The next morning arrived wrapped in the velvet peace unique to Green Valley.
Han Li awoke not to a sound, but to a presence.
He opened his eyes. Physician Xiao was already seated at the small table in the main chamber. A silhouette against the pre-dawn grey. A simple breakfast waited. The master's tea had lost its steam.
"Master," Han Li greeted, scrambling up. He offered a bow. "You cooked. That is my duty."
"Sit." Xiao's voice was the dry rustle of pages turning. "Your sole duty is to cultivate. To reach the First Tier. Cook when you are a servant. Eat when you are a disciple. The choice is still yours."
He finally looked at Han Li. His dark eyes held no reproach. Only a vast, patient weight.
"Once you reach Tier One, I will teach you the complex scripts. The principles of alchemy and formation. I will give you everything a true disciple deserves. Until then, preserve every scrap of focus. Now. Eat."
They ate in a silence that was functional, not awkward. The food was fuel.
When the bowls were empty, Xiao produced a small jade vial from his sleeve. He placed it on the table with a soft click.
"Three Meridian-Strengthening Pills. Use one every five days. They will soothe the damage and reinforce the pathways. Do not expect them to do the work. They are mortar for bricks you alone must lay."
Han Li took the vial. Its cool surface seemed to pulse against his palm.
The real work was beginning.
---
Days 1-5: The Bottomless Pit
The struggle was not what Han Li had imagined.
It was not a heroic battle. It was a slow, grinding act of faith against overwhelming evidence.
Each dawn, he sat cross-legged on the rush mat. He recited the Greenwood Immortal Mantra. He tried to feel the 'qi' his master described.
He followed the instructions. Focus on the dantian. Visualize gathering the valley's energy. Will it to circulate.
He felt nothing.
Only the ache in his knees. The prickle of stray thoughts.
He poured his concentration into the space below his navel. He poured his hope. His fierce will.
It was like shouting into a vast, dark well and hearing no echo. Like trying to fill a cracked vessel with mist.
The mantra's words began to feel hollow. Repetitive sounds with no connection to the silent, inert flesh of his body.
The first pill, taken on the evening of the third day, brought only a faint, cool numbness. A cessation of the phantom ache from the herbal bath. No forward momentum.
Doubt uncoiled in his gut. A cold, subtle creature.
Was he like the girl with the withering root? Was his potential just a deeper kind of absence?
He watched the serene attendants tending the gardens. Their movements were sure. Productive.
His own work felt utterly fictional. A pantomime of progress.
---
Days 5-10: The Ghost of a Current
The second pill changed the texture of the emptiness.
The 'bottomless pit' developed a quality. A strange, porous tension.
Around the seventh day, a new sensation flickered. Not energy, but its shadow.
A faint, itchy tugging along the pathways his master had described. The meridians that felt like phantom limbs.
It was like feeling the ghost of a stream bed long after the river has vanished. You can't see the water, but you know the shape the water should take.
The frustration now had a target.
The energy wasn't absent. It was refusing to coalesce. He was trying to gather dew with splayed fingers.
The mantra became a grinding, teeth-clenched effort. He repeated it until his throat was raw. Pouring desperation into each syllable. Trying to brute-force the universe into compliance.
He slept fitfully. His dreams were of chasing faint lights through root-choked tunnels.
He awoke more tired than when he lay down.
Physician Xiao observed him in silence during their sparse meals. He offered no advice. His expression was unreadable.
---
Days 10-15: The Weight in the Void
The third pill, taken on day ten, marked a shift.
The ghostly current became a constant, dull pressure. It was no longer about feeling nothing. It was about feeling a stagnant, resistant something.
The energy was there. He could sense it now. A dense, sluggish pool in his dantian. Refusing to flow.
Trying to move it was like trying to stir solid rock with a thought. The 'bottomless pit' had revealed itself to be a sealed vault.
The struggle transformed from a search into a siege.
A raw, visceral fatigue set in. A weariness of the spirit.
His senses turned inward in an unpleasant way. He became hyper-aware of his own heartbeat. The rush of blood in his ears. The labor of his lungs.
All of it was a loud, mortal distraction from the silent work within.
The vibrant life of Green Valley became a taunting chorus. The chirping birds. The fragrant herbs. All of it effortless existence.
He found himself staring at his hands. Wondering if this was all a beautiful, cruel joke.
The final five-day stretch loomed like a cliff face.
He had forced the meridians open. Now he had to make them live. The material he had to work with felt like cold clay.
---
Days 15-20: The Crack & The Convergence
The final stretch was pure, unadorned endurance.
He had run out of pills. He had run out of new strategies. All that remained was the mantra, his will, and the immovable weight inside him.
He stopped trying to 'command' the energy. The frantic, grasping quality of his meditation burned away. Leaving behind a stark, stubborn repetition.
He was no longer a miner digging for treasure. He was a drop of water wearing away stone.
Word by word. Breath by breath. Cycle by cycle.
On the eighteenth day, as afternoon light bled honey-gold through his window, something cracked.
