Chapter 23- A Matter of Merit

The immortals immediately vanished from mortal sight. They had a lot of practice moving very quickly between the gaps in a mortal’s perception. Hong and Tian weren’t doing anything too creative, they were just running in circles trying to feel where the greatest concentration of qi and brainpower was.

Tian returned to the group wearing a frown. Hong joined him a second later.

“The qi distribution seems normal. Or, at least, I don’t feel any significant concentration.” Tian groped for the right words. The trees had fractionally more qi in them than the grass, but so what? Of course they did, it would be stranger if they didn’t.

“The brainpower is similar. It’s really faint, and seems to cover the whole orchard.” Hong agreed.

“Immortals? Um… what is brainpower?” Little Treasure asked.

“We aren’t quite sure either. It’s a kind of qi that Heavenly Realm cultivators can manipulate.” Tian answered. His quite normal tone had Censor Henshen coughing.

“Heavenly Realm?! How many of them could there even be in the Kingdom? And you want to go poking your nose in their arrangements?”

The two juniors looked at each other, then back at the Censor. “Yes? They either belong to the Monastery, in which case they will pardon us, or they don’t, in which case they really don’t want to cause trouble inside the kingdom.” Hong spread her hands, her body language matching her casual tone.

“Or they are heretics, in which case it is highly urgent that we find out about any arrangements they are making.” Tian kept his eyes light on Little Treasure, but the line connecting the Pillar Family of Bluestone City and a key general that supported the founding of the kingdom was very short and very straight. If the heretics had aimed something at Bluestone City, it wasn’t impossible that they were scheming something here.

“Back to the point, though. I’m pretty certain there is a high level illusion cast over the orchard. The problem is that I’m not finding a spot that might be a node I can break.” Hong explained.

Tian pulled out the pendant that was their only clue to the palm art and held it in front of his face.

“What are you doing?” Hong asked.

“Seeing if anything happens.”

Hong waited a moment.

“And?”

“Nothing.” Tian shrugged, and slowly shifted around, trying to peer around the pendant.

“Of course there isn’t. You look like an idiot. Do you think the very senior senior who made this array would set it up so they looked like an idiot every time they had to use it?” Hong’s voice was maddeningly reasonable.

“Better than what you are doing. Which is nothing.” Tian made a point of sounding unbothered while privately swearing vengeance.

“Mmmhmm.”

“Um. Immortals? What’s a node?” Treasure asked.

“A spot where lines connect. Have you played Go or watched people play? You know where the lines intersect? You could call those nodes. Or where several roads meet. It should feel like a concentration of energy, or look like a bright spot if you have the right sensory arts.” Tian explained.

A thought intruded. “Say, Little Treasure, does anywhere here look glowy like me?”

The little boy nodded his head, his tidy little bun wagging seriously in the air. “Yes, that’s why I asked. There.” He pointed. Tian looked. Then looked at Hong. Who also pointed.

“Here?”

“No, Big Sis Immortal, there.”

Hong suddenly radiated a loving, maternal aura. “Yes. I am the big sister. You are a good and wise child. Here?”

“He’s clearly pointing here. Your brain damage is worsening.” Tian frowned. He would have to make the moral and social education of Little Treasure an urgent priority.

“Um, Big Bro Immortal? A bit left. Yes. You have your finger on it now.”

Hong and Tian exchanged glances, then glanced over at the censor, who looked helpless. Tian was pointing a little above shoulder height at an empty spot in the air.

He waved his hand through the spot. Nothing.

“Huh.”

Hong nodded. “Try sticking the pendant in there.”

Tian didn’t have a better idea. He raised the pendant and slowly brought it to the spot Little Treasure had pointed at. It wasn’t until he was right on top of it that he felt the slightest tug on the string. He let the pull guide the pendant. It snapped into place with an audible click, suspended in midair.

Then suspended in the center of a heavy wooden door set in a sandstone wall.

Tian ran his hand over the stone in wonder, trying to replicate the swiping motion he used before. Smooth, not polished but cut with such fiendish precision that it remained satiny to the touch who knows how many thousands of years later. When he looked closely, he could see lines of script etched on the stones. He didn’t recognize the language, but it looked a little like the red squiggles he had seen in the eyes of the boys whose eyes had turned golden.

“Sis’ Liren, are you seeing this?”

“Seeing, yes. Believing, no. I swear I ran through that exact spot.”

“Immortals?” Censor Henshen looked between them.

“Do you not see this?” Tian rapped his knuckles on the door.

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“I do not.”

“Didn’t hear anything just now either, I assume?” Tian asked.