Ch. 022| That Threshold

On his first day in the outer gate, Lin Que was assigned a small room in the west wing of the menial-chores court, two to a room.

He pushed the door open, and someone was already inside—Fang Qi.

"Brother!" Fang Qi sprang up from the bed, grinning. "What luck—we're rooming together!"

In a few quick motions he fluffed out the straw mat on the other bed for Lin Que, his mouth never stopping: how he'd been too excited to sleep the night before, how the outer gate fed you two full meals a day—far better than back home in Yingchuan—how, once he'd made something of himself in cultivation, he'd bring his parents here to enjoy the good life. Lin Que let him prattle on and, saying nothing, took the measure of the room he was about to live in.

The menial-chores court was a row of low huts on the westernmost edge of the outer gate, home to newcomers who had yet to find their footing. Lin Que's little room held one table and two beds; the window paper was torn at one corner, and in the corner lay half a worn-down brush left by some previous tenant. Most striking of all was a sword-mark on the wall—a slanting gash across half the earthen face, unnaturally deep, as though some past resident had once vented his unspent bitterness against that wall.

Crude it was. But compared to the rented room in the market town, where he'd had to bar the door every night, here at least he need not guard against someone coming in the dark to take his life. Lin Que set down his bundle and, for the first time, felt the breath he'd held taut in his chest for three years ease by half.

---

For a new outer-gate disciple, the first order of business was to receive a cultivation art; the second, to be assigned menial duties.

At midday the steward gathered the new disciples in the courtyard and, going by the roster, parceled out the monthly chores each was to rotate through: chopping wood, hauling water, tending the pill furnaces, cleaning the talisman rooms, sweeping the various halls. As each was called out, the disciples scrambled for those close to cultivation and light on labor—tending the furnaces, say, where one could soak up a little residual furnace-warmth to nourish one's qi; or cleaning the talisman rooms, where one might scavenge a couple of spent talismans to practice on.

"Sweeping the Archive Hall," the steward read, sweeping his eyes over them. "Sweep the floors, move the scrolls, refill the lamp oil, pour the water. One month. Who'll take it?"

The courtyard went quiet for a moment; no one answered. The Archive Hall's duties were tiring, dealing all day with dead books, without the slightest benefit to cultivation—the acknowledged least-wanted post of them all.

Lin Que kept his eyes lowered and stepped half a pace forward. "I will."

The steward glanced at him, mildly surprised, took up his brush and noted it down, asking nothing further. Beside him a new disciple sniggered, taking the pill-boy for a fool—passing up the furnaces to go sweep a room of old paper.

Lin Que paid it no mind. The scrap of qi one nourished tending furnaces, he did not lack; but a reason to come and go from the Archive Hall openly, day after day, was worth far more than that residual furnace-warmth. What he wanted was precisely this post no one else did.

---

With the chores assigned, they went to receive their cultivation arts.

The Archive Hall stood at the east end of the outer gate, a three-story timber building thick with the mingled smell of old paper and lamp oil. On the ground floor sat a dozen low desks where seven or eight new disciples bent over their copying, sweating as they wrote. The steward who guarded the building checked Lin Que's disciple token, took a thin transcript down from the shelf, and set it before him.

"The entry scroll. Copy it only within the hall, and return it before sunset," the steward said without lifting his head. "Anything deeper, you may request only after you've cleared three years of outer-gate coursework."

Lin Que found a low desk in a corner and sat, copying out that scroll of the Xuanzhao Breathing Art stroke by stroke in the window's light.

Halfway through, the point of heat beneath his left eye stirred.

The entry scroll of the Xuanzhao Breathing Art laid out the breathing methods from the first to the third layer of Qi Condensation—the paths of the qi-channels, the rhythm of the breath, the meditation formulas, each set down plainly, line by line. Yet to Lin Que's eye, there was one faint wrongness in the channel-diagram of this art.

The wrongness was buried very deep, like a river: the upper reaches ran smooth, but beneath the riverbed a fault had long been laid that would one day breach the banks. Cultivate to the third layer of Qi Condensation, and nothing would go amiss; but at the very root of these breathing methods, a stretch was missing—missing so subtly that only by climbing higher, to the greater layers, would that seam pull open.

The hand holding Lin Que's brush went still.

He thought of the two older disciples' whispers the day before: three had already died this year breaking through to the sixth layer while cultivating the Xuanzhao Breathing Art.

The sixth layer. At which layer that fault buried at the root would tear open, he could not yet reckon exactly; but he could all but conclude—it would not be the safe, untroubled first three layers.

He kept his eyes lowered and copied the transcript out to the last word, his expression no different from the new disciples beside him sweating over their own copies. He returned the transcript before sunset; his own copy he tucked away against his body.

---

From the next day on, Lin Que went to sweep the Archive Hall each morning at the hour of the Rabbit.

Sweeping floors, refilling lamp oil, reshelving the scrolls the disciples had left in disarray. He worked diligently and kept to his place, asking nothing extra, looking nowhere he shouldn't, and the steward who guarded the building gradually stopped watching him closely.

But those eyes of his were never idle for a moment.

Over these few days of sweeping, he came to know the three-story timber building through and through. The ground floor held entry scrolls and outer-gate coursework, the sort anyone could copy; the higher one climbed, the deeper it went. At the far end of the third floor stood a black timber door, over which a faint green ward flowed with light; a scroll-warden enforcement disciple sat beside it all day long, forbidding even the sweeper to come within three paces.

