My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 29: The Five Strands of Spirit Qi Didn't Dissipate

Shi Po carried three flatbreads up the mountain. The sky was still dark.

Xu Yan trimmed the lamp wick higher and spread open the ledger. At the bottom of the July 7 entry was written "three pieces, Linchuan," with half a blank line left after the notation—he hadn't written in the date.

Beside it, he started new lines: the mule cart price, still unasked. Three Formation Stones, three hundred pieces. Once those three hundred went out, fifty-one remained in the account; forty-eight was a month of rice, leaving three—the cracked bowl needed replacing, and the Medicine Hall salve still had to be bought.

When he reached the rice line, he set down his brush and looked out the window.

There was a light on the Back Mountain. The moment he looked up, it went out—earlier than it had last night.

He closed his eyes, then opened them again.

This time last month, the girl was still behind the counter at Huichun Hall copying daily ledgers, and when she copied a number wrong, the shopkeeper would rap her knuckles with an abacus. Now she sat on the halfway slope until dawn, all for the sake of keeping a single strand of qi from dissipating.

Before Dragon hour, two lines settled onto the ledger page.

[Credit: Bai Xiaoman, Qi Condensation First Layer.]

[Balance: Sect Master, Qi Condensation Fifth Layer.]

The characters appeared on the paper first; the spiritual power arrived after. A current of qi rose from below his dantian, traveling up along his spine, past his shoulder blades, past his elbow, to his fingertips. The brush pressed against the paper didn't move; the tip bloomed into a black dot.

He scraped at the dot with his fingernail, but it wouldn't come clean, so he simply drew a horizontal line beneath it and continued the entry: July 8, one credit entry recorded.

The second entry. The first had been June 15, when Shi Po stood practicing pillar training all night at the foot of the steps.

He spread his hand open, then clenched it again. Fifth-layer qi was a little thicker than fourth—not much thicker, like an extra spoonful stirred into water. And it hadn't come free; it was what she'd sat overnight after overnight in the middle of those five stone troughs to produce.

He didn't dare delay. He stood and fastened the door behind him.

The sound of a broom came from the Mountain Gate—once, and again. He circled around the front courtyard toward the Back Mountain. Two li of mountain path, two quarter-hours. By the time he reached the halfway slope, the sky was whitening at the edges, and dew on the grass had soaked through the tops of his shoes.

Bai Xiaoman still sat in the center of the Stone Disc, her hair half-loose, tear tracks still on her face. The three flatbreads sat untouched on the stone by her knee. Shi Po stood three paces away, hands clasped behind his back. When he saw Xu Yan arrive, he said only one thing.

"She cried."

Bai Xiaoman looked up, eyes red. Her mouth twitched open, then closed. Xu Yan crouched down beside the stone platform.

"All five?"

"All five." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "Not one of them left."

"Where."

She pressed her hand against her own body and reported them one by one: "Wood to the liver, Fire to the heart, Earth to the spleen, Metal to the lungs, Water to the kidneys. Metal is white, Wood is green, Water is black, Fire is crimson, Earth is yellow. It's just like when I used to identify herbs at the shop—medicine has five flavors, and the five flavors enter the five organs."

"That's not how you practiced the first two days."

"The first two days I forced everything down into my dantian." She lowered her head and pressed a little hollow into her knee with a finger. "The dantian's just one pit. Five things squeezed in and started fighting. One would come and another would scatter; once it scattered I'd start over. I sat from morning to dark, sat until my belly went hollow."

Xu Yan said nothing.

"This morning I thought about the first line of the Formation Manual," she said. "'Five Elements Each Return to Their Place.' I always took 'their place' to mean the dantian. But the stone platform has five troughs—Metal in the west, Wood in the east, Water in the north, Fire in the south, Earth in the center. Which trough does the dantian occupy? None of them."

"Pour all five herbs into one jar, and the moment the heat's wrong, the whole thing's ruined. Separate the five flavors, and only then do you have a proper prescription."

