Chương 9: Lìchūn: Novice 9

"... only saying that if A'Ying meant to threaten him, he would have done a better job of it."

"He bit through his sleeve," Chi Yanluo says.

"He nipped it."

"He drew blood."

"A very little blood." Liu Yinhua walks between them with her hands folded in her sleeves and decides, after some thought, that this is likely what passes for restraint between boys who have known one another too long. The path from the residence intersection slopes gently down through young pines, the stones warm beneath the afternoon sun and still damp in the cracks where the morning mist has not fully gone.

Her legs object to the descent in small, private bursts, though she keeps her steps smooth enough that neither boy comments. Shen Yuanzhao walks half a pace ahead of them and turns back with a grin.

"Besides, he had it coming." A'Ying, perched on Chi Yanluo's shoulder, makes a sharp clicking sound.

"I think your bird disagrees," Liu Yinhua says.

"He disagrees with most things," Chi Yanluo replies.

"He agrees with me often," Shen Yuanzhao says.

"That is not a sign in your favour." Shen Yuanzhao puts a hand to his chest.

"Wounded. Deeply. In front of Liu Yinhua too. Have you no loyalty?"

"I am demonstrating it by allowing you to embarrass yourself without interruption." The answer is dry enough that Liu Yinhua smiles before she thinks better of it. A proper smile, brief but real, drawn out by exhaustion and the absurdity of the exchange. Shen Yuanzhao sees it, and the poor boy turns red at once and looks away so quickly he nearly misjudges the next step. Liu Yinhua lowers her gaze to the path, but not before Chi Yanluo catches the whole thing.

He glances at Shen Yuanzhao, then at her, and very wisely chooses silence. Liu Yinhua appreciates that. Pressing a man on embarrassment rarely makes him more dignified, and Shen Yuanzhao has little enough to spare at the moment. It is familiar, in a way that settles her more easily than it should. Young guardsmen had looked at pretty girls like that from doorways and courtyards in Suzhou, bold until the girl looked back, then red-eared and suddenly fascinated by their own boots.

Soldiers could be worse, but young ones, ones not yet hardened into entitlement or cruelty, often went shy around beauty in a way that made them easy to manage and, sometimes, almost sweet. Shen Yuanzhao is only a boy. A tall, loud, handsome boy, too quick to laugh, but still a boy. They are all still young, for all that the sect seems determined to beat childhood out of them before the season turns. The training ground comes into view not long after.

It is smaller than Elder Huan's terrace, little more than a broad clearing of smoothed pale stone set into the side of the mountain. A low wall borders the drop on one side, and beyond it the slope falls away into pine, mist, and the faint red glimmer of lanterns lower down the residences. The stone has been marked by use: old scratches, worn circles, faint grooves where repeated footwork has polished the surface. It is public enough to satisfy propriety and quiet enough to be useful.

Two older disciples practise at the far edge, moving through slow palm forms without speaking. She knows enough from Tang Mingxia now to know that anyone truly older than them likely failed to reach the inner sect during their qualification trials— and that after the first failure, it was far harder for these disciples to ever make it through. A lack of talent and luck could end up trapping them here, and they would only be given so many chances.

A pair of girls sit by the wall, resting with waterskins between them, but they leave as the trio enter the training yard. Chi Yanluo leads them to an open stretch near the centre and turns, letting his gaze pass over her with keen assessment.

"We made it here," he says.

"An auspicious beginning," she agrees, mild as milk. Shen Yuanzhao laughs and climbs onto a low rock near the wall, settling there with one knee drawn up. It gives him a view over the clearing. A guard's habit, perhaps, or a border boy's. He makes it look idle, but Liu Yinhua notices the way his attention moves when other disciples pass too close. Chi Yanluo notices her noticing. For a moment, his eyes meet Shen Yuanzhao's. Something unspoken passes between them, quick enough that most would miss it.

Shen Yuanzhao's grin eases a fraction, and he looks out over the path instead of at her. Chi Yanluo turns back as if nothing has happened. Liu Yinhua files the moment away.

"What do you want help with first?" Chi Yanluo asks. That is, unfortunately, a very difficult question. Liu Yinhua keeps her hands folded and considers several answers before discarding all of them. Footwork, because hers is inadequate. Stances, because her body has clearly betrayed her. Breath, because both Elder Yun and Elder Huan have made it sound like the beginning of everything.

Qi, because she has felt it now, a bright little flame in the dark of her body, and knowing it exists has only made her more aware of how little she understands it.

