Interlude: Better than Before

The water is cold.

It wasn’t always this way. Before, I would have been grateful for cold water. Cold water meant I hadn’t had to break ice to get it. But now, standing at the wash basin behind the disciples’ quarters, I dip my hands into the bucket and feel only a mild discomfort. The winter isn’t as daunting as it used to be. My cloak is thick. My robes are sturdy. The cold seeps in slower, and when it does, I don’t shiver the way I did when I was younger.

Younger. I’m nineteen now. But I feel older. Older than my years, older than my cultivation stage, older than the girl who stumbled up this mountain six years ago.

I scrub the practice robes against the washboard. The material is different now; thicker, better quality. Not the cheap hemp I wore when I first arrived, the kind that chafed and tore and never quite kept the cold out. These robes hold warmth. They hold shape. They make me feel like I belong here, even when I’m not sure I do.

Sect Leader Lu Chen bought them. The new one.

I correct myself. Not the new one. The same one. He’s still the same person. Just… awakened. Like something sleeping inside him finally opened its eyes.

I scrub harder.

‘The old Lu Chen.’

The phrase sounds harsh, but I don’t mean it harshly. The man who took me in when I had nowhere else to go… I owe him everything. I owe him my life. I owe him the fact that I’m not someone’s property right now, sold to a merchant for a few silver coins because my family had too many mouths to feed and I was the only daughter.

I was twelve when I ran. I’d heard my parents talking one night, their voices low and tired, thinking I was asleep. Good girl, works hard, pretty enough. The merchant didn’t care. He just wanted someone to serve tea and warm his bed.

I ran as far as my legs could carry me.

It wasn’t far. I was twelve. I was hungry. I was scared. By the time I reached the foot of Coiling Dragon’s mountain, I couldn’t run anymore. I sat by the side of the road and cried, and I thought that was it. That was the end. That I’d die there, alone, because running was pointless and the world was cruel and no one was coming to save me.

Then he found me.

Sect Leader Lu Chen. The old one. The one who was just a middle-aged cultivator with a dying sect and a kind face.

He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t demand payment. He didn’t even test my spirit root. Just stared at me with mild surprise, before extending a hand.

“… You look hungry. Old Chen has extra rice.”

That was it. No sermon, no conditions… just rice.

I stayed. Of course I stayed. Helping Old Chen in the kitchens, doing the laundry, feeding the animals. A week later, when I was strong enough to stand without shaking, he had me tested.

Water spirit root. Not exceptional, not worthless. Suited for cultivation.

I threw myself into it. I worked harder than anyone. I memorized every technique, practiced every form, stayed late after training to drill the movements again and again. The other disciples noticed. Some of them leered; I was the only girl at the time, and I was pretty enough, and cultivators aren’t always better than merchants. Some of them looked down on me, a kitchen girl, they called me.

I ignored them. Because cultivation was my lifeline. The only way to escape the fate I was born with. If I could get strong enough, if I could reach Qi Condensation, if I could prove myself valuable; no one could sell me. No one could take me. I would be my own person.

Other disciples had left over the years, even when they had “worse” talent than me. They’d seen the writing on the wall. A dying sect. A kind but ineffective Sect Leader. No future. But I stayed. Stayed because Sect Leader Lu Chen gave me an opportunity when I had none. He didn’t see me as an object to be sold. He didn’t look at my face and calculate my worth in silver. My hand drifts to my hair. I tuck a strand behind my ear, a nervous habit I’ve never been able to break. The water in the basin ripples. It responds to my emotions now. It hasn’t been long. A few weeks, maybe.

I look at the basin. The surface is turbulent, small waves lapping against the wooden sides. I take a breath. Exhale. The water stills.

‘Good. Control.’

The Coiling Dragon Sect took people like me. People who were not useless, but not worth fighting over. People with nowhere else to go. Broken things, discarded things, things that other sects would have turned away without a second glance.

Lu Chen gave me a place to call home.

I should remember that with warmth. I do remember it with warmth. But I also remember his fatigue.

He used to pause before answering difficult questions, his eyes drifting toward the window as if the answer might be written in the clouds. He encouraged us, but rarely surprised us. When resources ran thin, he looked toward the mountain path as if hoping help would arrive from somewhere else.

