Elder Vhōl took another short step toward the entrance arch, his ink-stained hand rising in the air as if to pull the chin of the wild-maple mask closer for a better look.
Lī'ya shoved herself in front. Her ears flattened back and she slapped the master's wrinkled wrist.
"Hands off, old man!" she hissed, spreading her small arms to cover Zhì Yuǎn's chest. "Have you gone senile?! Never touch my man's mask!"
Vhōl withdrew his arm with a low grumble, but his small eyes stayed narrowed, peering over Lī'ya's shoulder at the dark creases of the wood where the light from the hall's grooves bent without returning any reflection.
"I've been teaching you since your tail didn't have two palms of fur, girl," the old man retorted, tapping the tip of the bone compass against his palm. "Last month you still let the second concealment weave slip every time you tried to hide a sap stone. How did you close this third weave on the edge without cracking the wood?"
Lī'ya's neck turned red all the way to the roots of her red hair. For an instant her eyes flicked to the living-wood floor—remembering the silent haste in the middle of the night when she had carved line by line in the dark of the room.
Then she lifted her chin.
"Isn't it obvious?" she declared, crossing her arms over the bark sheets she still held. "In your lessons you make me use a dispersal clasp, and that clasp is too loose. I got tired of watching the line leak, so I pinned the tip of the third weave with an inverted containment lock."
The bone compass stopped in the air.
Vhōl's white ears rose slowly atop his head. The old man's mouth opened a thin line beneath the sparse before he let out a raspy breath.
"A containment lock on an illusion formation…" Vhōl murmured, shaking his head as he measured Zhì Yuǎn's mask once more. "If you had missed the pressure by a hair, the tension would have burst in this boy's face and torn his nose clean off."
"But it didn't burst!" Lī'ya shot back, her tail beginning to wag behind her skirt with a satisfaction she made no effort to hide. "It held even against that brute's probing just now without losing a drop of strength!"
Vhōl narrowed his eyes at his student for a moment, splitting his gaze between the pride on her face and the silent man standing just behind her. In the end the old man shrugged and turned his back, walking with dragging steps to the three low pillars in the center of the circular hall.
"Very well," the Elder grumbled, pointing the compass at the bark plaques scattered across the central workbench. "Since your hand has grown so sharp overnight when it comes to hiding your mate, come here and close the distribution of the middle pillar. For four days the sap of the eastern vein has been striking the lower joint with too much pressure and cracking the preparation matrices of the dome."
Lī'ya rolled her emerald eyes, but before going to the pillars she turned to Zhì Yuǎn and tugged his sleeve two steps into the room, pointing at a low polished-root bench near the wall.
"Sit there and rest your legs," she said, switching the sharp tone she had used with the old man for a milder voice. "And don't step on the lit grooves in the floor, all right? I'll sort out the mess Master Vhōl couldn't manage on his own."
"I heard that, insolent brat!" Vhōl barked from the middle of the hall, tapping the compass on the plaque. "It wasn't me who left the diversion half-finished last week so I could lock myself in the room doing who-knows-what!"
Zhì Yuǎn did not sit. He simply walked along the clean contour of the wall and stopped three steps from the pillars, crossing his arms over the raw-cotton tunic. With each step the lines of light beneath the floor gave a slight oscillation under the weight of his boots, but Lī'ya was already rolling her sleeves to the elbows beside the workbench, tossing the sheets she had brought onto the old man's table.
"It's all drawn right here, see," she said, tapping a finger on the first sheet and casting a quick sideways glance to make sure Zhì Yuǎn was paying attention to her. "You insisted on splitting the eastern vein into four equal channels, but the wood on that side of the trunk is older and harder. Obviously the sap was going to pool at the curve."
Vhōl pulled the bark sheet closer, squinting at the strokes. He stayed silent for the time of two breaths, beard moving from side to side as he checked the proportions.
"Hm," the old man grunted, dropping the bark back on the table without conceding the point. "At least you remembered to compensate for the tilt of the northern root."
Lī'ya's ears rose and her tail gave a wide sweep through the air. She looked straight at Zhì Yuǎn's mask, chin lifted in a silent smile of I told you so, before clearing her throat and pretending seriousness.
"Of course I remembered," she murmured, tucking her hair behind her ear. "If it depended on your other disciples, half the matrices would already have cracked down the middle."
