Window ☞
The next morning, Long Tian was awakened by a very light knock on the door.
The knocking came from the front gate, three times, each knock evenly placed, not like someone casually knocking as a passerby. Yu Jin was already squatting under the pomegranate tree brushing his teeth when he heard the knocking, so he stood up and glanced at Long Tian. Long Tian came out of the house and stopped at the inside of the gate, not opening it immediately. He first sensed the aura outside the door—a stable pulse of Soul Power, low-frequency, focused, and belonging to the same person as the gaze he had felt on the terrace last night.
He unlatched the door.
Standing outside the door was Tang San. He had changed into casual clothes, not his competition attire, and his hair was slightly disheveled by the morning breeze. He carried nothing. Standing in the morning light outside the doorframe, he nodded slightly when he saw Long Tian open the door, and without exchanging pleasantries, spoke directly, "You are the one who awakened twin dragons at the age of six."
Long Tian looked at him. The distance between them was only the width of a door frame. At this distance, Long Tian could see the color in Tang San's eyes, that unwavering gaze exactly the same as his on-field demeanor last night—unbiased, unhurried, and steady. He stepped aside to clear the doorway. "Come in."
Tang San stepped across the threshold into the courtyard. His gaze paused briefly as it passed the pomegranate tree, then again as it passed Yu Jin crouching beneath it, before finally settling on the grey-gold Dragon Shadow behind Long Tian, which hovered above the door frame in the morning light. He stared for about two or three breaths before withdrawing his gaze and standing by the well.
Long Tian sat down on the low stone bench next to the pomegranate tree. Tang San didn't sit down, but leaned against the wall on the other side of the courtyard, with a section of the courtyard floor bathed in morning light between them. Yu Jin rinsed his toothbrush in the bucket of water, stood up, and stepped back under the eaves, leaving space between the two of them.
"Your Dragon Shadow has been in my perception for three days," Tang San spoke first, "And it hasn't dissipated."
"It won't dissipate again."
"My Second Martial Soul also needs to be maintained when switching. But yours doesn't."
Long Tian did not deny it. "Once it takes shape, it doesn't need any additional maintenance. Like a piece of forged iron taken out of the furnace, it cools and solidifies into its intended shape on its own, without needing fire to maintain its temperature."
Tang San nodded. He paused for a moment, then changed the subject. "Last night, during the middle of the finals, I felt your gaze fall on my right hand. I stopped exerting force the instant I switched hands; no one else would have noticed, but you watched the whole thing from the west balcony."
"I saw the texture of your Soul Power change when you switched hands. You didn't use your second Soul Power in that match, but you left room for switching."
Tang San neither said yes nor no. He stood against the wall for a moment, then suddenly raised his hand and stretched it out in front of him, his right palm facing upwards. The fine lines of Blue Silver Grass briefly appeared from his wrist along his palm before disappearing, like a drop of ink seeping from the surface of paper into the back, leaving no trace. After making this gesture, he lowered his hand and looked at Long Tian. "My Second Martial Soul is the Clear Sky Hammer. I usually don't use it in public. But when an opponent is applying sustained pressure, I habitually leave a switching path, though I don't necessarily actually use it all the way through. The hand-switching motion you saw was the entrance to that path."
Long Tian squatted by the well, listening to Tang San's words. He didn't respond immediately, glancing down at a small clump of moss growing in the cracks between the bricks at the edge of the well. After looking at the moss, he raised his head, his voice calm and composed. "I spent several years in the East Sea and saw some dragon patterns carved on stone walls. Those patterns light up on their own when light passes through them, and after they finish lighting up, they don't dim back down; they just store the brightness beneath the surface. The thing inside me has a similar mechanism. Its base is already lit; it doesn't need to be illuminated again. If your two Martial Soul have each found their rhythm for continuous operation, then the energy consumed by the reserved channels is actually lower than you think."
Tang San stood in the courtyard for a while, gazing at the half-withered branches of the pomegranate tree and the clear morning light above its branches. He didn't press Long Tian about his experiences in the East Sea, nor did he inquire about the specifics of the patterns carved on the stone wall. He only paused briefly at the doorframe as he turned to walk towards the gate, turning his head slightly to say, "After the finals, the Spirit Hall will have a period of rest. If you're heading southeast during this time, there's an old official road leading to the sea at the post station on the western side of the city. Although it's overgrown with weeds, it's still passable." With that, he stepped out the door.
Long Tian sat on the low stone bench under the pomegranate tree, watching Tang San's figure disappear into the morning light at the alley entrance. The courtyard gate was still open, and an early riser passed by carrying a birdcage. The cage cloth was still up, and the bird inside chirped intermittently twice before falling silent. Long Tian stood up, walked to the well, bent down, scooped up a handful of cool water, and splashed it on his face. Water droplets dripped down his chin onto the brick surface, shimmering in the rising sunlight. The clump of moss in the courtyard, where he had just been watching, had already begun to turn green at its edges, like something new growing under an old wall, slowly pushing aside the surface of the old bricks, finding a place to continue growing in the damp cracks, adapting to the temperature of the new environment at its own pace.