Chapter 7: Crippled Again

Forty carriers stood in a line across the white flagstones of the Stone Yard, in front of the whole sect.

Nobody could remember the last time a carrier had been allowed up here.

The outer court packed the yard's edges to watch.

On the dais, Sect Master Nie Hanyue sat with her white-gloved hands folded, and Guan Shuo stood at her shoulder.

Zhuo Ming stood at the foot of the dais steps in his black robe, looking at nobody.

The Discipline Elder stood beside the Root Stone with his hands behind his back.

"A crippled body cannot hold qi," he said to the yard.

"If one of these women has been drinking ash, the stone will show gray smoke instead of light."

"Ash-drinking is demonic cultivation. The law is the well."

The head carrier went first, because she always went first.

She laid her scarred hands on the jade.

A little green light woke at the bottom of the stone and died there.

"Crippled," said the testing elder. "Next."

The twins went, one after the other.

The girl with the stammer went, and her hands shook so hard on the stone that the testing elder patted her shoulder afterward.

Every one of them lit a hand's width and went dark.

Then it was Lian.

She had drunk from the bottom of the pool every night for three weeks.

The ash in her was so heavy now that she felt it when she climbed stairs.

If any of it moved while her hands were on the jade, the whole yard would see the smoke.

She laid her palms flat on the Root Stone.

The jade was cool.