Ch. 027| That Needle

Senior Brother Chen came out of seclusion at midday the next day.

The news had spread through the menial-chores court the night before. Fang Qi, downing cold water, prattled: that Senior Brother Chen of the West Court was the hardest bone among this year's outer gate, sealed away for the better part of a month just to break through to the sixth layer; break through, and he had hopes of transfer to the inner gate. The junior on watch, and the senior brothers who knew him, would all wait outside the meditation cell tomorrow for the moment he emerged.

"The sixth layer." Fang Qi smacked his lips, envy in his tone, and something else besides. "How many who cultivate the Xuanzhao Breathing Art in the outer gate get stuck at this layer and can't rise. I hear... men fell this year too."

When he said "men fell," his voice dropped, and he dared not go on.

Lin Que ate his rice and did not take it up. The slip of thin paper in his robe, bearing the sixth-layer mending, weighed heavy enough to chafe just then.

But let these eyes show once, and the one watching him would be more than Bai Heng alone.

Across from him Fang Qi was still murmuring, saying he'd go early tomorrow to claim a good spot and see how grand Chen's emergence would be. He spoke with his brows flying, wholly unaware that what he cultivated and envied was the same version of the art. Lin Que finished his last mouthful of rice, set down the bowl, and did not answer him.

That night, the lamp out, Lin Que took the rubbing in the dark and, by the moonlight leaking through the window-crack, silently read over the run of that one aperture-stroke of the sixth layer once more. That done, from the cloth pouch he'd carried since his pill-boy days he counted out a few silver needles, wiped them clean, and tucked them away against his body.

Save him or not, he had not decided even by the time he lay down. But these few needles, he had to ready first.

He had also reckoned it over in his heart: if he truly acted, how this needle must be driven—to haul Chen back from that flaw, yet without letting anyone see that he was needling the flaw by "watching" it. He'd have to play a pill-boy who'd stolen a few moves at a pill shop, driving the needle as if by a rote-learned formula, as if on a wild chance: strike home, and it was fortune's luck; miss, and it was no more than a menial newcomer being meddlesome.

---

The next midday, twenty or thirty people ringed the meditation cell in the West Court.

Lin Que carried a broom, mixed into the outer ring, sweeping the fallen leaves under the eaves from afar. The junior on watch had readied the ginseng broth; the steward on duty stood before the cell door. In the crowd he spotted Bai Heng at a glance—a moon-white true-lineage robe, standing at the very front, her expression cool. He swept a glance over Fang Qi too, squeezed into the throng, on tiptoe, his face alight with shared glory.

Lin Que withdrew his gaze.

The seal-strip was torn away. The cell door opened, and Chen walked out.

He was a robust man just past twenty; the better part of a month in seclusion had turned his face gray-green, yet a fierce drive burned in his eyes. He took the ginseng broth and drained it in one draught, sat cross-legged on the open ground before the door, and shut his eyes to regulate his breath—before all these people, he was about to break through to the sixth layer.

Lin Que stopped his broom.

The point of heat beneath his left eye swept quietly over Chen's channels. That qi was nourished full to bursting, brimming layer by layer up along the meridians, steady, past the barrier of the fifth layer.

Brimming to that threshold before the sixth layer.

Lin Que's heart lifted. Across that threshold lay the flaw—the channel should have turned a corner here, skirting a narrow mouth, but the outer gate's version of the art had drawn out the stroke of that turn. Chen did not know; he was charging headlong into that narrow mouth by the flawed version's run.

At the instant the qi struck the narrow mouth, Chen's brows clenched dead. His qi caught fast.

---

At first nothing showed. Chen's face flushed, sweat beading at his temples; others took it merely for the crucial pass of a breakthrough, and some even called out low in praise.

But Lin Que saw it plainly: that caught qi grew heavier and heavier before the narrow mouth, unable to retreat, unable to advance, backwashing bit by bit onto the branching paths. Backwash into the meridians, and that was qi deviation.

"That's wrong." Bai Heng suddenly spoke, her voice cold and urgent. "His qi's gone counter-current—"

The words were not out before Chen spat a mouthful of blood with a retching sound. His cross-legged body swayed, blood seeping from the seven apertures, the meridians all over his body surging as though something scuttled beneath the skin.

The crowd broke into disorder.

The steward on duty rushed forward, one palm pressed to the center of Chen's back, transferring qi in a low voice to suppress it. Bai Heng too pressed close, her fingertips striking several great points on his back in quick succession. But that was the way one saved ordinary qi deviation—it could hold down the counter-flowing qi, but not the flaw. The qi jammed before the narrow mouth grew fiercer the harder it was pressed; the blood from Chen's mouth and nose ran faster, his face going from red to purple.

"His meridians are about to snap!" the junior on watch cried, a sob in his voice.

Sweat showed on the steward's brow; the qi he transferred in was all jammed before that narrow mouth, unable to disperse. Bai Heng bit her lip, her fingertips shifting among several points on Chen's back, but she could never press exactly where the qi-knot was caught—that flaw was buried too deep; even she could see only that the qi flowed counter, not why it flowed counter.

Saved this way, he'd not last one incense-stick.

The hand with which Lin Que held the broom tightened.

He glanced without thinking at Fang Qi in the throng—the lad's face had gone white, mouth open, watching a living man cough blood before his eyes.

At the moment Chen spat that mouthful of blood again, Lin Que had already moved.

