By the time drills ended, the sun hung low behind the mountain peaks, washing the outer training fields in gold. Qu Rulan’s shirt clung to her back, her arms ached from the shield exercises, and her thighs still burned from slope runs. She was tired, the good kind, and sore in the way that meant she’d pushed the line a little further.

  And what a line it was— the world felt light around her as she ran these days, qi flowing through her veins and it feels like the weight of the sky cannot press down on her as it once did. Her muscles work, pushing further and further every day. She hasn’t gone hungry in a month.

  She didn’t head straight back to her quarters.

  Instead, she wound upward towards the narrow path that wrapped above the second terrace, where the stone wall caught the last clean light of afternoon. Few others came here at this hour. It was too exposed, too plain. But it had the one thing she needed.

  Sun.

  She found a patch where the warmth still touched the stone and sat cross-legged against the wall, letting her breath slow, her muscles ease. The scroll was still folded neatly in her satchel, but she didn’t reach for it. She didn’t need to. She’d read the opening passage enough times by now to have it etched into the backs of her eyes.

  When the cultivator stands beneath the sun’s path, the world shifts.

  She wasn’t yet sure what that meant. But she wanted to.

  With care, she drew in a breath, slow and steady, and reached inward—her qi moving not fast or hard, but smoothly now, familiar in its pacing. She guided it upward through the channels, past the first meridian’s quiet thrum, and towards the space behind her eyes where the scroll said the light should meet her.

  It felt… wrong. Not sharply, not enough to startle, just out of step. Her qi was used to Veil of Dust, used to slipping low and circling her feet, staying near the ground, wrapping around her presence instead of reaching outward.

  Solar qi wasn’t like that.

  The scroll had said it wasn’t just heat or force—it was clarity. Direction. Presence.

  But qi was qi. And everything around her was saturated with it: the stones beneath her, the air, the roots of trees in the terrace above. How was she supposed to find something as specific as light?

  She tried again, slower this time, softening her grip on the guiding flow. Not pulling. Just listening.

  It brushed her skin as it rose—just a breath behind the eyes—and met the light falling across her cheek.

  For a second, something caught.

  As if the shape of the world sharpened by half a finger’s width—the edge of the stone, the veins in the leaf three paces away, warmth and light and burning heat. Then it passed, and something in her chest felt very still.

  She didn’t try again immediately. The scroll had warned against forcing the technique, especially before the body grew familiar with its pacing. Clarity first. Combat follows. That was the line underlined in the margin—perhaps by a cultivator like her, trying to read the sun with a body trained to hide.

  Instead, Qu Rulan rested her palms against her knees and simply breathed. She let the last of the sunlight soak into her shoulders, let the strain of training roll slowly off her bones. The sensation behind her eyes had passed, but not entirely. She could still feel the faint echo of that moment. Not seeing more—but seeing differently.

  The sun slipped lower.

  She rose when the shadows stretched long, brushing the dust from her robes, and made her way back through the winding upper paths. The wind was cooler now, the stone under her sandals still warm from the day. Her satchel thumped lightly against her hip with every step.

  Back in her room, she lit a single lamp and unwrapped the cloth pouch holding her spirit stones. Seven red, one yellow. The reds glimmered faintly, still potent. She ran her fingers lightly over them, then glanced towards the sabre resting against the wall.

  The blade was clean. The grip worn smooth in just the right places. She had oiled it that morning, not because it was needed, but because it felt like something a real disciple would do.

  She crouched besides it, reaching for the cloth-wrapped foundational pill box, and sat back on her heels, the weight of it in her hand steadying something deeper than her posture.

  She had a technique now—an art aligned with light.

  A blade she knew how to wield, even if barely.

  Stones to cultivate, a pill to deepen her foundation.

  And yet, the part that struck her hardest wasn’t what she had; it was the fact that it was hers.

  The red stones might have been worth gold back in Zhaoyang City. Enough to feed a whole gang, if she’d been fool enough to show them. That yellow stone? She couldn’t even guess.

  But here—here it meant breath. Breakthroughs. A place, if she fought for it.

  The rules weren’t soft. But they held. And no one had tried to take her satchel on the way back.

  Qu Rulan leant back, stretching her sore legs out before her, and set the pill box gently on the mat besides her bed. She didn’t open it, not yet. That would be a task for the weekend.

  “…it’s this way,” Shen Li said, leading her down the quieter southern stairway that skirted behind the western pavillion. “Hall Seven’s the only one with properly stabilised formations for outer disciple use. The centre dais is best. Least residual interference.”

  Qu Rulan nodded, the pill box held close against her ribs beneath the folds of her sleeve. They had eaten together that morning, spoken little. Shen Li didn’t hover, didn’t ask if she was ready. She had simply said, I’ll walk with you, and that had been that.

