Zao Ping groaned. "You're hopeless."
Lin Chen smiled lazily. "I prefer the term 'efficient.'"
As the two of them walked back toward the main compound, Lin Chen looked up at the sky. The clouds drifted slowly, unconcerned with the affairs of mortals. He envied them.
"So," Zao Ping said, giving him a sideways glance, "you're really not going to join the early morning drills?"
Lin Chen stretched his arms and yawned. "That sounds like a lot of noise and sweat. Not really my thing."
"You do know we're in a cultivation sect, right?" Zao Ping said. "If Elder Gao finds out you're skipping out again, he'll make you carry water jars up the cliff again."
Lin Chen grimaced. "He calls it discipline. I call it bullying."
Zao Ping laughed. "You're lucky you've got decent movement technique. Otherwise you'd have been tossed out of the sect by now."
As they entered the outer disciple courtyard, Lin Chen's gaze swept across the busy training grounds. Disciples were already forming sparring pairs, some shouting, some meditating, others swinging wooden swords with wild intensity.
"Everyone's too serious," he muttered.
"You say that now," Zao Ping said, "but when the next inter-sect tournament rolls around, don't come crying to me."
Lin Chen waved a hand. "Don't worry. I'll just pretend to faint before the first round."
Zao Ping rolled his eyes and jogged off toward his training group.
Left alone, Lin Chen wandered toward the edge of the courtyard and found a shaded spot beneath a tree. He sat down, closed his eyes, and exhaled slowly.
His qi responded without needing to be called. It moved with his breath, matching his calm. There was no need to force it. It wasn't something he controlled like a tool. It was something that listened, no, understood his intent.
He raised a hand and imagined the flow of energy swirling through his palm. His qi responded like ripples on a pond, adjusting, shifting, refining the motion before he even fully finished the thought.
"Still weird," he whispered.
He knew it wasn't normal. Most disciples had to focus, chant, visualize, and even then their qi would stutter or resist. But his moved like it was alive. Not intelligent, not thinking, but aware. It aligned with his will like a bird catching the wind.
It didn't make him invincible. He still needed strength. He still needed skill. But it gave him a shortcut others didn't have.
And he was absolutely not going to tell anyone about it.
"Lin Chen!"
He cracked open one eye to see a girl stomping toward him, Mei Yun, another outer disciple, fiery-tempered and always dragging him into something.
"Elder Gao says all disciples must report to the platform for assignment rotation. Now."
Lin Chen groaned. "You sound like Zao Ping."
"He told me you were napping again. Move it!"
Lin Chen stood with a dramatic sigh. "My quiet life is under constant attack."
"Maybe because you live in a cultivation sect?"
"Details, details."
The assignment rotation turned out to be as dull as Lin Chen expected, standing in line, listening to Elder Gao drone through scrolls, and getting told he'd be cleaning the herb garden for the next week. He grumbled, but didn't argue. Better plants than people.
By the time it was over, the sun was already sinking, and he caught up with Zao Ping near the kitchen pavilion.