The broom was light in his hands.
That surprised him.
It was made of bundled straw, no different from the ones he had used years ago when he was still strong enough to keep a small yard in order. He remembered those mornings clearly—the ache in his shoulders after only a few minutes, the faint tremor that crept into his wrists.
None of that came.
He swept the stone path slowly, not because he needed to, but because the motion felt appropriate. The broom whispered softly against the ground, the sound steady and unbroken. Dust gathered, shifted, and vanished over the edge of the path.
His breathing followed the movement without effort.
In.
Out.
He did not focus on it. He did not try to control it. Yet each breath felt complete in a way he could not remember experiencing before—not deeper, not stronger, simply unburdened.
At some point, he realized he had stopped thinking altogether.
The realization came only after the fact, like noticing silence once a noise had faded. There had been no sudden calm, no moment of clarity. His thoughts had simply… thinned. The usual background murmur—concerns about his body, about time, about what remained undone—had receded without ceremony.
The courtyard felt unchanged.
The same wooden beams. The same open sky. Clouds drifting lazily past the mountain's edge. Yet standing there, broom resting lightly against the stone, he felt as though the space between things had widened.
He paused.
The attendant stood nearby, as he often did, watching without comment.
For a moment, the old man considered asking a question. He did not know what the question would be. Only that something about the moment invited speech.
He let it pass.
Sweeping resumed.
When the task was finished, he leaned the broom against the wall exactly where the attendant indicated. The placement felt important—not symbolically, but practically, as though disorder would be wasteful here.
They sat beneath the pavilion.
Tea was poured.
He lifted the cup with both hands, noticing again how steady they were. The liquid was clear, faint steam rising from its surface. When he drank, warmth spread gently through his chest, familiar now, expected. It did not linger as strongly as before. That felt right.
"You seem different," he said, surprising himself.
The attendant did not look up from the teapot. "Do I?"
"No," the old man corrected after a pause. "I do."
The attendant considered this. "Difference is easier to notice when pain is absent."
The old man nodded slowly.
That, at least, made sense.
Later, he walked the paths alone.
They curved gently along the mountainside, bordered by low stone walls and sparse growth. The air was thin but clean, carrying no sharpness. He walked longer than he intended, not out of determination, but because no signal arose to tell him to stop.
When he finally did, it was because the view demanded it.
He stood at the edge of a narrow overlook where the land fell away into layers of mist and distant peaks. The world beyond felt vast, but not overwhelming. He did not feel small before it.
He felt present.
A thought surfaced, quiet and unadorned:
So this is what remains when nothing presses.
The thought did not lead anywhere. It dissolved naturally, like breath leaving the lungs.
That night, he slept.
There were no dreams he could recall. No symbols, no wandering images. Only darkness and rest, seamless and deep.
When he woke, light filtered through the window at an unfamiliar angle. For a moment, he lay still, listening—not for anything in particular, but because listening felt appropriate.
His body answered without complaint.
He rose.
Outside, the courtyard waited as it always had.
Far beyond the mountain, unseen and unacknowledged, Lin Yuan's awareness rested lightly upon the domain. Nothing demanded attention. Nothing had crossed a threshold.
Something, however, had settled.
And for now, that was enough.
End of Chapter 5