A day after the questionable sparring match, around midday, Patel came by. He had a case in his hands — the same one he’d used to take out the components of the surveilnce system during its instaltion.

  “Well then,” he said, gncing around the room. “Shall we take it down?”

  I nodded.

  Over the past few days, I’d gotten used to it. Used to the idea that someone was constantly watching me. It wasn’t bad surveilnce, its purpose had been to keep me alive. Still, I wouldn’t miss it. A bit more privacy wouldn’t hurt.

  Patel started with the orb. He removed it from the tripod, deactivated it, and pced it into the case. The tripod was folded and stowed next. Then came the less visible, but more bour-intensive part of the job: the sensors. The room had been full of them. They were tucked into discreet spots, I didn’t even remember how many there were anymore. Small, ft, almost invisible, they hung near the ceiling, in corners, above the door, behind the wardrobe. Patel removed them methodically, without rushing. Each one he stopped, deactivated, unmounted, and immediately stored in a designated slot in the case.

  The room gradually began to change. Not outwardly, but in feel. The space grew… duller. Normal. It lost that st trace of individuality that had distinguished it from the neighbouring rooms. After all, nothing in it was truly mine.

  Except the trophy sword, which I’d tossed into my spatial pocket a few minutes before Patel arrived.

  The case filled up. The orb took up the side compartment, the still-bulky (though folded) tripod went in the centre. The sensors slotted into their pces. Patel counted them and closed the lid.

  I looked around the room. For the first time in a long while, I was alone in it. And now, it would be alone itself.

  We left together. The door closed behind me without the usual click of the security lock. Just a door. Just a tch. Just a corridor.

  On the way, I caught myself thinking that Yellow Pine had never truly become a home. It was a pce. A stage. A point on the route. And at that moment, it already felt like something behind me.

  Patel and I descended into the metro and headed to Mendoza’s for tea. Tea that would mark the final conclusion of this chapter. Novak was already waiting there.

  Patel didn’t stay for the tea itself. He only walked me to the door.

  Caramel, walnut, scorched wood, and apple. Those were the scents that greeted me in Mendoza’s apartment.

  They were drinking bourbon. As for what had been prepared for me...

  I took a few final steps until both masters at the tea table were in front of me, and I offered a light bow.

  “Master Mendoza, Master Novak.”

  “Jake!” my master saluted me with his bourbon gss, if not cheerfully, then at least with enthusiasm.

  “Sullivan,” Mendoza inclined her head and gestured for me to sit.

  In front of the seat she indicated stood a tall, handleless cup with a lid.

  Apple and walnut… That blend was new to me. I lifted the lid and examined the greenish-yellow colour. At the bottom of the cup y finely chopped twigs.

  Well, it wasn’t the strangest thing they’d brewed here. After that stone steeped in milk, not much could surprise me anymore.

  I took a sip.

  The apple was only in the aroma. The taste was all walnut, but not bitter. Sweet, with a hint of tartness. Clearly, this tea wasn’t something ordinary. It had a real kick to it.

  While I was tasting it, the masters exchanged a few inconsequential words. Then they refilled their gsses from the bottle Novak had brought and moved on to the ceremonial part.

  “Yellow Pine thanks you for your assistance!” Mendoza added a note of ceremony to her voice, then reached across the table and waved her hand.

  A breeze of Space Qi swept across, and a tin container appeared before her.

  She slid the box toward me.

  I thanked her immediately and considered pulling a move like old Chen, pushing the box aside with dignity. But I wasn’t Chen. I needed to at least put on a minimal dispy of polite appreciation.

  I opened the box.

  Inside was tea. Not just one kind, but a selection, each in its own individually sealed and belled packet. The aromas were so diverse it was impossible to pick out just one.

  I nodded deeper and thanked her again.

  “A token of gratitude,” Mendoza said, nodding toward the tea box. Then she pced another container on the table.

  This one was smaller, heavier. And it was the kind of container that blocked qi.

  I braced myself before it was open, expanding my senses.

  Mendoza clicked the tch open, and as she cracked the lid, a sharp wave of Bde Qi swept through the room.

  It felt like someone dragging a razor across my nerves. I really shouldn’t have opened my senses so wide. It was intense enough already. My body reacted instantly, tensing, preparing for combat.

  Mendoza turned the box toward me.

  Inside was a small shard of green stone with razor-sharp edges. Definitely not jade. It resembled the obsidian Novak had given to Doc Robinson in exchange for that elixir recipe.

  “Obsidian?” I asked.

  The sting on my nerves was fading, but the conceptual sharpness remained. It felt like if I so much as touched the shard, I’d cut my fingers open.

  “Correct!” Mendoza replied, somewhat surprised I’d guessed it. “Enhances the piercing properties of Bde Qi,” she said.

  No doubt about it — this was red-grade quality. And it was exactly what I’d been missing. Not just raw power, but a well-considered optimisation.

  This time, I had to stand and bow properly.

  “Oh, please!” Mendoza objected, clearly pleased, and dipped her head in return. “This is your payment. You’ve earned it.”

  We went through a brief round of ‘thank yous’ and ‘no, thank yous,’ and Mendoza let me win, as etiquette and tradition demanded in moments like this.

