A/N : Okay, I know this took two weeks to get up but for some reason I just didn't feel like updating, then I realized why this morning - my beta reader (*hugs her tightly*) hadn't gotten this chapter back to me yet. But, when I opened up my e-mail, she had sent me the highly edited version of what I had sent her and so I fixed it up some and decided it was time to post. ^_^ I'm hoping you'll all enjoy Tom's time in China, though some it does start getting a bit strange from here on out.

A/N 2 : In this chapter you find out, of course, what those "truths of magic" are all about, though they're nothing too thrilling. You'll probably just be severely disappointed when you read it and complain. Sorry about it. But, as I say in this chapter, it's often more fun, surprising, and educational to find things out for yourself than to just have someone tell you what it is you want to know. Right…?

A/N 3 : And, also, as that no one seemed all that interested in my one-shot I will be taking it down in the next few days. But, that might be a good idea, as that it hints at things that happen later in the story and I want it to be something of a surprise, if I decided to carry through with it, at least.

A/N 4 : As a last note, please understand, I don't fully understand Chinese culture or language so if there is anything that I've done wrong here, or in later chapters, please let me know so I may correct the problem. I like to try and be as accurate as possible, so help me in doing this if I'm incorrect with some aspect of the story. Thanks…

Well, on with the chapter…and PLEASE read and review. ^_^

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Chapter #12 – The Truths of Magic

Now, for the third time in less than five years, Tom and Lena packed swiftly to leave. Lena was surprised that he had decided what they were doing next without telling her sooner, but she really did not complain as she had been sure that they would be leaving Greece. But going to China?! She had not expected that…

And this time it was going to be a much longer and more difficult journey since flying to China would to take a very long time. They had no idea how Pei Shen had done it alone when he had first come to Greece. By the way Tom figured it, it would take more than fifty hours of flight to reach their destination (which would mean about a four-day trip with rests and all). He did not know if he would be able to manage such a long journey on a broom.

Another thing that was a problem was that Tom was the only one of them that knew any Chinese, and he was not very good at the tonal system they used. Pei Shen had assured Tom, though, that many of his friends actually spoke quite good English and was sure that the two of them would learn Chinese well enough. Lena was not too sure, though, for she already knew half a dozen languages fluently and really did not want to have to worry about learning another one, even if there were spells that helped you in the process. She had just had enough of them already.

When Shen returned the next afternoon from finishing his own packing at the Synetus' home, he looked at their brooms with a smile. "Oh, we aren't flying."

Tom raised his eyebrow, confused. "How else are…"

"You've never done burenhouchen before," the Chinese wizard asked, though he was sure the knew the answer already.

Both Tom and Lena were puzzled and asked together: "Burenhouchen?"

"Oh, um…" Pei sometimes had trouble remembering that others did not know what he meant when he used his native tongue and looked rather embarrassed. "You might know it as 'tagging' or 'trailing' or something of that sort. You mark someone as a target with a certain spell, they Apparate ahead of you, and then you follow them to their location."

"I've heard of it. It's called Sequatium." Lena looked apprehensive. "Though I've heard it's very difficult."

"It's not that hard. If you're good at Apparating, you should quickly get the hang of it." Shen smiled reassuringly. "We can give it a try and see what you think of it before we start Apparating to China."

And so Shen had them Apparate out to a quite spot on the beach they all knew of not far from town. He gave them instructions on how to follow the tagging spell. They tried it and found that it was, indeed, difficult. Tom, however, quickly got used to it. Lena lagged behind a little, mainly because she doubted the accuracy of using this method over great distances, and she reminded Tom of how little he had practiced Apparating at all in recent years. While Lena was used to going five hundred miles regularly, the farthest Tom had ever gone was about half that when he had gone to Little Hangleton to murder his father a decade before (and he had not traveled that far since then). Fortunately, Shen assured them that he would not go too far so that they could easily follow him.

It had taken them much of the afternoon to get used to tagging. When Shen was confident that they would not have any trouble following him, he said that they should go get their things then come to him where he would be waiting, as a final test for them. Tom and Lena Disapparated back to the Eklekti's home and said a quick good-bye and good luck to Calida. She smiled and wished them well. After that, they gathered their trunks and "tagged" the Chinese wizard to wherever he was waiting for them now, which happened to be at the Synetus' house. He was very pleased with their accuracy. As soon as he got affirmation from them that they were ready, he nodded to them and disappeared. Now it was up to them to keep up with him as he Apparated across nearly the entire expanse of Asia (and that was about a five thousand mile journey).

