Morning cracked pale over the peaks, the mist lying soft and low across the courtyard stones.

  Rulan woke early, though it wasn’t truly by choice. The faintest scrape of a branch against the window had her eyes snapping open, her hand fisting in the blanket like she’d expect someone to tear it away. It took long moments for her breathing to slow, for her mind to piece together the facts: the locked door, the walls around her, the mountain air too thin and clean to belong to any alley she knew.

  Safe.

  Safe enough.

  Her heart didn’t quite believe it yet.

  She dressed fast, hands clumsy from sleep and the lingering ache of yesterday’s cultivation. She ignored Wang Feiyan as easily as she might ignore a chill breeze. Pretending she didn’t exist was easier than acknowledging the sharpness of her sneers, the way the girl took up space like she owned the mountain itself.

  Rulan made her food without a word, scarfing down two hard rolls and a strip of dried fruit with the same mechanical need that had carried her through years on the street. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, washed the bowl, and slipped out the door before Wang Feiyan could so much as breathe in her direction.

  The mountain air hit her like a clean slap.

  Sharp. Cold. Full of the heavy dampness of mist that hadn’t yet burned off with the sun.

  But there was something else too.

  It had been so faint, yesterday. Barely a flicker. A thread she could almost mistake for imagination if she didn’t know better.

  Now it was a pressure, low and constant, not in her gut exactly but somewhere underneath, like a second breath she carried curled around the bones of her spine. It was warm—not fire-warm, but living—like a coal buried deep in her ribs, giving off no smoke, no light, but stubbornly, unmistakably there.

  She swallowed against the dry rasp in her throat.

  The world itself felt… different.

  Sharper, somehow.

  The mist caught on her skin and she could feel it, almost not as water but as something brushing at the thin layer of warmth around her body. Like the air wanted to crawl into her lungs differently. Like the stones under her boots hummed at a pitch just a little too low for hearing.

  She shook herself once, sharply, and stuffed the sensation down.

  No time for floating in wonder.

  Not now.

  Not ever.

  The main street of the outer quarter was already stirring. Early risers hauling water from the spring cisterns. Someone in a training yard striking a target with heavy, clumsy blows. Voices low and purposeful, threading through the mist like thin rope.

  Rulan kept her head down.

  Walked fast, but not fast enough to look like she was running.

  Safe. Still safe.

  For now.

  At the end of the street, a familiar figure leaned against the low wall, arms folded, expression mild. Shen Li caught sight of her before she even raised her hand in greeting.

  Rulan slowed.

  Not because she distrusted Shen Li—not exactly.

  But because she knew what it meant to walk in someone else’s shadow.

  She’d learnt early that in the courts of the streets, as in the markets and the alleys, there were those who held coin without ever touching a string of copper. Bloodhounds, the others had called them. Kings without crowns. They didn’t always shout or strike. Sometimes all they had to do was stand still—and people moved around them.

  She recognised the way the others watched Shen Li from the corner of their eyes. The way little knots of disciples shifted slightly as she passed, unconsciously smoothing their sleeves, minding their steps.

  It wasn’t fear.

  Not yet.

  But it was something.

  Something Rulan knew better than to ignore.

  For now, it was a good enough shelter.

  For now, standing in that orbit meant she could breathe without keeping her back pressed to a wall.

  Still—

  She tucked her hands into her sleeves, the way a beggar might hide her hands in winter, and moved to meet Shen Li with her chin up and her step even.

  It was easier than thinking too much about the gnawing hollow she still hadn’t filled. The part of her that still wanted to latch onto safety with teeth and nails and never let go.

  “You’re early,” Shen Li said, casual as anything.

  “You’re annoying,” Rulan muttered back, but it lacked any real bite.

  The girl laughed—soft, quick—and turned, setting an easy pace toward the cultivation grounds.

  Rulan hesitated only a second longer before falling into step beside her.

  After all, no one survived alone forever.

  Not even here.

  Especially not here.

  And if she had to stand in someone else’s shadow for a little while longer—

  Well.

  It was better than drowning.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The mist hadn’t yet burned off by the time they reached the cultivation field.

  Already, the outer disciples were sorting themselves—half of them settling onto the stone lower platforms where Lin Yujing had directed the unawakened, the other half moving to the raised terrace, where the paths of breath and qi began to truly root.

  Rulan paused at the base of the stairs.

  It wasn’t a big terrace. Just five steps up. A length of stone polished smooth by generations of kneeling. Lanterns hung at each corner, faintly guttering in the morning damp. Nothing spectacular.

  And yet her heart thudded once, hard, behind her ribs.

  A boundary.

  A gate.

  She swallowed, squared her shoulders, and stepped up.

  Shen Li settled beside her without comment, adjusting the fold of her robe and stretching her legs neatly beneath her. Calm, unhurried. Like she’d been here a hundred times already.

  Rulan sat slower, the bruises from yesterday whispering their own quiet complaints through her knees and thighs. The warmth in her dan tian pulsed faintly—quiet, steady, like a second heartbeat lower in her body. Still strange. Still foreign. But hers.

  Around them, the terrace slowly filled: about two dozen disciples, most breathing slow and deep already, some fidgeting, one girl nervously rubbing the hem of her sleeve over and over again between her fingers.

  The world felt different here.

  Not heavier.

  Not lighter.

  Just… deeper.

  The stone under Rulan’s palms hummed, faint and low. The mist didn’t just settle against her skin anymore—it wrapped, curled, touched. When she breathed in, she could feel it riding her breath: a subtle thickness, a weight, a texture she had never noticed before.

