Wen's hand on his elbow was a steady, unassuming guide. She did not pull or hurry him. Her steps were measured, her presence a calm warmth against the cool night air. The path underfoot changed from soft earth to smooth, fitted stones that clicked gently as they walked.
"You sense the village layout?" Wen asked, her voice conversational.
Li Ming focused. Beyond the immediate sounds, their footsteps, the distant frogs, the sigh of wind through reeds, he began to map a broader space through echoes. The lake was a vast, flat presence to their right, muting sound. To the left and ahead, structures rose, breaking the wind and creating pockets of softer noise: the rustle of a cloth banner, the creak of a well pulley, the faint snuffle of an animal in a pen.
"Houses," he said slowly. "To the left. Smaller ones, close together. A larger building ahead, with an open space before it. The ground slopes up behind it."
Wen made a soft sound of approval. "Good. You use what you have. Many who come here are so dazzled by the lake's clarity they forget to listen to the land. I am taking you to the Longhouse. It is where we gather, where we eat, where stories are shared. The others are curious."
The murmur of voices grew clearer. There was no shouting, no loud laughter. The tones were low, thoughtful, sometimes punctuated by quiet chuckles. It was the sound of people who had left loudness behind.
They stepped off the stone path onto what felt like hard-packed earth. The space opened up; the lake-scent was joined by woodsmoke and the rich aroma of stew. The voices quieted as they approached.
"Wen returns," a man's voice, deep and gravelly, announced. "And she brings the river's latest gift."
"Peace, Tao," Wen said, her tone fond but firm. "His name is Li Ming. He will be staying among us for a time."
A gentle ripple of welcomes flowed toward him. "Be at ease, Li Ming." "Welcome to the still water." There was no rush, no barrage of questions. It was a quiet acceptance.
"Sit," Wen said, guiding him to what felt like a long, low bench around a central hearth. The heat from the fire was a welcome blanket. She placed a warm, smooth bowl in his hands. "Eat. Then, if you wish, you may listen. Or speak. There is no obligation here but respect."
The stew was different from Lao Jiang's, lighter, filled with wild greens, mushrooms, and a tender, flaky fish. It tasted of the lake and the forest. As he ate, he listened to the village.
He learned their names from their conversations. Tao, the deep-voiced man, was a woodcarver. He spoke of the spirit in a piece of cedar. An younger woman named Meilin was a gardener who could understand what a plant needed from the slightest change in the feel of its leaves. An old man, Fen, hummed constantly, tuning musical instruments by the resonance in his bones.
They were all… sensitive. Not in the martial sense. They felt the world in subtler ways, textures, resonances, moods of the weather, whispers of growth and decay. They were people whose deepest skills were useless on a battlefield but invaluable in creating a harmonious, hidden life.
They were also, he realized, people who had been wounded by the noisy, brutal world outside. He heard it in the spaces between their words, in the careful way they avoided certain topics. They were exiles of a gentler kind.
When he finished his bowl, a comfortable silence had fallen, broken only by the crackle of the fire.
"You are the Keeper of the Azure Archives," Tao stated. It wasn't a question. "Lao Jiang's message came ahead on the wind. The fisherman has few friends, but we are among them."
All pretense was gone. The gentle atmosphere remained, but the focus sharpened.
"I am," Li Ming admitted. There was no point in hiding it here.
"And the ghosts you carry?" Meilin asked. Her voice was like rustling leaves. "They are… restless. I can feel them shifting. A stubborn mountain, a bitter silk, a quiet pond, and a sad, stumbling drunk."
Li Ming's breath caught. Her perception was terrifyingly precise.
"She has the Touch," Lady Silken Death whispered, intrigued. "A minor, natural talent for soul-sensing. How… charming"
"…tell her the drunk is thirsty…"
"Be still."
"They are the echoes of the styles in the Archive," Li Ming explained. "They speak to me."
"They are using you," Fen the tuner hummed, his voice resonant. "Borrowing your meridians, your spirit, to remember what it was like to be alive. It is a heavy burden for one so young."
"I have no choice," Li Ming said, a flicker of the old desperation returning.
"There is always a choice," Wen said softly, settling beside him. "Even if it is only the choice of how to bear the burden. Here, we may be able to teach you that. Not how to fight like them, but how to listen without being swept away. How to be the lake, not the river."
"The lake?"
"Mirror Lake is still," Tao rumbled. "Its surface, when calm, reflects perfectly. It does not argue with the sky. It does not try to hold onto the bird that flies over it. It simply is. Your spirit is a river in flood after a storm, all churn and debris. We can teach you stillness."
A wave of longing so sharp it hurt washed through Li Ming. Stillness. That was what he had loved about the Archives. But now he was the Archives, and they were anything but still.
"How?" he asked, the word raw with hope.
"Tomorrow," Wen said. "For now, rest. Fen, will you show him to the empty hut by the reed bed?"
The old tuner stood, his joints popping. "Come, river-boy. Let's see if you can hear the difference between a house that is content and one that is lonely."
