Chương 27: Lìchūn: Tempering 6

The last week of the first month begins with Elder Huan dismissing fourteen disciples from the physical cultivation class. He does it with less ceremony than Elder Yun, which somehow makes it worse. The class has barely finished lining up across the packed dirt of the lower training field when he walks down the row, one hand clasped around the opposite wrist behind his back, his expression as bored as it always is. He stops in front of each disciple long enough to look them over, then points toward the path.

"You. You. You. Out." The first boy stares at him.

"Elder?"

"You heard me."

"But I have attended every lesson."

"And wasted every one of them," Elder Huan says.

"Leave." The boy's face reddens. Two girls near the far side lower their eyes when Elder Huan reaches them, already pale with expectation, and they step away before he speaks. A broad-shouldered boy with fine boots and a gold clasp at his belt tries to argue that his constitution develops slowly under standard methods. Elder Huan lets him speak for three sentences, then tells him to go develop it elsewhere. Liu Yinhua stands very still and keeps her gaze forward. She is less surprised than she wants to be.

The last few weeks have made differences harder to ignore. Some disciples have begun to move better, breathe better, hold themselves beneath strain without crumpling under it. Others still treat the warmups as an insult, the drills as an inconvenience, and their own bodies as things that ought to obey because their families have power. Elder Huan has never looked impressed by any of them. He has looked, mostly, like a man waiting for spoiled food to be taken off a table.

When the dismissed disciples are gone, the field feels larger, and Elder Huan turns back to those remaining.

"You are here because your bodies are still worth correcting." No one answers.

"You have spent weeks learning how poorly you stand, breathe, fall, strike, and recover. Some of you have listened. Some of you have mistaken pain for progress and sweat for work." His gaze moves across them, flat and unsentimental.

"Today we will see if you can run." A few disciples shift. Elder Huan smiles, and then sends them up the lower mountain path in pairs at first, not racing, though several boys seem unable to understand the difference. The path curls behind the training ground, climbing through red-leaved trees and pale stone, with roots crossing the dirt in places where a careless foot will catch. Older disciples move along the upper paths without looking at them.

A few sit on rocks above, eating breakfast from wrapped cloth and watching with the bored interest of people who have already survived this humiliation. Liu Yinhua starts too quickly and knows it within the first hundred steps. Her left leg answers with warmth when she draws qi through the opened route, and for a little while, that warmth makes her feel lighter than she is. The mistake costs her by the second bend.

Her breath roughens, her ribs tighten, and the path keeps climbing as if the mountain has taken a personal dislike to ease. Beside her, Tang Mingxia runs with grim control, robes tied back and hair pinned so precisely that Liu Yinhua briefly hates her.

"Slow down," Tang Mingxia says without looking at her. She huffs out a breath, and doesn't waste breathe on it. The trick, she finds, is not to flood qi into her leg until it feels strong. That only burns through what she has. She keeps the thread narrow, guiding warmth from her dantian down the opened route and back again with each few steps, enough to steady the leg without letting it run ahead of the rest of her body.

Dance of Falling Blossoms tries to interfere when the path narrows between two rocks, her foot wanting to slide around the pressure instead of drive forward. She almost trips and catches herself with one hand against a tree trunk. Tang Mingxia glances over.

"That was nearly good." Liu Yinhua breathes through her nose.

"I will treasure the praise." By the time they return to the field, Liu Yinhua's hair is damp at her temples and her calves feel hollowed out. Elder Huan makes them walk once around the training ground before they are allowed to stop, then orders half the class to run again because they finished with enough breath to complain. Liu Yinhua does not complain. This appears to count against her, because he sends her again too. —0— The next few days narrow around running.

Elder Huan has them climb, descend, sprint between marked stones, carry sand-weighted baskets across the yard, and hold low stances until thighs shake and sweat runs down their backs. He does not ask about dignity. He does not care whose robes cost more or whose hands blister first. Liu Yinhua learns to tie her sleeves tighter, to breathe before the hill steals her breath, and to draw qi through her opened leg route without emptying her dantian in the first burst of effort. Her body changes in small ways.

She recovers faster. Her steps land with less waste. When tiredness gathers, she can flush some of it out for a little while, though it always returns later with interest. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The token stays in her sleeve through all of it. At first, it is only warm when she holds it. Then, by the third day, she feels it while walking past the upper fork near the archive paths.

By the fourth, it pulls so sharply when she leaves Elder Yun's class that she stops in the middle of the path and has to pretend she has found something in her sandal. The pull points upward, past the outer training grounds and toward the forested side of the mountain where novice disciples do not usually wander. She does not go alone. Xie Lianqiu finds the matter delightful, which is not the same as treating it carelessly.

