The sun had climbed higher by the time they broke from training, warm enough now to peel the chill from her skin but not enough to soothe the sting in her legs. Rulan’s hands shook faintly when she curled them into fists. Not from fear. Just effort, piled layer on layer until her body had nothing left to give but sore silence.

  She’d expected to limp straight back to her quarters, collapse face-first onto her mat, and not move until someone forced her.

  But Shen Li was waiting again.

  And, as always, she didn’t offer rest.

  “There’s a spring near the far terrace,” she said as Rulan caught up, not even looking over her shoulder. “Most of the outer disciples haven’t found it yet.”

  Rulan blinked. “Are we allowed?”

  “Not barred.”

  “Sounds like you found it first.”

  “I asked.”

  Rulan huffed. “Of course you did.”

  She followed.

  The path they took wound around the far side of the southern peak, quieter here than near the gardens or the main hall. The stone underfoot was smoother, older, the grooves of countless passing feet worn into it. Ferns lined the path in low, curling waves, and mist clung to the hollows like the mountain exhaled between the trees.

  Rulan’s legs burned with each step, but it was easier somehow, following Shen’s pace.

  Maybe it was knowing there was water at the end of it. Warm water. Steam. Clean robes.

  Maybe it was the way Shen Li moved—not fast, but assured. Like the mountain had already agreed to let her pass.

  They didn’t speak for a while.

  The wind carried birdsong through the pines. Faint murmurs echoed from the practice fields below.

  And behind them—just faintly—Rulan caught the scrape of shoes on stone.

  She glanced back.

  Two disciples. Talking low. Slowing when they saw Shen Li ahead.

  One of them smiled too quickly. The other looked away too fast.

  Rulan’s eyes narrowed.

  She’d seen that before.

  She used to see it on the streets—trailing behind men with silk coin pouches and too many rings, with their eyes always half-lidded like they were thinking three deals ahead and three steps sideways. People watched them the way you watched storms—nervous, hopeful, a little hungry.

  They watched Shen Li like that.

  Not afraid. Not in awe.

  But calculating.

  And maybe Shen Li knew.

  Maybe that’s why she walked like she didn’t need to look behind her.

  Maybe she didn’t.

  Rulan kept walking.

  But the shape of her thoughts shifted.

  The springs weren’t far—just beyond a crumbling arch that read, not that she knew it, women half-hidden in ivy, down a slope where the air turned thick with heat and moss and mineral steam. The scent hit her first—stone, iron, old earth. Then the sound: bubbling, slow, like water remembering how to breathe.

  It was quiet here.

  Still.

  Set apart.

  Rulan slowed to take it in.

  The pool was wide, ringed with worn rock and shaded by hanging branches. The mist curled above it in lazy spirals, rising towards the fractured light. Wooden slats stood to the side, holding bundles of drying towels and thin plain robes.

  She didn’t wait for permission.

  Didn’t ask.

  She was in the water in three breaths, groaning low as the heat hit her skin and the pain in her calves turned into something almost bearable. Uncaring of her own modesty, not that it meant much to a street kid.

  “Ohh spirits,” she mumbled, sinking deeper. “I’d marry this spring.”

  Shen Li laughed—quiet, but real. She crouched at the edge, dipping her fingers in before stepping in after her.

  Rulan watched her through the steam.

  Eyes half-lidded. Arms folded along the rim of the pool. Her posture never slouched, not even when half-submerged.

  Still that calm.

  Still watching.

  And being watched.

  Rulan exhaled, the heat drawing sweat across her brow.

  “You know,” she said, tone light, “people look at you funny.”

  Shen Li didn’t look over. “They look at everyone.”

  “Not like that.”

  A pause.

  Then Shen glanced at her, sideways, unreadable.

  “What do you mean?”

  Rulan shrugged, water rippling around her collarbones. “Like they’re wondering if they should bet on you. Or worry about you. Like they don’t know if you’re going to win big or burn down the board.”

  Shen Li didn’t answer immediately.

  She dipped a hand into the water again, watching the ripples spread outward, then stilled them with a fingertip.

  “I let them wonder,” she said.

  Rulan snorted. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “I’ve seen what happens when you let them decide too soon.”

  There was something in her voice then—not cold, but old. Older than a girl her age had any right to sound.

  Rulan didn’t push.

  Didn’t ask.

  But she remembered it.

  “You talk like someone twice your age,” Rulan muttered, tilting her head back against the stone.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “You act like someone twice as suspicious.”

  “Comes with the territory.”

  “Which one?”

  “Being hungry.”

  A pause.

  Then Shen Li said, “Not everyone’s your enemy, Rulan.”

  “No,” Rulan agreed. “Some of them are worse. They smile first.”

  Shen hummed, neither agreement nor denial.

  Rulan cracked an eye open. “You ever smile like that?”

  Shen turned her head. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

  “No.”

  “Then I won’t bother lying.”

  Rulan grinned. “Knew it.”

  They let the water bubble between them for a while. No splashing, no movement—just heat softening the bruises they’d earned since dawn.

