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Aenëe did not stop trying to fool around immediately, but I managed to get her to knock it off and get some sleep without too much trouble. She really did need it. She had suffered significant blood loss, and [Healing] could only restore the physical blood, not the missing pneuma and mana. [Restoration] could insure that the remaining pneuma was fully revitalized, but only rest could restore what had been lost.
I arranged myself in Fan Li’s meditation pose, which is a bit like ‘lotus position’ from yoga, except that she simply crosses her feet at the ankles. I vaguely remember that this position is also a yoga pose, but I don’t remember the name.
My purpose wasn’t meditation or cultivation, precisely. I had a different goal, but it also required putting the body into a harmonized state so that I could put it out of my mind.
I did not yet understand how Daq could make a literal audio clip with mind power alone. He called the recording of Trisiagga speaking to her Lord Durash an ‘eidetic technique’, and it worked on the same principle as his copious literal written notes that were also stored in my memory. But I did, just barely, grasp how to play it back and how to read those notes. And since I could play it back (at least in my mind), I could translate it… if only I understood Regari.
I desperately needed to decode that conversation, because the presence of so many important names clearly marked it as critical information. I could be sure I wasn’t mishearing, mistaking other words for those names, because whenever a name is used in Regari in third person, the words that mean ‘he’ or ‘her’ come first, like a special ‘the’ that’s used for people’s name. Whenever Durash said “cii Gerald” or “cin Serera“, those ‘personal articles’ really helped make the names stand out.
Thanks to this recording, I needed to change the purpose for what I had already planned to do next. Rather than seek information on the mysterious wolf and whatever else Trisiagga had in store for me, as I originally planned to do, I was going to seek a translation.
I carefully regulated the advanced level of spiritual expansion that Daq had already achieved, until my mind was fully supported within my spiritual vessel, and became as wide open as it could become. Then I began drawing on memories of Fan Li performing the ‘cosmic deduction’ technique, her world’s version of Divination.
The technique depended on the comprehension of a wide range of principles, some of them quite profound. It was going to take some time to place them all in order in my head, and the rote task left parts of my expanded mind free to ponder many things.
Divination is a massively high-level spell on Huade, but that is because people with very little spiritual growth are attempting it. It takes a great quantity of Holy mana to overcome their handicap.
What I was about to do, I suspect Mother could do. She has far higher spiritual growth than the typical priests and mages performing the Divination spell. But she doesn’t possess this technique that would allow her to utilize it. It’s as if she’s the only woman with working legs in a world restricted to wheelchairs, with nobody around her able to teach her how to walk. The only way she knows how to see divine knowledge is through Divination.
Even I and my compatriots, back during the Elder Age, didn’t have the knowledge of how to use our spiritual vessels in this way. As a technique developed by humans in a world of Qi and Aura cultivation, it was simply outside the scope of our experience. The way we previously accessed the Sea of Knowledge, when we lived in the Immortal Realms, didn’t work from within the Mortal Realm.
Although, I realized, a great senior from the upper realms like Oranos surely knew it. My lip curled as I considered that thought. I wondered in passing why he never taught us.
But, if I were to guess, his reason would be that we wouldn’t be able to teach the technique to the mortals of spiritually-poor Huade. Instead he gave us a technique that was slow and cumbersome, but which we could pass on to the mortals, because mentoring them had been our ultimate role.
My forehead creased slightly as I began struggling, at the moment I began comprehending the third hundred of the principles underlying the technique. ‘The three thousand Dao’ is a popular expression in Fan Li’s world, but in reality, the number of principles known there is considerably higher. Even so, a significant percentage of them were involved in this tricky procedure which Fan Li made seem so effortless…
I somehow reached the three hundredth principle, but when I reached for the next, but it became elusive, slipping out of my grasp as if my mental fingers were coated in oil. In my frustration as I wrestled with the problem and continued to fail, I even began using both Daq’s and Fan Li’s techniques to acquire more spiritual energy, in this environment that was nearly as thin in such energy as the vacuum of space, just to get that little bit more which might get me past this insurmountable barrier.
My efforts were futile. I had hit a bottleneck called the limit of my abilities… I hadn’t hit that sort of limit in a long time, and I had forgotten how frustrating it could be.
But then, a familiar feeling of unreality settled down around me as I struggled, a sense of existence shifting in an imperceptible way. I opened my eyes to see that the thin light of the [Ghost Lamp]s had acquired a golden hue. My cultivation became easier, the added spiritual energy flowing into my vessel with far less effort, although it still wasn’t enough to make the difference.
