第 020 Ch.| Breaking Out of the Ward

Sun Heng's fist came on the wind, driving straight at Lin Que's face.

Lin Que did not watch the fist. His eyes—freshly mended to the fifth layer, sharper now by a whole degree than before—were fixed, unblinking, on the old hidden injury beneath Sun Heng's right ribs, that wound he had carried a lifetime. That flaw.

With the qi of the fifth layer flowing through him, his feet had, for the first time, the faintest touch of "quickness." Just that faint touch—enough to turn his body half an inch, to let the cruelest edge of the punch slide past. The wind of the fist grazed his ear and slammed, with a crack, into the alley wall behind him; broken stone spattered across his face.

That half-inch of time was all it took.

Lin Que closed in. The whittled wooden sliver he had carried against his body for days now followed the line his eyes saw clear as day, and drove hard into that flaw beneath Sun Heng's right ribs.

Sun Heng's body was tempered through, his hide thick and his flesh tough; blade and sword alike won little against him. But that hidden injury was the one dead corner his iron-body training had never reached—an inner wound torn open in the desperate years of his youth, scabbed over, pressed down beneath the deepest layer of his flesh, until even he had all but forgotten it was still there. The wooden sliver was short and could not pierce his tempered flesh, yet it was just enough to stab into the old wound's scab—the one gate on his whole body that no iron-body training shielded.

The instant the sliver's tip broke through the scab, a shudder ran through Sun Heng's whole frame.

That old wound, pressed down for years, was bored clean through by this one thrust. A dull pain burst out from his right ribs, raced up along the qi of his tempered body; and his brute strength, in that moment, went slack as though the sinews had been pulled from him, scattering most of itself away. Sun Heng gave a muffled grunt, his knees buckled, and he sank to a half-kneel, one hand clamped hard over his right ribs, blood seeping out between his fingers.

"You…" He raised his head, his eyes full of both pain and disbelief. "How did you… know…"

Lin Que did not answer.

He backed off two steps, breathing hard, his back drenched in cold sweat. He had just forced a single breath of qi to mend the fifth layer, then spent his all on this one thrust; the flaw beneath his left ribs, only just closed, throbbed faintly with heat, and his organs felt as though a hand had seized and wrung them through. Darkness washed over his eyes in waves. That half-inch just now, that one thrust—had any part of it been off by a hair, the one lying on the ground unable to rise would have been him. In raw strength, ten of him together were no match for Sun Heng. That he could win today rested entirely on these eyes that could see the flaw, and on the wooden sliver that had gone in just as Sun Heng overextended a punch and left the gate of his old wound wide open.

Sun Heng was still kneeling on the ground, the bored-through old wound dragging on the whole meridian; he would not be rising soon. But he was, after all, a master of iron-body tempering—catch his breath, and he might well give chase again.

Lin Que did not dare to look a second time. He turned and walked. Han Bosheng's words rang again at his ear—don't linger, don't look back. He plunged into the flow of people outside the dead-end alley and left far behind him that Sun Heng, half-kneeling in his own blood, cursing in a rasping voice.

---

The market-ward was in chaos.

The Xuanzhao Sect had sealed off Black Wind Hall; along West Street and the South Market there were men hauling crates, men gawking, men slipping away in the disorder. The blue robes of the enforcement disciples wove back and forth through the crowd, shouting to clear the way. Head down, Lin Que folded himself into the chaos and edged along with the flow toward the ward gate.

The nearer he drew to the ward gate, the tighter his heart wound.

At the ward gate there were two more Xuanzhao Sect enforcement disciples than usual, checking each person leaving the ward. Lin Que knew well enough that the black mark of "the cursed-pill apprentice boy" hanging over his head had not yet been cleared; and though Shen Ningshuang had turned her blade on Black Wind Hall, the disciples under her hand might not, every one of them, take him for "one of their own." Should he be stopped, questioned about where he came from—an apprentice boy who had just traded blows with a Black Wind Hall steward, with a black-market qualification charm tucked in his robe—three sentences would give him away.

He felt for the qualification charm inside his robe.

When it was his turn, the enforcement disciple looked him up and down. "What are you leaving the ward for?"

"To the Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate, for the examination." Lin Que lowered his eyes and held out the qualification charm, his voice neither loud nor soft. "The charm's here."

The enforcement disciple took the charm and gave it a glance—it bore the qi-seal of the Xuanzhao Sect's own outer gate, no faking that. His expression eased, and he handed the charm back, waving a hand. "Go on."

Lin Que put the charm away and stepped out through the ward gate, unhurried.

Not until the wall of the market-ward lay half a li behind him did the breath he had held the whole way slowly ease loose. He looked back once. The drab, ashen wall of Qingqi Market stood quietly in the morning light, and within it were the waste-pill vats he had toiled over for three years, was Shopkeeper Zhou, was Black Wind Hall, was that rift that had eaten men.

In that market-ward he had been, for three years, an apprentice boy no one cared about. Today he walked out through this gate with a qualification charm in his robe, the qi of the fifth layer of Qi Condensation running through his meridians, and these eyes—taken since childhood for some strange affliction—turned into a power no one else had.

He looked no longer, but turned and set off in the direction of the Xuanzhao Sect.

---

The Xuanzhao Sect lay sixty li to the northeast of Qingqi Market, built against a mountain of green stone cliffs.

By the time Lin Que arrived, it was past noon. The outer-gate examination was set on an open drill ground at the foot of the mountain, where rogue cultivators who had come from afar gathered in twos and threes along its edge, waiting for their charms to be checked and their names called. Lin Que handed over his qualification charm, was given a wooden token with a number written on it, found himself an inconspicuous corner, and crouched down to wait.

