“What happened!?” Rouxi received an unexpected call from Secretary Liang early in the morning.
Secretary Liang found Li Yun collapsed in an old temple and he rushed him to the hospital.
As soon as she heard what had happened, she took a charter out to Panda City.
On her way, she received a text from Li Yun, but it was likely a timed message. It was a really simple text.
Yun: If you don’t hear from me, I’m in an old abandoned temple near the untrodden pathway of Mt. Qingcheng. Don’t worry, I should be fine.
“Fine my ass!” Rouxi glared at the text, trying not to cry as her eyes welled up from the message.
On arrival to Panda City, Secretary Liang drove her to the hospital and escorted her into a VIP suite.
Li Yun was laying on the bed, hooked up to the heart monitor device. The doctor said his body is stable, but for some unexplained reasons, he hadn’t been able to wake up since they found him early this morning. There were no physical injuries and the toxicology report came back negative.
Rouxi thanked the doctor, who left the room to Rouxi and Secretary Liang.
“Why are you in Panda City?” Rouxi asked as she sat next to Li Yun.
“Boss ordered me to visit Doctor Li and personally invite him to the next family gathering,” Secretary Liang replied.
Rouxi wondered if they were keeping tabs of Li Yun from afar. If Secretary Liang had been following Li Yun, she was sure Li Yun would have sensed it. “When did Song Taiji meet Yun?”
“The day after your visit with the third master.”
Rouxi nodded. “Can you leave now?”
Secretary Liang nodded and discretely walked out of the room.
Rouxi took Li Yun’s hand, and then touched his forehead. He looked like he was just asleep. She was considering whether she should let his family know. Would it be causing them needless worry to contact them? She stayed by his side until she fell asleep by the bed.
****
After midnight, Li Yun's eyes slowly opened and inspected his surroundings. It was much more familiar than where he was before and he could see the moon and stars beyond the window.
"The hospital?"
More like a VIP ward, but it wasn't a hospital he was familiar with. Li Yun felt a warm presence by his side and turned to see Rouxi sleeping by his side. He moved aside, gently pulled her up to lay beside him, and covered her with his blanket.
At the foot of the bed were his jacket and backpack. He looked inside, but everything was still there. Was it a dream?
He rested his head back on the pillow, and thought about what had happened. He still wasn’t able to process everything. It felt like a dream, but at the same time, it felt so real that he wondered if it was possible for it to be another reality.
Li Yun re-examined his physical body, and everything appeared normal. There wasn’t any soreness or injuries, so wherever he was, it wasn’t this particular physical body. However, there were antibodies in his body specifically for the exotic toxin that entered his body. Was it possible for a dream to trigger an immunal response?
Did he enter into an illusionary array at the temple? Or was it some other type of array? The only trigger was spirit detection, so was it connected with the spirits in some way? He wondered if fengshui was related to arrays. The books available on the topic were either too esoteric or difficult to understand.
One of the earliest traces of feng shui was dated more than 6000 years where the houses were aligned to allow solar gain. The same strategy that modern architects employed in passive housing strategies to reduce energy consumption.
While he was growing up, his parents and grandparents would never align the bed with the door and with the feet facing the door. It was typical things that the elders were always warning the children about. The position was called the coffin position because it was often how people were carried out after they died. From a psychological standpoint, people were most vulnerable when they sleep, and being close to openings such as doors and windows opened up the possibility of attacks or the feeling of being intruded upon. It wasn’t just in Chinese culture, but other cultures had similar guidelines with placing beds away from doors.
Feng Shui guided these decisions, but it also included geographical, mathematical, and astronomical influences. The complex relationships with different fields made it difficult for Li Yun to even grasp a small portion, much less achieve small perfection. If he could understand the principles, was it possible for him to understand what had happened to him? Or the best possible route was to avoid it altogether? Something in his head was telling him that he had walked too far to turn back.
Rouxi shifted a bit, and noticed that she was laying on bed. Her eyes moved up to look at Li Yun, who was awake and looking back at her.
“Yun!” Rouxi got up quickly. “You’re awake. You!”
Li Yun pulled her down and kissed her before she started yelling at him for making her worry. Although it was only 24-hours, being trapped in a world with nothing but dangerous beasts really put a lot of things in perspective. Before he got carried away, she pushed him down on the pillow.
“Yun! We’re in the hospital and you better explain why you fainted,” she demanded.
“Do you remember when I fainted in the haunted house?” he asked, considering how much of the truth she would believe.
She nodded.
“Something similar happened at the temple, but much more powerful.”
Rouxi frowned and remembered the time he had collapsed. "But if you knew this would happen, shouldn't you avoid it from happening?"
"I can see it coming, but I can't avoid it." Li Yun felt something pushing him forward, and he hated that feeling. Rather than being manipulated by whatever forces and fate had in store for him, he wanted it to be his choice to continue searching for the reason he was being guided down on this path.
"Are you going to be okay?" Rouxi hands softly held onto his cheeks.
Li Yun kissed the palm of her hand. "I've never felt more alive."
Rouxi settled her head on his chest and wondered what she was getting herself into.
“Did you find me in the temple?” Li Yun asked, wondering how he got to the hospital.
Rouxi explained to him what secretary Liang had told her.
“Why is Secretary Liang here?”
“I’m not sure, Secretary Liang only works for Song Taiji. He doesn’t stray too far away from him unless it’s something important.” Rouxi looked at Li Yun. “Did the old man contact you?”
Li Yun nodded. “He invited me the last time we were in Imperial City.”
There was a period of time when Li Yun went off by himself. Rouxi had guessed that Song Taiji had seen him, but she wondered why he never mentioned it to her. If he knew of her ability, wasn’t he curious?
“Why didn’t you mention it to me?” Although she could guess the reason, she wasn’t a mind reader, and the more she stayed with him, the less she was able to trust her own judgment. What was it about relationships that made even the smartest of people question their own judgment?