Sect Leader Lu Chen was never a bad man. That was what made leaving so difficult.

If he had been cruel, it would have been easy. If he had been indifferent, it would have been simple. But he was kind. Fair, when fairness did not cost too much. He remembered names. He settled disputes. He never struck disciples in anger.

He was not a great Sect Leader. But he was our Sect Leader.

And now the sect is changing rapidly. And so is he.

I hang the robes on the line, smoothing the fabric, pinning them in place. The winter sun is pale but present. They’ll dry by evening.

I remember the day he gathered everyone in the yard without warning. It was strange. He never gathered everyone without warning. He was not the type to create urgency unless something had already gone wrong. Announcements came at meals. Instructions came during training. A summons to the yard, at an odd hour, with no explanation… that was not his way.

The disciples whispered among themselves as we assembled.

“Did something happen?”

“Maybe the mine collapsed?”

“Maybe the Violet Sky Sect raised tribute again?”

I shushed them. “Wait. We’ll find out soon enough.”

But inwardly, I was preparing for the worst. Another problem. Another crisis. Another thing that might finally break the sect we’d been barely holding together. It felt like we were always waiting for the next disaster. The dying mine. The dwindling supplies. The disciples who left because they couldn’t see a future here.

When you’re slowly dying, everything feels like a threat.

I had learned to live with that feeling. The weight of it settled into my bones the way the winter cold used to, before the new cloaks.

Then Lu Chen looked at us. He stood at the front of the yard, and he looked at us with attention. But it was attention like I had never felt from him before. He studied each person for slightly too long. His eyes moved across the disciples in loose formation, pausing on faces, measuring something I couldn’t name. When his gaze reached Feng, I saw a flicker of something sadder.

Then his eyes moved on. To me. To the younger disciples. To the servants at the edge of the yard. Then, strangely, he glanced at the goats, muttered something under his breath, and shook his head.

I could not explain why it felt wrong. He was exactly the same in appearance. Same robes. Same posture. Same calm voice when he spoke. But the quality of his attention had changed. Like he was seeing through us rather than looking at us.

I had been corrected by the Sect Leader many times. I had bowed beneath his praise, his disappointment, his patient advice. I knew what it felt like to be seen by him. His eyes did not pass over my face or my stance or the neatness of my robes. They seemed to settle somewhere deeper, somewhere I didn’t know I had. I felt exposed.

‘Had he always looked this carefully?’

Then his attention shifted. Past Old Chen, half-hidden behind him like she didn’t want to be found.

Ling’er.

I noticed the pause. Too long. Longer than anyone else. Then he looked away, and his face was neutral again.

“Hah…”

I find myself staring at the robe on the line. The fabric drips. The water beads and falls. I think about how things have changed since then. The sect improved in ways that were too practical to ignore, but too small to point at as miracles.

We receive individual exercises now. New techniques that just felt better. Wei Chen’s fire stopped sputtering. Even Jun, who never seemed to improve at anything, started making progress. Everyone had a place. Everyone had something they were good at. Discipline improved. Supplies were organized. The storeroom stopped leaking grain because he moved one servant from hauling water to repairing shelves. The mine received more labor. People were assigned responsibilities that fit them strangely well, as if he had known all along what they were capable of.

I noticed that no single change was impossible. Any one could be explained. A lucky guess. A conversation overheard. A moment of inspiration.

But together, they formed a pattern.

If he had found a great treasure, I could have understood. If he had broken through to a new realm, I could have understood. If he had suddenly become cruel, arrogant, or distant, I might even have understood that in a different way.

But he did none of those things.

He fixed the meal schedule. He adjusted practice rotations. He noticed which disciples avoided which chores. Nothing changed enough to be called a miracle. But nothing was being neglected anymore. I had only ever known steady decay under the Coiling Dragon Sect. Stagnation. The slow acceptance that we would never be more than we were.

Now, things worked. I didn’t know what to do with that.

‘Feng.’

I think about Feng sometimes. He left. The official story was that he went to seek opportunities elsewhere. Minor sect disciples do that. It’s not unusual.

