The morning sun in Heaven's Gate was a pale, filtered gold, strained through the fine dust that always seemed to hang in the air of the bustling capital. In the small, walled compound of the Silver Lantern Inn, the city's distant clamor was a muted backdrop to a far more intimate struggle.
Gen sat cross-legged on the worn flagstones of the training yard, his back straight, his eyes closed. The familiar, sun-warmed feeling of **Jingdao** was a phantom limb—a memory of power that thrummed in his mind but refused to answer his call. In its place was something… else.
He breathed slowly, as Madame Su had instructed, directing his focus inward, down from the hollow ache of his silent **Root** point, to the space below his navel. The **Sea Acupoint**. For so long, it had been a vague, theoretical concept on a glowing diagram. Now, after the spiritual shock of the Jade Palace battle and the lingering, strange resonance of the Sleeping Deity pollen, he could *feel* it.
It wasn't open. Not by a long shot. There was no wellspring of power, no channel for **Shidow** to flow. It was more like a sealed door he could now hear whispers through. A faint, cool, shifting sensation, like mercury resting in a deep bowl. It was a world away from the roaring, golden furnace of his Reinforcement foundation. This was subtle. This required listening, not demanding.
*Okay,* he thought, the frustration a familiar knot in his stomach. *Just feel. Don't push. It's like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands in a dark pond. If you thrash, it's gone.*
Beside him, Liang mirrored his posture, but the energy around him was different. A soft, creative white glow—the hallmark of **Zhidow**—emanated gently from the center of his chest, his **Heart Acupoint**. It was the only Wheel Liang had fully awakened, his true foundation. His focus, however, was split. Part of his will was solidifying that creative flow, mastering the principles of giving shape to the formless. The other part was a grim, grinding effort. He was forcing his Qi, against its natural inclination, down towards the base of his spine—towards the stubbornly dim **Root Acupoint**. Sweat beaded on his temple from the strain. He was trying to build a secondary foundation in **Jingdao**, to force open a gate that had never wanted to open for him. It was like trying to dig a foundation in solid granite with a spoon.
Madame Su stood before them, a pillar of calm observation. Her voice, when she spoke, was measured and clear, cutting through their individual frustrations.
"You must understand the scale of what you are attempting," she said, her gaze passing from Liang's strained face to Gen's furrowed brow of concentration. "This is not a sprint. For the most dedicated and naturally gifted, awakening a single Acupoint can take months of unbroken meditation and spiritual alignment. For those less attuned, it can take years. And that is just for the *first*."
She knelt, picking up a small, smooth stone from the ground. She placed it before Gen. "This is your first Acupoint. Difficult, but the path is singular." She placed a second stone beside it. "This is the second. Now, your Qi, your spirit, must learn to flow in two distinct, often contradictory patterns. It must hold two natures at once. The difficulty does not add; it *multiplies*."
She added a third stone. The pyramid looked precarious. "The third is a nightmare. Your foundation strains under the complexity. Only those with immense spiritual fortitude, or a constitution of rare harmony, can hope to balance three Wheels without their cultivation crumbling into internal conflict. This is why so many peak at the Second or Third Wheel. It is not a lack of power, but a limit of the soul's ability to hold contradictions."
Gen opened his eyes, looking at the three stones. He thought of his father's six silent Wheels, orbiting in perfect, impossible harmony. The scale of that achievement, which he had once taken for granted, now felt like staring up at a mountain whose peak was in the clouds. He gave a slow, understanding nod. The arrogance that would have made him scoff at a timeline of 'months' was gone, burned away. He knew what empty felt like. He would take progress, however slow.
"So we keep listening," Gen said, his voice quiet with determination. "And we keep grinding."
Liang let out a sharp exhale, releasing his forced flow to his Root. The creative light at his heart steadied. "Grinding is one thing I'm getting better at," he said, a wry smile touching his lips.
After another hour of silent, grueling effort that yielded no dramatic breakthroughs—only the faint, maddening whisper of potential—Gen pushed himself to his feet. His body ached from stillness more than any combat.
"We'll head out," he announced, brushing dust from his trousers. "Continue asking around. Someone in this city must have heard of the Blackgreen Wood."
