The days following the evaluation settled over Qinghe like a familiar, worn blanket. The brief storm of excitement and anxiety passed, and the village returned to its immutable rhythm—the slow, grinding wheel of survival. Men and women returned to their fields and chores, their conversations once again about the weather, the harvest, and the price of herbs. The grand destiny of the Sect of the Verdant Willow felt like a dream that had visited in the night and vanished by dawn.
For most.
For Yan Shen, the stillness was now a workshop. The evaluation had not been a disappointment; it had been a calibration. It had shown him the limitations of the world's standard measurements. He was not a faulty instrument; their ruler was simply too short. This knowledge was a fuel that burned with a cold, steady flame. His daily routines-gathering firewood, tending the small garden plot, playing with the other children, were all performed with a new layer of purpose. Every movement was a chance to study his body's mechanics, every moment of quiet a chance to listen.
Lanlan, however, carried a visible weight. The scroll given to her by Elder Yun was both a treasure and a chain. The hope in her eyes had been tempered by a furrow of concentration that never quite left her brow. She practiced diligently, secluding herself for hours each day, but frustration was beginning to etch itself onto her features.
On the evening of the third day, as the sun bled orange and purple behind the Qiling Mountains, she found him under their pine tree. Her steps were hesitant, her usual quiet grace replaced by a tense uncertainty. The scroll was pressed tightly against her chest as if she were afraid it might fly away.
She didn't sit down immediately. She stood before him, her expression open and troubled. "I can't do it," she admitted, her voice low, almost ashamed. "The third breathing pattern. It says to draw the breath in for four counts, hold for seven, and release for eight. But when I try, my chest gets tight. It feels… wrong. Like I'm trying to swallow a stone. And the loop it describes, the one that's supposed to circle from the navel down and back… I can't feel it. It just feels like I'm imagining it. It doesn't want to move."
She finally held the scroll out to him, her fingers trembling slightly. "Can you look? Maybe you'll see something I missed."
Yan Shen looked at her, then at the scroll. He understood what she was offering. This was her future, her only key, and she was trusting him with it. He accepted it carefully, his grip respectful. The parchment was older than it looked, its edges softened by time, but the sect's preservation techniques had kept it intact. The silk ribbon felt smooth and cool against his skin.
He unrolled it across his knees. The characters were not flamboyant or complex; they were simple, stark, and precise, written in a steady hand that valued clarity over artistry. This was not a text for geniuses; it was a manual for building a foundation, block by boring, essential block.
His eyes moved across the text, not reading, but absorbing. He processed the information in layers.
The breathing rhythm was indeed measured and deliberate, designed to expand lung capacity and calm the heart-mind.
The seated posture was for maximum stability and alignment, to create a vessel that wouldn't leak.
The three basic circulation paths were the simplest, safest routes for vital Qi to travel, avoiding complex meridian gates that a beginner could damage.
The mantra was a tool to focus the conscious mind, to stop it from interfering with the subconscious process of energy movement.
It was all profoundly… basic. And therein lay its genius. There was no room for error, no room for ego. It was a recipe for creating a perfectly blank, stable slate. It was everything his past life's chaotic seeking had not been.
He read it through once, then again, then a third time, committing the essence of it to the vast library of his memory. He wasn't just memorizing the steps; he was reverse-engineering the intent behind them.
Finally, he rolled the scroll back up and handed it to her. "It's good," he said, his voice soft but certain. "The method is solid. It's meant to feel restrictive at first. Your body isn't used to breathing with purpose. You're trying to force a river through a dry creek bed. You should keep practicing. I know it's hard now, but everything is hard at first."
Lanlan's shoulders slumped slightly, not in relief, but in acceptance of the grind ahead. She had hoped for a secret trick, a hidden clue he had found. "So, I should just be more patient?" she asked, a note of resignation in her voice.
Yan Shen gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug. "Yes. Let's see how it feels in a week. Sometimes the body needs time to understand the instructions."
It was vague advice, but it was the only truth he could offer. The path of cultivation was one of relentless repetition. She searched his face for a moment, then let out a soft, frustrated laugh. "Okay. A week." The sound was light, clear, as if simply sharing the burden had already lessened its weight. She turned and walked back toward her home, the scroll once again held securely against her.
That night, after the last cooking fires had died to embers and the village was sunk in deep sleep, Yan Shen returned to the base of the old pine. The world was bathed in silver moonlight, and the wind whispered secrets through the needles above. He sat, not in the exact posture described in the scroll, but in a way that felt naturally aligned to his own body. He didn't force his spine ramrod straight; he let it find a comfortable, open curve. He didn't place his hands precisely over his navel; he let them rest loosely in his lap.
He began to breathe.
But he wasn't following the scroll.
He was using it as a starting point for his own experiment.
He inhaled slowly, drawing the cool night air deep into his lungs, but he didn't count. He simply listened to the feeling of fullness. He held his breath, not for a count of seven, but for as long as it felt natural, savoring the stillness at the peak of the breath. He exhaled fully, feeling the release of tension, and then he waited. He lingered in that empty pause at the bottom of the breath, the space the scroll had only mentioned in passing. He explored that silence, that void.
He imagined the Qi paths not as rigid, prescribed loops, but as gentle, inviting channels. He didn't try to push energy through them. He simply offered them as a route, a suggestion to the faint currents he knew were already there.
He was listening. Not with his ears, but with his entire being. Listening to the hum of the earth beneath him. Listening to the lunar Qi filtering down through the pine boughs. Listening to the subtle, inner workings of his own body.
He was not cultivating. He was conversing.
And then, it happened.
A flicker.
It was so subtle it was almost nothing. A sensation like a single drop of cool water tracing a path along the inside of his forearm. It wasn't heat or cold, but a distinct presence, a whisper of something that was not blood, not nerve impulse, but other.
It was gone as quickly as it came.
Not enough to be called Qi movement. Not enough to be a breakthrough.
But it was real.
It was an answer. The first silent reply in a conversation he had been starting for seven years.
Yan Shen didn't jerk or gasp. He didn't try to chase the feeling. He simply acknowledged it, a slight, internal nod. He kept his eyes closed, his breathing steady, and let the moment stretch into the silence.
He knew, with a certainty that went to his very core, that this was not an end. It was a beginning. And the path ahead would not be found by blindly following another's map. It would be carved by his own patient, relentless listening. The flicker in the dark was a promise, and he was a man who knew how to keep a promise to himself.