She nodded to herself after saying that, then remembered something, and her voice dropped. "Fire was the hardest. Fire's nature is the fiercest. The moment it enters the chest, it surges upward—by the time it hit my throat I wanted to cough. I pressed it back down three times."

"Pressed?"

"Just drawing the qi back in a little so it sits close against the chest and doesn't climb." She made a loose cupping motion in front of her chest. "Once Water came in after, it settled down. There's coolness inside water."

Shi Po held out the flatbreads. She took one, bit down, and started talking with her cheeks still full. "The other two are Senior Brother Shi's."

"One each," Shi Po said.

Xu Yan waited until she'd eaten half before speaking. "First Layer."

"I know." She held the remaining half in her hand. "I counted it myself. Three inches below the navel—today, for the first time, something came welling up. That place was always empty before, so empty I didn't even know it was empty. Only when it welled up on its own did I realize."

"It's been recorded in the ledger."

She turned her head. "Recorded what?"

"Recorded that you've entered Qi Condensation First Layer."

Bai Xiaoman stared. "I entered First Layer—what's that to your ledger?"

"The ledger has to be complete."

She watched him for a moment, didn't ask again, and lowered her head to gnaw at the remaining half-flatbread.

When she finished, she tried to stand, but her legs buckled and she sat back down.

"Sat too long." She stretched both legs out, pounded them twice with her fists, waited for the blood to flow again, then braced against the stone platform and got up. After two steps she tried lifting a breath; on the third step the breath broke, and she staggered before steadying herself.

"It broke," she reported herself. "Doesn't matter. I can walk."

She walked in front on the way down. Yesterday along this stretch she'd still needed to grip the vines; today her feet landed solid stone by stone, and when she misstepped, she could pull herself back.

Two reed mats lay drying by the Medicine Hall door. Cheng Banshan sat on the threshold, wine gourd at his waist, grinding something in a medicine grinder with a soft shh-shh sound. At the sound of footsteps he raised his head, his eyes landing on her feet first.

"Girl, you broke through?"

"I broke through." Bai Xiaoman stopped in front of him.

Cheng Banshan set the grinder down and reached out for her wrist. He held it for less than a breath before letting go.

"First Layer. Unsteady."

"Unsteady?"

"Scraped up by force this morning." He took a swig of wine. "Within three days, if you go back and sit by that stone platform for another full day, this layer can drop right back out. Breathing cultivation is fed, not wrung out."

"Then how do I feed it?"

"Eat, sleep, and stop fighting your own qi." He picked the grinder back up. "Tomorrow at Mao hour, come to the Medicine Hall and follow me to the herb garden on the Back Mountain. The Astragalus Root's ready to harvest. Harvest too late, and if rain comes, it rots in the ground."

"Astragalus fears waterlogging," Bai Xiaoman said.

"If you know it fears waterlogging, then shouldn't you go check whether it's waterlogged?"

She took note of those words, her lips moving twice, as if memorizing them.

Cheng Banshan lifted his eyes to look at Xu Yan.

"You too..."

He set the wine gourd on his knee and didn't finish. Instead he said, "The alchemy materials in Linchuan—ask about them when you get there. Asking the price costs nothing. Don't save on my account."

"I'll remember."

"That 'complete' thing—filled in yet?" he asked, his eyes not on Bai Xiaoman but on the herbs spread across the mat.

Bai Xiaoman answered honestly, "Half."

"Half?"

"The formation hasn't been activated yet, and the Formation Stones haven't been bought. The Metal, Water, and Earth stones are still sitting in Linchuan."

Cheng Banshan gave a soft snort. "Half is still half. Forty years and no one's ever filled in that much."

From the Kitchen, Qian Duoduo came out carrying a bowl with a lid on top. Halfway over, he lifted the lid, glanced inside, and covered it again.

"It's gone cold three times," he said. "This time I burned one less load of firewood in Luoxia Town's batch just to keep it warm for her."

A Sui poked half her body out of the kitchen doorway, her voice arriving before the rest of her. "Senior Sister Bai, you've got dirt on your face!"

Bai Xiaoman wiped at it twice with the back of her hand, smearing it into a streak.

