Chapter 15: The Madman

Old Man Xuan arrived on the seventh day.

Ti Mo knew it was the seventh day because Wei Lin had been counting. Wei Lin counted everything. Days. Meals. Mistakes. The number of times Ti Mo had sighed since arriving at the temple. The current count was forty-three.

The old man did not walk up the hill. He appeared. One morning he was not there. The next morning he was sitting on a fallen column, eating a raw turnip and quoting something that sounded like scripture but had too many jokes in it to be genuine.

"The Book of Empty Chairs says," the old man announced, "sit only where you are welcome, and welcome only where you sit. I have sat here. Therefore I am welcome. The logic is unassailable."

Ti Mo opened one eye. He was napping in the center of the temple, as was his custom. The circle beneath his mat had kept the floor warm for a week without needing refreshment. He found this convenient. He found most things that did not require his attention convenient.

"Who are you?" Ti Mo asked.

"I am Xuan. I am two hundred years old. I am a former elder of the Iron Bone Sect. I am mad. These are my credentials."

"They are unimpressive."

"Madness is never impressive to the sane. That is why the sane are boring."

Ti Mo sat up. He looked at Xuan. The old man was small, wrinkled, dressed in rags that had once been fine. His eyes were clear. Too clear. The clarity of someone who had burned away everything unnecessary and was left with only the essential spark.

"You are not two hundred years old," Ti Mo said.

"I am not. But I am older than I look, and I look old enough to frighten children. The exact number is irrelevant. Age is a story we tell our joints. My joints tell a different story than my memory."

"Why are you here?"

"Because you are here. And you are writing in a language the world forgot it knew. I have been waiting for someone like you. Not hoping. Waiting. Hope is exhausting. Waiting is passive. I prefer passive activities. They last longer."

Ti Mo rubbed his face. He had not expected visitors. He did not want visitors. Visitors required conversation, and conversation required interest, and interest was a resource he had not budgeted for this week.

"I am not writing a language," Ti Mo said. "I am drawing circles. Circles are not a language. They are geometry."

"Geometry is the grammar of the universe. You are speaking that grammar. Most people recite it badly. You are fluent. That makes you either a prophet or a disaster. Possibly both. Prophets and disasters are often the same person viewed from different distances."

Wei Lin emerged from the side room. He had been attempting to repair a crack in the wall. He held a trowel made from a broken plate and a stick. He looked at Xuan. He looked at Ti Mo.

"Should I be concerned?" Wei Lin asked.

"No," Ti Mo said. "He is mad. Mad people are harmless. Their danger is theoretical."

"I am not harmless," Xuan said. "I am simply selective about my harm. I have not decided whether you deserve any. Give me time."

Bai Zhi appeared from the roof. She had been patching holes. She dropped down silently, landing in a crouch. Xuan watched her with approval.

"A blank-born," Xuan said. "Excellent. Empty vessels are the most honest containers. They do not pretend to hold what they cannot."

Bai Zhi stiffened. "How did you know?"

"I know many things. Most of them useless. The useful ones, I forget. The useless ones, I remember perfectly. It is the curse of a long life."

Ti Mo stood. He walked to Xuan. He looked down at the old man. Xuan looked up. Neither blinked.

"What do you want?" Ti Mo asked.

"To watch. To learn. To laugh. I have not laughed properly in thirty years. The Iron Bone Sect frowns on laughter. They believe it weakens the bones."

"Does it?"

"No. But it weakens authority. That is why they forbid it."

Ti Mo considered this. He was not interested in the Iron Bone Sect. He was not interested in authority. But he was interested in laughter. Laughter was rare. Most things that were rare were valuable.

"You may stay," Ti Mo said. "But you will work. I do not feed idle mouths. Even mad ones."

"What work? I have no skills. My cultivation is crippled. My Golden Core cracked decades ago. I am a leaking vessel."

"You can talk. Talk to Wei Lin. Tell him about the local cultivation framework. He needs to understand what he cannot do before he can understand what he can."

Xuan clapped his hands. "A student who cannot learn. A teacher who cannot teach. A framework that does not fit. This is comedy. I accept."

Wei Lin looked alarmed. "I do not need another teacher."

"You need every teacher," Ti Mo said. "You are desperate enough to climb drainpipes. Desperate people should gather all the help they can find."

Xuan moved into the temple that afternoon. He had no belongings. He carried only a broken iron ruler, which he used as a walking stick, and a sack of raw turnips, which he ate with disturbing enthusiasm.

He talked constantly.

