Natsuki walked over to me and, smiling dully, placed her hands upon my shoulders.
"Xue'er. What is it that you wish for? Offer me your prayers, and you will have the power to realize them with your own hands."
I knew. I knew! I knew, and so I spoke!
"I... I want..."
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
From outside the courtyard resonated inwards a loud ticking sound, something like a heartbeat, except each tick was composed of three sounds, the first two dull and the final sharp, and it was too slow to be a heartbeat.
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
Natsuki turned her gaze back to the obsidian jade gates at the front of the courtyard.
"How odd... there's someone standing outside, but they have no intention of entering, so the barrier didn't recognize their presence."
I looked past her shoulders, but I could not see through the gates, not anymore.
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
"Should we... check?"
"If you wish it."
From the ends of Natsuki's cascading hair crawled out eight crows, which all lazily floated over to the front gate and each curled three legs of four talons apiece around the great handle of the right half of the gate. They began pulling it open, and as it silently opened, I felt an odd sense of discomfort at the sight.
That gate was not supposed to open.
But Natsuki was opening it, so there was no use in thinking over it twice. I walked over to the gate, and through the gap between the double-doors I heard a familiar voice—
"What we're looking for is to decompose the inverse of the composite qi waveform into its constituent waves... and then we can run analysis on the amplitudes of the constituent waves once we get back. This said, it's more complicated to do the inversion at this stage, so you can just directly measure the dots of the waveform against the constituents, and we can apply the inversion once we have the numbers, since inversion is preserved under this sort of decomposition, at least for the odd constituents, and we can skip it for the even ones."
I peeked half my face out from the gap between the double-doors of the gate, and saw Professor Jibeidi, facing away, speaking to a group of alchemists holding various sorts of instruments and tools, most of them looking incredibly confused, and around them a small group of civilians coming and going, who seemed even more perplexed.
"Uh... Senior Jibeidi..." One of the alchemists, who seemed to be glancing at me out of the corner of his eyes, raised a hand that barely reached above his head. "I haven't been in this city long, but, uh... is that door supposed to open?"
"Which door?"
"The front gate of the Bai manor."
"No, obsidian jade is too heavy, so they only open it for funerals. Now, before we calibrate the dot-trackers, we first need to determine a suitable periodization to provide the base frequency for the reference constituent waves. That's what this pacefinder is for. Of course, you all learned how this works in university."
From the ground she picked up something that resembled a balance scale. Though nothing weighed down either of its plates, the plate on the left rose with three clicks, then fell back down, then rose with three clicks again, and repeated, its speed changing each time.
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
"This will take some time to calibrate. In that time, we should set up around the manor and stabilize the qi fields to make sure we're not losing track of the anomaly's aftereffects. Do not touch the walls or attempt to go inside. Otherwise Legal will end up getting involved. Here in our Kangtian division we have a proud streak of not running things by Legal, and let's do our best not to make them force us to change that."
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
Another alchemist raised a hand, and watched me with a befuddled expression as she spoke. "Senior, are you implying that what we're doing is illegal? Like, could this be considered a form of trespassing, even if we don't go inside?"
"It's not illegal unless Legal says so. Therefore, if we don't ask Legal, then it's not illegal. If, even then, it still turns out to be illegal, then that's Legal's problem, not ours. In the first place, you can't even go inside due to the barrier, and since you all know that there isn't enough intent to constitute trespassing, but I digress. Any more questions?"
The alchemists were silent, but I could see many of them looking my way, rubbing their eyes, craning their necks to see if the gate was really open and I was really standing under it.
"You all look like you have questions. You should ask them now, before the pacefinder stops ticking."
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
It seemed as though everyone in the crowd was now looking at me, except for Jibeidi, who was looking at the crowd. Under the pressure of so many eyes I did not wish much to speak, but at the same time, the silence was too awkward to leave unbroken.
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
"Professor..."
"Huh?" Jibeidi turned, finally facing me, though her gaze first fell upon the gates, these slightly ajar gates. "When did the gate open?"
"Professor, can you, uh...."
Eyes upon eyes pressed down on me, now two more than before.
"...come inside for a bit?"
I ducked back into the courtyard, outside of the reach of those eyes, and a few moments later Jibeidi followed me inside, not carrying the pacefinder but rather ten other alchemical devices, one hanging from each finger, each shifting and whirring silently. She left one device at the gate, then followed me to the fountain at the center of the courtyard. Looking down at the fish swirling about the basin, she laid another device upon the surface of the water. Then she stood, and she looked to the left end of the courtyard, where several divine cypress trees lay shattered. Then she looked to the right end of the courtyard, where an empty hall stood undisturbed. Then she looked to the far end of the courtyard, where the main hall sat silently.
She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again and asked, "Chunxue, where is everyone?"
They are all dead.
I opened my mouth to speak, but then realized that there was nothing I could possibly say to that question. It was not that I did not know the answer. No, I knew the answer, but a dull, throbbing anxiety in my neck preventing the words from rising out of my lungs into my mouth.
