Ch. 046| Going Alone

The sixth layer of Qi Condensation had coiled in Lin Que's body for barely a few days before it felt too cramped.

The night he broke the sixth layer, he had used the living-qi jade marrow to mend the flaw of the sixth layer in the Breathing Scroll.

Ever since passing the sixth layer, each time he did his breathing, those eyes drifted, of their own accord, to the flaw of the seventh. The broken end, the run of it, he saw clear as day—like a door left ajar, wanting only a key. Plainly he could see it, could mend it, yet all he could do was wait empty-handed for the drawing-material—a taste harder to bear than not seeing at all.

To break the seventh layer, he needed a drawing-material: like the jade marrow, living-qi stock out of a rift.

The moment the drawing-material was in hand, this layer he could break—he had no intention of waiting. Other disciples were stuck at a single layer for three, five years; his eyes could see the flaw and mend the flaw, and what he lacked had only ever been the material. Material complete, then break; there was no reason to hold himself back and grind through it slowly.

Only this time, he meant to go alone.

Han Bosheng and Qinghe came along to explore rifts for the rift crystal and rare stock, for that mutually convenient trade; but the sword-intent in the rift, and the sword-qi the pick in his sleeve could spit—these he had let no one see. To use that one sword, there could be no one else present.

"Gathering herbs on the shaded slope of the rear mountain; back by midday." He gave word to the herb-keeping elder, shouldered the herb-basket, and went up the mountain alone.

---

On the west side of the blighted ground, he picked a rift he had noted before but hadn't dared touch.

That rift opened and closed, the light at its edge flickering with it—the "breathing" kind, fiercer than one asleep. But hidden within its wall was a piece of living-qi brighter even than the jade marrow. These few days he had watched it from afar three times, and made out the rhythm of its breathing: between one inhale and one exhale, there was that brief small half-breath when the gash gaped wide and the man-eating light at its edge was faintest.

That small half-breath was the window to go in.

The window was frighteningly small. Miscount by a beat, be half a step slow, and once that rift closed he'd become the second rabbit that grazed the rift's edge—fur and bone, a piece missing. Coming alone, there was no one outside to time it for him, to call "Go."

Lin Que crouched against the gash a good while, watching that opening and closing, counting the rhythm over and over in his mind, counting until his palms grew damp, until that one inhale and one exhale were carved into his bones.

At the seventh count, the instant the gash gaped wide, he held his breath and slipped in.

Behind him the rift closed with a rush and opened again, a gust of qi sweeping past his heels, cold to the bone. Inside the rift, the daylight was gone; only that layer of "clean" faint light on the rift wall lit up a narrow passage sinking downward. The point of heat under his left eye burned; step by step he picked his way along the solid places without man-eating light—

The rift was deeper inside than it looked from without. At the end of the narrow passage that living-qi shone dazzling, but before the living-qi coiled a deer missing one antler—its whole body sprouting blue-black scales, one of the two antlers on its brow broken off, the broken end oozing "clean" light as it bent its head to drink that living-qi.

A two-headed flaw-deer. An aberration Han Bosheng had mentioned in passing, savage at ramming men.

The deer, drinking the living-qi, suddenly lifted its head, the break of its broken antler aimed at him, two streams of blue-white miasma snorting from its nostrils. It knew a stranger, guarded its food; its forehoof pawed the ground, poised to charge. An aberration like this charging in—even a true-lineage disciple at the seventh layer of Qi Condensation would have to give way before its edge first.

Once, Lin Que would have had to lure it, dodge it, wait for it to show an opening; alone against it, most likely he could only retreat.

But this time, he didn't retreat.

A sweep of his left eye, and the break of the deer's broken antler was the root of the flaw-lines all over it, its vital gate. The deer's hooves had just left the ground when his wrist turned, the bone-pick raising a thread of sword-qi, and along the force-path of that sword-intent, it thrust out with a hiss.

The sword-qi needed no closing in. Across a full ten feet, that thread of sword-qi came splitting the air, reaching the break of the broken antler dead-on before the deer could ram him.

The flaw-deer's huge body, in the very momentum of its half-charge, froze abruptly, the "clean" light bursting apart from the broken end, and it crashed down with a roar, dust sifting from the rift wall where it struck—stopping no more than half a foot from the tips of Lin Que's toes.

Lin Que stood beside the fallen flaw-deer, his chest heaving.

Half a month ago he wouldn't have dared even enter this breathing rift. Now, one man, one sword, and he'd laid low a flaw-deer savage at ramming men. That sword-intent scavenged from within the rift was worth it.

He glanced down at the bone-pick in his hand, its thread of sword-qi drawing slowly back in, leaving no trace.

The flaw-deer's blue-black scales, that broken antler, were fine rare material for forging implements and pills; ordinarily Han Bosheng would surely strip it clean. But today he was alone, and in this breathing rift that might close at any moment—Nine Lives' first rule: don't be greedy. He didn't spare the deer's stock a second glance.

He rounded the deer's carcass and in two or three motions pried that piece of living-qi loose from the rift wall—don't linger, Nine Lives' second rule. It was a piece of living-qi congealed jade brighter and thicker than the jade marrow, lying warm against his palm.

The drawing-material to break the seventh layer was in hand.

But at the very instant he pried the living-qi loose, the "breath" of that breathing rift went ragged.

The opening and closing, even a moment before, now seemed to take fright, its rhythm scattered all apart—perhaps because that piece of living-qi had been taken, the rift itself "hurt." Lin Que's heart went cold: the window he had counted out on entering was gone.