He was sitting head down, gathering his spirit, when the far end of the drill ground fell suddenly still.

A woman in blue robes came at an even pace down the mountain path.

She wore the moon-white close-cut garb of the Xuanzhao Sect, a thin pale-green cloak over it, and at her waist hung a plain-sheathed long sword. She was no more than a little past twenty, her brows and eyes cool and clear, her skin the kind of pale that comes of seldom meeting much sun; and there was in her carriage a still, keep-your-distance composure all her own. A few of the rogue cultivators at the edge of the ground knew her, and passed it along in low voices: that was a true-line disciple of this generation of the Xuanzhao Sect—Bai Heng, Senior Sister Bai.

Bai Heng had come to oversee the outer-gate examination. Her gaze swept lightly across the rogue cultivators in the ground, resting on no one for long.

When it reached the apprentice boy crouched in the corner, Lin Que's left eye gave a sudden flush of heat.

He raised his eyes and, very quickly, without a flicker of expression, looked Bai Heng over.

In that one glance, he saw it.

The qi all about Bai Heng was smooth, near to perfect—that was the foundation only a great sect's true-line disciple could cultivate. Yet at one point in the turning of her qi, very deep, very hidden, there was a snag no one else could ever make out. Like a smooth-running stream that, reaching a certain bend, has always one instant where it does not flow free. That flaw was hidden exceedingly well; even Bai Heng herself most likely took it for nothing more than "a threshold in cultivation"—one she could not get past, yet could not say why she could not.

Something stirred in Lin Que's heart, and at once he lowered his eyes.

It was none of his business. For a rogue cultivator just out of the ward, his footing not yet steady, to lay bare the flaw of a Xuanzhao Sect true-line disciple was to weary of living. He pressed that flicker of a thought, along with the flaw he had seen, back down into his heart.

But he had, in the end, lowered his eyes half a breath too slow.

Bai Heng's cool, clear eyes fell upon him in just that moment.

She had looked at many people. These rogue cultivators on the ground, on seeing her, were either fawning, or cowed, or putting on a forced calm. This one apprentice boy crouched in the corner alone—in that glance just now there had been nothing at all, as though, rather, he were looking at some thing others could not see. And in the instant those eyes swept over her, she felt, inexplicably, the illusion of having been "seen through" in some way.

Bai Heng's brows knit, almost imperceptibly.

She let her gaze rest a breath longer on the apprentice boy's face. That face was plain and unremarkable, drab and ashen, the most overlookable kind in the market-ward. Yet the qi about him was, again, somehow not right—a rogue cultivator at the fifth layer of Qi Condensation ought to have meridians that still carried the stumbling, floating quality of low-level cultivation; his qi, though, was steady, steady in a way no fresh-entered rogue cultivator's should be, as though it had been… mended, flaw by flaw, with painstaking care.

"Those whose charms have been checked, gather over here." A steward disciple calling the roll gave a shout, and the drill ground stirred to life again.

Bai Heng drew back her gaze and turned toward the raised platform at the edge of the ground. She did not look at the apprentice boy a second time.

Yet a few steps on, she glanced back, very lightly, once more at that corner.

The apprentice boy had already melted into the gathering crowd, head down, no longer to be picked out.

---

Lin Que stood in the line of examinees, a thin film of sweat still seeping from the back of his neck.

That moment just now had been too close. He had not thought Bai Heng would look back at him, still less that this mended qi of his could not be hidden from the eye of a Xuanzhao Sect true-line disciple. It seemed that hereafter these eyes of his, this cultivation come by crooked paths, would have to be hidden deeper still than they had been in the market-ward.

The line edged slowly forward. Ahead, a rogue cultivator stepped up onto the platform and, at the steward's bidding, pressed one palm to a green stone half a man's height, channeling qi into it. Several carved lines on the green stone lit up; they lit to the third line, then dimmed—that rogue cultivator's cultivation fell short, and with a shake of the head he was cut.

Lin Que watched with lowered eyes, and that spot of heat beneath his left eye swept, beyond his control, across the green stone. Among the few carved lines that gauged qi on the stone there was, in fact, an exceedingly fine flaw hidden as well, one that drew the qi to snag the moment it ran there. Something stirred in his heart, and again he pressed it swiftly down—a thing of the Xuanzhao Sect, this he could touch even less. Just out of one market-ward, he had no wish, on his very first day, to let anyone know he could see a fault even in this qi-checking stone.

He bowed his head and looked at the wooden token with its number in his hand. This small, unremarkable wooden token was the entry he had won back with one peril at the fifth layer of Qi Condensation, one piece of old jade, and half his life. Only when he gripped it tight did he truly feel it—that he had, after all, walked out of that market-ward that had penned him in for three years.

He raised his eyes; the buildings of the Xuanzhao Sect upon the green-cliff mountain lay veiled in cloud. Within were complete methods, true inheritance—and also waters deeper than the market-ward's, eyes sharper than its. He had walked out of one market-ward, and the place he was stepping into was far larger, and far more perilous.

"The Xuanzhao Sect outer-gate examination—examinees of this session, come forward by token number—" The steward disciple unfurled the register and called the names in a clear, ringing voice.

Lin Que gripped the wooden token tight and took a step forward.

His turn would come soon.

【Ch. 020 End · the South Market dead-end alley → the Qingqi ward gate → the Xuanzhao Sect outer gate】