The damp cold of the limestone fissure settled into the seams of Pei Jing’s clothes. But his skin remained dry, streaming a steady, fever-warm heat.
His legs were crossed in the lotus stance, his knees locked firmly against the flat slate floor. His palms rested upturned upon his thighs, wrists limp, elbows tucked exactly four finger-widths from his ribs. This was the stance of the Turtle Breathing technique sharpened during his mortal Viscera Refinement years. A stance engineered to lower body-energy consumption by seventy percent while expanding the chest cavity to its maximum clockwork volume.
Before him, the bamboo scroll lay open, its painted spirit vein channels lit up by the pale glowing lichen overhead.
Pei Jing closed his eyes and began his first deliberate breath flow cycle.
In traditional training manuals, beginners were instructed to “empty the mind” and “wait for the sky grace of Heaven to guide the spirit.” Sect masters spoke of ephemeral epiphanies, poetic enlightenment, and letting the soul wander like a leaf on an autumn stream.
To Pei Jing, such advice was the mystical equivalent of bad bookkeeping. An excuse for an unmonitored production process.
Energy didn’t wander. Energy followed pressure gradients, conductance pathways, and heat-powered pushback.
