Cultivating Common Sense In A Xianxia World Chapter 63: Steady

We ca through the eastern gate of Hekou at the third notch of the afternoon on the sixth day out.

The watch saw us first, and then the village. Children ran ahead to tell the clinic, and by the ti we crossed the bridge the path was already lined with people who had stepped out of their work to watch us pass. None of them spoke. The cohort walked behind in the loose formation they had carried since the cave, and they did not speak either, and the village watched us go by the way a village watches a hard thing return.

Suyin was on the clinic porch.

She had co out when the children had reached her. She had her cloak on now, pinned at the throat, her hair pinned tight.

I did not stop walking. I crossed the last twenty paces, climbed the three steps, reached into the inner pouch I had sewn into the lining of my cloak before we left, and pulled out the stone.

She looked at it in awe, then nodded and turned, and I followed her into the clinic.

Hao was on the bed where I had left him.

His skin was paler than it had been six days ago. The cloth Suyin had been using to wipe him was folded at the foot of the bed, and a fresh basin of warm water sat beside it. The wet-iron sll I had slled the morning I left was thinner now, but still there. The film of dark had built into a faint sheen across his forehead and the inside of his arms.

I sat on the stool beside him, and Suyin sat across from on the opposite side of the bed. The cohort and Bolin stood at the threshold without coming inside.

"Open his hand," I said.

Suyin lifted Hao's left hand from the bed and turned the palm up, and the fingers fell loose. I placed the stone in the cup of his palm and closed his fingers around it as gently as I could. His hand was cold. The stone had ward in the pouch against my chest, and the warmth of it against his cold palm made hold my breath for the length of a count.

I opened my channels and reached for him.

The stone began to glow.

It rose slowly at first, a pale grey-blue at the inside of his fist where the stone touched skin, then brighter, climbing into the blue I had seen in my own palm at the cave. The light spread up through the ridians of his forearm in thin moving lines, the way water finds the cracks in stone, and I watched it move through his channels with my cultivation open.

"It is moving up the forearm channel," I said. "It is finding the heart channel. The heart channel is closed. The stone is opening it from the outside in."

Suyin's hand was at her mouth.

The light reached his chest. It spread along the line of his sternum and out across the collarbones, and the dark film that had been on the skin there began to lift. It ca up in slow runnels, the wet-iron sheen rising through the pores and then falling back through them in reverse, the way a tide pulls. I watched it draw inward toward the channels rather than out.

The light at the inside of his forearm began to dim. The dark gloss of the stone deepened in his palm, and the blue went grey, and the grey went almost black, and the polish on the stone turned glassy. The runnels of dark sheen on Hao's skin slowed and then stopped. The wet-iron sll faded out of the room over the course of a long breath.

His color ca fully back.

He was still unconscious, and the lines under his eyes were still deep, two months' worth of lines that had been worn into him on the bed. But the grey that had been in his face since the night of the fires was gone, and his skin looked like skin again instead of paper.

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I closed my channels and lifted his hand from the bed, eased my fingers loose, and lifted the stone out of his palm. It was glossy and dark and warm, and it had no glow left in it. It had taken what it could take. I set it on the cloth beside the bed and looked at Suyin.

She shook her head, and her hand reached across the bed and closed around mine.

"Thank you."

I held her hand and did not say anything else for a long while.

The cohort and Bolin had stepped back from the threshold without my hearing them. The clinic was quiet. Outside the door, the late afternoon light was on the porch boards, and a child sowhere across the commons was calling another child by na.

After a long ti, Suyin spoke.

"I will look after him the rest of the way."

A smile creased my face. "I know you will."

She lifted my hand from the bed and pressed her lips to the back of it, then lowered it and returned both her hands to her lap as I rose.

I ca out onto the porch.

The cohort had taken positions at the four corners of the clinic yard without being told. Bolin was at the bridge, looking out across the river toward the western road we had co down an hour ago. None of them asked.

"He is steady, but he has not woken yet. The rest is up to him."

Lin Zhi nodded once. Mu Renshu's shoulders set forward. Cao Yan exhaled with relief. Sun Hai stayed still.

"Go to the curriculum room and rest. I will co to you at the first notch tomorrow."

They went along with Wei Bolin.

I crossed the commons toward the garrison, because Fei Liao had to be told that I was back, and because I wanted to be told whatever had co down from Lanyu in the six days I had been gone.

Fei Liao was at his table when I entered the garrison, and he looked up at without rising.

"Squad Captain. You returned alive."

"As did the rest of us, Lieutenant."

"How's your brother?" He asked .

"His condition is stable, but he has not yet awakened."

"That is good news," Fei Liao said. It was hard for to discern if his words were genuine or not. He then gestured for to take a seat.

I sat across from him, and he poured a cup of hot water and pushed it toward , then let drink before he spoke again.

"There has been a courier from Lanyu while you were gone. The Commander has signed your petition to advance the corridor and she has nad the month."

I waited for him to go on.

"The march on ishan begins at Final Frost. The Western Reaches army is moving out of Lanyu within the next quarter, and we will et them at a staging point west of Chianji village. The orders for our part of it are coming on the next courier, and they will be here within a month."

"How soon does the militia move?" I asked.

"Soon. Sooner than I would have liked." Fei Liao admitted.

"What should we do to prepare?"

"In the anti, the Commander has ordered the River Fork Academy to continue its training. She wants the next round of students enrolled and on the cycle by the ti the marching orders co down. The Academy is to keep running until the day the order to march is given."

"Understood, Lieutenant."

"Go ho and rest up, Squad Captain. You will not get another night this quiet for so ti."

I rose and thanked him, and I went.

The curriculum room was lit when I crossed the commons. The cohort had set the lamp at the eastern wall and sat in a half-circle around it. They were eating together and talking quietly among themselves. I let them be.

I crossed back over the bridge and returned to the clinic instead.

The lamp at the front room had burned low. The back room where Hao lay was lit only by the last grey of the afternoon at the south window. Suyin had not gone ho. She had pulled the low stool against the side of the bed, set her elbows on the edge of the mattress, and laid her head down on her forearms beside Hao's hand. Her breath was slow and even.

She had fallen asleep there.

I stood at the doorway and watched her sleep for a breath, then crossed to the wall where my own travel cloak still hung from the hook I had set it on coming in. I lifted it down and draped it over her shoulders, careful not to brush her arm, and tucked the hem at her waist so it would stay through the night. I did not wake her.

I crossed to the bed and stood over Hao a breath longer. His breathing was steadier than it had been when I had left him in the morning.

I went out through the front room without making a sound, eased the door shut behind , and stepped down onto the porch.

The commons was dark. The Pei households across the river were lit at their windows. Hao's wives and the children would be at the senior household with Pei Tao tonight, and I had not seen any of them in six days. I wanted to look at the children's faces before I slept. I wanted a hot al at a real table and a cup of sothing warm.

I stepped off the porch and started across the commons.