that, the first time, made us both jump.

So I hope these ones do work.

Because a leaf spring is stiffer and forces you to press the treadle harder, but if there is one thing I am sure of, it is that the people of this world will have more than enough strength for that, because here almost everyone has some cultivation, and although most haven’t finished Body Tempering, Muscle Tempering is practically obligatory.

And someone who has tempered their muscles isn’t going to notice the difference between a soft spring and a stiff one, so, without further delay, I get to work.

The rest of the machine already works, since I managed to adjust it weeks ago and the bar runs without a single hitch.

The problem was in the spring that has to make that bar work in time with the treadle, and in the needle itself, which has to catch the thread on the way up and then release it without snagging on the fabric.

A hand of the Myriad removes the spring currently on the machine, another brings me the first of the new ones and holds it in place while I tighten the piece that fixes it to the wood.

At the same time, two other hands take out the needle that was in the bar and fit the first of the new ones.

Lianhua stays standing beside me, hands clasped in front of her, watching.

And then I start the tests, changing springs and needles until, with the third spring and the seventh needle, the one with the most open hook and no latch, the mechanism works cleanly and without any lag.

Even so, I press the treadle down fifty times in a row, since on other occasions the machine worked but it was the spring that didn’t hold up, and all fifty times the mechanism does exactly the same thing, with the same sound, like the ticking of a wooden clock, without my being able to detect any sign of the spring being about to fail.

After the check, I let go of the treadle and sink back against the backrest, relieved.

But the mechanism working with nothing in it doesn’t mean the machine can sew, so all that is left is to test that.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “Bring me the thread I had ready.”

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she replies.

She brings it at once from one of the benches pushed against the wall, which, to be exact, is a spool of silk thread, and with the Myriad I set it on its holder, on the underside of the machine, run the thread through the guides up to the piece underneath and check that it runs without catching.

“And now two pieces of fabric”, I ask her.

Lianhua hands them to me before I finish saying it, two scraps of coarse cloth, because there is no sense in ruining good fabric on a test either.

I take them, place one on top of the other and put them under the needle.

And then I realize the first problem, which has nothing to do with the machine.

Because this machine is designed for someone sitting in front of it on an ordinary chair, with one foot on the treadle, and not for someone sitting in a wheelchair, with her feet resting on a footrest that bumps into the base as soon as I try to get close enough.

So I turn the chair a little, just enough for the footrest to sit to one side of the base and not in front of it, and I come in sideways until my forearms reach the worktable.

It isn’t the most comfortable position in the world, but it is what there is.

The treadle, obviously, I can’t press myself, so I use Dragon’s Grip on it again while I hold the fabric with my own hands.

The first attempt is a disaster.

I bring the treadle down too fast, the fabric doesn’t advance at the same speed and the needle makes five stitches in the same spot before I realize I have to push it, so when I push it, I do it so abruptly that the next stitch comes out twice as long as the others, while on the third, to make the disaster even worse, the thread slips out of the hook.

I take out the fabric, cut the thread and start again.

The second attempt comes out crooked, because this time I concentrate so hard on the rhythm of the treadle that I forget to keep the fabric straight, and the seam drifts little by little toward the corner.

And it isn’t the machine’s fault, far from it, because the machine does exactly what I ask of it, so it is entirely my fault, since I had never used a sewing machine and this one isn’t exactly the most comfortable for a first time.

I take a deep breath after stopping again and try a third time, more slowly.

The needle goes down and up in time with the treadle, and beneath the fabric the thread forms the chain, link by link, while the two pieces of fabric advance between my hands, sewn to each other.

When I reach the end of the scrap, I let go of the treadle and stare at the seam.

It isn’t pretty, but it exists, which is more than I could say two months ago, so I cut the thread, take the fabric out of the machine and hand it to Lianhua.

“What do you think?” I ask her.

Lianhua takes the fabric in both hands and looks at it with a critical eye.

She turns it toward the light from the window while running her thumb over the seam, and then turns it over to look at the chain on the reverse, unhurried, with the same attention with which she checks the edge of her weapons.

“The stitches are uneven, Xiaojie”, she finally tells me.

“That’s just a matter of practice”, I reply. “Of coordinating the speed of the treadle with the speed you have to move the fabric at.”

I lean toward her a little.

“What I want to know is whether the stitching is sound”, I finish.

Lianhua looks at the seam again, and this time she pulls the two scraps a little, one in each direction, to check whether it holds.

It holds.

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she replies. “The stitching itself is sound, although that of very experienced seamstresses is better.”

She pauses.

“But the machine’s is better than that of many beginners”, she finishes.

Coming from Lianhua, who wouldn’t hand out a compliment even if she were paid to, that is a validation, so I let out my breath, relieved, and for the first time in two months I look at the machine without wanting to rip any part off it.

“Then it’s finished”, I say.

Lianhua gives me back the fabric, and I fold it on my knees.

“Now all that’s left is to take it to the Tower of the Five Dragons”, I continue. “So Lin Quingyu has an example from which to create the slightly better version I only have on plans.”

Because that version, much as it pains me, is beyond what I am capable of building.

Lianhua looks at the machine for a moment.

“Do you mean the one that, as you say, is shaped like a small cabinet, Xiaojie?” she asks me.

“Yes, that one”, I reply. “But that one requires a lot more labor, and parts I have no desire whatsoever to deal with.”

It has been hard enough getting a single leaf spring to work, without now taking on all the small, precise parts the other one needs.

“So something simple will do”, I add. “The Tower’s craftsmen will have an example of how it’s supposed to work, and from there, they can do the rest.”

