Ch. 030| He Doesn't Blame the Art

The work of the herb-lodge was more tiring than sweeping floors.

Before daybreak he had to light the stove and brew the medicines; for the seven or eight plank beds of injured, whose medicine took what degree of fire, and at what hour it was to be fed—the hard-of-hearing old man who managed the medicines said it only once, and if you couldn't remember you got a scolding. Lin Que had a good memory; in three days he had committed to heart each patient's medicinal nature, injury, and what was to be avoided, and the old man scolded him less.

He worked diligently, and he worked within bounds.

That pair of eyes, he kept reined in very tight within the herb-lodge. Among the injured was a youth who had deviated forcing the fifth layer, his meridian breach in a shallow place; Lin Que saw it clear as day at a glance, knew which flavor of medicine should be increased by three parts and led to that spot, and in three days the youth would recover. But he did not move, letting the youth mend slowly by the physician's prescribed formula—whether that collapsed meridian could be nursed back was all down to the youth's own fortune. Inside the herb-lodge and out, there was always someone watching him, this "menial who can save qi deviations"; Supervisor Pei had placed him here precisely to see whether he kept within bounds.

He could only brew by the formula the old man set, not daring to add even one part more.

To see, and not be able to reach out—the taste of it was hard to bear. But he could endure it—back in the market, those who couldn't hold their temper had long since lost their lives.

---

Senior Brother Chen woke at noon on the fourth day.

Lin Que was just changing the basin of warm water at his bedhead when he saw the eyelids that had been shut for days stir and open a crack. Those eyes were at first unfocused, then slowly gathered and settled on Lin Que's face.

"Water." Senior Brother Chen's voice was so hoarse it barely held a tone.

Lin Que cradled the back of his neck and brought a spoon of warm water to his lips. Chen drank half a bowl that way, gasped for a long while, before he could even out his breath. His gaze rested on Lin Que's face, his brow slowly knitting.

"It's you," he said hoarsely. "Outside the meditation cell… that needle."

Lin Que kept his eyes lowered. "It's good that Senior Brother Chen is awake. The physician says your meridians are badly hurt; you must rest quietly."

Chen made no answer, only stared at him.

It was a look hard to name. An outer-gate disciple who had toiled seven or eight years, on the very verge of breaking past the sixth layer and being transferred to the inner gate, had deviated and spewed blood before twenty or thirty people, ruining a whole body's cultivation, and now had been pulled back from the gates of hell by a floor-sweeping menial. There was gratitude in that look, yes, but beneath it pressed something heavier—for a man proud half his life to be seen to his depths and hauled back from death before another's eyes, that mortification weighed even more than the gratitude.

"I forced it seven or eight years," he suddenly said, his voice sinking. "The sixth layer of Qi Condensation—how many are stuck here. I thought… I thought this time I'd nurtured my qi full, steadied my mind's state, and surely I'd pass."

He closed his eyes.

"At that threshold of the sixth layer, the qi scattered. I couldn't stop it." His hand clenched beneath the quilt. "My fire wasn't hot enough. One breath short. Nurture another three years, and perhaps…"

The hand holding the water-spoon paused.

He knew what that threshold was—a stroke drawn out from the root of the art by someone's hand, so that the qi, reaching there, had nowhere to turn, and whoever practiced it must crash into it. Chen could nurture another thirty years and still not pass.

Lin Que opened his mouth, and in the end swallowed the words back.

Besides, to a man who had staked all his seven or eight years' hope on this art, saying "the art harmed you" was not necessarily a comfort—it was more like negating those seven or eight years, man and life together.

"Senior Brother Chen has a fine foundation." That was all Lin Que could say, setting down the water-bowl. "Heal the injury, and there's a long road ahead."

Chen gave a bitter smile and did not take up the words.

---

Lin Que tucked in the corner of his quilt and, in the same motion, laid fingers on his wrist.

This touch was the ordinary act of a pill-boy taking the pulse—no one could fault it. But in that instant, the heat beneath his left eye swept quietly across—that breach at Chen's sixth layer still leaked spent qi, and several main meridians beneath were no lightly hurt; by the old man's formula, it would take a year or more to nurse.

Lin Que saw it clearly: in the formula, the meridian-mending medicinal guide was half a fraction off, unable to reach that deepest breach. Change one flavor, add a small measure, and it would reach.

He withdrew his hand without a flicker of expression. That evening while brewing the medicines, he worked a small trick into Chen's bowl: setting aside the Sichuan teasel-root the formula habitually used, he swapped in a length of northern teasel-root, coarser but medicinally driving deeper, and added a further measure—what he swapped in was "good stock" any pill-boy could pick out, and the added measure lay within ordinary bounds. The old man spot-checked once, took it only for solid dosing, and asked nothing more.

The medicine was aimed at that deepest breach. Chen would not know, nor could others tell. Whether it could spare him two or three months of nursing rested on that one measure.

This was the first move Lin Que had dared to make since entering the herb-lodge—hidden right there in this one bowl of medicine, without sound or trace.

---

"That scroll—have you ever borrowed it?" Chen suddenly spoke again.

Lin Que started. "What scroll?"

"The advanced annotated scroll for the sixth layer of the Xuanzhao Breathing Art." Chen stared at the canopy of the bed, a pressed-down heaviness in his voice. "Before forcing the layer, I went to the Archive Hall to borrow it. The annotations on the qi-formulas of past disciples forcing the sixth layer are all recorded on it. I thought, forcing it against the annotations would be surer."

He paused.

