The library was a welcome change of pace, after the annoyance of dealing with the academy. Some people just couldn’t take a hint, he swore… sighing, Mingtian placed the last few books back on the shelves before wheeling the cart down through the towering stacks, the soft sound of it rolling along the only echo of noise in the entire place.

  The library was ever-busy, yes, especially now that the semester had restarted, but it was a simple busyness, lacking the intense politicking of the academy or… he huffed, smiling softly as he remembered, lifetimes ago, all the various bits of trouble he’d gotten up to in his youth. It was difficult to look at even what he’d done in the far-gone era of his mortality and call this, now, busy. Maybe even laughable…

  A comfortable busyness. No grand goal, no heavens to surpass… it was interesting, that. He wasn’t sure if he liked it. One day, he’d have to return to the heavenly realm and continue that inevitable march to ascension, but until then…

  Strangely adrift, he pushed open the door to the sorting room, parking the little cart in its place by all the other little carts, beneath the posters, sunlight streaming through old windows slanted, glass a little fogged by age and winter frost, a crystal liquid luminescence that caught on every little thing and rarified it to aureate shimmering. A gentle warmness flowed through the room, ruffling at his hair and prickling on his skin as it contrasted with the slight cool of the library.

  It was in every respect practically the exact same as any other room in the building— perhaps possessing its own unique little idiosyncrasies, but nothing of incredible note. It was not his office, steeped in formations and perfectly unentangled qi flows, shifting and ebbing with the cycle of existence… but… he cracked a smile, then sat down at the table beside the bin of yet-unsorted books, putting the thoughts out of mind. Of course there were differences— he could feel it in the aura of the place, the slight echo of qi so subtly ingrained into every piece of furniture and little bit of machinery— this was not a room for the students. It was a quiet haven, tucked away from the library proper, but not a haven for any one…

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Ah. He saw now. The way it had all come together, without any conscious act of it— perhaps because of the lack of conscious direction, a strange and subtle thing. He doubted that anyone else would notice it— though perhaps an Immortal Ascension cultivator would’ve been able to? Regardless, beside them, there wasn’t anyone who would have been able to see where the slow bands of long-formed intent seeped together, running as one, creating, then, something so much more.

  A tiny, syncretic thing, borne not for sole sanctuary but for every librarian, each and every worker who’d put so much effort into maintaining the books and the shelves and the stacks, and the floors and the windows and…

  It was the perfect counterpoint to the heavy qi of winter outside— the perfect thing he’d needed, after having to deal with the annoyance that was the academy— and Mingtian let himself indulge in its comforting embrace for a while as he sorted through the books. One by one, yet surely, placing them in their proper place; falling into that same sort of meditative trance he’d spent so long practicing to get perfect, now second nature. It was easy— to let the world bleed by. In the Celestial Realm—

  “Mingtian? I was wondering where you were.” The thought shattered as Janus entered the room, but… perhaps, that was for the best. It had been a grim sort of thought anyways. “Oh, wow.” His coworker slowed as he entered the room, eyes widening a little as he… ah. “You sorted all of those?”

  “The machine does most of it already.” The machine, an old, massive thing that was more often broken than not, its rubber conveyor belts more nicked and scratched and dust-covered than a tire, most certainly did not sort everything all that well. The extent of its capabilities was to sort between genres; the rest of the sorting was left up to the librarians themselves. “It was really no trouble at all.”

  “Still, impressive. You’re really settling into your position here well.”

  “I’ve been here almost a whole year.” That short? It felt longer.

  “That long?” Janus blinked, unintentionally paralleling his own thoughts. “It felt shorter.”

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