Li Jiong thought he was in a dream. Are you sure this man doesn't have any kind of spiritual power? He approached from behind slowly to double-check the meridians but Meng Fei had finished the song.

He noticed that there was a lone tear trapped in the corner of the other's eyes. His hand unconsciously reached up to pick up that tiny pearl, but Meng Fei himself wiped it away with his shirt sleeve, as if feigning a slight itch.

"Did you like it?" He turned. His eyes were even a little reddish and he was smiling weakly.

"Yes. The sound it produces is so crystalline, it was like I was immersed in the landscape itself." Li Jiong replied with a discreet but sincere smile. "This must be your favorite song anyway, you play with so much emotion.

Meng Fei blushed and replied a little embarrassed.

"Hmm, yes. I like her a lot."

Li Jiong looked at the bunch of flowers on the table and touched the petals. He muttered something under his breath and the petals gave off a subtle glow.

"What are you doing?"

"It's a charm so the flowers don't wither. That way you can have them forever and you'll remember me when I'm gone."

Meng Fei's eyes instantly sparkled.

"This is awesome! Thank you so much!" He admired the flowers by looking at them closely. But his heart tightened a little later. Li Jiong remembered that he would one day not be here anymore.

He's only been here two days and I'm already attached.

"I'm glad you like it. I wish I had a better way to thank you..." Li Jiong commented somewhat shyly. He wanted to give something better even though he had noticed that this Meng Fei was the type to be happy with the simplest things.

"Hmmm..."

"What it was?"

"Could you...could you play some more?"

"Of course! What would you like to hear?"

"Ahh, I'm not good at expressing myself like you and your guardian are... but it would be nice to hear something that could express what I feel, but I can't explain what it is, maybe sadness...?"

Meng Fei turned to the piano, thought for a while, and began to play Chopin's Tristesse [1]. Li Jiong sat nearby.

This person understands me, or maybe has a sensitive eye on anyone, but to me both he and the other Meng Fei are an enigma to me.

Hearing this song felt like Li Jiong was taken on an inner journey. Memories of the past, of his childhood in the village, of when he entered the sect and met his shizun... the memories came like waves on the beach, bringing feelings of sadness and longing.

"And this one, what's it called?" He asked when the melody ended.

"Chopin didn't name her, but critics christened her Tristesse." He shook his head contemplatively. "It means sadness, but Dai Lu and I disagree with that name. I think Melancholy or Longing sounds better." He stroked the piano keys, thinking.

"Meng Fei." It was the first time Li Jiong had called him by name without being in hate or anger. There was a certain hesitation in his voice until he asked the question. "Why didn't you become a musician?"

Meng Fei had that answer on the tip of his tongue. "Dai Lu passed away when I was fifteen. He left everything to me but it wasn't much. Gradually I had to sell things, look for a job. I could barely eat giving music lessons. I sold what I had and then when I only saw the piano."

He cocked his head, smiling sadly. "In order not to lose him, I joined the construction area as a helper and pursued a career in that... but I play every night, the roof here has good acoustic insulation and I don't have neighbors. I just couldn't do it yesterday because we arrived a little late."

Li Jiong felt sad for the other, not because of the waste of talent, but because this person looked like a bird with its wings clipped.

"Actually, I'm a bit like Peng Niu. She can't live without books and I can't live without music. We should really be a pair, haha..."

For unknown reasons Li Jiong mentally disapproved of this comment. For some reason, he didn't like the idea of seeing little Peng Niu next to Meng Fei. Meng Fei had gotten up and seeing the hour advanced, he was startled.

"Wow! I better start cooking dinner! Well, it's been a while since I've talked to someone about music like this."

Li Jiong followed him into the kitchen and offered to help, he didn't want to be a deadweight and at least he would learn a little more about how to live there if he had to stay in this world for too long. Meng Fei handed him the vegetables to cut while he took care of the meat and put noodles to cook.

