Chương 18: Lìchūn: Expansion 7

Liu Yinhua spends the next three days trying to open the route through her left leg without ruining it, and t his proves far more difficult than the lesson had made it sound. Elder Yun had spoken very plainly. The instructions had seemed almost simple while sitting in the hall with an elder's gaze over the room and the route lit briefly through her body by someone else's qi.

Alone, in the small room beside her bedding, with a candle burning low and her borrowed jade slips wrapped beside her knee, the matter becomes far less clear cut. Too little qi and she cannot find the route at all. The warmth leaves her dantian, reaches the hip, and fades into the flesh around it until she is only sitting there with one hand over her abdomen and one leg slowly going numb beneath her.

Too much qi and the pressure near the hip turns sharp, her knee aching in answer before she can call the thread back. Neither result is useful. Both leave her tired. She cultivates anyway. In the mornings, she runs until Elder Huan dismisses them or until her legs tremble, whichever comes first. In class, she listens to Elder Yun and measures every word against the road she is trying to wear through herself. In the afternoons, she takes minor tasks when she can find ones that are not already claimed.

At night, she sits with the Dance of Falling Blossoms open before her and traces the route again. Her dantian grows fuller, then emptier, then fuller again. It no longer feels fragile, but it is not endless. That becomes clear very quickly. Two red stones remain in the little cloth pouch at the bottom of her chest. She checks them too often. One sits duller than the other from a previous night's cultivation, its warmth thinned but not gone. The other remains bright enough that holding it makes her palm prickle.

She should use them. She should save them. She should be clever enough to do both, which is useless because cleverness does not create qi from empty air. The others are still moving ahead. Chi Yanluo trains as if time itself is on his heels, even as Shen Yuanzhou laughs too easily, then strikes hard enough to send dust leaping beneath his feet. Duan Xueheng looks as though progress is something he has agreed to permit, if only internally.

Xie Lianqiu appears beside Liu Yinhua after lessons with increasing frequency, smiling, talking, inviting herself into the edges of Liu Yinhua's day until refusing her would require more effort than accepting her. Friends is not a word Liu Yinhua has decided to use, purely because she's not quite sure whether it will be a two way designation.

By the third afternoon, her left leg aches from hip to knee, her dantian is warm but less full than she would like, and Wu Cailan is standing in the doorway with two rough canvas bundles at her feet and a scowl that has clearly been waiting for company.

"I found a job," Wu Cailan says. Liu Yinhua looks up from tying her sleeve.

"You sound unhappy about it."

"It involves carrying things."

"That does seem like work."

"It also involves someone else carrying things." Liu Yinhua glances at the bundles again. They are tied with cord and marked with the square seal of the talisman practice yard.

"You need help?"

"I can do it myself."

"That was not my question." Wu Cailan looks away first, which is answer enough. The task turns out to be simple, at least in writing. A talisman instructor has sent a request for old practice tiles, cracked ink stones, failed paper lots, and several sealed jars of ash to be carried from a storage shed near the lower workshops to a disposal pit beyond the western practice grounds. The pay is poor. The bundles are awkward.

The route is longer than it looks on the map, with one hill that seems to have been designed by someone who hated disciples personally. Liu Yinhua takes one of the bundles without asking about reward. Wu Cailan gives her a look.

"I said I could do it."

"Yes," Liu Yinhua says, settling the strap against her shoulder.

"And now you do not have to."

"It's my task."

"I am aware."

"You don't get points for helping."

"I am aware of that too." Wu Cailan keeps looking at her for another moment, then makes a frustrated sound and hoists the second bundle with more force than necessary.

"Fine. But if you drop anything, I'm telling them it was you."

"That seems fair." The afternoon is cool and bright, with clouds dragging thin shadows across the lower paths. The western side of the outer sect feels less polished than the instruction halls and residences. The stone underfoot is rougher. The buildings are lower, made for storage and work rather than display, with roofs darkened by smoke from the furnace yards farther up the slope.

Disciples pass them carrying wood, clay jars, bundles of reed paper, chipped practice weapons, sacks of grain, and once, a cage covered in talisman cloth that rattles softly as it goes by. Liu Yinhua keeps her eyes on it until it turns a corner. Wu Cailan sees.

