Mu Chen led Yuming to a small stone pavilion. The mist was so thick that Yuming could barely see the terraces below.

  A junior disciple had left a pot of tea warming on a formation plate. Mu Chen poured two cups. “This is Settling Leaf tea. It calms the meridians. I hope Fellow Daoist enjoys.”

  Yuming accepted the cup and sipped. It reminded him of the valley.

  “With such excellent tea and such an excellent view, it seems fitting to recite poetry.” Mu Chen remarked.

  Yuming was a bit embarrassed. The Liu Family, while elegant and refined, never emphasized the finer arts. Yuming felt that his taste was somewhat mortal—he had always found poetry quite meaningless.

  Yuming chuckled. “Fellow Daoist, I truly have no talent. Please teach me a lesson.”

  Mu Chen began reciting poetry.

  “Cold stone sprouts new green

  Master teaches: yield to Heaven

  Ten years holding frost

  Mist passes, leaves nothing.”

  Yuming closed his eyes, pretending to listen to Mu Chen’s words and nodding along. Inwardly, he was finding the Tree fragment within his Self.

  The fragment stirred. He didn’t push it outward through his spiritual sense, as that would alert Mu Chen. Instead, he let the resonance pulse through the deeper layer—the layer that his karmic perception operated on.

  The fragment hummed. For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then something near him shifted. Through his Ren Meridian he felt the movement: the threads carrying that Wen-Liu texture drifted toward him slowly. They were answering.

  He turned his attention to his sticky mortal threads, dangling from the core of his being.

  During the karmic attack at the Wen compound, the threads had moved on their own. They swayed wildly as foreign karma crashed into Chenming. The threads caught Xu karma not because he’d willed it, but because the impact of the attack had caused his mortal threads to drift and collect.

  Maybe I can replicate it.

  He couldn’t recreate that violence, but maybe he could imitate the motion. He tried to twitch his Self. There was no outward motion. Instead, he focused on his dantian—the core of his physical being—and circulated qi wildly.

  “Fellow Daoist, I hope I didn’t embarrass myself too much,” Mu Chen said as he finished his poem.

  Although Yuming was fighting a war internally, his face stayed calm. “It was far better than anything I could compose. And this tea—truly splendid! How is it made?”

  “My Verdant Dew Pavilion is known for its alchemical prowess, we…”

  Yuming half-listened while he circulated qi as aggressively as he could muster. Nothing happened; the mortal threads remained limp as they swayed, not nearing any of the Wei-Liu karma that the Tree fragment had attracted.

  He tried again, somehow even faster, feeling his meridians strain.

  Still nothing.

  He clenched his jaw and tried a third time. His dantian pulsed erratically, his nearly awakened spiritual sense flared outward involuntarily before he caught it and pulled it back.

  He felt his Self shudder. Or rather, he saw it. Some of his mortal karmic threads twitched erratically.

  It wasn’t from the qi, it was from the instability.

  Yuming didn’t know why his method had worked. He simply tried to replicate the way his proto-dantian had stirred during the karmic attack. His lack of understanding made him deeply uncomfortable.

  One thread brushed against a drifting karmic fragment. It didn’t hold on. The same thing happened with two more threads.

  Finally, a fourth thread brushed a fragment and it stuck.

  So it’s viable.

  He did it again. He cycled hard, letting the turbulence rattle his foundation. He felt the mortal threads rattle in response.

  Like shaking a tree to move the branches.

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  It was crude and reckless. It risked destabilizing his already chaotic dantian.

  “—and that is why distilling is essential.” Mu Chen finished his speech. “Fellow Daoist, you are a guest here. You must recite a poem.”

  Yuming stopped circling qi immediately, his head beading with sweat. Mu Chen gave him a strange expression but didn’t say anything.

  Yuming rushed to wave his hands. “Fellow Daoist, I really—”

  Mu Chen interjected. “I won’t have it!”

  Inwardly, Mu Chen was getting slightly irritated. He’s a Young Master from the Immortal Liu Clan. He’s surely had training in poetics—he really wants me to beg him!

  Yuming sighed, realizing he couldn’t escape this. He racked his brain, trying to think of something presentable.

  “Alright, but my skill is truly inadequate.”

  “Jade persists beyond ten thousand torrents

  As Heaven’s wheel turns eternal beyond the mortal veil

  The Dao of Water reflects the…

  Sage’s boundless virtue.”

  Mu Chen smiled. “Excellent, truly excellent!” I didn’t understand a word! Such great profundity—his skill must be unimaginable!

  Yuming didn’t understand a word either.

  “Fellow Daoist, let us enjoy the tea and the view.”

  Mu Chen agreed, and the two continued sipping their tea in silence.

  Yuming continued rupturing his dantian, trying to shake his mortal karmic threads. He caught slightly more contamination, but the process was agonizingly inefficient.

  Still it confirmed his theory: he could absorb contamination.

