Chương 6: Lìchūn: Novice 6

The side courtyard is easy enough to find once Liu Yinhua reaches the lower archive. The archive itself is a square, dark-wood building set slightly apart from the main paths, less grand than the instruction hall and more closely watched. Its doors are shut, but two older disciples in grey robes stand beneath the eaves speaking quietly, and a steward sits beside a narrow table with a brush in hand, looking bored in the way of people who are paid to notice everything while pretending otherwise.

The courtyard beside it is open on three sides, as Wu Cailan said. A stone table sits beneath a crooked pine, its roots lifting one corner of the paving. Beyond the courtyard wall, the mountain falls away into mist and dark green treetops, and the wind carries the smell of resin, cold stone, and the faint smoke of cooking fires from the residences below.

Chi Yanluo is sitting on the edge of the stone table rather than the bench, one foot braced against the ground and one heel hooked lightly against the table's side. It is not proper. Liu Yinhua thinks Tang Mingxia would find some quiet way to disapprove of it, but he looks comfortable there, head tipped back slightly as he watches a pair of older disciples pass along the archive steps. His robe is still arranged neatly despite the posture, the red tie in his golden hair bright against the grey of his shoulder.

When he sees Liu Yinhua, he lifts a hand in greeting.

"You came," he says.

"I said I would," she says, offering a polite bow as she stops by him.

"People say many things in the morning and regret them by midday."

"Do they?"

"Often enough," he says, sliding down from the table. He gives her a quick smile, more open than it should be for someone whose name seems to make empty space around him.

"Usually after speaking too confidently in front of an elder." Liu Yinhua inclines her head in to that, and he returns it with a delayed bow.

"I brought the scroll," she says.

"Good. Come sit. Not too close to the archive door, unless you want the steward in there to stare holes through the side of your head. He has been doing that to everyone who lingers too near." Liu Yinhua glances toward the steward, just visible through the door. He appears to be reading the register in front of him, though his eyes lift the moment she looks.

"Is he dangerous?"

"Probably not. Annoying, certainly. I asked him where the lower courtyard was, and he told me I was standing in it." She sits at the stone table, setting the scroll between them. The surface is cold beneath her fingers. Chi Yanluo sits across from her properly this time, though the looseness remains in him, something easy in his shoulders and hands that does not quite match the quality of his clothes or the care with which his hair has been tied. He notices her looking and glances down at himself.

"Do I have rice on me?"

"No."

"That is a relief. I ate quickly." A small laugh almost escapes her, and she hides it by lowering her eyes to the scroll, half to disguise the twist of her lips. Most men do not enjoy being made fools of, even in the slightest of ways. Chi Yanluo smiles as if he has noticed anyway, but he does not press the point.

"The First Ember Method," he says, touching two fingers lightly to the outer edge of the scroll without taking it from her.

"That is the standard one. Everyone gets a copy. Clan disciples, too, though most of them have already read a dozen others before they arrive." Chi Yanluo turns the scroll a little so they can both see it.

"All right. First thing. The text is not trying to trick you, but it is written for too many kinds of novices at once. Some arrive with no sense of qi. Some arrive half-awakened. Some have already been trained by family tutors and only need the sect to record them. That makes the wording broad, and broad wording is where people get lost." He points to the first passage about posture and breath, explaining without making a lecture of it. The spine should be straight, but not stiff.

Jaw softening is not about looking serene, but about keeping the breath from catching high in the throat and relieving the tension there. The tongue behind the teeth keeps the mouth from drying and settles the breath through the nose. The hands over the lower abdomen are not meant to press, only to remind the mind where to return when it wanders. He speaks easily, more than she expects, the words coming with a warmth that makes the lesson feel less like instruction than a conversation.

When he uses a term she does not know, he explains it without making her ask twice. When she asks what seems to her a foolish question, he answers it as if it is only a question.

"The dantian is not quite an organ," he says, after she asks how one is meant to feel something that has no shape under the hand.

"But it is not imaginary either. Clan tutors like to say things like, 'the lower field is the root of the spirit,' which sounds good and helps almost no one on the first day. Think of it as a place where breath, attention, and qi can meet. At first, you are not filling it. You just need to recognise it, so that when you channel qi, it knows where to settle. It's the very core of every cultivator." Liu Yinhua's eyes lowered to the line about the novice approaching the gate.

"Your explanation is far more complete than this text." This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Do not tell Elder Yun I said this, but I think they make it confusing on purpose."

"Does Elder Yun frighten you?" she asks, light and even, and the slightest bit teasing as she presses buttons where she knows they exist in others. If this one is prone to a particular flavour of cruelty, it's best to find it now.

"Yes," he says at once.

"I prefer to live." It is said so promptly that Liu Yinhua's mouth moves before she fully stops it. Chi Yanluo looks pleased with himself for a moment, and then seems to remember that he is meant to be helping. Most of the lesson passes that way. He does not cultivate with her, and he does not offer to place qi into her body as he explains is sometimes the forceful method by which clan help their young find their dantian, which Liu Yinhua is grateful for in a way she does not name.

The twist of his lips as he explains it makes her think that there is a more personal dislike of the practice there. Instead, he has her read the difficult sections aloud, then explains where the wording is unnecessarily old or where a phrase is meant to prevent a novice from making a common mistake. The simplicity, he tells her, is the part most people dislike.

