Li Hui Ming

Jin and I were reading together at the picnic table. For some reason, Jin only bought books on history and alchemy. I couldn't understand anything in the alchemy books, but the history books were interesting. I was reading “Origins Of The Black Fire Sect”, which chronicled the adventures of the Black Fire Sect founder. Tales of his adventures may have been exaggerated, but they were entertaining nevertheless.

I glanced at Jin. He was reading a compilation of everybody who had ever gotten to the dao traversal stage, the realm above the nine dao formation stages. It was one of the most well written books out there, but he looked bored out of his mind. He flipped to the next page as if it were a terrible chore.

He looked up and saw me looking at him. Too late, I tried to look down.

“I couldn’t find the fiction section in the bookstores and libraries. Are they banned in this sect or something?” Jin asked.

“What’s ‘fiction’?”

Aloof and eccentric, Jin is a total mystery to me. He had disappeared into his house for more than forty days. I heard explosions and other noises characteristic of alchemy.

Then he finally came out again and bought a cart of books on history. He must’ve bought a copy of every book in the history section. But he acted as if reading them was a form of passive torture.

He stared at me blankly, “You know, fiction.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.”

“How could you possibly- ah, never mind,” he said. He went back to flipping through the books with dispassionate eyes.

A loud thump as Jin threw a book to the floor. The spine of the book broke apart, the pages exploding out. Hundreds of yellowed sheets fluttered to the ground. Startled, I jumped up. “Sir? What’s wrong?”

He turned to me. I saw pure panic in his face. There was nothing abnormal around us. What was he so scared about?

The earth started shaking. I looked around myself, searching for the source of the shaking.

Dozens of twenty-tentacled plant monsters crawled out from underground. Vines from all over the garden came to life and moved towards Jin. I stumbled back. A snake wider than I was tall brushed past me. A huge blade rose out of the ground. Where had all of these come from?

More importantly, what could make Jin feel he needed to take them out? What would warrant such a show of force?

The plants stacked on each other with Jin at the top. His plants assembled into a tower, lifting him high into the air. He jumped down and the plants disassembled and returned to their original places. In the span of twenty seconds, his plants assembled into a giant tower and disassembled again, as if nothing had happened.

Normally, when I faced somebody significantly more powerful than myself, I feel a primal fear that forces me to act.

With Jin, it was the exact opposite. He doesn’t inspire fear, I’m comfortable reading history sitting next to him. I felt fine when I stood next to him, but it was moments like this when I was reminded why I had to keep him away from my sect. Instead of an instinctual fear, it was menacing knowledge.

He ripped a page out of a book and pointed at a corner of it. It was a map of the city. “Go to this place,” he threw me a seed in a box, “crush this box and a shell will come out and protect you.”

He spoke quickly and flutteringly. He bit his bottom lip and gave me a pained look. “Chen Wei might be at that spot on the map. Please save her if you can. I know you’re enemies. I’ll do what I can to compensate for you, or your sect.”

He stared at me. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it felt like he was scanning the depths of my soul. Tiny changes in his body language told me of the boiling anger underneath that desperation.

The vines covering his estate fell to the ground and he dashed off. The net of vines that covered the estate disappeared.

I stared at the box in my hands. I could leave. I could just leave. I could go back to my sect and pretend nothing had happened.

I grabbed the map and jumped in the direction of place he had pointed to. Barefoot, I felt roof tiles crumble beneath my feet, my short hair fluttering in the wind.