Fen's hut was a small, circular building made of woven reeds and clay. As soon as Li Ming stepped inside, he understood. The space had a resonant, warm hum. It felt settled.
"I tuned it," Fen said simply. "Like an instrument. The walls, the floor, the air within. It is in harmony with itself. It will help calm the discord you carry. Sleep. The lake guards its own."
Fen left, and Li Ming was alone. He lay on a pallet of sweet-smelling grasses, wrapped in a rough wool blanket. The gentle, harmonic hum of the hut was a touching presence, a soft blanket of sound that seemed to press against the chaotic whispers in his mind. The ghosts grew quiet, soothed by the pervasive resonance.
For the first time since Master An's death, Li Ming fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
He was woken not by noise, but by a change in the light on his eyelids and a new, fragrant scent, steaming grain and herbs. Wen was outside his hut.
"The day begins gently here," she said. "Come. We start with the water."
She led him not to the Longhouse, but down to the very shore of Mirror Lake. The morning air was crisp, the water's surface so still its lapping was the softest of whispers.
"Sit," she instructed, guiding him to a flat stone at the water's edge. "Place your hands on the surface. Not in it. On it."
Li Ming knelt and did so. The water was shockingly cold, a perfect, smooth plane.
"Now, close your eyes you do not use, and listen. Not with your ears. With your spirit. Feel the vast, quiet weight of the water. Feel its perfect patience. It has seen empires rise and fall and has not stirred. Your ghosts are storms. You must learn to be deeper than their weather."
He tried. He felt the cold. He felt the slight tremor of the lake's vast, silent life below. But his own inner world was too loud, the aftermath of fear, the strangeness, the subtle pressures of the four main ghosts watching this lesson with keen interest.
"I can't," he said, frustrated.
"You are trying to make yourself still," said a new voice. It was Meilin, the gardener. She had approached silently. "That is like trying to smooth the waves by slapping the water. You must find the stillness that already exists underneath. Here." She placed something in his hands. It was a smooth, heavy, cool stone. "This stone came from the deepest bed of the lake. Hold it. Feel its silence. It has never been in a hurry. It has never been afraid. Let its stillness be an anchor for yours."
Li Ming clutched the lake stone. It was just a rock. But as he held it, feeling its solid, timeless weight, he imagined it lying in the dark, cold mud for centuries, undisturbed. A tiny point of absolute calm.
He used that point as a focus. He let the churning of his spirit flow around it, as water flows around a stone in a stream. He stopped fighting the ghosts' presence; he simply let them be, acknowledging them as one acknowledges wind or rain.
Slowly, the chaos within him began to settle. The lake's immense, quiet presence seemed to seep up through the stone, through his hands, into his core.
"Ehm", Bai grunted. "This… is not unpleasant."
"…quieter than a dry tavern at dawn…"
A sense of approval flowed from the Silent Abbot.
For a long time, there was only the cold stone, the colder water beneath his palms, and the expanding sense of inner quiet.
"Good," Wen murmured. "You have found the anchor. Remember this feeling. This is the foundation. Now, we build."
His training at Mirror Lake had begun. It was not cultivation he knew. It was cultivation in the oldest sense, tending, refining, making fit for purpose.
Over the next days, each villager taught him a facet of their quiet art.
Tao the woodcarver had him hold different pieces of wood. "Feel the song of this pine, quick, bright, anxious. Now this oak, slow, deep, stubborn. Your ghosts are like these. You must feel their grain before you can work with them, or you will split them, and yourself."
Meilin taught him to sense spiritual "weather." She placed him in her garden. "Feel the contentment of the well-watered herb. The slight thirst of the seedling. The grief of the blighted vine. Your ghosts have weather too, storms of anger, frosts of sorrow, dry winds of bitterness. You must sense the change before it overwhelms you."
Fen's lessons were the hardest. He taught resonance. He would hum a note and have Li Ming feel how the hut, his own body, even the ghosts within him, vibrated in response. "Discord causes friction. Friction causes pain. You must find the notes that bring their chaotic songs into a tolerable harmony, even if it is a sad one."
It was exhausting, subtle work. He was not learning to punch or kick or channel qi. He was learning to be a diplomat, a tuner, a gardener for a haunted garden inside his own soul.
One evening, a week after his arrival, he sat with Wen by the lake. He held his anchor stone, his spirit relatively calm.
"You make progress," she said. "But stillness in safety is easy. The test comes when the wind blows again. And it will blow, Li Ming. The Stone-Serpents do not forget. The world of strength and strife has a gravity. It will pull at you. Your ghosts will clamor for action, not peace."
As if summoned by her words, a new sensation pricked at the edge of his awareness. Not the peaceful lake, nor the quiet village.
It was a sharp, metallic, hungry pull. Different from the melancholy tug of the dying Drunken God. This was aggressive. Desperate. It came from far away, to the north-west. And it was aimed not at the world, but directly at him. At the Archive he carried.
He gasped, his hard-won stillness shattering.
"What is it?" Wen asked, alert.
"A… call. Another style. But it's not dying. It's… trapped. And it's screaming."