About qi. About dantians. About the stages of cultivation and the ways they failed. About sect politics and sect stupidity. About the Iron Bone Sect's founder, who had been a farmer with good bone density and a talent for hitting people.

"The sect is named after his skeleton," Xuan said. "They keep it in a shrine. They believe it grants strength. It does not. It grants tetanus, possibly. But not strength."

Wei Lin listened. He took notes. His notes were messy, desperate, full of underlines and exclamation marks. Xuan read them and laughed.

"You write like a man who is afraid the knowledge will escape. Knowledge does not escape. It hides. It waits for you to stop chasing it. Then it appears."

Ti Mo listened from his mat. He did not participate. He drew small circles on scrap paper, testing variations. A circle with a dot in the center. A circle with a line through it. A circle inside a circle inside a circle.

Some of them did things. Most did not.

The one with the dot created a small light. The one with the line created a small weight. The one with three circles created a small sound, like a bell heard from very far away.

"You are mapping," Xuan said one evening. He had stopped talking to Wei Lin and was watching Ti Mo instead.

"I am doodling."

"Doodles do not create light and weight and distant bells. You are mapping the local framework onto your own. You are translating."

"I do not know what my own framework is."

"Your hands know. Your mind is merely catching up. The mind is always the last to arrive. The body boards the train first. The mind buys the ticket later, complaining about the price."

Ti Mo looked at his hands. They were ink-stained. Permanent. The marks of a scribe who had written too many names and drawn too many circles.

"What is your framework?" Xuan asked.

"I don't know."

"Then find out. Before the world finds out for you. The world is nosy. It investigates things it does not understand. Its investigations are usually violent."

"I am not afraid of violence."

"You should be. Violence is boring. It repeats itself. First a threat, then a fight, then a winner and a loser. The pattern is predictable. Predictable things are the enemy of interesting people."

Ti Mo set down his brush. "You speak in warnings."

"I speak in observations. Warnings imply care. I do not care. I am simply describing the weather. Storms are coming. Whether you bring an umbrella is your concern."

"What kind of storms?"

Xuan smiled. His teeth were yellow but intact. The smile of a man who had seen storms before and had learned to enjoy the wind.

"The Iron Bone Sect knows about you. Not much. Just rumors. A foreign scribe who draws circles. A failed scholar who follows him. A blank-born girl who wears his robe. These rumors are small. But small rumors grow. They feed on attention. You have been noticed."

"Noticed is not threatened."

"Noticed is the first stage of threatened. There are three stages. Notice. Concern. Action. You are at stage one. Stage two arrives when someone important feels embarrassed. Stage three arrives when that someone decides embarrassment must be punished."

Ti Mo lay back on his mat. He looked at the roof. The stars were visible through the holes. He counted them. He lost count at twenty-seven.

"Let them come," Ti Mo said. "I am napping."

"You cannot nap through a sect investigation."

"I can nap through anything. That is my primary skill. Napping is a form of resistance. It says: your urgency is not my urgency. Your concerns are not my concerns. I will wake when I choose, not when you demand."

Xuan laughed. It was a full laugh, belly-deep, the laugh of a man who had forgotten restraint and was enjoying the forgetting.

"You are either the wisest man I have met," Xuan said, "or the most foolish. The distinction is irrelevant. Both are entertaining."

"I am neither. I am tired. There is a difference."

"Is there?"

"Wisdom requires understanding. Foolishness requires ignorance. Tiredness requires only existence. I exist. Therefore I nap. It is simple."

Xuan shook his head. He stood. He walked to the temple entrance. He looked out at the hills. The night was clear. The wind moved through the grass like a breath.

"They will come in spring," Xuan said. "Not before. The Iron Bone Sect does not travel in winter. Their bones ache in the cold."

"Spring is months away."

"Yes. You have time. Use it wisely. Or use it foolishly. Or nap through it. The choice is yours. That is the only freedom any of us has. The freedom to choose how we waste our time."

Xuan walked out. He did not sleep in the temple. He slept under the stars, wrapped in his rags, holding his iron ruler like a sword.

Ti Mo stayed on his mat. He did not sleep. He drew one more circle on a scrap of paper. A simple circle. Complete. Closed.

He wrote a word inside it. Not a name. Not a command. Just a word.

"Stay."

The circle warmed. The paper did not burn. The word did not glow. It simply sat there, patient and permanent, a request made to no one in particular.

Ti Mo folded the paper. He put it under his pillow.

He closed his eyes.

The white room did not come. The wheat field did not come. There was only darkness, and the sound of Xuan snoring outside, and the faint warmth of the circle beneath his mat.

It was enough.

It was almost enough.