“Thank you very much detective. You are so kind.” Jianmen said to Aimee and Thomas, deliberately ignoring Aimee’s more and more annoyed expression

“Alright Mr. Yu. Have a good night. Please do pass on our message.” Thomas promptly ended the conversation with Jianmen, since he noticed that his sister was losing patience.

“Of course. And the same to you.” Jianmen waved his hands in the air as Thomas and Aimee went out the front door of the inn.

As the two detectives walked to their car and Aimee realizing that Jianmen had a pretty fluent conversation with them even though the last time they met Jianmen claimed that he does not speak English and ran off, Jianmen waved his hand in the air a few more times, then he took a look at what he had in his palm.

It was a small trace of black smoke, and it was still slowly moving in his hand, at the center of it there was even a small portion of it that was flickering red. The smoke still flowed like normal smoke would, but it was contained within a small space on Jianmen’s hand by an invisible barrier.

Jianmen had rarely looked at anything as seriously as he was looking at this small trace of black smoke that was flickering red.

His two students were still in the basement, and from the sound they were making it seemed like they were going to be there for a while, so he still had some time before he would be bothered and interrupted in whatever he was doing.

A simple pen with his own special homemade red ink inside in hand, Jianmen drew a few symbols on its corners. And in the center of the paper, he drew a circle and a few words around the circle.

If Jason and Caroline were here, they would notice that some of the words and symbols were also on the drawings hanging on the basement walls.

Placing the trace of black smoke onto the paper, Jianmen slowly conjured up the power he gained from practicing one of the most mysterious, powerful and dangerous cultivation methods in his previous world: “The Laws of Karma”.

A simple name, and not overly complex for a cultivation method of its level of power, yet not many had come close to successfully understanding it. Not to mention utilizing it.

The symbols and words on the piece of paper started emitting light of different colors: some red, some green, some blue, some golden, and some purple.

Visions started flashing through Jianmen’s eyes - an old man with silver hair got onto a bus, then he went onto a train. And on one of the stops the old man got off the train, where he was greeted by Aimee and Thomas.

Before the old man went on the bus, he dropped by a fast food restaurant to grab a bite and a cup of coffee.

Before the old man dropped by the fast food restaurant, he was in his apartment.

The day before, the old man went to a busy place, some city downtown, where he bought some gifts in a shop and gave his spare change to a homeless man sitting beside the shop’s front door.

It was through this exchange, a lock of black smoke climbed onto this old man’s wrist like a snake from the homeless man’s hand.

Before the homeless man went to the shop’s front door, he took a drink at a roadside water fountain.

Through the water, another bigger lock of black smoke went into the homeless man’s body.

The water from the water fountain was delivered from some complex and somewhat old and under maintained underground piping, which connected to an old and similarly under maintained filtration system.

Then the visions ended - the limited amount of black smoke could only support this much causal tracing before it got neutralized under the power of Jianmen’s Xuanli and the Laws of Karma.

The piece of paper turned brown, slightly curled up and brittle, as if it was exposed to heat for a while.

A small blister occured on Jianmen’s palm like there was a minor burn, then it quickly recovered.

Even though the trace was incomplete, Jianmen still got the feeling that it came from something unclean and dangerous. But for now, it was not that huge of a concern for him.

But it did give him an urge to speed up his training and lessons, especially on that of meditation and visualization, and eventually, Yi, or Intent.

Not too long after he completed, the sounds in the basement stopped. 

“Hmm.” Jianmen smiled with a little bit of pride, and started to prepare tea and chopped berries.