Chapter 8 · free to read
They gave her thirty strokes and put her back to sweeping. She came every night anyway, and every night she brought water instead of food.
Water is the oldest mirror and the worst one. It shows you, and it lets you through.
Nine years for a cultivator with a master, a mountain and a hundred years of breath. I had four nights and a soup bowl.
For a year she had seen me kneel behind her in every polished thing on this mountain. It had never once occurred to her that the kneeling was a posture and not a nature.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.