Chương 11: Lìchūn: Expansion 1

By the third morning, Liu Yinhua has stopped expecting the bells to wait for her to wake before they begin. They sound through the novice district while the sky is still grey, deep enough to settle in the bones. She washes her face in cold water, braids her hair until it pulls at her scalp, eats the porridge left warming by the hearth, and follows the stream of outer disciples up the stone paths. The eastern terrace belongs to Elder Huan, and e veryone learns this quickly.

The first day, Liu Yinhua's sleeves slip over her wrists halfway through the warm-up. The second, her braid loosens before the first set of stances ends. The third, her sleeves are tied and her hair holds, so Elder Huan finds her shoulder instead.

"Lower," he says. Liu Yinhua lowers.

"Again." She does it again.

"Your shoulder." She fixes it. Elder Huan steps in and taps two fingers against the offending joint. Her arm shifts. Her back changes. The stance becomes uglier and more painful at once. Wu Cailan makes a sound somewhere to Liu Yinhua's left. It is brief enough that Elder Huan does not turn. Liu Yinhua keeps her eyes forward. Her face is hot enough already without straying towards too many fit bodies. At the Moon-Viewing Tower, pain had nicer names. A girl's feet hurt because her dance is improving.

Her wrists ache because sleeve work requires dedication. Her back burns because elegance does not come from sloppiness. Madame Xue possesses many ways to explain discomfort, most of them delivered while someone else suffers it. Elder Huan says, "Hold." So L iu Yinhua holds, and b y the time he moves down the row, her thighs are shaking badly enough that she is grateful for the long fall of her robe. Elder Yun's hall is quiet in comparison but no less strenuous.

There are screens, scrolls, polished floors, and rows of young disciples sitting with their hands settled before their lower abdomens. Some of them look peaceful. Some have merely arranged their faces well. Liu Yinhua knows the difference when she has time to look, though apparently Elder Yun knows it faster. On the second day, Elder Yun pauses beside her.

"Stop arranging your face," she says. Liu Yinhua opens her eyes, but E lder Yun has already moved on. For the rest of the lesson, Liu Yinhua sits with her hands folded before her lower abdomen and breathes as instructed. In for four. Hold for two. Out for six. Empty for two. The words are simple. The doing is not. Her mind keeps slipping back to the shape of Elder Yun's voice, to the ache in her legs, to whether Wu Cailan has remembered to put water over the coals before leaving the house.

The house, at least, begins to make itself known. By the fourth day, Liu Yinhua knows which cupboard sticks, how much rice to set aside if Wu Cailan has trained late, and where Tang Mingxia keeps the cloth she insists is for cleaning the table rather than wiping soot from the kettle. One floorboard near the kitchen complains beneath careless feet. The hearth takes badly to damp kindling. The water jar empties faster than seems reasonable.

Tang Mingxia takes her tea too strong and lets it cool until it is nearly unpleasant before drinking it. She folds drying cloths twice, then once more, and rearranges the bowls whenever Wu Cailan stacks them badly. She attends spiritual cultivation most mornings, physical cultivation only when shame or ambition drags her there, and returns from Elder Huan's terrace with her dark green hair still immaculate and her mouth set in a thin line.

Wu Cailan eats quickly, dislikes sweet bean paste, and keeps a small knife under her pillow despite the sect rules. She rises early enough that Liu Yinhua sometimes hears the front door shut before the second bell. She attends physical cultivation without complaint and spiritual cultivation with the wary expression of someone waiting for the lesson to reveal its trick. She leaves her shoes crooked by the entrance every night. Every morning, Tang Mingxia corrects them without comment.

Every evening, Wu Cailan puts them back worse. No one mentions it. By the fifth day, Liu Yinhua knows Tang Mingxia hums under her breath while reading and stops the moment anyone looks over. She knows Wu Cailan takes the burnt rice from the bottom of the pot if no one else reaches for it first. She knows neither of them likes asking for help.

After one afternoon on Elder Huan's terrace leaves Liu Yinhua lowering herself onto a cushion with more care than she would like observed, Wu Cailan looks over from the doorway.

"Stretch your calves before sleep." Liu Yinhua settles her sleeves over her knees.

"I thank you for the concern."

"That was instruction." Tang Mingxia turns a page in her book.

"It will help." Wu Cailan braces one foot against the doorframe and leans forward.

"Like this. Hold it. Don't bounce." Liu Yinhua watches for a moment.

"You are very generous with your suffering," she remarks.

"I'm generous with other people making less noise in the morning." Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Tang Mingxia's mouth curves slightly before she lowers her eyes back to her book. Liu Yinhua tries the stretch later, after washing. It hurts in an awful, unpleasant way, but afterwards her legs feel a little less as though Elder Huan has taken personal offence to them. In the morning, the stairs are still unwelcome, but they are possible.

It is not friendship. Liu Yinhua is not so careless with names. Still, the house no longer feels like three strangers guarding separate corners of the same room. It has not become safe. She has learned where to put her bowl. On the sixth morning, Elder Yun looks up as Liu Yinhua enters the hall. Liu Yinhua stops. The hall is already half full. Morning light lies pale across the floorboards. A few disciples glance toward her and then away again. Elder Yun gives a slight nod towards the right side of the room.

For one breath, Liu Yinhua does not understand. Then she does. The left side is for those still searching. The right is for those whose dantian has answered. On the first day, it looked much the same as a division by birth, since so many clan children and privately tutored disciples sat there already with their straight backs and quiet certainty. It seems the two things are not identical after all. Liu Yinhua bows. She crosses the room with her face calm and her skin aware of every glance.