"Less talk and more Qi in the hand," Vhōl cut in, already picking up the jade chisel from the workbench and pointing at the central pillar. "The vein is already full. Help me settle the lid before more charge rises."
From the wall, Zhì Yuǎn watched the structure's workings through the slits of the wood. Unlike the matrices of the Middle Plane, which used spiritual stones or engraved metals to force Qi to obey a rigid geometry, the Sky-Tree's system worked with the living pulse of the wood itself. The grooves opened in the floor did not draw energy from the air. They dammed the thick flow rising from the tree's roots and folded it in layers inside the three low pillars.
"The left joint is releasing heat again, Lī'ya," Vhōl complained, tapping the bone of the compass on the base of the central pillar, where an orange glow was beginning to hiss beneath the bark. "Hold the diversion plate in place while I scrape the exit channel, or this garbage will spew the entire charge outward."
Lī'ya braced both hands on the dark wooden plate atop the pillar, releasing her own silver Qi in measured threads to contain the flow without crushing the carving.
The hiss increased. Under the recoil of the three main veins converging at a single point, the entire pillar vibrated. The sole of Lī'ya's boot dragged a finger backward on the smooth floor, forcing her to split the control of both hands so the lid would not burst in the middle.
"The side lock is rising, Master!" she warned, ears lowering as she held the exact measure of force so the bark would not crack. "Both my hands are stuck on the center, I need weight on the right corner or the plate will lift!"
Vhōl had the jade chisel driven into the open groove and could not release the tool without losing the stroke.
Without a word, Zhì Yuǎn took two steps forward, crouched beside the pillar, and laid the bare palm of his right hand directly on the corner of the containment plate.
"No!" Lī'ya's eyes widened, drawing breath to shout. "The charge will leak straight into your arm—"
The sentence died in her mouth.
Under Zhì Yuǎn's palm, the wooden plate that had been vibrating hard enough to jump from its seat settled in the same instant, pressed against the pillar as if a block of iron had descended on the corner.
Beneath the wood, however, the dammed energy of the Sky-Tree met an obstacle that would not yield. Unable to lift the plate, a fraction of that force escaped through the gap in the carving and struck full against the skin of Zhì Yuǎn's hand.
A hot thread climbed the bone of his forearm and struck the silent void at the center of his chest.
Deep in the dark, the immobile crust isolating his Dantian gave a single dull crack. For the span of one heartbeat the fingers of his right hand grew a thread lighter on the wood, before the dead weight settled once more as before.
Zhì Yuǎn kept his breathing even behind the mask, looking at his own hand while Vhōl scraped the last knot of the channel with the jade chisel and stepped back.
The orange hiss vanished. The light in the three pillars settled into a continuous flow, running clean through the roots of the floor.
Lī'ya released the plate and circled the pillar almost tripping on her own skirt. She seized Zhì Yuǎn's right wrist with both hands and turned his palm upward, searching for burned flesh or exposed bone.
The skin remained intact, without so much as a red mark where the containment gap had struck.
"How…" Lī'ya blinked, looking from the clean palm to the fox mask, before letting out a sigh and lightly bumping her forehead against his arm. "You stubborn thing! I told you to stay near the wall! If Master Vhōl had taken one more breath to open the channel, the recoil of this vein would have reduced your arm to ashes!"
Vhōl wiped the tip of the chisel on a dirty cloth, glancing sidelong at Zhì Yuǎn's hand and then at the joint of the pillar the human had held with his bare arm, without using a drop of Qi.
"For a man who does not cultivate, your physique is truly robust, boy," the Elder commented, rough voice carrying a dry curiosity. "Were you born with a special physique?"
"I handled heavy wood and stone before I collapsed in the forest, Elder," Zhì Yuǎn answered, withdrawing his hand slowly. "My joints have been hard for a long time."
Vhōl narrowed his worn eyes, shifting his gaze from Zhì Yuǎn's intact hand to the way Lī'ya continued holding the human's wrist with both hands, as if ready to bite anyone who came near.
The old man let out a rough breath through his nose, shaking his white head.
"Fifty years of snapping at half the world only to end up like a mongrel guarding a bone at the door of my workshop," Vhōl grumbled, turning his back on the two and bending once more over the diagrams.
"Who are you calling a mongrel, old man?" Lī'ya cut in, shouting. Her face burned and her tail stiffened in the air.
"Take your man out of here before you wear out the floor of my room from wagging that tail so much, girl. But don't think you've escaped the review of the dome matrices tomorrow morning," the Elder finished, no longer looking at them.
