56: Master Qing's Teahouse

The teahouse on the western edge of the royal city sat above a small clear stream that ran down from the western foothills, in a quiet residential district where elderly retired cultivators kept small private gardens and walked at the unhurried pace of people who had decided, after long working lives, that the kingdom's news could reach them at whatever hour it preferred.

Su Yan arrived at the third hour past noon on the seventh day of the fourth month of the spring.

He came in an unmarked pale-grey carriage Cousin Su Lin had quietly arranged. He came alone. He came in his ordinary plain dark-blue clansman's outer robe, with no insignia, with *Ledger* sheathed at his belt under the robe's outer fold, with the cracked pendant at his chest and the small lacquered traveling-case at his belt.

The teahouse keeper — a thin patient woman of perhaps sixty, with the small precise unhurried bearing of a former sect attendant — bowed at the door, slid the lattice of the upstairs back room, and withdrew.

Master Qing was already seated.

He was — by the substrate-sight — *Heavenly Immortal*. The reading was unmistakable. The thread along his spine was the cold clean clear silver-gold of a cultivator who had passed through perhaps eight previous breakthroughs that the kingdom of Beicang's standard taxonomy had no public name for. He had, by the calm of his face, been a Heavenly Immortal for perhaps four hundred years.

He looked, however, like a man of perhaps fifty.

He wore a plain pale-grey scholar's robe. His hair was gathered at the back in a single plain knot. He was drinking, when Su Yan entered, a small clay cup of plain green tea.

He set the cup down. He inclined his head — exactly the angle a senior cultivator of his age and standing inclined his head to a young clansman whose mother he had, by the careful unhurried preceding calibration of his own bookkeeping, known.

"Su Yan."

"Master Qing." Su Yan bowed — small, formal, the bow appropriate to the meeting.

"Sit, please."

Su Yan sat opposite him on the low cushion.

Master Qing poured.

The pour was, by every careful preceding calibration of substrate-tea ceremony, *clean*. The tea was a *cloud-summit*, a high-mountain green that the kingdoms below the Lower Immortal Realm did not produce and which the careful unhurried preceding small private bookkeeping of senior cultivators occasionally brought down from the mountains by the small precise unhurried courtesy of their own preceding hands.

Su Yan accepted the cup with both hands.

They drank, in the same beat, the first sip.

The tea was — by Sebastian Yan's careful read — *better than any tea he had encountered in either of his lives*. Not by ostentation. By depth.

Master Qing set his cup down.

"Su Yan."

"Master Qing."

"I will," said Master Qing, in a voice as plain and quiet as his robe, "be brief. I knew your mother in two years out of her four. She came to my study once, by her own preceding preference, when I was a junior senior at the Royal Academy and she was at the small careful unhurried preceding hour of accepting the title from her predecessor. She was twenty-two. She had — by her own careful preceding bookkeeping — read every book on substrate calibration in the Academy's preceding library and had concluded that I was the only person in the Lower Immortal Realm whose preceding work she had not, by her own bookkeeping, *understood*."

He paused.

"She came to ask," he said, "whether I would teach her the careful unhurried preceding calibration the books had not contained. I declined. I told her, by my own preceding preference, that I was — at the time — *not* willing to teach the careful unhurried preceding calibration to any successor of the title, on the careful preceding bookkeeping that the careful unhurried preceding hour of the Aeon Rebellion was, by my own preceding read, *too recent* for me to risk the careful unhurried small private interference of teaching another Aeon's predecessor the calibrations that had, by their preceding work, contributed to the Rebellion's failure."

"She accepted my refusal. She thanked me. She left. She wrote to me, by the unmarked courier line, twice over the next two years. The letters were, by my careful preceding read, the small careful unhurried preceding observations of a substrate scholar at the careful unhurried preceding hour of the title's first decade of work. I read them. I did not, by my own preceding preference, reply."

He paused.

"On the ninth day of the eighth month of the year of her preceding small private departure from this kingdom," he said, "she sent me a third letter. The third letter contained — by her own preceding preference — a small careful unhurried preceding *instruction* to me. The instruction was: *In approximately ten years, my son will begin to display the small careful unhurried preceding markers of the title. I will not, by my own preceding preference, be in this kingdom to teach him. I am asking you, by the careful preceding small private courtesy of one Aeon-of-the-line to one senior substrate-scholar, to teach him. I will, by my own preceding preference, accept your refusal. I would ask, however, that you reconsider — by the careful preceding bookkeeping of the ten years of preceding distance from the Aeon Rebellion that will, by their preceding hour, have passed — your earlier refusal of mine.*"

Master Qing set his cup down.

