In be­tween every­thing else that was go­ing on, the fol­low­ing day Mian had a break­through that Ki'el nei­ther ex­pect­ed nor un­der­stood. It... in all hon­esty, the man's qi be­gan to feel odd to her, and even Kuli was un­able to put words to the dif­fer­ence, ex­cept that Mian's prob­lems with his qi cy­cling re­mov­ing bad in­tent from him seemed to no longer hold him back. If any­thing, the new­er ver­sion of his qi cy­cle seemed more like it want­ed to reck­less­ly dump the world's dirty qi into him, and it took some amount of dis­ci­pline on his part to refuse, and hold qi into the pu­ri­fy­ing cy­cle.

It was not sur­pris­ing that such a method quick­ly pulled him out of sil­ver qi, which nev­er should have been such a stum­bling block for a per­son with a good pow­er cul­ti­va­tion method.

It was Xam, not Ki'el, who walked him through open­ing his dant­ian and reach­ing the be­gin­ning of Gold Qi, a process that was sim­ple enough as long as you had some­one to ex­plain it. By the time that she met up with Mian again the fol­low­ing evening, the man seemed more con­fi­dent, and his ver­sion of the qi cy­cle seemed to be func­tion­ing nor­mal­ly. When asked about his break­through, Mian's mood seemed to shift a bit.

"I re­al­ized what was be­ing pu­ri­fied away from me," he said. "It's... prob­a­bly not wrong, but also, I be­lieve I can safe­ly choose not to com­plete­ly re­move it from my­self. It is a mat­ter of hope... and love, and courage, and a few oth­er com­pli­cat­ed things." He sim­ply smiled at Ki'el and pat­ted her on the shoul­der, his face not guard­ed but also show­ing noth­ing. "You don't need to wor­ry about it. I think... it may stop me from reach­ing the same heights that you and oth­ers might reach, but then, I'm not sure I ever would have. And I think I'll be­come strong enough to pro­tect my home, my fam­i­ly, my friends." When he with­drew his hand, his de­meanor shift­ed, as though he had put the in­ner con­flict out of mind, for now. "Don't wor­ry. Now that I've got­ten this far, I don't think I'm go­ing to hit my lim­it any time soon."

Ki'el wasn't sure what to say about that, but let him do as he pleased.

For her part, Ki'el had so many things that she could fo­cus on that it was dif­fi­cult not to be­come dis­tract­ed. Kuli en­cour­aged her not to wait too long to reach the peak of Gold Qi, al­though it was her in­stinct to leave that for now, since she had un­til the end of her first month be­fore that would be a prob­lem. So when she was work­ing, she kept her fo­cus on her qi cy­cle, ea­ger for the day when her process was sta­ble enough that she could split her at­ten­tion be­tween two qi cy­cles, or per­haps, hold­ing one while be­ing able to think clear­ly about things. For now, al­though she could move her hands and feet and do crude labors, or main­tain the cy­cle with­out do­ing any pu­rifi­ca­tion, try­ing to do too much while con­cen­trat­ing would make her fum­ble one task or the oth­er.

She was get­ting bet­ter, though, es­pe­cial­ly if she also added right­eous aether to her spir­it to keep her mind cen­tered and clear, and it was that habit, more than any­thing else, that caused her to no­tice some­thing was wrong be­fore she got en­tan­gled into a mess.

It was a com­mon enough task--a haul­ing la­bor, but when she ar­rived, the box of al­chem­i­cal vials to be moved was sit­ting care­ful­ly next to a door­way, and the Out­er Dis­ci­ple who re­quest­ed it was con­spic­u­ous­ly ab­sent. Ki'el glanced around, but it was when she flood­ed her spir­it again with Right­eous Aether that she sensed it.

The qi with­in the vials was un­sta­ble. She frowned, mov­ing in a small cir­cle around it, but she was cer­tain of it. She took the to­ken that Sis­ter Futi had giv­en her and fo­cused her in­tent on it. [ I re­ject task. Vials are un­sta­ble. Maybe trap, maybe fool­ish. ]

She felt a mo­men­tary tin­gle from the to­ken, and then, af­ter a mo­ment, [ Wait. ]

Ki'el stepped away from the vials, and wait­ed, and af­ter a time, an Out­er Dis­ci­ple showed up, frown­ing at the vials, and then at Ki'el. "Are you the one who re­quest­ed the task?"

"No," Ki'el said. "I was giv­en the task but no one showed up. The vials seem full of un­sta­ble qi. I told Sis­ter Futi that I refuse the task."

