Grandmother Liu invited Shen Qing for tea on the third morning.
Her house was small and clean. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling beams in bundles tied with hemp cord. A cat of indefinite age occupied the best chair. The chair had a cushion. The cat's position on the cushion suggested this arrangement was non-negotiable.
She poured tea. It was bad tea. Bitter, over-steeped, from leaves that were at least two seasons old. She poured it carefully, with both hands on the pot.
Shen Qing drank it.
"You won't tell me what's under the well," she said.
"I don't know what's under the well. That's the truth."
"But you know something is."
"Yes."
"And whatever it is, that's why you're here. And when you've finished your business, your people will leave and our village will still be here." She picked up her own cup. "That's how it works with cultivators. You come, you do your business, you leave. We stay."
She said it the way people state the weather. Shen Qing drank the rest of the tea.
"I will try to minimize disruption," he said.
Grandmother Liu looked at him. She said nothing. She poured more tea.
...
That afternoon, Shen Qing helped Old Wei repair a collapsed section of terrace wall.
The stones were heavy for a farmer. They weighed nothing to Foundation Establishment muscles. They worked without talking for an hour. Old Wei chose each stone by feel. He would pick one up, turn it in his hands, set it down, pick up another. He was looking for something in each stone that had nothing to do with size or shape. Some quality in the weight. Some rightness of fit.
Shen Qing lifted and placed each stone where the farmer pointed.
When they finished, Old Wei stepped back and examined the wall. He ran his hand along the top edge. He pressed one stone with his thumb. It held.
"Good work," he said. He was talking to the wall. Shen Qing understood it was meant for both of them.
...
Uncle Bao found him again at the evening meal.
Tonight the fish had been caught during a thunderstorm. Uncle Bao had been in his boat, alone, with the rain coming sideways and the river rising. The fish, he said, had surfaced from a depth where no fish should live. Its scales were the color of old bronze. Or maybe green. He could not remember which. Both.
"It pulled me downstream for half a mile," Uncle Bao said. His hands were apart by the width of a table. "I held on because my father told me: when the river gives you something, you don't let go."
"Did you catch it?" Shen Qing asked.
Uncle Bao looked at him with genuine surprise. "Catch it? It's still down there. I'm waiting for it to get bigger."
Jiang He, sitting nearby, made a sound that was trying not to be a laugh.
Nobody in the village corrected Uncle Bao. Nobody said the fish was smaller last time. Nobody said there was no thunderstorm. They had heard this story a hundred times. The fish grew every telling. The storm got worse. The river got wider. They listened the same way they listened to the same story every time, with faces that said they already knew every word and wanted to hear it again.
...
Desheng found Shen Qing after the meal.
The boy stood five feet away and watched him clean his sword. The watching lasted a long time. The boy's eyes moved from the blade to the cloth to Shen Qing's hands and back to the blade.
"Can I learn to be a cultivator?"
Shen Qing looked at him. The boy's eyes were steady. He was not asking to be polite.
"Come here."
Desheng stepped forward. Shen Qing placed two fingers on the boy's wrist and extended a thin probe along his spiritual channels. Standard test. The probe traveled down the arm, across the chest, through the core. He traced the primary channel points and found baseline mortal readings at every one. Clean. Empty.
He withdrew the probe.
"You don't have cultivation potential."
Desheng's face went flat. He nodded.
"Cultivators fight. Farmers feed the people who fight. Both are necessary."
The boy looked at the sword. He looked at Shen Qing's hands. He turned and walked away.
Twenty minutes later, Shen Qing heard rocks hitting the boulder. The impacts were getting louder.
...
Yun Xiao was sitting with the children near the well. She had been teaching Desheng to throw for two days now. A minor technique, a thread of spiritual energy channeled through the arm at release. Any trained cultivator could teach it. It required no aptitude, just timing.
Desheng's first enhanced throw had cracked a hillside boulder at fifty yards. His mouth had fallen open. Then he had grinned. Then he had gone to find a bigger rock.
Now Yun Xiao was showing the other children something simpler. A breathing exercise. Three children sat in a row with their eyes closed, breathing in through their noses, holding, breathing out. They were terrible at it. One kept giggling. Another fell over.
Yun Xiao was patient. She adjusted the giggling child's posture and started again.
Shen Qing watched from the window of the eastern house. The excavation report sat on his desk, unsigned.
...
Jiang He came to him that night.
"Tao asked about the circulation exercises. They're working. Mingzhu sleeps better. The morning sickness has eased."
"Good."
"He asked about a second set. For the later stages."
"You know them?"
"I learned them in second year at the academy. Standard supplementary module."
"Teach him."
Jiang He stood in the doorway a moment longer. He was looking at the square. Grandmother Liu was making her final rounds, checking doors that had no locks, calling goodnight to houses that were already dark.
"The excavation order," Jiang He said.
"I know."
"It's been three days."
"I know, Jiang He."
Jiang He looked at the square again. He looked at the desk where the unsigned report sat.
He left.
Shen Qing sat in the dark. Outside, the village settled into sleep. Grandmother Liu's door closed. Uncle Bao's snoring reached across three houses. A dog circled its place beside the communal hall steps, circled again, lay down.
Two hundred and three people. Every one of them a link in a chain that held something beneath the earth. Every kindness a lock. Every shared meal a bar on a cage.
They did not know. They were kind because they were kind. And their kindness kept something trapped.
He picked up the report. He put it down again.
In three days the senior team would arrive. They would decide. It would not be his decision then.
He told himself this. It helped for about ten minutes.