After handing over all the pills to a beaming WuJing, I went to find SuYin.
“Hey!” I said when I saw her on the shop floor. “Can you help me out? I want to study some techniques.”
“Just go up to the library,” she said, her face showing confusion at my request.
“The what?” While I had lived in the Pavilion for well over a year, almost all that time was spent focusing on my cultivation technique. I didn’t even think to resume my previously cut-short tour.
“Come on,” she sighed, leading me to the stairway. As she did, she began to explain. “The fifth floor is the workshop, the sixth is the library, and the seventh just has a few meeting rooms. That’s where we hold important events, such as large meetings with the heads of different branches. The seventh is rarely used here, but we still have to maintain it. Anyway, we just need to go to the sixth.”
Once we had tromped back up the stairs, SuYin brought me to a large library not too dissimilar to those in the sect, but instead of tables in the middle of the hall, the Pavilion had small reading rooms around the perimeter, and large wooden bookshelves filled the entire space. There were no windows on this floor, and lighting was provided only by softly glowing orbs.
“You can flip through anything you want on the floor, but to study a manual you need to register it with the librarian, and she will charge it to your account. If you want something that isn’t here, such as a higher-grade manual, talk to the librarian. If this branch has it, she will check your contribution to see if you are allowed to view it. If we don’t, she can requisition it from the main branch, but that requires substantially more contribution.”
I nodded. “Thanks. What about herbalist and wood qi techniques? Where would I find those?”
SuYin smiled wistfully at that question. “Let me show you.”
She brought me to a section of the library dedicated to plants. There, she gently ran her fingers across the spines of several books. “Here they are,” she said in a soft voice, “everything you could want to know about growing plants.”
I wasn’t great with people. I had spent centuries alone in a shed in the past avoiding them, but even I could pick up on some clues.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She looked down and shook her head. “It’s just… My parents are farmers. Most people in these parts are, you know? I just imagine what this kind of knowledge could do for them.”
“You can’t buy it and send it to them?”
“I could,” she gave a wry laugh, “but no one in my family can cultivate. No one has any affinities, so it wouldn’t do any good even if I did. That’s how it is, you know? Most of us are just hanging on. Waiting for someone to get a blessing that can help.”
We just stood there for a moment.
SuYin finally shook her head. “Sorry… I… I need to go.” Without looking back, she walked away.
I headed toward the stairs too. Not to follow, but because I was no longer in the mood to study. I headed down to the second floor where there were some break rooms I could relax in. After I had been sitting and thinking for several minutes, a young woman walked in front of me.
“Come on,” said Mei, “follow me.”
----------------------------------------
Mei led me down the stairs to the warehouse floor and out the side entrance I had used my first life here.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “no Grandmaster is going to jump out at you this close to the Pavilion. We’re safe.”
I had assumed so, but I was still nervous about Master Zhong’s uncle finding trouble with me too early.
Mei took me to a small apartment building behind the Pavilion. It had a similar aesthetic, but the smaller size and reduced ornamentation made it feel significantly less ostentatious. We went up to the fourth floor, and she guided me into a room.
“Welcome to my apartment,” she said, gesturing to a small sofa. “Take a seat.”
Mei’s apartment was incredibly well decorated, and it put my paltry efforts to shame. There was no gilding or expensive ornamentation, but tastefully subdued wooden carvings were spread around the room. The sitting room had a large balcony, but it opened onto the side of the building facing the Pavilion, so the view was blocked, and little light could come in.
After I sat, Mei quietly made a pot of tea and placed it on a coffee table in the middle of the chairs. She poured two cups and began drinking without saying a word. The entire time, I was worried about what was happening and why she suddenly brought me here.
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After finishing her cup, she set it down and began talking.
“You know about my blessing,” she said with a subdued but firm tone. “I don’t know how much you know about how it works, but I know you know what it is.”
I nodded. “Yes, I do.” She hadn’t explained it in this loop, but WuJing had told me the first time we met. She gained knowledge about the best way to act to gain the most benefit in any situation. To me, this made her both the most and least trustworthy person I knew. I had a firm belief that my blessing would always give her the most benefit, so I believed she would never risk betraying me, but I could never trust the intentions behind her actions.
“It doesn’t tell me the words to say, and it doesn’t let me read minds,” she said, looking at her empty cup with a downcast expression. “It just guides me on how to behave. I don’t know the reason why I should act the way I do. I just know that is what I am supposed to do. I’ve become so accustomed to it that it has become natural. Right now, my blessing is guiding me to act vulnerable and afraid. I don’t even know how I would naturally behave in this situation anymore.”
Even hearing her say it, I still felt a need to protect her, to help her. I could not let emotions control me around this woman.
“I didn’t bring you here to talk about me, though. We are here to talk about little Yin. Do you know about her blessing, too?” she asked.
