The students stared. One of them whispered that the cut had been so fine that the leaf had split along veins too small for him to see.
Yan Cijin followed by lifting her hand. The breeze changed direction, sweeping across the terrace and gathering the loose petals that had fallen from a flowering tree nearby. They moved around her in a slow circle, one after another, forming a ring of pale color. Not a single petal was torn. When she lowered her hand, they drifted down in a neat pattern across the stone.
The beauty of the display did not make it less frightening. The disciples understood that if Yan Cijin had wished to turn that current of energy into an attack, the same control could have stripped weapons from a hundred opponents before any of them realized what had happened.
Bai Li stepped beside her wife. "You are showing off."
"You went first."
"I was teaching."
"So was I."
"You arranged petals."
"A lesson can be beautiful."
