Chapter 65: Life 60, Age 17, Martial Disciple 3
I didn’t see Mei or SuYin at all the next week. They gave me the time I needed to digest my decision. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like it had been rash, but I wasn’t willing to go back and undo it. I would let it play out and see what happened.
During this time, I began spending time studying the Martial Masters that visited the Pavilion. Whenever I had free time, I would stand on the second-floor balcony and watch the people below as they shopped. I wanted to understand cultivating as a Martial Master on a deeper level. So many of the Masters I had met were mentally unstable. This also affected Martial Disciples, like Gougou, but the problems seemed to increase by an order of magnitude among Masters. Why? More importantly, how could I fix it?
The logic I had been told before was that it had to do with cultivating too fast. During my time in the sect, I had been repeatedly advised to progress slowly as a Master to ensure I stayed balanced. I wasn’t completely convinced of this, though. Why did cultivating faster cause people to become unbalanced? There should be a way to increase cultivation speed without risking such problems. I just had to find it. If the energy flows within a Disciple’s body were what contributed to their change in temperament, what did adding meridians to the body do to affect these flows?
Day after day, I stood on the balcony and just watched as the world passed around me, but on the seventh day after our last meeting, Mei finally came to find me.
“Alright,” she said, “stop just standing there. Come with me.”
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Mei led me up to a small meeting room on the seventh floor. It only contained a few mats spread out around the floor, but it had a large window with an impressive view overlooking the city below.
When I entered, I saw SuYin already sitting on one of the mats. She looked nervous. Her eyes were staring at the ground, and she was twiddling her thumbs. When we stepped into the room, she looked up at us but then quickly lowered her eyes again.
Mei gently touched my shoulder and guided me to sit near SuYin.