  “You always this nice to strays?” Rulan asked finally.

  “You’re not a stray.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  “No,” Shen said. “It’s not.”

  Rulan opened her mouth. Closed it again.

  “…Alright.”

  More silence. Not awkward. Just weightless.

  Then Rulan: “You got a plan?”

  “For what?”

  “This place. Sect life. Trials. All that.”

  “Yes.”

  “You going to tell me?”

  “No.”

  Rulan laughed, tired and real.

  “You’re the worst.”

  “I’ve been told.”

  “But you’re smart.”

  “Also that.”

  Rulan glanced over at her. “And careful.”

  Shen met her eyes, steady. “Shouldn’t I be?”

  Rulan shrugged. “Guess I like seeing which way people lean, is all.”

  “You think I lean?”

  “I think you’ve already picked a direction. You’re just waiting for the right moment to move.”

  Shen Li smiled, small and sharp.

  “I think you’re more perceptive than people give you credit for.”

  “I think you’re deflecting.”

  “I think we’re even.”

  Rulan shook her head, a smirk tugging at her mouth.

  “Spirits help me, you really are a pain.”

  “And yet.”

  “And yet,” Rulan echoed.

  And let herself relax—just a little.

  Her shoulders eased under the water, and for a blessed few breaths, the pain in her legs dulled into something almost pleasant. Her eyes drifted half-closed. The steam curled around her face. She could’ve slept here, if the pool weren’t made of stone and discipline.

  Shen Li, of course, ruined it.

  “So,” she said casually, “picked a surname yet?”

  Rulan groaned, long and low. “Why do you keep bringing that up?”

  “Because I like having complete sets.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “No. It’s organized.”

  “You’re unbearable.”

  “You keep saying that. Still here.”

  Rulan sank lower into the water until just her nose was above the surface. “I don’t need one.”

  “You do.”

  “I’ve done fine without it.”

  “You were nearly left off the housing chart.”

  “I was on it eventually.”

  “Because I made them check again.”

  Rulan blew bubbles for a moment, then surfaced. “You’re exhausting.”

  “I’m practical.”

  “You’re pushy.”

  “I’m invested.”

  That made her blink.

  “…In what?”

  “You.”

  The word landed quiet.

  Rulan stared at her, caught off guard.

  Shen Li didn’t flinch. “I don’t like watching people drown when they don’t have to.”

  Rulan rolled her eyes, trying to shake off the weight of the conversation. “You’re just trying to make me pick something embarrassing so you can call me it forever.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “You absolutely would.”

  Shen tilted her head, as though considering it seriously. “Maybe something poetic. Street-girl-becomes-lotus sort of thing.”

  “Spirits forbid.”

  “Lian Rulan.”

  “Stop.”

  “Shuang Rulan.”

  “No cold names. I’ll never hear the end of it from Feiyan.”

  “Wèi Rulan.”

  Rulan snorted. “What, like flavour? Are you naming me after soup now?”

  “Or Xīn Rulan.”

  “Too sentimental.”

  “You could pick something sharp. Jian Rulan.”

  “Now I sound like I’m going to stab someone.”

  Shen Li raised an eyebrow. “Would that be inaccurate?”

  “…Fair.”

  Rulan leant back against the edge of the spring, water rising around her shoulders. Her eyes drifted closed for a moment, her breath slowing.

  Then, cracking one eye open: “Shen, huh?”

  “What about it?”

  “You never mentioned it before.”

  Shen’s reply came without hesitation. “Not important to most people.”

  Rulan looked at her. “It’s a real surname, though?”

  “It is.”

  She waited.

  Shen didn’t elaborate.

  Rulan narrowed her eyes. “You from a sect branch or a clan?”

  Shen didn’t answer right away. Her fingers skimmed the water’s surface, quiet and thoughtful.

  Then: “I don’t lead with it.”

  Rulan stared a moment longer. She recognised the sidestep. The deflection was neat—too neat for someone who had nothing to hide.

  She didn’t press.

  But the pieces moved into place all the same.

  “…Alright,” she muttered. “I’ll think about it.”

  Shen nodded once, satisfied. “Good.”

  “But if you suggest another flower name, I’m throwing you in this spring.”

  “You’d have to catch me first.”

  “Oh, I will,” Rulan said, grinning. “Eventually.”

  They sat in silence after that.

  And the mist curled between them like something held but not yet claimed.

  — — —

  Evening fell sharp and gold across the peaks.

  The house was quiet when Rulan returned. Not by chance—by design.

  She'd timed it perfectly, slipping through the door just after dusk, just long enough after dinner that the main room had already been cleaned, the dishes dried and stacked, and Feiyan had retreated into whatever icy silence she occupied behind her closed door.

  Rulan liked it this way.

  It wasn’t peace, exactly.

  But it was uncomplicated.

  She had long since decided that her illustrious housemate, eldest daughter of the noble Wang clan, did not exist.

  Not in the mornings, when she left before the sun crested the ridge.

