Chapter 410
A Song of Jade (I)
The details on how I wound up in a room scented with jasmine and jade are a bit blurry, not because the inn did something, but because I just surrendered myself to the flow without much thought. The only thing I remember distinctly doing was shelling out 20,000 mid-grade stones and feeling the ache of it.
To be fair, looking around, I can say that it's worth it. Satin bedsheets, pristine cleanliness, a tiled floor, a bath nestled in the corner, a set of fresh robes, a table lined with fresh fruits, a few bottles of wine and ale... it was premium. Yet, I could barely take a bite out of a grape before I heard a knock on the door.
I could just not answer--I recall being told that every room, especially the 'premium' ones, had an array that disallowed unwanted entries. Thus, I could just turtle in here, ignore the real world, and take a few days off to just be a slob.
But it would do me no good.
Sighing, I got up off the bed and walked over to the doors, cranking them open as Long Tao's face appeared on the other end. He looked a bit surprised, as though he hadn't expected me to open.
"I didn't expect you to open." Huh, look at that. My face-reading skills are still top-notch.
"You didn't go exploring with others?"
"..." he shrugged and walked past me.
Closing the doors, I spun around and saw him sit up against the table, fiddling with a wine bottle before putting it away.
"Father used to love drinking wine," he spoke up. "Until he drank one made with something called lyeon grapes. According to him, the taste was so divine it made all other wines taste like swamp water."
"..." I walked over and sat opposite of him, pouring myself a cup. "I ought to then avoid wine made out of lyeon grapes."
"Should be easy, as they don't exist anymore."
"Oh."
"Did you see them, Master?" he asked.
"... I did."
"Honestly," he said, looking at me oddly. "I was certain you'd be more... terrified."
"I am."
"No," he shook his head. "That's not terror. My father, when he first saw them, felt terror. The man locked himself away, unable to properly exist. Rather, the few of his friends who caught a glimpse of them, too, went mad. The sight of those creatures... it leaves everyone at least untethered. But you seem oddly unaffected. Like you'd seen them before."
"..." well, technically I didn't. Not those two, for certain. "I haven't," I said. "Truly. What did your father tell you they were?"
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"He didn't know either," he said. "Nobody truly knows. Some suppose they are Cosmic Leviathans, burrowing their way toward us, in want of Dao. Some, yet, suppose they are ancient gods that are older than even Dao itself, or even that they are its creators. Some suppose that they are the origin of Yin and Yang. But... judging by your expression," he said. "They're none of those things."
"..." I mean, the cat's already out of the bag. I don't think the veil will truly ever fall apart, but hiding it is pointless. It's not as though it will change anything in the grand scheme of things. "No, they're not," I said, taking a sip of wine. "Let me ask you something first: why do you think we don't just... float away?"
"Hm?" his brows furrowed.
"How are we able to stay on the ground?" I asked. "And not float away?"
"Uh..." he seemed doubly confused, but it's likely because he never thought of it that way. To him, and by extension to everyone else here, the idea of 'floating away' would never even come forward in their minds. Though they do have an understanding of gravity as a type of energy, as I've seen it utilized more than once, they don't have an understanding of gravity as a type of force.
"What do you call it when someone uses an art, or creates a domain, that makes your body feel as though it weighs ten times more? When you have to exert far more energy to simply move?"
"Suppression," he said.
"Right. And it's Qi suppressing you, no?"
"Of course. What else--it's... not Qi, is it?"
"It might be," I shrugged. "But I don't think it's Qi directly. There's an invisible force that exists everywhere, all around us, that pulls objects towards each other. The greater the object, the denser it is, and the stronger that pull is. The world itself exudes it, which is what 'pins' us to the ground. Which is why when you jump, you always come back down. In those suppression domains, the strength of that force is enhanced, and I'm sure there are martial arts out there that loosen it, that make it twice as easy to jump around."
"And those two things are... containers of that force?" he asked.
"No, no. As I mentioned, that force is everywhere. Just as space and time exist, it, too, exists all around us. Second question--why do you think those two things were fully black at their centers?"
"..." he thought about it for a moment before offering an explanation. "They are made of something that traps the light?" Oh? Wow. That's actually surprisingly close. I do recall 'dolling out' a small lesson on light to Rayce some ways back, so he must have heard it, too.
"Fairly close," I nodded. "It's not that they are made of something that traps the light; it's that the pull of that force I mentioned is so strong that it captures everything. My... grandfather, he called it gravity. And the pull he called gravitational pull. Every object has it--but those two, in particular, teeter at the edge of possible. There's a specific point at a specific distance from their center past which nothing can escape. You're not seeing anything but the absence of light."
"..." he listened as his brows furrowed deeper and deeper. "So... what are they? Are they alive?"
"No," I said. "They are celestial bodies, not unlike the stars. Unfeeling, uncaring, thoughtless."
"!!!"
"Grandfather called them black holes," I continued. "Celestial bodies of such attraction that they can swallow up countless stars and worlds. Those two, the best I can understand, are in the process of merging together." He nearly shot up from his seat, his eyes widening as his hands began to shake.
"But... f-father mentioned that people made sacrifices to them and got stronger from it."
"... I don't know how they got stronger," I said. "But it was not because of those two. Not directly, anyway. It's true that the sheer quantity of energy that is currently in a tailspin around them is so excessive that there is no comprehending it, but, as I said, they are not alive. If somebody's found a way to absorb that energy and convert it into Qi, that is their achievement."
"What... what will happen when they merge?" he asked.
"I wouldn't worry about it."
"Why?"
"Because there will be nobody left alive to witness it."
"Hm? You mean, we'll all die due to the effect of them merging?"
"No," I said. "By the time they've finished merging, you and I, as well as everyone and everything across Seven Heavens, will have been dead for so long that not even the cold stardust will remember us."
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