Characters in this chapter.
Pei Liang — Squad Captain over the cultivators.
Wei Bolin — Head of clinic operations.
Lin Zhi, Sun Hai, Cao Yan, Mu Renshu — the second cohort.
We reached the cave at the first notch of the afternoon.
The road climbed a low ridge, dropped through a thin stand of pine, and ended at a clearing where the rock face opened in a narrow split between two shoulders of grey stone. The mouth was no wider than a man with his arms held out, and the air there was a quarter colder than the air behind us. I felt the Qi rise against my chest with each pace I took. By the ti I stood at the mouth, drawing breath felt like drawing it through warm honey.
I turned to the cohort.
"The air inside will be heavier than anything you have felt. That is the Qi pooling in the chamber. Breathe the cycle as we walk and let your channels open to it the way you opened them to the river."
Lin Zhi nodded. Mu Renshu's shoulders set forward. Sun Hai was already looking past into the dark, and his eyes had narrowed.
Bolin struck a flint and a small oil lamp caught. He lifted it to chest height.
"After you, Squad Captain."
The cave widened past the mouth into a single chamber the size of a small barn. The lamp showed a far wall pale and damp, with mineral wet running down it from sowhere above. The floor was packed silt, smooth from generations of slow water.
At the center, the Qi pooled. None of us could see it. The air looked the sa at the center as at the edges. But the weight pressed against my chest like a hand, firm and steady.
Cao Yan drew a sharp breath behind . He raised one hand palm-out at his sternum, and the hand was shaking.
"That is the Qi," I said. "Your channels are opening to it faster than they opened to anything at the river. Breathe through it."
He breathed and the shaking eased.
I closed my eyes and reached out with my cultivation, feeling for the densest points the way I had been learning to feel for kinship signatures. I found them at once. Three places along the eastern wall where the Qi was not pooled but condensed, drawn into itself the way water freezes around an anchor stone in a slow river.
"There," I pointed.
The stones were set into the rock at chest height, three of them in a rough column, dark grey and the size of small apples. The Qi pooling around them had polished them smooth.
Wei Bolin held the lamp closer. "They are larger the one we brought back before. Which ones will you take?"
"Two. One for Hao, and another one that we can take back to the Academy for further study."
Bolin shrugged. He did not argue. He held the lamp steady while I reached for the top stone. It ca loose with a small dry sound, and the Qi tripled against my palm the mont my hand closed around it, flowing into steady and unhurried without having to draw on it.
"Make it three," I said.
Bolin raised an eyebrow.
"I want to test the cohort's affinities before we walk ho. This one stays with until I do."
I worked the lower two stones loose and set all three in the fold of cloth Bolin held open for .
I gathered the cohort with a simple gesture and they ford a half-circle around .
"Watch. I am going to test the stone on myself before I take one to Hao. If sothing goes wrong, Bolin breaks contact, and I tell you what I felt. If nothing goes wrong, I let it run and release it. Either way, you see what the stone does."
I sat with the stone on my open palm, and I opened my channels.
The draw beca a current the mont my channels opened. My dantian filled in three breaths to the level it had reached after two months of river training, and then it filled past that, and then it kept filling even more.
I routed the surplus up through the heart channel and out through the breath. The cycle held, but the volu was at the edge of what it could move. I lowered my breathing and I extended the exhale. I pulled the excess down toward the lower ridians where it could rest.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The flow steadied yet the Qi from the stone had not slowed. The flow steadied only because I had made it do so. The stone was a definite boost to my cultivation, but to what degree, I could not say for sure.
Bolin had stepped closer, his hand hovering at my wrist, ready to break contact. I did not give the signal.
I held it for twenty breaths and found that the Qi ca already condensed and it did not need refining.
The lower ridians began to ache from the unaccustod reserve. I drew back, slowed the flow, and lifted the stone from my palm, closing the connection.
I opened my eyes.
"Well?" Bolin asked.
"It is stronger than I thought. A lot stronger. The Qi in it is already worked through, so it pours in finished. I did not have to refine any of it. All I had to do was keep up with how fast it ca."
"Looked like it nearly got away from you," Bolin observed.
"It did, for a breath. I had to slow my breathing down to stay ahead of it."
"And you still want to put one of these under Hao's hand?" He asked wearily.
"Yes. He has been pushing the impurities out of his body on his own. I am hoping the stone will help him flush them out quicker. That is all it has to do. The rest his body can handle on its own."
Bolin nodded.
I wrapped the top stone in oiled cloth and tucked it into the pouch I had sewn into my cloak. It sat against my chest. The middle stone, the Academy's, went into the side of the pack. The third I kept in my hand.