She arrives the next afternoon with her bow over one shoulder, a small knife at her belt, and her hair braided back with a now pale green ribbon. She listens to Liu Yinhua's explanation without interrupting, then holds out her hand for the token. Liu Yinhua hesitates before giving it to her. Xie Lianqiu's smile softens.

"I only want to feel the direction," she reassures.

"I know."

"You say that as if knowing has ever stopped you worrying."

"It has not."

"No," Xie Lianqiu says, closing her fingers around the token.

"I had noticed." The token does little in Xie Lianqiu's palm. She turns it once, then gives it back without complaint.

"It wants you, then. How flattering."

"It is wood."

"Wood can have opinions, even bad ones." Xie Lianqiu's smile brightens.

"I am told this often enough by bowyers to respect the possibility," she says.

"My father's bow is a magnificent thing, you know, and he had to find the tree himself before the bowyer would make it."

"How does that work?" she asks, curious despite herself.

"Finding a tree that… matches?"

"It's all about resonance, apparently," Xie Lianqiu says, thoughtful.

"With my own bow, it was not so labour intensive. I was just directed to direct qi into samples of wood, and see which one had a reaction that was favourable."

"I suppose the process of finding a tree yourself would be like that, except more involved?"

"Quite." They take the upper path after the afternoon lesson, walking as if they have every reason to be there and no reason to hurry. That is Xie Lianqiu's suggestion, to avoid attention. The forest above the novice grounds is older than the cultivated red trees near the halls. Pines grow between pale trunks she does not recognise, and roots knot through the earth in thick ridges. The air is cooler here, threaded with the damp smell of moss and old leaves. Somewhere above them, water moves over stone.

The token pulls harder with every turn, sometimes fading when they take one path and sharpening when Liu Yinhua angles toward another. Xie Lianqiu lets her lead. That, more than anything, makes Liu Yinhua feel the weight of it. It is uniquely They pass two warning markers carved into stone posts. The first forbids unsupervised entry beyond the western ridge for disciples below Foundation. The second directs novice disciples away from beast nesting grounds during the fifth and ninth months.

Xie Lianqiu reads both, hums, and points to the narrower path between them.

"That one is not forbidden."

"That feels like a poor standard," Liu Yinhua says, a little dry.

"It is the standard many sects use."" Comforting."

"Deeply," Xie Lianqiu says, and steps around a root. The pull becomes heat by the time they find the gate. It sits half-hidden between two sloping stones, so overgrown with moss and trailing vine that Liu Yinhua would have walked past if the token had not burned against her palm. Not pain, but insistence. A small stone arch rises from the earth, no taller than a man and sealed by a grey surface that looks like mist caught behind glass.

Formation marks run along the arch in rings, some old enough to have blurred at the edges, others recut more recently. Above the centre is the same fire character carved into her token. Liu Yinhua stops several steps away. Xie Lianqiu stops with her. For once, she does not smile.

"That," she says after a moment, "is interesting." Liu Yinhua looks at the sealed arch, at the moss gathered around its base, at the faint movement behind the grey surface. Something waits beyond it. The token warms steadily in her hand, asking to be brought closer. She does not move.

"Are we going in?" Xie Lianqiu asks, voice quieter now.

"No." Xie Lianqiu glances at her.

"Good, maybe better to come back prepared." The relief in Xie Lianqiu's voice is light, but real. Liu Yinhua hears it and feels better about her own caution. They spend the next little while circling the gate without touching it. Xie Lianqiu checks the ground for tracks and recent disturbances. Liu Yinhua copies what formation marks she can into a small notebook, though most of them are beyond her. The token grows warmer near the arch and cooler when she steps away.

When she holds it toward the fire character, the grey surface ripples once. Both girls step back, but nothing follows. Liu Yinhua closes the notebook with careful fingers.

"I think this is what Elder Yun gave me."

"I would be surprised if it was not."

"I also think she expected me to find it." Xie Lianqiu looks at the arch, then at the forest around them.

"Then she expected you to decide what to do after." That sits in Liu Yinhua's stomach more heavily than the token sits in her palm, before she tucks it away, and takes one last look at the sealed gate before turning away.

"I suppose I'll need to research," she muses. Xie Lianqiu falls into step beside her as they start back down the path.

"Tang Mingxia will be delighted."

"She will not."

"No," Xie Lianqiu says, sounding pleased, and Liu Yinhua avoids the faint glimmer of competition in the girl's voice as she packs up their things, and takes the path back.