She huffed and closed her hand on Zhì Yuǎn's wrist, pulling him out of the root arch with hard steps.
The afternoon light entering through the high cracks of the trunk was already beginning to turn orange when the two left the smaller teleportation matrix and took the curved corridor carved into the living wood that led back to Lī'ya's quarters.
The walk back was quieter than the way there. Lī'ya went half a step ahead, hands clasped behind her back and tail swaying slowly, glancing sideways at Zhì Yuǎn's right arm every few steps.
"Your arm really isn't hurting?" she asked for the third time, slowing her pace as they followed the silent gallery. "Not even tingling inside?"
"No," Zhì Yuǎn answered. "In fact, the impact of that plate even made the weight on my back ease for an instant."
Lī'ya's ears rose. She stopped in the middle of the corridor and turned to face him, measuring him with furrowed brows.
"You're very strange, you know that?" she murmured. "You don't have a drop of Qi in your body, you weigh like a mountain, you withstand Léi Hǔ shouting in your face, and now you stick your bare hand on one of Vhōl's containment pillars like you're holding a pot lid. Seriously, even I, who am half a step from becoming Immortal, have trouble holding a rebound like that. What kind of tempering did you go through to end up with a body that hard?"
"In truth I worked coal mines," Zhì Yuǎn answered in the same flat tone as always.
Lī'ya kept staring at the mask for a moment, eyes half-closed.
"You always answer everything by halves," she complained, crossing her arms under her chest and tapping the tip of her boot on the floor. "You think I'm an idiot, don't you?"
Zhì Yuǎn did not retreat. He raised his right hand—the same one that had just held the pillar—and touched the tip of his index finger to the smooth white knuckles of her fingers, exactly where she had punched his arm earlier.
"If I thought you were an idiot, I wouldn't have let you speak for me in the plaza," he said, voice low and dry. "Nor would I have held that corner when you had both hands stuck on the center of the plate."
Lī'ya blinked, looking at his finger resting on her hand. The entire interrogation pose melted in an instant. She pulled her hand back against her chest, clearing her throat and turning her face aside while her ears lowered a little.
"Hm…" she murmured, already starting to walk down the corridor again to hide the flush in her cheeks. "Well, the plate wasn't going to escape anyway, it only rose because I couldn't risk breaking Vhōl's carving by manipulating ambient Qi."
"I imagine," Zhì Yuǎn said while laughing to himself, matching her pace. "But is the pressure in those pillars always that strong?"
"Today it was worse," Lī'ya grumbled, walking side by side with him again while kicking a splinter on the floor. "Every time the upper dome closes the halls for a meeting of the Five Hegemonies, my father has half the flow from the middle branches pulled to reinforce the barriers up there. Then it falls to me and Vhōl to hold the recoil in the joints down here so the courtyards of the inns don't crack."
She let out a short huff, crossing her arms behind her nape.
"At least now Vhōl has nothing left to complain about for today. I'll ask Hāi'na to heat the bath water and roast those sweet roots before it gets dark."
Reaching the end of the gallery's curve, Lī'ya quickened her step and pulled the mat door of the room open at once.
"Hāi'na, bring the large basin because today I'm—"
Lī'ya's voice cut off mid-sentence.
Her small body froze on the threshold. The two fluffy ears that had been raised atop her head lowered slowly until they stuck to her red hair, and her tail fell stiff between her heels.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped just behind her and looked over her shoulder into the room.
Hāi'na was not there.
The usual smell of bitter roots and dry grass in the room had been covered by the cold aroma of white flowers.
Seated on a cushion before the low workbench—two steps from the mat where Zhì Yuǎn had slept for the past month—a woman with a straight back blew the steam from a clay bowl. She had the same emerald-colored eyes as Lī'ya, but without any of her daughter's haste. Appearing little more than twenty, tall and voluptuous under the fitted silk, she wore pure white hair pinned high by a single black bone clasp, while nine long and immaculate tails rested folded on the smooth wooden floor beside the ceremonial skirt.
Without haste, the woman set the bowl on the workbench and raised her eyes to the daughter frozen in the doorway.
"I warned that taking in a stranger would cause talk, Lī'ya," her mother said, soft voice filling the small room. "But I confess I did not expect you would solve the problem by placing your own mark on him and making that little tiger lose face in the middle of the plaza."