Speaking Tongues is, by most cultivators' standards, a minor skill. Useful but unremarkable, the kind of thing you learn early and then forget to appreciate because it doesn't make for impressive demonstrations at the trials. At its basic level you can communicate with non-living matter: stones, water, metals, old wood. Simple things with simple thoughts, if you can even call them thoughts. Impressions, really. Preferences. A rock does not dream, but it knows what it is and where it belongs, and if you pay attention, it will tell you so. Communicating to Animals or spiritual beings is a lot harder, since they have more complex thoughts.
Most cultivators use it for practical things — tracking spiritual energy lines through terrain, locating high-concentration meditation spots, the occasional structural work. Nobody talks about it much. Too ordinary.
Ordinary suits me fine.
The two large stones I have selected are old. You can tell by the density , the way they sit in the ground. I crouch in front of them, forearms resting on my knees, and listen first. That is the part people skip. They reach for the tongue before they have any sense of what they are about to say to something.
The thoughts that come back are simple, as expected. Heavy. Not hostile, just — particular. As all earth things are.
I present my case.
They can merge, I suggest, given that their mineral compositions already lean that way, the erosion that separated them was circumstantial. Like part of one piece separated at birth. Hardly even a reunification.
They agree but on three inflexible conditions, naturally.
First: they stay in this spot. No moving. That should be easy since the air flow here is already good , the cave's upper fissure handles ventilation well enough that the fire will breathe without assistance and the smoke will find its own way out. I have no objection.
Second: no overheating. Heat them past a certain threshold and the mineral structure shifts — what holds them together becomes something different, and then the bread burns on one side and is raw on the other, which defeats the entire point anyways. Agreed.
Third — and this one I found endearing, honestly — clean up after. They want the cave left as it was. Fine by me. I have always cleaned my workspace.
Reasonable conditions. Honestly more reasonable than most people I have dealt with.
I step back.
"How long are you going to lean over those two giant rocks, Ye Fen."
Xiao is behind me, whining, which I notice has become the ambient background noise of my afternoon. I can hear underneath the whining the thin, strained sound of him forcing two smaller stones together with raw spiritual energy , the technique the academy actually teaches, which involves pushing your cultivation output into the material until it has no choice but to comply.
It sounds exhausting. It looks exhausting. His spiritual energy is audibly straining.
"There is no point in forcing yourself," I say, watching the stones.
"Easy for you to say, you're just sitting and doing nothing, besides there is no way you can merge those two giant rocks—"
"Just watch."
He goes quiet.
And before his eyes, the two large rock panels begin to move.
The surfaces shift, find each other, and press together with a sound like a long exhale, the seam between them filling and smoothing as the minerals recognize their counterparts and close the gap. The interior hollows out naturally into the right shape — a wide belly for heat retention, a narrow throat for airflow — and comes to rest in a configuration that looks, from the outside, like someone took a great deal of time building an oven.
Which they did. Just not in the way Xiao is currently gaping at.
"H — how did you—"
"You just have to ask nicely." I roll up my sleeves. The Speaking Tongues technique is not strenuous by any real standard but my cultivation level is what it is, which is to say low, and a nap after those buns would do my spiritual energy a great deal of good. Something to plan for.
I snap my fingers and the dimensional pouch appears.
Xiao's head cranes forward immediately with curiosity. "Oh — is that the dimensional pouch? The one you made from the spiritually imbued cotton cloth?"
"That's right."
"That must have taken forever."
I pause, just slightly, at the memory. It was certainly a long tiresome process.
Look. Originally it was only supposed to be a pillow.
The academy assigns living provisions according to cultivation rank. The higher you place in competitions and trials, the more comfortable your accommodations. This is apparently meant to be motivating. What it means for me — who places last in competitions without particular distress, who has no interest in combat rankings, and who has never once built a spiritual fortress to repel a simulated demon incursion because the training schedule conflicts with my preferred napping hours — is that I receive the most basic provisions the academy offers. A sleeping mat with fabric in it that I am fairly certain was designed to be itchy on purpose, as a kind of passive aggressive punishment for not taking the rules seriously. Not the mention the fabric of the clothes they would give were itchy everytime I moved.
I was not going to become ambitious. But I was also not going to keep sleeping on that fabric.
Forty nights and forty days of cultivating spiritually imbued cotton. Harvesting, processing, spinning it into cloth by hand and by cultivation both. Then sewing , which I was able to learn by begging the maids here. They were prickly at first of course. But after a cultivator was willing to learn from maids who are supposed to be invisible, they were more than happy to help.
The result: clothes that feel like sleeping inside a cloud. Return on investment, excellent. No regrets.
And while I was at it — a small dimensional pouch seemed practical. For essentials. Spare pillows, some preserved snacks, a light blanket for when I find a particularly good outdoor napping spot and do not want to have to walk back to get one.
Very sensible.
I pull out the dough I prepared yesterday, carefully wrapped and exactly where I left it. I cradle it in both hands for a moment, already pleased with how it has rested overnight.
"Now." I turn to face the oven, which is sitting there looking solid and cooperative and exactly the right size.
"Let's fire this up."