Chapter 167: Before That Stick of Incense, There Was Nothing

Someone was practicing swordwork by the pool.

Daylight had not yet reached the stone plaza, only graying the water's surface. Huo Qing stood before a waist-high boulder, sword in his left hand. Raise, thrust, withdraw—the tip struck the same point on the stone face and left. His right arm hung at his side, motionless the entire time. A small mound of stone shavings had accumulated at the base, ground away by days of repeated strikes.

Shi Po crouched nearby, clutching two coarse grain flatbreads. One was finished; the other he held without biting. He counted past thirty strikes, lost track, started over, and around a dozen gave up counting and stared at Huo Qing's shoulder instead.

Xu Yan, fresh off the Chou-Yin watch, sat on the doorstep watching. The light climbed layer by layer until the doors of the stone chambers at the far end of the plaza began to crack open. Some came out to the doorway, rubbing their shoulders. Others headed toward the pool with water flasks, and when they saw Huo Qing practicing halfway along, they detoured around.

"Senior Brother Huo does this every day." Qi Qi emerged from behind the stone chamber, hair uncombed, and crouched beside Xu Yan. "Last night, the watch heard him toss and turn twice."

"If they heard, they heard," Xu Yan said. "Don't ask him about it."

At the Snake hour, Cheng Banshan administered the medicine. The pill he couldn't split evenly with one hand, so he had her press it flat against a stone and pinch it in two; Jiang Wan swallowed twice to get it down. The salve was the same gray-green layer, spread below her right rib. When he finished, he smoothed her clothes back into place. "The days go on like this. Medicine once a day, not a single extra dose."

At the Snake hour's end, Bai Xiaoman supported Jiang Wan outside.

Jiang Wan walked slowly, right hand pressed to her right ribs, pausing every seven or eight steps. Bai Xiaoman held her left elbow, eyes fixed on her feet, kicking aside any loose stones before they reached them. The two descended from the flat stone slab at the door to the pool's edge and followed the water. The pool lay still; near the bank the bottom was visible, but farther out it darkened. Fragments of debris floated on the surface—dust the wind had blown down from the shore.

She stopped when they reached the emptied herb patch. The soil had been smoothed flat, the twelve shallow pits still there, dust-filled now, two rims bearing white scratch marks left by fingernails.

"Senior Sister, that palm strike was aimed at me," Bai Xiaoman said.

Jiang Wan didn't stop walking. "Aimed at you. That's why I stood in front."

"My formation never rose."

"You reached the third stone when his palm came down." Jiang Wan took another step before finishing. "Even if it had risen, it would've been a single-zhang ring. No holding him. What you should remember is where it came from—pressing down from above, not coming from the front."

Bai Xiaoman bit her lower lip and nodded. She crouched, reached out and measured the pit's rim with her fingertips, then drew her hand back. "Senior Sister, could I reseat the five stones here? Not against him—just for myself. Practice."

"Leave the soil alone," Jiang Wan said. "Don't flatten the pits. If you want to practice, use the open ground by the plaza."

"Mm."

"How long to seat the fifth stone?"

Bai Xiaoman paused, calculating. "Right now... half a breath."

"Then speed up the first four," Jiang Wan said. "If the fifth won't fall into place, the first four are wasted."

Bai Xiaoman mouthed the words once, stood, and adjusted her hold on Jiang Wan's elbow.

On the way back, the sun fell on their backs and their shadows dragged at their feet. Shi Po waited at the door, and when he saw them returning, he stepped forward two paces. Jiang Wan waved him off. "I'll walk myself." She made her way step by step to the flat stone slab and sat, a thin sheen of sweat on her face, her pallor undiminished.

Qian Duoduo came out of the stone chamber with a bowl of pool water, set it by her hand, said nothing, and went back in. Jiang Wan picked up the bowl but didn't drink, holding it in her palm for a while first.

"Tomorrow I'll walk to the herb patch on my own. The day after, I'll circle past it," she said, as if scheduling her own days.

Bai Xiaoman crouched beside her, gently lifted her sleeve at the ribs and checked, then pulled it back down.

On the twenty-third, at the Snake hour, Xiong Dai came.

