The Door To All Marvels

A shaft of sunlight streamed in through the winter, stained gold by the first word of spring. It caught on the dusty glass, spilling into a dusty hallway, stirring— a thousand motes of invisible detritus caught up agleam in the quietude encaptured. A moment of peace, therein enclosed, splashed across wooden floors and whitewashed drywall, and the library’s age.

Mingtian leaned against the wall, basking in the sunlight for a moment. Kinda like a cat, except more— for no cat nor solar dragon nor dominion of daylight could ever really appreciate the sunlight like he could. In no small way, he was more sunlight than actual sunlight, and in that… he could feel the first brush of spring as it settled down over East Saffron. It was a continuum, yes— he knew as much; the methods and methodologies of the seasons were not as inscrutable to him as they had in his long-ago youth, and even the mortals of this realm understood, which was pretty crazy in his opinion… but there was something intangibly more to it than the mere physical changing of the seasons. Spiritually… Ca Cao-on-Aurelia came alive beneath the breath of a new season.

What serene majesty. It was glorious.

A soft pair of footsteps resounded on the floor behind him, old boards creaking softly as someone approached. Lexi still in her office, and Janus had been called away to help his family prepare for the spring festival… which meant that he was alone in the library. It could have been Lily, but Lily— for all her admirable qualities— would never be quiet like that. Plus, Lily was still on the roof, staring uncertainly in the complete wrong direction.

A clever trick, he had to admit. To stretch the meaning of blood so far as to allow a movement technique so eminently subtle… for a lesser realm, that was impressive indeed. “This one greets the outer disciple of the Bloody Saffron Sect.” He didn’t look away from the window, not even as she stopped beside her. There was only so much respect he could show before she might actually think that he was taking her seriously. And if she thought that, then he knew she’d start thinking he was taking her lightly…

He resisted the urge to sigh. Sect politics… he’d thought he’d escaped that by ascending to the Celestial Realm… but of course, down here in a mortal city, even if they liked to pretend otherwise, the sect was everything.

“You are a very interesting man, Leng Mingtian.” Finally, he looked over her way, gently accepting back the paper star she’d held out to him. Unfolding it, he inspected the runes and glyphs he’d painted onto it, then slipped it into his pocket. She probably thought that he’d carefully prepared it as a contingency, just in case, and not made it out of essentially nothing the moment he’d heard Lily’s call, because that would be absurd. Totally… “you may refer to this one as Senior Ohm Zhihu.”

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He blinked. “Your parents actually named you ‘paper tiger?’”

Zhihu groaned. “I was hoping that you wouldn’t pick up on that… but, if you know the language of runes, why wouldn’t you know the immortal tongue?” She sighed, voice dropping to a slightly put-upon grumble. “I should’ve known not to expect anything but the exceptional…” then, back to normal. “I suppose you are not technically part of the sect. Perhaps a better honorific would be Master Ohm Zhihu?”

“You are not my master.”

“Fair enough.” Perhaps she’d sensed that this was something he wouldn’t compromise on. Or perhaps she was just teasing him. He understood better than most that sect-members were just normal people, elevated in pursuit of heaven. “Then as an independent civilian, I guess you can merely refer to me as Zhihu. Please don’t call me paper tiger.” There was a story behind that, he was sure, but because he was a venerable and esteemed and respected hidden immortal, he wasn’t going to tease her. Probably. “I must ask… why ask me? Not that I’m dissatisfied about the situation— getting to beat up the lone pines clan and get a favor from a formations master? Well worth it! But… why me?” It was annoying how well she controlled her aura— his mortal senses couldn’t discern anything off about it, even if it was obvious she’d finally gotten to what she was really asking about. Content orıginally comes from novel fire.net

He wondered if she knew. Then, he wondered if she suspected he knew she knew, and was just going to keep quiet to make him suspect she didn’t know— and he discarded that train of thought as unproductive. With only a mortal level of calculation, he literally didn’t have the brainpower for that sort of calculation. “Your mission is to represent the 32nd Precinct in the sect, is it not?” That was probably a vast oversimplification of the actual nature of her duties, but it was what a mortal could be reasonably expected to know… probably, at least. “You were the only one who had the power to affect the change I needed.”

“Interesting.” A slight grin split the normally stoic woman’s face. Though, if the way she’d dealt with that alchemist was any indication, that very stoicism was more a front than any true read as to her character. “You’re lucky that you guessed right. You’re also lucky that I wasn’t trying to be stealthy when you sent your letter— it would’ve never found me.” There was essentially no circumstance in which it wouldn’t have been able to find her, but she didn’t know that. She had no clue that it was, in essence, an immortal-ascension artefact specifically made to find her and direct her to Lily.

He just shrugged, looking back out the window at the sunlight spilling over all the earth, as evening slowly began to settle over East Saffron, catching the city aglow and dying it, so appropriately, almost ironically, a burning so glorious saffron scarlet. “I guess,” he whispered, “I’m just lucky.”

Zhihu could say nothing to that.