The steward's messenger arrived with the sun high in the sky.
He was a thin man, middle-aged, with eyes that surveyed everything with the precision of someone assessing the price of every object in sight. Yù Chéng received him in the courtyard, and Zhì Yuǎn watched from a distance, leaning against a pillar of the veranda.
"Everything is in order," Yù Chéng said, pointing to the twelve aligned sacks. "Weights checked, moisture controlled."
The messenger leaned over the sacks, examining the bindings, poking the coal with his fingers. Zhì Yuǎn saw his eyes pause on the third and ninth sacks—the ones that had been repacked. For a moment, he feared the man would find some defect, some excuse to deduct more than he should.
But the messenger only grunted and straightened up.
"Acceptable. Payment will be delivered next moon."
Yù Chéng nodded, and the relief that swept through the courtyard was almost palpable. Sū Huì brought tea and bread for the visitor, and Yù Méi, forbidden to approach, watched from inside the house with wide eyes.
The messenger departed an hour later, the sacks loaded onto two carts pulled by mules. As the vehicles moved away along the dirt road leading to the capital, Yù Chéng let out a long sigh.
"Another month," he said, clapping Zhì Yuǎn on the shoulder. "Stay for dinner. Let's drink to celebrate."
Yù Qíng appeared beside her husband, her face lit with a smile.
"Can we?"
"We can," he answered.
---
Dinner lasted longer than usual. Yù Chéng opened a jar of rice wine he kept for special occasions, and even the grandmother took a small cup, her eyes gleaming with the warmth of the drink. Yù Méi was sent to bed early, but not before stealing a sip from her father's cup, which made her cough and contort her face into grimaces that drew laughter from everyone.
Zhì Yuǎn drank in moderation, but felt the warmth of the wine spread through his chest differently than before. It was as if his body, now more sensitive to Qi, was also more sensitive to everything else—the taste of rice, the aroma of herbs in the broth, the lamplight reflecting in Yù Qíng's eyes.
She drank more than he did, and when they finally said their goodbyes, late in the night, her face was flushed and her steps a little unsteady.
"You're drunk," he said, supporting her as they walked through the bamboo grove.
"I'm happy," she answered, squeezing his arm. "It's different."
The moon was high, nearly full, and its silver light filtered through the bamboo stalks, creating a path of shadows and gleams. The night wind carried the damp scent of earth and the soft perfume of her hair.
They reached home, and Yù Qíng went straight to the bedroom, lying down on the bed with a sigh of contentment. Zhì Yuǎn sat beside her, watching her half-asleep face, her parted lips, her long eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks.
"Aren't you coming to bed?" she murmured, eyes still closed.
"In a moment."
He put out the lamp and lay down beside her. Immediately, she moved toward him, pressing her face to his chest, winding a leg between his. Her body was warm, much warmer than usual, and the scent of rice wine mingled with her natural fragrance.
"Zhì Yuǎn," she whispered, her fingers tracing along his arm. "Today was a good day."
"It was."
"You are different again. Stronger."
He did not answer. Since morning, something had been building inside him. The Qi of the sun and the moon—the two flows he had learned to absorb—now seemed to seek balance within his body. The meridians, those empty channels he had seen in his inner vision, had begun to expand.
In the morning, after the messenger's departure, he had sat by the stream and breathed in the rhythm of the sun. This time, instead of only pulling the Qi points into the empty space in his chest, he had tried to direct them into one of the main meridians, the one descending from his chest to his abdomen.
The result was immediate and painful.
The meridian expanded like a rope stretched beyond its limit. There was a sensation of tearing, of stretching, and for a moment he thought something had ruptured inside him. But then the Qi began to flow—no longer as sparse drops, but as a steady trickle—and the pain gave way to a feeling of spaciousness, of room where before there had been tightness.
Yang expands, he understood then. The Qi of the sun not only nourishes—it opens paths.
At night, under the moon, he had repeated the process on another meridian, but this time the sensation was different. There was no tearing, only compression. Yin did not expand; it consolidated. The meridian did not widen, but its walls grew thicker, firmer, like leather cured by fire.