"Steward He, who manages the Archive Hall, told me—'It's been borrowed out, not yet returned.'" The corner of Chen's mouth twitched. "A true-lineage scroll—it's not for us outer-gate disciples to press for its return. I couldn't get it, so I could only force it by my own skill."

Lin Que kept his eyes lowered, and the string in his heart drew taut.

Steward He.

This one scroll Chen couldn't get was the very one Wei An had mentioned that night. And Steward He—the man who ran the Archive Hall and kept the deep scrolls behind that ebony door. Some days ago, he had seen with his own eyes that blue-robed "Teacher" being invited up to the third floor by a steward of the Archive Hall, bent at the waist.

Was that man, then, this Steward He?

That day the steward leading the way up the steps—he had kept his distance and hadn't seen the face clearly; and this Steward He, what he looked like, he had yet to meet. Whether they were the same man, he couldn't say for now. Next time he delivered wound-medicine to the Archive Hall, he must find a pretext to look this Steward He over closely.

Lin Que pressed this thread into the deepest place in his heart.

"That sort of advanced annotated scroll—I've only just entered; by the rules I couldn't requisition it either." A trace of blankness showed on his face. "Senior Brother Chen, don't dwell on it; healing your injury comes first."

Chen sighed and closed his eyes. "True enough. The scroll's out of reach, and the man's ruined too. What's the use of thinking on these things."

Lin Que changed the cloth on his forehead and, weighing his words, said as if in passing: "Senior Brother Chen—that youth over there who was hurt forcing the fifth layer, the physician says with nursing he can rise again. Later on he'll… have to force the sixth layer too, won't he?"

Chen opened his eyes, glanced toward the youth, and after a long moment said hoarsely: "All of them will. Who among those practicing the Xuanzhao Breathing Art doesn't want to pass the sixth layer and be transferred to the inner gate." He paused, his voice lower. "This year I'm the third to fall. Of the two before me, one I knew—surnamed Du, entered two years before me, with a foundation harder than mine, and he nursed a full five years before he dared force it. Spewed blood the same, ruined the same. Now he's out of the gate; I hear he watches a house for someone down the mountain."

"A foundation harder than yours, and he fell too?" Lin Que asked softly.

"What's the use of hard." Chen smiled bitterly. "At that threshold, every one of them scatters. The old brothers say among themselves that this sixth layer is a gate of hell, and those who pass are one in ten. I still thought I was that one." He closed his eyes. "Before forcing the layer, Du—like me—went to the Archive Hall to beg for that scroll. Steward He's reply was not a word different: borrowed out."

Lin Que's heart sank again.

Senior Brother Du. Another one. A foundation hard as Du's, a full five years nurtured, and he fell just the same at this threshold—the thing Lin Que had long since seen clearly was fiercely confirmed once more. When Du begged for that scroll back then, he too, like Chen, had been shut out by those three words, "borrowed out." Carried down one after another, not one of them knowing on what, exactly, he had fallen; and the one who saw it plainly was, of all the Xuanzhao Sect, him alone—and he could not spit out a single word of it.

He turned over, his back to Lin Que, his voice muffled in the quilt: "That needle's kindness, I'll remember. When I've recovered, in the outer gate I can still put in a word for you."

Lin Que turned the oil lamp down a little for him and made no answer.

---

At noon the next day, Fang Qi found his way to the herb-lodge.

He had come to see Senior Brother Chen. This hard-boned man of the west court was the standard in the hearts of the outer gate's crowd of rogue-cultivator youths—toiling seven or eight years, on the verge of forcing into the inner gate. Fang Qi squeezed to the bedside, looked at that ashen face, that ruined cultivation, and his own face went white bit by bit.

"Senior Brother Chen…" He opened his mouth, and in the end got no words out.

Chen was sunk in sleep and made no answer.

Fang Qi withdrew and crouched on the herb-lodge's threshold, silent for a long while. Lin Que came out carrying a medicine-bowl, saw him like this, and softened his steps.

"Didn't he force it only after nurturing his qi full?" Fang Qi suddenly spoke, his voice muffled. "How could he still…" He didn't go on, gripping his own knees. "I saved spirit stones three years to enter this gate, just to force past the sixth layer and enter the inner gate. Senior Brother Chen toiled seven or eight years and couldn't pass; this little foundation of mine, later on…"

Lin Que did not take up the words.

He looked at Fang Qi—the boy's hands gripping his knees still trembled, the color slow to come back to his face. The fear in his eyes was real; but once the fear had passed, tomorrow he would still go back to practicing that art. For a rogue cultivator to climb, there was no second road.

This one needle of his could save one Senior Brother Chen; but this lodge full of injured, and all those who would later crash into the sixth layer one by one along that seam—could he save them all?

But of this, he could not spit out a single word.

"First practice these lower layers solid." That was all Lin Que could say. "The matter of the sixth layer is still far off."

Fang Qi gave a muffled "Mm," stood up, looked back once more at that bed in the herb-lodge, and only then went off, turning back at every third step.

Lin Que stood on the threshold, watching his receding back, his hand around the medicine-bowl tightening.

---

Back on his own little stool, Lin Que went on grinding his medicine.

Chen, in the end, only blamed his own fire for being insufficient. Lin Que did not take up the words, letting him believe it so—those who fell into this threshold each took it for their own inadequacy, and none thought to look toward the sect's own true-lineage art.

The herb-roller turned round and round beneath his hand. Those three words, Steward He, were ground into the medicine-powder. Outside the herb-lodge the sun slanted west; it was time to feed the youth who had forced the fifth layer his second dose.

【Ch. 030 End · the Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate · the herb-lodge】