Chương 19: Lìchūn: Expansion 8

The first shard passes close enough to cut a loose strand of Liu Yinhua's hair. She sees it too late to move properly, only enough to jerk her head aside and feel the cold line of it skim past her cheek before it breaks apart against the packed earth behind her. Water spatters across the dust in a fine spray. Xie Lianqiu makes a pleased little sound from the other side of the training yard and lifts two fingers again, pretty as a girl selecting sweets from a tray.

"Better," she calls.

"You saw that one."

"I would prefer to see them before they are against my face," she puffs out, scrubbing at her cheeks.

"That is the point of practice." Liu Yinhua does not answer, because the next three shards form in the air beside Xie Lianqiu's sleeve. They are small, no longer than a finger, sharpened at both ends and clear enough that the sunlight almost swallows them. If she had not known to look for the slight bend in the air around them, she would miss them entirely. Xie Lianqiu flicks her wrist, and the water darts forward with a hiss. Liu Yinhua moves.

Dance of Falling Blossoms is easier in the quiet of her room, where the only enemy is memory and the only projectile is the thought of one. Her leg meridian answers there with a thin, raw heat, enough to carry her weight through the first half-turn and return the qi before the route begins to ache. Here, with Xie Lianqiu smiling at her over a fan of sharpened water, the art becomes less polite. The first step takes her left.

The newly opened route pulls warm through the hip, thigh, knee, and sole, a narrow road still sore from its making. She guides qi down it and lets the movement bend with the pressure rather than against it. The first shard passes where her ribs had been. The second catches the outer fold of her sleeve and tears a short line through the cloth. The third forces her low, one palm nearly touching the ground as she turns under it.

Dust rises beneath her fingers, and her heart is beating much too fast, a drum in her ears.

"Do not fold so deeply," Xie Lianqiu says.

"You will never rise in time if I send the next set low."

"You sound very confident about sending the next set low."

"I am trying to help."

"Are you?"" Mostly." Liu Yinhua looks up in time to see Xie Lianqiu's smile sharpen. She throws herself sideways before the next shard forms properly. It is ugly, closer to a stumble than a step, but the water snaps past her knee instead of through the skin above it. Heat flares along the meridian from her hasty attempt, raw and bright, and she has to pull the qi back at once before the ache becomes pain.

"Too much," Chi Yanluo says from the side. He has been quiet for most of the practice, standing near the training post with his arms folded inside his sleeves, his pale hair lifting faintly whenever the wind stirs. Liu Yinhua had almost forgotten he was there. Liu Yinhua straightens, breathing through her nose.

"I noticed."

"Then notice sooner." Xie Lianqiu lowers her hand long enough to laugh.

"He has such a warm teaching manner, doesn't he?" She says, a sweet almost sing-song.

"It is efficient," Chi Yanluo says.

"It is rude."

"It is also correct," Duan Xueheng says from the shade beside him, without looking up from where he is cleaning the edge of his practice blade with a cloth. Xie Lianqiu presses her free hand to her chest.

"Betrayal from every side, beset on from all quarters!" Liu Yinhua wipes sweat from her temple with her wrist and tries not to lean too much weight onto her right leg, as she listens them bicker. Her left still feels strange after the opening, stronger in one way and more delicate in another, as if someone has added a string to an instrument and left it not quite tuned. The Dance is supposed to use wind qi. That is what the first layer says, or as near as Liu Yinhua can interpret it.

It does not require a wind affinity, thankfully, but the art borrows the idea of wind rather than the nature of it. Yield before force, slipping around pressure, and take the space the attack has left empty. A falling blossom does not outrun the storm. It turns inside it. Xie Lianqiu raises her hand again.

"Ready?"

"No," she says, brushing back dark hair from her temples.

"Uh, stop being pretty," Xie Lianqiu complains as her qi flares and the next volley comes faster. Five shards this time, spread wide enough that stepping once will not be enough. Liu Yinhua sees the first two, guesses the third, and loses the fourth entirely until it flashes near her shoulder. She moves on instinct, left foot drawing qi from the dantian, heat running along the leg route as she turns. The first step clears one shard.

