Ch. 021| A Flaw in the Stone

The Xuanzhao Sect's outer-gate examination was held on an open drill ground at the foot of Green Wall Mountain.

Behind the drill ground, Green Wall Mountain rose straight up out of the earth, and where clouds and mist wreathed its midslope, a stretch of flying eaves and towered halls showed dimly through—that was the Xuanzhao Sect's mountain gate. Lin Que gazed at it from afar, and for the first time it became real to him: the place he was about to enter was somewhere like this. Set against that drab, low wall of Qingqi Market, even the sky here seemed to sit a notch higher.

Lin Que arrived at the hour of the Dragon, handed over his qualification tally, took the wooden token stamped with his number, found an inconspicuous corner at the edge of the ground, and crouched down to wait. The rogue cultivators who came to be tested arrived in a swarming throng, a hundred or more, gathered in threes and fives—mostly low-tier rogue cultivators who had scraped together enough stake from one market town or another and wanted to gamble on a proper sect's lineage. Some were finely dressed, plainly the sons of some market town's rich household; some were drab like him, carrying their whole worldly fortune to gamble on a way to live; and some were old rogue cultivators graying at the temples, who had toiled half a lifetime and were taking one last bet. Crouching in his corner, Lin Que looked them over without a flicker of expression—hereafter, in the outer gate, some of these would be fellow disciples, and some would be men who climbed up by treading on him.

He crouched there until midday, when a youth sidled up beside him. Sixteen or seventeen, thin as a bean sprout, in a short jacket washed pale, but with an excitement on his face he could not hide.

"You here for the outer-gate exam too, brother?" The youth was easy with strangers. "I'm Fang Qi, from Yingchuan. And you?"

Lin Que gave a name and said little more.

But Fang Qi was a chatterbox and ran on of his own accord. He said he had saved spirit stones for three years and walked the better part of half a month to reach the Xuanzhao Sect; said that although the Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate was only the outer gate of a small sect, it was at least a proper lineage, a hundred times better than scraping along with back-alley rogue cultivators in a market town; said that once you got into the outer gate, there was the orthodox art, the Xuanzhao Breathing Art, to cultivate, and monthly spirit stones to draw, and with luck, if you showed your face at the inner-gate grand contest, you might even gamble your way to the rank of an inner-gate disciple.

Lin Que listened, and quietly filed the useful bits away in his mind. Trapped in the market town this past half year, he was wholly in the dark about the outer gate's rules; Fang Qi's running prattle spared him no small effort of asking around.

"Oh, right," Fang Qi suddenly dropped his voice, all mystery, "have you heard? This Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate, lately it isn't quite—"

Before he could finish, a steward disciple sang out a name—it was Fang Qi's number being called.

"My turn!" Fang Qi sprang up at once, rubbing his hands, nervous and excited. "Brother, wait till I pass—we'll meet again in the outer gate!"

He scurried off to the slab of green stone at the center of the drill ground.

---

It was a slab of green stone half a man's height, and from bottom to top its face was carved with ring after ring of grooved lines. A rogue cultivator being tested would press a hand to it and channel his qi—however many layers of Qi Condensation his qi reached, that was how many rings would light up. The Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate took people from the third layer of Qi Condensation upward. But the third layer was a threshold, not a guarantee—this year the rogue cultivators who came to be tested swarmed in a dense throng, while the outer gate's openings were only so many; the higher one lit the stone, the sooner he was taken, and once the quota filled, it closed. Those who could not light the third ring were struck out on the spot, their names not even worth recording.

Fang Qi pressed his hand to the green stone, gathered his qi to the full, and the grooved lines lit ring by ring, reaching the third ring, where they came cleanly to a stop—not wavering, not hollow.

"Third layer of Qi Condensation. Seated steady." The steward disciple noted it down. "One fewer opening at the third layer this year."

Fang Qi was so pleased he nearly jumped, turned back and waved hard toward Lin Que, then was herded off to collect his token, looking back at every step.

After Fang Qi, several more went up—some lit three rings, some lit two and a half and were struck out on the spot. Then it came to a stout, hard-built man, and Lin Que saw at a glance that this was a solid fourth-layer foundation of Qi Condensation. Yet when the man pressed his hand to the green stone and gathered his qi to the full, the grooved lines lit only to three and a half rings, and the fourth ring would not flood up no matter what. His face flushed crimson; he channeled again, and still he was stuck on that half ring, the grooved lines flickering bright and dark, hollow and unsteady.