"Un­sta­ble? Re­al­ly?" The man moved over to the box of vials and squat­ted down. "Hum, maybe a lit­tle. The task was re­as­signed to me, so--"

From the mo­ment that he be­gan to move the box, Ki'el could see that the trap wasn't sub­tle at all, ex­cept in the way that it was hid­den. From the first time the box was shift­ed, the qi in one of the vials be­gan to stir, and then the qi in oth­ers. She stepped back. "Sect broth­er, the qi..."

"I haven't done any­thing," he said, pick­ing the box up. "And if the vials were that un­sta­ble, some­one would be tempt­ing fate just leav­ing them out like this--"

Sud­den­ly, the qi from the one vial spiked, and the vial shat­tered, mak­ing sev­er­al vials near it also be­gin to peak. The man paused his haul­ing, frown­ing, and be­gan to set the box down--but the bro­ken vial pro­vid­ed space for oth­er vials to shift, and more of them be­gan to col­lapse or spike their qi.

As though sum­moned by the event, a man that Ki'el had seen not too many days be­fore seemed to ap­pear all at once out of a near­by build­ing, only to pause sud­den­ly when he saw Ki'el and the Out­er Sect mem­ber, who was squat­ting over the box. "Hey!" He shout­ed. "What are you do­ing with my al­chem­i­cal ex­per­i­ment? It's very--"

"Il­le­gal," Ki'el heard the oth­er Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple mut­ter un­der his breath, and he sum­moned a stone to his hand. But no mat­ter how gen­tly he set the box down, the dam­age was done and get­ting worse.

"And you--are you the Less­er House mem­ber that ac­cept­ed my task?" Broth­er Mon­shu round­ed on Ki'el. "How dare you have some oth­er fool do your work for you? I de­mand that you re­pay me for the work that you so care­less­ly de­stroyed!"

Ki'el just looked over at him, and lift­ed her to­ken. "I did not ac­cept the task, Broth­er Mon­shu. I asked Sis­ter Futi to as­sign an Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple to it in­stead."

Broth­er Mon­shu's mouth snapped shut so hard that Ki'el heard it echo. "You... you do not have the right--"

"Broth­er Mon­shu," Ki'el said, feel­ing a cold cer­tain­ty in her stom­ach that the man had gone very far out of his way to try to trap her here, and if not for a smidgeon of aether, he might have suc­ceed­ed. "I did not ac­cept the task. I nev­er touched your box. An Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple was as­signed it."

"I have no in­ten­tion of pay­ing an Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple to sim­ply move a box for me!"

"But you do ad­mit that this was your task?" The Out­er Dis­ci­ple stood up and turned to look at him. "This is your box, full of your vials? You de­mand­ed re­pay­ment, so it must be."

"I..." Broth­er Mon­shu's face blanked. "I'm sor­ry, Broth­er, but I'm not fa­mil­iar with you. Have we met?"

"If this were your alche­my ex­per­i­ment, I'm sure we would have, Broth­er... Mon­shu, was it?" The man stepped up to him, and sud­den­ly, he had an ex­ceed­ing­ly un­pleas­ant look on his face. "I am Broth­er Abi, and I am a ju­nior as­sis­tant in­struc­tor in charge of teach­ing alche­my to the Out­er Sect."

"I..." Broth­er Mon­shu's voice drew out un­til it hit a very strange note, as the man was clear­ly try­ing to find an ex­pla­na­tion for his ma­nip­u­la­tions that didn't make his mal­ice ob­vi­ous, and was not able to find any such suit­able words.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"I ad­mit when I was sud­den­ly tasked to take on a task to sim­ply move vials, I was cu­ri­ous, but I can now see the en­tire pic­ture, as El­der Fai will when she ar­rives." Broth­er Abi sud­den­ly re­vealed a set of three dif­fer­ent col­ored vials in his hand, all of which Ki'el rec­og­nized from the set. "I ad­mit I am dis­ap­point­ed twice, Broth­er. No, three... four times, once in my­self. I was first dis­ap­point­ed when I re­al­ized that one of the com­pounds in these vials is against the rules of the sect. I was dis­ap­point­ed a sec­ond time as it be­came clear to me that you set this up to trap some poor mem­ber of the Less­er House. And I am dis­ap­point­ed in my­self, be­cause a mem­ber of the Less­er House was more able to de­tect an alche­my trap than I was, as a ju­nior alche­my as­sis­tant, even if I was dis­tract­ed and dis­mis­sive."

"Ah... Broth­er Abi, per­haps you have mis­un­der­stood--"

"But I am most dis­ap­point­ed, Broth­er Mon­shu, that this vile mix­ture was clear­ly not even done by you. You are not even a ju­nior al­chemist, and be­lieve me, we will be search­ing for the per­son who you hired to make your lit­tle trick. The sub­tle ma­nip­u­la­tion was im­pres­sive--and il­le­gal."

Ki'el frowned, un­sure that she liked the mixed mes­sage that Broth­er Abi was giv­ing the oth­er Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple. It might have been bet­ter, if he had done it him­self?

