Chapter 24 – Mother Of Healing

Wei Bolin came to me after a session in the third month of the second year and said, “Zhao Jun, Ma and Tao are all making the same error on the kidney-to-liver pathway exercises. They’re bracing at the hip instead of releasing through it. The qi stalls when they are not relaxed because they don’t understand that Qi responds to intent, not desire. It’s part of the principles.”

He had proposed the correction: a modified breathing rhythm that encouraged visualization training in the same way that I had done to Bolin when I trained him.

I made him zone one’s lead instructor that afternoon.

“You’re sure?” he asked me.

I gave him a pat on the back. “You soak up knowledge like a cloth. So yes, I’m sure.”

He took the position without ceremony. Within a week, Gao Run was assisting him. I found her running the breathing exercise with Ma and Tao even though, to my knowledge, I hadn’t asked her to supervise. When I raised an eyebrow at her, she immediately told me that Bolin said she could do it if she wanted to.

“He also said that you’d be fine with it,” she added.

I nodded.

The beginnings of the Sect was producing its own teachers. Students were becoming instructors without me orchestrating the promotion, which meant that the system was working the way it was supposed to. The knowledge flowed downhill because the channels were open, and the people found their level naturally.

And speaking of which….

Zhao Jun found the river.

I came to the training ground before dawn on a morning in the fifth month and he was already sitting at the water’s edge with his hands submerged.

I sat beside him and didn’t speak, and he in turn didn’t look towards me.

After some time passed he finally pulled his hands out of the water. “The river makes it easier.”

“How so?” I asked him, testing his knowledge.

“The energy in the water gives me something to push against. Without it, I’m reaching for a feeling I can barely detect.”

So, he’d independently derived the environmental qi principle. The same discovery I’d made at this same riverbank when I’d first plunged my hands into the current and felt the membrane thin.

“How long have you been coming here before dawn?” I asked.

“Four months. I figured if the environment affects cultivation then I should find the environment that helps me most,” he said.

I didn’t tell him this was exactly what the program was supposed to produce, nor that was the makings of the sixth principle. Some things landed better when students found the answers for themselves.

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I told him that I was proud of him before then turning my attention to the growing clinic near my home.