The Furnace
Three days after Meng Changyuan let them go, the air around the stone house finally relaxed.
Shen Qiu's recovery was slow. For the first two days, he spent most of his time lying in the inner room, occasionally leaning against the headboard to drink a few sips of porridge, closing his eyes to rest for a while before falling into a deep sleep again. Shen Mo stayed by his side without leaving for a moment, leaning against the low stool in the corner of the wall fully clothed at night, listening to the rise and fall of his brother's breathing in his sleep to make sure he was alright. By the morning of the third day, Shen Qiu was finally able to sit up and finish a whole bowl of porridge by himself. Although his complexion was still ashen, the light in his eyes had returned somewhat. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse but his words were clear. "There's one item on the laboratory's equipment list that I didn't have time to tell you about—they installed a Reverse Fusion Device in the core area on the third underground floor, which can make the already stable Origin of Chaos split back into the two attributes of light and darkness. Meng Changyuan said, 'Taking away your core is done with that machine.'"
Long Tian called Yu Jin over from the open space outside the door, and the two squatted by the stream to go over the news Shen Qiu had brought. The fact that the Reverse Fusion Device could disassemble chaos back into light and darkness meant that Meng Changyuan was no longer satisfied with "copying"; he wanted a complete switch to control chaos. He wanted to disassemble the fused elements, then reassemble them, repeating this cycle until he fully mastered the system.
Yu Jin stirred the stream, watching the patterns on the surface created by his fingers slowly close up. He looked Return to One at Long Tian and said, "If that machine can even dismantle the chaos between you and me, then the people who use it for experiments can reverse engineer other fusion samples. His goal isn't to create a successful 'unification,' but to master the two tools of 'Return to One ' and 'split,' and then use these two tools to iterate repeatedly to create the strongest composite."
"So our goal can't just be saving people." Long Tian stood up and shook the water droplets off his hands. "That machine must be destroyed. As long as it's still there, Meng Changyuan can use it to dismantle and reassemble everything close to the Origin of Chaos until he finds a satisfactory answer."
Yu Jin nodded. When the two returned to the stone house from the stream, Long Tieshan was sitting at the table looking at the Silk Returning to Return to Origin Diagram. His fingertip slowly moved along one of the marked lines, his brows slightly furrowed. He pushed the silk towards the center of the table so that Long Tian and Yu Jin could see it clearly. "At the end of the Return to Origin path is marked a 'Closed Circuit' —guiding the converged Power of Chaos back to the dantian's confluence point, forming a cycle of repeated tempering. Each cycle will increase the degree of fusion of chaos. If you two can form this Closed Circuit when you combine your qi, following the complete Return to Origin to Origin path of the silk, the stability of your fusion may reach a level that was previously unattainable."
Long Tian and Yu Jin exchanged a glance. Their previous Qi fusion was a one-way circulation—flowing from Long Tian's Origin Return Pearl to Yu Jin's core and then back, forming a basic loop. The Closed Circuit marked on the silk was much more complex than their current circulation path, with three additional bends outside the dantian confluence point, guiding the Power of Chaos to the Soul Power hubs on both sides of the body before returning to its original position. Each bend was an additional layer of tempering.
That afternoon, the two tried it out for the first time in the open space in front of the house. Their palms met, their breaths merged, and the Origin Return Pearl and the core accelerated their operation simultaneously. Following the path on the silk, Long Tian guided the converging power from his dantian towards the pivot point on his ribs—the bend was sharper than he had expected, and the converging power felt like it had hit a sloping wall as it passed through, causing both of their breaths to stagnate at the same time. Yu Jin groaned, his palms trembling slightly, but he did not withdraw his hand, stabilizing his Power of Origin and continuing to follow the path to complete the first bend.
After completing the first full Closed Circuit, both of them were covered in a thin layer of sweat. Although they walked very slowly and with great difficulty, at the moment the loop closed, Long Tian clearly felt the Origin Return Pearl vibrate slightly, and the golden ice cracks on its surface lit up briefly. Yu Jin's dantian core also lit up at the same time, like an iron ingot in a furnace being hammered, and the inner layer exposed after the fragments were peeled off was even denser.
"It's effective." Long Tian breathed a sigh of relief. "Although it's slow, as long as there are enough cycles, each cycle will make the fusion tighter."
That night, they practiced two more rounds, completing two to three Closed Circuit in each round before finishing. The second round was about 10% smoother than the first, and the transitions at the edges of the third round were no longer as choppy as in the first. After finishing, the two squatted by the stream and washed their faces. The reflections on the water shattered into shimmering glitter under the moonlight. Yu Jin wiped the water droplets from his face and turned to look at Long Tian: "If I practice ten rounds every day, I can push the compatibility between the Origin Return Pearl and the core by two more levels in half a month."
