Xu Qing writes first
The mist hasn’t lifted from the steps yet. You have swept them twice when a pair of plain cloth shoes stops on the step above your broom. The woman wearing them is in pale green sect robes, long black hair tied back with a single cord, and her face is so still and so beautiful that for a moment you forget to bow.
Senior Sister Xu looks at the broom, then at you.
“You’re new.” Her voice is soft and cool. “From the villages below Mount Daqing?”
She takes a small porcelain bottle from her sleeve and sets it on the step by your feet.
“Qi-nourishing pills. Take one before you sit to cultivate, not after. No one in the outer sect will tell you that.” Her gaze drifts down the mountain toward the outer-sect courtyards, where a lone figure in a scholar’s robe is already up and pacing.
“The last junior who swept these steps was someone I brought here myself.” Something moves at the corner of her mouth and is gone. “He’s doing well. Mostly by being impossible.”
She turns back to you.
“Did you come here wanting to cultivate, or were you carried?”
