Back at the Verdant Dew Pavilion, where mist accumulated like a second sea.

  Yuming woke before dawn. His body decided for him—his dantian pulsed once and sleep ended.

  He lay still for a minute, staring up at the ceiling and reaching toward the mist that drifted through the open window.

  He sat up and immediately moved to the meditation mat. His spine straightened, his hands reached his knees, and he closed his eyes, beginning to cultivate.

  His microcosmic orbit turned once, twice. Things were stable. He reached outward toward the Mist-Dew Qi that hung around him. He’d failed to draw it in yesterday, so he adjusted his approach this time.

  He was gentler; he didn’t grasp at it. The qi brushed against his meridians and slid away. He tried again, softer this time. He opened his Ren Gate wider, accepting rather than pulling.

  The qi touched him, and for a moment it seemed to settle. Then it drifted past, completely indifferent.

  He pushed his frustration away, settled his breathing, and tried again. He used the internal orbit within him to create a vacuum at the Ren Gate. He inhaled, hoping to let the qi arrive.

  The qi approached, and he seemed to smell rain on dirt roads. Not the immaculate paths of Zhenyuan, but the well-tredded roads of Willowbank—roads with crevices and puddles.

  His concentration fractured. He hadn’t summoned the memory intentionally: it had been there all along, and it rose from inside him like Mist-Dew Qi rose from the floor.

  He pushed the feeling aside and reached for the qi again. It got closer this time. Yuming guided it carefully, letting it settle naturally, orienting himself so that it volunteered to approach his dantian.

  He felt a flick against his forehead, a feeling so familiar it had been worn into him. It was his sister’s finger, quick and teasing. Accompanied by a voice: “Go on, fight demons.”

  The qi scattered again. Yuming’s hands clenched.

  When Chenming had been a separate self—stuck across a chasm—these memories stayed away from him. They were the longings that Chenming kept for himself.

  But now there was no chasm, there was only Yuming. And these feelings that once felt so distant now belonged to him.

  He didn’t feel them—they didn’t conjure any emotions. But they flicked at him, scattered him.

  He tried again, and heard his father’s voice: “Don’t ever take this for granted.”

  An earnest boy responded. “Ming’er wouldn’t dare.”

  Scattered again.

  That was me. Am I remembering something?

  He unclenched his fists.

  Or is something inside of me remembering for me?

  The qi didn’t scatter this time. It just stopped, hovering within him.

  His hands were shaking.

  Yin and Yang grind together to make stable Self. But there aren’t two surfaces anymore!

  Chenming had dissolved. What remained of him had seeped through Yuming's cracks and settled into places that used to be clean.

  Who am I? One Self with someone else’s fingerprints pressed against every surface?

  He opened his palms and let a resonance pulse from within him. It was the Tree fragment—another presence that shouldn’t have been there, now coexisting.

  How can you condense something when you don’t know what it is?

  The mist outside of the window was brightening and the sun began its march toward the firmament.

  Yuming collected himself. Soon, he heard a knock at his door.

  Mu Chen arrived at Yuming’s dwellings accompanied by two servants, bringing breakfast.

  “Fellow Daoist, would you like to see more of the terraces today?”

  Yuming smiled. “I can’t refuse, Fellow Daoist.”

  They set out along the stone paths. The mist was thicker than it had been the day before. Yuming let his spiritual sense drift passively, receiving his surroundings.

  “Fellow Daoist,” Yuming began casually, “how are Senior Qin’s injuries? Were they severe?”

  Mu Chen rubbed his chin. “I’m not sure of the details, but the Ancestor prepared a full course of Heart Settling medicines for her. That’s usually a four or five day treatment.”

  Four or five days… I should try to do it in three.

  “She must trust your Pavilion’s medicines greatly, to spend so much time resting here instead of rushing back to Jingquan.” Yuming praised.

  Mu Chen chuckled. “Fellow Daoist overpraises me. My Pavilion’s medicines aren’t the most powerful, but they are very clean. Cultivators from the Upper Sect prefer a clean recovery over a fast one.”

  The two climbed higher. Disciples tended basins. Yuming observed in silence for a few minutes before asking another question.

  “The valley feels very open. No walls or gates—is Fellow Daoist not worried about beasts wandering in?”

  Mu Chen waved a hand. “It happens occasionally, but the valley has a passive formation. We’ll know about a spirit beast before it reaches the lowest terraces.”

  Yuming’s expression remained mildly curious.

