The next morning, someone knocked on the door of my temporary quarters.
Standing outside was the blue-grey-clad registrar from yesterday, a jade scroll in his hand, his expression carrying nothing.
"Shen Qichi?"
"That's me."
"The First Seat wants to see you." He held out the jade scroll. "Basic aether-resonance data collection. Now."
The scroll was cool to the touch, its surface inscribed with a few lines of small characters: *Resonance Institute — Small Laboratory. Seventh quarter-hour of the chen hour.* I turned it over. The back was blank.
"Do I need to bring anything?"
"Just yourself." He turned and left before the sentence was finished, the hem of his changshan sweeping over the stone step, nothing more added.
I checked the light outside. Half an hour remained until the seventh quarter-hour of chen. The herb packet in my sleeve was still there. I took it out, retied the cord, and pushed it back into the deep of the pocket.
---
The small laboratory was on the west side of the Institute. Its door was heavy black iron; opening it produced a dull, grinding friction.
The room was cooler inside than out.
The examination table had been cut and polished from a single piece of jade, its surface mirror-smooth with a faint curve at the edges. I pressed my hand flat against it — cool, not the piercing cold of ice but the kind unique to jade, a coolness that seeps slowly through the skin.
On the windowsill: a low shrub in a pot, its leaf edges a deep reddish-brown with fine serrations. Yesterday, coming in, this plant had been at the left corner of the examination table. Today it had been moved to the windowsill. A faint water ring remained on the left corner — circular, as though a pot had just been lifted away.
Xie Wuwang was standing on the other side of the table, holding a palm-sized instrument in the shape of a bronze mirror. Today he wore a different dark ink-grey changpao, its fabric threaded with extremely fine silver patterns — from a distance they looked like ordinary dark brocade; only close up did you notice the patterns moving slowly, like mercury threading through the weave.
"Sit," he said.
I sat on the stone stool at the near side of the table. It was jade too. The coolness came through the cloth.
He moved to my side — not close, keeping distance — and raised the bronze mirror. He aimed it at my wrist. Nothing there. No resonance marks. Clean enough to sting the eye.
A ring of pale gold light rose around the mirror's edge.
Symbols appeared on its surface, flowing and luminous. They flickered three times, then all turned a deep, cutting red — and shattered into fine fragments of light that scattered, regrouped, shattered again.
Three times. Then stopped.
A low hum rose from inside the mirror, like something being forced to a halt deep within. Xie Wuwang's gaze stayed on the mirror surface. The outer edge of his brow didn't move, but his jaw tightened once.
He set down the mirror and picked up a record book from the other side of the table.
The record book had a stiff dark-brown cover, its edges worn pale. He opened to a fresh page. The tip of his brush hovered over the paper — held there longer than the interval of normal writing.
I watched his profile.
He was turned half away from me, eyes on the page, the brush moving slowly, every character appearing to require a decision about which word to use. When he turned a page, there was the dry sound of paper against paper. He turned one page and began again.
The brush tip stayed on the paper for a long time.
The laboratory was quiet. Only the sound of the brush moving, and the faint periodic hum of the bronze mirror — very regular, once every seventeen seconds, like a heartbeat.
On the third hum, he looked up.
"Wrist flat," he said.
I laid my wrist flat on the jade surface. The coolness was more pronounced now. Where my skin made contact, a thin layer of gooseflesh rose.
He crossed to me, holding a smaller instrument this time — shaped like a seal. The bottom face was carved with intricate formation patterns, fine spirit stone dust inlaid into the grooves, giving off a faint blue glow in the room's light.
He stopped three feet away.
Precisely three feet.
I looked at the seal in his hand, then at the distance between us. He aimed the seal's face at my wrist. The formation patterns on its base began to rotate, and the blue light fanned outward like ripples on water, forming ring after ring in the air.
The ripples reached three feet and stopped.
He looked down and wrote.
While his gaze was on the page, I quietly raised my right elbow and used it to measure the space between us.
Three feet exactly.
I noted the number in the oil-paper booklet I carry and set it on the left corner of the examination table.
The air my elbow had moved through was room temperature — not cool, not warm. Ordinary air. But he was keeping that air at three feet. Not more, not less.
The blue glow from the seal went dark.
The instrument made one short, sharp hum — different from the regular pulse of before, a half-tone higher. One line of fine characters appeared on the mirror's surface — not the deep shattering red from earlier, but a very pale gold that flashed once and held.
Xie Wuwang deactivated the instrument considerably faster than he had activated it. The mirror's surface went dark immediately.
In those two seconds, the background hum of the bronze mirror stopped. Like water finding its own outlet and going quiet.
The laboratory was silent for a few seconds.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Instrument error," he said. No change in his voice.
Xie Wuwang put away the instruments. The brush touched the record book one final time. He closed it.
"That is enough for today," he said. "Same time tomorrow."
"Is the data collection finished?"
"The basic portion." He set the record book at the corner of the table, the dark-brown spine facing me, the page edges showing dense lines of text. "Your aether-resonance response is... not what was anticipated."
"Because I'm a blank?"
"Because instruments cannot read a blank." He looked at me — his gaze, for the first time, landing fully on my face. Not my wrist. Not the instruments. My eyes. "Blank is not zero. It is unknown."
I nodded.
Everyone else who had mentioned "blank" used the word *defect*, or *danger*. He used *unknown*. I noted that and nodded.
He turned and walked to the cabinet on the far side of the laboratory, opened it, and removed several jade scrolls. With one of them — his fingers first moved toward the left compartment, paused, then placed the scroll in the right compartment instead. The cabinet door closed with a quiet click.
"You may go," he said, his back to me as he arranged the scrolls.
I stood. The moment the stone stool left my skin, the coolness stayed in the cloth. At the door, I looked back.
Xie Wuwang was still standing at the cabinet, a jade scroll in his hand. Not reading it. His gaze had drifted to the record book on the examination table, the outer edge of his brow pressing slightly down — the look of working something through.
He walked back to the table. He opened the record book again. The hand that turned the pages slowed at a particular page and stayed.
I pushed the door open and left. In the corridor, three luminstone lamps were lit.