Legend of The Young Master

Chapter 206: Conscious Link

Wuyi smiled. "Let us try. I can connect with you all while you cannot enter my conscious thoughts."

"I give a great deal for very little gain," Xilai said. "Bah – and yet, the Pavilion Mistress is right. I am not an island." He extended his hand to Liwei.

She took it graciously. They held hands around the circle, like children in a game.

"Young Master, I intend to pray. Try not to vanish in a puff of smoke," said the Pavilion Mistress.

She began the heavenly Prayer.

They all entered a conscious space; it was a big hall that contained different type of conscious spaces..

The Pavilion Mistress appeared in this hall. She was young, voluptuous in a tall, thin way, with an earthy power to her face that belied her spirit. Liwei was elfin and green. Xilai was young and strong, hale – a warrior on errantry, with a halo of gold.

Lady Yueli was shining like a statue of polished bronze. Feiru looked just like herself.

In the hall he felt various spaces. He was at once in his conscious space – it was just a room, an exact replica of his sacred chamber – and simultaneously in Liwei's conscious space, standing on her beautiful bridge but there was no river. He sat in a comfortable chair in a great room – that had to be Xilai's – surrounded by Weiqi boards and wheels within wheels.

He stood in a temple surrounded by statues of warriors and their ladies – or, as he realized, ladies and their warriors, each with a golden chain attaching them. A hall of courtly love – surely the lady's place of power.

Yueli's conscious space was just simple as temple.From the temple he moved to next and he stood in a small seamstress house – Feiru's conscious space.There was a glow of health, of vitality, of goodness, of power. And no time at all.

He knew many things, and many things of his were learned. While he learned their internal deep conscious thoughts, they learned nothing new.

They made their plan of war with Luding in the conscious space. It was the only space where they were certain that Luding would have difficult time finding out what they had planned.

And then, like the end of a kiss, he was himself.

He sagged away from them, tired from the length of the conscious link. This cost a lot of energy. Other perspectives were haunting, exhausting – he could see, as quickly as Xilai had, how a pavilion of dedicated women was the ideal basis for a group of righteous, because they learned and practiced discipline – together.

Xilai was stroking his beard. " Talking about our next plan. You are taking all the risk, Young Man," he said aloud.

Wuyi gave them all a lop-sided smile. "A single, perfect sacrifice," he said.

The Pavilion Mistress rolled her eyes. "Sometimes your blasphemy is just banal," she said. "Try not to die. We're all quite fond of you."

Liwei met his eye and smiled at him, and he returned her smile.

"I have many things to prepare," he said. He bowed to the group and went out into the night.

First, he walked to the northern tower and climbed the steps to the second floor. He climbed softly, his footsteps giving nothing away. The guards also Mahpai tiles players were attuned to the sound of any footsteps.

Baijian was playing some special betting tile game.

"A word," Wuyi called Baijian.

Baijian raised his head, pursed his lips, and put his tiles face down with a start. "I can leave tiles like this any time," he said, a little too carefully.

Wanxie was hiding something under his hand.

Given the circumstances, Wuyi didn't think he needed to care. Wanxie shrugged. "They'll be the same when you come back," he said.

"Better be," Baijian said. He followed Wuyi out onto the warriors' room's balcony over the courtyard. "My lord?" the big man asked, formally.

"I'm going for a ride tonight, Baijian," Wuyi said quietly. "Out into the enemy. I'd like you to come."

"I'm your man," Baijian said cheerfully.

"We're going to try and take him," Wuyi said. He made a sign with his fingers, like bones growing all over his body.

Baijian's eyes widened – just a hair. Then he laughed. "That's a mad jest," he said. "Oh, the pleasure of it!"

"Forget the watch bill. I want the best. Pick me twenty Qi warriors," Wuyi said.

"'Bout all we have on their feet," Baijian said. "I'll get it done."

"Full dark. You will have to cover me when I— Baijian, you know that I will have to use my all?" Wuyi said.

Baijian grinned. "I guess." He turned his head away. "Everyone says you have few more techniques and strength hidden against the Demons."

Wuyi nodded. "True. Even though I am careful, I do not have many trump cards. I need you to cover me. Sometimes I might have to use spell skills where I will be vulnerable." Then he grinned. "Well.

I can't do all."

Baijian nodded. "I'm with you. But – in the dark? Chasing that bony lunatic? We need to bring someone to write everything down"

Wuyi was lost by the change of subject. "To scribe?"

"Someone to record it all, Young Master." Baijian looked off into the dark. "Because we're going to make a song."

Wuyi didn't quite know what to make of that. So he slapped the big man on the shoulder.

Baijian caught his arm. "You can't be thinkin' we can take him with steel."

Wuyi lowered his voice. "No, Baijian. I don't think so, but I'm going to try, anyway."

Baijian nodded. "So we're the bait, then?"

Wuyi looked grim. "You are a little too quick, my friend."

Baijian nodded. "When there's death in the air, I can see through a brick wall."

✶ ✶ ✶

Luding had everything he needed to proceed. He'd stored enough energy for his two most powerful Qi spells in advance, storing them carefully in living things he'd received just to store such things – pale limpets that clung like naked bones to his bony carapace.

He didn't bother to curse the flying serpents who had failed him. It had been, at best, a long shot. But now it was down to him, and he didn't want to do it.

He didn't want to weaken himself by taking on the fortress directly. He didn't want to expose himself to direct assaults from his apprentice and the dark sun. However puny, they were not unskilled or incapable.

He didn't want to fight with her. Although his reason told him that when he killed her, he would be much stronger for it. His link to her was a link to his past life. A weakness.

He didn't want to do this at all. Because win or lose, he'd engaged forces that forced his hand. Made him grow in power. In visibility. Damn them all, the useless Yingmo most of all. It was their land in past they wanted that Qi energy, and they were all busy watching him to see if they could bring him down, instead of helping.

And Jianfeng had failed to take the dark sun.

Luding was not without doubt. In fact, he was full of doubt, and again, for the hundredth time since the siege began, he considered taking his great staff and walking off into the Wild. But without him, his master's plan might fail. And that would be catastrophic. At best, it would be fatal for his long-term plans.

He extended his hands, and power flowed smoothly. A cloud of Qi began to gather, so great was the power concentrated in a few yards of air.

He tried to imagine what it would be like when she was dead. He would miss her. She had once been the standard by which he measured himself. But that self was largely gone, and it was time he did without her. And the apprentice. It is a weakness, to miss the company of men.

The Demonic Wild had to win. Men were like lice, undermining the health of the Wild, especially the righteous.

It was time to act, and he could imagine all of his actions, a fugue of them extending back to his earliest conscious thoughts, culminating here. He surfaced from the tide of his thoughts and looked around, unhampered by the darkness. He looked at Huajun, one of the leaders of the swamplings.

"Your people must storm the trench," he said. "And hold it. By holding it, we separate the fortress from the Bridge Castle."

"And then we dig," Huajun said.

Luding bowed assent. To Jianfeng he said, "The dark sun will come for me."

"We will lay in ambush for him," the Yingmo promised.

Luding looked at the big troll-sized Dushas – mighty creatures which he suspected had been created in the distant past by powerful beings. As bodyguards. He had now acquired two dozen of them, as was the way when one became a power. He was like a beacon, and so they came. He no longer saw them as horrible.

Instead, he saw them as beautiful, the way a craftsman views his perfect chisel, the one that fits his hand as if made for it.

Luding tapped his great staff on the ground. "Go," he told his warrior leaders.