By noon, faint cooking smoke rose beneath the canopy that blotted out the sky.
Ye Jingtang deftly sliced fish and put it in the pot in the kitchen. Before long, the fragrance of food drifted through the fenced garden.
As a woman, Xue Baijin ought to have gone in to help, but after repeatedly tasting the pleasures of fish and water, her thoughts were inevitably unsettled. Once she had tidied herself up, she sat upright on the bed with her hands forming the Ziwu Mudra, practicing the art Ye Jingtang had taught her.
Although Ye Jingtang achieved twice the results with half the effort when practicing the Nine Phoenixes Facing the Sun Art, that was because it suited his body perfectly.
For Xue Baijin, neither the Nine Phoenixes Facing the Sun Art nor the Dragon-Mingling Diagram had been tailored to her. Practicing alone was little different from her previous practice of the Dragon-Mingling Diagram: everything crawled along like a tortoise, with no perceptible improvement at all.
Having experienced last night's efficiency, Xue Baijin naturally felt restless now. She even felt she was wasting her time, and found it somewhat difficult to still her heart like calm water and enter meditation.
Xue Baijin knew this restless state of mind was bad, but could not avoid it. When Ye Jingtang came in carrying the poached fish, she stopped practicing, got up to help set out the dishes, and asked:
"If I reached the realm of qi refining into spirit, would seated practice become faster?"
Ye Jingtang sat down beside the table and ladled fish soup for Ice Lump:
"Qi refining into spirit isn't enough. You have to touch the threshold of refining spirit and returning to emptiness before you can sense the qi everywhere between heaven and earth and guide it. Only