Chapter 229: Five Entries in the Ledger

After the wind on the clifftop stalled, the bare stone was still scorching.

Jiang Wan sat cross-legged on the flat stone she had picked out for herself on the thirteenth—the same one—with her back to the old pine, motionless. When she'd first sat down, the hem of her robe had spread out wide; now it clung to the rock, the edges curling up a little, lifting in the breeze only to settle back down.

Xu Yan sat deep beneath the old pine, his back against its roots, a dozen or so paces from her. Two water flasks rested in a crevice between them, one already half empty. The sun hung just beneath the clouds, and the stone threw the heat back up, burning even through his trousers. Today was not a market day, so not a soul had walked the road at the foot of the mountain all day. No sound carried up from town—only the wind, sweeping back and forth along the cliff's edge.

When the wind stilled, only two people's breath remained on the clifftop. One drawn in so tight it was invisible; the other loose and open. The thin ledger against his chest stayed warm the whole time—he could feel it through his clothes.

He drew the ledger out, spread it across his knees, and turned to the Roster page. No characters had appeared yet.

He ran the entry through his mind one more time: counting from the moment the lid had come off, one shichen until the start of the Wei hour. She'd swallowed the pill right then. There was no error in the account. Done, he closed the ledger, reopened it, closed it again, and looked up at her back.

Beneath the veranda outside the Medicine Hall, five prayer cushions were laid out in a row. The easternmost one—the one Shi Po had measured with his feet at dawn, then shifted half a chi over—sat empty the entire time.

Huo Qing opened his eyes first.

When he did, his left shoulder twitched first, as if shrugging something off. Then his left hand opened flat on his knee, and his five fingers curled in one by one. When they'd all closed, the hand groped beside him. His sword usually lay at his side, but today he'd brought no iron; his fingers found only empty air. He didn't reach again. He braced his hands on his knees and stood, stayed standing for a while, then sat back down.

Cheng Banshan crouched down, the sleeve covering his formation hand pressing against his knee for support, and extended three fingers of his other hand to Huo Qing's left wrist. He held it for a while, then shifted to another spot and pressed again.

"Foundation Establishment."

Huo Qing grunted in response and raised his eyes toward the back mountain. From the Medicine Hall courtyard, only a sliver of the cliff's edge was visible—nothing could be seen. He looked anyway for a long while before pulling his gaze back.

Shao Ming opened his eyes a bit later. Sweat ran down his face all the way to his chin, and he didn't wipe it away. Cheng Banshan moved his fingers over and held on longer than before.

"Mid-stage."

Shao Ming blinked, then wiped his face with a hand. "Elder Cheng," he said, "does that mean I'm stable now?"

"Stable? That depends on what comes after." Cheng Banshan withdrew his hand and adjusted his sleeve. "The poison pooled in your dantian has been drawn clean. Beneath it is empty ground. Build a house on empty ground and it goes up fast—but it can't take a knock."

Shao Ming nodded and asked no more. He pressed both hands back to his knees and closed his eyes a while longer.

Qi Qi crouched at the base of a veranda pillar, craning his neck to count: "One. Two."

On the clifftop, characters appeared in the ledger.

[Credit: Huo Qing, Foundation Establishment Initial Stage.]

[Credit: Heritage 20 points.]

[Credit: Shao Ming, Foundation Establishment Mid-Stage.]

Xu Yan read the three lines top to bottom, then read them a second time, as was his habit with bookkeeping: name, realm, Heritage. No date, no hour was written down. The hour he'd record in his own mind: the fourth quarter of the Wu hour. He looked further down.

Below was empty.

He pressed the ledger against his knee and waited a while longer. The heat in his chest did not sink inward; it piled where it was, neither rising nor falling.

Jiang Wan had not moved. No heat radiated from the stone beneath her; all her qi was gathered into her body, invisible. His eyes rested on her back for a moment, then withdrew. He kept waiting.

In the fifth quarter of the Wu hour, the two remaining figures on the prayer cushions in the Medicine Hall courtyard opened their eyes in turn.

Shi Po's stomach growled first. He sat bolt upright, hands still on his knees, and looked down at his belly before looking at Cheng Banshan.

Cheng Banshan pressed three fingers to Shi Po's wrist. Shi Po's wrist was thick; the fingers had to push down a touch harder, and after holding for a while, Cheng Banshan shifted half an inch up and pressed again.

"Third Layer," Cheng Banshan said.

"I'm hungry," Shi Po said.

Qi Qi couldn't hold back a snort that escaped through his nostrils. He clamped his mouth shut immediately.

"Hungry is right." Cheng Banshan tapped two fingers on his knee. "Hungry means the qi has returned to your dantian instead of jamming up elsewhere. If you're going to withstand things, first you have to be able to hold your food."

Shi Po thought for a moment, then said, "How many bowls can I eat?"

"Half a bowl to start," Cheng Banshan said. "Add more later."

Bai Xiaoman opened her eyes a breath later than Shi Po. She looked first at her own hands. Her five fingers curled down one by one, but the last one wouldn't hold still—it trembled. She clenched that hand into a fist, and the other hand went into her sleeve, retrieving five small pebbles. She ran them through her palm once, then tucked them away.

"Third Layer," she said, her voice tight.

Cheng Banshan didn't answer right away. He set three fingers to her wrist and held until her breathing leveled out, then released.

"Third Layer," Cheng Banshan said.

Bai Xiaoman raised her head toward the back mountain. "Senior Sister?"

"On the cliff."

"The lightning—"

"She's sitting," Cheng Banshan said.

Bai Xiaoman let her clenched fist open. There were nail marks in her palm. She slowly curled it shut again.