This was how it worked. Yang to expand. Yin to consolidate. One did not function without the other.
Now, in the dimness of the room with Yù Qíng nestled against him, Zhì Yuǎn felt these two flows stir within him, as if seeking a new form of expression.
She lifted her face, her eyes meeting his in the darkness.
"What are you thinking?"
"About you," he answered, and it was true.
She smiled, and her face, lit only by the moonlight filtering through the gaps, was like a painting on silk—soft, delicate, but with something deeper underneath, something he was only now beginning to see clearly.
She touched his face, her fingers tracing his jaw, his lips.
"Sometimes I'm afraid you'll disappear," she whispered. "That one day I'll wake up and you won't be here."
"I will never disappear."
"You can't promise that."
He took her hand and kissed her palm.
"I can promise that I will try."
She laughed, a low laugh that vibrated against his chest. And then her lips met his.
The kiss began softly, almost shy, but quickly deepened. There was a hunger in her that he knew well, an urgency that always surprised him with its intensity. Her fingers tangled in his hair, her legs entwined with his, and the warmth of her body was like a fire kindling slowly.
But that night, something was different.
As they moved together in the dimness of the room, with the sound of the stream outside and the wind swaying the bamboos, Zhì Yuǎn felt the Qi within him respond. It was not thought, not conscious control. It was something more primal, more natural—like water finding its level, like the tide rising and falling.
The Yang in his body, the warm, expansive flow he had learned to absorb from the sun, began to move toward her.
It was not a choice. It was rhythm.
He noticed that her breathing, ragged and irregular, was beginning to synchronize with his. And then, without either of them making any effort, their bodies found a common rhythm—a pulse that was not just the heartbeat, but something deeper, more ancient.
Inhaling as he pulled her toward him. Holding as their bodies joined. Exhaling as she surrendered.
Yù Qíng arched her back, her fingers digging into his back, and a sound escaped her lips—not merely pleasure, but something like wonder, as if she too felt that something was different.
"Zhì Yuǎn," she murmured, her voice trembling. "What is this?"
He did not answer. He did not need to.
The Yang within him found a path through his body, descended through his meridians, reached the surface of his skin. And where their bodies touched, where intimacy united them, that warm flow found a passage.
She shuddered, her eyes widening in the darkness. And then something changed in her.
Zhì Yuǎn felt—or perhaps saw, with that inner vision that now never fully dimmed—the empty space in her chest. Until that night, it had been dark, void, like a chamber sealed long ago. But now, something had entered there.
It was not much. Only a thread, a spark. A drop of Qi that had flowed from his body to hers, carried by the rhythm they had created together.
Her receptacle, once empty, now held a small light.
The moment passed. The rhythm dissolved, and they lay there, breathless, wrapped in each other's warmth. Yù Qíng laid her head on his chest, her fingers tracing slow circles on his skin.
"Did you feel it?" she asked, her voice low.
"I felt it."
"What was it?"
He hesitated. How to explain something he barely understood himself?
"Qi," he answered at last. "The breath I have been absorbing. It… flowed into you."
She lifted her face, her eyes shining in the darkness.
"Does that mean…"
"I don't know what it means." He ran his fingers through her hair, untangling the strands the wind and movement had tangled. "But your body received it. It is there now. A little."
"Inside me?" Her voice was a whisper, a mix of fear and wonder.
"Inside you."
She was silent for a long moment, and he felt her breath slow, her heartbeat decelerate. And then she smiled—a smile he had not seen before, something between satisfaction and possession.
"So now you are inside me in a way that will never leave," she said.
He did not know if it was poetry or a threat. Perhaps it was both.
"I suppose so," he answered.
She nestled against him, eyes closed, and for the first time that night, her grip on his arm seemed less born of fear and more of certainty.
"Tomorrow you teach me," she murmured, already nearly asleep. "I want to feel it too."
He kissed her hair and did not answer. But in the darkness of the room, with Qi still circulating slowly through his expanded meridians, he knew the path was open.
Not only for him.
For both of them.
---
End of Chapter 4