The Lan River entered the city from the south, but it began further out, past the outer wall, through the flat farmland that fed Lanyu's population, and beyond that into a stretch of forest the city had not yet consumed.
I could feel the difference the moment we passed through the outer gate.
The ambient field thickened although it was still weaker than the ambient Qi that surrounded Hekou's river fork, where the current carried qi with density.
We followed the river upstream along a track worn by fishermen and foraging parties until the outer wall was out of sight behind the tree line and the city sounds had thinned to almost nothing. The river here moved over stones rather than stone walkways, the current continued on unhurried, the banks soft with grass and root.
I stopped.
Xu looked at the trees and the river that stretched beyond, "So, is this is where you train people?"
"This is what I train people near," I clarified. I crouched at the water's edge and pressed two fingers to the ground and expanded my senses as well as my awareness. This was less of a technique and more of a sense that you develop over time. I excelled had detecting the presence of ambient Qi over time due to my proximity near Hekou's river, but it was an ability that any could learn if given a sufficient enough of time. "Lanyu's river is older and the energy here is more stilted but it'll do." I stood.
She had already moved closer to the bank.
"Where is the equipment?" she asked.
"There isn't any."
She seemed surprised by this.
"Sit down and face the river, we're going to do some breathing exercises."
She sat on the grass at the river's edge without ceremony, legs folded, back straight, looking at the current. I stood behind her.
"I'm going to check your meridian pathways," I said. "That is what I referred to as Mai. This requires contact at specific points such as the wrist, forearm, spine, chest, and abdomen. Tell me if anything feels wrong, which can include sharp discomfort, pressure that builds, or a rubbing or grating sensation."
Commander Xu nodded. "Understood."
I started at her left wrist, the lung mai point, two fingers pressed lightly at the inside of the wrist where the radial pulse sat. Her qi flow was strong, considerable volume, dense and well-developed more so than I thought it would be. I held it long enough to feel the full character of it and moved on.
The large intestine point, inner forearm just above the wrist crease. She was strong there too. The pericardium point at the wrist's center was again, strong, with a faint excess that I noted and kept moving.
"Roll your left shoulder back," I instructed her, and she did it. I moved my fingers to the upper trapezius where the small intestine pathway ran close to the surface, tracing the line toward the base of the neck. "Any tension here?"
"Always," she said.
"That's not tension. That's the small intestine mai running congested. You've been carrying it so long you thought it was a muscle ache." I pressed the release point at the junction and felt the pathway ease just a little. "You'll want to work that yourself every morning. Two fingers pressed against it for thirty heart beats."
I moved to the back. The bladder pathway ran the full length of the spine in two parallel lines flanking the vertebrae. I worked down it from the base of the skull, both hands now, thumbs pressing the points in sequence.
"Breathe into it," I said at the mid-spine.
She breathed and I felt the pathway open.
"There's a held point at the fourth vertebra," I said. "You've compensated the governing vessel around it."
A pause. "Must have happened during the Border Campaign."
"Your body remembered it so you wouldn't have to." I held the release point until the tension in the surrounding tissue softened. "It won't clear in one session but you know where it is now."
I moved around to her front. The stomach pathway ran down from the face along the throat, across the chest, and down the abdomen in a long vertical line. I worked the upper chest points first, collarbone junction, then below the clavicle. She watched me work with the same focused interest she'd brought to everything else.
The heart mai point sat just below the left collarbone. I pressed it and felt the first significant thing, a density I hadn't expected.
"There's an accumulation here in the heart pathway. It's not deadly but it can be an indication of a source of stress."
A moment passed, then Commander Xu said, "I have a general idea of what caused it."
I moved on without pressing it. The spleen pathway along the inner leg, which I assessed by the secondary points at the abdomen rather than asking her to extend her leg. The kidney pathway at the inner ankle and the lower abdomen.
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The liver mai ran along the inner thigh and abdomen. I worked the abdominal junction point, which was the most assessable without asking her to change position.
"The kidney-to-liver transition," I said. "This is the main restriction. Feel it?"
"I'm trying."
"You're looking for it with force. Stop and let your attention rest on the area between your lower abdomen and your right side and notice what's there first. Think of it like peaking through a window before going outside yourself."
A long pause.
"There's a tightness," she said.
"That's it. That's where you've been losing energy every time you circulate. You've been pushing qi through a passage that wants to be tended to, not driven." I removed my fingers. "Your lung pathway is the cleanest channel I've assessed. Your governing vessel has old impact compensation. Your heart pathway has the accumulation of waste, and The kidney-to-liver transition is the main problem. It's costing you."
"Show me the kidney transition," she urged.
I pressed two fingers to the point again. "Find it the way you found it a moment ago. Let your attention rest on it without directing anything toward it."
It didn't take long for Commander Xu to get a hang of it. She closed her eyes and concentrated just like I told her to, and in just a handful of seconds she said: "Found it."