"Rat spirits."

"Do I want to ask?"

"They eat talisman glue if they get into a workroom. Someone has to catch them."

"Is that a task?"

"Yes."

"Do not take that task."

"I wasn't going to."

"You sounded as if you were considering it."

"I like points. I don't like bites." The bundle digs into Liu Yinhua's shoulder as the path rises. It is not heavy enough to shame her, which is a relief, but it is heavy enough to make the ache in her left hip return with interest. She adjusts her grip, draws a careful thread of qi down the traced route, and stops before it reaches the knee. Warmth settles in the upper thigh and steadies the step. It is not the Dance. It is barely anything. Still, the climb becomes a little less miserable.

Wu Cailan glances at her leg.

"You're doing that meridian thing?"

"Trying."

"Does it work?"

"Sometimes."

"That means no."

"It means sometimes." Wu Cailan grunts and looks ahead. Her hair has been tied back with a strip of undyed cloth, and there is a new nick along one knuckle where she has probably cut herself on talisman wood or a carving tool. Liu Yinhua had seen her hunched over a talisman board the night before, swearing under her breath in a way that made Tang Mingxia leave the room with her tea.

"Where did you learn talismans?" Liu Yinhua asks. Wu Cailan's expression shifts at once, guarded mostly by habit.

"Before here."

"That is broad."

"So is 'entertainment district'." Liu Yinhua looks at the path ahead. Wu Cailan makes a small sound.

"Sorry." The apology surprises her enough that Liu Yinhua turns. Wu Cailan is still staring forward, jaw tight, the bundle on her back sitting badly because she has not stopped to adjust it.

"I was not offended," Liu Yinhua says after a moment.

"You were something." Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"Yes," Liu Yinhua says.

"But not offended." They walk several more paces in the scrape of shoes and the dull shift of packed materials inside the bundles.

"My village was far north-west of here," Wu Cailan says at last.

"Past the Blueglass Isles entirely. Not one of the big places. Hills, bad roads, cold winters. The sort of place where people remember a cultivator passing through for twenty years because nothing else happens." Liu Yinhua lets the silence remain open.

"A lone cultivator came through when I was small. Old woman. Not sect. Not clan, not that she ever told us. She took work clearing something from the old shrine road. Stayed the winter because the pass closed. I followed her around until she got tired of stepping over me."

"That sounds like you." Wu Cailan snorts.

"She said that too." Liu Yinhua shifts the bundle higher.

"She taught you?"

"Some breathing, basic characters, how not to cut my own fingers off carving lines. She said I had enough talent to die from it if no one trained me. When she left, she gave my father a letter and told him to send me if he had sense."

"And did he?"

"No, my mother did." Wu Cailan's mouth twists.

"Father thought one more pair of hands was more useful than a girl trying to become something she wasn't. Mother waited until he went to the next town and sold two winter blankets to pay the first part of the journey." Liu Yinhua says nothing for a little while as the path underneath them levels out near a stand of wind-bent pines. Beyond them, the western practice grounds open in terraces of packed earth and stone, dotted with target posts, ash pits, training frames.

"Is your mother still there?" Liu Yinhua asks.

"Yes."

"Do you write?" Wu Cailan grimaces.

"I am bad at letters."

"That is not what I asked," she says, not quite reproachfully. She thinks she would send her mother a letter if she had but a chance.

"I wrote one when I arrived. Tang Mingxia fixed the characters."

"Was she unbearable about it?"

"Yes." Liu Yinhua's mouth moves despite herself. Wu Cailan sees it and relaxes by a fraction.

"What about you?" The question comes too plainly to dodge without making the dodge visible. Liu Yinhua adjusts the cord around her shoulder and pretends for a moment that the knot requires attention. She had known this would come eventually. Wu Cailan is blunt, but she is not stupid, and the house is too small for three girls to live inside it without questions collecting in the corners.

"I grew up in Suzhou," Liu Yinhua says.

"In the entertainment district." Wu Cailan looks at her, then away.

"Music?"

"Yes." That is true enough.

"Music, poetry, conversation, people who spent too much money to be pleased with themselves. I was taught to be useful there."

"That sounds awful."

