"Who taught you that method?" she asked.
"You already know who taught me," Han Jiu said.
"Say it out loud. I want to hear if it sounds as stupid as it feels."
"You did. Two days ago. On that bed."
"The Deepwinter Canon." Her hand was still pressed flat on the bed frame. "Coldpeak’s Deepwinter Canon. Every elder above the fourth peak has practised it himself, because it’s the method they give to cold-attribute disciples. Because it belongs to them."
Han Jiu understood a second later.
"If I show forty, Coldpeak takes me."
"Coldpeak takes everyone who shows forty. That’s how it works. They get first pick, because they’re the closest and the biggest, and the other two sects get whoever’s left." She let go of the bed frame. "So you go up that mountain as an outer disciple. And one morning, during your first year, an elder walks past you in a hallway while you’re moving your Qi. And he stops, because he recognises it."
"And then it’s Transmission."
"Then it’s Transmission for me. And for you, whatever they do to a Han boy who shows up using a stolen sect method." She sat down on the edge of the bed. "For two days, I’ve been teaching you the one method in the whole world that will get us both killed the moment it works."
Han Jiu leaned his head back against the wall.
"Then we stop," he said.
"Then you show thirty-two at the most, you’re back to sweeping this room in a month, and my uncle writes his letter anyway." She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. "Don’t do that. Don’t offer to throw the whole thing away the moment it gets hard. It isn’t generous. It’s just giving up quickly."
"That’s not fair."
"It’s completely fair. Now be quiet and let me think."
She stayed quiet for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. Han Jiu lay on the floor with his arms crossed over his chest and listened to the sounds of the compound outside.
Someone was chopping wood near the kitchens. The Yun cultivators came back from wherever they went in the mornings and argued about somebody’s horse. A servant walked past the door twice without stopping.
"What’s your spirit root?" she asked.
He opened his eyes.
"You know what it is."
"I want to hear you say it."
"Dross-rank." He had said it at every assessment since he was fourteen, and it came out flat. "It’s the lowest kind there is. It takes in as much as anybody else’s root, but it only keeps about half. The rest leaks out through my skin and does nothing."
"So everything costs you twice as much."
"Everything costs me twice as much."
"Then tell me the numbers. From the fourth stage up."
He didn’t have to think about it. Every boy in the valley knew what each stage cost, the same way they knew the price of rice. Han Jiu knew it better than most. He had spent four years working out how many days of cutting frost moss each stage would take.
"For a normal root, the first three stages are almost free," he said. "They just take the Qi in the air, and time. If you put a boy in a clean room, he’ll reach the third stage all by himself. After that, the fourth stage costs a hundred stones. The fifth costs two hundred. The sixth is four hundred, the seventh is eight hundred, the eighth is sixteen hundred, and the ninth is thirty-two hundred. The cost doubles at every stage, all the way to the top."
"What’s the total?"
"About six thousand three hundred stones, from the bottom of Qi Gathering to the top. That’s what it costs to raise one ordinary disciple to the ninth stage. And that’s before anyone buys him a pill to get into Body Tempering."
"And for you?"
"Twelve thousand six hundred."
Yun Qingshuang nodded. He could tell she had already done the same maths herself. She had only wanted to hear him say it.
"And for me," she said, "it’s five times as much. The number they wrote down was a hundred and fifty thousand stones to raise me to the Foundation realm. And the assessor showed my father that the same money could raise five other people instead."
"I remember."
"So tell me. What does Coldpeak do when a nineteen-year-old with a Dross root walks up to their stele and shows forty bulls?"
Han Jiu started to answer.
Then he stopped. He lay there on the storeroom floor, and he started to laugh.
"They don’t take me."
"They don’t take you." Her shoulders relaxed. "This is the sect that looked at a girl who showed a tiger at sixteen, added up what she’d cost, and decided she wasn’t worth it. They keep careful records of every stone. That’s how they think about everything. If you walk up there with a Dross root, they’ll work out that you’ll cost twice as much for the rest of your life. So they’ll pass. They’ll be very polite about it. And they’ll take the farm boy behind you, who showed forty-one with a Mortal-rank root."
"And the other two sects?"
"Ironrain and Whitegrass only take two people from the Six Valleys, even in a good year. They’re small and hungry, and they can’t afford to be picky." She shrugged. "Whitegrass is mostly about alchemy. They’d take a boy with a cold-attribute body and a bad root, and put him to work in a pill hall for six years. What they really want is workers. And they’ll feed you the whole time you’re there."
Han Jiu stopped laughing.
"So the plan is that I’m not worth taking."
"The plan is that you’re not worth taking." She sounded a little annoyed about it. "Don’t enjoy that too much. It only works if you get the number exactly right."
"Forty."
