The morning bell did not care that he had failed the circuit.
It rang at the same time it always rang. The same iron tone, the same duration, the same flat echo rolling across the outer quarters and dying against the mountain face. Xu Qian opened his eyes. The ceiling was the same gray stone. The air was the same temperature. The ache in his meridians had not moved. It sat behind his sternum like something that had learned to live there.
He had slept. He did not feel rested.
He dressed. He ate. The congee was the same thin grain paste it had been every morning since induction. He ate it without tasting it. The disciple next to him ate with both hands cupped around the bowl, as if someone might take it. No one would. But the gesture had become a habit around him, outer disciples moved through the same motions, the same silence, the same economy of gesture that the sect had trained into them through repetition and consequence.
He reported to the training yard at the second bell.
Instructor Fan was already there.
The old man stood at the edge of the packed-earth square with his hands behind his back. He wore the same faded gray robe he always wore. His face held the same expression it always held, which was no expression at all. He watched the disciples file in and take their positions with the attention of a man counting inventory.
There were fewer of them.
Xu Qian noticed it immediately. The formation had gaps. Not large ones. Not the kind that announced themselves. But the spacing was wrong. The five missing positions were distributed across the grid, each absence leaving a pocket of empty air that the remaining bodies did not move to fill.
No one mentioned it.
Instructor Fan did not mention it. He did not call the names of the missing. He did not acknowledge the gaps. He simply adjusted his scan to account for the reduced number and began.
"Circulation drill. Standard pattern. Begin."
Xu Qian settled into the stance.
The standard circulation pattern was the foundation exercise of Realm 1. It required the cultivator to draw qi from the dantian, push it through the primary meridian loop, and return it to the center without significant loss. The sect defined "significant" as more than fifteen percent dispersal. Most outer disciples at this stage of Flesh Tempering operated between twelve and twenty percent. The best in the cohort ran under ten.
Xu Qian ran at eighteen.
He knew the number because Instructor Fan had told him, once, three weeks ago, in the same flat tone he used for everything. Eighteen percent dispersal. Functional but inefficient. The friction in his channels ate the difference between what he pushed and what arrived.
He began the cycle.
Breath in. Qi gathered. He pushed it into the first channel. The resistance was immediate, the same rough drag he had felt last night in his room. The scarring along his meridian walls caught the qi like burrs catching thread. Heat built. Energy bled.
He did not force it.
That was the lesson he had learned in the first weeks of training, the lesson that separated Flesh Tempering from the brute conditioning that came before it. Forcing qi through resistant channels did not widen them. It damaged them further. The sect's method was pressure without force, sustained movement at the edge of the channel's tolerance, repeated until the tissue adapted.
The adaptation was slow.
It was supposed to be slow. Instructor Fan had said so, in one of his rare multi-sentence instructions: "Your body evolves at its own pace. Rushing it won't help.
Xu Qian pushed the qi through the first junction. Lost two percent. Pushed through the second. Lost another three. By the third junction the thread was thin but intact. He carried it past the fourth, past the scar point that had stopped him last night.
It passed.
Not cleanly. The qi squeezed through the narrowed section like water through a cracked pipe, losing coherence and speed. But it passed. The thread continued into the fifth channel, thinning, weakening, bleeding heat at every rough point.
He did not complete the full circuit. The qi broke apart at the seventh junction, scattering into diffuse warmth across his upper chest.
Eighteen percent dispersal. Maybe nineteen today. The road had cost him.
Around him, the other disciples ran their own circuits. Some moved through the pattern with visible ease, their breathing steady, their faces calm. Others struggled. One disciple three positions to his left had sweat running down his temples despite the cold air. His jaw was clenched so tight the tendons stood out like cords.
Instructor Fan walked the grid.
He stopped behind each disciple for exactly three breaths. He said nothing to most of them. Occasionally he adjusted a stance with a tap of his finger against a shoulder or a hip. The touch was precise and impersonal, the correction of a mechanism rather than the guidance of a student.
He stopped behind Xu Qian.
Three breaths. Xu Qian felt the old man's attention on his back like a change in air pressure. He continued the drill. He did not alter his pace or his effort. Performing for observation was a trap. The body learned what it practiced. If he pushed harder under scrutiny, he was training himself to need scrutiny.
Instructor Fan moved on without a word.
The drill continued for one hour. At the end, Instructor Fan called them to standing rest.
"Three of you have improved since the last cycle," he said. His voice carried across the yard without effort. "Nine of you have not changed. The rest have degraded."
