“Should Flee wait outside, Master?” Flee asked with a smile.Ren and Ash looked at me seriously too.“Liuxiang is inside, so once she’s done talking with—” As I was saying that, the door opened.Liuxiang popping out and looking at me with curiosity. “Yuan, I sensed your presence, but what brings you here to—” She looked back into the room at the Shie Matriarch, who had a hollow gaze as she stared at the ceiling. Even though Liuxiang didn’t finish her words, I understood what she was asking.“I need to have a private conversation with the Shie Matriarch.”Liuxiang blinked in surprise. “With the Matriarch?” Liuxiang suddenly looked quite nervous. She closed the door behind her and leaned toward me, whispering, “She is in a quite sensitive mental state these days. That’s why I’ve been accompanying her and trying to spend as much time as I can. Can you try to be gentle, if possible?”I nodded. “Of course I’ll be gentle. The Shie Matriarch may not be someone I knew too well, but she’s stil

Her mouth pressed flat in thought. I could almost see her old self weighing options. Old habits of planning were not gone.“Perhaps I am not empathizing enough with your position,” I said. “Perhaps I am assuming too much about my own tolerance, but I think I would like to survive, no matter what, if it meant I could spend more time with my loved ones. Even if the world is inconvenient and the food is worse without cultivation and the stairs are hard. Even if I was in your position.”“Hnh,” she said. “The stairs are very hard.”“Then you see my point. Even if I fail, Matriarch Shie, wouldn’t it be better for you to survive and spend some time with Liuxiang? Spend some time with the old man and Granny Lang? Even though your lot might not be the best, just… live? Is life truly so worthless?”Her gaze dropped to her hands. She flexed them once. “You’ll be sacrificing yourself,” she stated.“Yes.”“Is there no other way?”“There might be, I don’t know yet. Can you think of any ways to take

Liuxiang watched as Yuan walked out of the room, flashing a smile at her before he left with his pets. She paced anxiously in front of the door, wondering what Yuan’d talked about with Matriarch Shie. She knew him. She knew it probably wouldn’t have been anything negative. But Matriarch Shie’s state had already been volatile—who knew how she reacted? Still, his expression would’ve been more conflicted if it had been something negative, right? So surely it should have been something positive.She took a deep breath and opened the door, only to find Matriarch Shie sitting up in bed, staring out of the window at the village moving outside with people doing their tasks. When she saw Liuxiang enter, Matriarch Shie flashed such a gentle smile that Liuxiang’s breath was stolen for a second.“Sit, Liuxiang. Sit.”Liuxiang gulped but obeyed, sitting on the stool. She didn’t know how she felt about this lady. Even now, Zhi Zhu protested.Don’t waste your time, Liuxiang, it said. You didn’t like

Sound filled the workshop and bounced off brick, wood, and clay. We had cleared three benches to lay everything out but the room still felt crowded. Baskets of dried leaves sat stacked by size on the floor, the stems bundled tight with thread so the grades wouldn’t mix.Two mortar sets rested near the window where the light was strongest at this hour. The pill furnace hissed softly as it released the last of its heat, a thin ribbon of steam rising from the exhaust valve.The vent crystals in the ceiling pulsed, shifting from bright to dull as they balanced the air. On the nearest table, nine fresh pills cooled on a lacquered tray, each one the pale green of new shoots with darker veins running through their centers. The smell coming off them was sharp and clean, like crushed leaf and wet soil after rain, only stronger, enough that it tickled the back of the throat.Old Man didn’t move right away. He bent over until his breath fogged the tray’s cover, then lifted the lid with practiced

I cleaned the table. Yin set the small cauldron on the steady plate. I took a leaf sliver with tweezers and held it against the light. The treatment had left it flat and matte. I rested it on the etching pad and took up the fine needle.“Route mark v0,” I said, more to the log than to Yin. “Three steps. We keep the lines short and straight. No curls.”I scratched three small rings with breaks at the top. I added one notch on the first, two on the second, three on the third. Stillness, separation, purification. I paused and checked the depth. Too deep and it would crack the sliver during rolling. Too shallow and the mark would not hold its path.“Depth?” Yin asked.“Hair-thin,” I said. “No more.”I etched nine more slivers, checking each one with a finger tap to make sure it did not bend or split.“Base mix,” I said. “Six parts base, two parts binder, one part refill, one part temper shell.”I measured with the small scoop, leveled each scoop with a straight edge, and wrote the ratios