CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY ONE
### What The Three Practitioners Did
Mo Xuan's message arrived two days later.
*Three practitioners contacted me through the relay address you gave them.*
*I have been corresponding with them for forty-eight hours.*
*They are not a faction. They were three practitioners who disagreed with the organization's decision and moved independently because the organization was moving in a direction they could not follow without understanding why.*
*They needed to understand why before they could follow.*
*The technique failing in the generating section provided the why.*
*I am sending them the adaptation document. They will work through it. It will take time. The technique they built their practice on does not dissolve in a conversation.*
*But they are asking the right questions.*
*I should know. I asked the same questions for thirty years before asking them to the right person.*
*Also: I completed the adaptation document. I am sending it to Li Shan today. It is forty-three pages. Some of it is wrong. I have noted which parts are uncertain. Li Shan can correct the errors.*
*I should have sent it six months ago.*
*Sending now.*
He read the message at the morning camp.
Feng Luo was eating. He looked at the message over Jian Yu's shoulder.
"They were not a faction," he said.
"No," Jian Yu said.
"They were three people who needed to understand why before they could accept the change," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"That is not the same as refusing the change," Feng Luo said.
"No," Jian Yu said.
Feng Luo was quiet.
"My father," he said.
Jian Yu looked at him.
"When I went home after the combination," Feng Luo said. "He made the right decision for the wrong reasons. He cooperated with the recovery coordination because it was politically correct. Not because he understood why the combination was necessary."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"He still does not understand why," Feng Luo said. "He has been cooperating for nine months without understanding why."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"The three practitioners needed to understand why before they could accept," Feng Luo said. "My father is accepting without understanding." He paused. "Which is better."
"They are different," Jian Yu said. "Your father's acceptance produces cooperation. Their understanding produces something deeper. Both are necessary. Different people require different approaches to the same change."
Feng Luo looked at his food.
"I want him to understand," he said. "Not just cooperate."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"How," Feng Luo said.
Jian Yu thought about this.
Mo Xuan's forty-three page document for practitioners whose technique depended on the old conditions.
The archive's foundational section. What Was Here Before.
The human record section. What people chose when they understood what the work was.
"Show him the archive," Jian Yu said. "Not the technical documentation. The human record. What people chose. Shen Hua's four-hour decision. The merchant family's three generations. The elder in Raohe. River-Stone." He paused. "The story of the choosing. Not the cultivation theory. The choosing."
Feng Luo was quiet.
"He is a sect leader," Feng Luo said. "He does not read farming family records."
"He is a person whose son has been asking him to understand something for a year," Jian Yu said. "He will read what his son brings him."
Feng Luo looked at him.
"You cannot know that," Feng Luo said.
"No," Jian Yu said. "I cannot."
They were quiet.
Then Feng Luo said: "I will try."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"Probably he still will not understand," Feng Luo said.
"Probably," Jian Yu said. "But you will have tried."
Feng Luo looked at the Flame Blade at his hip.
At the fire burning at its resting height.
"Don't waste it," he said. Not to Jian Yu. To himself. Or to his father. Or to the distance between them.
"No," Jian Yu said. "Don't waste it."
He counted fourteen breaths.
The road went south.
The generating section at the river crossing was behind them now.
The section would be there when Shen Bo's relay station opened.
The station operator would arrive to find territory that was already generating.
Already past the threshold.
Already permanent.
The work continued.