They reached the row of tier-three houses just as the mist began to lift in earnest. It peeled away from the rooftops like gauze from a half-healed wound, pale and clinging, reluctant to release the dawn.

  Shen Li didn’t slow.

  “Come on.”

  Rulan blinked at her. “To where?”

  “South courtyard,” Shen said. “The meditation platforms are open this early. Most won’t show until the second bell.”

  Rulan stopped in her tracks, the ache in her legs blooming now that the motion had ceased. “Now?”

  Shen Li didn’t even glance back. “Yes. Now is the best time.”

  Rulan scowled. “I just trained for two hours.”

  “And your legs still work.” Shen’s voice didn’t change. “And your hands are still empty.”

  The words sank in. Quick. Clean. Sharp, but not unkind.

  Rulan rolled her shoulders. Her robe still clung to the sweat on her back. The air smelled like pine needles and morning stone.

  “I don’t want to waste your time,” she muttered.

  “It’s not wasted.”

  “You don’t even know if—”

  “You’ve already said that,” Shen Li cut in, calm but pointed. She wasn’t irritated. Just done with excuses.

  Then she turned, taking a narrower path that curled around the outer wall like a thread through cloth. Mist moved around her, not quite touching.

  Rulan stayed where she was for three slow heartbeats.

  Then she sighed.

  And followed.

  The meditation platform was still.

  Stone-tiled, open on all sides, columns wrapped in thin climbing moss. One brazier smoldered low in the corner, its smoke curling toward the rafters in lazy spirals. A breeze drifted through, soft and cool. It stirred the hem of Rulan’s robe. It smelled like ash. Like pine sap. Like something old.

  Shen Li walked to the far edge and knelt with deliberate ease. No flourish. Just practiced motion. She opened a cloth-wrapped bundle with the same efficiency she brought to everything.

  From within: a small wooden inkstone, a narrow jar of ink sealed with wax, two slender brushes wrapped in silk, and a stack of soft parchment. Pale, blank, and waiting.

  “You brought all that?” Rulan asked, surprised despite herself.

  “Of course.”

  Shen Li said it like it was obvious.

  “I was going to practice alone,” she added, rolling out a clean mat. “But now you’re here.”

  Rulan hovered near the entrance, arms crossed over her chest, unsure whether she should be grateful or defensive. “I never said yes.”

  “You never walked away.”

  Shen Li poured the water into the inkstone, unsealing the jar with care. Her fingers moved in small, sure circles as she ground the ink. The sound was soft—stone over stone, like rain just beginning to fall. Her breath matched the motion: slow, even, without rush.

  Rulan didn’t move.

  Didn’t kneel.

  Didn’t speak.

  She could have turned around. Could have left.

  She didn’t.

  And Shen Li didn’t look up when she said, quiet and even, “I’m not going to laugh at you.”

  Rulan flinched like the words had struck a bruise.

  “I’m not going to ask you why you can’t read. I don’t care.”

  There was no venom in it. Just clarity. Clean as frost.

  “We all come from somewhere. We all lack something.”

  Now Shen Li looked up.

  “But if you don’t learn to read, this sect will bury you.”

  Rulan swallowed, hard.

  Shen Li continued, words measured but unflinching. “You’ll fall behind. Miss instructions. Fail trials. The elders will stop seeing you. The inner sect will never learn your name. And when the gate opens, they’ll send you back down the mountain. Back into silence.”

  Rulan lowered her gaze.

  She didn’t nod. Didn’t argue.

  Because the worst part was—she already knew it.

  She just hadn’t heard it spoken aloud before.

  She knelt. Slowly. Awkwardly. As if the floor might reject her.

  Arms still crossed.

  Still unsure.

  Shen Li dipped the brush into ink and tapped it once, then twice, against the side of the stone.

  She drew three characters in a clean, quick hand. Her strokes were crisp, elegant, just slightly slanted to the right. The final one lifted at the end like a breath escaping a tight chest.

