Chương 47: Lìchūn: Connection 11

The world is bright. The chamber has not changed. The stone is still pale and veined. The water still runs along the back wall. Tang Mingxia still kneels a little way before her, one hand half lifted as if she had nearly reached out and stopped herself. But everything is bright. Air touches every part of Liu Yinhua's skin separately. Her hair rests against the back of her neck in individual damp strands.

She can feel the pulse in her fingers, the ache in each bruise, the warmth under her sternum, the long green strength threaded through tendon and muscle and bone. So alive it is almost unbearable. She lifts her hands. They are only hands. Pale palms. Long fingers. A healing scrape near the base of one thumb. Dirt still beneath one nail despite washing. Nothing about them has changed enough for anyone else to gasp. Liu Yinhua stares at them anyway. The skin seems too thin for what sits beneath it.

Too ordinary to hold such a clean and springing strength. She curls her fingers slowly, and the motion travels through her wrist, forearm, elbow, shoulder, spine. Connected. Her breath catches, not from pain this time. Wood Middle. Only Wood Middle. If the middle of the first physical realm feels like this, what is peak? What is Stone? What is a body that has passed through Iron, Steel, Gold, and come out the other side still able to call itself flesh? For a moment, she understands why cultivators become arrogant.

Then she breathes in properly, and something turns in her stomach. A foulness climbs up the back of her throat so suddenly that Liu Yinhua jerks forward, one hand slapping against the stone to catch herself. Tang Mingxia moves at once, quick enough that Liu Yinhua barely sees it. A towel appears beneath her mouth just as she retches. A thick, dark spill leaves her mouth, bitter and sour, threaded with something grey-black that clings to the towel like old tea leaves and soot. It smells wrong.

Bitter medicine gone stale. Burnt oil. The sour-metal scent of a wound washed badly and hidden under perfume. Liu Yinhua gags again, more from the smell than the amount, and another rush of the foul thing bursts forward. Tang Mingxia gathers her hair back from her face without comment. That nearly undoes her more than the retching. The third heave brings up almost nothing, only a dark string of saliva and heat. Her eyes water.

Her newly bright body, having been a miracle for perhaps three breaths, decides to remind her that it is also still a body and therefore terrible. At last the spasm passes. Liu Yinhua remains bent over one hand, breathing through her mouth. The chamber is still too clear. The stone beneath her palm is warm. The towel beneath her face is ruined. The smell clings.

"What," she says hoarsely, "was that?"

"Impurities," Tang Mingxia says. Liu Yinhua turns her head enough to look at her. Tang Mingxia's expression is composed, though there is a narrowness around her eyes that suggests she has not enjoyed the smell either.

"Only a small amount." Liu Yinhua looks at the towel. Then at Tang Mingxia.

"Small," she repeats.

"For a Wood Middle breakthrough, yes."

"That was small." She would like to be dignified. She has just touched a new stage of physical cultivation. Her flesh has become stronger. Her qi has settled deeper into muscle and tendon and bone. The world is bright and perfect around the edges. There should be dignity available somewhere. Instead, she says, "That is horrible." Tang Mingxia's mouth twitches.

"It is less horrible outside the body."

"I disagree."

"That is because you are still near it." Tang Mingxia folds the towel carefully in on itself, sealing away the worst of the smell.

"You are fortunate. Some breakthroughs expel more. Some do not expel cleanly at all, and the impurities remain to be worn away later through diet, exercise, medicine, and misery."

"That was clean?"

"Relatively." Liu Yinhua breathes in through her mouth again, regrets even that, and sits back slowly. Tang Mingxia gives her water, and Liu Yinhua rinses her mouth once, spits neatly into the corner Tang Mingxia indicates, then drinks in careful, small sips. The water tastes impossibly clean. It moves down her throat and into her stomach like rain vanishing into cracked earth. Then her stomach makes a terrible sound. Liu Yinhua lowers the cup.

"I am hungry," she says, because it seems important to be honest.

"Yes," Tang Mingxia says. Her voice is very dry.

"I heard." The first bun is gone too quickly. Tang Mingxia tells her to slow down. Liu Yinhua does, mostly because choking immediately after a breakthrough would be humiliating, and because Tang Mingxia has the look of someone prepared to take the food away if necessary. They remain in the chamber while Liu Yinhua eats.

