Chương 49: Lìchūn: Ascend 1

A week passes, and Liu Yinhua does not break through. Much to her intense frustration, this is, according to Tang Mingxia, a success. Liu Yinhua is trying to believe her. It is not that she does nothing, which would perhaps be easier to bear in its own miserable way. If anything, she does too much, only not quite enough in the wrong direction for Tang Mingxia to start threatening her with all the horrors that apparently awaited impatient disciples with more qi than sense.

She attends Elder Huan's physical cultivation classes and runs nearer the front now, never with the fastest disciples, never with the ones who make speed look like a personal insult to everyone behind them, but no longer so far back that the dust arrives before any other part of the class. Wood Middle changes the little things first, which is deeply unfair when Liu Yinhua would have appreciated one grand, unmistakable improvement she could point to and declare worth the vomiting.

She notices it in stairs, and in how quickly she rises after sitting. In how her ankles hold on loose gravel before she has truly thought about keeping her balance. In how her shoulder no longer pulls sourly after half a morning with the bow, though Xie Lianqiu still manages to find entirely new places for her to ache. In the way a careful flush of qi after training can draw the worst heaviness from her limbs, not replacing sleep, not replacing food, but making exhaustion less final than it used to be.

The first time it works properly, she feels like a thief who has stolen a night's rest from somewhere, and smuggled it to a fence. By the fifth time, she begins to resent that higher cultivators have been doing this all along. She eats less now, or at least less than she had in the ravenous days after the breakthrough, when her body had seemed prepared to consume all of House Twelve and then consider the furniture.

Wu Cailan develops a habit of looking at Liu Yinhua's bowl, looking at Liu Yinhua, and then saying nothing in a tone so loud that actual words would have been kinder. Xie Lianqiu, when she hears of it, sends a packet of sugared lotus seeds through Shen Yuanzhou, who delivers them as if entrusted with a secret military order and then reminds her to eat before training. Liu Yinhua eats the lotus seeds slowly, because they are good. Her sun arrows improve.

Not beautifully, not all at once, not with any kind of neatness that would make for a respectable story told afterward, but they do improve. The small gold-white bite of Burning Shadow settles more readily into the arrowhead now, especially if she uses her sleeve, wrist, or the angle of the bow to create that narrow meeting between covered and uncovered. It likes shadow. It likes the instant before light appears. It likes being hidden until the final breath.

If she adds too much qi, the arrow fails or flares too early, and if she adds just enough, the impact blooms with a small burst of searing radiance, not large, not strong enough to smash through armour, but bright enough to make Xie Lianqiu go quiet and Chi Yanluo thoughtful. Dance of Falling Blossoms improves too, though Liu Yinhua is less inclined to forgive it for all the times it had made a fool of her. Wood Middle does not make Liu Yinhua a master of anything.

It only means that when her foot slips, her hip turns, and her shoulder follows badly, she can recover the line of her body instead of being carried away by the mistake like laundry in a river. She learns to let the art bend through the new strength in her tendons rather than sitting above it like a borrowed cloak. It still fails under pressure, only now it fails with a little more dignity. For the moment, Liu Yinhua is willing to take that as progress.

Elder Yun's classes become more difficult in a way that has nothing to do with bruises. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Spiritual cultivation is quieter than physical cultivation, and somehow more humiliating. Elder Huan can at least be hated openly. Elder Yun only stands before the class and gives instructions that sound simple until Liu Yinhua tries to follow them and discovers several new ways to be wrong inside her own body.

The week's lessons turn again and again toward thresholds, though Elder Yun does not hand them a neat map of the road and ask them to be grateful for the generosity. Instead, she gives exercises. Settle the lower dantian until the qi no longer gathers like loose warmth but sits as a held lamp. Draw breath without dragging qi. Draw qi without chasing breath. Let the two approach one another and then separate, approach and separate, until the body no longer mistakes nearness for union.