  “Your name,” Shen Li said. “The one they gave you.”

  Rulan stared.

  Three symbols. All black, unfamiliar. Heavy on the page.

  Names meant nothing, where she came from.

  Names were stories people gave themselves, or lies they told others. They were traded. Abandoned. Forgotten.

  But this name… it had been for her. It was real in a way nothing had ever been.

  Shen Li handed her the brush.

  Rulan hesitated. “I don’t even know how to hold it.”

  “You hold it,” Shen Li said softly, “like you’re holding a chance. Gently. But like you mean it.”

  She reached out, adjusted Rulan’s grip—two fingers higher, the base steadied between thumb and knuckle. Her hands were warm.

  “This one is Ru

  “I didn’t say it was,” Rulan muttered, even though she had.

  “The second is Lan

  “A flower,” Rulan said, flat.

  Shen Li smiled, not kindly, but wry. “Yes. A weed in the wrong garden. A medicine in the right one.”

  She dipped the brush again.

  “That’s your name,” she said. “Not what you are. That’s what we’re here to find out.”

  Rulan took the brush.

  It shook slightly in her grip.

  She copied the first character. Slowly. Unevenly.

  The line bled. The top stroke sagged. The whole thing tilted like it had lost its balance halfway through being born.

  She stared at it.

  “It’s terrible.”

  Shen Li was already writing another. “It’s your first. It’s supposed to be terrible.”

  She added a clean line underneath.

  “Again.”

  Rulan did.

  The second was worse.

  The third was crooked.

  The fourth almost looked like Shen Li’s, if she squinted.

  Her fingers cramped. Her hand ached. Her pride shrieked in the back of her skull like a trapped bird.

  But she didn’t stop.

  Shen Li said nothing unless asked. She didn’t correct Rulan’s grip unless it slipped entirely. She didn’t praise. She didn’t pity.

  She just sat there.

  Solid.

  Steady.

  And slowly——the panic in Rulan’s chest began to dull.

  Not disappear. But quiet.

  Not because she felt safe.

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  But because for the first time in her life, someone was teaching her how to stay.

  The ink on her fifth attempt hadn’t yet dried, but Rulan was staring at it like it had wronged her.

  The character was better—by the narrowest thread—but her hand ached, her posture was slumping, and the brush had started to feel like it belonged to someone else. Not her. Not yet.

  Shen Li watched her for a moment longer, then reached into her bundle and pulled out a familiar roll of parchment.

  “The scroll,” she said, untying the cord.

  Rulan stiffened.

  “I already tried,” she muttered, defensive.

  “I know,” Shen Li replied. Not unkind. Not indulgent. Just factual.

  “It didn’t mean anything.”

  “I know,” she said again. “That’s why I’m going to read it.”

  She spread the scroll flat across the clean stone between them.

  The ink was fine. Dark. The characters laid in neat lines, each stroke measured. The parchment smelled faintly of the oils used to preserve it—sandalwood, maybe, and something like dried mint.

  At the top, above the rest, three characters stood bolder than the others.

  Shen Li touched them lightly, as though pointing to a mountain peak beyond a veil.

  “Jewel Lotus Art

  Rulan leaned in, cautious.

  The text looked the same as before—impossible. Unreadable.

  But Shen Li kept speaking.

  “It’s a breathing method first. Then a stillness practice. Then a motion.”

  Her fingers moved with each phrase, slow and sure, like she was marking steps across a map.

  “Everything in this sect builds from this art. It’s how you draw qi safely for the first time. How you anchor it. How you teach your body not to reject it.”

  She tapped the first block of script.

  “Start here,” she said. “This line explains the first form: ”

  She read aloud, her voice steady, the cadence like wind combing water:

  Rulan listened, still as stone.

  Not because she understood.

  But because it like truth.

  The kind she’d never been taught to expect.

  Shen Li continued.

