Treasures Of Heaven And Earth

As was her custom Guan Dàilán rose early. She liked the peace and stillness of the house before it began to bustle with various servants and attendants. She was exceedingly glad that Father had always allowed her to stay in the separate residence maintained for the third line rather than forcing her to live in the main pavilion with her cousins under the supervision of Grandmother Guan.

Apart from the added hustle and bustle of the main house, the Grandmother's insistence on 'proper decorum' and the focus on daughters learning the 'Womanly Virtues' - that is, nothing practical - in Dàilán's opinion, apart from weaving and household management meant that life in the female courtyard of the main pavilion was full of the internal household politics and shrewish behaviour she hated the most.

Climbing out of bed, she crossed over to the curtains on b.a.r.e feet, opened them to let the dawn light and air in and moved over to the broad empty space at the foot of the bed for her morning tàijíquán exercise.

Letting her worries flow away with the movements she slipped into memories as she moved through the forms.

"Lán'er, follow Mother, ok? Hands like this… and feet.. Hehe…Lán'er is so cute! Put the feet like mother… yes…"

"...eh… difficult...foot. Will I become beautiful and strong like Mother someday?"

"If you do your tàijí exercises every morning, Lán'er will become even more beautiful and much stronger."

"En...I will do… tai..taj… the pretty dancing! Every day...Lán'er promises!"

"Aii, so cute… OK it is a promise! It is a secret for Mothers and Daughters, OK?"

"Can not tell Father? Or Chen'er?"

"Chen'er is OK...she learns this too! But it is not for boys to know… or anyone outside Third House"

"OK… I would not tell them anyway. They are mean!"

Dàilán let the memories flow away with the final movement of her morning forms, a quiet smile on her face as she opened her eyes. "Good morning Mother" she whispered softly and felt a cool morning breeze brush past her heated forehead.

A quiet knock at her bedroom door caught her attention; she looked towards the door to see her maid walking quietly in - holding out a cup of hot tea, steam rising from the mug and dressed in sensible training clothing. "Finished with your warm up?"

"As always." She took the offered cup as her maid went to the wardrobe, pulling out Dàilán's own training outfit.

"We are stepping up training?" Dàilán asked quietly between sips of the honeyed tea.

"Teacher says it is a wise idea," answered the maid as she laid out the clothing. "We should hurry if we want to avoid attracting too much attention."

"Ok." Putting the cup down on a side table, she changed swiftly out of her sleeping robe into the training clothes. Chenli eyed her critically and tightened her Mistress' belt slightly then turned and slipped out the door, Dàilán hurrying after her.

---

The two young teens faced each other across the private Cultivation ground her Father had constructed at his daughter's request. She doubted he had known she would be using it for combat practice, but the rocks, trees and sand of the meditation garden made for an excellent sparring ring.

Sparring on a flat surface was pointless anyway, since a real fight would almost never occur on perfectly flat ground.

Chenli leapt into the air towards Dàilán off the rock she was balancing on. That had to be a trap - Chenli had repeatedly told her (and shown her painfully), never to go midair as it conceded control to the opponent until you landed.

Dàilán lunged to the left while sending throwing needles upward towards her opponent's trajectory. Chenli unsheathed the sword at her back, sending out a wave of Sword Essence to deflect the needles as Dàilán pushed off at an angle from her own rock.

The heiress used the momentum of her earlier lunge to get away from ricocheting needles and inside Chenli's arc as the maid curled up her body like a hedgehog behind the whirling sword as she spun towards Dàilán.

Ignoring the wave of energy and sandblast that buffeted her as the Sword Essence impacted with the rock she just left, Dàilán absorbed the violence of her landing on the sand with bent knees, redirecting the force into a flip backward towards the rock she had just left - as Chenli had to block the blastwave of sand from her own attack, obscuring her vision.

Dàilán grinned, unsheathing twin daggers and stabbing downward as she passed over Chenli's crouched form, only for daggers to clash with blade as the maid raised her sword overhead. The impact of the Essence protected sword against the daggers snatched the daughter of the Guan clan out of the air and flung her into the ground with a startled yelp, fetching up in a cloud of stinging sand and undignified sprawl of limbs.

Attempting to throw herself away from her landing to gain some space, Dàilán froze at the cold feel of steel at her neck.

"Yield."

Pulling a sour face, the heiress sighed "I Yield".

The sword vanished and Chenli crouched down studying her mistress's sand covered face. "This is a rare sight."

"Bah," scoffed the other girl, spitting out sand "The limiter is unfair. How am I supposed to fight with my Essence constrained internally like this?"