  I closed the box and carefully set it aside, making no attempt to touch the material itself. I’d already cut my fingers on Crystallised Bck Lotus. This thing felt like it could slide through bone like butter.

  Now I was only missing one more material for my breakthrough. Well, would be missing it, once Novak handed over the numbered Rhino Horn. He’d tried to give it to me before our flight, but I’d declined, there was nowhere to store it, and carrying it around in a spatial pocket was just stupid.

  The next round of tea and maximum-politeness, minimum-content conversation sted about five minutes. Novak and Mendoza seemed to enjoy the emptiness of it all. Then again, they weren’t drinking tea, they had that deceptively smooth bourbon.

  Then Novak turned the conversation back to me.

  “By the way, Jake,” he said, “I had a word with Ben Hou. He asked me to apologise to you.”

  Asked, of course he did.

  I’d only met Ben Hou, head of the Yellow Pine Hall of Order, once. But that one time had been enough to understand the kind of man he was — someone used to speaking in orders to anyone of lower rank. Yeah. I could just picture him apologising.

  Still, Novak knew how to make an impression. And, as I’d told Hou back then, he wasn’t going to be happy knowing his student had been used without his knowledge.

  Compensation. Obviously material. Ideally something that would close the matter once and for all. I even let myself imagine what that might be. Another breakthrough material? Unlikely, but why not? Something Bde-reted, but of a different type. Something mass-produced and easily avaible here.

  Novak pulled a long box from the air. Not the same kind Mendoza had used. A different kind. I paused mid-thought.

  Another breakthrough material would be overkill. As old Chen would’ve said, they didn’t even break anything on me.

  The box was utilitarian pstic, without any kind of airtight lock. I opened it myself, curious to see what was inside. Curious how Ben had valued my ‘inconvenience.’

  Inside were discs, and that alone told me Novak had put in enough effort to squeeze some remorse out of Master Hou.

  Ten of them. Neatly slotted into individual grooves, easy to extract even with armoured fingers.

  Thin, almost paper-thin, and sharpened like razors. Diameter about fifteen centimetres. A circur hole in the centre, maybe five centimetres wide. Honestly, they didn’t look like much, until I picked one up. No idea what alloy they were made of, but they were disproportionately heavy for their size.

  They didn’t carry any Qi. No resonance at all. Still, I decided not to make assumptions until I’d tested them.

  “Do I need to pass anything along to Master Hou?” I asked, pausing to find the right words. “Thanks, or… that his apology is accepted?”

  Mendoza gave a faint smile.

  “I think he’ll survive.”

  “Agreed,” Novak smirked.

  Right… Whoever needed to know, already knew. Whoever needed to receive something, already had. The discs were just a side effect.

  We finished the tea without hurrying. No new topics. No attempts to tie things up with words. What needed to be said had already been said. What needed to be given y in the boxes. All that remained was to pack it into my spatial pocket, and leave.

  When Novak and Mendoza finally ran out of empty small talk, Vacv stood up first and thanked her.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  I instinctively gnced back at Mendoza, expecting her to stay behind. But no, she stood up as well.

  I stashed the boxes in my pocket.

  I’d assumed we’d head upward, suit up on the ptforms up there, and then fly out to the Queen’s ptform.

  Nope. We went down into the metro.

  I didn’t speak. Didn’t ask questions. The masters knew what they were doing.

  We exited at a station I’d never seen before. Granted, there were still more pces in the Lotus I hadn’t seen than ones I had, and I’d spent far less time in Yellow Pine.

  Five minutes on foot through corridors that started half-full, then emptied out entirely, but still remained absurdly wide, and we arrived at a set of heavy armoured doors rge enough for a truck to drive through. Embedded in the massive doors was a smaller access door, and in front of that, a checkpoint manned by four Stage Four cultivators in full armour. One of them even had a sword. Not even Novak or Mendoza passed without being scanned.

  Novak didn’t argue. He endured it patiently.

  I felt an odd sense of satisfaction. If he was being checked here, then this pce was definitely worth paying attention to. And the best part, neither of the masters’ high status put any pressure on the guards. Superiority just didn’t work here.

  There were more doors after that. Then more. And more again. All huge, all with smaller doors cut into them, as if the entire pce had been designed to scale up, to suddenly handle massive traffic.

  Eventually, all those corridors led us into a hall with three doors and a gigantic ring on a pedestal, backed by a solid wall.

  Qi radiated from the ring… Space Qi.

  A bloody portal!

  A strange déjà vu hit me: a portal gate beneath a mountain… and music. Grand, solemn, mysterious. Horns, trumpets, drums, flutes, a full orchestra swelling in my head.

  I looked at Novak, who turned to me with a faint smile.

  “Where does it lead?” I asked.

  Novak ughed and cpped me on the shoulder.

  “I swear, I got incredibly lucky with you. Straight to the core, every time!” he said, then turned to Mendoza. “How about dinner at my pce?”

  “Will my uniform stand out too much?” she asked, gncing at her brown jumpsuit.

  “Well, mine doesn’t,” Novak replied, tugging on the colr of his bck one.

  “Then I won’t say no.”

  MaksymPachesiuk