"Three and a half rings." The steward knit his brow. "A half ring does not count—the qi floats between two layers, cannot seat steady; it is the look of qi deviation. Reckoned by whole layers, you are recorded at the third layer."

"The third layer? I'm clearly—"

"Clearly at the fourth?" The steward did not so much as lift an eyelid. "There are thirty-odd at the third layer this year, swarming for fewer than ten openings. A man who lights the look of qi deviation, who cannot seat even a half ring steady—what right has he to rank ahead of those who seat theirs rock-steady? The outer gate does not take stock prone to qi deviation."

"It's this cursed stone that's at fault!" the man shouted.

"However many rings light on the stone, that is what it is." The steward waved a hand. Two patrol disciples stepped forward and, half ushering, half hauling, took the still-arguing man away—failed, unable even to stand in the line for the third layer.

Lin Que kept his eyes lowered. He had seen it clearly—the man's qi was indeed at the fourth layer, deeply steady, without the least hollow waver of qi deviation. Everyone else took him for short on mettle, unable to hold up under pressure; only Lin Que saw that on this qi-gauging stone there was a flaw.

That flaw was hidden between the third and fourth rings of grooved lines, exceedingly fine, like an unseen crack. When qi was fed into the stone and ran to that place, a thread of it would quietly leak away. For a foundation that stood only at the third layer and stopped once it lit the third ring, the qi never touched that flaw, and it did not matter; but any qi that meant to climb above the fourth ring had to crawl across that flaw—and a whole layer that should have seated rock-steady, robbed of that one thread, was churned into a hollow half ring. The man's true skill, a full fourth layer of it, was thus beaten by this very stone into a wastrel who lit the look of qi deviation and failed out.

---

It came to Lin Que.

He pressed his hand to the green stone, its cold face against his palm. In his mind, he reckoned it through swiftly.

He could on no account light to the fifth layer—a rogue cultivator of unknown origin, sprung up halfway out of nowhere, at the fifth layer of Qi Condensation, was far too conspicuous; there and then it would draw scrutiny, draw questions.

But the third layer was not safe either. He had watched the scene just now: those at the third layer this year were packed shoulder to shoulder, and the seven or eight openings would be full in a blink. If he lit only the third ring, he would be scrambling with those thirty-odd for the last few scraps, and the risk of failing he could not bear—he had cut off his own retreat and staked everything he owned on this single gamble for a way out. If he could not get through this gate, he would have nowhere left to set foot.

What was more, this stone had a flaw. If he channeled his qi toward the fourth ring in the ordinary way, the qi would cross that flaw and leak a thread, and what lit up would be the same three-and-a-half-ring look of qi deviation as the man just now—the fourth layer beyond reach, and even that slim hope of the third layer thrown away with it.

Only one road was left: to light a clean, steadily seated fourth layer. Neither high nor low, sitting firmly above the admission line, yet so mediocre that no one would spare it a second glance.

He had to channel his qi while mending that flaw.

Lin Que steadied his mind and sent his qi into the stone bit by bit. As the qi climbed to that flaw between the third and fourth rings, drawing on these eyes that could see flaws, he quietly fed in one extra thread, just enough to fill the leak level—no more, no less—letting the qi flood steadily up to the fourth ring.

On the green stone, the grooved lines lit up ring by ring from bottom to top, reaching the fourth ring without a flicker, so steady that not the least hollowness showed.

He withdrew his qi.

"Fourth layer of Qi Condensation. Seated steady. Pass. Go collect your disciple token over there."

Lin Que lowered his eyes and stepped back. No one saw that this fourth-layer rogue cultivator, who had passed so plainly, had just mended on the stone a flaw the Xuanzhao Sect itself had never noticed.

---

On the high platform, Bai Heng had been watching all along.

To others, Lin Que was an outer-gate newcomer of plain aptitude, scraping just over the line. But with the eyes of a true-inheritance disciple, she sensed something off—in the instant this herb-boy pressed the stone, his qi flowed too even, too steady, steadier than a low-tier rogue cultivator's mettle had any right to be. It was rather as though he had known beforehand where that stone would leak, and had mended it in advance.

She made no sound of it, only set down, in her heart, one more mark against this drab herb-boy.

---

At the place where disciple tokens were given out, Fang Qi was already waiting, holding up his own palm-sized wooden token as if showing off a treasure: "Passed! I, Fang Qi, am from now on an outer-gate disciple of the Xuanzhao Sect too!"

