Feng Qi stopped right in front of the door.
His belly didn’t hurt, not even when he twisted sharply.
“What is fate, really…” he sighed.
Feng Qi wondered — did fate imply that I would open this door?
Did it know I would eat the fruit?
Did it know I would transmigrate?
If that is so, then what is a human being?
What is this human, this small, static thing in its eyes?
But even if that were so, even if his fate was already sealed, that didn’t mean he would achieve nothing.
It didn’t mean he would die today.
And even if it were so, what would a human want to feel, under a fate like that?
Tenderness?
Support?
Love?
All three were possible, yet if Feng Qi knew he would die today, it would change nothing.
He would take such an outcome with the same impassive face as ever, for in a situation like that, nothing could be done.
Feng Qi put on an eerie, wide smile and whispered, “What have you got in store for me?…
Fate.”
He reached for the door handle with his right hand, shedding that eerie look as he did.
Without a shred of doubt Feng Qi pulled the handle, and the door opened, releasing the light of the window right in front of it.
He took three steps; this looked like some kind of corridor.
To the left of the room, and of Feng Qi himself, Leng Yu’s back came into view; he appeared to be talking with Qing Wei.
“Finally.
Took you long enough to get out of bed!”
It would have been the perfect chance to eavesdrop on them, to find out what this “business” of theirs was going to be.
But Qing Wei, standing face-to-face with Leng Yu, caught sight of Feng Qi as he stepped out of the room.
“Sorry, Qing Wei, but I had to check my wounds.
It’d be unpleasant if my belly started bleeding,” Feng Qi said with deference.
It was the best line he could put straight to Qing Wei.
She was hot-tempered, and if she rose to it, she might let slip why he’d had no cause for worry: that his wounds were gone entirely.
“Argh!
Fine, let’s just go already,” Qing Wei snarled.
“Ohh,” Feng Qi was intensely intrigued.
“We really should get going now, best not to keep the Master waiting,” Leng Yu said to Feng Qi, who stood behind him, as if apologizing once more for the harm he’d done.
“The Master.
Just who is he?” Feng Qi thought, already starting to walk.
The corridor was wide: as many as six large men could have stood across it in a row.
The three of them, Feng Qi included, walked abreast, with Leng Yu in the middle.
Feng Qi decided not to waste time and asked Leng Yu, “Leng Yu, so what is it these essence parameters actually give you?”
Tall as Feng Qi was, Leng Yu was still the tallest of the group, so Feng Qi had to lift his gaze a little to speak with him.
“You could call them four paths, or branches.
Name them however you like,” Leng Yu said with a smile.
“And these four paths lead on to more specific ones.”
“Such as?” Feng Qi asked.
Leng Yu thought for a moment, but still gave an answer:
“Mind, for instance, can lead to illusions, control, and so on,”
“Now, as for Will—”
“Sorry, but what feeds these powers?” Feng Qi cut Leng Yu off, looking straight into his eyes.
“There must be something of the sort, mustn’t there?”
There had to be some kind of essence energy, or something like it.
“The soul.”
“The source of that energy is the soul,” Leng Yu said.
Feng Qi was mildly surprised at so unnaturally steep a price.
But that didn’t mean he had to pay with the soul itself, rather than its “energy.”
“It replenishes itself,” Qing Wei put in.
“The soul replenishes on its own, unlike artificial sources.”
Just as he’d thought: Qing Wei was no fool after all; either she’d been putting it on, or something drove her to it.
Of course, he hadn’t taken it on faith just because she’d spoken about the soul.
There were plenty of other factors.
“The fruit of the world you ate only strengthened the bond between your body and your soul,” Qing Wei explained.
Of course, Feng Qi hadn’t been counting on lifting mountains like Sun Wukong just because he’d swallowed the fruit.
And naturally, it explained a great deal, but it meant the gods might not be all-powerful after all.
Assuming Leng Yu’s account was true, of course.