They were to land near sixteen different cities along the way to Shen's home, which was in a small wizarding village outside the Muggle city of Fengchieh on the Yangtze River. As they started across the Muslim nations, it suddenly occurred to Tom how much traveling Pei Shen had to have done in his life, even though he was still so young. Shen had to know where he was going before he popped there because if you did not know the lay of the land of which you were traveling to, you could end up getting stuck in a wall (which, in Tom's opinion, was worse then splinching oneself). Tom was rather envious of Shen's travels, knowing the Chinese wizard had seen more of the world than he had.

Because they were headed east, it had gotten dark much quicker. By the time they were finally within the Chinese border, it was nearly one in the morning local time. When they arrived at Shen's home, they were exhausted from how much magic they had used. Shen showed them to the room they would use while they stayed with him. They gratefully collapsed into the bed he offered and immediately went to sleep. Voldemort did not even caring that his head had begun to throb from all the work he had done that day.

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In the morning Tom really felt the headache that he had gone to sleep with. He was glad he had brought a few ready-made potions made up that would relieve the pain. Once his head was feeling normal again, he went out with Lena to gape at the beauty of the landscape. Tom even wanted to pull out his broom and take a flight around the gorge to see the full beauty of it all. Shen told them, though, that anything beautiful Muggles would eventually destroy, no matter the importance of the Three Gorges area to the culture of the nation.

That day Shen started teaching them Chinese. Lena was not all that interested until she was told that if she wanted to go shopping, she had to learn the language of the land for most Chinese wizards only knew their own language. After that she put her full effort forward…but shopping was the only reason for that. Once she figured she knew enough, she went shopping too, and came back saying she had succeeded at not insulting or confusing anyone, which their new host smiled at, seeming to have accomplished his goal with her. After that, Lena began to spend much of her time at the Chang Cheng Yin Yu (the shopping area located near part of the Great Wall).

Tom was ecstatic when, on her third trip to the Yin Yu Lena returned with a Chinese tome entitled Pao P'u Tzu, which Shen explained was an ancient text (about fifteen hundred years old) that explained means to become immortal and which was based in Taoist thought. It took Tom a while to learn to read all the Chinese characters, but he could eventually understand it and found the means presented there of yoga, proper eating and breathing, and the ingesting of certain minerals and metals to be quite different than the European approach with just sought out magical means with potions and such. But he told himself to overlook nothing and so did indeed start incorporating some of the steps therein with his other plans. Shen gladly taught his guest what he knew of meditation and yoga.

The meals in China were quite an experience for them, though Tom quickly got tired of rice. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner…everyday. Granted, what went with the rice offered quite a variety of taste and texture, which sort of made you forget that you were eating rice with each of the meals. In fact, Tom became rather fond of Sichuan chicken.

Tom had many things to write to his friends about now, but he still wrote no more than once a month to each of his friends. One good long letter was fine, in his opinion, yet Lena still wrote almost weekly to her father. The amount of information she had to be telling him was getting on his nerves for some reason. He began to have the slightest twinge of doubt about her loyalties to him again after he had felt assured of them with her saving him and caring for him while he was unconscious. It seemed to him that she was telling her father everything to help his spying. He ended up questioning her about this but, even with his ability at Legilimency, he found no lies in her calm responses when he questioned her about the letters. This put him somewhat at ease.

And, when it came to the real reason that Tom had packed up and come to China so quickly and willingly, Shen did not disappoint his new guest. Once the young Dark wizard had gotten the hang of the Chinese language, Pei began teaching him some spells. But in doing this, he also had to teach Tom about the flow of Chi (the most important thing in all magic, Shen said). And Shen's explanation of it really interested Voldemort.

"Chi," his host had explained, "is present in all life. It is divided into yin and yang - light and dark; good and evil; male and female - the polarities of existence. The more Chi one has in them, the healthier they are. With wizards, Chi determine your magical abilities also. The more you have, the more powerful you are. It is important to know Chi, for it is the essence of magic, the source of your power."

Tom also returned the favor Shen was doing for him by teaching the Chinese wizard spells from the Hermetic system of magic that Shen had not yet learned. It was then that they both realized the very thing that they had been looking for…and it had been right in front of them the entire time. Once they discovered what it was, Tom wondered why Melantha did not just tell him this simple little thing (though it had been more fun to figure it out himself).

Each spell Tom and Shen had ever learned had an effect or color that went with it: stunning spells were typically red, binding spells always seemed to use some form of rope to hold the victim, all transfigurations were accompanied by a ripple in the air and around the object, and so on. Well, this was apparently true for all paths of magic. The effects and colors were always the same, though with some minor variations. But that was not the end of their discoveries.