"Everyone wants to do something impressive," Chi Yanluo says, leaning back on one hand while she studies the diagram again.

"They arrive at the sect and imagine fire in their palms or swords flying through the sky. Then the first thing they are told is to sit down and breathe until they can feel something smaller than a grain of rice. It offends the spirit."

"Did it offend yours?"

"Constantly."

"Yet you still did it."

"Because my spirit is not the part of me allowed to make decisions." That answer is too quick, but not dishonest. Liu Yinhua traces the diagram with her eyes and lets the words settle without picking at them. Around them, older disciples pass occasionally through the courtyard, some glancing over, most indifferent. A pair of girls from the novice cohort walk by once, slow enough that their curiosity is plain, but Chi Yanluo only lifts a hand in casual greeting.

They hurry on as if they have been caught doing something foolish. He does not seem angered. That interests her more than anger would have. By the time the sun has shifted past the pine branches, Liu Yinhua understands more of the First Ember Method than she had in the morning, just enough. Chi Yanluo closes the scroll carefully, leaving her hand on the cord.

"When you try again tonight, do less." Liu Yinhua looks at him.

"Less?"

"Less effort," he explains, packing his own items away.

"That sounds nearly like something the scroll would say." He grimaces.

"Then forget I said it."

"I may not."

"That is cruel of you."

"It was useful."

"Then remember it privately and spare my reputation." Liu Yinhua lowers her eyes, smiling despite herself.

"Your reputation seems already occupied."

"That is true." His voice remains light, but the ease in it thins a little.

"Still, one does what one can." She rolls the scroll and ties it slowly, giving herself a moment before she speaks.

"Thank you for the lesson."

"You are welcome," he says, and Liu Yinhua thinks the sincerity is genuine, for all she senses something amiss in it somewhere.

"And if you want to meet again after Elder Yun's first class, I can." There it is again. An offer, plainly made. Liu Yinhua looks at the red tie in his hair, the good cloth at his cuffs, the old pale mark near his jaw, the face of a boy who is friendlier than the space around him says he ought to be. She thinks of Tang Mingxia's warning, of Wu Cailan's judgment of good sight lines, of the red stones hidden in her sleeve and the fact that needing help has never made help harmless.

"I would like that," she says.

"If it does not cost you too much." His grin returns, quick and warmer than expected.

"Liu Yinhua, I think people already blame me for things I have not done. A little more will not ruin my day."

"That does not seem wise."

"No," he agrees cheerfully.

"But it is manageable." A bell sounds somewhere higher up the mountain, not the formal toll of curfew or lesson, only a smaller hour-bell carried thinly on the wind. Chi Yanluo glances toward the path.

"I should go before Shen Yuanzhao decides I have died and comes looking for my corpse."

"A friend?"

"Unfortunately." That sounds fond enough that Liu Yinhua does not believe the complaint, as Chi Yanluo stands and straightens his sleeves, suddenly closer to the young master his robes suggest. He bows again, not too deeply, and this time Liu Yinhua returns it with the scroll held against her sleeve. He steps back onto the path first, lifting a hand once before turning toward the broader courtyard below the archive. A few disciples look away as he passes. He keeps walking, as relaxed as if he notices none of it.

Liu Yinhua remains under the crooked pine for a moment after he is gone. The lesson has left her with no great revelation, no sudden flame, no answer to the question of what sort of person Chi Yanluo truly is, but she does think she is a step closer to figuring this out. When she finally turns back toward the novice residences, the First Ember Method rests warm in her hands inside her sleeve, and beneath it, hidden deeper, the five red stones press against her wrist like small, banked coals.

It is a somewhat slow journey back, caught in her own thoughts and perhaps truly her first time doing so. The journey here had been a whirlwind, torn from Suzhou and set down late in this world so different from hers. Or, she muses as she dips her head to a passing girl she faintly recognises as belonging to the dwelling next to them, perhaps not so different.

There are still rules, still strict barriers, unlike the qingluo in this; in that skill, luck and connections are the key to getting more freedom and better lodgings. There are nobles and egos and personalities that must be tolerated, sacrifices to be made now to get somewhere better one day. She sidesteps a pair of older novices, their sashes dark brown instead of red, a quiet apology on her lips as she does so, still lost in idle thoughts for all she appears serene.

She catches the pair staring at her for a long moment, the tall boy's mouth gaping before he falls out of her sight and out of mind a moment later, meandering her way home. She finds the house blessedly empty, and with her mind full of all she has learned this afternoon, she sets about using her free time to chase the ever-elusive spark of that something in her belly with the same persistence Liu Yinhua had used for many years for dance and other skills.

By the time footsteps sound at the entrance, Liu Yinhua has lost the spark so many times that the scroll's neat instructions have begun to look faintly insulting. Her knees ache, her temper sits hot behind her teeth, and the place below her navel remains stubbornly silent the moment she wants anything from it. She hears Wu Cailan's heavier step first, then Tang Mingxia's lighter one, their low voices muffled by the wall as they return to the house.

Liu Yinhua exhales once, sharper than the method permits, and rolls the scroll closed with more care than patience. Enough for tonight.