At Monkey hour she carried the Formation Manual up the Back Mountain, a string of copper bells at her waist. Shi Po followed with his chopping knife over one shoulder; Xu Yan walked last.

She read the first line of the second section of the Formation Manual aloud: "A Small Formation needs no stones; it needs pebbles. Four Formation Anchors, one bell, one thread led to a place where you can hear it."

"And where's the place you can hear it?" Xu Yan asked.

"The West Wing," she said. "By my bed."

She picked through the loose stones around the stone platform, tapping each one against her fingers, then holding it to her ear to listen. By the time she'd tested a dozen or so, she'd tossed seven aside by her feet.

"The dull ones won't work," she said as she tapped. "When qi travels through a stone cleanly, it rings clear. That trick's from the Stone Workshop proprietor in town. The Sect Master had Senior Brother Shi bring it up last night."

Five stones remained: one greenish, one whitish, one with a dark edge, one earthy yellow, one faintly crimson.

"These five don't follow the five elements." She weighed them in her palm. "They follow depth."

Shi Po took his chopping knife and dug holes at the four corners of the stone platform, cutting through the grass roots. Halfway through the eastern hole, his blade struck a large buried stone and couldn't go deeper. She bent over, lay down, felt around, and moved the hole outward half a palm's width. "Shifted half a palm and it's clear of the Formation Veins now. Good."

With the holes dug, she took the hemp rope with its three knots and measured—using the segment at the topmost knot as the gauge: three inches east, four inches south, five inches west, six inches north. The depths didn't match, so she reached into each hole and pressed down until the soil was firmly packed before standing.

"Why different depths."

"They ring differently." She placed one stone into each hole, crouching, her skirt hem dragging in the dirt. "Three inches east—when disturbed, the bell rings once. Six inches north—it rings three times. Whichever side moves, and how deep it goes in, I can hear it."

With all four buried, she packed the soil down and left a small mound of fresh dirt at each corner.

"One thread led to a place where you can hear it." She recited the line again, then lay flat and felt beneath the Stone Disc.

After searching for a while, she looked up. "There's a crack here. The Formation Veins run down through this crack, follow that old Stone Line in the front mountain, then pass under the back wall of the West Wing. I walked a stretch of it on the third and fourth."

She pressed her palm against the Stone Disc, closed her eyes, and began sending her qi downward, counting her breaths. Her shoulders slowly sank, her insteps flexed taut. Around a count of thirty-something, her hand trembled and her eyes opened.

"Broke." She shook out her wrist. "The qi only got halfway."

"Rest a moment," Xu Yan said.

She didn't rest a full moment before pressing her palm back. This time she pushed slower, her shoulders sinking again and again, her lips moving with the count. Near fifty, her eyes opened.

"Enough. The qi's gone down."

When she stood, she braced against the stone platform for a while. Her palm was slick with sweat, dirt on her fingertips, her wrist hanging as if it couldn't lift properly.

By the time they returned to the West Wing, the sky was nearly dark.

Behind her room stood that earthen wall, a row of old stones at its base. She crouched there, dug out a small hole, and buried the remaining stone, leaving just a bit exposed. She pulled a strand loose from the hemp rope, tied it around the stone, and ran the other end up the wall.

A copper bell went up. The bell hung low; when the string pulled taut, it gave a soft ring.

"Buried too deep and it muffles; left exposed, it rings," she said. "There's a crack in the wall—I can hear it from the bed inside."

"The wind sets it off too," Xu Yan said.

"Wind makes a scattered, broken sound. Qi movement drives straight into the earth—one muffled thump." She pulled the string to test its length: too long, it went slack; too short, it stayed rigid. The third try, she bit the end with her teeth and tied it off.

Shi Po crouched outside the wall and looked up at the bell.

"What if it rings?"

Bai Xiaoman stood, untied the string of copper bells from her waist, and lifted it so he could see the ends of the tied strings in the last of the daylight. One bell was missing from the strand.

"If anyone touches the Formation Eye, I'll be the first to know."