The second should carry her between the next two, but she misjudges the gap and feels water slice through the air beside her throat, cold enough to raise the hair along her arms. The fifth shard is lower, as promised. Liu Yinhua drops her weight, not folding this time but sinking through the hip, letting the left foot pivot while the right slides back. For one narrow moment, the movement works. Qi moves through the opened route and returns before it spills.

Her body bends around the attack, sleeve flaring, hair slipping over her shoulder as the water passes through the space where her thigh had been. She comes up still standing, if focused now on pulling hair out of her mouth with a grimace. Xie Lianqiu's eyes brighten.

"Oh, that was lovely." Liu Yinhua does not have enough breath to answer. Chi Yanluo says, "Again."

"Let her breathe," Xie Lianqiu says.

"She can breathe while moving."

"I can also bleed while moving," Liu Yinhua says, one hand pressed briefly against her side.

"I would like to avoid that, if you please." Xie Lianqiu laughs, openly delighted, but she does lower her hand for a few breaths. Liu Yinhua uses them. The dantian is still warm, though she can feel it draining the more she uses it. The opened leg route feels alive, too alive, pulsing from hip to sole with every heartbeat. She draws the qi back inward and lets it sit until the ache dulls.

Across the yard, Shen Yuanzhou crouches on a low wall with his chin in his hand, having been told not to offer advice unless he can keep it to fewer than ten words. He has failed twice already.

"You're watching the water," he says. Duan Xueheng looks up.

"That was four words."

"I am improving." Chi Yanluo glances toward Shen Yuanzhou.

"Explain." Shen Yuanzhou brightens at once.

"She's watching the shards after they come. She should watch Xie Lianqiu's fingers." Liu Yinhua looks at Xie Lianqiu's hand. The girl smiles and wiggles her fingers at her, sweetly unhelpful. There is something there, though. Xie Lianqiu is not doing it carelessly. Nothing about her is careless once one looks past the smile.

"Again," Liu Yinhua says. This time, when Xie Lianqiu moves, Liu Yinhua watches the hand. The water forms from dampness drawn out of the air and from the shallow bowl Xie Lianqiu has set near her feet. It gathers quickly, beading bright along her fingertips before hardening into pointed shards. Liu Yinhua sees the flick of the wrist and steps before the projectiles leave. Xie Lianqiu adjusts with a small turn of her hand. The volley shifts, and Liu Yinhua has to cut her step short or take one in the stomach.

The opened meridian pulls hot through her leg. She bends the movement into a pivot, not graceful, not as the jade slip shows it, but near enough that two shards pass on either side of her robe. One strikes the ground by her foot and bursts cold water across her ankle. The next clips her upper arm. It is only water, but it has been sharpened and driven by qi. The impact stings through fabric and skin with enough force to make her teeth come together.

She turns with it instead of against it, lets the blow carry the edge of her sleeve back, and steps into the narrow space left between the last two shards. For three breaths, she is not ahead of the attack, but she is not behind it either. She moves where there is room and not where panic wants to send her. The Dance is no more than a thread beneath the skin, a new road still rough underfoot, but it holds. One step, a low turn, weight shifting through the left foot, warmth returning before it spills.

The final shard passes behind her back, close enough to wet the loosened hair at her nape. Liu Yinhua stops because Xie Lianqiu has stopped. The training yard is quiet for a moment. Then Shen Yuanzhou says, "That one was good." Chi Yanluo's gaze drops to Liu Yinhua's feet, then lifts.

"Do you know what changed?" Liu Yinhua takes a breath, then another. Sweat has run down her neck and under the collar of her robe. Her arm stings where the shard struck. Her left leg feels warm from hip to sole, but the heat is contained now, trembling inside the route rather than spilling everywhere.

"I stopped concentrating on the attack," she says slowly.

"I moved into the part of it that was already empty." Xie Lianqiu claps once, delighted.

"Listen to her, she sounds like a manual."

"I apologise," she says, almost a drawl. No Moon-Viewing girl would ever drawl, but she thinks she will be forgiven for it.

"No, no. It suits you. Very solemn. Very wise. Slightly damp," the other girl teases, gesturing to her. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Liu Yinhua looks down. The side of her robe is wet with burst water and streaked with dust. Her sleeve is torn at the edge, her hair has slipped loose again, and there is a cold line drying along her ankle, another at her neck. A blade would've been fatal if she had been hit. Chi Yanluo nods once.

