"Meridians?" echoed Liu Yan, glancing at the yellowed map.
"Meridians are used by cultists to cultivate qi and form a core," he revealed his knowledge. Xinxin nodded.
"Not only that. Meridians permeate everything that lives, including our world. Not only every living being, but also animals, plants, and the earth are permeated by meridians. Qi is the life energy that flows through them," she explained in more detail.
Liu Yan's gaze hardened. He had, of course, enjoyed a high level of education, but his teachers, like everyone else, had seen him as nothing more than a means to an end. He had to figure out and read a lot for himself. The fact that Xinxin seemed to know more than he did, despite his hard work, hurt his pride. He crossed his arms in front of his chest.
"Is that so?" he asked casually, looking out the window. Xinxin sat up straight.
"Would you like me to tell you something about it?" she asked, poking at his curiosity.
Liu Yan's gaze shifted from the window back to her. In the glow of the fire stick, her eyes looked mischievous. Liu Yan wavered but did not let himself be swayed.
"You can tell me a lot," he replied. Xinxin furrowed her brow.
"I studied for a while with a well-renowned scholar," she replied indignantly. Liu Yan raised one eyebrow.
"You?" he remarked cynically.
Xinxin interlaced her fingers and looked into the firelight. Then she nodded.
"You're right not to trust everyone," she finally said.
"So I'll begin. I was born and raised in a village on the border. We never had much, and what we did have often was taken away from us by invading bandits or soldiers from foreign countries. One day, it got so bad that our entire village was burned to the ground and razed to the ground. I escaped, if you can call it that, and fell into the hands of some human traffickers. They wanted to sell my untouched body to the highest bidder. Call it luck in misfortune that the scholar happened to be passing by. He probably took pity on me and had no offspring of his own to pass on his knowledge to. He bought me, and for a while everything was fine," she told him briefly and concisely.
Liu Yan frowned skeptically.
"If you studied with a renowned scholar, why do you express yourself like a street whore?" he asked coldly. Luo Xinxin raised her head.
"Didn't he teach you to be polite and formal? That your words should be sweet and always well chosen? That your character should be like a blooming flower, unfolding in the morning sun..."
There was a crack. Liu Yan had been so focused on drawing her out that he hadn't noticed how her gaze had darkened. Only when one of his brushes, which she had been playing with during the conversation, broke in the middle did he close his mouth.
Anger welled up inside him. He didn't own much, and she dared to destroy something that was his. But the tone of Xinxin's voice made him pause in his anger.
"I hate this cunning, hypocritical grace, the carefully chosen words, and the false smiles. I hate the gentleness and feigned kindness."
Her tone was icy, her expression stony. She didn't look directly at him but saw something that ignited a burning rage within her.
Tian Liu Yan thought back to that morning. When she woke up. To her words: She hated them, all of them.
"What happened?" His curiosity got the better of him again. Xinxin looked up.
"He died, and I was alone again, and then..." Her gaze drifted away again. But before the anger could overwhelm her, she forced a smile.
"I ended up in this river under certain circumstances," she concluded. Liu Yan was aware that she was not ready to go into detail about these circumstances. He glanced at the parchment under her hands.
He could listen to her and then decide whether what she was saying was worth knowing or not.
"The meridians," he picked up the thread again. The smile returned to Xinxin's face as she pushed the map forward. "Do you see these lines here?" she asked, pointing to some faded, light blue, thick lines.
"Rivers," Liu Yan replied. Xinxin shook her head.
"These are rivers," she corrected him, pointing to a few black lines that ran across the land and were labeled in some places.
"These are the meridians through which the white qi of life flows," Xinxin explained. Then she lifted the map and held it over the fire stick. Thin red lines became visible on the paper, spreading across the land like a net.
"And these are the dark meridians, the corrupted qi," she explained, letting Liu Yan take a curious look at them.
Although he had read and studied all the books, maps, and parchments in this room several times, he had never noticed anything like this. Inside, he was boiling with jealousy. Xinxin put the folder back down, and they watched as the red web contracted again.
"By the way, you filter the bad karma and resentment of the world from these veins. You're right, most people use the power of the white meridians to cultivate. But you are bound to the black meridians! The source of power for demons and evil spirits."
"Does that mean I could draw power from them like they do?" Liu Yan pressed, immediately regretting his carelessness.
Xinxin tilted her head. She didn't seem to hold it against him for longing for power. Then she shrugged.
"I don't know; demons and evil spirits are cut from an entirely different cloth than mortals," she finally replied.
"Did the scholar also teach you to cultivate qi?" Liu Yan asked.
He sat on one leg, the other bent, his hands folded over his knee, his chin resting on them. His long, black hair flowed over his thin, white robe with black bamboo leaves printed on it, fanning out across the floor of the wooden platform on which they sat.
His dark, black eyes sparkled, this time not with anger, but with curiosity. It looked downright cute as he looked at her with wide eyes, hoping to learn something new. Xinxin shook her head.
"Master Tao was well-versed in medicine, calligraphy, history, and philosophy, but not in cultivation," she replied.
Tian Liu Yan was burning with curiosity, but apparently she had acquired her skills under the circumstances mentioned and was not willing to talk about what had happened. Between the death of her teacher and her rescue from the river.
"Although I must admit that calligraphy is not exactly my forte. Master Tao would certainly have been much happier with someone like you," she chatted, looking at his neat, neatly arranged transcripts.
"Occasionally, I write talismans for the sons of the house," Liu Yan interjected, never taking his eyes off Xinxin. She looked at him.
"Really? And how do they work?" she asked curiously. He shrugged.
"So far, I haven't received any complaints, but I can't use them myself," he replied. Xinxin frowned.
