There had been an awful lot of hugging today, which Matteo had never been too keen on. But if he were to give this particular hug a fair evaluation, he would have to concede that it seemed to have some benefits. The muscles in his shoulders relaxed, and a knot in his gut that he hadn’t even noticed seemed to loosen before coming apart. A bit of resting guilt, perhaps? Emotions had a way of sneaking in sometimes, even against all reason.

  He rubbed his mother’s back as she cried tears of happiness into his chest, mumbling about how much she’d worried about her sweet boy. Eventually she pushed off again and took him in with puffy eyes and a bright smile.

  “You look bigger than before. More muscles.”

  He nodded. “Constant training tends to do that, mother.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Five minutes back and he’s already getting cheeky. Come on, the two of you, I’ll fix you some dinner.”

  It didn’t take them long to be sitting around the familiar old dining table in their mom’s kitchen as she cooked. Dario was beaming, even more giddy than usual. He’d always had a soft spot for their mother. Matteo gave a summary of what he’d been up to, leaving out most of the worst parts, as one tended to do when reporting back to one’s parents.

  “What could have happened to the letters then? I’ve never known the mail service to be unreliable. They really shouldn’t be, for the rates they charge,” his mother said.

  “I didn’t hand them to the mail service myself. I trusted someone else to do that. That trust may have been misplaced.”

  He could believe that a single letter would have gotten lost on the way, but a dozen? In all likelihood, Luciano had lied to him. It took him by surprise, not because he’d thought the man particularly trustworthy, but because it seemed like such a banal thing to lie about. That Luciano was ruthless was clear, but there was also a cruel kind of honesty in the way he would speak his mind, regardless of the consequences.

  Yet about this, the man had lied. The only motive he could think of, would be to eliminate any risk, however small, of news getting out of what Matteo was working on. To stop competitors from finding out their secrets? Or from poaching him? If so, it had been pointless, for Matteo hadn’t even written about the damn pills. But whatever the motivation, he had to adjust his mental model of the man to be even more callous than he’d thought.

  They ate and laughed as Dario shared stories of his misadventures on the second floor, but gradually that knot in his stomach seemed to be coming together again, wrapping itself tighter and tighter as his thoughts turned to Luciano and the pill operation. What really bothered him about it, was that instead of becoming clearer, the situation became increasingly muddy the more he thought of it.

  One realization was how little he actually knew of Luciano, besides that he was a wealthy entrepreneur who’d come from nothing and who seemed to have a passion for helping people to exceed their limits. That, and becoming even wealthier. But from their previous conversation, it was clear that the man wasn’t overly concerned with possible side effects. Was it only about the pearls, then?

  “What’s wrong dear?” his mother asked. “You seem a bit glum. Something on your mind? Is one of your experiments not going as planned?”

  Matteo smiled, shaking his head. “Nothing like that. That, at least, I would know how to solve. This is more of a moral dilemma, I guess. I’ve gotten involved in something which… Well, I’m not even sure if it’s good or bad. But it could be dangerous.”

  “Sounds… complicated?” his mother asked. He nodded. “Well, what does your gut say?”

  “How could my gut possibly help me with a complicated moral dilemma?” he said, frowning.

  “Hey!” Dario protested. “We’ve got good gut instincts in this family. That’s how I make my best decisions.”

  Matteo snorted. “A lazy way to decide things is what it really is.”

  But his rational methods weren’t helping with the uncertainty. Firstly, there was the uncertainty of the side effects themselves, which had not been properly documented in even mid term studies over a sizable number of test subjects. He’d only tested five, out of which four showed moderate symptoms, but that was after only three weeks of using the pills. Enough to warrant further study, but was it enough to act on?

  Then there was the matter of cost versus gain. When it came to dealing with issues of morality, he favored a recent theory which promoted the creation of the most good for the highest number of people. The pills would help people exceed their mental limits, resulting in a higher chance of breaking through their bottlenecks and reaching Coral. Would that be worth the cost of dealing with lethargy, excessive tiredness and perhaps even a loss of intelligence? Reaching Coral brought a huge upside, so some cultivators were still likely to take that deal.

  If the side effects were to worsen over time, which was not unlikely, the pills he’d helped make would create suffering in a potentially high number of people. They may also create great happiness in the few who’d reach Coral. With just a few assumptions on the number of people involved and by quantifying the suffering and happiness, he should be able to reach a calculation that…

  “But how does it feel, dear?” his mother asked again, snapping him out of his musings. “Even if you don’t decide based on your gut, I find that the feeling often tells you something valuable. It can be quite revealing sometimes, if you’re honest with yourself.”