  She glanced at Rulan. “That’s the first part. You don’t need to read to start it. You just need to remember.”

  Rulan didn’t speak.

  Something was shifting behind her ribs, slow and uneven. Not quite pain. Not quite hope.

  Shen Li began again, pointing out each character in turn. The strokes. The rhythm of the sentences. How breathing was described not with instruction, but with imagery

  “It’s poetry,” Rulan said, startled.

  Shen Li nodded. “Of course. Cultivation is a path. Not a manual. Every instruction is a metaphor.”

  Rulan looked down at the scroll again.

  Let the breath fall to the dan tian. Four beats in. Two held. Exhale slow.

  Could she do that?

  Yes. Maybe.

  It wasn’t easy. But it wasn’t impossible.

  It didn’t ink. Not yet.

  Shen Li pointed to another passage.

  “This next part is motion,” she said. “They call it It’s five movements, done slowly. I’ll show you tonight, if you want.”

  “I’m not ready,” Rulan said automatically.

  Shen Li didn’t argue. Didn’t push.

  She just said, “You will be.”

  And that was worse. And better. And everything in between.

  Rulan stared at the characters again. Let her eyes follow Shen Li’s finger as she traced them. She didn’t know the words. Not yet.

  But she would.

  She .

  They sat in silence for a long time after that.

  The scroll lay open between them, its ink beginning to fade where the sunlight crept across the floor. The warmth of it made the parchment curl faintly at the corners, like it wanted to close again on its own.

  Shen Li didn’t move.

  Her eyes lingered on the final line of the first section, unmoving, unreadable. As if she weren’t reading it at all, but listening—like the scroll was whispering secrets she couldn’t quite decide whether to trust.

  The brazier cracked softly in the corner. A breeze moved the tips of Rulan’s loose hair. Somewhere far down the slope, a bell chimed once—thin and distant, swallowed quickly by the mountain.

  Rulan shifted. Picked at the thread of her sleeve. She opened her mouth, closed it again, then opened it anyway.

  “…Sister Shen?”

  Shen Li blinked, slow, like someone surfacing from deep water. “Mn?”

  Rulan glanced down at the scroll again, then away, half-flinching already. “What’s… qi?”

  Shen Li stared at her.

  Not shocked. Not annoyed. Just… blank. For a beat too long.

  Then Rulan rushed to fill the space. “And what’s a ? Everyone talks like we’re supposed to just like it’s something obvious. Like it’s always been there. I’ve tried—I’ve tried feeling something but it’s just…”

  She trailed off. Her voice thinned.

  “…I don’t feel anything.”

  Shen Li didn’t laugh.

  Didn’t blink.

  She let out a long breath—then dropped her face into her hands.

  Rulan froze.

  Not because she was hurt.

  But because ?

  “Uh,” Rulan said eloquently, “…are you okay?”

  Shen Li groaned into her palms, muffled. “I am I do not know how to explain qi to someone who’s never heard of it without sounding like a fake sage from a puppet show.”

  Rulan stared.

  Then, absurdly, a laugh burst out of her. Short. Sharp. Real.

  Shen Li looked up, hands dragging down her face.

  “I’m okay?” she said, half-smiling now, cheeks a little pink. “Give me a moment to sound less like a carved plaque in a temple.”

  “I thought you were going to say something all mystical and elegant again,” Rulan said, a little breathless.

  “I ,” Shen muttered. “And then I realized how stupid it sounds when you haven’t grown up hearing it every other week since you were four.”

  Rulan ducked her head, hiding a grin she didn’t know how to explain.

  Then Shen Li straightened again, brushing her palms down her thighs, shoulders squaring with new purpose.

  “Okay. Take two. You ready?”

  Rulan gave her a look.

  “You asked,” Shen said, with the air of someone about to climb a very steep hill.