They are all dead, and I am free.
—I think it was a sense of shame. It felt like, once again, I was violating some duty that I owed her. For the duration of my imprisonment in the sect, Jibeidi was the only person who had consistently offered me something that might be categorized as solace. In fact, that was perhaps the only basis on which a relationship could be said to have existed between us. She was an official of the Alchemist's Tower whose work carried her all around the Great Plains, and only incidentally in the process of that work did she happen to occasionally have the opportunity to teach some alchemy to me, a prisoner of one of her employer's business partners. That was not necessarily the extent of our relationship, but that was its basis, its foundation. So now, by casting off my chains, I was denying the very foundation of that relationship. That did not mean that I would never see her again— after all, her work carried her to the Imperial Capital just as well as it did to Kangtian. But there was something shameful in me tearing away at the earth underneath our feet with such a— such a selfish, one-sided approach! Rather than an ant, which carves kingdoms of sand underground with only the weight of its own back, was I not more like a badger, whose carelessly bored tunnels destabilize the dirt under even the tallest of towers?
"I'm... not sure how to answer that question," I finally answered.
"Hm—" Her eyebrows furrowed, in just the slightest measure. "I feel like you've said that before, though I can't recall when."
I had in fact said it before, only a few months ago, in the aftermath of my duel with Long Guoqiang. And then I had said... I had said that, if only...
If only...
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
"If only... Natsuki were here..."
Jibeidi reached a hand up to her head, but, yet holding eight alchemical devices among her fingers, had no choice but to bring her hand back down.
"Na Cikui? Can't say I've ever heard of the surname Na. Not that I'm one to speak."
At her words I felt a wave of stiffness rippling across my back, as if the vertebrae of my spine were all melding into a immovable stalagmite.
How could she not remember?
"You don't remember her?"
Natsuki, my savior?
"Natsuki, the foreigner?"
With the voice of a demon and the soul of a god?
"With the horns of a markhor and the eyes of a rakshasa?"
How could she not remember?
"A foreigner? Here in Kangtian?" Professor Jibeidi frowned deeply as she sat the rest of the devices down in oddly specific places around the fountain. "Are you referring to the incident with the Mountain of Cleansing Flame? That was a long time ago. Before my time, even."
"No... no, not in the past, no... but..."
But rather now! Now, here, where Natsuki, Xia-jie, is by my side!
—I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned my head up to see, there by my side, Natsuki, smiling more dully than normal.
"Good afternoon," Natsuki said, and then she paused for the most imperceptible of moments, something like regret taking the place of her voice. "—Doctor Jibeidi."
Doctor Jibeidi, she said, though she had always addressed the professor as Feixing, her given name.
"Good afternoon." Jibeidi gave a slight bow. "I don't think we've met before. I am Jibeidi Feixing, a senior alchemist from the Alchemist's Tower, currently stationed here in Kangtian."
Natsuki nodded. "I am Xiayue, a sister to Chunxue, though I am a traveler by birth, and thus not one of the Bai family proper. I have heard much about you, Doctor. Thank you... for watching over Chunxue for so long."
"Oh, no, no, not at all," Jibeidi muttered, shaking her head. "I... haven't been able to do much at all."
I wondered if Professor Jibeidi had ever felt guilt for what she had watched happen, or rather for what she had let happen, though I could not read it from her expression, which had fixed itself upon the pavement under Natsuki's feet.
"By any chance..." Jibeidi said after some seconds, "have you studied cultivation abroad?"
Natsuki tilted her head to the side.
"That depends. Why do you ask?"
"Your qi's aura is not particularly strong, but I can see the way that it distorts space around you. There is an old alchemical formation under the ground here, but it bends arounds your body like snow around flame. Despite the limited flow of qi through your dantian, your feet carry the weight of a great expert. I can only assume that you have grasp of some technique not known to this land."
Natsuki put a hand over her mouth and cast her gaze off to the side. She remained like that for several seconds. We waited for her words.
Finally—
"Between east and west, north and south, future and past, one lifetime is not sufficient to see all the truths of this world. And yet I shall take hold of them all, for I am the one who bears witness to samsara. That is my Dao, and that is the only answer I can give you."
"I... see."
There was once again silence in the courtyard, but for the muted sound of the pacefinder beating from beyond the double-doors.
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
"—I shall answer your other question as well," Natsuki declared. "Where is everyone? The Bai family is no more, for I have killed them all. In accordance with my own sense of justice, I have killed them all, saints and demons alike."
Jibeidi tightened her lips and turned her gaze upwards, to the gap in the clouds where, not that long ago, Natsuki's power had cut through reality itself. She exhaled forcefully through her nose, then stood unmoving for several moments, not even bothering to reclaim her breath. But, if nothing else, the pacefinder did not stop ticking, its irregular beat marking a consistently incorrect time that would not cease to flow.