But I saw him follow the Sect Leader to the mines that day. I was near the kitchens, invisible among the servants, and I saw Feng slip into the tunnel after him, even when Lu Chen instructed him to stay in the sect. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

Then Feng ran.

I caught only a glimpse: a figure fleeing down the mountain path, gait unsteady. He didn’t look back. I never saw him again.

Before I knew it, I was the most senior disciple.

I didn’t ask what happened. I didn’t want to know. But I filed it away. With the too-long look at the kitchen girl. With the muttering at the goats. With all the other small, inexplicable things that had started to accumulate.

“The spirit herb seeds need tending. Someone with patience, dedication, and a gentle touch with living things. Someone who won’t give up when the first few plants wither, who’ll learn from mistakes, who’ll treat this as important as cultivation.”

That was the first time he gave me a role beyond being “a senior disciple.” He did not just tell me to train harder. He saw a future for me.

I know the Sect Leader. I have watched him for years. He would have said “you’re responsible” or “you’re reliable” or “you’ve earned this.” He would not have listed patience, dedication, a gentle touch. He would not have anticipated the withering plants, the mistakes, the possibility of failure.

This man had thought about me failing and decided it did not matter.

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That is not the Sect Leader I know. The Sect Leader I know gives people chances and hopes they do not fail. This man expects failure and plans around it.

My fingers tighten around the pouch.

I wanted to feel proud. Part of me did. He had been carrying those seeds for me.

“I won’t let you down, Sect Leader.”

I started watching him more after that.

Not obviously. Not the way Jun watches, with his head tilted and his eyes narrowed. I watched the way water does: absorbing, reflecting, flowing around obstacles. I noticed things without appearing to notice.

He corrected Wei Chen’s stance without looking up from his notes. He knew where the fault is before Wei Chen finishes the movement. He has memorized our bodies, our habits, our weaknesses. He sent the younger disciples to gather specific herbs from specific locations on the mountain. Not “find what you can” but “third ridge, north face, near the stream.” The locations are precise. The herbs are there. He has mapped the mountain in his mind.

He muttered to himself while walking between tasks, something he never did before. I caught fragments: “formation flags need reinforcement,” or “the goats are useless.” He was always solving problems.

I remember stories. I grew up listening to my mother’s. Not cultivation stories, but the kind of tales that spread through villages at night. Possession. Soul replacement. Demonic influence. Ancient inheritances that swallow the inheritor and wear their skin. I had dismissed them as superstition.

But now, watching the Sect Leader move through the yard with that quiet, terrible competence, I am not so sure.

Jun and Wei Chen once gossiped about whether the Sect Leader was secretly a woman. They did it within earshot of Ling’er and were nearly beaten to a pulp for it. I did not agree with them, but my thoughts went somewhere darker.

‘What if something in that mine had taken over Sect Leader’s body?’

The first time the thought came, I rejected it so violently that I nearly dropped a watering pot.

‘No. That is disrespectful. Worse than disrespectful. Cruel.’

Sect Leader accepted me. Fed me. Taught me. Gave me a place when better sects would not have even let me past their outer gates. He found me on the road, crying, twelve years old, and he did not ask what I had done to end up there. He just fed me.

To question him now—to question whether he is even him—feels like betrayal.

But the thought persisted.

‘What if this is not Sect Leader Lu?’

I turned the thought over like a stone in my palm.

I didn’t confront him. I didn’t tell anyone. I did not dare test him.

‘Why don’t I act?’

Because I am afraid. Because I have no proof. Because accusing a Sect Leader is dangerous. Because if I am wrong, it is unforgivable: I would be accusing the man who saved my life of being something he is not. And because, if I am right, what can I even do?

I imagined asking him. I imagined his expression changing. I imagined that calm, knowing gaze turning toward me with no warmth left in it, and my courage failed.

Then I imagined being wrong. I imagine the real Sect Leader Lu hearing such a question from a disciple he had sheltered for years, seeing the suspicion in my eyes, feeling the distance I have placed between us. Both possibilities made me ashamed.

But worst of all, the thought that keeps me awake at night… things are improving.