Du Xiaochuan got up and went to the kitchen, coming back with half a bowl of porridge. Shi Po drained it in two gulps and set the bowl beside his knee without asking for more.

"That's four," Qi Qi said from under the veranda pillar, then seemed to realize his voice was too loud and drew his neck down into his collar.

Two more lines appeared in the clifftop ledger.

[Credit: Shi Po, Qi Condensation Third Layer.]

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

Still empty below. He noted in his mind: fifth quarter of the Wu hour, two lines.

Xu Yan closed the ledger and opened it again. The characters hadn't changed. He laid it flat and pressed both hands against either side of the page, just holding them there.

The heat in his chest piled higher, pressing down, refusing to move.

The clouds had come from the north, moving quickly, but when they reached the mountainside they slowed—slowed until they hung only over that cliff, not shifting an inch anywhere else.

Everyone in the Medicine Hall courtyard looked up. The eaves of the veranda jutted northward, and the cliff's edge showed just above the roof ridge, black as another weight of stone pressing down.

Du Xiaochuan crouched by the stove, his eyes dark-rimmed and bloodshot, tilting his head up. "The clouds reach the cliff and stop."

"They're just pressing there," Qi Qi said.

"Nobody makes a sound," Cheng Banshan said.

Shi Po picked up the empty bowl from beside his knee, then put it back down, very gently.

At the kitchen door, Qian Duoduo braced one hand on the doorframe and pressed A Sui back behind the door with the other. A He poked half his head out from behind Qian Duoduo's shoulder, then ducked back.

In the seventh quarter of the Wu hour, Jiang Wan's qi drew inward.

There was no wind on the clifftop and nothing to see on the stone's surface, but Xu Yan could see it—the fabric across her back tightened first, both shoulders drawing back together, gathering toward a single point, then slowly relaxing. All the loose qi drifting around them was pulling into the space where she sat.

A few dry stalks in the crevices stirred, then went still.

A scent rose up. Very faint—like that moment when the furnace lid had come off outside the Medicine Hall.

The sweat on the back of her neck dried and formed again. Her robe's hem lay flat against the stone, not a corner lifting. Xu Yan counted his breaths. Past thirty, the scent was still there, undispersed.

The ledger still lay open on his knees, those five lines unchanged. Her line had not come.

Xu Yan leaned back, resting his head against the bark, and moved one water flask half a chi to the side with a hand, so it wouldn't be in the way if he had to move. He thought about speaking—his lips twitched, then pressed shut. He remembered what Cheng Banshan had said outside the Medicine Hall. At this moment, even calling out would send a breath of air into her space, and that would not help.

He looked up at the sky. The cloud base now pressed against the crown of the old pine. The pine needles all leaned one direction, then all stood still. The sun was still there; light leaked through the cloud's edge and lit the clifftop white. The ledger's pages glowed white too, but the five lines of ink had not faded in the least.

At the end of the Wu hour, the sky went white first.

The clifftop blazed, so bright you could make out the dust in every crevice. The flat stone where Jiang Wan sat turned into a white mass, and she was set into it, impossible to tell shoulder from back.

The sound came afterward. By the time it reached the ears, the earth had already moved once.

Xu Yan's back was braced against the tree roots, both hands gripping the ledger's edges on his knees. He did not rise, and he did not reach out.

That streak of light fell from the cloud base to the stone. It did not curve. It did not stop.

When the sound passed, the clifftop reeked of scorch. Thin threads of blue smoke rose from the stone where she sat, rising and scattering upward.

Jiang Wan had not fallen.

Her back was still straight, her body still in place, both hands resting on her knees, fingers unclenched.

The stone beneath her had charred. The black spread outward from under her, cracking into a ring of fine fissures at the edges, white vapor seeping from the gaps. The hem of her robe was scorched in a ring, the edge curled. A lock of hair was singed, curled and stuck behind her ear.

In the Medicine Hall courtyard, the sky went white for an instant too.

Qi Qi's hand was still on the veranda pillar; he released it once the sound had passed. "It fell," he said.

The four people beneath the veranda all half-rose at once.

"No one goes up," Cheng Banshan said, standing in front of the cushions without turning around.

"Elder Cheng—"

"Half a shichen," Cheng Banshan said. "The lightning has passed, but her breath hasn't settled back into place. If anyone goes up and touches her right now, this pill was for nothing. She's sat from the fourth quarter of the Wu hour until this moment—she sat for exactly this."

No one beneath the veranda moved. Shi Po took a step north, then stopped. Bai Xiaoman brought out the five pebbles again and clenched them in her hand until her fingers went white, counting them one by one in her mind without a sound. Qian Duoduo kept one hand pressed over A Sui's ears; when he finally let it down, A Sui whispered a question. Qian Duoduo didn't answer.

On the clifftop, the smoke rose and thinned, vanishing into the clouds.

The ledger lay open on Xu Yan's knees. The wind lifted the edge of a page and let it fall back beneath his palm.

Below those five lines were two more.

[Credit: Jiang Wan, Golden Core Initial Stage.]

[Credit: Heritage 20 points.]

Still within the Wu hour.

Xu Yan counted them one by one from the top: Huo Qing, Shao Ming, Shi Po, Bai Xiaoman, Jiang Wan. Five entries.

One line wasn't enough. It took five.

The heat that had been stacked in his chest since the fourth quarter of the Wu hour sank downward now. The dantian opened, and qi flowed down, with no place along the way where it had to stop.

The smell of scorch still hung over the clifftop. He pressed the ledger to his knee. He did not stand, and he did not make a sound. Jiang Wan's back was still straight, the charred stone holding her up, no heat rising from its surface.