"Rest, then one more round." Xie Lianqiu's smile returns, all sweetness over hunger.

"I will be gentle." Liu Yinhua gives her a flat look, flexing her left foot against the packed earth. The new meridian answers in a thin line of warmth, sore and eager at once. She has no illusions that one good exchange means she can do this properly. Her arm throbs. Her breathing is uneven. She has spent too much qi for all too little progress.

Still, when Xie Lianqiu lifts her hand again and water gathers bright along her fingers, Liu Yinhua watches the wrist, lowers her weight, and lets the first step of the Dance settle beneath her skin. Xie Lianqiu makes the invitation after the last round, while Liu Yinhua is still damp with water-shard spray and dust is sticking to the wet hem of her robe.

"You should come with me tomorrow," she says, as if continuing a conversation already settled in her head. She is seated on the low wall at the edge of the training yard, one leg folded beneath her, her bow laid across her lap like an ornament rather than a weapon.

"There is a task near the lower pine slopes. Very…dull." Liu Yinhua looks at her over the mouth of the water flask.

"Suitable for dull people?"

"For people who should learn to shoot something before something learns to bite them."

"That is a very broad category."

"It includes most of the outer sect." Xie Lianqiu smiles at her, bright and sweet, with the faintest edge of satisfaction under it.

"You have opened your leg route, and you are learning how to step away. Now we just need to make you combat viable." Chi Yanluo, who has been speaking quietly with Duan Xueheng, turns his head a fraction. It is not a refusal. It is not approval either. Xie Lianqiu notices, because she notices everything, and only widens her smile by a little. Liu Yinhua feels something odd sink in her chest, at the thought of approval, of needing it and her fingers flex around the flask for a moment.

"The task is low risk," she says before Liu Yinhua can ask.

"Horned dust-hares near the lower slope. They chew through herb beds and carry a little earth qi in the horns if they live long enough. The medical hall wants two intact, and the kitchen will take the rest."

"That does not sound like hunting," Shen Yuanzhou says from where he is sitting with his elbows on his knees, his grin betraying his amusement.

"That sounds like pest removal."

"Hunting is pest removal with better clothing," Xie Lianqiu says with a haughty sniff, though Liu Yinhua can see the small glimmer of humour in her eyes. Duan Xueheng says, "You should not take her far from the marked paths."

"I am wounded by the implication that I would."

"You should also not use her as moving cover." Xie Lianqiu presses one hand to her chest." Deeply wounded." Liu Yinhua lowers the flask.

"Would I be useful?"

"Eventually," Xie Lianqiu says cheerfully.

"Tomorrow, probably not. But you will learn, and I enjoy teaching when the student looks so pretty while failing."

"That is not reassuring." It is not, entirely. Liu Yinhua can feel that much, though she cannot yet find the lie. Xie Lianqiu's interest is genuine. So is the friendliness. So is whatever calculation sits beneath both, neat and patient as a folded letter. That almost makes it easier. A person who wants something can be understood.

She cannot quite place what Chi Yanluo wants of her, and she can already feel the threads of her choices, to join this training despite her better judgement, spreading out into the greater tapestry of this sect. She would feel better, she thinks, if Chi Yanluo was ruled by desire or want or greed, that at least would be understandable. Liu Yinhua thinks of two red stones, one now dust, and a dantian that empties too easily.

She thinks of Chi Yanluo's circle, of Guo Meilin's smile, of Jiang Wenhao's warm eyes in the archive, and of the strange fact that invitations have begun to gather around her like threads.

"I will come," she says. Xie Lianqiu looks pleased.

"Good. Wear something you can ruin." The next morning is pale and cool, with fog caught in the lower pines and dew darkening the grass along the path. Liu Yinhua wears one of her plainer robes and ties her hair back more tightly than usual, though several strands escape before they even pass the last residence. Xie Lianqiu arrives with two bows, a quiver over one shoulder, and a basket charm hanging from her belt.

She looks too pretty for the task, her dark hair coiled with a green ribbon and her sleeves bound back in a way that still somehow looks decorative.

"You brought two bows," Liu Yinhua says, eyeing her dubiously.

"I did."

"I have never used one."