"Ten rounds are too many; they can easily damage the meridians." Long Tian stood up and filled the water bag. "Six rounds a day is the maximum; stop when you reach that amount. Use the remaining time to help me remove the patterns from the Fifth Ring."
Yu Jin nodded, and the two walked back to the stone house side by side. The light inside was still on. Shen Mo sat by the bed watching over Shen Qiu, while Mu Shuang sharpened her blade outside. Long Tieshan Long Tian sat down, his trouser leg brushed against the gravel floor by the stove, and the warmth of the charcoal seeped into his knees through the fabric.
Days passed in this stone house nestled against the mountainside. During the day, the five of them would either rest or practice. Mu Shuang would go down the mountain every few days to retrieve new messages that Shen Mo had sent through a secret compartment at the dock. In the evenings Long Tian and Yu Jin would practice Closed Circuit, with Long Tieshan observing from the side, occasionally offering a comment on the angle of the force application point. After Shen Qiu was able to get out of bed and walk, he would sit on the threshold and watch them practice. In his youth, he had been a skilled tracker in the Sixth Squad and was extremely experienced in identifying Soul Power fluctuations. Occasionally, he would detect subtle imbalances in the pulse of Yu Jin Origin Core and point out from a few steps, "That line on your right rib is off-center; pull it back and start over."
Half a month later, the Closed Circuit increased from three revolutions per cycle to seven, and the time for Qi integration extended from the time it takes to drink a cup of tea to nearly half an hour. The golden ice crack pattern on the surface of Long Tian's Origin Return Pearl covered the entire pearl, and the grayish-white luster it emitted during operation was warmer and thicker than before; the third ring pattern around the core of Yu Jin's Dantian had fully formed, and the body could maintain a stable intensity in driving the two Soul Ring, while the Third Ring was slowly being broken in. The grayish-white light film generated by the fusion of the two Qi could now cover the entire open space in front of the house, and the afterglow at the edge condensed into fine dust in the air, slowly drifting down and being lifted up again by the next round of fluctuations.
Long Tieshan watched the speck of light floating in the moonlight, holding a half-cold bowl of coarse tea in his hand, which he hadn't drunk. When Yu Jin finished his practice and sat down to rest by the stream, he looked up and saw Long Tieshan staring blankly at the remaining speck of light on the open ground. He walked over, squatted down next to him, and followed his gaze to look at the dissipating specks of light.
"Uncle Tie Shan." Yu Jin didn't look at Long Tieshan; his gaze remained fixed on the open space ahead. "If you had stayed and confronted Meng Changyuan back then, what would things be like now?"
Long Tieshan didn't answer immediately. He placed the half-bowl of cold tea at his feet and crossed his hands on his knees. The late winter night wind, carrying a growing warmth and dampness, blew in through the gap in the mountain wall, ruffling a few strands of gray hair at his temples. When he spoke, his voice was lower than usual, as if a soliloquy carried by the wind. "If we had confronted each other head-on, Dad would probably have died in that basement back then. You, Long Tian, Shen Mo, Mu Shuang, none of you would be in this situation today. Sometimes, someone has to step back and make way for others."
Yu Jin listened silently, squatting to the side. When he stood up, his knee clicked. Long Tieshan glanced at him sideways. "You've grown taller."
Yu Jin looked down and compared his height to his own; he did indeed appear to have grown taller since emerging from the dark room. His lips twitched, but he didn't smile; instead, his expression relaxed slightly. He turned and went back into the house to add firewood.
Long Tian remained seated cross-legged on the open ground, using his Soul Power to go through the patterns of the Fifth Ring once more. The patterns on the inner wall were now completely covered, and the connection between the ring and the Origin Return Pearl was much closer than when it was first formed. Each rotation caused the entire Soul Ring to tremble slightly. When he finished and stood up, his knees were a little stiff. He took a few steps on the open ground to loosen his muscles and looked up at the sky. The moon was setting in the west, and the night was slowly thinning from the edges. Dawn would break in two hours.
He pulled his coat tighter around himself, then pulled out the new note Shen Mo had slipped in the night before from a crack in the wall outside. He unfolded it and read, "Meng Changyuan went to the third basement level alone last night and stayed for two hours before emerging. Core equipment startup testing is complete."
Long Tian folded the letter and tucked it into his clothes, then turned and walked into the house. The fire in the hearth leaped up again on the embers of Yu Jin newly added firewood, and the flames shone through the open door, turning the muddy ground in front of the threshold a warm orange-red. As he crossed the threshold, he glanced back at the sky that was about to turn white at the gap in the mountain wall, then gently closed the door behind him.
The fire in the stove was still burning, and the warmth Jiujiu in the space enclosed by the stone walls. Five people sat in their respective corners, some asleep and some awake, their breathing rising and falling in the firelight, like a furnace that had burned all night continuing to radiate warmth in the darkness.