"Now let the qi settle into the passage on its own like how water settles upon the lowest path."
The forest was quiet around us. I watched her face and felt the pathway under my fingers, and the change when it came was cleaner than I expected from a first attempt. The qi eased through the junction with a smoothness that her years of high-volume cultivation had actually prepared her for.
She exhaled and her shoulders dropped.
"My lower back," she noticed the shift.
"The kidney pathway feeds the spine. When the transition restricts, the pathway backs up and the lower back holds it." I stepped back. "How does it feel now?"
She moved her shoulders experimentally and began rolling her neck. She then pressed a hand to her lower back and held it there. "Lighter," she said. The word surprised her.
She stood and turned to face me. The way she looked at the assessment had shifted. The aches and tension she'd been carrying as the ordinary cost of her work were not, it turned out, ordinary.
Now that I had taught her something worthwhile, I figured that it was time for her to teach me something.
"There's something I've been working on," I began to say. "But I haven't been able to do it."
She waited.
"Your heartbeat sensing method, I can understand the theory behind it but I want to learn how you do it."
She studied me. Then she gestured at the ground in front of her.
I sat down facing her with our knees a few inches apart and the river running at our side.
She took my right hand and pressed it flat against her chest, then she guided my left hand to my own chest.
"Feel your own first," she said.
I felt it. The rhythm against my palm, steady, slightly elevated from the morning's work.
"Now feel mine."
I held my right hand where she'd placed it and let my attention rest on the contact point without reaching through it. The ambient field moved with the river, slow and easy. I let the sensation carry me where it wanted to go without resistance.
There.
There was a density around the heart pathway that matched what I'd felt under my fingers at the collarbone point. The sound of her heart echoed in my ears, and the thumping grew louder until it drowned out the sound of the running river itself.
She pressed her free hand over mine.
"How did you learn this?" I asked her while I continued to marvel at the rhythm of her heart.
She looked out at the river and her voice came out differently than it had all morning.
"I don't know that I learned it, not on purpose anyways," A pause. "When Shen Bao and I were first married I used to sleep with my head on his chest. His body always ran warm and the campaign tents were cold." She continued to watch the river's current. "I memorized the sound of his heart without intending to. After a few months I could hear it before I reached him, in the corridor, in the next room. I thought it was familiarity in the same way that you recognized a voice."
I held her heartbeat in my awareness and waited.
"The day he died I was at the command post eight li out," she said. "I felt his heart stop. I didn't know what it was. I thought I was losing my mind from the heat, but afterward I understood what had happened, yet I can't explain how my technique came to be. All I know is that I fell asleep listening to his heart for long enough that my body learned to find it."
I sat with that and ran it through the framework.
Principle one. Cultivation begins with awareness. Hers had begun without her knowing it.
Principle two. The body's resistance to qi is protective, not pathological. Expand tolerance gradually through daily practice. She hadn't practiced deliberately. But sleeping on a person's chest for months was daily practice whether you named it that or not. The body had expanded its tolerance for the field between two people until the field became readable.
Principle three. Emotional spikes produce uncontrolled qi release. Train the mind before the energy. This one didn't fit cleanly. What she'd developed had come from an emotional spike, the sharpest one available. Her husband's heart stopping at eight li's distance. The uncontrolled release had been the sensing itself, grief cracking the channel open rather than closing it. It suggested the principle needed a corollary. Extreme emotional events didn't only disrupt cultivation, sometimes it opened the body up to more.
Principle four. Qi responds to intention but not to desire. She had never desired the heartbeat sense. She hadn't intended it. And yet it had developed, perhaps rooted in love.
Principle five. Any principle that works for one person should work for any person with the aptitude. This one held without modification. But aptitude, I was increasingly certain, was less fixed than even I had assumed.
"Yours is similar to how his rhythm was," Xu continued to say, breaking me out of my thoughts. "It's steady and not easily agitated."
Her pulse moved against my palm. Her hand over mine was warm and encompassing. Suyin's hands by comparison had always felt hot and all-consuming, the kind of warmth that left an impression. Xu's was different in a way I didn't have words for, it was a quality all of its own.
I noticed, after a moment, that my hands had moved without my awareness. Neither of them was on my chest or hers anymore. Both of them held her hands, and my thumb had been moving slowly across the back of one of them for a while.
I let it rest and suddenly the sound of the current had broke me out of my stupor and I said out loud: "The administrative tour."
Xu passed me a soft smile. "Don't worry, I'll be your guide. Who knows, you might learn a thing or two."
"That's exactly what I'm hoping for." I stood and brushed the grass off of my robes. "I also need to understand what the construction of the school will require. I was also thinking about modeling it after Lanyu's garrison grounds."
She rose beside me. "Then we'll start there."
We turned and walked together side by side through the forest and back towards the capital city.