Madame Su, who had been watching the sky as if it might hold answers, let out a soft, tired laugh. It was a rare sound, stripped of its usual sternness. "You mean you will go and shout at people in squares until their ears bleed or they tell you something to make you go away."
Gen scratched the back of his head, a boyish gesture that clashed with the new hardness in his eyes. "It worked at the last three inns. Sort of. We got rumors. Rumors are a start. I… I need to be doing something. Not just sitting here waiting for a door in my gut to decide to open."
Madame Su studied him. She saw the restless energy, the fear that if he stopped moving, the hollow feeling would swallow him whole. She also saw the pragmatic truth: her own discreet inquiries among Heaven's Gate's apothecaries and lesser-known healers had hit dead ends. Having the boys actively, if clumsily, stirring the pot might shake something loose. And keeping Gen occupied was its own kind of medicine.
"Very well," she conceded, her tone shifting back to its guardian's firmness. "Do not draw attention. Do not pick fights. Be back before nightfall. And Liang," she added, fixing him with a look, "you are the ears. Let Gen be the… loud, persistent mouth."
Liang grinned, standing up and clapping a hand on Gen's shoulder. "That, I can do."
***
The central square of their district was a riot of sound and smell—spices, roasting meat, unwashed bodies, and the metallic tang of the city itself. Gen planted himself near a well-traveled corner, took a deep breath that had nothing to do with Qi circulation, and launched into his now-practiced routine.
"Pardon! Good folk of Heaven's Gate!" he called out, his voice cutting through the din with a cultivator's trained projection. "We seek knowledge! A healer of renown known as the Blackgreen Wood! Any information, any rumor at all!"
Liang stood beside him, his eyes scanning the crowd, observing reactions. Most people hurried past, eyes averted. Some shot them looks of pity or annoyance. A fruit seller shook her head wearily, having heard this for the third day in a row.
For an hour, it was the same. Shout, be ignored, repeat. Gen's throat was getting raw. The hope that had sparked at Ting's mention of the healer was guttering under the drizzle of daily failure.
Then, as Gen launched into another round, a man slammed open the shutters of a second-floor window above a tea shop. He was middle-aged, with the harried look of a scribe or clerk, and his face was a mask of pure, unadulterated irritation.
"YOU! For the love of silent contemplation, STOP!" he bellowed, leaning out. "Day after day! 'Blackgreen Wood!' 'Any information!' My study overlooks this square! My ears are breaking! Do you have any idea how hard it is to transcribe poetry with that dull, repetitive bellowing echoing in your skull?"
Gen and Liang looked up, momentarily stunned. This was new.
Before Gen could formulate a retort, the man jabbed a finger towards the east. "If you must chase children's tales, go bother the *actual* child! Down the Street of the Weavers, in the lesser square by the cloth dyers' vats. There's a little girl. They call her Lolly. She wears a bamboo pendant. The rumor—and it is *only* a rumor spread by sentimental fools—is that she has some tenuous, tragic connection to your mythical healer. A grand-niece, a discarded apprentice, who knows? People say it to be kind, to make the urchins leave her be, to give her a shadow of protection. She has no father, no mother. That's your 'lead,' you relentless fools! Now, by the Ten Thousand Scrolls, let there be PEACE!"
With that, he slammed the shutters closed with a final, definitive crack.
Gen and Liang stood frozen for a second in the sudden quiet left in the man's irate wake. Then, their eyes met. A slow, wild grin spread across Gen's face. It wasn't much. It was a rumor wrapped in pity, attached to a child. But it was a *specific* rumor. A name. A location. A bamboo pendant. It was more than they'd had in weeks.
"It worked," Liang whispered, disbelief and elation dawning in his eyes.
Gen's grin turned triumphant. He slapped his palm against Liang's raised one in a crisp, loud high-five that echoed in the space the shouting had vacated. "Told you! Persistence! It breaks down walls!"
They turned and immediately began pushing their way through the crowd towards the Street of the Weavers, energy renewed.
Above, the harried scribe peered through a slit in his shutters, watching them go. He shook his head, a smirk of weary satisfaction on his face. "As if it were that easy to find a legend," he muttered to his empty room, the blessed silence already soothing his frayed nerves. "A little girl with a pendant. Good luck, you noisy bastards. You'll need it." He returned to his poetry, the square finally, mercifully quiet.