Free Web NovelChapter 95: Different
He had not, technically, meant to fall asleep.
Lin Xuan came back to himself in the inelegant order of someone who had passed out in a posture the human spine had not been designed for. First the awareness that his forehead was pressed to floorboards. A breath later, the realization that his shoulders were burning where the muscles had locked. Last came the understanding that his backside was up where Mira had warned it would be hours earlier.
The lamp had burned itself out at some point. Grey morning light pushed through the lattice of the eastern window in pale rectangles across the floor.
He heard the door open before he saw it.
Soft footsteps, careful, the way Lian always crossed his threshold. The pause was a quarter beat longer than usual.
"...Xuan?"
He could not yet move. His face was a problem his body had not figured out how to solve.
She crossed the room and crouched beside him.
"Xuan. Wake up."
A finger poked his cheek.
The poke set off something deep in the back of his nervous system that had been napping for several hours under heavy supervision. His hand shot up before the rest of him had agreed to it. He caught Lian’s wrist mid-air and clamped down with a Stage Seven grip he had not yet fully measured.
She made a small, startled sound. She pulled back.
His hand did not let go.
His eyes opened.
The world came in stages. Floorboards. Edge of the desk. Grey sleeves under his fingers. A pair of slightly alarmed dark eyes a hand-span from his.
He released her wrist. Carefully — very, very carefully, the way someone hands back a piece of porcelain they have nearly dropped.
"Sorry."
He rubbed his eyes with the same hand and pushed himself off the floor one vertebra at a time. Every joint protested. He had slept in a position even his bones found embarrassing.
"What time is it?"
Lian rubbed at her wrist once, quietly, and stepped back to give him room.
"The outer disciples started their forms a while ago. Wei is guiding them. He is doing his best, but Wei isn’t a professional in our arts yet."
"Right." He cleared his throat. "Right. Sorry. I’ll go." freewebnøvel.com
She watched him cross to the basin and splash water on his face without saying anything else. The unspoken half of the sentence was that he had told her last night, very confidently, that he would be fine.
He caught his own reflection in the dark window above the basin and decided not to inflict it on anyone for a while. His hair was a small disaster. His robe was glued to his back. A faint scab on the inside of each wrist marked where the Stage Six pill had bled him.
He also did not smell, by any honest measure, like a man who should be standing in front of disciples.
He weighed it.
He was going to sweat through the next two hours anyway. The math came out the way it usually did.
He grabbed Plain Steel off the floor, slung it across his hip, and started for the door.
[ Sleep well? (¬‿¬) ] Mira’s voice arrived at the corner of his vision.
’I was tired.’
[ I told you not to fall asleep in that pose. ]
’I retain the right to ignore good advice approximately once per breakthrough.’
[ Once per breakthrough is two per night under the current arrangement. ]
’Which means I am ahead of schedule. Move on.’
He took the stone steps down the side of Silent Peak two at a time. The cool air did him a small favour. By the third landing, his head had stopped feeling like the inside of a struck bell.
These were the early days since he had taken the outer yard. He could not be late. He would not be late.
He pulled up short ten paces before the gate to the training grounds and watched from the line of cypresses on the eastern side.
Inside the yard, forty-some disciples were running through the third form under Wei Tianming’s count. Wei was holding the rhythm a fraction slow, the way a careful instructor holds it when he is uncertain of his own authority. None of the disciples were goofing off. None were drifting toward the rear of the formation to skip a repetition. None of them wore the slouching half-attention Lin Xuan had seen in the yard a week ago.
Even with only the corrections he had drilled into them across a handful of mornings, the difference showed. Their shoulders sat lower. Their feet had stopped splaying. The boy on the second row was breathing on the cut now, not against it.
[ Looks like you don’t have any rebels left to wrestle. ]
He stepped through the gate.
Heads moved a fraction of an inch in his direction without breaking the form. Wei Tianming caught the motion in his periphery, turned, and crossed the yard at a trot, half-bowing as he came.
"Young Master." frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
"Tianming."
"I guided them through the morning warm-up the way you told me. They have done the first three forms and started on the fourth." Wei lowered his voice and managed to look mildly aggrieved without committing to it. "Please. Don’t disappear again without telling me."
Lin Xuan caught a small laugh somewhere behind his teeth and didn’t quite let it out.
"I won’t. And if I do, I’ll give you warning. Last night ran longer than I expected."
Wei nodded once, and narrowed his eyes the way a man does when he is checking something he is not entirely sure he is allowed to check.
"Young Master. I notice something different about you."
"Do you?"
"Have you advanced again? You feel..." Wei searched for the right word and gave up on diplomacy. "Heavier. In presence. Not in weight, you are not fat by any means. Stronger, I mean."
Lin Xuan arranged his face into something polite.
"Is that so?"
A small ripple ran through the formation behind Wei. A breath cut off mid-cycle. A foot landed an instant late. The disciples nearest the front had heard their inner-disciple instructor say the word advanced in the same sentence as their training master, and hundreds pairs of ears had become exactly one ear, pointed in his direction.
Lin Xuan turned his head an inch toward them.
"Who told you you could stop?"
