The afternoon breeze had barely lifted from the ridgelines when Yan Zhenwu called Qin Lian to the plum garden.
She arrived with her hair still damp from washing, Yun nestled lazily in the crook of her arm, half-asleep. Her pale green disciple robes were clean but slightly wrinkled. She bowed carefully. "Grandfather."
Yan Zhenwu stood beside the meditation stone, one hand behind his back, the other holding a thin branch from the plum tree.
He gave her a small smile. "Put Yun down. Today's lesson needs your full attention."
She complied, placing the rabbit gently on a flat rock nearby. Yun twitched his ears and immediately went back to sleep.
"Sit," Yan Zhenwu said.
She lowered herself onto the cool stone and folded her legs, hands resting atop her knees the way he had shown her before.
He did not sit.
Instead, he walked slowly around the garden, his steps soft, his gaze distant—as if he were listening to something beyond the rustle of wind in the leaves.
After a while, he spoke.
"Do you know what cultivation is, Lian'er?"
Qin Lian hesitated. "Isn't it… gathering qi? Strengthening the body? Opening meridians?"
"That's the method," he said. "Not the meaning."
She tilted her head. "Then… what is the meaning?"
Yan Zhenwu stepped onto the smooth gravel beside the pond, his robes trailing like mist behind him. He held the plum branch up so she could see the pale petals at its tip.
"Cultivation," he said, "is the art of listening to what the world tries to say before you are ready to hear it."
Qin Lian blinked. "…That sounds like something from a poem."
"It should," he replied. "Because cultivation is a conversation with the universe—and poetry is the closest most mortals come to understanding it."
He turned back to her, raising the branch slightly. "This blossom is alive, is it not?"
She nodded.
"Then it has qi. But qi is not something you steal. It is not something you trap or consume. Not truly. Cultivators who rush, who burn, who seize—they become sharp. Dangerous. Brief. Like sparks."
He let the blossom fall. It landed in the pond without a sound.
"But to listen—to truly cultivate—is to become a vessel. You do not force water to fill the cup. You empty the cup and wait."
Qin Lian swallowed. "Then… when do I start learning techniques?"
He smiled. "When your body is ready to house them. But if you chase fire before you know how to breathe, you'll burn your own lungs."
She furrowed her brows. "Then… is cultivation always slow?"
"Slow is the only kind worth keeping."
⸻
He finally sat down beside her, resting the fallen branch on the stone.
"You have a water spirit root, Lian'er. That means your nature is not in bursts or fury. You're not a flame. You are a river. And rivers do not rush the mountain—they carve through it."
She looked down at her small hands, fidgeting with the hem of her robe. "I just… I want to be strong. I don't want to be useless while the others grow."
Yan Zhenwu didn't answer at first. He poured them both tea from a small clay pot sitting near the edge of the meditation stone.
"You see that tea?" he said. "It took three years to age. The leaves grew high on a cliff no one dares climb. It was picked under moonlight, dried in sacred fire, and pressed for two winters."
She accepted the cup, warm in her hands.
"If I gave it to a child who didn't know what tea was, they'd say it tasted bitter. But to someone who waits, who prepares, who understands…"
He took a sip, closing his eyes briefly.
"It is heaven, in water."
She stared into her cup for a long moment, then followed him and drank.
It was warm. A little sharp. But calming. And in the aftertaste—something gentle, something deep.
"Cultivation," Yan Zhenwu said at last, "is not about who becomes strong first. It is about who become who you want to be. Your spirit is a garden. You can water it with patience… or you can flood it and watch everything drown."
Qin Lian looked up at him. "Then what should I do now?"
"Exactly what you're doing," he said softly. "Breathe. Listen. Let the qi notice you. Let it come like mist on the mountain."
A quiet breeze stirred the garden.
The petals of the fallen plum blossom drifted slightly on the water.
And for the first time, Qin Lian didn't feel like she had to chase anything.
She only had to stay still—and trust the mountain to teach her, one breath at a time.