"I have, in the ten years since," he said, "*reconsidered*. The Aeon Rebellion's preceding hour is — by my preceding read — *no longer too recent* for me to risk the careful preceding small private interference of teaching another Aeon. The careful unhurried preceding bookkeeping of the kingdoms below the Lower Immortal Realm has, by my preceding read of the past three months, registered that the next Aeon-of-the-line is, by his own preceding work, *operating*. I have — by my own preceding preference — decided to honor your mother's third small private letter."

He inclined his head.

"I am, Su Yan, *willing* to teach you. I will, by my own preceding preference, teach by the small careful unhurried preceding calibration of *one meal per quarter*, taken in private at this teahouse, by the unmarked courier line. I will not, by my preceding preference, attempt to recruit you to the Royal Academy of Eastern Yan. I will not, by my preceding preference, attempt to bind you to the kingdom of Eastern Yan in any of its standing arrangements. I will, by my preceding preference, *teach*. I will teach the careful preceding small private calibrations that your mother's seven books of substrate calibration do not, by her own preceding preference, contain. I will teach them slowly. I will teach them by the small careful unhurried preceding hour of one meal per quarter, for as long as you and I, by our preceding preferences, find the meals useful."

He paused.

"In return," he said, "I would ask one small careful unhurried preceding courtesy. I would ask that you, in some careful unhurried later year — when the careful preceding bookkeeping of your two years' preceding plan has, by your preceding work, completed — *bring your mother to my study at the Royal Academy*, by the small careful unhurried preceding courtesy of the unmarked courier line, *so that I may, by my own preceding preference, see her again before the careful unhurried preceding hour of my own retirement*."

Su Yan held very still.

He inhaled, slowly. He let the inhalation finish.

"Master Qing." His voice was steady. "I accept the teaching."

"Good."

"I will, by my own preceding preference, also accept the small careful unhurried preceding request. I will bring my mother to your study at the Royal Academy, by the unmarked courier line, on the first careful preceding hour after her preceding small private extraction from the central facility permits the careful preceding travel. I will, by my preceding preference, *not* delay."

Master Qing inclined his head.

"Then we have, in this teahouse, a small careful preceding agreement."

"We have."

He picked up his cup. He drank.

The afternoon's preceding meal — by the small precise hour of two scholars in one upstairs back room of one teahouse on the western edge of the royal city of Beicang — *began*.

It lasted perhaps three hours. By the end of the three hours, Su Yan had — by the careful preceding work of one Heavenly Immortal whose preceding scholarship had been preceding his mother's by perhaps three centuries — received the careful preceding first lesson of a calibration that his mother's seven books, by her own preceding preference, had not contained.

The lesson was: *the careful preceding small private calibration of how a substrate-cultivator at Foundation Establishment could, by the small careful preceding hour of his own preceding work, *prepare* the substrate-anchor pair that the seventh book of his mother's set described, *fifteen years* before his cultivation was, by the kingdom's standing reading, *ready* to use them*.

The preparation would not, by Master Qing's preceding read, *complete* the anchor-pair. The preparation would, by his preceding read, *begin* the anchor-pair's preceding calibration *now* — so that, by the careful preceding hour of Sovereign Origin Stage One in eighteen months, the anchor-pair would be — *fully ready*, *not partially ready*.

Su Yan would, by Master Qing's preceding teaching, *save eighteen months* of the careful preceding bookkeeping of his two-year plan.

He would, by the careful preceding hour of Master Qing's first lesson, be — by his own preceding read — *six months early on the careful preceding extraction calibration*.

His mother would, by Master Qing's preceding teaching, be — *home, at the careful preceding hour of seventeen months and twenty days from this afternoon, instead of twenty-three months and twenty days*.

Su Yan inclined his head, in the lantern-light of the upstairs back room of the teahouse on the western edge of the royal city of Beicang, in the careful preceding direction of one senior cultivator who had, by the careful preceding preference of one third small private letter from his mother ten years ago, *agreed to teach him*.

The afternoon's preceding meal closed at the sixth hour past noon.

Master Qing departed first, by his own preceding preference, in the careful preceding pale-grey scholar's robe of a senior cultivator on a small careful unhurried preceding errand.

Su Yan departed second, by the unmarked carriage Cousin Su Lin had arranged.

The careful preceding bookkeeping of the next seventeen months and twenty days had — by the small careful preceding hour of one teahouse meal — *gained six months*.