Buns first, then rice cakes, then dried fruit, then a small packet of salted nuts Liu Yinhua does not remember packing and suspects Tang Mingxia of adding because Tang Mingxia is increasingly difficult to dislike. She drinks water in careful mouthfuls. Her body receives everything with frightening enthusiasm. The food seems to vanish into the new brightness beneath her skin. The hunger is not elegant. It is not even entirely in her stomach.

It sits in the muscles of her thighs, in the line of her spine, in the stretched and newly threaded places that have just accepted qi and now want to know what else she intends to build them from. The buns taste better than they should. The salted nuts are nearly unbearable. She eats one, pauses, eats three more, then pretends she had meant to do that. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Tang Mingxia watches her with an expression Liu Yinhua cannot read at first. Not quite pride, and not quite concern. A little of both, perhaps, wrapped in the irritation inherent to Tang Mingxia. The thought is oddly warm. Liu Yinhua licks salt from the side of her thumb and catches Tang Mingxia looking at her too closely.

"What?" she asks.

"You are sitting more evenly." Liu Yinhua looks down at herself. Her weight has settled differently. Her spine is not stiff with the effort of holding herself correctly. Her shoulders do not curl inward in quite the same habitual way. The ache at her hip is still there, but it no longer drags that side of her body down with it.

"I feel strange," she says.

"That is expected."

"I feel…" She stops, annoyed by the difficulty of putting the sensation into words.

"Too much in my body." Tang Mingxia nods.

"That will settle."

"Will it?" Tang Mingxia looks at her, and Liu Yinhua eats another rice cake. The dry sweetness sticks to her teeth. For a while, there is only the sound of water moving along the back wall and Liu Yinhua being forced to chew more slowly than she would like. The chamber has cooled a little, though the stone beneath them remains warm. The folded towel with the impurities has been set aside, far enough away that Liu Yinhua can pretend it does not exist if she does not breathe too deeply in that direction.

Only after her hands stop shaking does Tang Mingxia finally give the advice she had meant to give the day before. The spiritual threshold will need seclusion. Not secrecy, she explains, though for Liu Yinhua secrecy may be part of keeping the place undisturbed. Seclusion is not only closing a door. It is preparation.

Rested body, settled mind, enough food and water before and after, clean clothes, a safe qi source, no martial training waiting on the other side, and someone trustworthy close enough to notice if something goes wrong but not close enough to interfere with the qi. A proper family would arrange a chamber, attendants outside, a senior relative or tutor nearby, medicines prepared, and perhaps a protective formation if the child were valuable enough to justify the expense.

A sect expects disciples to learn a cheaper version of the same lesson: choose the time, choose the place, prepare the body, prepare the qi, and do not approach a threshold as if enthusiasm is a substitute for foundation. Liu Yinhua eats a dried plum and listens. Tang Mingxia's voice is calm now, returned to itself after the shock of the chamber and the long day of watching Liu Yinhua try to thread qi through her own bones. She explains that the next spiritual step will be less forgiving than Wood Middle.

A physical breakthrough can leave soreness, uneven strengthening, even injury if mishandled. A spiritual mistake can settle into the dantian or routes and make every later step more difficult.

"Rushing is not useful," Tang Mingxia says.

"It is waste." Liu Yinhua swallows, and her hand tightens around the remaining half of the plum.

"I feel slow," she says. Tang Mingxia looks at her. The words should not have come out. Liu Yinhua had meant to keep eating, to nod as if she were perfectly sensible, to tuck each instruction away and consider it later when she did not smell faintly of sweat, sour impurities, and breakthrough heat. Instead, she says, "Everyone here seems so far ahead. Tang Mingxia, you do not even need to eat every day if you do not wish to. Xie Lianqiu can shoot three perfect arrows before I have placed one properly.

Chi Yanluo hits my guard once and I lose feeling in my arm. Even Shen Yuanzhou, who looks as if he is smiling too much to be paying attention, is miles above me!" Tang Mingxia says nothing. That is dangerous, for it lets Liu Yinhua continue.

"I am still catching up to things children here learned years ago. I did not know what a meridian was. I did not know how to hold a bow. I did not know how to fall properly. I am only just reaching Wood Middle. My spiritual cultivation is still barely—" She stops and looks down at her hands. Only just reaching Wood Middle. The words sound foolish now that she has said them, but the feeling remains. That is the worst of it. Feelings are rarely polite enough to vanish when shown evidence.