  Then, more carefully this time: “Qi is life. But not just life like breathing or blood or sleep. It’s… motion. Pressure. The thread on a bowstring before you fire it. The pull of water before the wave. It’s everywhere, but it only if you can feel it.”

  Rulan wants to point out that actually sounds a lot like something a temple would.

  She held out her hand, palm upward, and looked at it like it might start glowing. “The way heat rises from stone. The way trees bend toward sunlight. The way your skin gets tight before a storm. That’s all qi.”

  She paused. “You have it. The world has it. The difference is—”

  “Cultivators shape it,” Rulan said softly, following.

  Shen Li gave her a small, crooked nod.

  “You learn to gather it. Shape it. Store it. That’s what the breathing is for. The isn’t flashy. It doesn’t summon lightning or open portals or whatever nonsense kids tell each other.”

  She tapped the scroll.

  “It teaches you to feel it. So you don’t die when you try to use it.”

  She reached up, tapping her own chest. “Here. Below the ribs. That’s the Not a body part. Not something you can touch. A place between places.”

  Rulan squinted. “Like… like a stomach?”

  Shen Li snorted. “Sure. But instead of breaking things down, it builds. It takes in qi and holds it, stores it like a reservoir.”

  There was a beat of quiet.

  Rulan blinked slowly. “…You’re better at this than you think.”

  Shen Li sighed. “Only because I’ve messed it up enough already.”

  She leaned back, rubbing the back of her neck.

  “You won’t feel it yet. That’s normal. It’s like… walking in darkness until your eyes adjust.”

  “Or stepping into cold water,” Rulan offered. “Takes a while for your skin to stop screaming.”

  Shen Li smiled, sharp and pleased. “Exactly that.”

  They were quiet again, but it wasn’t uncomfortable this time.

  Then Rulan asked, more softly, “Why does everyone act like it’s easy?”

  Shen Li’s smile faded, but not with coldness.

  “They don’t,” she said. “They just learned young. They forgot how hard it was.”

  Rulan looked at her. “Did you?”

  “No.” Shen Li’s voice thinned. “I remember. But… by choice. Not pain.”

  That landed heavier than Rulan expected.

  She nodded slowly.

  Then looked down at the scroll again.

  The words no longer looked cruel.

  Just distant. Just unfamiliar.

  Like a shoreline she hadn’t reached yet.

  “I thought it would feel like something,” she whispered. “Like a spark. A weight. Something clear.”

  “It doesn’t,” Shen said. “Not at first.”

  She paused.

  “Feels like breathing wrong. Like trying to sleep with your eyes open.”

  She drew a breath, soft and steady.

  “And then, someday… it feels like ”

  Rulan looked up sharply.

  Shen Li didn’t blink.

  “That’s what my first instructor said,” she added after a moment. “And they were right.”

  Shen Li unrolled the scroll again after that and smoothed it flat with both hands.

  “Start here,” she said, her voice quiet. “ The first form. No movement. Just breath.”

  Rulan looked at the line of characters, still incomprehensible but no longer hostile.

  Shen Li tapped the first with her finger. “Sit.”

  Rulan obeyed.

  She crossed her legs slowly on the mat, spine still sore from morning drills. Her hands settled into her lap, one over the other. Her shoulders curled inward slightly—habit. She unfolded them.

  “Spine straight,” Shen Li murmured. “Shoulders loose. Chin level. Eyes half-closed, not shut.”

  She demonstrated besides her, moving into the same posture.

  Rulan mirrored her again.

  “Now,” Shen said, “inhale for four heartbeats. Hold for two. Exhale through the nose. No force. Just fall.”

  Rulan tried.

  The breath came too fast. She caught it halfway. Started again.

  Four beats.

  Hold.

  Two.

  Exhale.

  The first time felt like swallowing a stone.

  The second, like her ribs were too tight.

  By the third, her mind had already wandered.

  She thought of the alley behind Master Jin’s shop, the one with the loose tile that always dripped in winter.