When Mon­shu seemed to de­volve into a stut­ter­ing mess, Broth­er Abi turned to Ki'el and of­fered a shal­low bow. "Ju­nior Sis­ter. I ap­pre­ci­ate your alert­ness, but there is no fur­ther need for you to re­main, and it might com­pli­cate your life if you do. My tes­ti­mo­ny will see Broth­er Mon­shu pun­ished, make no mis­take." His grin spread, and to Ki'el, it was an ugly ex­pres­sion.

{ I be­lieve he in­tends to keep all of the for­fei­ture, } Kuli nudged her, men­tal­ly. { As a re­sult, we can keep our hands clean in this mat­ter. }

Ki'el re­al­ized that she had been star­ing, and flushed her mind with right­eous aether one more time to clear it. She bowed to Broth­er Abi. "I will let you take the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and the cred­it, then, Broth­er Abi. Be well."

She walked away, feel­ing un­com­fort­ably like more than one or two pairs of eyes was look­ing at her as she did. For what­ev­er rea­son... she felt like she was be­ing watched the en­tire walk back to the Less­er House. A spir­it? Or some kind of qi ef­fect?

By the time that she met with Sis­ter Futi, Ki'el's rush had end­ed, though she still couldn't deny that it was in­fu­ri­at­ing. Sis­ter Futi gave her a care­ful look as she walked in, im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter an­oth­er Less­er House mem­ber walked out, and asked, in a very se­ri­ous tone, "Is every­thing han­dled?"

"The re­quest­ed Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple... re­spond­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly to the sit­u­a­tion," Ki'el said, de­cid­ing to be cagey about it. "My choice not to get in­volved was cor­rect."

Sis­ter Futi sim­ply arched her brows at Ki'el and said noth­ing about that, in­stead of­fer­ing her an­oth­er small task in a very dif­fer­ent part of the Sect.

It was strange to Ki'el, though, that for many days af­ter that, she start­ed to no­tice more and more fre­quent­ly that she would pass Sis­ter Lan Wu, the woman's red dress be­ing dif­fi­cult to mis­take for an­oth­er. Sis­ter Wu nev­er spoke, but if she was sub­tly try­ing to keep an eye on Ki'el... then she was no good at sub­tle­ty. Af­ter the first few days, Ki'el brought it up with Xam.

"She has men­tioned you," Xam agreed. "She con­tin­ues to talk to me when she sees me, I think be­cause she ex­pects me to agree with her. I... do not like her."

"You re­call I said that her voice has qi lay­ers in it," Ki'el said, wor­ried about the im­pli­ca­tions.

"Yes, and I sense them. Ma­nip­u­la­tion tech­niques re­quire ad­vanced con­trol, Ki'el. If she had that kind of con­trol, she would not re­main in the Less­er House."

Ki'el sup­posed that was true, but it... felt very wrong. There were al­ready at least two peo­ple here who seemed not to be­long--Sis­ters Futi and Be­nai. Both were clear­ly more ad­vanced than some­one who stayed for­ev­er in the Less­er House should be, in dif­fer­ent ways. It would not be at all sur­pris­ing if some oth­er force plant­ed some­one else here. And yet... her opin­ion of Lan Wu was no dif­fer­ent than Xam's. The woman sim­ply didn't seem com­pe­tent enough to pull off such tricks.

Un­less...

Since Xam had proved to be dis­in­ter­est­ed in her qi cy­cling tech­nique, Ki'el tried an­oth­er tac­tic. "Have you sensed any­thing off in the qi in around the Less­er House? As you have ex­plored your foot-cen­tric na­ture?"

"Yes," Xam said, the ir­ri­ta­tion in her voice ob­vi­ous but not se­vere. "It shifts, but I adapt. All of the var­i­ous meth­ods used by the mem­bers of the Less­er House make for a con­fus­ing land­scape of in­tents, some of them un­pleas­ant. I have found, be­yond ques­tion, that know­ing the area around where I med­i­tate im­proves my abil­i­ty to fil­ter and ab­sorb qi. But the area around the Less­er House... too of­ten, the shift­ing qi is a prob­lem."

And you do not think it could be de­lib­er­ate? Ki'el held her tongue, know­ing that in spite of the re­cent trap set for her, there was not an im­me­di­ate rea­son to be so para­noid, es­pe­cial­ly for Xam's cul­ti­va­tion. While Ki'el had man­aged to make en­e­mies, Xam had seemed to grudg­ing­ly adapt to her cir­cum­stances, reach­ing a steady lev­el of stress that seemed to not vary much day to day.