"What kind of talismans have you written?" she pressed.
Liu Yan stood up, went to his shelf, and pulled out a bundle of orange-yellow parchment cut into handy strips.
He placed it on the table in front of Xinxin and picked up one of his remaining brushes. He dipped the tip into the remaining ink and wrote one of the usual characters on it. Then he pushed it under her nose.
"Something like this," he said tersely.
He couldn't decipher the characters himself. Each sect of immortals had its own symbols and meanings. They were inaccessible to the public; even he was unaware of their meanings and effects.
He watched Xinxin's reaction closely as she studied the parchment. How could someone like her know about this? And yet she laughed and waved the parchment.
"These are defensive spells against evil spirits," she explained to him.
Tian Liu Yan snorted. She could tell him a lot. He turned his head away and looked outside in frustration. Through the hole in his window, he could see the starry sky and the thick, dense flakes falling gently. The moon hung crescent-shaped in the night sky, and everything seemed clear and cold.
Xinxin leaned over the table and took the brushes from his hand. Then she took one of the pieces of paper and drew another symbol on it with her skilled fingers. Liu Yan's gaze slid to her sheet.
"You were right," he remarked pointedly. "My handwriting really is better!"
Xinxin rolled her eyes. She gave him the sheet and drew the same symbol again.
"Special spells like the ones to ward off ghosts are too advanced. But try this," she said cheerfully.
Xinxin lifted the paper to her face, then blew on it as if she were blowing out a candle, and in the next moment, the paper burst into flames.
For a while, only the upper half burned, then the rest went up in flames and remained in the air for a moment before dissolving, leaving nothing, not even ashes, behind.
Tian Liu Yan looked at the talisman in his hand. He lifted it and blew on it. Nothing happened. Xinxin frowned.
"Try again. Sometimes you have to get the hang of it first..." "Wonderful," she exclaimed happily when he managed to ignite the parchment on his third attempt.
But his went straight up in flames and was burned out just a second later.
"It doesn't matter," Xinxin consoled him. "It takes a while to get the hang of lighting it and burning it gradually," she explained gently.
"Why did it work for me too?" Liu Yan wanted to know. Xinxin tapped the papers.
"These parchments are often imbued with qi before the talisman is painted on them. When cultists are traveling, they may not be able to find a suitable place to cultivate qi for a long time, but they still need talismans. However, since you can't always carry the talismans you need with you, charge the special paper with pure qi in places where it is available and then paint the talisman you need on it," she explained, adopting an instructive tone.
Liu Yan was flooded with a good, warm feeling. He had learned plenty of new things today, so Xinxin's instructive tone didn't bother him. He looked with shining eyes at his fingers, where the talisman had been burned.
"However, I think it's very irresponsible to leave something like this lying around here," Xinxin reprimanded the Zhao brothers' work.
"Show me something else!" Liu Yan urged her. Xinxin looked at him in surprise.
"Don't expect too much from me. I'm not a cultist; I've just picked up a few things here and there," she defended herself.
"Surely you know something other than a spell for mending clothes and lighting fires," Liu Yan insisted.
"I actually know another one that you could do. But it's just a gimmick and doesn't really have any useful effect," Xinxin mused aloud. Liu Yan leaned forward.
"Show it to me," he insisted stubbornly. Xinxin sighed and gave in.
She took another sheet of paper and drew a symbol on it. Then she handed it to him and drew another one for herself. She blew on the ink to dry it, sat up straight, and held her index finger at an angle with her thumb and the other three fingers straight.
With this hand gesture in front of her chest, she concentrated for a few breaths and then flicked the paper. A small, fiery red spark flew out from the back and landed directly in Tian Liu Yan's chest. When he looked up, he saw a glowing red thread connecting him to Xinxin.
"What is that?" he asked, frowning.
"A thread, don't worry, only the two of us can see it, and after a few hours it will dissolve on its own. But as long as we are connected, it will lead me to you at any time and vice versa. So we can't lose each other. However, this only works with living beings and not with objects," she added.
"That's a pointless spell. Why would I want to know where you are? Show me something else!"
Xinxin shook her head.
"I told you, I'm not a cultist. I just learned a few useful spells!"
"There's nothing useful about that," he said, getting upset. He was frustrated that his new knowledge had already reached its limits.
"You can't cast spells that are beyond your own creative realm anyway," Xinxin replied.
"Even if I could draw you a talisman that could summon higher magic, you wouldn't be able to use it. To be able to do something like that, the user must already be capable of summoning such a thing themselves. The talisman only serves as a shortcut for what has already been learned and cannot replace any power in the world," she said.
Unsatisfied, Liu Yan bent one leg again and rested his head on his knee.
"I should go now before someone else notices and spreads false rumors," Xinxin said, getting up.
Liu Yan ignored her as she walked past him. He would never admit to himself, let alone to her, that he had had a nice evening. He had closed his heart to everything and everyone. Besides, she wouldn't stay long enough to make a difference.
She had made enemies of Zhao Hua and Yi Chang. Tonight had shown how dangerous this house alone was for her.
He stared out the window as the door behind him quietly opened and closed again. It grew colder in his room once more. It was as if it had been Xinxin who had warmed the room.
He pulled the parchment toward him and drew one fire talisman after another. By dawn, he had burned almost the entire stack, but he had not been able to keep the flame going for more than a few seconds. Frustrated, he threw the brush aside.
The sun was slowly rising. The sparkling snow and frost cast dancing points of light on the ceiling. And in them was reflected the deep scarlet red of the thread in his chest.
He lay down on his back on the floor and held the untouched talisman of the red thread to his nose.
Such a pointless thing, he thought, and tucked the yellowish parchment under the folded fabric over his chest.