"It had food," Liu Yinhua says, and it is easier to make it light.

"Warm rooms. People have survived worse."

"That doesn't make it good."

"No." The bundle shifts again as Liu Yinhua tightens her grip.

"My awakening was unpleasant," she continues, because stopping there would leave Wu Cailan with too much space to imagine and too little truth to guide it.

"There was a fire, and I caused damage. A sect cultivator took custody before the city could decide what to do with me." Wu Cailan is quiet. Liu Yinhua waits for the next question. Which house? What kind of entertainment? Who owned the rooms? Who touched the money? What happened during the fire? How many people were hurt? She has answers prepared for some of them and silences prepared for the rest. Wu Cailan only says, "That why you hate wasting stones?" Liu Yinhua turns her head, and Wu Cailan scowls at the road.

"What? You look at them like they're going to run away!" After a moment, Liu Yinhua exhales through her nose.

"Yes," she says.

"Partly."

"Fair." They reach the disposal pits shortly after that as a not-quite awkward silence reigns, a low-walled area cut into dark stone where old talisman materials are sorted for burning, burial, or purification. A bored older disciple checks their task slip, points them toward a marked pit, and tells them not to break the sealed jars unless they feel like explaining ash contamination to someone with the authority to assign night cleaning.

It takes them only a half hour to complete the task, and Wu Cailan is quick to move on to the next task, leaving Liu Yinhua to head to a training yard. By evening, the route through Liu Yinhua's left leg has become difficult to ignore, a low pressure beneath the hip that follows her through dinner and washing and the small ordinary movements of the house.

It is there while Tang Mingxia comments on the ash dust at the edge of Liu Yinhua's sleeve, and there while Wu Cailan returns near dusk with a task chit tucked into her sash and no explanation of where she has been. Liu Yinhua answers when spoken to. She eats what is put before her. She keeps the shape of herself composed, but the pressure remains, stubborn and present, not quite pain and not quite promise. She waits until the house settles before she tries again.

Tang Mingxia retires first, her door sliding shut with its usual careful restraint, and Wu Cailan stays by the hearth for longer, scratching something onto a piece of scrap wood with her talisman knife until she swears under her breath and throws it into the kindling pile. When the other girl finally goes to bed, she does so with the heavy tread of someone making a personal attack on sleep.

Liu Yinhua remains seated for another fifty breaths after that, listening to the quiet of the house and the faint creak of timber as the night cools. Only then does she rise. Her room is dim and cold around the edges. The candle has burned low, leaving a shallow pool of wax at its base, and her bronze mirror catches the flame as a thin, blurred streak across its old surface. She sets Dance of Falling Blossoms before her knees and places one red stone beside it, choosing the duller of the two.

It has already given up some of its heat on a previous night, but there is still enough warmth in it to prickle against her palm when she closes her fingers around it. Perhaps enough, if she is careful. Perhaps not enough, if the body decides to be greedy. For a while, she does nothing but breathe. The first days of cultivation had taught her to chase warmth, to draw it in and feel relief when the dantian answered. The last few days have taught her that warmth is the easiest part to misunderstand.

Warmth spreads if allowed. It sinks into muscle and makes the body feel full and alive, which is pleasant and mostly useless. A meridian is narrower than that. Meaner, almost. It asks for the same road again and again, and it punishes every moment of eagerness by vanishing into ordinary flesh. She finds the dantian first. The hearth beneath her navel waits for her attention, steadier than it had been that morning, though not as full as she wants it.

Liu Yinhua draws a thin thread from it and guides it down toward the left hip. The path is familiar now, for all that familiarity has not made it easy. Qi enters the lower abdomen, slips toward the hip, and meets the first pressure. It gathers there, wanting to pool because pooling is easier than passing through a sealed place. She lets it rest there for one breath, then two, and pulls it back before the ache can sharpen.

She draws less this time, almost too little, a strand of heat fine enough that losing it would be easy. It reaches the same place and presses, as the red stone between her palms answers faintly, offering what remains of itself, and Liu Yinhua accepts only a little, enough to thicken the thread without letting it become a shove. The pressure beneath the hip tightens in response. Her knee warms too soon. She withdraws, jaw clenched, and waits for her qi to return to her dantian The third attempt reaches lower.

