Living with a sentient sword was exactly as inconvenient as it sounded.
The first morning began at 4 AM — my standard cultivation hour. I sat cross-legged on the bed, began the Void Meridian circulation, and was approximately three breaths into the opening sequence when a voice from beneath me said:
"Your breathing is wrong."
I opened one eye.
"Your inhalation-to-exhalation ratio is 3:5. It should be 4:7 for optimal Void circulation at your current meridian capacity. You're losing approximately 12% efficiency per cycle. Over twenty circulations, that's two and a half cycles' worth of wasted effort. In four hundred years, I've had nothing to do but count breaths. I've counted a lot of breaths. Yours are wrong."
"It's 4 AM," I said.
"Time is irrelevant. Breathing is foundational. Fix it."
