Morning came quietly.
No bells rang. No disciples shouted slogans. The Qingyun Sect woke the way old men did—slowly, grudgingly, with joints that complained louder than mouths.
Lin Mo did not wake with it.
He lay sprawled on his narrow wooden bed, one arm dangling off the side, hair slightly disheveled. Sunlight slipped through the paper window in thin bands, cutting across his face without asking permission.
He groaned and rolled over.
Five more minutes, his mind pleaded, instinct from a former life refusing to die.
Just as sleep began to reclaim him—
"Elder."
Lin Mo twitched.
"Elder… are you awake?"
The voice was careful. Soft. Respectful to the point of anxiety.
Lin Mo kept his eyes closed. "Mm."
A pause.
Then, hopeful: "Then this disciple may ask a question?"
Lin Mo exhaled slowly.
He did not need to open his eyes to know who it was.
Zhao Fan.
Of course it was Zhao Fan.
This is why attachments are dangerous, Lin Mo thought bitterly. They come back in the morning.
"Speak," Lin Mo muttered, his face still buried in the pillow.
There was a brief shuffling sound, like someone straightening their robes nervously.
"This disciple has been thinking all night about Elder's guidance yesterday."
Lin Mo winced internally.
That was not guidance.
"That thing you said," Zhao Fan continued carefully, "about not forcing anything… and maintaining one's state."
Lin Mo half-listened, drifting in that hazy place between sleep and waking where words blurred and meaning dulled.
"Yes," he mumbled. "That."
"I don't quite understand how to apply it during cultivation," Zhao Fan said. "Should I still circulate qi? Or—"
"Stop forcing qi."
The words left Lin Mo's mouth before his mind fully caught up.
They were lazy words.
Automatic words.
The kind of thing he used to say to interns who were clearly overworking themselves and making everything worse.
"Just… stop forcing it," he muttered. "You're trying too hard."
Silence followed.
Lin Mo shifted, seeking a cooler patch of bed. "Cultivation isn't… squeezing water from a dry towel."
Zhao Fan inhaled sharply.
Lin Mo frowned faintly.
Something tugged at his chest.
A resistance.
He tried to continue—to clarify, to soften the statement, to walk it back into something safely meaningless.
"Not literally stop cultivating," he tried to say. "I mean—"
The resistance thickened.
It wasn't pain.
It wasn't pressure.
It was like pushing words through mud.
His tongue felt heavy.
His thoughts scattered.
What came out instead was—
"Walk."
Zhao Fan froze. "Elder?"
"Walk aimlessly," Lin Mo muttered. "Stop sitting around trying to feel things. Just… move."
His brow creased in his sleep.
That wasn't what he meant.
He opened his mouth to correct himself.
Nothing came.
A strange emptiness swallowed the explanation before it could form.
Lin Mo's eyes snapped open.
For a brief moment, panic flared.
What was that?
He tried again. "What I mean is—"
"—that movement without intent is cultivation itself?"
Zhao Fan finished softly.
Lin Mo stared at the ceiling.
No. That is not what I mean.
But when he tried to say no, his throat felt tight.
Not blocked.
Just… unwilling.
The silence stretched.
Zhao Fan's breathing grew faintly uneven.
Lin Mo felt a cold trickle of unease slide down his spine.
Say something, he urged himself.
Anything.
Dismiss him.
End this.
"…yes," Lin Mo said instead.
The word slipped out smoothly.
Too smoothly.
Zhao Fan sucked in a breath like a man who had just glimpsed light through a crack in the heavens.
"I understand," the boy whispered.
Lin Mo sat up abruptly.
Zhao Fan stood at the foot of the bed, eyes shining, posture straight, hands clenched at his sides as if restraining something fierce and fragile inside his chest.
"This disciple will not force qi," Zhao Fan said. "I will walk. I will move. I will let cultivation come to me instead of chasing it."
Lin Mo opened his mouth.
Closed it.
His heart beat a little faster.
This is bad, he thought. This is very bad.
But Zhao Fan had already bowed deeply.
"Thank you for Elder's profound guidance."
And then he turned and left.
The door slid shut softly behind him.
Lin Mo sat there, staring at the wooden panels as if they had personally betrayed him.
"What," he muttered slowly, "the hell was that?"
He swung his legs off the bed and stood, testing his balance.
No dizziness.
No pain.
But that strange resistance lingered, like an afterimage in his thoughts.
I tried to explain, he told himself. I really did.
He rubbed his face.
"Maybe I'm overthinking it," he said aloud.
After all, what harm could come from telling a disciple to stop forcing qi and take a walk?
—
Zhao Fan took Elder Lin's words very seriously.
He stopped cultivating entirely.
At least, in the traditional sense.
That morning, instead of sitting cross-legged in the training yard, he walked.
Not laps.
Not patterns.
He walked aimlessly.
Through the outer disciple grounds. Along the cracked stone paths. Past storage sheds and empty courtyards where weeds grew taller than swords.
He didn't circulate qi.
He didn't recite manuals.
He didn't attempt to sense spiritual energy.
He simply walked.
At first, it felt wrong.
Every step sparked anxiety. Every moment not cultivating felt like wasted time.
Four years, a voice whispered in his mind. Four years of being behind.
But then he remembered Elder Lin's voice—calm, lazy, unhurried.
Stop forcing it.
Zhao Fan exhaled.
His shoulders loosened.
His steps slowed.
The world… quieted.
He noticed things he'd never noticed before.
The way dust swirled differently in shaded areas.
How the air felt heavier near old stone walls and thinner near open ground.
How his breathing naturally fell into a rhythm when he stopped thinking about it.
At noon, a few disciples passed him.
They stared.
"Isn't that Zhao Fan?"
"What's he doing?"
"Walking?"
One of them laughed. "Did he finally give up?"
Zhao Fan didn't react.
He kept walking.
By evening, his legs ached.
His stomach growled.
But something strange had happened.
When he stopped walking and stood still, his breathing didn't scatter like it usually did.
It settled.
Quietly.
Like water after ripples faded.
Zhao Fan's eyes widened.
He closed them.
Not to cultivate.
Just to feel.
And somewhere deep within his body, something faint stirred—so faint he almost missed it.
Not qi.
Not energy.
Just… awareness.
He opened his eyes, heart pounding.
Elder was right, he thought in awe.
I've been forcing something that doesn't exist here.
He turned and began walking again, steps lighter than before.
—
That night, Lin Mo sat alone in his room.
He waited.
He wasn't sure for what.
A voice.
A sensation.
A sign.
Nothing came.
No warmth flooded his body.
No sudden clarity.
No system notification.
The silence pressed in, heavy and absolute.
Lin Mo frowned.
Shouldn't something have happened?
He didn't know why he thought that.
He shook his head.
"Idiot," he muttered. "You didn't do anything."
Still, unease gnawed at him.
He lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling beams.
The resistance from that morning replayed in his mind.
How his words had slipped.
How explanations had vanished.
How a simple attempt to clarify had turned into something… else.
Outside, footsteps passed—light, steady, unhurried.
Zhao Fan, walking under the moon.
Lin Mo closed his eyes.
No reward, he thought.
That's good.
For some reason—
It didn't feel good at all.