The Essence Court, Liu Yinhua comes to understand, is not merely having qi. That had been her childish understanding, though she had not known enough to be embarrassed by it at the time. Essence Court means having enough qi gathered, settled, and obedient that it can be used without constantly threatening to spill away or bite the hand directing it. The qi has a place. A weight. A centre. It can be called upon and returned without everything inside her becoming an argument. Breath Court is not only more qi.

It is the next change in how qi moves through living action. Breath, step, voice, exertion. A technique held while running. An art carried through a dodge. A bow drawn while the lungs burn. A body no longer forced to stop being alive in order to cultivate properly. It sits so close to everything Liu Yinhua needs that she distrusts it on sight. She does well anyway. Perhaps Wood Middle helps. Perhaps the little thread of sun left in her body has made her more sensitive to the relationship between breath and heat.

Perhaps she is simply tired of being ignorant and has begun attacking ignorance with the same stubbornness Elder Huan applies to poor posture. Whatever the reason, by the end of the week, Elder Yun's gaze rests on her longer than usual. At the end of class, after a morning of breath exercises that leave half the disciples pale and the other half pretending very hard not to be, Elder Yun calls several students forward for their improvements. Liu Yinhua is among them. Her prize is a small paper-wrapped box.

Inside are six pills, each no larger than a pea, sealed in pale wax and marked with a thin red line. They smell faintly of bitter root, mineral salt, and something cool beneath the sharpness. Pills for thresholds, the class murmurs afterward. Breakthrough pills, one boy says with too much envy, and Liu Yinhua does not open the box again until she is back at House Twelve. Tang Mingxia looks at the pills for a long time. Liu Yinhua finds this in no way reassuring.

The pills are not treasures, and Tang Mingxia makes that clear without saying anything cruel about it, which is one of her more advanced skills. They are useful, threshold-supporting pills, low grade but clean, meant to steady the dantian, soothe overheated routes, and reduce the chance of a ragged transition. They cannot make a breakthrough happen. They cannot decide direction. They cannot repair stupidity. Used badly, they might even encourage it. Liu Yinhua finds this unfair.

Tang Mingxia does not appear moved by the tragedy of it all. In the evenings, they sit together with the little box between them, along with cups of cooling tea, Liu Yinhua's notes, two qi stones, and the increasingly worn dignity of Liu Yinhua's patience. Tang Mingxia explains seclusion again, not dramatically, not as if Liu Yinhua is about to enter some legendary gate and return shining, but more as if she is planning a difficult journey in bad weather. Rest first. Eat first. Wash. Prepare water. Prepare cloth.

Prepare the chamber. Ask Lièjìng properly and do not assume old spirits enjoy being included in human plans only after the plans have already begun. Keep one pill ready, perhaps two. Tang Mingxia also presses, gently for Tang Mingxia, on direction. The Breath Court is not a question of wanting to win the Lower Valley Trial or avoid embarrassment before Xie Lianqiu. It is not even a question of wanting to become stronger, which is too broad to be useful and too obvious to be meaningful.

The qi must be guided by something with more weight than mere impatience. There is physical cultivation, spiritual cultivation, archery, movement, errands, food, sleep, water for Lièjìng, Xu Qinghe's tentative agreement to meet the group properly, and the daily effort of not looking as frightened by friendship as she sometimes feels. There is not much time to sit still and ask what she is moving toward. When she does, the answers that come first are all things she is trying to leave behind. Madam Xue. Debt.

Locked doors. Soft hands reaching without permission. A life where her body had been something counted by other people. By the seventh day, Liu Yinhua has not broken through. She has not even tried, and she chafes at the stillness of it all. A dance should have pause, for meaning, always… but this will drive her to insanity. Tang Mingxia appears satisfied by this, which makes Liu Yinhua want to try out of spite.

She does not, and apparently, according to all reasonable people who are not Liu Yinhua, this is also progress.