CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY TWO
### Fourteen Breaths
They were five days south of the formation site when he realized something.
He was counting fourteen breaths and staying at fourteen.
He had been doing this for weeks.
Fourteen was where he lived now.
He tried fifteen.
It arrived.
He looked at Lin Mei.
She was reading something on the relay. She felt him stop counting and looked up.
"Fifteen," he said.
She looked at him.
"Yes," she said. "You were ready for fifteen a week ago. You have been staying at fourteen."
"Why did you not tell me," he said.
"Because fourteen was where you were," she said. "And where you are is always the right place to be while you are there." She paused. "Fifteen is where you are now."
He counted fifteen breaths.
He stayed at fifteen.
He thought about three.
The count that had stopped at three the night Master Feng died and could not continue.
Three to nine. Nine to twelve. Twelve to fourteen. Fourteen to fifteen.
Each number a distance covered.
Each distance everything that happened between the previous number and the new one.
"What comes after fifteen," Bing Xi said.
He looked at her.
"I do not know," he said.
"Yes you do," she said.
"I know sixteen comes after fifteen," he said.
"No," she said. "You know what happens after fifteen."
He held fifteen breaths.
He thought about what happened after fifteen.
The sixth generating section had crossed threshold. The formation had held the Void Anchor. The three practitioners had contacted Mo Xuan. The adaptation document was forty-three pages and being corrected by Li Shan. The river crossing section was generating.
The work was in a different phase than it had been at three.
At three he was sitting in a refuse pile outside Eagle Sect's gate.
At fifteen he was walking south with the domain extending thirty-one li and six generating sections permanent and the archive distributed and River-Stone's sequence in the hands of every practitioner in the network.
What came after fifteen.
He looked at the road.
"The Sovereign stage," Feng Luo said.
Everyone looked at him.
He said it flatly. Accurately. The way he said everything he had decided was true.
"Stage six," he said. "The final stage. The cost — what was it."
"Face Wei Han," Jian Yu said. "Not to fight. To choose."
"You already did that," Feng Luo said. "At the combination valley. Fourteen months ago."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"Then the condition is met," Feng Luo said.
"The condition required standing before Wei Han and making the choice," Jian Yu said. "I made the choice. I do not know if making the choice once is sufficient or if the sword requires the choice to be maintained."
Feng Luo looked at the Lost Blade.
"Has the sword indicated anything," he said.
Jian Yu looked at the unnamed color.
Steady. Present. The between.
Not brighter than usual.
Not dimmer.
The same.
"Not yet," he said.
"Then fifteen for now," Feng Luo said. "Until the sword tells you something has changed."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
He counted fifteen breaths.
He thought about Wei Han in the southeastern sections. The restorative application work. The forty days. The sections clearing.
He thought about the three words.
Don't waste it.
He thought about what it meant to have chosen something and maintained the choosing.
Every day since the combination valley he had maintained it.
The release. Not forgiveness — he had said that clearly. Release. Carrying the weight differently.
Every day of fourteen months he had maintained it.
The choice was not a single moment.
It was the maintaining.
He counted fifteen.
He looked at the Lost Blade.
The unnamed color was steady.
The sword knew what he was thinking.
It always had.
"The sword is listening," he said.
Lin Mei looked at him.
"To you," he said. "It has been listening the whole time. To whether the maintaining holds."
She was quiet.
"Fourteen months," he said. "Of maintaining it. Every day. In the recovery regions and the growing season work and the formation site and the deployment and the faction and the river crossing." He paused. "Every day I chose to carry it differently."
"And," she said.
He drew the Lost Blade.
The unnamed color brightened.
Not the recognition brightness of the formation site.
Something different.
He had no word for this brightness.
It was the brightness of something that had been building for fourteen months and had arrived.
"The Sovereign stage," he said.
The brightness held.
He counted fifteen breaths.
He stayed at fifteen.
He looked at Lin Mei.
She was looking at the unnamed color.
At the brightness he had no word for.
She said: "Don't waste it."
Not to him.
To the brightness.
To the fourteen months.
To the maintaining.
"No," he said.
The brightness held.
The road went south.
---