“No, only yours and WuJing’s,” I said with a slight head shake.
“Her blessing gave her a good memory. It’s nice, it helps her in the Pavilion. She can perfectly remember anything you tell her, and she is especially good at remembering and recording diagrams and such, but that’s about it. Like me, she has no affinities and will never be able to cultivate. She is just a girl with a good memory.”
We sat in silence for a bit, but finally, I looked at Mei. “And? There is a reason to say this, right?”
“I’m sure there is,” she said with a wry smile, “but I’m just supposed to bring you here, act vulnerable, tell you what I want about Yin, and let you decide.”
“Alright,” I said, firming up my mind, “Anything else to say about her?”
“Just… I don’t know if the way you handled Gou and Master Zhong will be good for her. She is from a poor family, most of the attendants are. Working here, we have a chance, but Pavilion Attendant is a job for the young. We trade our youth for the hope of a better future. SuYin might not have liked Gou, but I don’t know if she will be able to find anything better, especially now.”
I sipped my tea without responding. I knew what I was being pushed to do. I knew what Mei’s blessing was asking for. But… did I want to do it? Even if I didn’t change every future for them, I could give them a single life…
“Mei,” I said with a mirthless chuckle, “you can give people advice on how to act through your blessing, right? Do you just tell people how you yourself are supposed to act, or is it how they should act?”
“It’s…” she began before stopping to think. “It’s a bit of both. I feel how I am supposed to tell them to act if that makes sense.”
“Yes,” I sighed. “So, what does your blessing say? Should I do it?”
“It’s your choice,” she said shaking her head. “I’m not supposed to tell you either way.”
“Alright,” I said, making my decision. “Choose. I know what SuYin wants. What do you want?”
I didn’t tell her the question. I wanted to test her blessing’s power. If she was telling the truth, she had to combine what it told her with her own powerful intuition to know exactly what was happening.
“Anything?” she asked, looking me in the eye.
“Sure, anything,” I smiled.
“Wind. If I could choose anything, it would be wind,” she said with a smile before shaking her head. “Too bad it’s the wrong answer.” She paused another moment, then looked at me. “Water. I guess it has to be water.”
Was that all to get me to look for wind qi cultivation techniques? I was going to do that anyway.
“System,” I subvocalized so Mei couldn’t hear me, “how much to give Mei a temporary low eight-star water affinity and SuYin the same thing for wood?”
Temporary Low, 8-star Water and Wood Affinities for Mei and SuYin. Cost 520 credits. Discount applied. Discounted cost 260 credits.
I laughed quietly. Well, if this was going to burn my discount anyway, I might as well play big.
“How much is a wind affinity?”
Temporary Low, 8-star Wind Affinity. Cost 2,600 credits.
So, ten times the price of the basic elements?
“Alright, System, give them both mid seven-star affinities and give Mei a mid eight-star wind affinity.
Temporary Mid, 7-star Water and Wood Affinities for Mei and SuYin, and Temporary Mid 8-star Wind Affinity for Mei. Cost 15,620 credits. Discount applied. Discounted cost 7,810 credits. Purchase Confirmed. 45,515 credits remaining.
Was it a smart move? I don’t know. Credits were valuable, but this only cost me 8 thousand and a somewhat limited discount. I could spare it. Spending these credits may have bought me something much more valuable. Normally, Mei and SuYin would have died long before my encounter with Formation Emperor Du XiongMing, but now, they should be able to easily step into Grandmaster and live much longer lives. If this bought their loyalty, the price might be worth it.
I looked at Mei. “Alright,” I said, “it’s done. Get me a pen and several sheets of paper.”
Mei did not act giddy or excited in the slightest. She moved with the gravity I was personally feeling about my decision. I still wasn’t sure I had done the right thing here, but it was a new choice, and it was something I wanted to try.
She gave me only a couple of sheets of paper, but as I started writing, she left her apartment to buy more. I spent two hours carefully writing down Peak-Yellow cultivation techniques for water and wood qi. Without cultivating wind qi, the extra affinity wouldn’t do much for Mei, but she should be able to slightly control the air around herself.
“Alright,” I said when I finished, “this one is for you, the other is for SuYin. They are the best I have. You might be able to get better from the Pavilion, I don’t know.”
“Thank you,” she said. Tears began to well in her eyes.
I just nodded, trust and distrust warring within me.
“If you have any questions, you can come find me. Tell SuYin the same. Don’t rush. Slow and steady is the only path forward. Don’t worry about qi stagnation or any problems like that. We can take care of cultivation speed with pills. Instead, be slow and deliberate. Your blessing should give you a lot of protection from the mental deviations cultivation can cause, but you still need to be careful.”
“I understand, thank you,” she said again, tears beginning to flow from her eyes.
My distrust of her emotions ran too deep. I couldn’t believe anything I saw. I just stood and left.