Meng Fei was concentrating on preparing thin slices of pork, although his mind was elsewhere. Although the music was written on a two-dimensional score, it was composed of three elements: melody, rhythm and harmony. The blueprints he drew were also a 2D representation of something three-dimensional. With the m spiritual actress could be the same thing, no? He remembered when he was drawing circles in the water, causing a vortex as he made the branch circulate at different speeds...

"Li Jiong, what are the sacrifices in the array for?" He asked picking up the already cut vegetables to cook.

"It depends on the sacrifice. If it's lives, it usually works as a third activation, after the two spells. If it's blood, it's to potentiate the effect. And if it's a member, then it's to make a trade."

Meng Fei shuddered. "How macabre!"

"Yes, that's why matrices that require sacrifices are prohibited and considered demonic."

"You said he used blood?"

"Yes, either mine or his. I had hit him and he spit up a lot of blood."

Meng Fei laughed. He remembered what it was like to be hit by Li Jiong, but Li Jiong didn't understand why he was laughing and stared at him in bewilderment. What was going on in this man's head?

Okay, so a spirit matrix needs two incantation lines to activate and maybe a sacrifice. The drawing has to be correct too. Meng Fei felt like he was putting pieces of a puzzle together. Mentally he tried to visualize the matrix, it had six concentric rings. The first line was the first verse. So the last five were from the second charm or more instructions? Off the top of his head he couldn't remember all the details but he was pretty sure the rings interspersed the words on the back with another function.

Finally the ramen was ready and he swallowed a steaming mouthful. For those who had already gone hungry, mealtime was sacred.

"Were you thinking about the matrix just now? What occurred to you?" Li Jiong asked, putting a piece of meat in his mouth. He started to think that he would miss Meng Fei's cooking when he got back. It was very well seasoned. Meng Fei scratched his chin a little, the last time he tried to explain it seemed a bit too confused.

"I was thinking... If I draw a circle on the paper, it could very well represent something three-dimensional like this bowl of ramen or a cup. The circle alone wouldn't be enough to tell which one it is."

Li Jiong nodded. Meng Fei continued the explanation. "So to find out which one it is, I put some clues in the drawing. If it were the ramen, I would draw the ingredients inside the circle, for example. In the matrix we have the verses."

He took a sip of the broth.

"I think I once said that here in this world everything is explained by the laws of physics. Well, there is a branch of this science that predicts that there are other dimensions and that you can get to them through tunnels."

"Tunnels?"

"They call them Wormholes, they could be connecting dots in the same universe or in different universes. I won't go into that too much, but the point is that this is a three-dimensional path, which could very well be described in a matrix like this."

Li Jiong tried to digest the information. Meng Fei's ideas could very well be correct, but could also be taking them further away from solving this problem. The cultivator deeply regretted not having devoted himself to studying this area in the past.

After dinner, he and Meng Fei sank under the books. The other was relentless in his studies, he questioned all the symbols and wrote down the design and meaning of all that resembled the original.

In the end, he ended up rewriting the verses that Li Jiong had deduced from the illustrated symbols and which were not clearly written by ideograms.

The final result looked like the following lines:

Meng Fei concludes that his partner made a mistake in the last verse, putting the character "world" in place of "underworld" [2].

"Sounds right, how do we do it now?" Li Jiong questioned anxiously.

"Tomorrow we'll go back to the place where you appeared and we'll do the test!" Meng Fei smiled in the conviction that they were getting close to resolving this case.

Oh, oh, it would be nice to have an illustration of Meng Fei with glasses, all intellectual, explaining the matrices.

[1]Tristesse: Étude Op. 10, No. 3 in E major by Chopin.

[2] Diyu in Simplified Chinese 地狱 literally "earth prison"; "hell" or "underworld"; it is the realm of the dead or "hell" in Chinese mythology. The Earth is called Dìqiú 地球. There is a change in the last character, which was Meng Fei's demonic cultivator's mistake.