"I do not know enough to choose properly," she says at last. Chi Yanluo nods, accepting the answer without mockery.

"A good answer," he says. She gives him a look, for all she doesn't sense any mockery in it.

"I mean that," he says.

"A worse answer would be pretending certainty. You have sensed your dantian?"

"Yes."

"Properly?"

"I am not sure what would make it proper." His mouth curves faintly.

"Also good." From his rock, Shen Yuanzhao says, "you praise like an old tutor!" Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"I can hear you," Chi Yanluo says, lips twitching.

"I hope so!" Liu Yinhua lets them have the exchange and waits. Chi Yanluo's ease shifts when he turns back to her. He does not become colder exactly, but something of the idle humour smooths itself away, leaving the young man she had first noticed in the hall: calm, well-trained, and too aware of the eyes around him to waste movement.

"Show me your resting posture," he says. Liu Yinhua sits where he indicates, on a flat stretch of stone warmed by the afternoon sun. It is not comfortable. Her legs complain immediately, and her thighs, already offended by Elder Huan's class, make their displeasure known the moment she folds them beneath her. She arranges her robe, places her hands over her lower abdomen, and straightens her spine. Chi Yanluo crouches several paces away, far enough to be proper, close enough to see the details of her posture.

"Less shoulder," he says. She lowers them.

"Less chin." She adjusts.

"Less everything, actually."

"That is unhelpfully broad."

"It is accurate." Shen Yuanzhao makes a strangled sound that might be laughter and turns it into a cough when Liu Yinhua looks at him. Chi Yanluo does not look away from her posture, for all A'ying chatters an avian laugh.

"You hold yourself like someone is about to judge you," he admits. The words strike close enough that Liu Yinhua's fingers still against her robe. He seems to realise it a breath later. His expression shifts, not into apology, but into care.

"It's likely not entirely wrong to think someone will, but cultivation isn't about outer appearance, but instead about inner discipline. Elder Yun likely told you the same."

"She did."

"Then she was right."

"I had gathered that."

"Good. Now breathe." Liu Yinhua breathes in through her nose and lets the air descend. It is harder with pain settled in the body. Every ache pulls attention towards itself. Her thighs burn where they press against the stone. Her shoulders want to tense. Still, beneath all of that, the spark waits. It is easier to find now than it was the first time, though not easy enough to trust. A little flame, bright and small, tucked low in the dark.

She approaches it carefully, afraid that wanting it too much will send it fleeing again. Chi Yanluo watches her face.

"You have it," he says. Her eyes open to see him smile slightly.

"Good. Not stable yet, but present. Did you bring one of your red stones?" Liu Yinhua slips a hand into her sleeve and draws out the wrapped cloth bundle she has tied there, smaller than her palm and warm from being kept close to her body. Five red stones had seemed like an absurd amount when the steward placed them into her hand that morning. Now, unwrapping one beneath Chi Yanluo's eye, she wonders how quickly such a supply can vanish once a person begins to need them properly.

The stone she chooses is small, no larger than the top joint of her thumb, polished smooth but not cut, with a dull crimson glow caught deep inside it.

"Red stones are the lowest grade," Chi Yanluo says.

"That makes them safer for beginners. The sect gives them to you because ambient qi alone is too slow and uneven for the first stages, and because learning to draw from a measured source is part of learning control. Those without family support may only receive this help to cultivation, compared to what noble peers might get from family." Liu Yinhua looks down at the stone.

"Elder Yun did not have us use them."

"She wanted you to find the vessel first. A stone is useful only after there is somewhere for the qi to settle. If you draw before that, you are only putting heat into flesh and hoping your body forgives you." Shen Yuanzhao leans back on his rock.

"It usually does not."

"No," Chi Yanluo says.

"It usually does not." Liu Yinhua rests the red stone on the ground before her. It looks harmless. That means nothing. So had the scroll, the mirror, the flame in the lamp before it bent towards her breath. At first, there is only cool mineral under her skin. Smooth surface. Faint edge. The ordinary pressure of touch. Then the spark beneath her navel stirs, and the world shifts by a hair. The stone is not cool. It is full. Liu Yinhua's breath catches. Chi Yanluo's voice reaches her before she can pull back.

"Breathe out." She does. The sense remains, less shocking now but still strange. The red stone holds qi the way a coal holds heat, compact and waiting. Not alive, not truly, but not inert either. It has weight beyond weight, warmth beyond temperature, something bright and dense sealed under the stone's skin.