"Forty. And not one bull more than forty-four." She held up a hand before he could say anything. "Here’s the part you’re going to hate. Their records only protect you as long as you look like an ordinary boy with a bad root. If you show them sixty, you stop being ordinary. You become interesting. Then some elder decides that a Dross root showing sixty bulls is worth a closer look. He comes over and stands right next to you while your Qi is still showing. And then we’re right back where we started."
"Good enough to pass. Boring enough to skip."
"Exactly good enough. You get one try, in front of three hundred people who’ve watched you show two bulls every year since you were fourteen." She lay back on the bed. "It’s a harder problem than the one you had this morning. The fifth stage costs you four hundred stones, and the sixth costs you eight hundred. That’s twelve hundred together. Each of those pills is worth two hundred to a normal root, so it’s worth a hundred to you. That means twelve pills."
"I have thirteen."
"Then that’s all of them. Twelve pills will get you to the sixth stage. You’ll never be able to afford the seventh stage in this lifetime, so the sixth stage is what you’ll be standing there with." She turned her head to look at him. "That’s thirty-two. Four folds of the Canon is about half of a doubling, so call it forty-eight."
"That’s four over the line you just gave me."
"So on the day, you use three folds instead of four. That’s forty-two, and you’ll look like a boy who only just scraped in." She said it like it was obvious. To her, it probably was. "Holding back one fold is easier than finding an extra one."
"And the noise?"
Neither of them had an answer for that yet. The fourth stage had needed ten pieces of frostmarrow and had turned the whole room white. The fifth stage would be louder, and the sixth would be louder still. He didn’t have enough frostmarrow to hide both of them without turning the ninth branch’s room into something the fourteen Yun cultivators would come and stare at.
"Go up to the frost pools," she said.
He sat up.
"The frost pools are the top of a cold vein. The vein has been leaking for six hundred years. That’s why the water there is so cold, and why the moss is worth anything at all." She leaned forward. "The Qi in the air up there is always loud. If a man breaks through at the edge of a spirit vein, it just sounds like the spirit vein."
"That’s an hour’s walk up the north track."
"Then go early in the morning and come back at dusk. And don’t do both breakthroughs on the same day." She paused. "I’m not coming with you."
"I didn’t ask you to."
"You were about to. If the Yun daughter and the Han husband both leave this compound before dawn and come back after dark, my uncle will have something to write down before you even reach the pine trees. So I’ll stay here where people can see me, and you’ll go be a man who likes to go for walks."
...
He went up to the pools twice.
The first time was four days later, when his hands could finally close well enough to hold a rope. He sat above the highest of the six black pools with his back against the rock, and he swallowed four pills, one after another.
The cold rose up out of the water the whole time. By the fourth pill, he couldn’t feel the stone under him. The Qi in his chest felt heavy, slow, and crowded. Then his limit broke. It was so loud that two crows flew off the ridge, cawing angrily at him.
Nobody came. The spirit vein kept humming quietly underneath him, the way it always had.
Qi Gathering, fifth stage.
He moved his Qi, alone on a freezing mountainside with nobody else for two miles around, and one iron bull rose above his head. Just one, dark and slow and heavy.
He made it disappear, and walked home.
The second time was six days later. Eight pills were more than his body wanted to handle. It took him most of the afternoon. At one point, the cold got into his chest and wouldn’t leave. He sat there with his teeth clenched and the taste of the mine in the back of his mouth, and he honestly thought he might have killed himself over an assessment.
Then the cold turned, went where it was supposed to go, and settled.
Qi Gathering, sixth stage.
Two iron bulls. Thirty-two.
Fourteen days ago, he had stood in a courtyard wearing his dead cousin’s old robes and shown two black bulls, and three hundred people had sighed at him.
He stayed up there until the light started to fade. He wanted to keep looking at his bulls, and there was nowhere else he could.
He had one pill left in his inventory, next to two hundred and ninety pieces of frostmarrow that he still couldn’t spend.
There were sixteen days left until the assessment.
He let the bulls fade and started back down the track.
From the top of the last hill, he could see the storeroom. There was light coming from it. Nobody had lit a lamp in the ninth branch’s room since his parents died.
The door was open. Two Yun cultivators were waiting in the courtyard outside. They weren’t doing anything. They were just standing there, the way men stand when they’ve been told exactly where to wait.
Han Jiu walked down the path at the same speed he had walked up it.
Yun Qingshuang was standing against the far wall. Her sword was still leaning by the door. She hadn’t reached for it, and that told him more than the lamp did.
In the middle of the room, on the only stool the ninth branch owned, sat Elder Yun Hai, holding a cup of someone else’s tea.
"Ah," he said. "The man who likes to walk is back."
He put the cup down on the floor.
"Sit down, nephew-in-law. I’d like to hear about the northernmost mine shaft."