Still, she forced her­self to take the oc­ca­sion once a day to push right­eous aether into Xam and Mian's spir­its, and each time she did, she felt she drove some mi­nor ef­fect off. Mian's qi, which still felt a lit­tle odd, sta­bi­lized, and Xam's sim­ply lost a cer­tain edge to it. Both clear­ly no­ticed that some­thing changed, but nei­ther seemed in­ter­est­ed in com­ment­ing on it.

The days fol­low­ing her en­counter with Broth­er Mon­shu and her new­found para­noia about Sis­ter Wu did, how­ev­er, bring Ki'el up to Nine Gold­en Stars, and as she be­gan to ap­proach the peak of Gold Qi, Kuli sud­den­ly be­gan to speak to her.

{ The eas­i­est way to pass the chal­lenge ahead will not sim­ply be to have qi in your dant­ian, } she said, { but to ac­cli­ma­tize sev­er­al parts of your body to qi. The eas­i­est way to do this is by build­ing up your pu­ri­fied qi and then in­ject­ing it into parts of your body. }

Ki'el sent her aug­ment a men­tal ac­knowl­edge­ment, as she walked back to the Sect for an­oth­er task. Is there a set of parts I should use?

{ Rather than tell you, I would ask you to imag­ine that your task is to grasp hold of a bolt of light­ning, as it strikes you from the heav­ens. What should you re­in­force with qi to make that pos­si­ble? }

Ki'el con­sid­ered that. How does such qi light­ning strike?

In­stead of an­swer­ing that, Kuli in­stead gave her in­for­ma­tion on nat­ur­al light­ning--far less de­tailed than the in­for­ma­tion about fire, but still suf­fi­cient for her to un­der­stand that qi light­ning, which would fol­low sim­i­lar rules, would def­i­nite­ly be try­ing to pass through her body and her qi chan­nels, from her hand to the ground. Whether she want­ed to re­sist the light­ning or sur­vive its pas­sage, she would need at least to make sure from her hand to her dant­ian, the path was strong enough to han­dle greater qi than she could use now. And... if she want­ed to let the light­ning pass through her, an­oth­er pas­sage out from her dant­ian, or sim­ply her arm, through one or both of her legs.

In short, her limbs and core. It was... not sur­pris­ing, but it helped that she un­der­stood why she need­ed these things, and not sim­ply that she need­ed them.

That night, Ki'el took her whole day's worth of qi and, at Kuli's in­struc­tion, be­gan to pack it tight­ly into her right hand, along with pure right­eous aether. She could sense that do­ing so strained her body, and she was care­ful not to do too much, but... when she had put enough strain on her hand, she forced the qi and aether mix to be force­ful­ly re­ab­sorbed into her dant­ian straight from her hand. As it flowed through her chan­nels back to her dant­ian, it made her arm feel swollen and un­com­fort­able where it passed. When the pres­sure in her hand had fad­ed, she tried again, and dis­cov­ered that her tol­er­ance for the ex­tra en­er­gy seemed less than it had been be­fore. She fin­ished that at­tempt, then stopped, let­ting her hand and chan­nels rest.

Since she had the qi and aether to spare, she start­ed on her oth­er hand, but didn't quite get through two full cy­cles. Her left hand, strange­ly, burned more and took less qi to reach ca­pac­i­ty, though she still didn't have enough.

{ The dom­i­nant hand is of­ten bet­ter ex­er­cised, } Kuli replied to her men­tal ques­tion. { It is true of both mus­cles and qi. If you train your off hand, it will be­come equal to the oth­er, but most peo­ple do not try to bring the two into bal­ance. }

Ki'el con­sid­ered it, and de­cid­ed that at least in qi, if not in mus­cles, she could see no rea­son to have her left hand be less­er. So she be­gan to work at it, us­ing her right-hand aether cy­cles with her left hand, de­spite Sobon's protest when she was first learn­ing, that she should make sure that she did not con­fuse the two en­er­gies. She could see that was true, and so when she man­i­fest­ed her right thorn in her left hand, she let it come to the back of her hand in­stead of the palm, and chan­neled the en­er­gy dif­fer­ent­ly. If she had a rea­son to use sin­is­ter aether with her right hand, she de­cid­ed, she would do the same.

The days af­ter she start­ed prac­tic­ing this... ac­clima­ti­za­tion, Ki'el be­gan to feel more and more ir­ri­ta­ble, her hands tired more of­ten and faster, but she pushed through it. Kuli had not led her wrong, and was not in­ter­rupt­ing her cur­rent method. She had to trust that this would all take her where she want­ed to go. But... the ir­ri­ta­tion only made her more sus­pi­cious of Sis­ter Wu's fre­quent ap­pear­ance.

So Ki'el de­cid­ed, when she had the time, that it was time for her to be­gin in­ves­ti­gat­ing that woman, since she was clear­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by her.