The silence Lao demanded was not the absence of sound, but a different way of hearing. At first, Li failed miserably. He sat on the cold, damp moss of the boulder, the jade a familiar weight in his lap, and tried to force his mind to be empty. It was like trying to hold water in his fists. The memories rushed in to fill the void.
The crackle of the fire became the roar of his burning home. The rhythmic thwack of Lao's adze became the soldier's footsteps in the mist. The roar of the river was the collective scream of his people. He flinched with each sound, his body tense, his jaw clenched so tight it ached. He was a bowstring drawn too tight, humming with a tension that threatened to snap him.
He opened his eyes, frustrated. "I can't," he said, his voice rough. "The sounds… they are all ghosts."
Lao did not pause in his work. He spoke without looking up, his voice blending with the sounds of the forest. "You are fighting the river. You are trying to stand in its current and command it to stop. You will drown." He set down his tool and finally looked at Li. "You do not command the sound. You do not block it out. You let it pass through you. You are the stone in the river, worn smooth by the water, but unmoved at your core."
He picked up a rough, unshaped block of wood from a pile nearby. It was gnarled, full of knots and twisted grain. "This was once a tree, fighting for light, twisted by wind. It holds the memory of its struggle in its shape." He then gestured to the graceful, curved hull of the canoe. "This is what it can become when one listens to the true shape within, when the struggle is smoothed away. You, Li, are full of knots. Your grief, your rage, your guilt—these are the twists in your grain. You must find the still center, the uncarved block at your core, before you can ever hope to wield the Heart of the Mountain. Otherwise, its power will only amplify your chaos, and it will shatter you."
The words struck a deep chord. The uncarved block. It was what his father had tried to teach him with the jade polishing. It was what had saved him from the forest cat. It was not a lack of feeling, but a state of being so fundamentally solid that feeling could not break it.
He closed his eyes again. This time, he did not try to silence the ghosts. He let them come. The image of his father's face, smiling. The smell of his mother's cooking. The heat of the flames. The cold of the shale in his hand. He let the memories flow through him like water, acknowledging their presence but refusing to be swept away by their current. He focused on the solidity of the rock beneath him, the weight of the jade on his legs.
He stopped listening to the river and started listening with it. He let its immense, timeless roar become the foundation of his awareness. The other sounds—the adze, the fire, Mei's soft breathing as she watched—became smaller currents within that great flow. He was not the river, and he was not fighting it. He was the stone in its bed, and the sounds were the water washing over him.
Slowly, imperceptibly at first, the tension began to leak from his shoulders. His clenched fists relaxed. The frantic hammering of his heart settled into a slower, deeper rhythm. He wasn't empty. The grief and the rage were still there, but they were no longer screaming. They were quiet, deep pools in the center of his being. He had found a place to put them.
He didn't know how long he sat there. Time lost its meaning, measured only in breaths and the steady progress of Lao's work. When he finally opened his eyes, the light had changed, softening into the gold of late afternoon. The world looked different. The colors seemed richer, the edges less sharp. The roar of the river was no longer a threat, but a constant, comforting presence.
Lao was watching him, a faint glimmer of approval in his deep-set eyes. "Better," he said simply. "The block begins to show itself."
He stood and walked over, not to Li, but to Mei. "Your turn."
Mei, who had been sitting quietly, weaving a strand of grass into a complex knot, looked up, startled. "Me? But I'm not… I don't have the jade."
"The jade is a focus, not the source," Lao said. "The power it channels is in the world, and in you. Your strength is different from his. His is the stillness of the mountain. Yours…" He plucked the half-finished knot from her hands. "…is the cleverness of the knot. The resilience of the reed that bends but does not break." He pointed to a different, smaller stone near the fire. "Sit. Listen. Not for the silence, but for the patterns. The language of the birds. The rhythm of the insects. Your mind is quick. Use it. Learn the grammar of this forest. It will protect you as surely as his stillness."
Mei, hesitant but intrigued, moved to the stone and sat, her expression turning from anxiety to focused curiosity as she tilted her head, listening to the chirps and clicks around them.
Li watched her, a strange sense of… rightness settling over him. This was not just his journey. It was theirs. And Lao was not just teaching him to harness power; he was teaching them both how to survive in this new world, by honing the natures they already possessed.
That evening, as they shared a stew Lao made from river plants and dried meat, the craftsman spoke again.
"The soldier," Lao said, stirring the pot. "He is a problem that will not solve itself. He is a hound on a scent, and he will eventually find this clearing."
A fresh knot of fear tightened in Li's stomach. "What do we do?"
"We do not wait for him to find us," Lao said, his voice calm. "We find him. Tomorrow, you will lead me to him."
Li nearly dropped his bowl. "Lead you to him? But… he's a trained warrior. He's killed… he's…"
"He is a man," Lao interrupted, his tone leaving no room for argument. "A man who is lost, frustrated, and far from his clan. You have faced him twice and survived. Once by luck and desperation, once by wit. The third time, you will face him with understanding." He looked at Li, his gaze intense. "The hunt is not always about the kill. Sometimes, the most skillful hunt is the one that ends without bloodshed. Sometimes, the predator must be shown he is not at the top of the chain."
Li looked down at his stew, his appetite gone. The thought of seeking out the soldier, of willingly walking back into that nightmare, filled him with a cold dread. But he looked at Mei, who was watching him with wide, trusting eyes, and then at Lao, whose calm seemed as unshakable as the mountains themselves.
He had chosen the path of the price. This was the first installment.
"I will lead you," Li said, his voice barely a whisper.
Lao gave a slow nod. "Good. Tonight, you rest. Both of you. Tomorrow, you take the next step. Not as prey, but as a hunter learning his craft."
That night, curled in a bed of soft ferns Lao had prepared for them under a lean-to, Li did not dream of fire or blood. He dreamed of a great, smooth river stone, sitting unmoved in a raging current, while all around it, the chaotic waters flowed harmlessly by.