  The halls along this stretch of the sect weren’t often used—most outer disciples only passed this way once or twice, unless they were lucky or very, very disciplined. The stone underfoot was old, uneven in places, and the columns that framed the passage bore sun-faded carvings that traced the shape of spirals, lotuses, and rising light.

  Qu Rulan recognised none of the patterns. But they felt intentional—more so than the walls she’d walked past each day since arriving.

  “Do I need to sign in?” she asked as they rounded a bend.

  “There’s a slate outside the threshold,” Shen Li said. “Time of entry, purpose. They don’t time you. It’s not a test. You stay as long as the pill carries you.”

  Qu Rulan’s fingers tightened slightly against the lacquered edge of the box.

  “What happens if it’s too much?”

  Shen Li didn’t slow. “Then you stop. You leave what you can’t hold. The instructors won’t interfere unless you start bleeding from the eyes.”

  Qu Rulan gave her a look. Shen Li’s mouth twitched, just barely.

  “They’ll step in if you seize or lose consciousness. But that’s rare. And usually, it’s pride.”

  They turned one last corner, and the entryway to Hall Seven came into view—low, solid stone, half-sunken into the slope. No ornament, just a single carved panel above the doors, etched with a faded ring of sunrays worn nearly smooth. A few names were slotted into the slate just besides the entry. Only one still remained from earlier in the morning.

  Qu Rulan slotted hers in without comment.

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  The door creaked open with a gentle push, and the scent of old air greeted her—not stale, exactly, but untouched, cool with stone and faint resin from somewhere in the deeper walls.

  The room was round, the centre floor sunken slightly, ringed with polished steps that bore faint glimmers of embedded jade. Three platforms marked the centre—each inlaid with copper spirals, anchoring lines radiating outward. She moved towards the largest, the central platform, and knelt with care.

  Shen Li lingered just inside the threshold.

  “You don’t have to wait,” Qu Rulan said, her voice low, half-expecting dismissal.

  “I know,” Shen Li said. “I’ll stay.”

  She didn’t sit, only folded her arms within her sleeves and leant slightly against the inner wall. Her eyes moved across the chamber once, then settled.

  The silence inside was different than in her room. Not quiet from lack of sound, but because everything here had been built for stillness. The way the floor pressed against her knees, the way the air held motionless between breaths, the way the formations just beneath the surface of the stone began to whisper against her senses—all of it said: Here is the place for change.

  Qu Rulan closed her eyes, holding the box in her lap.

  The pill inside was no different than it had been yesterday—small, gold, faintly etched. She ran her thumb once along the lacquered edge of the case, then opened it. The pill sat alone in the cloth, still and quiet. It gave off no scent now, but something in the air shifted just from having it exposed.

  She breathed, let her heart settle, and let the space open around her. There was no ceremony. No teacher. No blessing.

  She held the pill between her fingers for a moment longer, then placed it on her tongue and bit down.

  It broke with a faint crack. The taste hit instantly—bitter and earthy, something like dried herbs crushed into clay. It caught at the back of her throat, thick and cloying, and she swallowed twice to get it down.

  The warmth started low.

  Not a glow. Not a flare. Just heat blooming like a coal pressed too close to skin—contained, but growing. Her breath faltered. She shifted on the mat, adjusted her posture, and closed her eyes.

  The heat deepened, and then it surged.

  Not outwards—but through her, as if her dantian had cracked open and a second sun had spilt into her core. Her breath caught, teeth clenched, fingers digging into her knees. She bent her focus hard into the sensation, found the shape of her qi beneath the flood, and began to push.

  Not against it—but with it.

  It wasn’t pain.

  But it was close.

  The rush rolled up her spine, into her chest, along her arms in prickling waves. Her channels buzzed with energy—sharp, electric, too much all at once. It boiled under her skin. Buzzed in her bones. Her breath came shallow, then deepened again by force of will.

  She sank into it.

  Time blurred— there was only qi now—bubbling, biting, too dense to move easily, too vast to hold comfortably. Her meridians ached as she tried to cycle it through the patterns she’d learned, each breath a struggle to keep it flowing. The dantian didn’t just hum—it throbbed, pulsed with pressure like a wound stitched too tightly.

  She refined what she could, pushed the rest back, a constant flow.

  Her fingers had long since curled into the mat, muscles trembling, hair clinging to her temples with sweat. She didn’t know how long it had been. Ten minutes. An hour. More.

  She lost track of time entirely, caught between pulses of movement, between bursts of focus and the sharp-edged chaos of too much.

  Her qi channels burned.

  Her core strained, but still the work went on.

  She hadn’t meant to push quite that far, not entirely—not when the current of qi had already turned ragged at the edges, jagged with the strain of maintaining form under the weight of it all. She’d been managing, barely, holding the rhythm like a rider clinging to a panicked mount, breath short and spine locked tight with effort. But the flow surged suddenly, harder than she anticipated, shoving itself through the thinnest point in her inner circuit, and the blockage in her left arm—one she’d worked around for over a week now—broke apart in a sudden wash of heat, sharp and immediate, like a muscle knot tearing loose without warning.