It wasn't a sound. It was a sensation of microscopic release deep in his core.
The stagnant pool shuddered.
The next time he circulated the mantra, a thread of it—infinitesimally thin—detached and moved.
It inched along the meridian pathway beside his spine. A sensation like warm syrup sliding through a narrow glass tube.
It was agonizingly slow. It took hours to complete a single, miniature circuit.
But it was movement.
---
Day 20: The Birth
Han Li sat as the first true twilight settled. He was hollowed out. A shell of focus.
He began the cycle again.
This time, the warm thread flowed stronger. Clearer.
As it moved, it seemed to pull substance from his own body. From his blood. From the air in his lungs. From the residual vitality of the herbs in his system.
A vibrant green energy—the essence of the valley itself—seeped from his tissues. It met the warm, internal current.
In the sacred darkness behind his eyelids, he witnessed it.
The warm, vital flow of his blood essence. The cool, vibrant green energy of the world.
They met in his expanded meridians. They did not fight.
They spun around each other. Intertwining. Compressing under the mantra's rhythmic guidance.
And they transformed.
Where they fused, a new substance was born.
A shimmering, bluish-silver qi. Thinner than a hair. Brighter than moonlight.
It sparked into existence. It began to run through his meridians of its own accord. Completing a full, glorious circuit.
It lit up his internal map like a constellation being drawn.
It was no longer him pushing energy. It was energy flowing through him. A self-sustaining loop.
The bottomless pit had been connected to a spring.
Han Li's eyes flew open.
The world was the same, yet fundamentally different.
The twilight was not dimmer, but detailed. He could see the individual fibers of the grass mat. Hear the distinct cadence of three different crickets. Smell the separate components of the night air—damp soil, night-blooming jasmine, the sharp tang of pine.
The enhancements were subtle. But undeniable. They were structural.
He sat for a long moment. Feeling the gentle, ceaseless circulation of that bluish-silver qi within him. A profound, quiet vitality hummed in its wake.
A question formed in the quiet.
"Did I… succeed?"
---
He stood. His body felt lighter, yet more substantial.
He moved to Physician Xiao's chamber. Knocked softly.
"Master. I feel… different."
Xiao was at his desk. He rose immediately. His usual detachment was gone. Replaced by focused intensity.
"Show me."
He placed two fingers on Han Li's wrist. His other hand was a firm pressure over Han Li's dantian.
"Circulate it. Now. With the mantra."
Han Li closed his eyes. Willed the new qi to move.
It responded effortlessly. Flowing in its established circuit.
He felt a subtle vibration pass from Xiao's hand into his dantian. A probing thread of foreign qi, far vaster and denser than his own. It touched his nascent energy, circled it once, and retreated.
Han Li opened his eyes.
Physician Xiao was smiling.
It was not a broad smile. But a deep, real one that reached his weary eyes. It transformed his entire face.
"Good," he breathed. "Very, very good. Not just Tier One. A stable, pure foundation. The Greenwood Qi is born."
He placed a hand on Han Li's shoulder.
"You are no longer a provisional disciple. You are my heir."
The words should have brought elation. They did. But a practical thought surfaced through the daze of triumph.
"Master, my supplies… the pills are gone. I have the money from my family. I should send it to them, perhaps get more—"
"Your only concern is consolidation," Xiao interrupted. His tone was firm but not unkind. "I will see to your family."
He moved to a cabinet. Began selecting vials and dried herbs, placing them in a travelling satchel.
"I must journey to the high peaks. A specific cluster of Moonpetal Blossoms grows there. They are crucial for the next stage of your nourishment. I will be gone for a month."
He fastened the satchel. Looked at Han Li. A spark of something like excitement glinted in his eyes.
"Use this time. Stabilize your foundation. Make the new qi as familiar as your own breath. When I return," he paused, "I will begin teaching you the art of pill-making."
"Pill-making?" Han Li's voice was hushed with awe. "You mean it?"
"I teach my heir everything," Xiao said simply. "Now. Rest. True cultivation begins not with a breakthrough, but the morning after one."
---
Han Li returned to his hut. He lay on his bed. Not tired, but vibrating with a serene energy.
The ceiling above him seemed to pulse with the rhythm of his own new circulation.
I succeeded. I can stay. The path is real.
He reached into his inner robe. Drew out the cloud-carved white jade. It felt warm in his hand, as if responding to the new energy within him.
He peered at its mysterious, smooth surface.
"I don't know how to open your secrets yet," he whispered to it. "But I have time now. And I have a path."
He placed the jade back against his chest. Over his heart, where the gentle pulse of his bluish-silver qi was strongest.
He closed his eyes.
Outside, the wind moved through the valley. It sighed through the pines. It rustled the herb gardens.
It did not howl. It did not whisper.
It sang a soft, continuous note of approval. Sweeping away the residue of struggle. Celebrating the quiet, irrevocable fact of his success.
The valley itself, it seemed, was welcoming its first true cultivator in a long, long time.