Chen Yè arrived at Bai Zixian's courtyard and stopped.
The usual nine faces were present—seated around the low table, speaking quietly among themselves, their expressions carrying the comfortable familiarity of people who had spent months learning each other's patterns. But there was someone else.
A tenth figure sat at the edge of the table.
Quiet. Unassuming. Almost invisible despite being in plain sight.
Chen Yè smiled.
He evolved.
The gentle boy—the one Chen Yè had approached weeks ago with a proposition he wasn't sure would work—had changed. The difference was subtle, nothing as dramatic as Kiran's grey eyes or Noah's dreamlike innocence. But it was there. A refinement to his features. A stillness to his presence that felt less like shyness and more like... depth.
He'd evolved to the Resonance stage.
And he hadn't been among the thirty announced by the officials a few weeks prior.
Which means my method works.
The realization settled into Chen Yè's chest with quiet satisfaction. He walked toward the group, his mind already turning over what this meant.
It had started as desperation.
The perspective-sharing method had helped others—Kiran with Void, Noah with Dream—but it had done nothing for Chen Yè. He'd listened to every interpretation of his representation. Had considered each perspective seriously. Had tried to find meaning in the darkness and the dancing lights that filled his awakening vision.
Nothing came.
His connection remained silent. His concept remained hidden. His path to evolution remained closed.
So he'd decided to try something else.
Not patterns. Not thoughts. Not the slow accumulation of other people's opinions about images he couldn't understand.
Definition.
That was the word he kept returning to. What if understanding the meaning of a representation wasn't the key? What if you could bypass meaning entirely and simply... define what you saw?
It was a theory. Untested. Possibly foolish.
But Chen Yè had nothing to lose.
He'd looked for someone to test it on—someone who might be willing to try an unproven method, someone whose representation he could analyze with fresh eyes. His gaze had eventually landed on the gentle boy.
He was easy to overlook.
Quiet. Unobtrusive. The kind of person who moved through spaces without disturbing them, who spoke only when necessary, who seemed to vanish into backgrounds despite standing in plain sight. You would deem him invisible if you weren't paying attention.
But Chen Yè was always paying attention.
And what he saw intrigued him.
The boy possessed something unusual—a quality that Chen Yè could only describe as intuitive understanding. He seemed to grasp things without being told, to comprehend situations without explanation. He moved through the group's dynamics with a quiet awareness that belied his apparent passivity.
It was as if he understood the meaning of things without needing to learn them first.
Ironic, Chen Yè had thought, that someone like that would struggle with his own representation.
But that was exactly the case.
The boy's representation had been a room.
Chen Yè remembered the description clearly—he'd asked for every detail, pressed for information that the boy himself found difficult to articulate.
A room filled with symbols.
Not just images. Not just pictures hanging on walls. Symbols—shapes that carried weight, forms that meant something beyond their physical appearance. They covered every surface: the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Some were simple—circles, lines, spirals. Others were impossibly complex—layered patterns that seemed to shift when you looked at them too long.
And words.
Words in languages the boy didn't recognize. Words that looked like they'd been carved into the air itself. Words that hummed with significance, that demanded to be read even though reading them was impossible.
And images.
Faces. Landscapes. Moments frozen in time. Some the boy recognized from his own life. Others belonged to people he'd never met, places he'd never been, events he couldn't possibly know.
All of it together. All of it overlapping. All of it meaning something.
The boy had felt it. That was what he'd emphasized most. He'd felt the meaning—not understood it intellectually, but experienced it directly. Emotions had washed through him: joy, sorrow, rage, peace, love, hatred. The full spectrum of what existence could contain, compressed into symbols and words and images that spoke directly to his soul.
He'd understood everything in that room.
And then he'd been transported out, and he'd forgotten all of it.
Every single thing.
The knowledge that had filled him completely had drained away the moment he left. He remembered that he'd understood. He remembered the feeling of understanding. But the actual content—the meanings he'd grasped, the truths he'd perceived—was gone.
It had been maddening.
The boy had tried to re-enter that state. Had meditated and concentrated and struggled to recapture what he'd lost. But the room only existed in the awakening chamber. The understanding only came when he was inside it.
And he had no idea what any of it meant.
Chen Yè had listened to all of this with careful attention.
And he'd seen something the boy had missed.
Symbols. Words. Images. All carrying meaning. All understood intuitively. All forgotten after leaving.
The representation wasn't showing the boy what his concept did. It was showing him what his concept was.
True Meaning.
Or perhaps Symbolism—the principle that underlies all symbols, the truth that gives significance to every word and image and pattern that mortals create. The understanding that comes before explanation. The knowing that precedes knowledge.
