Book 3: Chapter 21: Broken Orbs Remain Broken |
The line of people behind the skeletal man shifted. Whispers rippled backward through the crowd like wind through tall grass. Yin Hu ignored them. He'd said what he said and meant every syllable. Hei Gu had been loud, arrogant, a young master with a young master complex, and about as dangerous as a firecracker thrown at a mountain.
Da Ruis sat frozen for long moments as he stared.
His quill lay forgotten on the table, registry ledger sat open to a page half-filled with names and measurements. His covered hands pressed flat against the wood surface, fingers splayed, and Yin Hu could see the faintest shimmer where the ghost's form flickered beneath the gloves. Losing cohesion for just a moment before pulling itself back together through what had to be sheer force of will.
He turned toward the skeletal man and waved him forward with a mechanical gesture. "Continue. Place your hand on the first orb."
The old man obeyed. His bony fingers wrapped around the Orb of Telling and it pulsed once. A dull grey meaning he had no elemental affinity worth mentioning.
The Orb of Reading followed. Another dull pulse that was low potential across every metric.
His last hope was the Orb of Grand Secrets… except that had returned the same exact result of every single person it had tested. Which was nothing.
The man's face fell.
Da Ruis recorded the results without comment and waved him head around the other side of the line to not cause traffic issues. The skeletal man looked at the bare table, going from Da Ruis and then at Yin Hu. It took a moment as though he was considering an attempt at begging for a chance before he thought better of it and then shuffled away with his shoulders hunched and his ragged robes dragging through the mud.
A girl, maybe nine, with dirt caked into her hair and eyes too sharp for her age.
Da Ruis processed her mechanically. Orb of Telling: faint green pulse, minor wood affinity. Orb of Reading: moderate body cultivation potential, low Qi cultivation ceiling. He recorded it, waved her through, and the next person took her place. The Orb of Grand Secrets remained non-functional.
They went through the process as a dozen people passed.
Each one touched the orbs, got recorded, and then moved on because they had yet to find anyone worthy.
Da Ruis's quill moved faster with every entry, but Yin Hu could see the tension building in his shoulders. The fabric across his back pulled tighter with each passing candidate. His head kept turning toward the empty space on the table. The area where the Orb of Grand Secrets had sat for the whole duration of the evaluations and disciple recruitment drive.
On the nineteenth candidate from the old man, a boy of fourteen with a surprisingly bright amber pulse from the Orb of Reading, Da Ruis stopped writing and realization dawned upon him that they had been ignoring the whole time.
He set the quill down and turned to Yin Hu. "This won't work."
"What won't work?" Yin Hu looked at him over the rim of his tea cup.
"Your Orb of Grand Secrets." Da Ruis's voice had dropped low enough that the people in line couldn't hear. His mask tilted toward the empty space on the table and then back to Yin Hu. "It won't function. Not here and not on these people… err… or quite literally anyone on this planet."
Yin Hu set the cup down. "Explain."
"The orb reads hidden potential based on a calibrated threshold. A baseline of power that determines what qualifies as 'hidden' versus what qualifies as 'nonexistent.' Your baseline—" Da Ruis's hands lifted from the table and made a gesture that started small and expanded outward until his arms were fully extended. "—is so far beyond anything on this world that the orb can't distinguish between a mortal with a dormant divine bloodline and a mortal with nothing at all. To the orb, calibrated to your understanding of power, everyone here reads the same."
What does that even mean? A Qi initiate is a Qi initiate. It can't be more complicated than that, right?
He must have seen the confusion in Yin Hu’s expression because he continued.
"Think of it this way," Da Ruis continued, leaning closer. His voice dropped further. "If you stood on the peak of the highest mountain in existence and looked down at two ants on the ground in the valley far below, could you tell which one was carrying a grain of rice?"
Yin Hu blinked at him with a blank expression. "...No?"
"Exactly. The orb sees through your eyes, Patriarch. To you, we are all ants."
Zhong Da made a strangled sound from the other side that he turned into a cough. His fist pressed against his mouth and single arm trembled.
Yin Hu stared at the Orb of Grand Secrets on the table for a long moment. The afternoon light had shifted. Shadows from the leaning buildings crept across the mud and stone, stretching toward the line of hopefuls that still snaked into the distance. Hundreds of people, all of them carrying potential he couldn't measure because something he couldn’t quite understand.
He blamed the system. It always messed things up in the critical moments, including the Orb of Grand Secrets.
It was probably reading how powerful his Dao’s were and the collective aura and intent that carried with him. The same source of power he did not have access to in any meaningful shape or form except for a distant touch upon its edges he could use to make people scared of him. Including old monsters who tended to make it seem like more than it actually was.
He cut the thought short.
"Let me handle this," Da Ruis said. His posture had shifted. The ghost was in his element now, solving a problem that fell squarely within his area of expertise. Centuries of talent scouting for a hall that no longer existed, but the skills remained sharp as the day they were forged. "I have methods. Older ones that are less elegant, more time-consuming, but they work regardless of the examiner's cultivation base. I promise it will produce better results than the orb ever could in these conditions."
Yin Hu studied him for a few breath.
Then he shrugged. "Go ahead." He waved his hand and the Orb of Grand Secrets vanished from wherever he'd placed it, the dismissal as casual as swatting a fly. "How about the other two?"
Da Ruis glanced at the remaining orbs. His mask tilted as he studied them from angles that suggested he was doing a deep dive into his thoughts and process. "Those are fine. They aren't based on a skewed perspective. They just show the truth as is. Element is element. Purity is purity. Potential ceilings are constants that don't shift based on who's watching." He paused. "It's only the Orb of Grand Secrets that requires a frame of reference. And yours is…"
He trailed off.
"Broken?" Yin Hu offered.
"I was going to say transcendent, Patriarch."
Zhong Da coughed again, harder this time.
Yin Hu picked up his tea and took another sip. Still lukewarm. Still missing Ta Rae's obsessive temperature management. He looked out at the line stretching into the slums and the hundreds of faces staring back at him with hope, desperation, fear, ambition, and every other emotion that came with standing before a door that might open into a better life or slam shut on their fingers.
Transcendent. Sure. That's one word for it. Another word would be useless. My single most important recruitment tool just got benched because I exist too hard and the system made all the hard existing locked away behind it. Absolute bullshit!
He set the cup down and nodded toward the line. "Then get started. We're burning daylight and I'd rather not be here after dark."
Da Ruis grabbed his quill, pulled a second ledger from beneath his cloak, and began writing symbols Yin Hu didn't recognize across the top of a fresh page. His movements were quick and carried the energy of a man who had just been handed permission to do the thing he was born to do.
The next candidate stepped forward. A woman in her mid-thirties, broad-shouldered, calloused hands, chubby cheeks despite being in good shape, and eyes that had seen enough hardship to fill a library.
Da Ruis raised his covered hand and the air between his fingers shimmered.
Yin Hu watched from behind his cup and said nothing.
As long as it works, it doesn’t really matter how he does it… Unless he tries to kidnap people again… That I can’t allow to happen.
The chair creaked under him again.
Yin Hu sighed. Wondering why the two had insisted he sit on something this uncomfortable when he could have been lounging upon a cushioned seat or sat upon a throne of feathered softness he would have sunk into and thoroughly enjoyed.
Made no sense to him at all.