---

He dropped the broom and drew those few silver needles from his sleeve—a pill-boy's implements, used in pill-hall first aid and for testing pill-warmth, unremarkable to carry on one's person. He shouldered through the crowd, and without much talk said only, low, to the steward on duty, "I've seen qi deviation saved at the pill shop. Let me try a needle."

The steward, at a loss, saw an unfamiliar menial and was about to bark him back. But Bai Heng cut Lin Que a glance and, somehow, turned sideways and yielded half a foot.

Lin Que waited no longer.

The point of heat beneath his left eye burned to its utmost and gazed, along Chen's dead-jammed qi, into that narrow mouth of the sixth layer—the qi-knot was caught there, fast and dead. Ordinary first-aid points would not pry it open; to break it, he had to needle the one aperture at the narrow mouth's very center, flicking that qi-knot open a thread's width, giving the backwashed qi a road to retreat.

That one aperture was precisely where the drawn-out stroke had been.

He pinched up a silver needle, took aim at a spot lower-left of the center of Chen's back, his hand very steady, and drove the needle in.

This needle fell cunningly, not on the several great points where qi deviation was ordinarily saved. The steward on duty went "Eh?" and the hand pressed to Chen's back stalled; beside him, Bai Heng's gaze locked hard onto the needle-tail sunk in halfway—how would a floor-sweeping menial needle that one spot?

At the instant the needle entered the point, Lin Que felt only the heat in his left eye drain violently, his eye-socket swelling to an ache, a sweetness at his throat, a rush of blood-reek surging up—his fifth-layer Qi Condensation qi, following this needle, forced that qi-knot loose a thread. His face whitened in a breath, the knuckles gripping the needle taut and blue, forcing back the mouthful of blood that would have welled up.

Just one thread.

Chen's dead-jammed qi followed the loosened thread and, with a rush, retreated. The surging meridians eased flat inch by inch; the blood at his seven apertures stopped. He gave a muffled groan and slumped to the ground, fainted dead away—the qi had retreated, the sixth layer unbroken, the meridians injured too, but this life had been hauled back.

---

Outside the meditation cell it was quiet enough to hear a needle drop. Only after a long while did a wave of sharp indrawn breaths rise from the crowd; someone stepped back half a pace without thinking, as though afraid of touching the blood spat forth.

The junior on watch flung himself over to feel Chen's breath, felt it there, and his eyes reddened all at once; he clutched Lin Que's sleeve, incoherent. "Thank you... thank you, this senior brother, if not for that needle of yours..." But the steward on duty stared at Lin Que in alarm and doubt. "You... a menial—how would you know to save qi deviation?"

"Three years at a pill shop." Lin Que kept his eyes down, wiping the silver needle clean and returning it to his sleeve, his voice as flat as it could be. "Rogue cultivators spoiling their pills and going astray in their qi—common enough. The shopkeeper taught me a few first-aid moves. A blind cat stumbling on a dead mouse, that's all."

The words were half true and half false, seamless. Rogue cultivators going astray, pill-boys giving first aid—in the market town it was ordinary. The crowd went "Oh," and most of that alarm and doubt faded—a pill-boy who'd knocked about a pill shop, knowing a few crude ways to save qi deviation, was not so strange after all.

The steward on duty, half believing, in the end still asked his name and noted it down, then ordered men to carry Chen back into the cell to convalesce.

Lin Que withdrew beyond the crowd, picked up the broom, and swept his fallen leaves again, as though that needle just now had been a mere afterthought. As he picked up the broom, the fingertips bracing it still trembled faintly; his left eye swelled to an ache, a throbbing behind the socket, as though someone had stirred it with a needle; the reek-sweetness at his throat pressed down and welled up again. What he'd used to force that qi-knot loose was his own vital-gate qi—and this drain ran heavier than he'd reckoned; three to five days at least before he'd mend it back.

He knew Chen was finished this round—meridians injured this badly wouldn't nourish back in under a year or more. As for the seam, he said not a word.

---

He'd not swept a few strokes when a moon-white figure blocked his path.

Bai Heng.

She did not look at the carried-off Chen; she only looked steadily at Lin Que, her gaze like two needles scraping inch by inch across his face. Lin Que's sweeping hand did not stop, but the reek-sweetness he'd not yet pressed down welled quietly up his throat again—and at just this moment, along came a pair of eyes like these.

"That needle of yours," she said, her voice low but falling word by word, "wasn't a first-aid point for suppressing qi."

"Senior sister jests." Lin Que did not lift his head, sweeping the leaves. "One needle, driven blind. Struck home by luck; had it missed, this man was for this fate anyway."

Bai Heng did not take up the words. She stared at the arm with which he'd withdrawn the needle, then glanced at the position of that pool of blood on the ground.

"A needle driven blind can't strike so precise a depth." She stepped half a pace forward and lowered her voice. "You needled the aperture of the sixth layer. That spot is the vital gate for breaking through to the sixth—an ordinary true-lineage disciple mightn't even find it exactly. How would a floor-sweeping pill-boy know where it lies?"

The hand with which Lin Que swept did not stop, but his knuckles whitened for an instant.

"And besides—" Bai Heng's gaze moved from his face to his chest, "—the day of the outer-gate assessment, I sensed this qi of yours was wrong: too evenly steady, as though someone had mended it. Only today do I understand—that qi, you smoothed out yourself. A qi-knot even I couldn't find, you needled dead-on with a single stroke. What you're hiding is likely more than mere cultivation."

She stopped. In those cold, clear eyes, the doubt of before had settled into certainty.

"Just who," she said, "are you?"

【Ch. 027 End · the outer gate of the Xuanzhao Sect · outside the meditation cell in the West Court】