The candlelight stayed thin and weak The shadows on the walls stretched and twisted like restless spirits The stink of blood still hung in the air and only grew heavier in the silence

  Every eye in the hall stayed nailed to the clear bottle like it was the last hope left in the world As the water slid past Ye Fan blue purple lips Allen watched for any sign at all Ye Fan did not move

  Allen felt his heartbeat climb into his throat He was already imagining a sword coming down for what he had done Then Ye Fan body suddenly seized hard

  He arched once like lightning hit him He opened his mouth and spilled a mouthful of rancid black blood onto the floor Allen flinched so hard he almost dropped the bottle

  The black blood sizzled as it hit the stone It ate into the green brick like acid At the same time color rushed back into Ye Fan face

  The dead gray drained away Warmth returned to his skin right before everyone could see it happen A clean fierce current of spiritual energy rose from him for the first time in his life

  Grand Elder Qingsong began to tremble all over He pointed at the plain plastic bottle like he was staring at a miracle He shouted that this was the legendary rootless divine water that could cleanse marrow and forge bone

  He shouted that it did not just break the poison It shattered the shackles that had trapped Ye Fan for years Ye Fan rolled over and dropped to his knees

  His eyes were wet His chest heaved with sobbing breaths The elders followed him down

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  Tears ran down their faces as they cried out that the Ancestor was merciful

  Allen felt like he was sitting on needles Their worship made his skin crawl All he wanted was to calm them down and find a way to slip out alive

  But the crowd only grew louder They begged for guidance They begged for the true path

  They begged him to pass down a supreme teaching

  Allen backed up until there was nowhere left to go His mind went blank Then one useless memory floated up from a college gym class he took for an easy credit

  He had learned a few motions by rote and forgotten them the moment the semester ended Now that scrap of muscle memory was all he had He gave a helpless sigh

  He thought if he was going to die anyway he might as well bluff with something

  He lifted his arms stiffly He bent his knees a little He tried to copy the opening posture of tai chi as best as he could remember

  His movement was slow and awkward His hands traced a crooked arc through the air Without thinking he muttered the words Wild Horse Parts Its Mane

  To Allen it felt painfully embarrassing To the disciples it looked like the simplest form hiding the deepest law Qingsong pupils shook

  In his eyes the Ancestor hands were cradling heaven and earth The motion was not slow because it was weak It was slow because the weight of the rules of the world was too heavy to move quickly

  In that moment slow became fast And plain became terrifying

  Allen tried to cover his embarrassment by switching to something even simpler He did a chest expansion move from old broadcast calisthenics He threw his arms wide in one sharp open and close

  His joints cracked from tension and stiffness The hall went dead quiet Not a single disciple dared to breathe

  In their minds that open and close held the grandeur of splitting the sky and holding the sun and moon The cracking sound was not bone It was space itself crying under pressure

  All through the hall they stared with hungry reverence They memorized every shift of his shoulders Every tremble in his fingers

  Every careless detail They feared that if they blinked they would miss the key to a method that could shake an era

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