Three figures approached from the far end of the stone plaza. Xiong Dai walked in front, his chest wrapped in cloth beneath his clothes, the binding bulging uneven under the fabric. He moved slowly, each step planted firmly before shifting his weight forward. The two Wanshou Mountain disciples behind him came empty-handed, half a pace back.

He stopped three paces from the stone chamber's door. "Sect Master Xu."

Xu Yan rose from the threshold and stepped forward, standing just past the door. "Fellow Daoist Xiong."

"She's mid–Foundation Establishment." Xiong Dai said. "That palm strike was mine. I've trained palms for twenty years; I know exactly how heavy it landed. She was kneeling at the edge of the herb patch. I counted. Less than half a ke passed, and she was back on her feet." He raised a hand to his chest, then let it fall. "That stick of incense—what was it?"

Xu Yan looked at him. "You saw it, Fellow Daoist Xiong."

"What I saw was Golden Core force." Xiong Dai's voice stayed low, each sentence pressing down. "A mid–Foundation Establishment doesn't carry that. What did she take?"

"Before that stick of incense, there was nothing."

The stone chamber fell quiet. Jiang Wan sat inside on a flat stone, her sword across her knees. Bai Xiaoman crouched at her feet, squeezing an empty water flask flat and letting it spring back. Cheng Banshan leaned against the wall by the door, his empty sleeve tucked into the back of his waistband. Shi Po stood at the inner doorway, easing back half a step to keep the entrance clear.

Xiong Dai shifted half a step toward the door, then stopped.

"No medicine." He worked the words over in his mouth. "Then it was something else."

Xu Yan didn't respond to that.

"My own people carried me back that day," Xiong Dai said. "Carried me to the far end of the plaza, tore half my robe off, wrapped it, and I lay there two days. Two days I've been thinking about how that palm ended up back on me. I saw her strike. The sword was reversed—she used the spine of the blade." He paused. "Someone who uses the sword spine isn't a killer. But the force behind that blow wasn't Foundation Establishment force."

"Fellow Daoist Xiong," Xu Yan said, "the herb grew on Qingya land and the person is a Qingya person. I've answered that under the rules."

"The rules forbid taking a life. They don't forbid questions." Xiong Dai turned to another matter. "I asked you one thing, and you didn't answer. So the second question: is it still in her?"

Xu Yan didn't answer.

"What you said that day was 'one stick of incense.' I heard it." Xiong Dai stared at him. "She stood and pressed the sword spine to my chest—all in half a ke. After I was carried off, I heard that the moment the incense burned out, she collapsed."

Still Xu Yan didn't answer.

"Borrowed power." Xiong Dai went on by himself. "What's borrowed must be repaid. The state she's in now—that's the repayment."

No wind at the door. Xu Yan stood unmoving, hands at his sides, fingertips unclenched. Behind him, Shi Po shifted his foot, scraping the loose stone faintly.

Xiong Dai tilted his head, looking past Xu Yan's shoulder into the stone chamber. Jiang Wan had already raised her head and was watching him, one hand resting on the scabbard, not lifting it. Their gazes met and neither broke away first. She wore the same faded clothes, the spot below her ribs bulging where the salve had been applied.

"I remember that palm strike, Fellow Daoist Xiong," Jiang Wan said.

"Good to remember," Xiong Dai said.

One of the disciples behind him leaned forward and murmured something. Xiong Dai blocked him with one hand, and the disciple retreated, flushed.

Xiong Dai withdrew his gaze and slowly let out a breath, the cloth at his chest rising and falling once.

"When the gates are sealed, I'll see you at the Branch," he said, and turned to leave.

He walked even slower on the way back, the two disciples flanking him left and right. Seven or eight paces out he paused, turned back, and looked once more toward the stone chamber—this time at Jiang Wan inside. Then he continued across the stone plaza, the uneven side of his robe facing the sun.

Xu Yan didn't answer.

Shi Po stepped out from the inner room and stood beside him, voice lowered. "That line about seeing us at the Branch—he still means to settle this?"

"The gates are sealed before anything happens," Xu Yan said.

