The training grounds were wider than Yan Qiu expected.

  “Looks like we are here,” Sun Hao said.

  “Yeah.”

  The stone courtyard stretched out in front of them, clean and well-maintained with tall pillars lining the sides and an elevated platform at the center. About forty new disciples were already gathered, standing in loose groups and looking around with the same mix of nerves and excitement that Yan Qiu felt in his own chest.

  “That is a lot of people,” Sun Hao said, looking around. “I did not think there would be this many.”

  “Must be all the newcomers from our batch,” Yan Qiu said. “I do not see anyone who looks like a senior.”

  Sun Hao glanced at him. “How would you even tell?”

  “Maybe they look older? Bigger?”

  Sun Hao raised an eyebrow. “Peng Hu is bigger than half the elders. Does that make him a senior elder?”

  Yan Qiu opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. “That is not what I meant and you know it.”

  “Come on,” Sun Hao said, grinning. “We should not be late on the first day.”

  They found a spot near the middle of the courtyard and waited. The morning air was cool and the sun had not yet climbed above the peaks. Yan Qiu could see his breath when he exhaled.

  A man walked onto the elevated platform.

  He was younger than Elder Bai Yun, maybe in his fifties, with a square jaw and a scar that ran from his left ear down to his chin. His robes were dark grey with a pale blue sash, and he carried himself like someone who had spent more time fighting than talking. He looked over the gathered disciples without smiling.

  “I am Elder Han Zheng,” he said, and his voice reached every corner of the courtyard without him raising it. “I handle discipline and foundational instruction for new outer disciples. You will address me as Elder Han.”

  He clasped his hands behind his back and looked over the crowd.

  “You all passed the trials, which means you met the minimum standard to stand here. Do not confuse that with being ready.” He started pacing along the edge of the platform. “We begin with qi circulation.”

  Elder Han held up one hand and gathered qi above his palm, a faint glow visible for a moment before he let it fade.

  “Qi is the foundation of everything you will do here. You breathe it in, circulate it through your body, and use it to strengthen yourself.” He let his hand drop. “Most of you are at the first stage of Breath Weaving, which means you can gather qi but not much else. I can tell just by looking at you.” His eyes swept the crowd. “But I notice a few of you are further along.”

  He paused and let that settle.

  “Breath Weaving has five stages. Most of you will spend your first year moving through the first three. After Breath Weaving comes Channel Refining, where you open and strengthen your meridians. After that, Core Awakening, where you form your dantian. Those are the four mortal tiers. Until you pass all four, you are not a true cultivator.” He looked across the crowd. “That is where you are headed. But first, the basics.”

  He pointed at Yan Qiu.

  “You. You are at the second stage of Breath Weaving. What is your name?”

  Yan Qiu straightened. “Yan Qiu, Elder.”

  “Have you trained before joining the sect?”

  “I trained on my own for a few months before coming here, Elder.”

  Elder Han nodded and moved on. His gaze settled on the far side of the courtyard.

  “You. Step forward.”

  Duan Ke walked out from the group. He looked different from the trials, cleaner, with his hair tied back neatly and his face washed. He looked better than Yan Qiu remembered, lean and sharp-featured.

  “Name.”

  “Duan Ke.”

  “You are at the third stage of Breath Weaving. Have you trained under anyone?”

  “No, Elder.”

  “Then how?”

  Duan Ke looked confused. “I am not sure, Elder. I worked in the fields and quarries since I was young.” He paused. “I never trained or anything. It just… happened, I think.”

  More whispers. Third stage without any training was unusual. Yan Qiu watched Duan Ke walk back to his spot with new interest. Gold roots meant comprehension, the ability to pick up techniques faster than anyone else. If he had reached the third stage just from working, there was no telling how fast he would move with real instruction.

  Elder Han nodded once. “Take your place.” Then, to the rest of them: “Those two are ahead of you. That does not mean they are better. It means they started earlier. The rest of you will catch up if you work, and fall behind if you do not. Simple as that.”

  The whispers did not stop after that. Some of the disciples started wondering what stage the girl who placed second would be at, and where she even was.

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  “Where is the girl who placed second?” a boy near the back asked, loud enough for half the courtyard to hear.

  “Jiang Mei?” another boy answered. “She was not at Stone Sparrow Hall either.”

  “I heard she was pretty,” someone else muttered.

  “I heard an elder took her as a personal disciple,” a girl beside them said.

  The boy frowned. “Already? On the first day?”

  “Her roots are purple,” the girl continued. “It was probably something like spiritual perception Someone said Elder Qiao Ling tested her affinity for sensory arts and took her on the spot.”

  “Seniors said elder Qiao Ling has not taken a personal disciple in over a decade,” the second boy said, sounding impressed.

  Sun Hao leaned toward Yan Qiu. “You are at the second stage and we were still that close?” he whispered. “Would you not be terrible without that advantage?”

  Yan Qiu laughed quietly. “Or maybe you are just that good.”

  “I am going to take that as a compliment.”

  “It was.”

  “Quiet,” Elder Han said from the platform, and the courtyard went silent.

  “Let us begin with qi gathering. Sit.”

  The disciples sat cross-legged on the stone. Elder Han demonstrated the basic method, drawing qi from the air and pulling it into the body through steady breathing. It was simple and foundational, the first thing any cultivator learned.

  “Close your eyes. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. Feel the energy in the air around you. Pull it inward.”