"That is why I brought the uglier one for you." Liu Yinhua takes the offered bow and studies it. It is not ugly, in her eyes. It is plain, dark wood, smooth from use, with a grip wrapped in faded leather.

"This is the uglier one?"

"Yes."

"I hesitate to imagine the insult you would make of me if you disliked me." Xie Lianqiu laughs and begins walking.

"I rarely insult people I dislike. It gives too much away, you silly girl." The lower pine slopes are not far from the novice district, but the path down changes the sect around them. The halls and training grounds fall away behind ridges of red stone and damp moss. Storage sheds give way to talisman posts, then to waist-high marker stones etched with the Vermilion Glass Sect's seal. Beyond them, the trees grow closer together, their trunks dark with moisture and their needles whispering overhead in the wind.

Xie Lianqiu walks easily, light-footed despite the basket charm and bow. Liu Yinhua follows with more care. The newly opened route in her left leg still feels raw, but it answers when she draws on it, warmth travelling from hip to sole in a narrow line. It is comforting, in a strange way, to have something so wholly hers that nobody can take it from her.

"Do the horned dust-hares bite?" Liu Yinhua asks, curious as she follows the other down through the woods. She had never been allowed to stray outside the city, or even far past the market district, and she is trying not to be entirely distracted by the vegetation around her and the calls of birds.

"Only if cornered."

"I am beginning to regret trusting your definition of low risk."

"They mostly run." Xie Lianqiu steps over a slick root and glances back.

"Which is why you are here. I shoot. You flush them out. If one runs toward you, step aside. If it runs away from you, do not chase it into a burrow. If something larger than a hare comes out, step behind me."

"That last instruction seems important enough to come earlier," she points out.

"It would only worry you."

"I am capable of worrying in advance."

"Yes," Xie Lianqiu says, smiling over her shoulder.

"I had noticed." The first half-hour is mostly mud, bent grass, and Xie Lianqiu explaining tracks. Dust-hares leave shallow crescent marks where their horns scrape the soil near roots. They favour patches of spirit-warmed clay after rain and chew the pale shoots of qi-rich herbs before the outer gardeners can harvest them. Their horns can be ground for minor earth-stabilising powders if taken intact but their meat is stringy, according to Xie Lianqiu, though Shen Yuanzhou insists it improves with enough chilli.

"You all seem to know each other's eating opinions well," Liu Yinhua says, curious.

"We have travelled together."

"Before the sect?"

"Some before, some after." Xie Lianqiu crouches by a disturbed patch of moss and touches the mud with two fingers.

"Chi Yanluo does not care what he eats if it serves the purpose of food, which is a terrible flaw in an otherwise tolerable person. Duan Xueheng pretends not to care, but objects to overcooked rice. Shen Yuanzhou thinks anything can be improved by shouting at it and adding spice."

"And you?"

"I have excellent taste."

"That was not an answer." Liu Yinhua watches her fingers trace a mark in the earth. Xie Lianqiu's prettiness is less soft here. The pines and fog take away the polished frame of the training yard, and what remains is still graceful, but sharper. Her eyes miss little, her hands are quick and precise. When she rises, she does so without wasted movement, looking back at her.

"So, I heard you grew up around music?" Liu Yinhua's grip tightens on the bow, a little bemused with the sudden subject change.

"I did."

"What instrument?"

"Several, poorly. Voice more often than not, but I have some skill with erhu, guqin and guzheng." That is not entirely true, but it should at least distract Xie Lianqiu from the main meat of the question.

"Ah, you must've been well raised," she notes.

"Those are quite noble instruments for instruction, the noble families always ensure their daughters have such skills." She thinks of men, watching her hands and her shoulders, of slowly being debuted into a hungrier and hungrier world.

"I suppose so," she agrees, happy to let the assumption lie for her.

"So I assume I cannot tempt you to sing for us later?" Xie Lianqiu asks, amused as she eyes the path ahead of them. Liu Yinhua studies her for a moment, a little amused despite herself.

"Maybe," she says, lips curving in a smile.

"Though I may charge-" Ahead, something rustles beneath a low pine. Xie Lianqiu lifts one hand at once, and the conversation ends. She gestures Liu Yinhua to the left. Liu Yinhua obeys, stepping through damp grass with her robe lifted just enough to keep the hem from snagging. The bow is awkward in her hand. Xie Lianqiu nocks an arrow without looking down. The dust-hare bursts from the brush in a grey-brown streak.