Some disciples return to their own practice. Some look at her sleeves, her hair, her face, and then lower their eyes a little too late. She lets them look. Looking costs them nothing. Reacting would cost her more. Chi Yanluo sits near the middle. Shen Yuanzhou is beside him, sitting with enough careless ease that Liu Yinhua suspects it takes practice. A'Ying is absent.

Liu Yinhua notices this because Shen Yuanzhou looks faintly wrong without the bird spirit near his shoulder, and because the last explanation she overhears involves a paper screen, a senior disciple's hair ornament, and Shen Yuanzhou insisting the matter has been misunderstood. Chi Yanluo looks up first.

"Liu Yinhua," he says.

"Congratulations." She lowers herself beside them with care. Elder Huan's instruction has improved her legs. It has not improved her opinion of him.

"Elder Yun nodded at me. I am not certain whether that counts as congratulations or a warning."

"From Elder Yun?" Shen Yuanzhou says, his grin wide and his teeth very white.

"Both." Liu Yinhua looks at him.

"How reassuring, Shen Yuanzhou." His ears colour before he looks away. Liu Yinhua smooths one sleeve over her knee and keeps her expression mild. Young guards and junior soldiers in Suzhou have often been like this, bold in groups and less so when addressed too directly. Shen Yuanzhou is less foolish than many of them, and kinder in small ways than she had first expected, but his face still betrays him in stages before he very deliberately begins to take an interest in anything and everything but her.

Chi Yanluo notices and hides his laughter in coughs. Liu Yinhua files that away with the rest of him. Elder Yun begins the lesson before Shen Yuanzhou can gather himself. Her instruction on the right side of the hall is different from the lessons Liu Yinhua has attended so far. There is less explanation. When a disciple errs, Elder Yun corrects the error and moves on. The newly awakened are told to draw from their red stones in small amounts. Those with better control are instructed to cycle without waste.

Liu Yinhua listens closely enough to take what she can from both. She unwraps one of her red stones and sets it before her. The stone is warm beneath her fingers. The first time she holds one, she thinks it is beautiful. She still does, though repetition has made its beauty less comforting. Each draw is small. Each thread of qi must be guided carefully. Too much, and heat gathers in her fingers, then her wrist, then tightens in her chest, dissipating into the faint natural qi around them.

Too little, and the thread thins before it reaches her dantian. Elder Yun walks the rows in silence. Now and then, she stops beside someone and speaks too softly for Liu Yinhua to make out the words. The corrected disciple always sits very still afterward. Liu Yinhua breathes in. The thread comes more readily than it did two days ago. It slips from the red stone through her fingertips, bright and fine, warm without yet becoming painful.

She guides it down with the breath, following the path Elder Yun has made them practise until the words sit somewhere beneath thought. Do not pull as if taking. Do not chase what scatters. Do not mistake heat for progress. The thread reaches her dantian. Warmth answers beneath her navel, low and inward. Liu Yinhua holds herself still until the urge to clutch at the sensation passes. Greed wastes qi.

Elder Yun has said this several times, usually while looking at someone who then pretended the warning was for the room at large. The warmth settles. Liu Yinhua lets out the breath. Nothing in the room changes. No one looks over. The world remains polished floor, quiet breathing, Elder Yun's slow steps, Shen Yuanzhou shifting once beside her and then going still again. Even so, the heat inside her feels less fragile than before. No longer only a spark that might vanish if she breathes wrong.

It has gathered low in her body, slight but present. The comparison that comes to mind is a little teapot set over coals. Liu Yinhua dislikes this thought. It is too ordinary, too round, too much like something from a kitchen. It is also accurate. The heat sits contained and heavy, bright inside, threatening discomfort if mishandled. She opens her eyes halfway and looks down at the stone. The red within it has dulled by a fraction. A very small fraction. Her stomach tightens.

Five red stones seemed generous when the sect steward placed them into her hand. Five seemed like wealth, like proof that the Vermilion Glass Sect could give a new disciple more cultivation resources in one morning than Madame Xue might spend keeping a lesser girl alive for a year. Now Liu Yinhua looks at the stone beneath her fingers and feels the hunger of her dantian answer the warmth still left inside it. Five stones are nothing. A month's supply, Elder Yun said. Liu Yinhua keeps her breathing even.

She's going to go through all of those stones in less than a week at this rate, Beside her, Chi Yanluo's cycling remains quiet and controlled. Shen Yuanzhou's is rougher, more forceful, but steady enough that she can feel the edge of it when her own focus loosens. Around them, the disciples who came prepared draw qi with the ease of those who have known the value of a red stone since childhood. Perhaps they still resent the limits. Perhaps they count their supplies as carefully as anyone else.

They do not look at the stone as if the answer to the next month is trapped inside it. Liu Yinhua lowers her gaze. She will need more. The thought comes without panic. It sits calmly in her mind and begins arranging itself beside everything else she does not yet have: strength, instruction, patronage, manuals, medicines, allies, time. She has been given food, shelter, robes, and a place to begin. The sect has handed her the opening move. It has not handed her a way to win.

She rests her fingers more lightly on the stone. There are things that can be earned. Things that can be traded for. Things that can be borrowed with a smile and returned before they are missed. Things that are called gifts until the debt ripens behind them. Liu Yinhua knows enough about gifts to be wary. Elder Yun's sleeve passes at the edge of her vision and pauses. For a moment, Liu Yinhua thinks she has been caught thinking too loudly. Then the elder moves on.

Liu Yinhua breathes in again and draws another thread.