The deep scrolls of the Xuanzhao Breathing Art lay behind that door.

As he swept, Lin Que quietly committed to memory the hours the scroll-warden changed shifts and the rhythm at which the ward brightened, a little at a time.

The chore of refilling lamp oil gave him just the excuse to go up to the third floor. Every other day he took the oil pot and filled the lamps of all three floors, one by one. Filling the lamp on the third floor nearest the black timber door, he could stand openly before it for a few breaths. The scroll-warden was a young man of about twenty, sitting all day and bored half to madness; seeing Lin Que fill the oil, he sometimes traded a few idle words.

Once, while Lin Que was filling the oil, he saw the man give a long yawn, his eyelids sinking—guard the door as tightly as his words might, a man sitting half a day could not necessarily stay awake. That same time, the man raised a hand to rub his eyes, and half a green jade token slid from his sleeve; the light flowing over the door quivered, and when he casually tucked the token back into his sleeve, the ward's glow guttered for an instant.

As he swept, he also overheard other things. Outer-gate disciples came in twos and threes to copy the arts, murmuring low, and Lin Que, sweeping, took each sentence in.

"Did you hear? Senior Brother Chen of the West Court has gone into seclusion these last days to break through to the sixth layer." A young disciple kept his voice down. "He's toiled in the outer gate seven or eight years; he cultivated the Xuanzhao Breathing Art to the fifth layer long ago, and stuck fast at this threshold. If he fails this time, he'll have to petition to leave the gate."

"If he clears it, we'll talk." The other voice went lower still. "Have you forgotten the ones we lost this year? All of them died breaking through to the sixth layer—qi deviation at the moment of the breakthrough."

"Hush—how dare you speak of such things carelessly."

Both fell silent and bent to their copying.

The hand with which Lin Que swept slowed half a beat.

That Senior Brother Chen, in seclusion to break through to the sixth layer, did not know that what he was treading upon was a fault buried no one knew how many years. And here in this very Archive Hall, the deep scrolls that plainly recorded how that fault had come to be and whether it could be mended were locked behind that door on the third floor—he could not request them, and that Senior Brother Chen would know even less.

On the third day of sweeping, someone came down the stairs.

A trim moon-white cultivation robe, draped with a pale green cloak—Bai Heng. She had come up to the third floor to retrieve something, and at the sight of her the scroll-warden respectfully stepped aside and lowered the ward. Bai Heng's gaze swept lightly over the floor below, brushed past the gray-clad pill-boy sweeping with his head down, and paused for an instant.

Lin Que kept his head down, his sweeping hand unbroken.

Bai Heng said nothing and went in through the black timber door. A moment later she came out with a scroll in hand, and went straight off. But Lin Que noted one thing in his heart: a true-lineage disciple could command that door open.

---

Back at the menial-chores court that night, Fang Qi told him excitedly that he'd found out for certain—among the outer-gate disciples, whoever first cultivated the Xuanzhao Breathing Art to the sixth layer and broke through would qualify to enter the inner-gate grand contest.

"I've come this far—I have to break through, no matter what," Fang Qi said, and that very night he sat cross-legged on his bed, took up the entry scroll he'd copied, and set earnestly to breathing exercises by its formulas.

Lin Que lay on the opposite bed, and the point of heat beneath his left eye, unable to help itself, swept over Fang Qi.

Fang Qi's qi had only just set out, a second-layer Qi Condensation foundation climbing inch by inch up the path laid by the entry scroll of the Xuanzhao Breathing Art. The road of the first three layers was clean and even, without the slightest snag. But Lin Que's eye followed that channel upward—gazed to the far, higher end of the road, where the fault buried at the root waited, silent, unmoving.

Fang Qi cultivated in rapt absorption, undisguised hope on his thin face. Halfway through, he opened his eyes and looked toward the opposite bed. "Why aren't you cultivating? You got the art on the first day—why not get straight to it?"

"No hurry," Lin Que said. "I'm the sort who doesn't dare invite a thing onto my body until I've seen it clear."

Fang Qi snorted, taking it for an excuse, and shut his eyes to cultivate again. Lin Que truly did not dare—an art with a fault at its root, that others rushed up with their eyes closed, while he could see that seam plainly; before he'd made out whether that seam could be mended, he dared only copy the entry scroll, not truly practice by it.

"Rush upward before the foundation's laid firm, and qi deviation comes easiest of all," Lin Que added mildly, his back to him.

"You really are a dull one," Fang Qi said without lifting his head, laughing at his timidity.

The matter could be hinted at only this far. Say more, and Fang Qi would ask, "How would you know?"—and that one question would be the end of hiding what these eyes of his could do.

Fang Qi cultivated until the third watch before lying down, satisfied, his snores even.

But Lin Que did not sleep. He sat up in the dark and looked toward that unnaturally deep sword-mark carved into the wall by some past hand. He did not know whether the disciple who had carved it had also cultivated the Xuanzhao Breathing Art, had also charged that threshold at the sixth layer, and in the end vented his unspent bitterness against that wall.

He had copied other people's flaws all his life; this time what he meant to investigate was an art that had sent three disciples to their ruin while the Xuanzhao Sect itself remained wholly unaware. The answer to that seam was locked behind the black timber door on the third floor; and that Senior Brother Chen of the West Court could not wait for his three years of coursework.

He had to think of a way to get through that door early, before the seam swallowed its next man.

【Ch. 022 End · the outer gate of the Xuanzhao Sect · the menial-chores court / the Archive Hall】