  Matteo grimaced as he considered the tightening knot in his stomach. He wasn’t sure what would be the best name for that feeling, but one thing was crystal clear: it wasn’t anything good.

  ***

  “Sticky air, you say? Mm,” JeeJee hummed. “The aspect of viscosity. It is a tricky one to combat. A word of advice from an old man?"

  He paused for effect, sagely stroking his moustache. "Don’t antagonize the Hashira! Hohoho…”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t exactly planning to,” Dario said, before turning back to scanning Matteo’s body, eyes brimming with Ki.

  “Huh? The Ki is not just in your seams,” he said after a while. “It’s more… spread out. It’s in your actual muscles, I think.” He moved his head closer, eyes lighting up with even more Ki. “Yeah. Must be. Bits of purple woven in through the muscle, almost like water sucked into a sponge.”

  Matteo smiled.

  “Fascinating. You know, I’d suspected something like this might have been taking place, but the equipment needed to confirm would have been highly expensive. You’re like a walking Ki gauge.”

  “So… We need to fill the muscles with Ki? Is that a good theory?”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “We can formulate it to be more precise, but generally speaking, yes. Now we need to make a prediction and test it. What would we expect to see if this hypothesis is true?”

  “Well… A Coral would have all their muscles totally filled with Ki, I guess? While an Amber has the Ki only running through their seams, like me. And then there’s everything in between.”

  Matteo was nodding along. “You know, I’m reminded of the old rhyme. ‘We must toil to fill our coil’, isn’t it? I’ve seen the body referred to as our ‘mortal coil’ in some older books.”

  “Right! That must be it, then!” Dario began to pace excitedly. Something else was tickling at the back of his mind. Hadn’t he heard someone else talking about this floor. Someone old, who knew about things, but it wasn’t JeeJee… Uso, or the old man he’d been controlling! Right before he stepped on that explosive.

  “The Floor of Saturation,” Dario said, snapping his fingers. “That’s what he called it.”

  “Curious,” Matteo said, adjusting his glasses. “I’ve never heard that name. But we shouldn’t put too much weight on such things. Now, we need to run some tests to confirm if the predictions hold true. First, we could observe my muscles as I train. We should expect to see some changes there, though likely only very small ones.”

  Within half an hour, they found themselves in JeeJee’s training yard. It felt a lot smaller than Matteo remembered.

  “Mm. Getting closer, I’d say. A few more,” Dario said, peering closely at his back as he heaved a remarkably small weight that was, unfortunately, extremely heavy. After slowly letting it down again, hinging at the hips, he channeled his Ki through the back muscles once more, pushing until they were filled to bursting, before gritting his teeth and beginning the next lift. The trick about this type of training was that you had to keep going until you couldn't move anymore, then flood your muscles with Ki until they moved anyway.

  JeeJee was lounging back in a chair with his feet up on a shabby wooden table. Somehow, he’d returned from one of his brothel tours at exactly the same time they’d arrived. The timing was suspicious, but then nearly everything about the old man was. Matteo had learned long ago that these mysteries were not easily solved, not by questions nor by experiments.

  “Hohoho. Such vigor. Ahh, to be young again,” JeeJee mused as Matteo grunted and panted with the effort of lifting the artefact weights.

  Matteo kept doing repetitions until it felt like his muscles were tearing apart and his seams were bursting from the Ki he forced through them. He was positive he wouldn't manage another one and ready to call it a failure and collapse, but then Dario gasped.

  “That’s it! I saw it happen! The muscle was trembling all the time and then a puff of Ki escaped your seams and was sucked into it.”

  Matteo let himself fall to the ground, gasping for breath. “Strong evidence… For your hypothesis,” he said in between breaths. “Though you should… still take the time to observe cultivators nearing Coral.”

  “Yeah, I will, it’s just hard to see the detail because it’s so damn bright up there.”

  JeeJee hummed. “Flesh may be weak. When one watches only with their eyes, they will set the limit.”

  Dario gave Matteo a look that was equal parts frustrated and confused. “I could have gone another couple of weeks without the damn riddles. Why don’t you speak plainly for once?”

  The old mentor chuckled, pulling at his moustache. “It is not the way of a teacher. A teacher asks questions. Imagine a cultivator with a Kaku in their right hand. How might they use said Kaku?”

  He sighed. “They could fortify stuff, or energize the hand, or emanate from it, I guess. The usual.”

  “What separates those uses?”

  “What? They’re just… different ways to use Ki? Different patterns of channeling, different ways of controlling it and… Are you saying I need to do something different with the light Ki?”