It is larger than Liu Yinhua expected, nearly the size of a small dog, with long ears, a blunt little face, and two short horns ridged with packed earth. It bolts toward her, eyes wide and stupid with panic. Liu Yinhua steps, and the Dance does not appear beautifully. Her left foot catches slightly on wet grass, and the leg route flares too hot when she draws qi. Still, her body moves aside at the right moment, turning through the narrow space between the hare's charge and a jutting root.

The creature shoots past her ankle, just before Xie Lianqiu's arrow takes it behind the shoulder. The hare falls, kicks twice, and goes still.

"Good," Xie Lianqiu says.

"I did very little."

"You did not get knocked over by a rabbit."

"Hare."

"See? You are learning already." Liu Yinhua gives her a flat look, which only makes Xie Lianqiu smile wider. The other girl retrieves the hare, murmurs something brief over it that might be respect or habit, then binds its legs with cord and hangs it from the basket charm. The charm swallows the weight with a faint pulse of green light. After the second hare, Xie Lianqiu makes Liu Yinhua try the bow. The first arrow goes nowhere near the target.

It strikes a pine trunk two arm-lengths left of the clump of moss Xie Lianqiu had indicated, then drops uselessly into the needles. Liu Yinhua lowers the bow.

"This weapon dislikes me."

"It does not know you well enough yet." Xie Lianqiu steps beside her and nudges her elbow with two fingers.

"Your shoulder is too high. Your grip is too tight. You are trying to make the arrow obey by looking severe."

"Does that work on arrows?"

"Less often than on people." Liu Yinhua adjusts. Xie Lianqiu's touch is light and careful, never lingering long enough to force a reaction. She corrects the angle of Liu Yinhua's wrist, the set of her feet, the way the left leg should take weight without locking. When Liu Yinhua draws the string again, the movement pulls unpleasantly through her shoulder and ribs, and the bruises from sparring yesterday.

"Breathe out before release," Xie Lianqiu says.

"Do not hold all your fear."

"I am not afraid of moss." Xie Lianqiu does not look at her face. She keeps her eyes on the bow, expression pleasant and untroubled.

"Better to spend the fear in the breath. Otherwise it spends itself wherever it likes." For a moment, Liu Yinhua considers stepping away. Then she exhales and releases. The arrow strikes the ground in front of the moss, but at least it strikes in front of the correct moss. Xie Lianqiu claps once.

"Much better."

"That was terrible."

"Yes, but a little less terrible." They continue like that for some time. Hunt, walk, shoot badly, correct. Xie Lianqiu asks questions in between in the same tone she uses to discuss tracks and arrowheads. How long had Liu Yinhua been in Suzhou. Who taught her to read. Whether she misses it. Whether she had family there. Whether the sect cultivator who brought her was attractive, which made Liu Yinhua purse her lips and Xie Lianqiu to burst into laughter.

By the time they turn back toward the sect, Liu Yinhua's left leg is aching, her fingers are sore from the bowstring, and her sleeves smell faintly of pine sap and damp earth. The basket charm holds the weight of four dust-hares. Xie Lianqiu walks beside her with the easy satisfaction of a task completed and only a little blood on the hem of her robe.

"You did well," Xie Lianqiu says.

"I frightened small animals into running away, and insulted your bow."

"It is a beginning."

"Of archery?"

"Of being useful at range." Liu Yinhua glances at her.

"Is that what you want me to be?" Xie Lianqiu's smile softens.

"I want many things." She tilts her head, looking at Liu Yinhua through the mist between the pines.

"For now, I want you to survive long enough to become interesting." Liu Yinhua looks back toward the path ahead, where the sect roofs rise in muted layers above the trees.

"That sounds like a risky investment."

"It is." She should dislike the answer. Perhaps she does. Still, Xie Lianqiu had not hidden it behind kindness, and Liu Yinhua has always preferred a price named aloud.

"Then I hope I do not disappoint you," she says. Xie Lianqiu laughs softly.

"Oh, Liu Yinhua. I doubt you will be dull enough for that."