"You were doing OK until you tried to go strength against strength," Chenli pointed out in a reasonable tone of voice, but the twinkle in her eyes exposed her true thoughts.

Dàilán winced and coughed, wiping blood away from abraded skin. "Point. And that is why Teacher is having me do this? To learn how to survive against stronger fighters?"

The maid shrugged. "We can not get you other sparring partners without others finding out. This is the only way for you to practice fighting a stronger opponent."

"Because I beat you every time otherwise."

"Hah. Someone is asking for a thumping."

Dàilán grinned impudently and rolled to her feet, shaking the sand out of her training clothes, "If I beat you - you have to wear the limiter - until you beat me with it on. You have to learn to fight without Essence too."

Chenli scoffed, warily taking a step back. "I always practice against stronger opponents. And an inability to use techniques is hardly 'without Essence'. You are still able to fortify your own body."

Dàilán frowned and shook her head, her eyes thoughtful. "Not my power, just durability. And yes, I know that almost perfectly mimics fighting a stronger grade warrior… it still feels off."

The maid grinned, sliding into a combat stance "Imagine how surprised your opponents will be when they can not stop you, even if they are stronger."

"Ok, Chen'er I get it." The heiress shifted her feet back in a stance of her own, "I still think you would not be able to beat me with the limiter on either, so you need to practice with it as much as I do…"

The maid frowned and shrugged, looking off to the side. "If you insist. But you have to beat me first."

Dàilán nodded determinedly - then frantically executed a tàijíquán movement to redirect Chenli's sudden screaming lunge.

---

After being beaten seven times running in four kè, the young lady called a halt. "It… is getting... Late. Have to wash and... change into meditation… clothes before anyone…"

Chenli nodded, breathing almost as hard as her mistress. "I will...wash first. Cultivate."

Dàilán nodded, removing the limiter band from around her neck as the maid walked towards the change rooms and pushed some Essence into the maintenance formation for the meditation garden.

This was the other reason the area was suitable for sparring. It was possible to use the formation to restore any damage done by the elements by pushing Essence into a formation constructed within that reversed any damage done to the garden.

If the meditation garden needed to be altered a Formation Master could reset the formation to accept the new state of the garden as correct.

Incidentally, the same formation was used in sparring rings as well, except that it had multiple 'remembered' states to allow for changes in the environment. Dàilán was quietly studying formations from the Clan libraries and any books she managed to find in her shopping trips to see if she could update the meditation ground to accommodate that ability too.

With the meditation ground serene again, she sack into Cultivation using her exhausted state from almost a shi of intense exercise to improve the tenacity of her Essence. All good warriors knew that an exhausted body obtained better results from Cultivation than a rested one.

This was one of the reasons women who were not dedicated to Cultivation in sects or warrior clans rarely surpassed their male peers - most noble women rarely truly exhausted themselves for any reason, so any Cultivation made less progress and was less solid than the males.

Her meridians shivered in pain as she dragged her Essence through a circuit of the Guan Family Cultivation Method. Fighting with the limiter had pushed her in a different way than she was accustomed to. More than usual, she got the feeling that the Guan Cultivation methods did not suit her as well as they used to.

She stopped after barely completing a single circuit, worrying that pushing much more might result a deviation. She felt that she was approaching a bottleneck.

When she was younger, Cultivation had come easy and she had built the first layers of her 'Mountain' as the Guan techniques called it - easily. But after passing into Earth layer, she found each level of her mountain becoming harder to coalesce - and over the last year her diantian had started to show signs of instability.

She had not told anyone, concerned that this on top of everything might break her Father. He was almost single-handedly holding the Clan up after First Uncle was wounded and a good portion of his influence stemmed from her own reputation, ironically enough, as they had discussed last evening.

She was not sure what to do. All the Clan Libraries focused on variations of Guan techniques -

the Clan had never grown large or powerful enough to start collecting the techniques discovered or protected by other Clans.

She had started looking covertly during her trips from the market to look for 'Relics', but it was extremely unlikely she could find anything but pieces of low level Mortal techniques or fakes. Tales of people finding long lost techniques in some peddler's stall like a lost jade were only fancies created by commoners to give each other hope they might become a Cultivator too someday through lucky chance.

