Cultivating Common Sense In A Xianxia World Chapter 23: The Wall

The first morning after the feast, I stood at the center of the training ground and recited the Five Principles to an audience of six.

Hao, Bolin, Suyin Shan were all sitting at the edge along with two new faces: Tao and Ma, the conscript soldiers who'd chosen to stay after the battle.

"Principle one. Cultivation begins with awareness. Before you can move qi, you must learn to feel it."

I said the words the sa way I'd said them every morning for months. The sa way I'd say them every morning for years. The principles weren't wisdom. They were foundations. You didn't stop pouring a foundation because you'd poured it before.

"Principle five. There is no secret. Any principle that works for one person should work for any person with the aptitude to sense qi. If a technique only works for the teacher, the technique is flawed or the teacher is lying."

Shan uncrossed his arms when I finished, and I could tell that what I said had resonated with him.

That was the start.

In the following weeks, we recruited a student nad Zhao Jun, he was Zhao Ping's eldest son, I pulled him aside after his third session.

He already knew what I was going to say. I could see it on his face before I opened my mouth.

"Your qi signature is thin," I said. "The lung mai activation is progressing slower than the others."

He appeared crestfallen at my words. "I know."

"I want you to rember that you train at your own pace here, and nobody asures you against anyone else," I advised him. It would be troubling for a potential student to lose their confidence. Comparison was the thief of joy, as the saying went.

"I know that too." He looked at and studied my face. "Does it bother you?"

The question caught . "Why would it bother ?"

He shrugged. "I could be taking up a spot that soone with more aptitude could use."

I shook my head. "You can take up all the spots you want, we're always have room for more."

"Then I'll keep coming."

He walked back to his position on the line, sat down, and ford the prayer sign. It was in that mont that I realized he decided that showing up mattered more than being gifted. I watched him settle into the breathing exercise and thought that if the program ever produced a philosophy, Zhao Jun would be its proof.

Gao Shu, Gao Ren's daughter, appeared at the edge of zone one on a morning in the fourth month.

I didn't notice her at first. She was ten and small for her age. She sat cross-legged on the grass with her hands in the prayer sign and her eyes closed, mimicking the breathing pattern she'd watched from the forge path every morning for weeks.

I noticed her when her qi flickered.

It was a small and barely noticeable pulse of energy, but it was still there nonetheless.

I talked to Gao Ren at the forge that afternoon.

"Your daughter has aptitude," I said to him without preamble.

He didn't look up from the anvil. "So I've heard."

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"I'd like to include her in the zone one sessions."

The hamr paused. He set it down and turned to look at . "She trains when it doesn't interfere with the work."

I agreed to that.

Shu joined the beginner track the next morning. She was the youngest student in the program yet she absorbed the ridian basics with the eagerness that only a child could have.

Gao Ren stood watch at every session.

On the sixth month I found Suyin already walking the line and observing our current cohort of students.

She was correcting Zhao Jun's forearm alignnt, her fingers adjusting his wrist angle and she didn't look up when I approached. When she finished the correction, she moved to Gao Shu and continued working.

I stood at the edge and watched. She was harder on the students than I was. Where I explained the reasoning behind each adjustnt, she simply moved the body to where it needed to be and let the sensation teach.

After the session, I caught her on the path.

"You didn't tell you were going to start instructing," I said.

"Was I supposed to?"

She waited for to object so that she could explain why my objection was wrong.

I didn't object. "Your corrections were well done."

"I know." She spun on her heels and walked toward the clinic before I could say anything else.

In the next morning, during the early dawn hours, Suyin was back at the training grounds practicing with a wooden pole, enjoying the solitude of training.

"Suyin."

She stopped mid swing to turn to and regard with a simple nod.

"Are we okay?" I asked her.

She gave a smile that revealed nothing.

"Yes, of course. Did you want to discuss the zone one schedule? I have so thoughts about restructuring the afternoon sessions."

She changed the subject with a speed that would've impressed Commander Xu.

I stood there and listened to her talk about session restructuring and realized what I'd done.

At the feast I'd frad her as a sister. I'd done it to protect her from a truth I couldn't share, to draw a boundary that felt necessary.

But she hadn't been a child who needed protecting, she'd been a person making a choice about who she cared for, and I'd taken that choice away from her, and now she was standing in front of while maintaining the distance I'd created because she was too mature to ignore my boundaries.

That was the worst part about it. She was gracious in a way that told everything about how badly I'd misjudged her.

"The afternoon restructuring sounds good," I said finally, barely hearing what she had to say. I had complete trust in her regardless, and things were running smooth enough that it didn't require my oversight. "Run it how you see fit."

"I will." She stood and brushed the grass from her trousers. "Dawn session starts soon, so I'll handle zone one if you want to work with Hao."

She walked to the line and began setting out the stones for the ditation exercises.

I decided to use the extra ti on my hands to run through so of the ledgers at the garrison outpost near our village. They kept a running record of the village's comrce and trade goods, which ca in handy because we didn't have to house the records ourselves.

However, one peculiar thing that stuck out to was that Shan's na had appeared on the ore run manifests as Shan Pei. I went to find Hao to talk to him about it because, as far as I knew, we didn't have another brother...right?

"When did that happen?" I asked him while he was tending to the Chen Widow's crops.

Hao shrugged while he pulled the weeds from the ground. "I told him the na was his whenever he wanted it. I guess he took up on my offer."

I gave Hao a once over while he was working and noticed that the Chen Widow ca out to wave at and hand Hao a cup of well water. He drank it and handed it back to her, and her hand rested on his shoulder before she then went back inside.

The interaction caught my attention, and Hao seed amused by my confusion, because I definitely was wondering when did this happen and his look said I'm so happy that you're confused.

"Chen i and I married last week, and I decided that it would be best for her boys that I adopted them into the family, so they're going to be Pei n when they grow up."

Chen i. The widow whose family I'd reintegrated into the village by finding rat droppings in a grain shed. The woman whose plot Hao had been helping since the first week of the labor rotation. The sons who'd been fatherless since the conscription that killed Old Chen and nearly killed our father on the sa march. Is that how long this has been a...thing?

"There's also Tong Lian from the Tongshan families. She's around my age and we may be early in our relationship but things are going steady."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Hao had two wives and two adopted sons and any minute now they'd definitely beco pregnant with his kids soon too.

"Does Mother know?"

He smiled. "Of course. She cried tears of joy."

I walked back to the house that night and thought about how Hao had opened his life so easily, anwhile I'd close myself off.

The training ground was dark when I passed it. The ridian reference stones caught the moonlight in a line along the riverbank.

I went inside and sat with the cultivation notes until my eyes blurred and sleep took .