Ch. 011| That Wall

After that trip, Lin Que lay in bed for 3 days.

His left eye took 3 days just to stop bleeding, and even when he shut it the back of the eye still burned; now and then things doubled when he looked at them. Harder to deal with was the heavy, sunken qi in his dantian, the breath the dead ground had pressed down—it sat there like a block of ice that would not melt, and it left his whole body weaker than before he had entered the rift.

The first day he all but slept like the dead. His dreams were nothing but that dead ground—the grey-white mist, the man-eating slivers, that eyeless thing that had come sliding after him the whole way. When he woke, the cold sweat on his back had soaked clean through the straw mat. He felt for the broken jade and the rift crystal hidden against his skin, made sure both were still there, and only then did his heart settle a little. That trip was one he had staked his life on and, by sheer luck, bought back.

The first day he did not dare go to Hundred Herbs. On the second he forced himself there, his left eye covered by a strand of hair, telling Shopkeeper Zhou he had tripped getting up to relieve himself in the night and knocked his head.

Shopkeeper Zhou did not call the lie out. Only those shrewd eyes paused a moment on the covered left eye, swept once over hands and feet that were half a beat slower than usual, and at the end he dropped a flat remark: "An apothecary boy's life is worth more than the gold his pills bring. Don't throw your life away for a few copper coins."

Lin Que bowed his head and answered yes. He knew Shopkeeper Zhou could tell he had been off somewhere far and come back none too lightly hurt—he simply had not asked. The one thing this shopkeeper ever cared about was the single matter of whether this apothecary boy could still mend his pills.

Lin Que did not point it out either. He was hurt just now, with both Black Wind Hall and the Xuanzhao Sect watching him; tucked away in the back courtyard of Hundred Herbs, his post as an apothecary boy drew the least notice. Shopkeeper Zhou wanted him for mending pills, he wanted Hundred Herbs to hide in—the bargain still came out fair on both sides.

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By the evening of the third day the burning behind his eye had eased somewhat, and the doubling had faded. Lin Que barred door and window and drew the broken jade out from the seam beneath his pillow.

He shut his eyes and turned this pair of tempered eyes on himself.

This time it was far clearer than it had been at the pauper's burial ground.

The rear stretch of the minor meridian below his left rib—the wound the Breathing Scroll had jarred open, the flaw that had stuck him for nearly two years—its whole outline lit up before his eyes, line by line: the shape of the gap, its depth, the direction it tore. He could even see that the root of this flaw lay in that tattered Breathing Scroll: the scroll itself was missing a passage, and where the qi ran on without guidance it had, over the long years, ground this very wound into his minor meridian. It had nothing to do with whether his bones were fine or whether he trained hard.

Half a lifetime spent looking at other people's flaws, and for the first time he saw his own this clearly.

He looked again at the broken jade in his palm.

The flaw on the jade opened and closed, and that thread of pure, rich living qi breathed slowly in and out along the gap. Lin Que brought the jade close to his left rib, and the living qi answered at once: the flaw on the jade and the flaw in his body called back and forth across the distance, like two things that had always been meant to fit together.

He had reasoned it through: to mend this flaw in his body, he needed a thread of qi pure enough, and able to match his own, to fill it. Ordinary pills, ordinary medicine—their qi was too muddled; poured in, it would only stretch the flaw wider. But the living qi in this jade was pure, and what was more—it answered him.

He thought of what Han had said: "The rift that answers you is the rift most set on keeping you." That this jade answered him likely had everything to do with that rift. But this was not something he could afford to dig into now—if it could mend a flaw, break a barrier, let him save up the funds to leave the market town that much faster, he would use it. As for what exactly ran between this jade, this eye, and that rift, that could wait until he stood on firm ground and had his life secure.

Mending another man's pill, a mistake cost only a pill; but this time what he mended was his own flaw, and one slip would cost this very life.

Lin Que did not dare rush.

First he worked the breathing art, drawing the qi up to the front of that flaw in his left rib, and held it there. Then, with the most exacting technique he used for mending pills, he guided the thread of living qi in the jade to seep into the flaw, slowly, ever so slowly.

One strand.

The flaw was like long-parched earth: the instant it touched the living qi, it drank it in greedily. A stab of pain went through Lin Que's left rib and cold sweat broke out on his brow in a heartbeat—the wound, jolted by the living qi, hurt worse at first, like a scabbed-over cut torn open again.

He clenched his teeth and did not stop, nor did he go faster. A fraction too much and the qi would run astray; a fraction too little and the flaw would not fill. He fixed those eyes wholly on the gap as it was filled bit by bit, his hand feeding the qi thread by thread, matched to the depth of the gap.

This technique he had mended pills with for 3 years, mended himself a steady hand. But when mending pills the pill was dead—get it wrong and start over; this time the gap was living flesh grown along his own meridian, and with every strand of living qi fed in, the wound dragged half his body into trembling. Sweat dripped from his chin onto the front of his robe; he did not dare so much as blink—one blur of the eye and the force of his hand might press a fatal fraction too hard.

