21. Junior, Your Dao Is Wrong (According to My Disciple)

In the later afternoon, it’s time for my actual work.

I find what I’m looking for in a narrow shop tucked between a teahouse and a tailor. The sign reads “Cultivator’s Exchange—Buy, Sell, Trade” in faded gold characters. Inside, shelves are stacked with jade slips, old manuals, and mysterious artifacts that gleam faintly in the dim light.

The shopkeeper is a wizened Foundation Establishment cultivator with sharp eyes that miss nothing. He assesses me in a glance—minor sect leader, moderate wealth, nothing special. I see the calculation behind his gaze: not worth cheating, not worth impressing, just another customer.

“I need basic technique manuals,” I say, keeping my voice casual. “All elements. Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment levels. Quality over quantity.”

He gestures to a wall of jade slips without rising from his stool. “Help yourself. Fifty low-grade per manual, one hundred for the good ones.”

I spend an hour browsing, Gaze active.

I snort and set that one aside. The Gaze is mocking me again. I select ten manuals total; covering fire, water, earth, wind, and mixed elements. Enough to give my disciples options, to build a proper library, to find techniques that might work for Ling’er’s eventual fire-aspected cultivation.

The total comes to 750 low-grade stones. More than I wanted to spend, but the Gaze confirms their value. I haggle with the shopkeeper, using bulk purchase and promises of future business to knock the price down.

“Six hundred,” I say finally. “For ten manuals, cash now, and I’ll be back when my sect expands.”

He eyes me, weighing profit against principle. Principle loses. “Done.”

Remaining low-grade: 2,188

Worth every stone.

Back in our room, I spread the manuals across the small table. Ten jade slips, each containing techniques that could transform a minor sect. Once, this would’ve been impossible for me to acquire—the equivalent of a decade’s savings from our old standards. Now it’s just another purchase.

Ling’er looks at them, then at me.

“Master…” Her voice is hesitant. “I… still can’t read.”

I blink. Ah. I forgot. In the rush of the past weeks—the training, the breakthrough, the journey—I’d only gotten up to her writing her own name and learning a few basic characters. She’s been absorbing everything else through observation and the Sacred Cosmic Bone, but actual literacy? That takes time.

“Then we’ll start there.” I pull out a blank scroll and my brush. “Sit. Tonight, we learn to read.”

I teach her the basics. Characters, strokes, meanings. The building blocks of written language. She learns with a depth of understanding that startles me. It’s less terrifying than her martial arts comprehension, but only slightly. Where a normal person would struggle to remember ten characters in an hour, she remembers fifty. Where a normal person would confuse similar strokes, she sees the patterns immediately.

By midnight, she can read the titles of all ten manuals.

By the early morning hours, she’s sounding out the first pages of the Flowing Water Sword.

I meditate while she works, letting my qi circulate while keeping one eye on her progress. The candle burns low, replaced twice. She doesn’t notice. She’s lost in the manual, her lips moving silently, her finger tracing characters on the table.

Dawn approaches.

“Master.” Her voice pulls me from meditation. “This technique… it says to gather qi in the lower dantian, then release through the sword in a spiral pattern.” She pauses, frowning. “But if you gathered in the middle dantian instead, wouldn’t the spiral be tighter? Faster? The distance is shorter, so the qi would have less time to disperse.”

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I stare at her. At the manual. Back at her. I haven’t read this yet. I don’t know if she’s right or wrong. But I can’t admit that; I’m supposed to be the master. I reach for the manual, giving it a cursory glance, pretending to read. The Gaze flickers, providing a quick assessment:

“That’s… not what it says.” I set the manual down, meeting her eyes. “But you might be right. The middle dantian would create a different flow pattern. Faster, tighter, but harder to control. For a normal cultivator, the manual’s way is safer. For you?” I shrug. “You’ll have to test it.”

She nods seriously. “The threads show me. When I read, I can see how the qi would flow through different paths. The manual’s way works, but it’s not the best way. Not for me.”

The Sacred Cosmic Bone. Optimizing techniques before she’s even learned them.

“Keep reading.” I lean back against the wall. “Make notes—mental notes, nothing written—of every adaptation you think of. We’ll test them when we return to the sect.”