  She thought of little Jie, barefoot and fast, snatching sweet buns and laughing even when he was caught. Thought of how he coughed at night and didn’t wake up one morning.

  She thought of the bitter roots they boiled to stretch the soup, of the bruised plums, of the ache that came not from starving but from .

  She thought of her hands—how thin they’d been. How small.

  And how no one had ever stopped to show her how to

  “Again,” Shen Li said gently, not looking at her.

  Four in. Hold. Two. Exhale.

  Rulan snapped her mind back. Eyes fluttering. Jaw tight.

  The breath stuttered again. She forced it still.

  “Don’t force,” Shen Li murmured, like reading her thoughts. “Guide it.”

  Another breath.

  It fell jagged.

  Her mind wandered again.

  She thought of the ration queue when the guard kicked over the pot. Of the screams. Of how fast she’d run and how many children hadn’t.

  Of how she always ran faster.

  Of what that cost.

  Of what it meant.

  She snapped her mind back again.

  Now.

  Her stomach wasn’t empty. It was full. It was warm. She wasn’t hungry.

  She didn’t want to be hungry again.

  She didn’t want to live hour by hour, scrap to scrap.

  She wanted… more.

  She didn’t know what meant.

  But she wanted it.

  She inhaled again.

  This time it didn’t catch.

  Four counts. Hold. Two. Exhale.

  It wasn’t smooth. But it was full.

  The breath settled lower, near her ribs, not in her chest.

  She tried again.

  And again.

  The platform was quiet.

  The brazier still smoldered. The wind still moved.

  She kept breathing.

  And somewhere—not in her skin, not in her thoughts, but in that place Shen Li had named, below her ribs, behind everything else—

  —something shifted.

  A warmth. Not heat. A presence. A flicker of

  Not like feeling a heartbeat.

  More like noticing a thread you hadn’t seen had been holding something together all along.

  Rulan didn’t speak.

  She didn’t open her eyes.

  She just breathed again.

  And held on.

  The world had gone quiet.

  Not the quiet of tension—of held breath or hiding steps.

  This was different.

  This was not the silence of fear. Not the silence before pain.

  It was stillness.

  And it her.

  Rulan’s breath slowed, not by command, but by some fragile rhythm her body seemed to find on its own. Her spine hurt less. Her hands had stopped trembling. The ache behind her ribs, the one that never quite left, dimmed beneath something she didn’t have a word for.

  She breathed again.

  Four in. Two held. Out.

  And in that breath, something answered.

  Not a sound.

  Not a voice.

  A presence.

  The softest tendril

  She didn’t move.

  She didn’t dare.

  Her thoughts buzzed around it, wide-eyed, cautious.

  She breathed again.

  And there—again—a spark.

  A whisper in her bones. Not pain. Not heat. Just… a shift. Ephemeral. Like trying to hold sunlight in her hands. It darted away as soon as she noticed it, but it had been

  She was sure of it.

  She couldn’t catch it. But she could feel it.

  And that was enough.

  Her next inhale came deeper.

  When she held it, the breath coiled, just slightly, in her lungs—not cold, not hot, but than before. Brighter, maybe. It gathered not in her throat or chest but deeper, beneath her ribs, where her pulse slowed and her thoughts softened.

  It felt like hope.

  Or the very first shape of it.

  It wasn’t power. Not yet.

  But it was possibility.

  And for Rulan, that was a kind of miracle.

  Besides her, Shen Li didn’t interrupt. Didn’t shift. Didn’t praise.

  She only breathed, in quiet rhythm, like a second current moving beside her own.

  Rulan stayed that way for a long time, eyes half-lidded, spine tall, hands resting still in her lap.

  She didn’t know how long the moment lasted.

  But when the wind moved again, when the brazier hissed in the corner and her shoulders began to ache—

  She opened her eyes.

  And the world hadn’t changed.

  But had.

  Just a little.

  Just .