Physician Han's training methods, Yuan discovered within the first hour, bore absolutely no resemblance to anything the novel had ever described in its handful of throwaway mentions of cultivation.
He'd half expected something dramatic — sword forms, glowing sigils, the kind of intense, sweat-drenched training montage that always seemed to precede a sudden leap in power in every story he'd ever half-remembered from his old life. What he got instead, at least on this first proper day, was considerably less cinematic and considerably more humbling.
"Sit," Han instructed, settling him cross-legged on a cushion in the small, private courtyard Jian had cleared for exactly this purpose, walled high enough on all sides that no curious servant would stumble across whatever this training actually looked like from the outside. "Close your eyes. Breathe. Slowly. Not the way you breathe when you're panicking, which I suspect is the only way you've breathed since I met you."