The similarities also encompassed potion making. The magic that Tom had learned, Hermetic magic, encompassed pretty much all of Europe, most of the Arabic nations, and the New World so even when he was studying what he saw as "different" magic under Melantha there was little difference with what they were doing since it was all from the same overall system. As that Chinese magic had developed half a world away from Hermetic magic, though, these differences were clear to him. Certain potions that could be considered counterparts often had the same brewing instructions, the same smell, or the same color. Even some of the ingredients smelled or looked similar or could be interchanged with ones in either system.

This was what Melantha had truly meant by the "truths of magic." It had very little to do with the spells you used, it was all in the intent. Magic was magic, they later decided between themselves. It is neither good nor evil, neither constructive nor destructive in its intent. It was neutral. It was just magic. The wizard is the one that put the intent behind it, that "colored" it. The incantations and herbs were just tools to help focus the magic with the right emotion, just like the wands were. If you got good enough with directing your magic, you did not need to say the words and could even stop needing ones wand for certain spells.

It did not take them long to start looking into spells and potions from other lands. They also started trying their magic without their wands, which took a lot of practice to get even the simplest of spells right. They actually decided to stop trying to perform too difficult of spells without their wands, though. They had found that it was just too dangerous to not use their wands. They really did not need to change the rice bins into tigers again when they were attempting repelling charms (and who knew what might happen with more complex spells).

But, still, they found that what they had found was indeed the way that it was…it was the truth of magic. Voldemort wrote to Melantha and she congratulated him in her reply, telling him that she hoped he would continue to travel and see what else he might discover. Tom had no intention of returning to Europe anytime soon, but when he did, he planned to go to Albania to see her and thank her personally. And she had also said that she wanted to see what sort of great Dark wizard he had become when he did return.

After a few months in China and shortly after they had made their rather startling discovery, Pei Shen first mentioned the group of Dark wizards that he was associated with in his home country, the Gaoji Zongpai Anwutianri – the Elite Order of Darkness(*). Tom was not all that interested at first after his experiences with the Nychta Paidia, but then Shen explained some of the things his group did…and when he mentioned Muggle hunting Tom became very interested.

Shen gladly invited him to their next meeting…

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(*) Note - Gaoji Zongpai Anwutianri literally translates into "high-ranking sect of absolute darkness" (according to the dictionary I used) but what I was going for is what appears as my translation (and sounds better to me, too). As that I'm not familiar with the Chinese language, the words may not be organized properly or may be lacking elements. If anyone out there knows how to correct this, if it is wrong, let me know. Also, in the rest of the story, I will be referring to this group as just "the Gaoji" for simplification. Though this basically means my calling it "the high ranking", it sounded better to me (and has more of a ring to it) than "the Zongpai" ("the sect").

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To my reviewers -

lord archimond - nope, not dead, just taking a break, as all authors need from time to time. Sorry the chapter was dull. I tried to make it interesting - having Tom really begin his search for immortality there. Hope I did a better job with this one.

Liv - his studying instead of helping with the plans for the breakout was mainly a feeling of "I'm not staying, there's no need for me to get involved with that". I think, though, that when he becomes "the Dark Lord" later in the story, he'd be the one making the plans then telling everyone to do what he says. ^_~ And he really didn't drag Lena off with him, he just told her at the last minute. He could have left her behind, but he didn't. She's still got her role to play in the story, whether you like her very much or not…:-P

Mayhem El-Diablo - hmm, I didn't notice that Lena hadn't been acting "submissive" in previous chapters…*shrugs* She'll learn her place more in later chapters - though not in a very good manner.

(insert name here) - eh, yeah, I am feeling better, though I still haven't been very productive. I actually wrote a full chapter for this story in a day last week and love it (though I wonder how my beta reader'll like it…^_^;;). And Tom, here, has patience because he doesn't really have anything he has to do at the moment. Though he is patient anyway. I mean, look at how long he waited to get his hands on the prophecy in book five… He knows where he wants to go, yes - power and immortality - and he has to know pretty much how he's going to start getting there at least then find other things along the way to help him out. His stubborn refusal to die? *shrugs* Nothing too shocking there, really, just that (for now) he wants to make sure he can implement his "dreams" on the wizarding and Muggle worlds. Later on, when he finally gets into power, he'll see immortality as a means by which he will be unstoppable because no one can defeat (read as "kill") him - until little Harry comes along, at least (but even then he's not really defeated). And how is Lena in for the shock of her life? *blinks* I didn't get what you meant there. She does know him really well, but there's not all that much she doesn't know about him so there's really nothing too shocking for her to find out…I don't think so, at least. *ponders this for a while longer*