  “Have you never experimented with this?” Matteo said, disapproval clear in his voice.

  “Look, I just push light Ki into my eyes and then I see things. The more, the better. I’ve never needed to do any fancy patterns or whatever.” He paused, holding his hand in front of his eyes. “Guess I’ll need to do some more experimenting, then. But more importantly, I still have to figure out a way to get Ki into my muscles without training like an idiot. Got any riddles for me there, JeeJee?”

  “Alternative methods of advancement?” the old man said, twirling his moustache as he smiled. “One wonders where those might best be seen. It is always good to broaden one’s horizons.”

  The two brothers exchanged a look. ‘The fuck does that mean?’ Dario mouthed, none too subtle. Matteo had an inkling - the only way to see new horizons would be to venture outside of the city, which left only wild nature and beasts. He’d have to admit to knowing very little about how Reijuu advanced, but it certainly wouldn’t be by lifting weights. He was about to give Dario a hint, but then he felt JeeJee’s eyes on him.

  “The elder disciple does not seem in a hurry to reach Coral. There can be many reasons for a pause, or even a detour. If one were to ask this old man, he’d say it can be beneficial to take one’s time, provided one knows where one is going.”

  “I happen to have some… unresolved business on the second floor. But once it’s resolved, I intend to continue my research.”

  “Hmm. One might wonder whether it’s the disciple’s unresolved business, or someone else’s?”

  Matteo frowned. That was a good question. Was it truly his responsibility, for just having been part of something that might end up harming others? He did provide critical contributions to the research. None of the others had his knack for designing experiments that isolated mental effects.

  The idea hadn’t been his, nor had it even been his desire to work on that project. Now that he was out of that prison, he could just… walk away. Wouldn’t that be sweet? The allure of a new floor, the freedom to continue his experiments… If the pills had side effects, people would eventually pick up on them anyway, wouldn’t they? Some might even still choose to use the pills despite any side effects. Was it really on him to spend his time finding out and then doing something about it?

  “Is this about the Dao Heart stuff again?” Dario asked.

  JeeJee shook his head. “The elder disciple is clear about the core desires in his heart. Yet the Dao Heart alone is not always enough to set one’s path. It provides a goal, but does not tell one how to reach it. The weight of obligation may get in the way. Or,” he continued, giving Dario a pointed look, “a lack of resolve and ruthlessness.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m doing just fine. Soon as I get back, I’ll follow those leads until they lead me to shortcuts. I’m doing things my way. The fun way. Or are you saying climbing shouldn’t be fun?”

  “Not at all. Perhaps age has made this old teacher cynical, but Tenjou’s floors do have a way of turning on cultivators and their rosy dreams. When put under pressure, innocence is usually the first thing to give way.”

  ***

  With goals and obligations on the second floor on their mind, their stay at the Belt soon came to an end. Yet Matteo still had a choice to make: to return to the compound, or to simply walk away from it. Dario had insisted that he should come along to the Houjo fortress, where he’d be safe from any repercussions.

  It was an alluring option, but not the right one. In the end, it was more the strength of his curiosity than the weight of obligation that compelled him. Regardless of what his mother might say about trusting his gut, he still believed in making his decision in the most informed way possible. But in order to do that, he would need to gather more information.

  Being away from the compound had helped him see it for what it was: a prison. Yet it had also opened his eyes to the many things he didn’t know about this operation. Were there any permanent side-effects to the pills? What did Luciano really want from this? If there was nothing wrong with the pills, then why was the man so damned secretive? He might be able to live with the moral greyness of it all, but not knowing, having these unanswered questions bouncing around his skull, that’s what would haunt him. So it was that he and Dario said their goodbyes, his brother helping him to sneak back into the compound, with the promise to meet up again soon. If he wasn’t out of here in three weeks, Dario would come looking for him.

  A weight fell off his shoulders when he found the projection still working as intended in his office. But not long after his return, more guards were added to the compound, his office in particular. When he asked Tony about it, he learned of the reason for the increased vigilance.

  They’d found a bloody footprint on the inside of the wall, which nobody could explain. Lying was not his strong suit, so he kept his face carefully neutral when hearing the news, choosing not to comment. That print could only be Dario’s, who’d been bleeding from the nose when they made their way out. They must have overlooked it in their hurry to get away.

  Luciano would be on his guard, which would not make things easier for him. The man’s caution, however, did nothing to lessen his curiosity. Disparate pieces of a puzzle floated around, and they'd keep nagging at him until he put them all together. Before he could even think of letting himself walk away, he’d need to get to the bottom of this.