  “That’s quite impressive. In Xia Prefecture, we rarely use passive formations due to frequent false alarms.”

  Mu Chen explained. “Mist-Dew Qi is still by nature. It tends to hover rather than circulate. Any disturbance stands out clearly against it. My Pavilion is able to clearly distinguish monsters from contaminated air.”

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  Yuming continued to smile as the two ascended. Inwardly he was deep in thought.

  He probably wouldn’t be this open with me if he knew about my situation.

  Yuming glanced at Mu Chen again.

  Unless they want me to try to escape.

  Yuming had considered this worst-case-scenario, but couldn’t think of a logical reason why Qin Yueshan would orchestrate such a scheme. He decided to operate under the assumption that he wasn’t being baited.

  And I was right to probe—they really do have a detecting formation. How unfortunate.

  Ideally, he could figure out a way to minimize his signature and slip out undetected. But even with his unique karmic abilities, he knew doing that was next to impossible.

  If I, a Spiritual Opening junior with very little formation knowledge, could slip through the formation with only four days of training—I’d definitely be walking into a trap.

  The remaining option was to negotiate with Jade Balance True Person.

  Yuming would be noticed eventually. But, if Yuming’s footprint was small enough, the True Person would have plausible deniability if he didn’t act in time.

  He already doesn’t want to get involved with me—but I doubt that alone is enough for him to sit patiently and watch me escape.

  I need to figure out a way for my escape to help him.

  So what can I offer him that most people can’t?

  Fortunately, Yuming had a few unique traits. His cultivation technique allowed him to perceive karma—and his sensory ability had only increased after reaching Dantian Awakening. He had a Tree fragment mixed in with his Self. He had an Earth-grade root. He was a Liu.

  The two continued upward.

  “Fellow Daoist,” Yuming said, breaking another long silence. “Yesterday, you mentioned that the formations up here are only to adjust temperature—the qi settles on its own.”

  Mu Chen nodded.

  “I’ve been pondering that. At my Liu Family, every technique I learned was centered around drawing qi inward. Compressing and building density.” He paused. “Your Pavilion seems to operate on the opposite principle.”

  Mu Chen slowed his pace. He was pleased by the question; he was happy to find a companion with whom he could discuss Dao.

  “My Pavilion calls it ‘Holding the Threshold.’ Dew doesn’t need our help to form. It wants to form—it’s what water does when conditions are right. Our role is to tend to those conditions.”

  Yuming thought of how he’d cultivated that morning. Even at his most gentle, he was still fundamentally trying to guide qi inwards, toward his dantian. He’d still been reaching—not to make his conditions correct for qi to settle naturally.

  Mu Chen continued with a sheepish smile. “In a way, our Dao is the Orthodox of the Orthodox. If Orthodox is moving along with Heaven, my Pavilion clears space for Heaven to move!”

  Yuming narrowed his eyes. “Holding the Threshold—adjusting temperature, regulating stillness. But what happens when the conditions aren’t right?”

  Mu Chen smiled. “Fellow Daoist, the errors are precisely the point. A perfect valley wouldn’t need anyone to tend it. The essence of our cultivation is adjustment—reactive corrections.”

  Yuming contrasted the Verdant Dew Pavilion with the Upper Sect, Jingquan.

  Jingquan, as far as he knew, was about creating and maintaining purity. It was fundamentally proactive. Within that context, Verdant Dew could be seen as an offshoot that sought to create the correct conditions for purity to naturally appear.

  “How has Fellow Daoist’s cultivation been recently?”

  Mu Chen didn’t want to complain in front of a guest. He hesitated.

  “My cultivation… It has been somewhat difficult lately.”

  He gave a helpless sigh. “My technique is about finding a moment of threshold—the moment qi wishes to settle. I used to feel it clearly. But recently it's like something is sitting between me and that moment. I can sense it's there, but I can't quite reach it.”

  He chuckled. “Yesterday was the worst yet. Ancestor Jade Balance recommended that I talk with you to refresh my mind and gain new insights.”

  Hearing Mu Chen’s words, Yuming couldn’t help but recall a conversation he’d had a year prior. He’d been at the Yang Family, and the Elder Yang Qinru had been discussing a junior’s failed breakthrough.

  He still remembered the words.

  He felt like he was reaching for something that wasn’t there.

  He thought back to Yang Chengjun—the junior who had failed to breakthrough.

