The weeks following that afternoon were ones of quiet isolation.
Not that Zhì Yuǎn and Yù Qíng had planned to distance themselves from the family. It happened naturally, like the flow of a river finding a new bed and settling. The mornings of cultivation on the veranda stretched until the sun was high; the afternoons of training in the bamboo grove kept them away until dusk; and the nights… the nights were only theirs.
The first to complain was Yù Méi.
"It's been eight days since you came for lunch," she said, appearing on the veranda without warning, arms crossed over her chest, her face scrunched in an expression that tried to be stern but was merely childish. "Mother is getting worried. So am I."
Yù Qíng, who was sitting beside Zhì Yuǎn with their hands joined and Qi circulating between them, opened her eyes slowly. There was something in them different from what her sister knew—a depth, a calm, like the surface of a lake that had not been disturbed for a long time.
"We are training," she said simply.
"Training what?" Yù Méi frowned. "You spend all day sitting on this veranda. You look like two statues."
"You wouldn't understand, Méi."
The younger sister opened her mouth to protest, but something in Yù Qíng's tone made her close it. It was not impatience, nor disdain. It was merely… distance. As if her sister were on the other side of a river too wide to cross.
"We'll have lunch tomorrow," Zhì Yuǎn interjected, and his voice, which had always been calm, now seemed to come from a deeper, more ancient place. "I promise."
Yù Méi looked at him, and for a moment something crossed her face—not only frustration, but a hint of fear. As if she too felt the distance, the invisible chasm opening between them.
"All right," she murmured, and left.
The next day, they kept their promise.
The Yù house was as it had always been: the smell of vegetable soup in the kitchen, the sound of chickens in the yard, the grandmother sitting on her usual bench on the veranda. But when Zhì Yuǎn and Yù Qíng entered the courtyard, something changed. The air seemed to thicken. Sū Huì's eyes widened.
"Good heavens," she whispered, a hand on her chest. "You two are… different."
It was not a compliment. It was astonishment. Yù Qíng, who had always been beautiful, was now something beyond. Her skin glowed with an inner light, her hair fell like black silk over her shoulders, and her eyes… her eyes were like two dark stars, deep, unreachable.
Zhì Yuǎn, beside her, was equally transformed. His body, once lean, now had the presence of a newly forged sword. His shoulders were broad, his arms defined, and when he moved, there was a fluidity about him that did not belong to ordinary mortals.
"You look like nobles," Yù Méi said, her voice small. "More than nobles. You look like…"
"Gods," the grandmother finished, having approached without anyone noticing. Her clouded eyes, which saw little, seemed to see everything in that moment. "You are turning into something that is not of this world."
Yù Chéng, who had remained silent until then, cleared his throat.
"What are you doing?" he asked, his voice grave. "This training you speak of… what is it?"
Zhì Yuǎn and Yù Qíng exchanged a glance. It was not the time to tell everything—perhaps it never would be. But one truth could be told.
"We are learning to feel the breath of the world," Zhì Yuǎn answered. "Qi. Some call it energy, others spirit. It is everywhere, but few can perceive it."
"And you can?" Sū Huì's voice was a thread of hope.
"We can."
"Then…" Yù Méi stepped forward, eyes shining, "then can I too? Can you teach me?"
Zhì Yuǎn looked at her. The girl was fourteen, her face still marked by childhood, her eyes full of an expectation that hurt to see. He did not want to hurt her. But he needed to know.
"Let me see," he said, his voice gentle. "Stand still. Do not be afraid."
She lifted her face to him, trusting, as she had trusted since childhood. And Zhì Yuǎn plunged into his inner vision.
What he saw was no different from the last time. Her meridians were broken—not merely narrow, not merely atrophied. Entire sections were missing, like roads that had collapsed into chasms. And the receptacle… the receptacle was a shadow, a scar, something that had begun to form and then given up.
It was not an accident, he thought. It was the body trying and failing.
He withdrew his vision and turned to the others. Yù Chéng. Sū Huì. The grandmother. One by one, he examined them with the sight the Wisdom had given him.
Nothing.
There were no meridians. No receptacle. The channels that should exist, the ones he saw in himself and Yù Qíng as silver rivers, were absent. Not broken—nonexistent. As if they had never been.
How can that be? he asked himself. How can a living body have no meridians?
The answer came in a flash of understanding. They had had them. Once, they had. In childhood, when the body is still forming, the meridians begin to develop. But in most mortals, that development never completes. The channels remain thin, fragile, and over time—with years of ordinary life, without Qi to nourish them—they simply… disappear. Dry up. Cease to exist.
Yù Méi, still young, still in the middle of the process, still had remnants. Her parents, already adults, had nothing. The grandmother, so old that her bones already curved under the weight of years, was an absolute desert.
