Cultivating Common Sense In A Xianxia World Chapter 57: A Lesson In Refinement

I woke before the first notch and I sat at the low table in the curriculum room with the lamp burning low, and I wrote the letter to Sun Ai.

The letter took longer than I had expected it to take. I wrote it twice. The first draft was too formal, the second draft was too familiar, and the third draft was the one I sent.

I told her that I was the son of the woman she had trained forty years ago, that my mother had died eight months previously, and that her grandson had arrived at my Academy as part of the second cohort and had told that Mother of Healing sat on her bedside table.

I told her that the book had been written by my mother's students, and that the thods recorded in it had begun in her hands and were still moving through villages and clinics across the western and eastern districts, and that she should know how far her teaching had carried.

I told her that her grandson was already showing the steadiness she had taught my mother to value above brilliance.

I asked her to write back when she felt she had the strength, and I told her that there was no urgency, only that I wanted her to know that the line she had begun had not ended.

I sealed the letter with the clinic's mark and I set it on the shelf to be carried to Lanyu by the next courier.

I crossed the yard at the end of the second notch as the cold was lifting off the river.

The four were waiting at the bank where I had told Wei Bolin to bring them. They stood in a rough line in their training tunics with their breath visible on the cold morning air. Wei Bolin stood at the upstream end of the line in his clinic apron with his hair tied back and his hands at his sides. The river behind them ran low and dark in the winter channel, and the willows had begun to silver at the tips with the light of the rising sun.

I stopped six paces in front of them.

"This morning we begin cultivation. We do not begin with drills. We do not begin with weapons. We begin where every cultivator begins, which is here, on a riverbank, before the day has fully co up, with our breath where our breath belongs. Sit down on the stones. Cross your legs. Hands on your knees."

They sat.

"Close your eyes."

They closed their eyes.

I let the silence settle for a long breath, and I let them feel the cold settle into their faces, and I let them hear the river running below them. Then I began.

"There are three things you will learn this morning. The first is what cultivators call ambient Qi, which is the flow of energy that exists in the world around you at all tis, in the air and the water and the earth and in the bodies of every living creature. The second is what cultivators call the Mai channels, which are the pathways within your own body through which you will draw and circulate that energy. The third is the breath cycle, which is the practice that connects the first two. The breath is the doorway. The breath is what you have been doing your entire life without knowing it had this purpose. We are going to begin to use it."

I paused.

"Open your awareness outward. I am not asking you to do anything yet. I am asking you to listen with the part of yourself that is not your ears."

I let them sit with the instruction.

I watched their faces. Cao Yan was working too hard, his brow drawn tight, his shoulders hunched up around his ears. Sun Hai was breathing shallowly through his nose and waiting for sothing to happen. Mu Renshu had let his hands rest open on his knees with his palms turned upward, and his face had the sa stillness it had carried in the curriculum room the previous afternoon. Lin Zhi was already there. Her shoulders had dropped, her breath had lengthened, and the small line between her brows had smoothed. She had found the threshold of awareness within twenty breaths of being told to look for it.

"Lin Zhi."

"Yes, Squad Captain."

"What do you feel."

She did not open her eyes when she answered.

"The river is moving from my right to my left, Squad Captain. The cold is sitting on top of the water rather than rising from it, which ans the water beneath the surface is warr than the air above. There is a current of sothing else moving across the river that is not the wind and not the water. It cos from upstream, from the willows. It is the sa thing I felt in the barley field when Commander Xu tested , but it is brighter here. It is everywhere. I did not know it could be everywhere."

I held my expression still.

She had nad ambient Qi on her first attempt, on a cold riverbank, with no prior training. She had not been told what to look for, and she had found it, and she had described it in words that were not the words a trained cultivator would use, and her words were correct anyway.

I had been going to give them the rest of the lecture before asking them to feel for it. The lecture was no longer the right tool. She had outpaced the lecture before I had finished the introduction.

"Good. Hold what you are feeling. Do not chase it. Sit with it as if it were rain falling on you. The other three of you, listen to . What Lin Zhi has just described is what we are calling ambient Qi. It is realIt is around you right now. The reason you are not feeling it as clearly as she is feeling it is that you are still listening with your eyes and your ears. Let your shoulders drop. Breathe slowly through your nose for the count of four, hold for the count of two, and then release through your mouth for the count of six. We will run that breath cycle for the next quarter notch.”

They began the breath cycle.

I watched them.

By the tenth breath Cao Yan's shoulders had dropped and his face had loosened. By the fifteenth, Sun Hai had stopped trying to listen for sothing specific and had begun to listen for nothing. By the twentieth, Mu Renshu was breathing in ti with the river. None of them had reached what Lin Zhi had reached on her first sit, but all three of them had moved into the threshold of the work.