The boy wasn't supposed to remember what he'd learned in that room. He was supposed to recognize that learning it at all was the point. His concept gave him access to meaning itself—direct, unfiltered, beyond language or logic.
That was Chen Yè's theory, anyway.
He'd approached the boy with a proposition. Made a deal—the specifics didn't matter, only that both parties had something to gain. And then he'd shared his insight.
"Your concept is True Meaning," he'd said. "Or Symbolism, if you prefer. The principle behind all symbols. The understanding that gives things significance."
He'd explained his reasoning. Laid out the connections between the representation and the definition he'd constructed. Showed the boy how to think about his concept not as a mystery to be solved, but as a truth to be claimed.
"Don't try to understand what the symbols meant," he'd told him. "Understand that you understood them. That's the point. That's what your concept does."
The boy had listened.
He'd agreed to try Chen Yè's approach.
And yesterday afternoon, he'd come to give his response.
Now he sat at the edge of the table, evolved, living proof that Chen Yè's theory held weight.
Definition over meaning, Chen Yè thought as he approached the group. Define what the representation looks like to you. Connect that definition to a concept. And let understanding follow.
It wasn't the same as the perspective-sharing method. It was something else—something more direct, more forceful. Instead of waiting for meaning to reveal itself through accumulated viewpoints, you simply declared what you believed the concept to be and let that declaration guide your evolution.
It had worked.
But as Chen Yè took his seat among the others—nodding to Bai, acknowledging the curious looks, settling into his usual position of quiet observation—unease stirred in his chest.
I steered his destiny.
The thought arrived without invitation, heavy with implications he didn't want to examine.
The boy had been struggling. Lost. Unable to grasp the meaning of a representation that seemed designed to torment him with forgotten understanding. He might have eventually found his own path. Might have discovered a different interpretation, a different definition, a different truth that led to a different evolution.
But Chen Yè had intervened.
He'd given the boy a concept. Not suggested—given. Told him what he was, what his power meant, what truth he should pursue. And the boy had accepted it. Had built his evolution around Chen Yè's definition rather than his own.
What if Chen Yè had been wrong?
Not factually wrong—the evolution proved the definition had been close enough to work. But what if the concept of True Meaning wasn't exactly what the boy was meant to embody? What if there was a different shade of that truth, a more personal version, that the boy would have found on his own given time?
I might have shaped him into something he wouldn't have become naturally.
The unease deepened.
Chen Yè looked at the ten faces around him—eleven including himself. The six who hadn't yet evolved. The ones who would come to him next, asking for the same help he'd given the quiet boy. Asking him to define their concepts. Asking him to steer their destinies.
If I do this, he thought, I'll be shaping seven more people. Telling them what they are. Guiding their evolution according to my interpretations.
It was a lot of power for a street orphan who couldn't even understand his own representation.
It was also, potentially, a lot of damage.
What if he was wrong about one of them? What if his definition didn't quite fit, and they evolved into something twisted, something incomplete, something that would haunt them for the centuries of existence that awaited? He would be responsible. Their fates would rest partly on his guesses, his theories, his desperate attempt to find a path forward when his own remained closed.
That's a problem for the future me to solve.
The pragmatist in him surfaced, pushing the unease aside.
Yes, he might be steering destinies. Yes, he might be shaping people in ways they wouldn't have chosen for themselves. But what was the alternative? Let them struggle alone? Watch them fail, be filtered out, be sent to whatever fate awaited those who couldn't evolve?
At least his method gave them a chance.
At least they would survive.
And survival, in the end, was what mattered. Moral purity was a luxury for those who didn't have deadlines. For those who weren't racing against a system designed to grind them into useful shapes or discard them entirely.
As long as both parties benefit, Chen Yè told himself, it's a win.
He looked at the gentle boy—Seren, he'd learned his name was—sitting quietly at the edge of the table. Evolved. Alive. Possessing a concept that would let him grow, advance, possibly survive the war that awaited them all.
That was worth something.
That had to be worth something.
The others were watching him now. Curious. Expectant. They'd noticed the new addition. They were wondering what it meant, what Chen Yè had done, why the invisible boy was suddenly visible in a way he hadn't been before.
Chen Yè met their gazes calmly.
Let them wonder, he thought. Soon enough, they'll understand.
And if his method worked—if he could guide them to evolution the same way he'd guided Seren—then his position in this group would be secured. Not just as a contributor. Not just as someone with useful ideas.
As someone indispensable.
Someone they couldn't afford to lose.
Someone who might survive even without a concept of his own.
The unease lingered at the edges of his thoughts, whispering about steering destinies and shaping souls. But Chen Yè pushed it down, buried it beneath layers of pragmatism and survival logic.
Both parties benefit, he reminded himself one final time.
That's all that matters.
For now.
End of Chapter 20