“I see.
And is there such a thing as the strength of a soul, or its potential?” Feng Qi asked.
“Yes, you could say it all comes down first to the soul’s innate potential for the essence parameters, and only then to the bond between body and soul.
Legends and old tales spoke of raising that potential, but we’ve never seen it done,” Qing Wei replied.
Surprisingly, Qing Wei was far calmer than before, which surely marked her as someone of importance to everyone here.
Feng Qi began to entertain the possibility that she was stronger, and even smarter, than Leng Yu.
“If she can throw information around like this and still be no fool, then she’s doing it on purpose.
No one pulls something like that off by accident,” Feng Qi thought.
“Still, don’t underestimate a good bond between body and soul.
Potential can give you the roads, but the bond — the work upon those roads,” Leng Yu added.
Feng Qi had already grasped it all, but he still had a risky question.
He didn’t want to push so hard, yet he badly wanted the answer.
“And what about moving a soul into another body?”
Both Leng Yu and Qing Wei looked at Feng Qi.
It was not a reproachful or a ferocious look; it was utterly blank.
Nothing showed in them at all.
Leng Yu sighed and said:
“I don’t know where you heard of that, but you shouldn’t get mixed up in anything like it.”
Feng Qi’s eyes gleamed; he knew it was a risk, that things could take a turn for the worse, but he still chose to press on:
“Leng Yu, I’m just curious.
You did say you’d answer any question of mine!”
At that, Qing Wei sighed too, and seemed ready to answer him.
“Plenty of times, plenty of fools have tried to move their soul into another body, but every last one of them died, for two reasons.”
“Two at once, then,” Feng Qi mumbled.
Qing Wei raised her index finger as they walked, saying:
“First: the body in question must have no soul, meaning either a dead one, which a soul can’t be moved into, or some artificial one, in which a soul can’t function either.”
Then, without lowering her index finger, Qing Wei raised the middle one as well, and continued:
“Second: in essence, you have to carry your soul across piece by piece, into the other body.
That’s next to impossible, because the fewer pieces of your soul you have, the less you’re capable of.”
Feng Qi liked that answer, liked it so much that he felt as if his soul were warming itself.
“The most important thing is that it’s possible, and the rest doesn’t matter,” Feng Qi thought.
“Look, it’s a dead end, don’t you dare try!” Qing Wei snapped.
“I wasn’t going to!
I was just curious,” Feng Qi countered.
Granted, he had no idea whether their information was true, but he would use it, since there was no other anchor to stop the ship.
And besides, if this “business” turned out to be dangerous, he’d do better to have strong allies, if only so as not to die stupidly at the first threat.
Feng Qi wouldn’t waste time guessing what threats he might encounter, for it was utterly pointless.
Better to see a thing once than picture it a hundred times.
For now he still hadn’t gathered enough information, but he was no glutton, and he could wait for it, even when he was ravenous.
Curiously, after all that, they walked the long corridor in absolute silence, which let Feng Qi’s thoughts work all the better.
Though “absolute” was hardly the word for it, given how loudly footsteps sounded on the wooden floor.
He glanced once more at his escorts — they wore the same robes as him, only in different colors.
Leng Yu’s was blue, Qing Wei’s green.
Suddenly Leng Yu and Qing Wei stopped short, forcing Feng Qi to pull up as well, though a beat late.
Before them stood a door, right at the end of the corridor.
Leng Yu reached for the handle and gave it a yank.
The door flew open, but no light spilled out, unlike before, when Feng Qi had opened the door into the corridor.
Near the far end of the room stood a large table with a chair, and in the chair sat the same grey-haired old man who had wanted Feng Qi to grasp what was expected of him here.
“We’ve arrived, Master,” Leng Yu said with a bow.
Feng Qi decided to follow Qing Wei’s example and just stand off to one side, doing nothing.
But then the silence was broken by the old man’s voice:
“I think we can begin.”