Tang Mingxia lets the silence sit for one breath more. Then she says, very simply, "Some people take years to reach Wood Middle." Liu Yinhua blinks. Tang Mingxia continues, "Some never pass Early Wood. Some injure themselves reaching for Middle and spend longer repairing the error than they would have spent advancing properly. Some begin as children with medicine, tutors, family arts, steady food, and safe chambers, and still do not progress quickly." Liu Yinhua looks at her.

Tang Mingxia's expression is matter-of-fact.

"You have been here weeks," Tang Mingxia says.

"Not years, weeks. You entered Wood Body with poor instruction, poor reserves, and a damaged foundation in more than one sense, and you are now sitting in a hidden sun qi chamber after completing Wood Middle. You are also approaching the first true spiritual threshold of your realm quickly enough that I am spending my afternoon telling you not to ruin it by being impatient." Liu Yinhua looks down at the plum.

"Oh," she says.

"Yes," Tang Mingxia says.

"Oh." The word is crisp enough to be almost rude. Liu Yinhua feels her face heat, which is absurd after everything else her body has done today.

"I still feel slow," she says, quieter.

"I believe you." That makes Liu Yinhua look up again, to where Tang Mingxia's hands are folded in her lap.

"You are behind in knowledge," Tang Mingxia says.

"You are not wrong about that. But being behind in those things is not the same as being slow." Tang Mingxia reaches for the packet of salted nuts and pushes it closer.

"Eat." Liu Yinhua obeys. Tang Mingxia also explains that the spiritual threshold is not only a matter of having enough qi. That is the first mistake of impatient disciples. Enough qi is only material. Breakthrough requires direction. The qi must know where it is being refined toward.

"What if I do not know?" she asks.

"Then you do not break through yet." Liu Yinhua closes her fingers over the nuts.

"And if the trial comes before I know?"

"Then you enter the trial at your current spiritual stage, with better preparation and a stronger body."

"You make that sound simple."

"It is simple." Liu Yinhua considers throwing one salted nut at her. She does not, because it would waste food and because Tang Mingxia would probably catch it. For a while, neither of them speaks, and the chamber is cooling by degrees, though the stone beneath them remains warm. She has been fleeing so many things. Madam Xue. Debt. Hunger. Weakness. Hands. Doors. The old life waiting behind her with its ledgers and silk and careful smiles.

Even here, even in the sect, she has been moving as if speed alone might save her. What is she moving toward? She eats the last of the nuts to avoid answering it. Tang Mingxia notices, because Tang Mingxia notices everything, but does not press. That is another kind of kindness. Less obvious than Xie Lianqiu's robes and sweets. No less inconvenient.

"Seclusion," Liu Yinhua says after a while, because returning to practical matters is easier.

"Here?"

"Possibly."

"Because of the qi?"

"Because of the qi, the privacy, and the fact that you have already attuned yourself to the chamber." Tang Mingxia looks toward the pale walls.

"But only if the spirit allows it and only if the sun qi does not pull too sharply at your art."

"Lièjìng will complain."

"Then ask while bringing water." That is such practical advice that Liu Yinhua laughs once before she can stop herself. It comes out small and tired. Tang Mingxia's mouth softens. Only for a moment. By the time they gather the empty packets and fold the clean towels, Liu Yinhua can stand without the world tilting. Her body still aches, but the ache has changed. It lives inside the new strength, not on top of it.

When she steps across the stone, her feet meet the ground with a steadiness that makes her want to keep walking just to feel it happen again. Tang Mingxia watches her take three unnecessary steps and says nothing. At the passage mouth, Liu Yinhua looks back at the chamber. She has brought Tang Mingxia here now. The place has not vanished. The qi still gathers in the pale stone. The water still runs. Somewhere deeper below, Lièjìng is either sleeping, sulking, or listening in the rude manner of spirits.

The chamber is no longer only hers, but perhaps it was never hers in the way she feared losing. Perhaps some things can be shared without being taken. She is not yet ready to trust that thought fully, but she can let it grow a little further out. As they walk back toward House Twelve, evening has softened the paths. The air smells of cooking fires, damp leaves, and distant incense. Liu Yinhua is aware of every step. The movement of her knees. The shift of her hips. The swing of her sleeves.

Her heart beating with steady, green strength. Wood Middle sits beneath her skin, warm and sun-touched. The spiritual threshold waits lower, quieter, deeper. For once, Liu Yinhua does not reach for it. She walks beside Tang Mingxia instead, full of food, full of ache, full of a body that feels more hers than it did yesterday, and tries to imagine what she might be walking toward.