  His foundation was undermined because his identity didn’t match the identity his Yang Family had carved out in the Sea. The Yang Family were court guards, but his name meant ‘He who inherits lordship!’

  Mu Chen didn’t have those problems. His foundation was intact. But judging by their similar experiences, perhaps something was sitting in the space where his “threshold” should have been: invisible weight he couldn’t detect.

  The two continued climbing. The mist thickened as they reached the highest terraces.

  Mu Chen was explaining how elevation affected dew grade, but Yuming was only half-listening.

  He was busy probing with his spiritual sense.

  His perception of karma had always been passive. His Ren Meridian accepted and received karma, but it couldn’t force it in, nor could it actively seek it out. His Du Meridian helped him hold and examine—but he couldn’t examine what wasn’t there.

  So previously, Yuming had only been able to detect the strongest karma that he was directly connected to. But his spiritual sense gave him new abilities.

  His spiritual sense reached out and interacted with the world. By spreading his spiritual sense out and then returning it, his Ren Meridian could receive more information.

  The returning sense carried impressions of the ambient qi. The hovering Mist-Dew, the slow Riverflow beneath.

  As it passed through his Ren Gate, his karmic perception read what came with it.

  Yuming was careful, spreading his spiritual sense away from Mu Chen and keeping the radius small.

  As a result, the first few attempts returned nothing unusual. Qi, people, some formations, a few spiritual artifacts.

  But as he reached the highest terraces, where the mist was densest, he perceived something strangely familiar: a weight.

  The weight occupied the same space as the qi, but on a deeper layer. He brought it to his Du Meridian for examination.

  What was behind the weight?

  The culprits were directionless threads. They were too heavy to dissipate and too formless to settle. They lingered, cluttering the stillness that the valley’s cycle depended on.

  Yuming cast out his spiritual sense again and examined.

  At first, the threads were just empty weight. But as he searched more, he realized the texture was familiar.

  The weight of it, the feeling against his perception—it reminded him of home.

  He cast out again, pulling more information in. Most of the threads were formless to him, like clay shards that had been compressed, then scrambled before they could be shaped into anything.

  But some threads were clearer than others.

  One thread seemed to have a direction he could vaguely recognize. It was a weight between two parties that had accumulated over time.

  Wen and Liu.

  He couldn’t see the specifics; he couldn’t make out names, faces, or moments. But he could feel the shape of interactions layered over years. Tributes paid upward, protection reaching downward.

  Something inside of him stirred at the recognition. The Tree fragment inside of him responded to the threads—he felt a dull resonance reaching outward from himself.

  I understand why I can feel Wen-Liu karma, but why does the fragment specifically react?

  He looked at Mu Chen, who had felt his cultivation most impacted over the last few days.

  Right after the Tree was destroyed.

  Maybe—

  My fragment recognizes them because they were part of the same Ancestral Tree network! When the Tree shattered, it shattered. But the fragment still recognizes its own.

  But what about all of the other threads? The karma he couldn’t recognize? Mu Chen said he’d been feeling problems for nearly a year.

  Nearly a year corresponds with the timing of the Ancestral Tree ceremony.

  What did an Ancestral Tree connect to? Every person in a family. Yuming had felt it during his Tree rituals. The Wen Tree had reached toward every mortal in the compound.

  It was forming karmic connections with everyone—I just couldn’t articulate it.

  But Yuming knew something important about mortal karmic threads: they didn’t always cooperate. They could be incredibly weak; if they didn’t find something to bind on to, they could easily drift away and be lost forever.

  Yuming had experienced this exactly during the karmic attack a few days prior.

  Maybe Ancestral Trees can’t grab all of the mortal karma—some drifts away.

  And if every Ancestral Tree involved with the Liu Family’s program was doing the same thing, then the runoff wasn’t a single event. There would be a constant stream of unattached karma drifting out from each ceremony.

  I can only recognize karma from the Wen Family.

  His brows furrowed.

  But nearly all of this weight feels familiar. Every Tree involved with the program could contaminate—I can only recognize what I’m most familiar with.

  That could explain why Qin Yueshan was there in the first place: Jingquan wanted countermeasures against contamination!

  He didn’t know the exact explanation behind the phenomenon. But he felt like he had enough to go off of.

  Jade Balance True Person, we can bargain.

  He took a glance at Mu Chen and noticed something within himself that he hadn’t expected: gladness that he could help him with his problem.

  He just didn’t know if the feelings were his own.