The old man woke without knowing he had slept.
There was no jolt of awareness, no sharp return to consciousness. One moment, his thoughts had been drifting aimlessly, clouds passing the open window without rhythm or destination. The next, his eyes were open.
Light filled the room.
Not brighter than before. Not dimmer. Simply present.
He lay still for a while, waiting for the familiar signs that usually followed waking—the stiffness in his back, the dull ache in his knees, the faint pressure in his chest that reminded him he was no longer young.
They did not come.
He tested his fingers first, curling and uncurling them slowly. The movement felt natural. Effortless. Not stronger than before, but… unresisted.
He sat up.
The room had not changed. The bed was as it had been. The low table stood untouched. Outside the window, clouds continued their unhurried passage across the mountainside.
There was no sun to mark the hour.
No shadow to suggest morning or afternoon.
"How long…?" he murmured, then stopped himself.
The question felt inappropriate here.
He stood, half-expecting dizziness, but his balance held. His feet met the floor with certainty. The faint tremor that usually accompanied his first steps of the day was absent.
He walked to the window and looked out.
The mountains were the same.
The clouds were different.
That was the only distinction he could make.
A soft sound came from behind him.
The attendant stood at the doorway, as silent as before.
"You are awake," he said.
"I suppose I am," the old man replied.
"Would you like tea?"
The old man considered this, then nodded. "Yes."
They sat in the main hall once more. The tea was poured. Steam rose, thin and fleeting. The old man sipped it slowly, waiting for the warmth he remembered.
It came.
Gentle. Familiar.
Not stronger than before.
That, more than anything else, unsettled him.
"Has it been long?" he asked quietly.
The attendant did not answer immediately.
"You have rested," he said at last.
The old man smiled faintly. "I see."
They lapsed into silence.
At some point, the old man realized something else.
He was hungry.
Not painfully so. Not urgently. But the absence of hunger before, the way his body had seemed content to simply exist, was no longer absolute.
It was… returning.
He said nothing about it.
Far away, beyond the courtyard and the drifting clouds, Lin Yuan observed.
The man's breathing had changed.
Only slightly.
The stillness that had gathered so easily before now met gentle resistance, as though the body, having been eased of its burden, was beginning to remember itself.
Lin Yuan did not intervene.
This, too, was part of rest.
End of Chapter 4