CHAPTER 187
### Seven Days
He thought about it wrong for three days.
The arrival. Feng Luo and Xian Yue. The road gathering. He had been thinking about what needed to be discussed. What the sections required. What the archive needed. What the hollow's development meant for the network going forward.
On the third day Lin Mei said: "Stop planning."
He looked at her.
"You have been planning the arrival for three days," she said. "I can read it in your pace. You walk faster when you are planning ahead."
He looked at his feet.
He was walking faster than necessary.
"The arrival is not a logistics problem," she said. "It is Feng Luo coming back to the road. And Xian Yue choosing to come back to the road."
"Yes," he said.
"Those are people things," she said. "Not section things."
"Yes," he said.
"You are not good at people things in the planning phase," she said. "You are good at people things in the doing phase."
He looked at the road.
"Stop planning," she said. "Let it be what it is when it arrives."
He stopped planning.
He walked at the correct pace.
---
They arrived on the seventh morning.
Not from the east the way he had expected.
From the south.
Feng Luo and Xian Yue together.
He saw them at the road's junction before they saw him. The Flame Blade's fire at its specific resting height. The Dragon Roar Fang's gold energy visible at Xian Yue's hip.
He counted the distance.
He stopped.
He committed.
He did not count the distance.
He walked toward them.
Feng Luo saw him first.
The Flame Blade's fire rose.
Not agitation.
The specific brightness of someone returning to something they had been absent from and finding it exactly where they left it.
Feng Luo closed the distance at the pace of someone who had decided to close the distance quickly.
He stopped four paces away.
He looked at Jian Yu.
He looked at the grey blade.
He was quiet for four seconds.
"The color," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"It is gone," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
Feng Luo looked at the grey blade for a moment.
"The between quality is still there," Feng Luo said. "I can feel it in the Flame Blade's cross-absorption. The Lost Blade's frequency in the Vermilion fire. It is still there."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"Just not visible," Feng Luo said.
"Just not visible," Jian Yu said.
Feng Luo looked at him.
"You look the same," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"You are still nineteen," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"Sovereign stage and the undocumented stage and the hollow and the faction and the thread at ninety li and twenty-three simultaneous calibrated applications and seven practitioners sitting at the hollow's edge and the grey blade," Feng Luo said.
He said it all in one breath.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"And you are still nineteen," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
Feng Luo looked at him.
Then he did what Feng Luo did — he committed.
He closed the remaining four paces and his hand connected with Jian Yu's shoulder in the specific way of someone who had spent nine months on different roads and had returned.
"Good," Feng Luo said.
One word.
The Flame Blade's fire at full height.
Then back to resting.
Jian Yu looked at Xian Yue behind him.
She looked at the grey blade.
At Lin Mei.
At Bing Xi.
At Jian Yu.
"The eastern liaison office," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"It runs without me," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"I built it to run without me," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at the road.
"The Dragon Roar Fang," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"It needs to keep moving," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"So," she said.
She picked up her pack.
She looked at the road west.
"Show me what you have been working on," she said.
He looked at the road west.
He committed.
He walked.
Five people.
Five swords.
The road gathered again.
He counted nothing.
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