"Do you feel it?" Chi Yanluo asks.

"Yes."

"Describe it." She hesitates.

"Warm."

"Good. Let your dantian notice it." Liu Yinhua almost asks how one is meant to make an unseen vessel notice anything, but the answer is likely breathe, and she is beginning to hate how often that answer is correct. She closes her eyes. The spark inside her flickers. The stone beneath her fingers glows at the edge of her awareness, a second point of warmth outside her body. For several breaths, there is nothing between them. Then a thread forms.

It is so fine she might miss it if not for the way her dantian tightens in answer. Not qi moving, not yet. Only recognition, a faint line of attention between the flame within and the warmth beneath her fingers. She keeps breathing. Her body wants to lean towards it. Her mind wants to seize and examine. She does neither.

"Now," Chi Yanluo says quietly, "draw once. Barely. Less than you think." The thread brightens. A fleck of warmth slips from the stone and moves through her fingers, up the hand, across the wrist. Liu Yinhua nearly opens her eyes at the shock of it, but Chi Yanluo says her name, low and steady, and she holds herself in place. The qi does not feel like breath. It does not feel like blood. It is bright and fine and sharp at the edges, too warm to be comfortable and too small to be painful.

It reaches her chest and wavers there, uncertain.

"Do not guide with force," Chi Yanluo says.

"Invite it down with the breath." She breathes in. The qi trembles. She breathes out. It sinks. Slowly, clumsily, the tiny strand reaches the spark below her navel. For one breath, Liu Yinhua feels both: the inner flame, small and waiting, and the borrowed warmth settling against it. Then the dantian flares. Not large. Not dangerous. But bright enough that her eyes fly open and the red stone under her fingers flashes in answer. Chi Yanluo's hand moves, not touching her, but lifting sharply in warning.

"Enough." Liu Yinhua releases the stone. The thread snaps. The warmth inside her gutters, then steadies, leaving her dizzy and suddenly aware of every sound in the courtyard: Shen Yuanzhao shifting on the rock, A'Ying's claws scratching the wall, the distant cry of some mountain bird, the scrape of an older disciple's foot across stone. Her fingers tremble once before she stills them. Chi Yanluo studies her face.

"Pain?"

"No."

"Nausea?"

"No."

"Heat in the chest? Throat? Head?"

"No."

"Good." Shen Yuanzhao slides down from the rock, the humour gone from his expression now.

"That was clean." Liu Yinhua looks at him. He colours again, though less violently this time.

"I mean, for a first draw."

"High praise," Chi Yanluo says.

"From Shen Yuanzhao, that is almost a poem."

"Do not start." Liu Yinhua lifts her hand from her lap and looks at her fingers. They look the same. Pale, slim, faintly chilled from the mountain air. Nothing about them says they have just drawn power out of a stone and pulled it into the hidden furnace of her own body.

"How much did I take?" she asks.

"Almost nothing," Chi Yanluo says. That should disappoint her. Chi Yanluo picks up the red stone and holds it to the light.

"The surface is clear. No cracking, no dulling. You did not pull hard enough to damage it, which is what we want. At your stage, you will draw in scraps, then sit with them until your dantian learns to hold without leaking."

"How long does that take?"

"That depends on the disciple."

"An answer designed to be useless," she says, somewhat sharp.

"A true one," he says. From the wall, A'Ying chirps once. Shen Yuanzhao points at the bird.

"He says you should say months and let her be angry at you properly." Chi Yanluo gives him a flat look.

"He does not say that."

"He implied it."

"He cannot imply calendrical estimates." Liu Yinhua looks between them and finds herself smiling again, smaller this time but no less real. Chi Yanluo sees it. Shen Yuanzhao sees it too and promptly looks towards the trees with great interest. A'Ying chirps again, merciless. The spark below Liu Yinhua's navel remains brighter than before, not by much, but enough that she can feel the difference.

The world around her seems touched at the edges: the stone under her knees, the wind moving through pine needles, the red glass lanterns hanging along the path. All of it has qi in it. All of it has always had qi in it. The only thing that has changed is her ability to notice. For a moment, Liu Yinhua says nothing.

"Again?" Chi Yanluo asks. Her body aches. Her legs resent her. She is still hungry in the hollow, bottomless way Elder Huan's class seems to have carved into her. But beneath her exhaustion, the little flame waits.

"Yes," Liu Yinhua says, rolling the stone between her fingers. It takes weeks from here to Suzhou, but weeks are manageable. She must be untouchable sooner, rather than later.

"Again."