The "clean" light on both walls of the rift began to shudder, squeezing toward the middle. If he didn't get out now, once this rift closed it would wring him inside, fur and bone, the same end as that rabbit, those three strangely-dead rogue cultivators—come in alone, no one to guard his rear, no one to call out for him to withdraw.

He had no leisure to think it through. His left eye fixed dead on the flicker of that light, and picking the line of crevice not yet fully closed between the two converging walls of light, he turned sideways to snatch his way through—

But from the corner of his eye he caught, deep in the rift, a small ash-grey thing curled up. Palm-sized, shrunk between two closing walls of "clean" light, a pair of bright eyes wide as saucers, frozen stiff with fright, not daring to move. The light that had wrung the rabbit was pushing onto it, inch by inch.

It was the one that had poked its head out at the mouth of the shallow rift before and bolted at the sight of him. A sweep of Lin Que's left eye, and that same cold came again to his heart—from head to foot it was clean, not a single stroke missing, so whole it seemed not a thing this world should hold.

He had already edged onto that line of a way out. A little beast of unknown provenance was, after all, no concern of his; this life of his he had scrimped back from the rifts, step by step, on the strength of Nine Lives' iron rules, no cause to run even half a risk more for its sake.

But those eyes, dumb with fright, gazed straight at him.

"Tch." He cursed low, turned back, thrust the congealed jade into his breast, reached out and scooped up that ball of ash-grey, tucked it against his chest, and turned to slam his way through that line of crevice. With one more ball at his chest, he was heavier, slower. Behind him came a slap—the breathing rift closed dead, and a whole swath of his back-hem was scraped away by that layer of "clean" light, a great piece gone clean off—half an inch slower, and what it shaved off would have been his spine.

The man tumbled onto the slope. He rolled over, first shielding the ball at his chest. The little thing burrowed out from his breast, trembling like a leaf in the wind, yet not rushing to flee, its pair of bright eyes gazing straight at him a good while.

Lin Que gasped for breath and didn't touch it. After a moment, the little thing edged tentatively half a step nearer and, with its furry head, brushed his fingertip exceedingly lightly.

But just then, its whole body suddenly stiffened, the ash-grey down at the back of its neck standing on end, and out of its throat squeezed a thin, quavering cry. Lin Que looked along the direction it stared—not toward the breathing rift that had nearly wrung it dead, but farther off, toward the Xuanzhao Sect.

The direction of the forbidden court.

What the little thing feared was not the rift. The thought had just turned over in Lin Que's mind when it darted into a shallow rift at the slope's edge and vanished, the faint light of that shallow rift dimming along with it—fleeing more urgently even than when it had dodged him just now.

He stared at the dimming rift-mouth, then looked back toward the Xuanzhao Sect, and made nothing of it: a little beast that had just scavenged back half its life from a man-eating rift, and all that fear of it turned not toward the rift.

He set this odd matter aside in his heart, found a great rock out of the wind, and sat down. The sun was still high; the seventh layer's flaw he'd best mend within this half-day.

---

This time, mending the flaw, he did not bring the deep-scroll rubbing.

When he broke the sixth layer, he had still had to follow the mending method rubbed from the deep scroll of the Xuanzhao Breathing Art, joining it stroke by stroke. But this half-year, he had mended arts, mended talismans, mended sword-intent, mended one flaw after another—those eyes had long since seen the principle of "how a flaw ought to be mended" into his very bones.

He closed his eyes, sank the qi to the dantian, and drew it upward layer by layer. Before the threshold of the seventh layer, the point of heat under his left eye brightened, looking into his own meridians—that cut flaw, its broken end, its run, the very stroke that ought to be mended, all clear as day, no need to follow anyone's rubbing now.

He drew the living-qi of that living-qi congealed jade and, along the run he had seen for himself, filled it into the broken end.

This congealed jade was fiercer, thicker than the jade marrow, and the moment it was drawn out it strained to ram in every direction. But he had tamed the jade marrow, tamed that back-surging sword-intent; now his spirit-sense held steady, leading it into the broken end thread by thread—fill one part, the qi-vessel opens one part, and that flaw, cut who knew how many years ago, closed inch by inch beneath his eye. The stroke missing at the broken end, his eye saw plainly; mending it was as easy as moving his own arm.

At the instant the qi-vessel joined through, the sword-intent lying in his meridians suddenly hummed and shook, as if scenting something, and shot up a stretch along the newly opened qi-vessel—the seventh layer's qi thickening, that one sword sank and sharpened with it. The breath pent before the threshold coiled smoothly past the seventh-layer aperture.

The seventh layer of Qi Condensation.

He opened his eyes; the piece of living-qi congealed jade in his palm was pressed dry into a dead, heavy dark stone. The price, as ever—the left eye swollen, a thread of bloody sweetness at the throat, far lighter than the night he broke the sixth layer.

---

Back at the herb-lodge, it wasn't yet dark. The herb-keeping elder gave him a scolding straight off, faulting him for taking so long gathering herbs, and made him sift both great vats of dregs in the back yard once through.

Lin Que lowered his hands and answered "Yes," rolled up his sleeves, crouched before the vats, and slowly began sifting out the charred cores. The elder walked off grumbling, not seeing in the least: this timid odd-jobber picking out charred cores so honestly had, only at midday, gone alone into a man-eating rift, broken the seventh layer, and carried in his sleeve a sword that could take a man's life.

【Ch. 046 End · the rear mountain of the Xuanzhao Sect · the breathing rift of the blighted ground】