  Yan Qiu closed his eyes and breathed. The qi came easily, the same way it always had since that day in the forest when someone had shown him how. The energy flowed into his body and settled in his core, his white roots drawing it in naturally. Beneath that, something darker stirred, but he pushed his attention past it and kept breathing.

  Around him, other disciples were having a harder time. Some could not feel the qi at all and sat there with scrunched faces and clenched fists. Others pulled it in but lost it the moment their concentration slipped. A few managed to gather a small amount and held onto it with visible effort.

  “Good enough,” Elder Han said after a while. “Most of you can gather qi, which is the bare minimum for being here. Now we move to the sect’s core technique, the Withered Wind Breathing method.”

  He demonstrated. The qi circulation was completely different from what Yan Qiu had been doing. Instead of pulling energy inward and letting it settle, the Withered Wind method moved qi in a specific pattern through the body, cycling it through the meridians in a slow and steady loop that built endurance over time.

  “This technique is not fast and it is not impressive to watch,” Elder Han said. “It is patient. It builds a foundation that does not crack when you put weight on it. Master this, and the rest follows. Fail to master this, and nothing else will matter.” He looked across the rows of seated disciples. “Begin.”

  Yan Qiu tried.

  The qi moved through his body along the path Elder Han had shown, but something was wrong. The energy resisted the pattern, his white qi wanting to flow one way while the darker current beneath pulled in the opposite direction. Every time he tried to complete a cycle, the two collided and the whole thing fell apart.

  He tried again and got the same result. The third attempt was worse, the qi scattering so hard that his chest ached and he had to stop and catch his breath.

  Other disciples around him were making progress. Some had already completed their first cycle, rough and unsteady but functional. Sun Hao was struggling but getting somewhere, his red roots giving him enough raw power to force the qi along the path even when it fought back. Duan Ke had his eyes closed and his breathing was perfectly even, and Yan Qiu could tell he had already completed multiple cycles.

  Yan Qiu could not complete a single one.

  He sat there with his jaw tight and tried not to let it show on his face. The technique was designed for qi that flowed in one direction, and his did not. So he stopped trying the Withered Wind method entirely and went back to the way someone had taught him. He could not remember the face anymore, but his body still remembered the movements. He circulated qi the old way, pulling it through his core and letting it flow along paths that felt natural instead of forced.

  It worked. The energy moved smoothly, cycling through his body in a pattern that looked nothing like the Withered Wind method but accomplished the same thing.

  Elder Han walked among the disciples, checking their progress and correcting mistakes as he went.

  He stopped in front of Duan Ke. “Good. You have a natural feel for this.” Then he moved on without waiting for a response.

  He adjusted postures, told one boy his breathing was too fast, and pushed another boy’s shoulders down when they crept up toward his ears.

  After making his rounds, Elder Han walked back to the platform.

  “Most of you are struggling, which is expected,” he said. “But I want to point out two who are doing well. Duan Ke has the cleanest circulation I have seen from a new disciple.” He looked across the courtyard. “And Yan Qiu is not far behind. The rest of you, use them as your standard.”

  Yan Qiu’s stomach dropped. Not far behind Duan Ke? He was not even doing the Withered Wind Breathing. His qi was moving along completely different paths, the way someone had taught him months ago. The technique was nothing like what Elder Han had just demonstrated. But the elder had looked at him and praised him in front of everyone, like he saw nothing wrong.

  How? The methods were completely different. The only thing they had in common was the end result, stable circulation, but the paths the qi took were not even close. Did it just look the same from the outside?

  He kept his mouth shut and kept going. He was not about to correct an elder in front of forty people.

  The cultivation practice lasted another hour before Elder Han called them to stop.

  “On your feet. We test your bodies next.”

  He made them run twenty laps around the training grounds with no qi reinforcement allowed. The disciples who had been sitting cross-legged for two hours groaned as their stiff muscles protested, and by the fifth lap half of them looked ready to collapse.

  Yan Qiu ran without much trouble. The months of training in Blackroot and weeks of working at the inn had built his endurance, and twenty laps was nothing compared to what the innkeeper had put him through. He finished near the front of the group, breathing hard but steady.

  Sun Hao finished a few steps behind him. “I hate running,” he said between breaths.

  “You are good at it for someone who hates it,” Yan Qiu said.

  “That does not make me hate it less.”

  Duan Ke finished first and was barely breathing hard, which earned him a few resentful looks from the disciples still wheezing their way through the last laps.

  After everyone finished, Elder Han gathered them again.

  “Your orientation is not complete,” he said. “You will report here every morning for instruction until you have learned the three foundation techniques of this sect: the Withered Wind Breathing, the Dust Treading Step, and the Gale Palm. Only after you demonstrate basic competence in all three will you train alongside the senior disciples.”

  He waited for that to settle in, then continued.

  “Now, go to the Supply Hall and collect your equipment. Practice swords, training manuals, and your contribution point tokens. The disciples there will explain the mission system to you. Outer disciples earn resources by completing tasks the sect assigns. No tasks, no resources.” He looked across the group one more time. “Nobody here eats for free. Dismissed.”

  He turned and walked off the platform.

  Sun Hao exhaled. “That was a lot.”

  “At least he did not make us run more laps,” Yan Qiu said.

  “Do not give him ideas.”

  They followed the other disciples toward the Supply Hall. Yan Qiu was still thinking about what had happened during the practice. He had not been doing the Withered Wind Breathing at all, and Elder Han had not noticed. That should not have been possible.

  He did not have an answer. But it was one more thing to figure out.