I let them sit for the full quarter notch.

When the notch turned over, I spoke.

"Stop the cycle. Keep your eyes closed. Cao Yan. What did you feel."

"Squad Captain, I felt a pressure on the right side of my body. Not a heavy pressure. Like the weight of a hand resting on my shoulder. It ca when my breath slowed."

"Good. That is the ambient Qi making contact with the right channel of your shoulder. You felt it because your channel is open enough to register the touch. Sun Hai."

"Squad Captain, I felt a warmth that started at the base of my spine and moved up to the back of my neck. It was not the cold leaving . It was sothing else moving through in the sa direction the breath was going."

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"Good. That is your root channel and your spine channel responding to the breath cycle. Mu Renshu."

"Squad Captain, I felt the river. I felt the river the way I feel my father's voice when he cos through the door, which is sothing I cannot describe except to say that I knew it was the river, and the river knew that I was sitting on its bank."

I did not speak for the length of one breath.

"Good, Mu Renshu. Hold it. Lin Zhi. Anything to add."

"It has not changed since I described it before, Squad Captain. It is still everywhere. The willows upstream are denser with it than the willows downstream, and there is a thinner trace of it that is different from the river coming from behind us, from the village direction. I think it is from the people in the village. It is colored differently than the river. I do not have words for the difference yet."

"You do not need words yet. Now, open your eyes."

They opened their eyes.

"Stand and walk to the curriculum room. Wei Bolin will go ahead of you. You will not speak on the walk. Instead, you will hold the awareness you have just opened."

They stood, and they walked, and I followed at the rear with Bolin at the head of the group leading them across the yard.

The curriculum room was warr than the riverbank. The lamp was still burning from the morning. I had pulled the low table to the side of the room and cleared the floor at the center, and I had set five mats in a circle with one mat in the middle for Bolin.

"Sit on the mats. Cao Yan to the north. Sun Hai to the east. Mu Renshu to the south. Lin Zhi to the west. Wei Bolin in the center."

They took their places.

"Wei Bolin will hold a Refinent-stage draw open for the duration of this exercise. The draw is a steady pull of ambient Qi through his Mai channels at a low level, sustained over ti. It is the basic skill that defines a practitioner of his stage. While he holds the draw, I am going to trace the four foundational channels on each of you in turn while the others watch. Its purpose is to make you aware of the channels in your own body by feeling soone else find them on the surface of your skin. After I have traced all four of you, you will pair up and trace each other while I correct your placents. By the end of the morning, every one of you will have felt the four foundational channels on your own body, on another body, and on the body of an active practitioner. Do you understand?”

"Yes, Squad Captain." They all said in unison.

"Wei Bolin. Begin."

Bolin closed his eyes. His shoulders dropped a fraction. His breath slowed. The room shifted as the ambient Qi began to move toward him in the slow steady current of an active draw, and I saw all four of the students register the change.

Lin Zhi spoke without being asked.

"Squad Captain, the air has gotten heavier. It is moving toward Wei Bolin. He is pulling it through himself."

"That is correct. Be quiet now and feel it. Sun Hai. Lie back on your mat. Hands at your sides. Eyes open. Breathe."

Sun Hai lay back.

I knelt beside him and I traced the root channel from the base of his spine up along the inner column to the cradle of the lower back, naming the landmarks aloud as I went. I traced the heart channel from the breastbone up through the soft hollow of the throat. I traced the throat channel laterally along the line of his jaw to the base of his ears. I traced the palm channel from the center of each hand up the inner forearm to the inside of the elbow. The trace was the lightest two-finger contact, just enough for him to register where my hand had gone.

When I finished, I sat back.

"Sun Hai. What did you feel."

"Squad Captain, I felt the trace at each point you nad. I felt the heart channel most clearly. The palm channels were the faintest. The root channel was the warst. The throat was the most sensitive."

"Good. That is the order in which most practitioners first register the four foundational channels. The variation between practitioners is small. Cao Yan, you are next."

I traced Cao Yan in the sa sequence. Then Mu Renshu. Then Lin Zhi.

When I traced Lin Zhi's palm channel, I felt her draw open under my hand without her aning to open it. The Qi moved up the channel in response to my touch the way a current moves toward an opening in a dam. She did not know she had done it.

"The next thing I am going to show you is one of the things channel work allows a cultivator to do, the technique uses the channel awareness you have just opened, combined with the breath through the nose, to detect kinship by scent. A person who is related to another person by blood produces a scent signature in their channels that resonates with their kin. I am going to teach it to you because it is one of the simplest applications of what you now know how to do, and because it will demonstrate to you what channel awareness can be used for.”

I stood.

