The harsh grip of winter began to loosen its hold on Qinghe. The wind that had once screamed like a banshee through the mountain passes now only whispered, its bite less cruel. The days remained short, the nights long and deep, but a palpable change was in the air, a waiting silence, like the world itself was holding its breath before the first spring thaw.
In the small, earth-walled hut, Yan Shen had undergone his own quiet transformation. The helpless flailing of his early months had given way to a profound, controlled stillness. His body, though still undeniably small and soft, was no longer a chaotic prison. It was becoming a instrument. He had learned to lie motionless for hours, his breathing so slow and measured it was barely detectable, his awareness stretching out to map the unseen architecture of his world.
He knew the specific creak of the central rafter when the wind blew from the east. He could feel the dormant life in the frozen ground beneath the hut, a deep, slumbering pulse. And most importantly, he could sense the Qi. It was no longer just a visual pattern; it was a texture in the air, a temperature change, a faint hum at the edge of his perception. He couldn't grasp it, but he knew its signature intimately, like a blind man knowing the sun is up by the warmth on his skin.
One particularly still night, the moment arrived.
The fire in the central pit had burned down to a bed of pulsating embers, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to breathe with the room. Li Meiyan had succumbed to exhaustion early, her breathing a soft, rhythmic melody of sleep. Yan Bao was out on the mountainside, his slow, limping gait a testament to his desperation to find late-winter frostroot, a valuable medicinal herb that could trade for a week's worth of grain.
Yan Shen was alone with the silence. It wasn't an empty silence, but a thick, potent one, heavy with the promise of the changing season. He lay in his cradle, his eyes open just a slit, his entire being focused not on doing, but on being.
He had learned the hard way that desire was a wall. Reaching for the Qi, wanting it, craving it: all of it just pushed it further away. His past life's furious demand for power had been his greatest weakness. Here, now, weakness had become his teacher. He had nothing to offer but acceptance.
So he breathed. Not with effort, but with alignment. He inhaled slowly, matching the rhythm of the embers' glow. He exhaled, his breath misting faintly in the chill air, syncing with the sigh of the wind outside. He let his awareness expand, not to grab, but to encompass. He became the silence between the cracks of the fire, the space between the atoms of the cold air.
And then, in the depths of that surrendered stillness, he felt it.
It was not a sound or a sight. It was a sensation. A single, impossibly fine strand of silken coolness, brushing against the outermost layer of his awareness. It was so subtle it was almost not there, a ghost of a feeling.
But it was real.
Qi.
This was different. This wasn't Qi flowing past him in the ambient air, or coalescing around the altar. This thread of energy had drifted toward him. It had acknowledged his presence.
His heart, which had slowed to a deep, meditative rhythm, did not falter. His body, trained through weeks of relentless discipline, did not jerk in surprise. A tremendous wave of triumph threatened to crash through his mind, but he let it pass through him without grabbing hold, maintaining his perfect, empty calm.
He did not push. He did not pull. He simply held his state of open reception, listening with every cell of his body.
The Qi thread responded. It coiled lazily in the space just above his skin, like a curious serpent made of moonlight and mist. It did not enter. It did not merge. It simply was there, in contact, a silent hello from the universe.
It was the first true connection. The first crack in the dam.
He wanted to scream his victory to the silent hut. He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it+ a god's experiment communing with the fabric of reality from a peasant's cradle. But his infant body held no capacity for such expression. His mouth remained shut, his limbs heavy and swaddled. The victory was his alone, a seismic event contained entirely within the silence of his own consciousness.
He held the connection for what felt like an eternity and a single heartbeat all at once. And then, as gently as it had come, the thread of Qi unraveled, fading back into the ambient energy of the hut. The moment was over.
The fire gave a loud snap, sending a shower of sparks upward, the sound jarring in the aftermath of such subtlety. Yan Shen finally allowed himself to exhale, a long, slow breath that carried the weight of his accomplishment.
In the days that followed, he became a hunter of silence. Each night, when the hut settled into its deep, nocturnal rhythm, he would return to that state of open awareness. He sought the breath between worlds, the space between heartbeats.
The results were inconsistent, as was the way of all foundational practice. Some nights, he felt nothing but the cold and the dull ache of his own limitations. The Qi remained distant, indifferent. On these nights, frustration would bubble up, the ghost of Dren's impatience rattling its chains. He would force himself to breathe through it, to let the frustration go, understanding that even failure was data. He was learning the Qi's moods, its rhythms.
But on other nights, he would find it again. That faint, silken brush against his spirit. Sometimes it was the cool, clear energy of the moon filtering through the window. Other times it was the deep, warm pulse of the earth beneath him, or the fleeting, vibrant strand from a dying spirit herb in his father's basket.
It was always faint. Always brief. But it was always, undeniably, real.
He wasn't drawing it in. He wasn't cultivating it in any meaningful way his new world would recognize. But he was achieving something far more fundamental: he was building a relationship. He was teaching his very essence to recognize the touch of Qi, and in turn, allowing the Qi to become familiar with the unique signature of his spirit.
It was like touching a spirit's breath. And he learned, through repeated failure and success, that it never came when he reached with thought or greed. It only ever came when he was empty enough to receive it. The lesson was infuriating and profound. The power he sought would not be taken. It could only be accepted.