Qinghe laid Hanlo’s handout beside the complete Nine-Death Blood Ignition copy from Gu’s archive. Jin Rui and Fenna sat at the study table, their hands still unsteady but no longer shaking as hard. Jessa remained in the clinic room with them, ready to take them back if either pulse worsened. Tessa prepared colored ink and a blank warning sheet.
Gu read the handout from top to bottom, then opened the archived copy to the corresponding passage. The sold sheet ended after the surge. The complete text continued with a recovery circulation that returned qi to its resting path.
“This may have been copied from a military exercise page,” Gu said. “It is a portion, not the teaching manual.”
“Was the original meant for soldiers?” Qinghe asked.
“It appears so, but the page alone cannot establish who wrote Hanlo’s version or what source he used.” Gu kept one finger on the archive copy. “The missing recovery explains the students’ symptoms. It does not make the complete art safe for ordinary practitioners.”
Qinghe drew the two sequences on separate sheets. She marked the place where the handout stopped with a line of red ink, then the recovery path from the archive in blue. She did not join them as a single instruction. The students needed to see the missing step without being given a copy to practice.
