## CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT
### Two Weeks On The Plateau
They stayed on the plateau.
Not because they had to. Because the three seeded sections ahead were within the domain's range now and Jian Yu could read them from the plateau without traveling to them, which meant the window work could continue while the cost ran its course.
He reported what he read to Bing Xi every morning during the off hour. She cross-referenced with the Frostbite Edge's sensitivity. Li Shan received the data through the relay and ran the analysis.
Feng Luo arrived on the fifth day.
He came up the plateau's southern approach with his pack and the Flame Blade at his hip and the specific forward energy of someone who had been moving fast since receiving Jian Yu's relay message three days ago.
He took one look at Jian Yu's face and said: "Tempering stage breakthrough."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"The waking nightmares," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
Feng Luo looked at him for a moment.
Then he unpacked and made a fire that was slightly larger than necessary. Not because he had not learned control. Because he had and this was the deliberate choice.
Nobody said anything about the fire size.
---
On the sixth day Li Shan sent a message.
*The domain expansion changes the growing season application methodology significantly. From the plateau you can provide frequency input to the three ahead sections without physical travel. The domain at Tempering stage — based on historical records and what the cascade data shows of your current range — extends approximately eight to twelve li in all directions.*
*This means: a single Tempering stage Lost Blade wielder at a central position can work multiple seeded sections simultaneously. Not as effectively as physical application. But continuously. Ongoing low-level frequency input for as long as the wielder is present in the domain range.*
*The seven sections we have not yet physically visited — three are within your current domain range from the plateau. I have sent their positions to Bing Xi.*
*The cost you are currently experiencing: two weeks. The three sections within domain range will receive eight to ten days of ongoing low-level input before you move. That is equivalent to approximately three days of physical application per section.*
*Do not push the domain reach. Let it establish at its natural Tempering level. The range will expand further at Sharpening stage. You will know when you are ready for active application. The crack will tell you.*
Jian Yu read this message and filed it.
He looked at the domain's current reach. The three sections present in the peripheral awareness. Not bright presences — low, consistent, the specific quality of seeded sections that had frequency but were developing slowly without active input.
He reached toward them gently.
Not with the active absorption technique. Not with the directional application Feng Luo had developed. With the domain itself — the extended awareness that the Lost Blade's unnamed color was producing in the expanded state. The between quality reaching outward at domain range.
The sections registered it.
Not dramatically. The way things registered a low consistent signal — a slight orientation, the pathways aligning slightly toward the frequency source.
He held it and counted.
One through nine.
He stayed at nine and let the domain do its work.
---
Feng Luo ran the camp.
He did it without being asked and without making a performance of it. He handled the watch rotation, the food, the relay messages that needed sending, the coordination with Xian Yue's liaison office about the delayed section visits. He handled the moment on the ninth day when a small Ice Sect patrol came through the plateau and needed to be told what was happening in terms that would satisfy their patrol report.
He handled it with the specific competence of someone who had been watching Jian Yu manage situations for months and had learned how situations were managed.
He did not tell Jian Yu what he had said to the patrol. He came back from the conversation and went to rebuild the fire.
Jian Yu found out two days later through the relay network — Cui Shan had sent word that the patrol report had reached the outer territory command and the outer territory command had sent a note to the Spring Community informing them that the combination's wielder was present in the plateau territory for cultivation work and should be treated as a resource rather than an anomaly if encountered.
Feng Luo had given the patrol enough information to produce a useful outcome without producing complications.
Jian Yu thought about Feng Luo at the waypoint shelter. Three days of burning off the roof by existing. Eight days later in a new group making decisions that settled things cleanly.
He sent Feng Luo a message through the relay.
It said: *Li Shan confirmed you are now providing cascade data to the coordination network independently without routing through me. This is correct. Continue.*
Feng Luo's response: *I know it is correct. I have been doing it for three weeks. I was waiting for you to notice.*
Jian Yu read this.
He was in an off hour. The nightmare cycle was running at its predictable two-hours-on one-hour-off pattern. The domain was extending steadily. The three sections were orientating.
He looked at where Feng Luo was sitting across the camp, feeding the fire with the deliberate non-excess of someone who had mastered the directed application and applied the same precision to everything else now.
He had not noticed.
He added it to the list of things he had not noticed. The list was long. He had made peace with the list being long.
He sent back: *Good. Keep doing it. Also the fire size tonight is appropriate.*
Feng Luo looked at his message scroll. Then at Jian Yu. Then at the fire.
The Flame Blade's fire rose one inch and held.
Not agitation. Acknowledgment.
---
Lin Mei wrote the wielder's supplemental on the ninth day.
Not the wielder's human record — he had written that in Chapter 54. This was something different. A technical supplement to the archive's cost management section.
She titled it: *Carrying the Tempering Cost: A Practitioner's Notes.*
She documented the nightmare pattern — two hours on, one off — and the management strategy that had emerged from the two weeks. The value of speaking the content to the healer rather than carrying it silently. The specific observation that the cost's content was clarifying rather than distorting and what that suggested about the cost's purpose. The change in the cost's quality between repetitions as the processing proceeded.
She included: *By the tenth day the nightmares had become different in quality from the first day. Not easier. More complete. The specific difference between carrying something you do not understand and carrying something you understand fully. The weight is the same. The orientation changes.*
She sent it to Li Shan before she showed it to Jian Yu.
Li Shan's response arrived before she showed him.
*Adding to the cost management section. This is the first documentation of the Tempering cost from the healer's perspective rather than the wielder's. Both perspectives are necessary for the next healer to manage the next wielder's two weeks effectively. Thank you.*
She showed Jian Yu the exchange.
He read it.
He looked at her.
She was already working on something else. The supplemental written, sent, filed, next thing.
He counted his breaths.
One through nine.
---
On the fourteenth day the nightmares stopped.
Not gradually. The fourteenth morning arrived and the cycle did not run. He waited through two hours that had been on-hours for thirteen days and nothing came.
He sat on the plateau in the early light and felt the domain extended below him — now confident at its range, the three sections clearly present, the spring community behind him, the wider network a background awareness that had become as natural as any other ongoing sense.
The sword pulsed.
The unnamed color brightened and held.
He looked at it.
"Tempering stage," he said quietly.
The sword hummed. The same note. The recognition note. The note it had produced in the vault when the rust fell away.
He sheathed it.
He stood and looked at the plateau. At the camp where three people and three swords and the growing season's work and the archive and two weeks of nightmares and the specific accumulated weight of everything that had come before were all present in different ways.
He looked at the northern peaks.
The domain extension at Tempering stage was eight to twelve li. Li Shan had said it would expand further at Sharpening. He did not know when Sharpening would come. He knew it required something — one month where he could not feel temperature at all. That cost was ahead somewhere. He filed it in the drawer with things that were real and important and not yet immediate.
First the active test of the expanded domain.
Then north to complete the growing season's remaining sections.
Then wherever the road required.
He counted his breaths.
One through nine.
"Done," he said. Not to anyone specifically.
Feng Luo looked up from the camp. He had been awake and watching from the third hour of the night. He had not said anything. He had just been present.
"Yes," Feng Luo said. "Done."
They broke camp.