A finger's width, perhaps, though measuring anything inside the body feels foolish once she tries to think of it that way. The route below the first gate has become easier to sense over the last few days, running from the hip into the upper thigh and turning inward before it descends toward the knee. It feels unpleasantly deep, as if someone has drawn a cord through the centre of the limb and pulled it taut. This is the part that makes her understand why people force it.

The body begins suggesting that more qi would solve everything. More heat, more pressure, more will. The gate feels close enough that restraint becomes insulting, like standing before a latch with both hands free while smoke crawls under the door. She thinks of Elder Yun's warning, of rubble and expense. She does not force it. The first attempt after that ends with the warmth spilling too wide into her thigh. The next reaches the same place and refuses to move.

On the one after, pain pricks behind her knee sharply enough that her eyes open to the sight of the candle flame trembling in the corner. Liu Yinhua sits with both hands folded over the red stone and breathes until the prickling fades. Sweat has gathered at the back of her neck. Her left foot is cold, strangely, as if all the heat has crowded upward and abandoned the sole. She should stop. She knows it clearly enough to resent it.

The red stone is dimmer now, and the route beneath her hip remains present, pressing at her awareness like a bruise. She thinks of Chi Yanluo moving with wind already familiar to him, of Duan Xueheng's hand landing against her shoulder again and again, of Shen Yuanzhou laughing and striking hard enough to send dust up from the ground. She thinks of Xie Lianqiu appearing beside her after lessons with smiles and questions and no apology for being interested.

Friends is still not a word Liu Yinhua has chosen, but the space around it has begun to take shape, and she cannot keep up with any of them by remaining careful forever. Liu Yinhua closes her eyes again. This time, she begins lower, gathering the warmth in the dantian until it feels denser, drawn inward rather than spread thin. The red stone gives up the last of itself against her palms. She feels the surface begin to crumble beneath the cloth wrap, but she does not look.

The thread she draws out is still small, but it does not waver as much now. It travels to the hip, reaches the gate, and presses. The knot tightens. Her thigh aches. The knee warns her, distant and hot, and she keeps her attention fixed on the gate rather than following the pain. There is no sudden opening at first. Only resistance, then a change inside the resistance, so slight that she nearly loses the thread trying to understand it.

The qi sinks forward through the blockage by the smallest measure, grain by grain, and the route beneath it answers. Liu Yinhua breathes in too sharply as something almost painful runs down her thigh, but the thread has not spilled. She holds it, hands trembling around the spent stone, and lets the pressure continue. The gate gives a little more. Heat slides along the hidden road toward the knee, narrow and bright, no longer spreading into every piece of flesh around it.

It catches above the bend of the knee and throbs there, waiting. The gate beneath her hip yields. Qi rushes down the newly opened passage with a force far greater than the thread she had sent. Her left leg goes hot from hip to knee, then ankle, then sole, the route flaring through her all at once as if it had only been waiting for permission. Her foot presses into the mat. Her toes curl.

For one suspended breath, she feels the floor through the sole of her foot with startling precision: reed fibres, packed boards beneath, the faint uneven rise where one plank sits higher than the next. Then the heat turns back. The return is uglier. It comes up carrying ache, fatigue, and something bitter from the sealed places of the body, and Liu Yinhua guides it into the dantian with shaking care. The candle gutters. The mirror throws a warped flash of bronze light across the wall, larger than the flame itself.

She breathes through it until the returning qi settles and the dantian accepts what she has brought back. When Liu Yinhua opens her eyes, the red stone has collapsed into grey powder in her hands. Her left leg aches from hip to sole, deep enough that standing will be unpleasant, but beneath the ache is a road. Narrow, raw, and newly made. She draws the smallest thread of warmth from the dantian and sends it down, something delightful in the response of her leg, warmth and power coiling in that leg.

She can feel the air, feel the world around her so keenly against her skin and her foot shudders like the ground during the earthquake when she was five. Liu Yinhua sits in the dim room with stone dust on her palms, breathing slowly until the shaking passes. Then she lowers the ruined stone cloth beside the jade slip, wipes her hands with care, and begins the first step of Dance of Falling Blossoms again in her mind.