Ji Suyin's face had not stopped glowing since he said it.
Not after the meal. Not as they sat in the fire's dying warmth, the Boar Lord's defeat settling over the hollow like a quiet fog. Her ears still ached, a dull, deep throb where her drums had torn, but the sensation was distant, secondary to the warmth spreading from her dantian.
We can try it.
He had said it so simply. Not a promise, not a vow. A statement of possibility. Yet in that simplicity, she had felt a trust being extended, a door opening that she had only ever hoped to peer through.
She blinked once, the reality of it washing over her. Then her expression bloomed, radiant and unguarded. The smile that touched her lips was brighter than the emerging stars, a light no lingering pain could dim.
From her spatial ring, her fingers closed around familiar silk. She withdrew the worn, pale-blue wrapping and handed him the parchment inside without a word.
Yan Shen unfolded it. His eyes moved over the faded script, the simple diagrams of the Resonant Cycle Method. It was a gentle technique. Not forceful, or a plunder, but a harmony. A loop of mutual refinement based on shared flow, not dominance.
She watched him read, her heart a quiet drum against her ribs. This was not a secret, but it was a vulnerability. An offering.
He looked up. His gaze met hers, and he gave a slow, deliberate nod.
She was already moving, settling cross-legged on the cool earth, her palms open on her knees. Her breath deepened, centering. Her eyes held his, calm on the surface, a storm of anticipation beneath.
He sat across from her, mirroring her posture.
They began.
He did not push. He simply… activated. His Qi rose, not as a surge, but as a presence, steady, immense, and impossibly heavy. It was not a river; it was a tectonic plate shifting. A deep, silent movement of power that made the air around him seem to bow.
She reached out first.
A single, fine tendril of her own Qi extended from her palm, a thread of jade-green light tinged with the soft, vital essence of wood. It was an exploratory touch, a question.
It met the edge of his flow.
And sank.
Her breath caught.
It was not repelled. It was not consumed. It was absorbed. Her Qi, light and fluid, was drawn into the dense, slow current of his own, like a leaf pulled into a deep ocean eddy.
Startled, she instinctively pulled back.
But the strand that returned to her… was changed.
It was heavier. Slower. Refined. It carried a weight it had never possessed, a gravitational certainty that felt both foreign and profoundly stabilizing. It did not rush back to her dantian; it spread.
First through her arms, sinking into muscle and bone. Then down her spine, vertebra by vertebra, laying down a layer of quiet fortitude. Then into her chest, her meridians, her very marrow.
She froze, not in fear, but in awe.
This returning energy was not just refining her Qi. It was transforming her body. Wherever the heavy strand passed, a subtle reinforcement followed. The deep-seated fatigue from the realm suppression, the cellular tremor left by the sonic boom, it was being gently, inexorably pushed out. In its place came structure. Balance. A foundational solidity she had never known she lacked.
The heaviness did not crush. It dispersed, becoming part of her. And with that new foundation laid, the last, thin barrier within her, a wall of accumulated stress and imperfect integration, dissolved.
Her eyes flew open wide.
She had not sought a breakthrough. Not here, not now.
But the surge came anyway.
Her meridians, newly widened and clarified by the resonant flow, drank in the ambient energy of the hollow, the lingering potency of the breakthrough pill, the very resonance between them. It all converged into a single, silent, rushing tide.
There was no violent rupture. Only a profound release.
Her dantian expanded, a soft, undeniable unfurling. Her meridians widened, their capacity increasing, their walls growing more resilient. The Qi within her settled into a new, broader, deeper channel.
Early Foundation Establishment.
Her aura flared once, a brief corona of jade-green light, then calmed into a steady, rooted radiance. Like a sapling's trunk thickening overnight, stable and sure.
Yan Shen notice the change. His flow, a constant presence in the shared circuit, adjusted minutely, accommodating her new rhythm without a hitch.
And then she felt something else.
A whisper. A ghost of sensation along the connection.
A faint, smooth trace of her own wood-element essence, carried back into him on the returning tide of his Qi. It was the barest echo, like the scent of pine left on stone after the wind passes. It did not change the fundamental weight of him, but it layered a softness over it, a suggestion of growth within the endurance.
He carries a piece of me now, she thought, and the realization did not frighten her. It felt… complete.
She did not stop. She turned her focus inward, consolidating the new realm, anchoring it with the same deliberate care she used to sharpen her sword. He remained with her, his presence a steady pillar in the shared space, his flow adjusting seamlessly whenever her new, unfamiliar power stumbled.
But she did not stumble much.
Her freshly established Foundation was settling with astonishing speed. What should have taken weeks of careful meditation was crystallizing in mere rotations of their shared cycle. His heavy, grounding energy was the perfect counterweight to her newfound expansion, preventing instability, forcing perfect integration.
Her breathing slowed to the rhythm of deep earth.
Her aura became as steady as an ancient tree.
And then…
She opened her eyes.
The smile that found her lips was not one of surprise or pride. It was a quiet, sun-warmed joy, radiating from a dantian that felt, for the first time, unshakably solid.
Without a word, she leaned forward.
She crossed the small space between them, the cool night air brushing her skin, and gently rested her forehead against the firm plane of his shoulder.
He did not shift. He did not tense. He simply was there, solid and accepting, allowing her weight to settle against him.
The warmth of him seeped into her. Her body, held taut with pain and vigilance for days, finally unspooled. A soft sigh escaped her, carrying away the last vestiges of strain. Her face, always arranged in some measure of calculation or poise, softened into pure relief. Her lips curved, her eyes drifting half-closed.
Her smile reached her eyes. It was not the polished mask of a noble disciple, nor the sharp, playful smirk of a strategist. This was contentment. Simple, profound, and utterly genuine.
She felt him glance down at her.
He was not a soft man. He was carved from resolve and silent strength. Gentleness was not his language.
But he allowed her to stay. And in that allowance, she felt a recognition.
He liked seeing her like this.
The realization settled in her chest, warmer than any fire.
And it did not bother her.
Not even a little.