Cheng Banshan coughed by the door and flicked the sleeve on his empty side. "I heard what was said. The medicine's in my pouch. Ask a hundred times, same answer." He paused, then added, "He came to ask, but it's not answers he wants. Whatever he wanted to know, he figured out the day he was carried back. He came here so everyone on the second level would see him ask at your door—and see you not answer."

Xu Yan looked toward the far end of the plaza. Several people stood in the distance watching; seeing his gaze, they slowly turned away.

"I know," he said.

At noon on the twenty-fourth, people from Xuanshui Palace arrived at the far side of the pool.

Four of them, carrying two clay jars and a bronze kettle. They set them out on a flat stone at the water's edge, crouched down, and scooped water, pouring each jar full into the other and scooping again. One lifted the water to his nose and sniffed, then shook his head. Another rinsed the kettle twice, poured the rinse water onto the rock, and watched the direction it flowed. Two rolled up their trouser legs and waded into the shallows, bending to feel along the pool bottom for a long time before straightening up.

Qi Qi came back from the edge of the stone plaza and crouched at the door. "Xuanshui Palace. Four of them. Scooping water. Wading in and feeling the bottom. Looked this way three times."

"Let them look," Xu Yan said.

"They're speaking too low for me to catch it all. Except one line:" Qi Qi took a breath. "'Qingya controls the water.'"

Xu Yan tied the mouth of his water flask and set it by the door. "The water's in the pool. Anyone can scoop it."

Qi Qi made a noise of assent, sat on a rock, and after a while turned toward the pool again. The four figures filled their jars and didn't approach. They set the jars in a row on the stone and sat beside them, talking in low voices, not looking this way.

At the Monkey hour, Jiang Wan moved to the door and laid her sword across her knees.

She gripped the scabbard with her right hand, her left on the hilt, and drew. The blade came half out and stopped midair, trembling; the bronze guard rattled against the scabbard mouth in a rapid series of small sounds. She clenched her teeth and pushed another finger's width—the strength in her hand scattered, the blade slid back, and the hilt met the scabbard with a dull click.

She sat there, taking two breaths.

Bai Xiaoman reached for the sword but was stopped with a single "don't." Cheng Banshan came over and looked. "What's the point of drawing it?"

"To look," Jiang Wan said.

"Look all you like, it's still the same." Cheng Banshan went to the water, pressed his water flask down into the pool one-handed, then lifted it out.

Jiang Wan held the sword in her lap, palms pressing the scabbard, staring at it for a long while without moving. Shi Po stood in the doorway, eyes on her hands. After a bit, he said out of nowhere, "When I first shouldered stone, I couldn't lift it either. What you can't lift, you lift every day."

Jiang Wan glanced up at him. "Yours is stone."

"A sword's a thing too," Shi Po said.

Bai Xiaoman gave a small "mm". Jiang Wan said nothing more, only hugged the sword a little tighter against her knees.

Xu Yan stood by the doorframe, neither approaching nor leaving.

"He said, 'when the gates are sealed, see you at the Branch,'" Jiang Wan said.

"Mm."

"There's a line at the end of the rules I've heard read three times," she said. "Anyone with objections to what was won may file a petition at the Branch after the gates are sealed."

"Mm."

"What can he file?"

Xu Yan didn't answer immediately. He'd been laying this out in his mind for days: one was the stick of incense in Jiang Wan; the other was Qingya's status as landlord. Anything else, there was no hold to grab here. The sect's books were clean. The ledger pages they'd picked up in the Hidden Realm had vermilion marks at the top. The Dewdrop Grass grew by a pool on Qingya's guarded ground.

"Two things," he said. "That stick of incense—and the landlord clause."

"If he files, we stand at the Branch and answer."

"Then we stand and answer." Xu Yan said. "We can answer clearly."

Jiang Wan looked down at the sword in her lap. The sun had reached the plaza, and the light crawled inch by inch eastward; the flat stone at the door cooled.

"By that day," she said, "I'll be able to draw it."

Xu Yan acknowledged.

She didn't try the sword again, just held it, back against the door's stone frame. The people on the far side of the pool packed their jars and left, leaving rings of ripples on the surface that spread and re-formed.

Xu Yan turned Xiong Dai's line over in his mind—when the gates are sealed, see you at the Branch. That debt hadn't come due yet.