As best as I could tell, Lady Aenëe was sound asleep. Nobody else was present, physically, but I felt certain that another being was nearby. After moistening my lips, I asked in a soft voice, “May I ask which senior is aiding me?”
“Keep your eyes closed, Little Sen. You might disturb your concentration”
Hearing the familiar voice of Oranos, I nodded and closed them.
It might seem strange that I implicitly trusted him, but I think that feeling came directly from Senhion, who had trusted him enough to cast away her immortal life to come to this world.
Trust was one thing, but I was also a little ticked at him. I would probably have to start over by the end of this conversation, thanks to the disturbance. Three hundred daos were still dancing in my head, but my grasp on them was weak.
Now that I knew the recipient, I could use spiritual voice, but I suspected Aenëe would never hear it if I continued speaking out loud. I did so, in order to avoid wasting any energy.
“Did you come because you understand what I am trying to do?” I wondered.
“That’s right.”
My eyebrow rose. “And you came here to translate the recording for me?”
“That conversation contained considerable information. If I told you that information, the entropic penalty would be great enough to wipe out your entire memory of our conversation.”
More frustration welled up in me. “But doesn’t that apply to anything you do to aid me? What was the point of you coming here?”
His voice became slightly amused. “The point is something much simpler that I can do, that creates little entropic backlash. Inside this simulation in the Spirit Realm, the technique is far stronger. And, I can give you a short piece of advice. Are you still upset with me?”
I reddened slightly. “I wasn’t upset with you.”
After he didn’t respond for several seconds, I muttered. “I’m just a little frustrated. Please forgive me.”
His chuckle was warm, without any cruelty to it. It was the fond humor of a parent or spouse.
“My advice is quite simple. You are trying to do this act with the wrong part of your soul.”
“Pardon?”
“You are eager to learn the technique, but you are misunderstanding something. During your life on Huajie, you accumulated far more than just the few hundred great principles you are trying to comprehend now. You acquired one and a half millennia of wisdom.”
My brow wrinkled slightly, as I began understanding where this was going.
“I see you are grasping the fundamental problem. Each of your incarnations is a separate lifetime of experiences. You can pick up techniques from each other, use magic skills or spirit skills learned from each other, but the larger and more complex they get, the more likely that the original skill holder is the only one that will have a skillful hand.”
“So you’re saying I should be doing this as Fan Li?”
“I believe this is currently a bridge too far for any other incarnation. Other than Senhion, whom you still cannot revert to, Fan Li is the only one with a sufficiently trained mind.”
I began feeling a bit embarrassed. I mean, it was obvious I should have just turned the task over to her. I hadn’t, because I really wanted to learn it for myself. It was easily Fan Li’s most impressive skill. Call it envy, or whatever, I wanted to learn it.
I would have figured out eventually that I couldn’t do it, so I somewhat wished Oranos had let things take their course. Why had he stepped in?
“Because the situation is critical,” he answered my thoughts. “You need this knowledge as soon as possible. And because bringing you into this space will aid you.”
“But entropic backlash…”
“Will not apply. The information itself is from the mortal world. You are only making a translation of it. The entropic compensation for the translation effort is low enough that I can easily supply it from my side, as long as you are the one translating it for yourself.”
“Immortals normally don’t interfere with the affairs of the mortal world, though?”
“We do, when other immortals are causing trouble,” he answered, his voice turning dark.
‘Other immortals’… my blood ran a bit chilly at that thought, thinking he meant one of his fellow gods, but then I remembered that Astaroth fit that category, too.
“Precisely,” he stated. “Yield to your incarnation from Huajie, Little Sen.”
I nodded, and…
… the translation that this small one experienced was far smoother than previous times. The great senior had bid, and then the mind of Fan Li became aware.
The recording that the man Daq R’mion created was still in mind, as the technique that the princess had used to listen to it was still active. After reviewing it, I bowed my head and spoke politely.
“Great Senior, I am ready to begin Cosmic Deduction. I await your permission.”
Oranos gave a slightly sad chuckle. “With this incarnation, the distance between my wife and I becomes even greater.”
A blush came to my cheek. “Great Senior, this small one was unmarried for one and a half millennia…”
“You were unmarried for not even a day of it,” he corrected with amusement. “We brought you into our family thousands of years before your birth as Fan Li.”
The blush was almost hot enough to burn now. In an effort to hide it, I asked, “Great Senior, do you wish this small one to begin her deductions now?”
His chuckle was a bit more merry this time. I felt something like a gentle hand caressing my hair, then he answered, “You may begin.”