  If he absorbed enough on his way out, it solved two problems at once. Jade Balance True Person would have reason to look the other way—Yuming was removing a problem the True Person hadn't solved himself. And if he was covered in enough debris when he passed the perimeter, the formation might read him as contamination drifting out rather than a person escaping.

  But his reach was pitiful. Even after reckless cycling, he still wasn’t catching much. If he walked straight out of the valley tonight, he’d clean a bit up but leave the vast majority untouched. He doubted that was enough to sway Jade Balance True Person.

  He needed the contamination to come to him.

  He looked down at the terraces below. Runoff channels wove between the basins, converging as they descended. Riverflow Qi moved through those channels—it was the slow, circulating current that ran beneath everything in the valley.

  The Mist-Dew Qi responded to Riverflow Qi. Mu Chen had explained that himself. Where Riverflow cooled the surfaces, Mist-Dew settled.

  And the contamination seemed to be suspended in the Mist-Dew Qi.

  If Riverflow Qi carried Mist-Dew Qi along its currents, then it carried the contamination too. Wherever the qi converged, the contamination converged with it.

  This whole region is a network of rivers. There should be one point where the Riverflow Qi enters the Pavilion.

  He took another sip of tea.

  If I can find that point… the contamination might come to me.

  Besides that, I just need to figure out how I’m being monitored.

  “Fellow Daoist, your Pavilion is truly remarkable.”

  ….

  Three days later.

  The valley was quiet after dark. Mist pooled between the buildings, ankle-deep and still.

  Tang Wenshi stood in a small courtyard behind the guest quarters, his sword drawn. He wore no outer robe, just a white inner layer.

  He moved through sword stances slowly. His aim wasn’t to practice speed or power, it was to focus on the stillness in between—to understand the threshold between serenity and action.

  After another few movements he put his sword away. It was time to babysit again.

  Tang Wenshi found his jailor duties to be slightly demeaning. He was a proud Qi Condensation cultivator—and a young one at that. It was because of his youth that this boring job was handed to him.

  He needed to monitor the Liu prodigy at all times. The job required him to keep his spiritual sense partially extended toward the guest quarters throughout the day and night—which meant he'd barely found time to cultivate or practice his sword.

  So he'd started sneaking small breaks. Quick training sessions in the courtyard behind the guest quarters, close enough that he could still check on the boy every so often.

  The boy himself was quite boring. He spent his mornings clumsily meditating, and his afternoons pacing the terraces and staring at basins.

  He had made his way toward where Daoist Qin was healing a few times. Tang Wenshi had tensed up at first. But the boy just stood at a distance for a few minutes, arms crossed, glaring at the building while biting his lip. Then he turned back.

  When Mu Chen had asked him about it later, the boy muttered something about wanting to know when "that woman" planned to drag him to Jingquan.

  The boy was probably hoping his Liu Family would rescue him before that day came.

  The only truly notable event happened on the boy’s second day at the Pavilion. Tang Wenshi had been lazily monitoring when he felt the boy’s qi signature fluctuate erratically.

  His focus immediately sharpened—he didn’t want this important prodigy to turn cripple on his watch. Who knew how many prominent forces would despise him if that happened?

  It turned out that the boy was aggressively circulating qi throughout his body. He did so recklessly, far too fast for a fresh Dantian Awakening cultivator. The boy's meridians were straining under the pressure, his dantian pulsing in uneven surges.

  So Tang Wenshi intervened, pressing his palms to the boy’s back without permission. He cycled his own qi through the boy's meridians to clear blocked channels. The excess Mist-Dew Qi bled out through the boy's pores, and after a minute his dantian settled.

  The boy thanked him profusely.

  Tang Wenshi appreciated the boy’s sincerity, so he gave him some advice. “Mist-Dew Qi doesn’t respond to force. You must let it settle.”

  Tang Wenshi was satisfied: it appeared that the boy had taken the lesson to heart—maybe too much so.

  Since the incident, the boy’s evening cultivation had changed dramatically. Before, he’d been overly aggressive. Now, he sat so still that Tang Wenshi sometimes had to focus to confirm he was there at all. His qi signature would dim to almost nothing, a quiet hum barely distinguishable from the ambient mist.

  Tang Wenshi switched to another sword stance as his blade pointed upward. Mist spiraled around the flat of the steel.

  He took a deep breath and finished his exercises. Time to return to babysitting.

  He extended his spiritual sense toward the guest room. The signature was faint; it was the same dim hum the boy had settled into the last few nights.

  He almost moved on. But something nagged at him. The hum had no fluctuation, no rhythm of breathing. It was completely flat.

  He focused harder. There was still no sign of the boy.

  His heart tightened as he sheathed his sword and darted toward the dwellings.

  The door was unlocked. He pushed it open to find the meditation and sleeping mats empty.

  The turquoise robes he wore were folded neatly on the floor.

  Tang Wenshi stood still for three breaths’ time.

  Then he went to find the True Person.