This is how the world works, he understood. Most are born with the seed, but few water it. And the seed dies.
"Zhì Yuǎn?" Yù Méi's voice pulled him back. "What did you see?"
He looked at her. And he lied.
"You have the channels," he said, and the lie was sweet, like sugar hiding bitterness. "But they are still very thin. It will take time for them to develop. More time than I have now."
Her face lit up.
"So one day I will be able to?"
"One day," he repeated, and the word weighed on his tongue like lead. "But not now. Be patient."
Yù Méi smiled, and that smile was so pure, so full of hope, that Zhì Yuǎn felt something tighten in his chest. Beside him, Yù Qíng squeezed his hand tightly.
She knew.
---
On the way back home, the bamboo grove swayed in the wind, indifferent.
"You lied well to her," Yù Qíng said. It was not an accusation. It was an observation.
"I lied." He stopped walking. The sunlight filtered through the stalks, painting his face gold and shadow. "It was harder than I thought. Time will do what the truth does not need to do."
Yù Qíng looked at him for a long moment.
"You are becoming too wise."
"I am becoming practical."
She smiled, and the smile was sad, but also sweet.
"And my parents? My grandmother? They can never?"
"Never. Their meridians have disappeared. As happens with most mortals. The seed is born, but if it is not watered, it dies."
"So we are special."
"We are."
She stepped closer, touched his face.
"And why us? Why you and me?"
He thought of the thread that had woven him. Of the Wisdom that had awakened in his eyes. Of her love, which was so intense it seemed to have been forged before time.
"I don't know," he answered. "But I will find out."
She kissed him then, and the kiss was a promise, like all her kisses.
---
That night, lying in the bamboo bed, he told her about the pores.
"The body can breathe Qi like it breathes air," he said, his fingers tracing the curve of her shoulder. "Not only at peak hours. Not only with rhythm. All the time. Everywhere."
She turned to him, eyes shining.
"How?"
"I opened my pores. One by one. Thousands of them. When they are open, Qi enters constantly. I no longer need to absorb. It simply… comes."
"And me?"
"You will open yours too. I will help."
"How?"
He pulled her to him, feeling the warmth of her body against his.
"I will guide your Qi to each pore. I will show you where to open, when to open, how to open. It will take time. You have millions of them, just as I do. But each one that opens is one more portal to the world."
She was silent for a moment, and he felt her breath quiet, her heart slow.
"Then begin," she said at last.
---
The next morning, he began.
He sat behind her on the veranda, legs crossed, hands resting on her back. The inner vision kindled, and he saw what he needed to see: her pores, millions of them, most closed, inactive, asleep.
"I will guide your Qi," he said. "Feel where my hand touches. Let the Qi follow the path."
She closed her eyes. He guided a thread of his own Qi to the surface of her skin, to the first pore, at the base of her neck. It was like opening a rusted door: it required patience, precision, a constant pressure that did not force, only insisted.
The pore trembled.
"Now," he whispered. "Open."
Her Qi responded. Slowly, like a flower blooming against the cold, the pore opened. The air entered. Qi entered. Yù Qíng sighed, her shoulders relaxing under his hands.
"That is how," he said. "One by one."
She nodded.
He moved to the next.
---
The weeks that followed were ones of patience and intimacy.
Every morning, he sat behind her and opened her pores. Some opened easily, like doors that only needed a push. Others resisted, demanding minutes of concentration, of gentle pressure, of Qi that insisted without forcing. The pores along her spine were the most difficult; those on her hands and feet, the easiest.
He himself continued opening his own. Each day, a few thousand more joined those already open. Qi now flowed through his body like a perennial river, feeding every cell, every organ, every fiber. He felt the difference: his skin was more sensitive, his muscles more agile, his mind clearer.
And with each pore that opened in her, Yù Qíng also changed.
Her Qi, once dependent on the dual rhythm to expand, now began to move on its own. Slowly, timidly, but it moved. The Qi of the world entered her, not in torrents, but in constant threads, nourishing what before had only received from him.
"It's working," she said one morning, her eyes still closed. "I feel the world entering."
"There is still much to go. But it's working."
She turned to him, and her eyes were shining with that light he knew so well.
"Then continue."
He smiled.
"I will continue. Always."
On the veranda, the sun rose, painting the bamboo grove gold and red. Their hands were joined, their pores open, the Qi circulating in a flow that no longer needed rhythm, that no longer needed technique.
It was only them. And the world. And the path they were building together.
---
Outside, Yù Méi waited, believing that one day her meridians would open. Outside, her parents lived their mortal lives, unaware that the seed they had once possessed was already dry. Outside, the world moved on, indifferent.
But there, on the veranda, Zhì Yuǎn and Yù Qíng were where they had always been: together. And as long as there was air to breathe, pores to open, Qi to flow, they would be there.
Side by side. Forever.
---