CHAPTER 210
### The Road West
Three days west of the hollow they passed a village neither of them had been to before.
Small. Fourteen families. The kind of settlement that existed at the intersection of two secondary roads because the intersection was convenient and over two generations a convenience had become a community.
He felt the seeded section before they reached the village.
Standard developing section. Forty-four percent threshold. Young — the second combination's outer range had reached it seven months ago. No significant practice history to accelerate the development.
A section building at natural rate.
He read the character.
No grandmother's frequency. No military collective's synchronized practice. No two generations of morning exercises on a specific slope.
Just the section.
Building.
Young.
He extended the passive domain contribution automatically.
He walked through the village.
Fourteen families. Children. The normal activity of a settlement on a midmorning.
He walked through without speaking to anyone.
At the village's northern edge a child of perhaps seven was sitting on a fence post watching the road.
The child looked at him.
At the grey blade.
"Is that a sword," the child said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"What color is it," the child said.
"Grey," he said.
The child looked at the blade.
"It looks like it wants to be a different color," the child said.
He stopped walking.
He looked at the child.
The child was still looking at the grey blade with the focused attention of someone who had not yet learned to dismiss the things they noticed.
He looked at the grey blade.
He thought about the unnamed color.
The color between black and silver that had been deciding what to be for one hundred and forty years.
He thought about the grey blade.
Ordinary grey.
The between quality invisible because it was everything.
He thought about the child saying: it looks like it wants to be a different color.
He thought about the ancient layer in the hollow.
He thought about beginning words.
He thought about the one continuous project and the next wielder and the next combination and the next person who would stand at the hollow's edge at whatever depth was available to them and read what had not yet been written.
He looked at the child.
"The blade knows what it is," he said. "It is not trying to be something else."
The child looked at the blade.
"But it looks like it wants something," the child said.
He held the grey blade.
He reached through twenty-three breaths.
The between quality in the dantian and the sword and the domain.
The ancient layer at the hollow's depth present at the outer edge of twenty-three breaths.
What did it want.
He had not asked that question before.
He had asked what it was.
What it did.
What it cost and what it produced.
Not what it wanted.
He looked at the child.
He looked at the grey blade.
He committed.
He counted nothing.
He said: "I think it wants to be found."
The child looked at the blade.
"Found how," the child said.
"By the right person," he said. "At the right moment."
The child thought about this.
"Like when you find a good stick," the child said.
He looked at the child.
He thought about a rusted sword in a vault.
He thought about the rust falling away.
He thought about: it found me.
"Yes," he said. "Exactly like that."
The child nodded.
The child looked at the road.
He looked at the road.
He kept walking.
Lin Mei was beside him.
She had been watching the conversation from three paces back.
She fell in beside him.
"The right person at the right moment," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Like finding a good stick," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She was managing her expression.
He could not read what she was managing it away from.
He looked at her face without trying.
"Yes," he said again.
Not to the question.
To her.
To the grey journal done.
To the road west.
To the one continuous project.
To everything.
She looked at the road.
"West," she said.
"West," he said.
He committed.
He walked.
The grey blade at his hip.
The between quality in everything.
The ancient layer patient in the hollow's depth.
The project continuing.
The road long.
Don't waste it.
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