  It made her bones ache.

  It made her want more.

  Senior Disciple Lin Yujing arrived with the same quiet finality as before, robes trailing barely an inch above the ground, hair bound back with a strip of dark cloth. They stood at the head of the terrace, looking over the gathering without expression, without the need to raise their voice.

  When they spoke, the air seemed to still to listen.

  “You are here,” Lin said, “because something inside you has opened.”

  Their gaze swept the terrace, not lingering, but thorough.

  “You have touched the thread of your own life. You have begun to shape the formless into form.”

  No one moved. Even the nervous girl with the sleeves had stilled.

  “Qi is not energy. It is not fire to be burned or lightning to be unleashed.”

  Lin Yujing’s voice cut through the mist like a slow, sharp blade.

  “It is pressure. It is motion. It is the breath of stone and seed and river. It is the language the world speaks beneath sound.”

  They turned, gesturing lightly toward the mountain rising behind them.

  “The world moves through qi, just as qi moves through you. To cultivate is not to hoard it, nor to command it. It is to listen. To align. To shape without breaking.”

  Rulan stared up at them, her body rigid, her breath shallow.

  It felt too big.

  Too impossible.

  And yet—

  That warmth inside her didn’t falter.

  Didn’t recede.

  Lin Yujing paced slowly down the line of seated disciples, the hems of their robe whispering over stone.

  “The first lesson you will learn,” they said, “is that your body is no longer only yours.”

  Their hand lifted—palm open, as if feeling the currents of the mist itself.

  “You have invited the world into your flesh.”

  Their voice dropped, quieter but heavier.

  “And it will change you.”

  They stopped before a cluster of younger disciples near the far edge.

  “You will feel the shifts first in breath,” Lin Yujing said. “Then skin. Then bone.”

  Their gaze drifted over the gathered group again.

  “Your blood will thicken. Your muscles will lengthen. You will be heavier in your own body than you remember. You will ache after standing still. You will hunger not just for food, but for heat, for storm, for sky.”

  They stepped back to the head of the terrace, hands folding neatly behind their back.

  “You are beginning a conversation you will carry until death—or until you master it so fully that death becomes a choice.”

  The silence stretched, thick as morning mist.

  Rulan’s mouth was dry.

  The warmth in her belly pulsed once.

  You have invited the world into your flesh.

  It sounded terrifying.

  It sounded right.

  “Today,” Lin Yujing said at last, “we begin with anchoring.”

  They gestured to the ground.

  “Root your breath. Settle your awareness. Do not seek qi. Do not force it. Let it find you.”

  They sat down, folding into a meditative position with the same easy gravity as a falling leaf.

  Rulan adjusted her seat.

  Breathed once, carefully.

  And for the first time, when she inhaled—

  The world inhaled with her.

  — — —

  The first few breaths were miserable.

  Her chest wouldn’t settle. Her spine ached from holding the posture so long. The cold of the stone beneath her legs soaked up through her robe, leaving a dull, creeping chill gnawing at her ankles.

  Rulan clenched her jaw and tried anyway.

  Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

  She tried to feel it—the way she had last night. The coil behind her navel. The breath slipping past her lungs into something deeper, something thicker.

  But every time she reached for it—

  It slipped.

  It scattered like mist.

  The moment she wanted it, it receded, leaving her panting and furious and hollow.

  Around her, the other disciples sat in varying stages of calm.

  Some breathed slow and easy, their faces loose and unfocused. Others were tighter, more rigid, frustration leaking through the lines of their bodies.

  No one moved.

  Not even Lin Yujing, who sat at the front of the terrace like a statue carved from the mountain itself.

  Only the mist moved, curling in soft eddies around their feet, brushing the edges of robes and stone.

  Rulan grit her teeth and tried again.

  Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

  No rhythm. No warmth. No root.

  Just her own restless thoughts battering against the inside of her skull like trapped birds.

  I have to do this.

  I have to catch it.

  I have to—

  She exhaled.

  A long, slow breath that dragged her weariness out with it.

  And she stopped chasing.

  Stopped forcing her breath into boxes.

  Stopped trying to lunge after the warmth in her core like a thief reaching for a coin too high on a shelf.

  Instead—

  She sat.

  Still.

  She let the next breath come when it wanted.

  It was slower.

  Softer.

  It settled deeper without her bidding.

  The coil of warmth stirred again—not leaping, not burning, but stretching, slow as moss across stone. A gathering of presence just beneath the skin of her awareness.

  Her bones ached differently now.

  Not from fatigue, but from weight.

  She felt heavier inside herself, as if her limbs were wrapped not only in flesh but in something thicker—denser—like clay made soft with water.

  The breath slipped lower.

  She anchored it, not with force, but with attention.

  Held it.

  Released it.

  And with every slow cycle, the warmth behind her navel pulsed stronger. Steadier. Not rushing, not racing, but rooting.

  The stone beneath her felt closer.

  The mist felt thicker.

  Her own skin felt like a second boundary she could feel from the inside out.

  It was still faint.

  Still small.

  But it was real.

  Lin Yujing’s voice broke the quiet at last, calm and absolute:

  “You are not a vessel to be filled,” they said. “You are a root to be deepened.”

  The words dropped into her mind like pebbles into still water.

  Deepen.

  Not gather.

  Not seize.

  Deepen.

  And Rulan sat on the terrace, the warmth tucked low in her belly like a promise, breathing in rhythm with a world she was only beginning to glimpse.