Lin Que took one as well, the token branded with the words "Xuanzhao Sect, Outer Gate," and his name besides. Gripping this token, he—an herb-boy whom anyone in the market town could trample underfoot—at last had a foothold, a reason to stand, in a place far larger than Qingqi Market.

Just then, beside the token-issuing point, two old disciples in outer-gate colors were talking in low voices.

"...another one. A few days back he was practicing the Xuanzhao Breathing Art, got to the sixth layer, and when he tried to break through he suffered qi deviation—just like that, the man was gone." One was holding his voice down. "That makes three in the outer gate this year already."

"Hush." The other's face changed. "The steward gave word—this matter is not to leak out. Anyone who wags his tongue again gets cast out of the outer gate."

The two glanced warily around and hurried off.

The smile on Fang Qi's face stiffened a moment, and he leaned to Lin Que's ear: "What I was about to say just now—it was this... they all say cultivating in the outer gate is uncanny." He gave a shiver, then forced a smile again. "Maybe those few just hadn't built up enough mettle and forced the pass."

Lin Que did not answer; he only set those two lines down, word by word.

The Xuanzhao Breathing Art was the entry-level art the Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate taught openly; those who practiced it numbered in the hundreds, the thousands. This past half year, he had seen too many rogue cultivators in the market town die of qi deviation—they had practiced all manner of arts, and died in all manner of ways. But an art that was a sect's orthodox inheritance, and those who practiced it fell one after another at the same layer, the same threshold.

That was not right.

He thought of the flaw on that qi-gauging stone just now. If even a stone for gauging qi held a flaw, then that Xuanzhao Breathing Art, which had brought down three disciples at the same layer—

Lin Que dared not let the thought go further. It was too big a thought, too big for an outer-gate newcomer who had only just taken up a wooden token to touch right now.

---

Just before dark, the new disciples who had passed the exam were gathered to a corner of the drill ground by an outer-gate disciple who looked to be a manager, and their names were called.

The manager was in his early twenties, fair-skinned, but his speech was stiff, without the least courtesy: "From this day on, you are outer-gate disciples of the Xuanzhao Sect. The rules—I'll say them once. Whoever can't remember, that's his own loss."

He counted them off on his fingers: outer-gate disciples lived in the menial-chores court on the west side of the outer gate, two to a room; each month, on the strength of the disciple token, you drew your monthly spirit stones at the manager's office; the orthodox art, the Xuanzhao Breathing Art, was issued uniformly by the Archive Hall after entry, to be copied only within the hall, never carried beyond the gate walls; one lesson every ten days, and any who missed it without cause were cast out of the outer gate. Besides this, every month you had to take several days of menial chores—chopping wood, hauling water, tending the pill furnaces, cleaning the talisman rooms, all of it had to be done.

"There are over a thousand outer-gate disciples, and in a whole year scarcely a few claw their way into the inner gate." The manager swept a last glance over them all, his tone flat. "Want to cultivate your way up—work for it yourself. Those who can't cultivate up, better find another livelihood soon."

These few words doused most of the excitement on the new disciples' faces. Fang Qi shrank his neck and stuck out his tongue at Lin Que on the sly.

Lin Que stood at the very back of the crowd, eyes lowered, fixing these rules in his memory one by one. One line among them he remembered with particular firmness—the orthodox art, the Xuanzhao Breathing Art, was issued by the Archive Hall.

To look into where exactly that art was flawed, the first place he should go was the Archive Hall. Only, a newly entered outer-gate disciple who wanted to go into the Archive Hall and copy an art had to register by the rules, wait for permission—it could not be rushed. He would have to go step by step.

---

As the sky darkened, the rogue cultivators who had come to be tested dispersed one after another. Fang Qi made arrangements to enter the gate together the next day and went off first, hopping and skipping.

Lin Que gripped that disciple token, still warm with the heat of his palm, stood beneath the shaft-gate of the Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate, and looked back once at the road by which he had come.

Tomorrow he would enter the outer gate. Beyond that bit of hope of cultivating his way up, there was now one more thing weighing on his heart—that Xuanzhao Breathing Art, which had brought down three disciples at the same threshold, just where exactly was it flawed. These eyes that could see flaws would, sooner or later, have him go and look for himself.

He tucked the disciple token away against his body, turned, and walked into the dusk.

【Ch. 021 End · the outer-gate drill ground of the Xuanzhao Sect】