Chapter 23 – The Wall

The first morning after the feast, I stood at the center of the training ground and recited the Five Principles to an audience of six.

Hao, Bolin, Suyin Shan were all sitting at the edge along with two new faces: Tao and Ma, the conscript soldiers who’d chosen to stay after the battle.

“Principle one. Cultivation begins with awareness. Before you can move qi, you must learn to feel it.”

I said the words the same way I’d said them every morning for months. The same way I’d say them every morning for years. The principles weren’t wisdom. They were foundations. You didn’t stop pouring a foundation because you’d poured it before.

“Principle five. There is no secret. Any principle that works for one person should work for any person with the aptitude to sense qi. If a technique only works for the teacher, the technique is flawed or the teacher is lying.”

Shan uncrossed his arms when I finished, and I could tell that what I said had resonated with him.

That was the start.

In the following weeks, we recruited a student named Zhao Jun, he was Zhao Ping’s eldest son, I pulled him aside after his third session.

He already knew what I was going to say. I could see it on his face before I opened my mouth.

“Your qi signature is thin,” I said. “The lung mai activation is progressing slower than the others.”

He appeared crestfallen at my words. “I know.”

“I want you to remember that you train at your own pace here, and nobody measures you against anyone else,” I advised him. It would be troubling for a potential student to lose their confidence. Comparison was the thief of joy, as the saying went.

“I know that too.” He looked at me and studied my face. “Does it bother you?”

The question caught me. “Why would it bother me?”

He shrugged. “I could be taking up a spot that someone with more aptitude could use.”

I shook my head. “You can take up all the spots you want, we’re always have room for more.”

“Then I’ll keep coming.”

He walked back to his position on the line, sat down, and formed the prayer sign. It was in that moment that I realized he decided that showing up mattered more than being gifted. I watched him settle into the breathing exercise and thought that if the program ever produced a philosophy, Zhao Jun would be its proof.

Gao Shu, Gao Ren’s daughter, appeared at the edge of zone one on a morning in the fourth month.

I didn’t notice her at first. She was ten and small for her age. She sat cross-legged on the grass with her hands in the prayer sign and her eyes closed, mimicking the breathing pattern she’d watched from the forge path every morning for weeks.

I noticed her when her qi flickered.

It was a small and barely noticeable pulse of energy, but it was still there nonetheless.

I talked to Gao Ren at the forge that afternoon.

“Your daughter has aptitude,” I said to him without preamble.

He didn’t look up from the anvil. “So I’ve heard.”

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“I’d like to include her in the zone one sessions.”

The hammer paused. He set it down and turned to look at me. “She trains when it doesn’t interfere with the work.”

I agreed to that.

Shu joined the beginner track the next morning. She was the youngest student in the program yet she absorbed the meridian basics with the eagerness that only a child could have.

Gao Ren stood watch at every session.

On the sixth month I found Suyin already walking the line and observing our current cohort of students.

She was correcting Zhao Jun’s forearm alignment, her fingers adjusting his wrist angle and she didn’t look up when I approached. When she finished the correction, she moved to Gao Shu and continued working.

I stood at the edge and watched. She was harder on the students than I was. Where I explained the reasoning behind each adjustment, she simply moved the body to where it needed to be and let the sensation teach.

After the session, I caught her on the path.