That is what they have workshops, craftsmen and budgets for, whereas I have a dining room I haven’t been able to use in two months.

Lianhua says nothing; she just stands looking at the machine, as if trying to picture it somewhere other than this dining room.

“Xiaojie”, she finally tells me. “Will anyone be interested in this machine?”

It is a reasonable question, and not the first time I have asked it myself.

“It’ll probably be like the printing press”, I reply. “We’ll have to show it little by little, until people start to understand its advantages.”

Because with the printing press, Lin Quingyu already explained to me that nobody understands why they would want a thousand identical books until they see them, and the same will happen with this one.

Anyone who sees a machine for sewing will think a seamstress comes cheaper, until they see the garments that machine sews in the time it takes the seamstress to finish one.

But as I tell her, I am also thinking of something I don’t tell her, which is how Thimonnier’s workshop ended.

Because Thimonnier came to have dozens of his machines sewing uniforms, and a mob of tailors, convinced that those machines were going to take the bread from their mouths, stormed the workshop and burned all his machines.

I just hope nobody comes here to burn our house down, although I suppose they would first have to deal with the Tower.

I push that thought away and turn my head toward the door.

Outside, the light has turned orange, and the magnolia’s shadow has already reached the opposite wall and begun to climb it.

“It’s too late to go to the Tower now”, I tell her. “But tomorrow morning we’ll have to go.”

Lianhua nods.

“And not just for the machine”, I continue. “I also want to show Lin Quingyu the new talisman, to see whether she can help me test it.”

For the first time all afternoon, Lianhua looks surprised.

Not much, but she blinks once.

“Why would you need the help of the Tower of the Five Dragons, Xiaojie?” she asks me.

I fold the fabric on my knees a little more while I look for the simplest way to explain it to her.

“Because what that talisman is supposed to do is inject Qi into its target”, I tell her. “It’s supposed to replace a cultivator’s activation.”

Lianhua says nothing, but she doesn’t look away either, which makes it clear she is listening to me.

“So it can be used to activate, for example, spiritual objects or formations”, I continue. “And besides, it has a delayed effect, like Minor Explosion Talismans or Advanced Privacy ones.”

I pause before continuing.

“So it could even be used to activate them from a distance”, I finish.

Lianhua is silent for a moment, and I can almost see her turning it over, placing it beside everything she already knows how to do with a talisman and a hand of the Myriad that carries it wherever she wants.

“That seems quite useful in certain situations, Xiaojie”, she finally tells me.

She says it in her usual voice, flat and polite, but I have no doubt whatsoever that, of all those situations, several have already occurred to her.

“That’s why I thought of creating it”, I reply.

And after saying that, I sigh before continuing.

“But unfortunately, the only spiritual artifact we have to test it with is the storage pouch”, I continue. “And I don’t want to risk the talisman failing and destroying it.”

Because a talisman nobody has ever tested may do exactly what I think it does, or it may do something slightly different. And something slightly different, on an object that is much bigger on the inside than on the outside, isn’t a risk I want to run with everything we have stored in it.

I also thought of testing it on the house’s formations, but I ruled that out right away, since if the talisman damaged them, we would be left without defenses or without Qi gathering until I replaced the wood of the room’s floor or the stone of the courtyard and carved a new formation.

“That’s why I want to ask Lin Quingyu for help”, I finish. “To see whether she has some solution, even if I have to pay for the test.”

“It is a good idea, Xiaojie”, Lianhua tells me.

And then she looks at the machine again, but this time not like someone picturing it somewhere else, but like someone measuring it.

“Xiaojie”, she tells me. “The machine and you will not both fit in the boat at the same time.”

I look at the machine, and then I think of our boat, with the chair anchored to the bottom and Lianhua rowing at the stern, and you don’t need to be an engineer to agree with her.

“And then it has to be taken from the dock to the Tower”, she continues. “So the best thing is for me to go now and hire someone with a cart for tomorrow, so they can keep it at the dock while I come back for you on a second trip, and then take it to the Tower.”

“Don’t worry about the trip in the boat”, I reply. “I can carry it to the dock held with Dragon’s Grip.”

“Are you sure you will be able to hold it for so long?” Lianhua asks me next, with a certain note of concern.

“As far as the dock, I’m sure”, I reply. “But once we get there I’ll certainly be too tired to keep it up much longer, besides the fact that going down the street with a bundle the size of the sewing machine floating along would draw attention.”

Although as I say that, I think about the talisman tests, and then I look toward the door, toward the other side of the courtyard, where my study is.

“That’s why it’s better that you hire the cart anyway, and while you do, I’ll try to make more talismans to check whether I can make them without having to go into a trance”, I continue. “And that way, we’ll also have a decent number for the tests.”

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she replies.

She inclines her head and leaves the room, after which I hear her cross the courtyard, followed, shortly after, by the sound of the courtyard gate.

I stay a moment longer looking at the machine, which makes me admit that it is as ugly as sin, but then I leave the folded fabric on the worktable, turn the chair and cross back to the study.

Once inside, I go up to the desk, push the ash to one side and place a new sheet in front of me, right next to the finished talisman.

I look at it and remember every rune in that talisman. Every stroke, every angle, the exact order in which I wrote them and the amount of Qi I guided into each one, because during my trances I forget nothing of what I do.

But remembering a sentence in a language you don’t know isn’t the same as knowing how to say it, and a talisman I can only make when I am in a trance isn’t a talisman, it’s a fluke.

So I dip the brush, bring it to the paper, and begin with the first rune.