CHAPTER NINETY TWO
### Departure From The School
They left on the fourth morning.
Director Chen stood at the gate with the founding record and the updated primer and a list of the school's senior practitioners who would be contributing their practice records to Li Shan's River-Stone reconstruction project.
Twelve practitioners.
"All of them have been at this school for more than fifteen years," she said. "All of them practice at the garden corner." She paused. "They have been contributing to the River-Stone reconstruction without knowing the project existed."
"Tell them," Jian Yu said. "Specifically. What their practice has been maintaining."
"I will tell them this afternoon," she said.
She looked at Lin Mei.
"The primer," she said. "The above-baseline range expansion you added. The practitioners have already begun testing it."
"Send the results to Li Shan," Lin Mei said. "Monthly. The archive needs ongoing data as the secondary improvement continues."
"Monthly," Director Chen confirmed.
She looked at Jian Yu.
"The next time you are in the south," she said.
"I will come back," Jian Yu said.
"There will be more questions by then," she said. "There are always more questions."
"Yes," he said. "There are always more questions."
She nodded once.
They walked through the gate.
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The road north.
Not immediately north — east first, looping through the confirmed sections in the Flowing Hand school's territory that the domain could cover in transit.
Three sections. The school's founding had placed it at the center of a cluster.
Bing Xi read as they walked.
"All three developing on schedule," she said. "The school's practice has been accelerating them since the seeding."
"Add it to the cascade data," Lin Mei said.
"Already sent," Bing Xi said.
They moved through the territory at a walking pace and the domain did its ongoing work and the sections received and by midday they had cleared the school's cluster.
On the afternoon of the first day north Lin Mei walked beside Jian Yu without her documentation pack.
She did this sometimes. Not resting — being present in the road rather than the work. He had learned to read the difference. When she put the documentation pack away it was not a signal that the work had stopped. It was a signal that she was paying a different kind of attention.
"River-Stone's sequence," she said. "If the reconstruction completes."
"Yes," he said.
"The most precisely calibrated practice for the regional network's sections," she said. "Available to every practitioner who needs it through the archive and the hub's support network."
"Yes," he said.
"Three centuries after River-Stone developed it," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She walked.
"The journal," she said. "The section on the healer. What I wrote."
"Yes," he said.
"*The wielder will reach nine breaths. Give them the space to get there.*"
"Yes," he said.
"You reached nine before we left the vault's vicinity," she said. "On the plateau. Consistently. I noticed."
"Yes," he said.
"What comes after nine," she said.
He looked at the road.
He thought about this. He had been getting to nine and staying at nine. He had not tried to go further. Nine had become the arrival point and the staying point.
"I don't know," he said. "I have not gone past nine."
"Why not," she said.
He counted his breaths.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.
He stayed at nine.
He tried ten.
Ten arrived.
He looked at Lin Mei.
"Ten," he said.
She looked at him.
"Yes," she said. "What does ten feel like."
He held it.
"Like nine was the right stopping point for a long time," he said. "And now it is not the stopping point anymore." He paused. "Like the distance from three to nine happened between the ceremony night and here. And now something else is beginning."
"Yes," she said. "What is beginning."
He counted to ten again. Then eleven. The count felt different above nine — not harder, opened. Like a room that had been fully occupied becoming larger.
He counted to twelve.
He stopped.
"I do not know yet what is beginning," he said.
"No," she said. "You will find out."
She picked up her documentation pack.
She went back to writing.
He counted twelve breaths.
He stayed at twelve.
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