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
She did not ask any questions. She did not doubt Natsuki's words. I am not sure just where that trust came from. Perhaps she trusted me, or perhaps she trusted her own judgement of Natsuki's odd powers.
"About forty years ago..." she began to mutter, "when I was still a novice alchemist in the Imperial Capital, I watched the Ji family collapse before my eyes. I personally knew several of its members from both my time at university and from my work at the Tower, as they were one of the largest and most powerful families in all Wei. In fact, one of the senior alchemists who instructed me in field work when I first joined the Tower was surnamed Ji. Ji Tao. If you study alchemy formally, you will learn some of his theories. But... one day, on the fifteenth day of the new year, on the day that every member of the clan had gathered in the Imperial Capital for the Lantern Festival, they were all killed. All but one."
Jibeidi turned her gaze back down and spread her palms out before her. Between them appeared a ghastly image of something that resembled a guandao, but was clearly not a guandao.
"Li Yunxiao, a black sheep of the clan, spent several decades being abused by his peers and elders. Some said that if only he had not been born as a bastard child, then he would have been one of the greatest scions of the clan. But there is no magic that can rewrite the past. One can only wield power to change the future. Thus, when Li Yunxiao found this weapon, a legacy from the times before the endless curtain of fog had fallen over the eastern seas, he brandished it and killed every single other person surnamed Li, thus reclaiming what many said was his birthright. I cannot say if, in fact, the entire clan was guilty, but those I knew were certainly guilty, and so I could hardly mourn them at the end of it all. It is, after all, perfectly reasonable to be punished for one's own sins. The Yellow River ran red with blood that night, so much so that it is now said in the Imperial Capital that if one crosses the Yellow River at the wrong hour of night, one will arrive not in the court of the Emperor but rather in the court of the Yama."
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
"And... what happened to him after that?" I dared ask.
"Nothing much. The Imperial Court was, of course, furious, but Li Yunxiao had not harmed anyone who did not carry the surname Li, nor had he attacked any civilians, and thus there was nothing they could indict him for. That is the freedom granted to cultivator families in these lands east of A'erjin-Shan. Afterwards he rebuilt the Li family in his own image, and now he is just another noble of the Imperial Capital. That is why... Chunxue, though I never wished for you to take such a forceful step into the jianghu, this may have been... the only solution for you."
I nodded slowly. It was a good thing, then, that I had not killed Ouyang Di. Or rather, that I had not let Natsuki kill her, though there was little difference between the two, as either way it was my karma that would be sown. That said, it was not the law that I feared most. It was my own conscience, my own guilt, my own wishes.
"—Chunxue, will you be going to the Imperial Capital now?"
"Yes," I answered firmly, because I knew what I wished for.
"Then you should go and forget about this city as soon as you can. There are, of course, many loose bureaucratic ends that need to be tied up with the Bai family, but the Magistrate will take care of those, I expect. Some people who have karma with the Bai family might come after you, but... I suppose Xiayue here will be able to help you with that."
Natsuki put a hand to her chin and tapped her cheek.
"I am not familiar with your bureaucracies. Is the eradication of the Bai family a particularly troublesome event, any more than the more common deaths of famine and plague that humans are subject to?"
Professor Jibeidi blinked slowly, her eyes growing wider every time. I think I must have done the same. It was a strange question, one that no human could possibly ask.
"Yes. Very. There's so much farming land under control of the Bai family, as well as hundred of factories, and even several divisions of the army stationed at the border with Ji Han. It's a very big deal if management of all that collapses. But— aside from the issues with the army, the Magistrate should be able to handle the rest, if you get her help."
Natsuki nodded, though she seemed unconvinced.
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk..... t-t-chk...
t-t-chk.... t-t-chk CHK CHK CHK CHK CHK CHK CHK CHK—
Professor Jibeidi shook her head.
"Looks like I have to get back to work. Chunxue, I have some things to give to you before you go. I do not have them on me now, but I will have them sent to you by tomorrow. If I cannot pay you another visit before you leave, then I will see you in the Capital next time my work carries me there."
She stepped back, and in one swipe of the arm, lifted three devices up off the ground.
"Professor..." I whispered.
She stopped.
I bowed, clasping my hands together, and with a voice as lucid as I could muster, cried out,
"Thank you."
In those two words were a decade's worth of sentiment. Only two words. And yet they were too many. It would have been best if I could have said nothing, the way one does to a friend or to family. But I could not. Jibeidi was neither of those to me. What exactly was she to me? Teacher? Mentor? I was not really sure.
For a moment she was silent, her expression somewhat... pained.
CHK CHK CHK CHK CHK CHK CHK CHK—
"Chunxue, I hope that if nothing else, I have been able to offer you something like solace for these past nine years."
She clapped up all the alchemical devices in her hands and flashed out of the gate, and a moment later, the pacefinder went silent, and a different device began ticking, this one much quieter.