  Not in the evenings, when she made her meals quickly and with exacting silence, keeping her elbows in, her steps soft, her eyes anywhere but on Wang Feiyan’s perfectly centred place mat and folded sleeves.

  She refused to rise to the looks. The sighs. The unsubtle clearing of throats or sudden slamming of cupboard doors when Rulan took up too much counter space.

  She didn’t speak to Wang Feiyan.

  Didn’t offer greetings. Didn’t acknowledge her presence.

  And in turn, Wang Feiyan treated her with the kind of silence reserved for things too irritating to dignify.

  Which suited Rulan just fine.

  — — —

  She made her food.

  A bowl of rice and dried mushrooms, seasoned with a pinch of salt. She ate cross-legged at the low table, head down, eyes fixed on her bowl like it contained wisdom instead of overcooked grain.

  Feiyan moved once, maybe twice, behind her.

  Not a word.

  Not a glance.

  Rulan didn’t flinch.

  When she finished, she washed her bowl, wiped down the table, and vanished into her room with the quiet efficiency of someone who had spent her whole life keeping out of the way of people with power.

  The scroll waited on her shelf.

  Unrolled and pinned flat with two smooth pebbles she’d taken from the training yard, the corners curling inward with a stubborn memory of being carried, folded. The ink was fading in places now—worn faint by too many fingertip tracings—but the diagrams remained, etched deep by the quiet repetition of trying.

  Still lines.

  Still rhythm.

  Still a shape she hadn’t mastered.

  Rulan sat cross-legged in front of it, spine rigid with the ghost of motion. Her muscles ached in long, slow waves—shoulders still trembling faintly from the fifth round of posture drills, thighs sore from holding stances too deep for too long. Her calves throbbed where the slope had punished her with every misstep, and her ankle, raw from hours of running, now pulsed with a bruised, quiet heat beneath the robe’s hem.

  None of it mattered.

  Her body could scream all it liked.

  She didn’t need her legs for this.

  Her fingers hovered above the scroll—not to trace, not to memorise, but to feel. The shape of the art had begun to settle inside her, not in words, but in form. She couldn’t read the characters, but she knew the curves and lines of breath now. She had watched Shen Li trace them, again and again, and had heard the way she spoke of stillness as something with edges, something that could be held.

  She tilted her head slightly, eyes narrowing on the stylised figure marked with spiralling lines that wrapped through torso and limbs, all drawing towards the centre.

  That centre.

  The dantian.

  The coil beneath the navel where everything was supposed to begin.

  She didn’t understand it.

  Not in the way the others did.

  But her body remembered more than her thoughts could say.

  And she was too tired to be afraid of trying again.

  She rolled the scroll aside and let herself settle, drawing her hands down to rest against her knees, palms turned inward. Her breath caught in her chest at first, caught again at the back of her throat, restless and shallow like it wanted to run before it learned to stay.

  She let it stutter.

  Let it pass.

  Then started over.

  She inhaled—slowly, steadily—four counts into the hollowness of her chest. She held it there, felt it press against her ribs like something too large to be contained. Then released. Four out, like water flowing through a cracked basin.

  She did it again.

  Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

  Again.

  The tension in her shoulders resisted. Her jaw clenched tight without her noticing. Her back twitched with the need to shift. Her legs complained. Her mind wandered—to the ache in her knees, the dried ink on her fingers, and the half-heard voice of Wang Feiyan muttering that she tracked dirt into the house, as if she were a feral cat let in by mistake.

  She kept breathing anyway.

  She adjusted her spine again—taller this time, more deliberate. She released her jaw. Loosened her stomach.

  The breath changed.

  It stopped dragging like a chain and began to settle, each cycle a little deeper, a little heavier, not in her chest, but lower. Below the ribs. Behind the belly. In the soft hollow she hadn’t known how to reach until now.

  The noise in her head began to fade.

  Her thoughts didn’t vanish. But they grew quieter. Smaller. Like crows taking wing from rooftops at dusk.

  And something inside her shifted.

  Not a jolt.

  Not light.

  Just pressure.

  At first, it was like breathing against resistance—like her breath had to push through something thick, unseen, other. But she stayed with it. Let the rhythm hold. Let the silence bloom, not in the room, but in her ribs. In her spine. In her centre.

  And then, with no warning at all—

  The pressure deepened.

  The warmth came next.

  Not heat like fire. Not even like the spring. Just a soft swell, like breath against the inside of a drum.

  Low.

  Steady.

  Real.

  Her fingers twitched.

  Her breath caught.

  Then smoothed again, instinctively.

  The feeling coiled into place, warm and full just beneath her navel, not like something entering—but something waking. Something that had always been there. Something she hadn’t known how to call.

  She didn’t force it.

  Didn’t chase it.

  She breathed again.

  Held.

  And as she released, it held with her.

  Qi.

  Not a flicker.

  Not a thread.

  But pressure.

  Presence.

  It curled into her dantian like water in a well, small and still and hers.

  She sat in the silence of it, and the feeling was like hunger satisfied.