Chapter 64: Building |
We worked on reorganizing the academy.
I had walked with Bolin before the dawn, the two of us pacing the curriculum room with a charcoal stick and a strip of paper, marking where the cloth partitions would hang. By the second notch of the morning, the room had been divided into five spaces, and the open ground behind it had been cleared for the two drills that would not fit indoors.
We were prepared for the next round of cohorts: Five classes with six students in each class. Thirty students total drawn from villages across the Western Reaches at Commander Xu's behest.
Each of the founding disciples led a class of their own. Lin Zhi at the eastern partition, Sun Hai at the southern, Cao Yan at the western, and Mu Renshu at the northern.
The fifth class sat in the open ground behind the room and rotated through the four interior spaces over the course of each day, so that every student over the half-quarter cycled through four teachers instead of learning strictly through one.
Bolin supervised all five.
He moved between the partitions carrying nothing but a slip of paper and a charcoal stick, marking what he saw. By the end of each day his slip was filled. By the end of each week he had written a report in the same tight even hand I had grown to expect to see from him.
The reports reached my table on the first morning of every seventh day. I read them, marked and annotated them, sealed them, and walked them across the commons to the garrison. Fei Liao read them and stamped them and sent the next courier west with the stamped copies for Commander Xu to approve.
That was the chain. Bolin to me, me to Fei Liao, and then Fei Liao to Commander Xu.
I had read the reports again and again before I resigned myself to the truth. None of the thirty showed the speed of understanding that the founding disciples had shown at the river. None of them found a channel with the second-stage awareness Mu Renshu had carried since the first day. None of them moved through the partner work the way Sun Hai had moved through it without seeming to be working at all.
They were average cultivators in every sense of the word.
Four diamonds and a pile of copper.
The founding disciples had been a stroke of luck. The cohort I had been handed in the autumn had carried more talent in five bodies than I had any right to expect, all five of them willing to follow me to a cave they had not been told the location of, all five returning with their affinities named.
Yet if the average cultivators were like copper, then that meant that they had their uses.
An army does not march on diamonds.
I marked Bolin's reports approved and walked them to the garrison.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I went to the clinic at the end of each day.
Suyin had moved Hao's bed permanently to the back room. The south window let in the morning light, and in the afternoon her low stool caught the light at her shoulder. She sat from the first notch of the morning to the second notch of the evening, with breaks only when she needed to eat or take care of a villager who had gotten hurt and came to her clinic for help.
The first night I had insisted for her to rest, but she resisted.
"I am not tired, Liang."
"You are exhausted. Go take a break and I will sit with him a while. I will come and find you only after you have rested."
She looked at me a long beat. Then she rose from the stool, walked to the porch, and sat. Through the open door I heard her exhale, slow and long.
She has not slept properly since the morning of the fires. I have to take better care of her.
She finally agreed to take turns. Some evenings I sat with Hao a while and she came back, and we sat together with the lamp between us. Other evenings I sat the whole watch, and she slept on the cot at the front of the clinic where I had carried her there when exhaustion took hold of her.
I sat with Hao on the stool with my channels open and began to scan his channels.
His breathing was steady. The dark sheen had not returned in eleven days, and the wet-iron smell had not been in the room since the morning the stone had aided his cultivation.
He is sleeping, or....
His channels were still moving.
I read them at the end of each day, sat with my palm against the inside of his wrist and let my own cycle move alongside his, and I felt the slow continuous refinement of a body that was constantly refining itself. The Qi in his heart channel had begun to gather, and the Qi at his crown, which had been still for quite some time, was now in a slow rotation.
He is cultivating.
I sat with him each evening, read him, and was sure to make Suyin rest when she needed it. Sometimes I had to bribe her with extra cuddling time.
The fourth week's report came in.
Bolin had written it the morning after the courier from Lanyu had passed through with rations for the militia. He had also written in a separate letter addressed to me:
Hao moved his left hand at the first notch of yesterday morning.
I had been at the curriculum room when it had happened.
I went to the clinic that evening earlier than I usually went. Suyin was on the stool with her hand on Hao's hand. She did not look up when I came in.
"Bolin wrote me about yesterday morning," I said without preamble.
"Yes, I asked him to," Suyin said.
"Why didn't send for me?" I asked her.
"I didn't want wake up over something I wasn't sure of."
"So are you sure of it now?"
She turned her face up to me, her eyes shone with the softness of hope.
"He moved his hand twice, Liang. I truly believe that he's beginning to wake."
I sat down on the cot at the foot of the bed and put my hand on Hao's other hand, squeezing it tight.
"How long until he wakes?" I asked her.
"I do not know. This is the first time that he's moved on his own in quite some time."
I did not speak for a long while. The lamp burned. Hao's breathing did not change. The afternoon light at the south window had gone to grey.
I rose and crossed to the stool and put my hand on her shoulder.
"Go eat something. I'll sit with him, and Bolin can take the second part of the watch when the students rest for the night."
She squeezed my hand once and rose.
"You owe me extra cuddling time then," She said with a smile/
"I will deliver on it," I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, and she reluctantly let go of my hand while she walked towards the commons.
I sat the rest of the evening.
His hand did not move. His breathing did not change. But late in the watch, after the lamp had burned down and I had gone to refill the oil, I returned to the stool and sat and reached out with my cultivation to read him once more before I went home.
The Qi at his crown had completed a rotation.
It was the first complete rotation I had read in him.
Hao truly is something. His cultivation has been building more and more even as he slept. I am no more than copper compared to him.
I closed my channels and watched him sleep.
The orders for the march would come within the next quarter. The disciples would soon be ready, as would the militia.
Brother, wake up soon.