Once again she considered telling her childhood friend and sister-in-all-but-blood, but she knew Chen'er would have to bring the problem to her Master to have any hope of finding any options. Dàilán had only met her Master once, when she was very young and her Mother had introduced her to her 'new sister and playmate' and only had the vaguest recollection of a tall - of course, she had been less than three summers at the time - cloaked figure. Most of her attention was occupied with the older Chen'er, who at the time seemed like the perfect big sister she had started to wish she had - instead of the nasty cousins.

The problem was, that although Chen'er was her trusted - and secret bodyguard and trainer - friend, she did not know if her Master could be equally trusted; or why Chen'er had been assigned to her. She had asked once, when she was old enough to understand, but Chenli had only said it was because of her Mother and when she had asked her Mother, she had just said it was another secret she had to keep quiet, like the tàijíquán and Mother would explain when Dàilán was older.

Of course, now that would not be possible.

The young Heiress sighed bleakly. She had to make a decision soon.

Her maid came back out of the bath and changing rooms. "Mistress, the bath is ready."

"Thank you, Chen'er," she said, struggling to stand. The maid was there in a flash, helping her to her feet and slinging the Heiress' left arm over a deceptively slim shoulder. "Come on, Mistress, let us get you cleaned up. If we get caught like this, there would be no end of wagging tongues"

"It might end this stupid marriage talk once and for all," Dàilán said with wry humour, drawing a snort from Chenli.

"More like bundled off to a quick marriage to any guy willing to take a wife with strange tastes."

"Ugh…"

---

After cleaning up, the two of them had a leisurely breakfast in Dàilán's rooms, discussing the rest of the days plans.

"Should we go Market Hunting again, Mistress?", asked Chen'er, eating quickly at her bowl of rice and pickles.

Dàilán blinked with surprise at her bodyguard. "Is it wise to go out?"

Chenli raised an eyebrow, "Is it wise to change your usual patterns of behaviour? You are not in danger of assassination at this point - you dead would be a disaster for Second Uncle's plans - he needs you as the payment for another clan supporting his claim to First seat."

"Are you are trying to kill my appetite?" the Heiress growled, snatching another bun - starved after the morning's exertions.

"Clearly I am unsuccessful," the maid laughed. "Careful, you keep eating like that and you will be the Boulder of Guan instead of the Flower - and then you will have to marry Heir Ji."

"Ha...you are eating as much as I… if not more? Perhaps Fatty Ji will need a concubine too?"

"I will never become round - as I must slave endlessly for my mistress…"

The two girls looked at each other then started to howl with laughter.

After their laughter had tapered off, Dàilán wiped her eyes and looked at her friend in thanks, "I needed that Chen'er, thank you".

"My honour, my sister."

Dàilán looked quietly at Chenli. "I am having problems with my Cultivation."

Her maid blinked. "That explains a lot. Do you want me to approach Master?"

Dàilán wrung her hands, "I do not know. If I am unable to Cultivate, would your Master allow you to continue to stay with me?"

Chenli stilled, her eyes wide. "I-I had not… considered…"

"It seems unwise for me to show weakness, especially now. But for you to do your duty, you needed to know… and I have no one else I can tell…"

Her maid's eyes half closed in thought. "For now we tell no one. We need to find out the possible responses ahead of time and plan contingencies… at least I know why you have been going to Market Street so often lately… hoping for a story come to life?"

"The library has nothing... "

Chenli made a face, "It would not. The Guan have ever been like their namesake - incapable of looking outside their solid rock-like way of doing things."

Dàilán rolled her eyes. "Second Uncle is evidently a cracked rock then. Would that make my Cousins pebbles or mud?"

"The moss on a very slippery rock? Some slime maybe…"

"Ha…" Dàilán laughed, but it had a distinct note of despair.

After a moment, Chenli said contemplatively, "Seriously though, this makes sense...your Mother did not name you 'Mountain Mist Orchid' for no reason - you are half her as well - the Mountain might be at your core, but the rest?"

The young Heiress stilled. Then very quietly, asked, "Mother told me the relationship between her and your sect was a secret...but would they know her clan's Cultivation techniques…?"

"This… I would have to ask…"

"Understood."

The two sat silently, finishing the last of the food.

"I do not feel like going out again today, Chen'er." the young lady said finally, "If I have to deal with those idiot silkpants the way I feel now, blood would be spilt…"

Chunli giggled. "Right. You go study and practice calligraphy… I have some errands to run."

Dàilán smiled at her friend. "Thank you, sister."

The maid gathered up the empty dishes with a sweep of her arm. Rolling to her feet with the serving tray in a practised move, bowing as she moved out of the room. "Mistress."

Dàilán sighed as she sat alone in her room. "Yes, a day in seems perfect."