  The qi surged, thick and fast, and her balance faltered. Her breath stuttered, jaw tightening as she fought to hold position, to keep her centre even while the internal structure shifted. The flow didn’t pause to let her recover. It roared into the newly opened channel like a spring finally uncorked, wild and seething. Instinct answered where thought failed, and she sank her focus into the motion, forcing herself to follow it, to brace the opening and smooth the edges before the pressure could tear further or fracture something she couldn’t repair.

  Every beat of her heart felt magnified. Her qi raced, not wild anymore but eager, like a river searching for space to flood. Her senses narrowed around it, everything else falling away—walls, light, even Shen Li’s quiet presence at the edge of the room.

  She cycled again.

  Then again.

  The buzzing hadn’t stopped. It filled her limbs, jittered along her joints, made her fingers twitch where they pressed against her knees. Her bones ached with it. Her dantian pulsed, not hollow now but full—too full—and still her qi moved. It no longer sloshed inside her like a pool too wide for its bowl. It had coiled, compressed, refined.

  A second pressure began to build, lower and slower this time, curling around the outer meridian near her right calf. With the flood pressing outward in all directions, she could feel it with painful clarity—a dam not yet broken, but straining, trembling.

  She sent a thread of qi that way, gentler this time, not hammering like the first, but guiding. Coaxing. She knew better now. The barrier cracked with a long, slow roll of heat, and the relief was so sharp it made her breath catch.

  Her pace didn’t falter, but it grew heavier, harder to maintain. Her breath came faster—not panicked, not afraid—just worn thin from the strain of managing so many moving parts at once. It was like juggling on a tightrope in a storm: even when you knew the steps, every gust could still break you.

  She didn’t know how long it had been. Time had dissolved somewhere between the second meridian and the fourth breath of rebalancing. The light hadn’t changed, but it might have. The room felt distant. There was only the beating hum of qi beneath her skin, the aching pressure of it, the steady rhythm of cycling, sequestering, refining.

  The flow began to slow.

  It wasn’t dramatic. The waves didn’t stop. They just softened, the edges of the current less sharp, the intensity no longer biting. Her limbs stopped shaking. Her dantian no longer felt like a pressure-cooker about to split. The qi, once unwieldy and vast, now moved with purpose. It settled. She was no longer chasing it. She was holding it.

  Her meridians stretched cleanly now. The ones she’d opened held true, and she could feel them hum faintly in return. The rhythm of her body had changed. Deeper. Fuller. Whole in a way it hadn’t been before.

  She was close. That realisation came with startling clarity. She had drawn herself to the upper edge of the Foundational Root Realm, the final plateau before the next step—and it wasn’t a wall. It was a membrane. Thin. Permeable. A veil more than a threshold. With one last push, she could reach it. She could break through.

  Her body still had qi to spare.

  Her dantian still swelled with it.

  She could do it now.

  Right now.

  And still—

  She hesitated.

  Not from fear. Not from fatigue.

  Just the weight of the choice.

  To rise too fast was to stumble. But to stop here meant holding all that pressure for longer, keeping it sealed tight while the world kept moving.

  She held the breath. Let it deepen. Felt her pulse level out.

  And at the edge of it all, with her body trembling on the cusp of change, she stayed.

  For a moment longer, she simply waited.

  She sat at the edge of herself, full to the brim, her breath steady and her limbs ringing with the echo of qi still cycling through opened paths. The dantian no longer throbbed with pressure; it pulsed with potential. She could stop. She could hold this line, rest in the new space she’d carved out inside herself, and wait for the next opportunity.

  But she didn’t want to.

  Not really.

  Not deep down where it mattered.

  She had told herself she could be patient. That building strong foundations meant more than pushing blindly ahead. But beneath all the quiet, all the caution, something inside her clawed at the thought of waiting.

  She didn’t want to wait.

  She didn’t want to walk slowly, carefully, politely, toward strength.

  She wanted it now.

  She wanted the gate to open.

  She wanted to become.

  She didn’t want to die remembered only as a slave or a petty thief. She didn’t want to be another forgotten girl dragged into a shallow grave by cold hands and a colder city. She didn’t want to be weighed and dismissed and passed over. Not again.

  She wanted to burn.

  She wanted to be the kind of cultivator people couldn’t ignore.

  She wanted to look at Shen Li and not see a future she could never reach, but a path she could stand beside.

  She wanted to hold the sun in her hands.

  She wanted—

  She wanted.

  The pressure built again, not from the pill, not from the art, but from within. The line that divided her from what came next wasn’t thick. It was thin. Paper-thin. She could feel it stretched over the top of her core like silk, like mist.

  She reached for it.

  And pushed.

  Not gently. Not with poise.

  With hunger.

  With want.

  She pushed harder.

  And the veil resisted—

  Once.

  Twice.

  Then—