He did not say which category each disciple fell into. He did not need to. Every disciple who had been running the pattern knew their own numbers. The ones who had improved knew it in their channels. The ones who had degraded knew it in their heat.
"The Minor Assessment is in eleven weeks," Instructor Fan said. "The minimum circulation standard for continued placement is twelve percent dispersal or below. If you are above that threshold when the assessment arrives, you will not be removed. You will simply not be promoted. Your resource allocation will be adjusted accordingly."
He paused.
"Adjusted accordingly" was sect language. Everyone in the yard knew what it meant. Reduced rations. Lower task priority. Last access to training facilities. A slow starvation of everything that made progress possible, applied not as punishment but as reallocation. The sect did not waste resources on assets that were not appreciating.
"Dismissed," Instructor Fan said.
The formation broke. Disciples scattered toward their next obligations. Some went to the Task Hall. Some went to the practice courts. Some stood in the yard for a moment, staring at the ground, running the numbers.
Xu Qian went to the practice court.
The court was a stone-floored rectangle behind the main training yard, open to the sky, bordered by low walls that served no defensive purpose. Their function was spatial. They defined the area. Inside the walls, a disciple was practicing. Outside the walls, a disciple was not.
He drew his sword.
The new blade felt different from the training weapon he had used before. It was heavier by a small margin, the steel denser, the balance point shifted slightly forward. The edge was real. It would cut. The training blades were weighted to simulate combat load but dulled to prevent accidents during drills. This sword did not prevent anything.
He ran the first form.
The Edgefall outer curriculum contained seven sword forms. The first three were structural, teaching the body to move the blade along efficient paths. The fourth and fifth introduced qi integration, channeling energy through the arm and into the weapon during specific strike phases. The sixth and seventh were combat applications, combining footwork, blade work, and qi output into sequences designed for actual engagement.
Xu Qian was on the fourth form.
The fourth form required him to channel qi into the blade during the downward cut. Not much. A thread. Enough to reinforce the edge and add penetration without depleting his reserves. The technique was the foundation of the Edgefall method: sword as qi conduit, not qi as sword enhancement. The distinction mattered. One approach treated the weapon as a tool that received power. The other treated it as an extension of the meridian system, a channel that happened to be made of steel.
He cut.
The qi moved down his arm, through his wrist, into the grip, and stopped.
The connection between his hand and the blade was imperfect. The qi could not transition from flesh to metal without a bridge, and the bridge was intent. Intent was focus shaped by understanding, and his understanding of the sword-as-channel principle was intellectual, not physical. He knew what it was supposed to feel like. He did not yet feel it.
He reset. He cut again.
The qi reached the grip and diffused. Heat in his palm. Wasted energy. The blade moved through the air with physical force only, sharp enough to cut but carrying nothing beyond the weight of steel and muscle.
He cut again. Same result.
A bird landed on the practice court wall. It watched him with one eye, then left. It had better things to do
He cut thirty more times. On the twenty-third cut, a thin line of qi passed through the grip and entered the blade for a fraction of a second before scattering. On the remaining seven, nothing.
One success in thirty attempts. And even that success was partial, unstable, and unrepeatable on demand.
He lowered the blade.
His wrist ached where the grip met the callus that had not existed two months ago.
Progress.
He could not feel it. The numbers said it was there. Three weeks ago, he had not achieved a single qi transfer in fifty attempts. Now he had one in thirty. The ratio had improved. The curve was moving.
The curve was moving slowly.
He thought about the number Instructor Fan had given. Twelve percent dispersal. Eleven weeks. His current rate was eighteen. To close a six-point gap in eleven weeks, he needed to improve by roughly half a point per week. That was possible. It was within the range of normal adaptation for a disciple at his stage.
But it assumed no setbacks. No injuries. No tasks that cost him recovery time. No road trips that pulled his channels tight and added friction he would spend days working off.
It assumed a clean path, and nothing about his path had been clean.
He sheathed the sword.
He stood in the practice court and let the cold air settle against his skin. His palms were hot from the failed transfers. His forearms ached from the repetition. His meridians hummed with the low, persistent friction that had become his baseline state.
Across the yard, he could see the outer quarters. The building where five beds were now empty. Xu Qian knew two of the names. He did not think them. Five disciples who had done the same math he was doing and arrived at a different answer.
Or the same answer, accepted differently.
Xu Qian turned back to the court. He drew the sword.
He cut.
The qi did not transfer.
He cut again.