Halfway through, the dead-ground qi sunk in his dantian suddenly stirred, surging up along the meridian to tangle with the thread of living qi.

Lin Que's heart went cold.

If he let the two streams of qi collide at the gap, at best all his work would be undone, at worst he would suffer qi deviation on the spot. He hastily split off half his attention and, by the method Han had taught him and the one he had felt his own way to over these years, forced that sunken breath back down—forced it until his vision went black and a coppery sweetness rose in his throat again.

Close. But the gap was mended.

In the instant the last thread of living qi filled the gap, the wound in his left rib that had stuck for nearly two years closed with a single soft crack.

The qi was through.

Lin Que felt the qi that had always run up to the top of the third layer, struck the wall, and flowed back—this time it ran along the mended minor meridian and flowed onward without the slightest snag. The wall he had struck for nearly two years split open down the middle into a door, and the qi poured out through it, spreading across meridians he had never been able to reach before.

It was a pleasure unlike any he had ever tasted. Where the qi reached, meridians dry for nearly two years came alive inch by inch, like long-parched land meeting rain. He could even "see" the channels inside him that had once been dark light up one by one, the qi running full and rich within them, no longer breaking after a few steps and turning back as it always had.

In his dantian, the qi that had been condensed at three layers rose, slowly and solidly, by one layer.

The fourth layer of Qi Condensation.

He opened his eyes, every meridian in his body carrying an ease it had never known. He raised a hand and closed it, and the qi in his palm was thicker, heavier than yesterday. He tried running a lesser heavenly cycle, and the qi passed the threshold it had always caught on smoothly, without a trace of resistance.

Broken through. The third layer of Qi Condensation that had stuck him for nearly two years was broken through.

He tried clenching his fist, then loosening it. The fourth layer's qi was richer than the third's, but he knew well that to a true master this much richness was still nothing worth speaking of—against a seventh-layer like Hu Biao he still could not win head-on. He had broken this layer not to flaunt strength or pick fights. All he wanted was to keep cultivating from here, to save up faster, to walk out of this market town that much sooner.

He lowered his eyes to the broken jade.

The flaw that had opened and closed on the jade was still now. That thread of pure, rich living qi had faded by more than half, and the jade's clear white had dulled a shade—most of the living qi had gone into the flaw in his left rib.

This jade had about reached its end mending this one layer. The flaw of the next layer would have to be mended by some other means.

He had worked another thing out: great as the fortune in these rifts was, it came at a price. One broken jade was only enough to mend one flaw, break one barrier; to go any higher meant either entering a rift again and gambling his life, or finding something else that could mend the next flaw. Han had it right—this road ran deeper than West Street, and more dangerous than it too.

But Lin Que did not mind in the least.

The third layer of Qi Condensation he had held for nearly two years, held to the edge of despair. Now, in a single night, he had broken through to the fourth—and what mattered more was that what he had mended was that flaw in his own cultivation method.

He tried guiding the qi through a lesser heavenly cycle. The qi rose from his dantian and ran inch by inch along the meridians, reaching the old flaw at his left rib—where, every time he had cultivated to this point before, the qi had struck a wall and flowed back, surging through the channel and driving cold sweat out of him. But this time the qi flowed smoothly through; the wall was gone, the flaw was level, like a river broken for two years that had finally rejoined its lower course.

That smoothness was something he had tasted for the first time in two years of cultivation. With his eyes shut he ran this newly won breath carefully through his meridians three times, and with each round the qi in his dantian grew a fraction richer. When he closed the work, his fingertips trembled faintly, and a steadiness he could not put into words rose up from the bottom of his heart.

He opened his eyes and turned the eyes that saw flaws inward, running them along his own meridians. The break at his left rib that had trapped him for two years was now smooth and even, not a trace of a crack left to find. To see his own flaw, and to mend it with his own hands—this road no one else had, he had walked through one stretch of for the first time. Earlier, at Hundred Herbs, he could not even have said why his qi always caught at the third layer; now he had not only seen that flaw clearly but filled it level with his own hands.

He gripped the dulled broken jade and sat a long while in the lamplight. Mending this flaw had spent more than half the living qi in the jade; now only the faintest thread was left, pressed against his palm, all but past feeling for warmth.

The rift crystal and the broken jade he tucked carefully into the hidden compartment under the bed. The rift crystal scalded the hand; Han had said that those who killed for a thing like this were crueler than that rift itself—how to put it out, and to whom, was a thing to be weighed out slowly hereafter. For now, he shut for a moment the eyes that saw flaws—after this night, the road under his feet had, in the end, moved one step forward.

The sky outside was paling, and it was the hour to go to work at Hundred Herbs again. Lin Que rose, tidied the strand of hair covering his left eye, and pushed the door open.

In the morning mist, the cries of the market town just opening for business carried from far off. He slipped into that thin run of voices, the way he had every other morning—an unremarkable apothecary boy, carrying a hand no one knew of, on his way to Hundred Herbs.

【Ch. 011 End · the rented room west of the city】