"Pair up. Mu Renshu with Cao Yan. Lin Zhi with Sun Hai. Stand within arm's reach of your partner. Close your eyes. Breathe slowly through your nose. Open your channel awareness the way you opened it on the riverbank. Then turn your attention to your partner and let your breath bring their scent signature into your channels."

They paired and turned.

I stood at the edge of the room with Wei Bolin still holding the draw at the center, and I watched.

Sun Hai's face tightened in concentration. Cao Yan was breathing too fast. Mu Renshu had the sa open stillness he had shown at the river. Lin Zhi, paired with Sun Hai, took two breaths and then opened her eyes.

"He has a different signature than I do, Squad Captain. He is not from my family. He is not from any family I know. The signature is dry and cold like a dry winter field after the harvest is in. Mine is wet and dense like the inside of a barn in the spring."

"Good. Do not open your eyes again until I tell you to. Sun Hai. What do you feel."

Sun Hai's brow furrowed. He took three breaths. Then four. Then five.

"I feel sothing, Squad Captain. I do not know how to describe it. It is not the sa as my own. That is all I can say."

"That is enough. Hold it. Cao Yan. Mu Renshu. Switch. Now you breathe each other's signatures. Mu Renshu first."

They switched. Mu Renshu spoke without opening his eyes.

"Squad Captain, his signature is loud. It is hot in the way iron is hot when it has been working in the forge fire all morning. Mine is quiet. It is like the inside of a granary at midnight. We are not from the sa family."

I held the mont.

The boy had described not only the difference in signatures but the qualities of each one in language a southern hill tribesman would recognize. He had done it on his first attempt at a technique I had needed three weeks to master after Shan Pei first showed it to .

"Good. Cao Yan. Your turn."

Cao Yan opened his eyes for a breath. Then he closed them again. He breathed slowly through his nose. His face loosened.

"His is cold and quiet, Squad Captain. Mine is hot and loud. We are not from the sa family."

"All four of you. Open your eyes. Sit on the mats. Wei Bolin, release the draw."

Bolin released the draw. The ambient density in the room dropped to its baseline.

"You have just done in one morning what so practitioners take a season to learn. The reason is not that you are unusually gifted. The reason is that you ca to this room already screened by the Commander, and the screening selected for the specific awareness this work depends on. You felt the channels because you were chosen to be people who could feel them. Do not let this make you proud. The work that follows the awareness is the harder part."

I let them sit with that.

Then I said the next thing.

"Tomorrow we will run the sa exercise on a larger group. We will not run it here. We will go to the Pei clan compound on the western side of the river fork, and we will pair the four of you with mbers of the clan, one at a ti, and you will read the kinship signatures."

"Yes, Squad Captain."

I looked at Lin Zhi, because Lin Zhi had been watching the whole ti I had spoken.

"Lin Zhi, do you have a quesiton?"

"Squad Captain. Are we going to find people who do not belong to the clan..?"

I resisted the urge nod. She was definitely very intelligent.

"We may. If we do, you will say so quietly to , and you will not say so to anyone else. The exercise is cultivation practice. What we learn from it is mine to act on. Do you understand?”

"I understand, Squad Captain."

"Good. You are all dismissed.”

They stood, and they bowed to Bolin, and they bowed to , and they filed out of the curriculum room into the late afternoon.

I sat on the mat at the edge of the room after they had gone. Bolin sat across from . Neither of us spoke for a long breath.

Then I said it plainly.

"Tomorrow at the western compound, we are not running a cultivation exercise. We are running an intelligence sweep. I will be reading the sa signatures alongside the student, and I will be looking for the Qinghe soldiers who are still hiding inside the Pei clan. I am going to find any of them that remains and I am going to root them out."

Bolin did not look surprised at all, in fact, he looked relieved to hear it.

"That is the right call,” he said.

I held his eyes.

"Bolin, I owe you an apology. I failed the village, but I will not fail it again. No person and no clan is above the village, not even my own. If I have to chop the heads off of every Pei in Hekou to ensure peace for this place, then I shall do it."

Bolin sat with that for a breath.

His face did not move at first, and then it did. He looked stunned. He had not expected to hear what I had just said, and his expression said as much, then he eventually steadied himself and he nodded.

"You are in a hard position, Liang. I understand that. I will not pretend I have ever stood where you are standing. If you need a blade tomorrow, I will be your blade. I will read the signatures alongside you, and I will mark the nas you tell to mark, and I will swing the steel myself if it cos to that. You only have to ask."

"I appreciate the offer, Bolin, but I will not take it."

Wei Bolin raised a brow at my words. "Why?"

"Because the one who passes judgnt should be the one to wield the blade. And when it cos ti to their execution, I shall wield the blade in front of everyone."