A crisp morning breeze rustled through the courtyard maple trees as Kaelen Vance stepped onto the cedar veranda.
Dawn sunlight broke across the gray roof tiles, painting the wet flagstones in ribbons of pale gold.
Kaelen wore a thick, quilted cotton bathrobe lined with fleece, his feet comfortable inside sheepskin slippers. In his right hand, he held a steaming celadon cup of roasted barley tea, blowing gently across the dark liquid.
He leaned against the veranda railing, lifting one heel to stretch his calf with a slow, contented groan.
Nothing improves digestion like twenty minutes of stretching your calves while the kettle boils, Kaelen thought, feeling the pleasant pull in his tendons. If cultivators spent more time loosening their hamstrings and less time screaming about ancestral honor, their knees would last past forty.
Inside his chest, the final minutes of his sixty-minute Track 1 breakthrough stabilization window settled smoothly into his newly opened Jade Meridians. After the window closed, he held Track 1 for two hours and five minutes while Tracks 2 and 3 continued accumulating, then let the vessel counter build a fresh hour.
His baseline Qi circulation was five times faster than yesterday, purring with quiet warmth beneath his fleece robe.
