Qingshui had been unconscious for five days.
Inside, everything ran as usual—firewood snapping in the stove, the bitter punch of decoctions, steam rolling off hot dishes—as if the rhythms of the house had never paused. Yet she slept on, waking only "on schedule" at mealtimes.
The first time, Bi Hua was startled.
It was the second day at noon. She had just brought a tray over; a spoon of hot broth had barely reached the patient's nose when Qingshui's eyes flew open and she snatched the bowl with lightning speed.
"Food… to eat," she rasped.
Then she drank—three gulps and the broth was gone. Rice, vegetables, chew, swallow—no words, no glance. When she finished, she flopped back, and the stillness returned.
Bi Hua thought she'd truly awakened and began to speak—only to realize those lids had shut again, her breathing already sunk deep.
"Er… so was that awake?"
On the third day at noon, the same.
On the fourth, too.
By the fifth, unchanged.
"What kind of cultivation is this? How can she be comatose and still think only of food?" Every time Bi Hua watched Qingshui stare with unfocused eyes and slurp down rice and soup, it felt surreal.
It was as if some bestial instinct ran her body: smell food, "boot up," eat, then power down.
At first Bi Hua kept vigil at the bedside, alert to every twitch. Once she was sure Qingshui woke only "to eat," her tension eased.
She began doing housework in the room: airing quilts, mending old clothes, tallying coin, now and then drilling Layne on his characters.
Only, whatever she did, the corner of her eye drifted to that unmoving shape on the bed.
Qingshui slept heavily, brow often pinched, sometimes sweating, sometimes murmuring—words Bi Hua couldn't make out.
Only now and then did she catch their names: hers and Layne's.
On the fifth afternoon, Layne came in from practice, toweling sweat.
"Mom! Mom! Is she awake?"
"No."
Bi Hua was trimming greens, chin tipping toward the bed.
"But she's close. She stayed up a bit longer at lunch."
"Huh?" Layne leaned in. Sure enough, Qingshui had fallen asleep again—still hugging the empty bowl to her chest.
He crouched to study her, then asked, "Mom, what do you think she'll say first when she really wakes up?"
"'The rice isn't done.'" Bi Hua didn't hesitate.
Layne snorted. "I think it's, 'Can I have another bowl today?' Hah!"
They looked at each other and broke into the same laugh.
After, Bi Hua stood and ruffled his hair. "Go fetch some hemostatic powder from the pharmacy."
"On it!" Layne grabbed the basket and bolted.
Quiet returned—only the pot's gentle blub-blub and the thin breath on the bed, twining through the warm light.
For days now, she'd sent Layne daily: blade salves, stopping powders, loosening balms, qi tonics, bruise teas… nothing missed, three changes a day, never the same list twice.
The proprietor of Jade Harmony Hall was a chatterbox; seeing Layne every day, he shifted from polite chatter to suspicion.
"Hey, kid, what's going on at your place… fighting every day? Why all the trauma meds?"
Layne hugged the bundle, struggled for a moment, then scratched his head. "Mom says she cut her hand chopping and also fell."
"Cut for five days straight?" The shopkeeper rolled his eyes. "Tell your mom to quit the kitchen before she dices herself."
Layne kept his mouth shut and sprinted off with the medicine.
The proprietor clicked his tongue and turned—only to hear a voice at the door, amused:
"Shopkeeper, business is brisk."
He looked up. A broad-shouldered man in a straw hat was coming in. Stubbled face, clothes dusty with field dirt—like any country hawker.
But his smile sent a chill for no reason.
"That kid comes every day," the straw-hat said hoarsely. "Someone at home's badly hurt." He tapped the list. "Pack me the same set."
"Huh? Your family cut a hand, too?" the shopkeeper asked.
The man smiled. "My brother lost a bet and fell into a rock crevice."
"Tch. What a week. Another one." The shopkeeper grumbled, but his hands flew.
Head lowered, the man's eyes skimmed the open drawers. He knew at a glance—blade salve, hemo powder, anti-stasis pills, musk balm, and a qi-blood tonic of ginseng and velvet. Not a simple fall: sword cut plus internal shock.
He narrowed his eyes, picturing the quiet little courtyard.
Bi Hua, unscathed. Layne, lively. Only that "Shui Li"—five days without appearing…
"Interesting," he murmured. "So you really were hit hard."
At dusk he returned to his hide, called a pigeon, and slid a note into the tube:
"Liuxiang courtyard: Shui Li has not emerged for five days. Pharmacy prescriptions indicate sword trauma/hemorrhage, disordered qi, coma. Infer: badly wounded, convalescing at Bi Hua's home."
The pigeon sliced the air, tail-feathers cutting the wind.
He stood at the alley mouth, looking at the small house glowing softly, and sneered.
"Come back to town that injured? Not afraid to die? So much for Water Yao."
Inside, lamplight swayed. By the window, Bi Hua darned an old pair of socks, eyes straying, as ever, to the bed.
Tomorrow would be day six.
Aside from "waking to eat," Qingshui slept on; only the faint rise and fall of her chest said the bundled zongzi on the bed still lived.
Her breath no longer drifted; her breathing had steadied. But Bi Hua knew she wasn't truly awake.
Every day, Layne sat by her, small hand wrapped around hers, feeling for her qi.
At first all he sensed was "chaotic currents," "clogged channels," "skittering whirlpools," and at the back a "battlefield" of clashing forces.
In the last two days, he had begun to intervene—very carefully—using his faint sense to nudge the great river within her.
It wasn't something Qingshui had taught him; he didn't know if it was right—or dangerous.
She hadn't taught him how to "draw qi back, thread by thread, to where it belonged," nor how to "drive that black, hot, wrongness outward."
He only knew he had to try—even if it cost him.
Whenever he coaxed a rivulet, her brow smoothed a little.
Whenever he opened a jam, her breathing eased a notch.
Like the days he circled and dodged stones—getting hit. Qingshui would call him "adorably dumb," but her hands never truly struck.
Like when he tried to gather "qi" in his fist as she did—collapsed and fainted—and when he woke, besides his mother, only Qingshui was there.
The good you cannot see—he remembered.
That night, Bi Hua didn't send him to bed. She didn't say, "Grown-up wounds aren't yours to mend."
She simply watched him sit at the bedside, the small back like a wall.
Before dawn, a ribbon of gray rose at the horizon.
Layne still leaned there, burden heavy for one so new. He was about to pull back, to let go, to sleep at last—
When his palm warmed.
His faint sense heard it—the great rivers beginning to surge, the living murmur of still waters.
In the next breath, a current ran from her hand into him, circled once, and slipped back out.
Layne jolted and looked to the bed.
Their eyes met.
Qingshui's beautiful eyes were open, looking at him—full of fondness and gratitude, a spark of pride and joy besides.
Layne suddenly wanted to cry.
Her gaze was still unfocused, but it rested on the little fellow with reddened rims trying his best to sit up straight.
He opened his mouth—no words came.
Qingshui's throat was parched; her voice was barely a whisper. Still, a smile tugged at the corner of her lips.
"…Did I miss breakfast?"
"No. I was just about to make it."
Layne turned. Bi Hua, who had sat through the night in silence behind him, had eyes rimmed with red as well.