I had the cohort sit in a half-circle where the Qi pooled densest.
"This will be the opposite of what I did. I drew Qi from the stone into myself. You will push your Qi into the stone. When your Qi enters it, the stone should show your affinity through color. Hold the stone in your palm and let a thread of your Qi pass into the stone."
I gestured to Lin Zhi first.
She took the stone, closed her eyes, and breathed. The grey of the stone ward under her fingers, deepening to the green of new barley before the heads turn gold. The glow lit the underside of her chin.
"Wood," I said. "Your affinity is wood, Lin Zhi."
She opened her eyes and looked down at the green light in her palm. Her face moved through three expressions in the space of a breath. "The barley fields outside Heying. I used to walk into them at the end of the eighth month when the wind moved through them. I felt the wind was , and I was the wind. I never knew what to call that."
"You do now."
She bowed and returned to her place, the green fading from the stone as she handed it back.
I gestured to Sun Hai.
He took the stone. His shoulders dropped. The stone cooled in his palm to a clear deep blue, the blue of the river under a winter sky.
"Water," I said. "The sa as mine."
Sun Hai looked at . The line of his mouth softened. "I used to lie on the bank above the bend at the south end of the village when I was small. I would stay there until my mother called in," he said fondly.
I lifted the stone from his palm.
I gestured to Cao Yan.
He took the stone and closed his eyes. The stone hardened to a bright white in his hand, the color of a blade held to the grindstone, cold and edged.
"tal."
He drew a slow breath. "My father has been working the forge since before I could walk. I have been carrying iron for him since I was tall enough to lift it."
I nodded at him.
He bowed deeper than he had before and returned to his place.
I gestured to Mu Renshu.
He took the stone and breathed. The chamber grew warr around him, the change in the feel of the Qi rather than the air. The stone burned to a deep red-orange in his fist, the color of iron pulled from the coals just before it is struck.
"Fire."
He looked at the stone, then at . "The garrison forges burned day and night. I grew up sleeping a hundred paces from them. I figured that my affinity would be tal too, but it makes sense that it's actually fire."
"It is."
I turned to Bolin.
"Your turn."
I set the stone in his palm and he closed his eyes.
The Qi flowed into him, and the air around him changed in a way I could not na. The stone in his palm glowed, but the glow did not settle. It moved through green and blue and white and red and a fifth color I could not make out. The light turning over in his hand like water that could not decide which direction to run.
His eyes opened.
"Bolin. You carry more than one," I said to him.
He looked at the stone in his palm. The colors were still moving through it.
"How many?" He asked.
"I cannot count them. At least four. Maybe even all five."
The cohort ca alive behind .
Lin Zhi spoke first. "All five?! That sounds like a gift few cultivators ever get."
"It would be amazing," Cao Yan said.
I shook my head before they could go further.
"It is not a gift. It is a disadvantage. Imagine five ropes braided together in your hand. The man with one rope pulls and gets all the strength of it. The man with five tangled ropes pulls and gets nothing, because each rope catches onto the others. Before Bolin can draw on any one of his affinities, he has to untangle it from the other four."
Bolin had not lifted his eyes from the stone.
"That explains a great deal, Liang," he said, quietly. "When you first started teaching cultivation, it took longer to grasp it than it should have. I had thought I was slow."
"You were not slow. You were carrying more than you could sort."
He looked up at .
"Once you untangle them," I said, "you will be a cultivator unlike any other."
He nodded once. He did not say anything else. He handed the stone back to , and the colors faded as it left his palm.
We walked out of the chamber.
The sun had moved past the western shoulder of the ridge by the ti we reached the cave mouth, and the cohort moved with a quieter weight than they had carried walking in. Bolin built the fire at the edge of the clearing. We ate the dried rations Suyin had packed for us, the salted strips of pork and the hard bread that had been baked the morning we left.
I let them eat. Then I spoke.
"I want to ask you sothing. After your training is done, I would like the four of you to stay in Hekou. To make the village your ho for as long as you would like to be here. Would you like to stay in Hekou?"
The four of them looked at each other, exchanging glances, which made believe that they had thought this over before.
They nodded.
I figured that they would agree, but I was still happy nonetheless as I nodded back.
"There is more. One day, the River Fork Academy will not stay an academy. It will beco a sect, a place where cultivators from every walk of life will co to learn, independent of the Western Reaches."
The fire popped, and the cohort did not speak. The gravity of my words weighed heavily on their minds, but their eyes showed determination and awe, realizing that a great honor would be bestowed upon them.
"Lin Zhi, Sun Hai, Cao Yan, Mu Renshu. I na you all the founding disciples of the River Fork Sect."
User Comments
0 comments from readers