For the next week or so, Xuan was subjected to a little bit of torture. Obviously, by now, it had become a routine. One day, he woke up, his eardrums were destroyed. Why? Well, it was because he overslept.

And as someone who overslept, he didn’t deserve what came afterwards, aka, a good wake-up. So Dian went ahead and rang a bell in his ears, causing his eardrums to burst. Alas, Sound Qi training was just sound torture, and essentially mental torture.

But after a week of doing so, Xuan had finally began seeing some progress. It was similar to Water Qi. He had begun being able to use it however he wanted, in the sense that he could draw some water from the surroundings, and even bathe himself as he pleased.

As for Sound Qi, he was able to manifest faint vibrations. At first, he was just able to move things with Sound Qi alone. Well, dust, a few coins... Yep. Xuan had become a living fan, someone whose sole purpose was to just do stupid shit until Dian deemed it solid.

And because of that, his life was pretty stale.

The staleness had a taste to it. Xuan couldn’t describe it beyond that, but it was there every morning when he woke up and every evening when he went to sleep. Not bad, exactly.

He was getting better though. That much was undeniable. The coins had graduated into small rocks, which had graduated into larger rocks, which had graduated into Dian throwing things at him and expecting Xuan to redirect them mid air using nothing but vibration. That last one had gone poorly at first. Xuan had taken a wooden cup to the forehead on day one and a sandal to the throat on day two, which, out of the two, was somehow worse.

"You’re tensing up like an idiot," Dian said, retrieving his sandal from where it had landed.

"You threw a sandal at me," Xuan replied, from the floor.

"And you should have redirected it. Stop thinking about what it is and think about the sound it makes when it moves through the air." He put the sandal back on, which was a process Xuan watched with some resentment. "Everything moving through air makes a sound. You hear it before it arrives. That is your window."

Xuan got up, rubbed his throat, and said nothing.

They went again. This time Dian threw a small cloth pouch, which was lighter and faster than the sandal and gave Xuan considerably less time to do anything about it. He felt it though. Just barely. A faint displacement in the air, the tiny shift in pressure that preceded impact, and without really thinking about it he pushed back against it and the pouch veered sideways and hit the wall instead of his face.

Both of them looked at where it had landed.

"Again," Dian said.

So that became the new routine. Mornings were bells, which Xuan had made a genuine effort to wake up on time for, mostly because having his eardrums destroyed before breakfast put him in a bad mood that lasted the entire day.

Afternoons were throwing. Dian had an apparently endless supply of things to hurl at him and zero hesitation about using any of them.

Xuan had redirected a pouch, two more sandals, a ceramic bowl that he had only partially redirected and which had therefore only partially hit him, and one occasion where Dian had simply clapped his hands together very loudly right next to Xuan’s ear to see what would happen.

What happened was Xuan sat down on the ground and didn’t move for about ten minutes.

"That was a test," Dian said.

"Of what," Xuan said, from the ground.

"Stability. Sound Qi users can be destabilized by sudden loud noise if their foundation is weak. Yours is weak."

Xuan, who was still on the ground, took a moment to process that. "So the solution is..."

"More bells."

Of course it was.

The bells happened the next morning and the morning after that, and somewhere in between Xuan noticed that the ringing in his ears had changed. It used to just be noise. Annoying, constant, the kind of thing you tried to push to the back of your awareness and ignore. But lately it had started to feel less like damage and more like... signal. Like his ears had stopped complaining and started listening.

He didn’t mention it to Dian because the last time he had shown any sign of progress Dian had immediately made things harder, and Xuan was not in a rush to find out what came after throwing sandals.

But it was there. He could feel it during the quiet parts of the day, which were admittedly few. A kind of low awareness of the world around him that hadn’t existed a week ago. The sound of someone walking down the corridor outside before they knocked. The particular frequency of wind coming through a cracked window versus an open one. Small things. Probably meaningless. But present.

He was thinking about this, sitting outside during the brief window between afternoon training and dinner, when Dian appeared and sat down nearby without announcement, which was just something he did.

They sat in silence for a bit. The sect was loud around them in its usual ways. Sparring somewhere in the distance. Voices. A bell from the main hall that was, thankfully, very far away.

"You’re listening," Dian said.

It wasn’t a question. Xuan didn’t bother denying it. "Is that bad."

"No." Dian looked out at nothing in particular. "It means the foundation is settling. You stopped fighting the noise and started receiving it." He paused. "Most people never get there. They spend years trying to produce sound and forget that production comes after comprehension."

Xuan turned that over. "So I’m ahead."

"You’re early. There’s a difference." Dian stood, brushed off his robes. "Don’t get comfortable. Tomorrow we do the bells again, and after that I’m going to start teaching you how to project."

"Project," Xuan repeated.

"Send vibration outward with intent. Not just nudging objects. Sending a frequency toward a target and having it arrive exactly where and how you want it." He glanced down at Xuan. "It is considerably harder than coins."

Xuan looked at him. "How much harder."

Dian thought about it for a genuinely concerning amount of time before answering.

"You’ll see," he said, and went inside.

Xuan sat outside for a while longer, listening to the sect exist around him, and tried very hard not to think about what tomorrow was going to feel like.

He failed, mostly. But the sounds were nice, at least.

.

.

.

He found out what tomorrow felt like.

It felt like getting hit by a wall that wasn’t there.

Projection, as Dian explained it, was simple in theory. You gather the vibration, you give it direction, you release it. That was it. Three steps. A child could understand three steps.

The issue was that Xuan’s body apparently hadn’t gotten the memo, because every time he tried to release it outward it either fizzled out halfway or went sideways and rattled the window frame, which Dian found less impressive than Xuan thought he deserved credit for given that the window was across the room.

"You’re collapsing the frequency before it leaves you," Dian said. He was sitting, watching, doing absolutely nothing helpful. "You gather it correctly and then you second guess yourself and it falls apart."

"I’m not second guessing anything."

"Then why does it keep dying in your chest."

Xuan opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again.

It died in his chest.

He stood there for a moment, stared at the wall he was supposed to be projecting at, and breathed out slowly through his nose. This was fine. This was just a new thing and new things took time and he was not going to let it frustrate him because frustration would tighten everything up and tightening everything up was apparently exactly what he kept doing wrong.

He tried again.

It got maybe a foot further than last time before dissipating into nothing.

"Progress," Xuan said flatly.

"Marginally," Dian agreed.

They kept at it for the rest of the morning. By the time they stopped, Xuan had managed to project a vibration roughly three feet outward on two separate occasions, neither of which had done anything notable when it arrived, but both of which had at least arrived, which Xuan was choosing to count as a win. His ribs ached in a way he didn’t fully understand given that nothing had hit him there. Something about forcing vibration outward from your core apparently disagreed with the surrounding area.

He mentioned this to Dian.

"Yes," Dian said. "That happens."

"Is it bad."

"Not permanently."

Good. Great. Wonderful information delivered with the warmth of a man reading off a list.

Lunch existed, which was the best thing that had happened all day, and Xuan ate it with the quiet focus of someone who had earned it. Afterwards he sat in the familiar spot outside and let the afternoon do whatever it wanted around him. His ribs still ached. His ears had their usual low hum going. Somewhere nearby someone was chopping wood, and Xuan could feel each impact faintly, less like hearing and more like a low tap against the inside of his awareness.

It was a strange way to experience the world. He wasn’t sure yet if he liked it or if he was just getting used to it, which were two different things that were easy to confuse.

Dian came out at some point and stood nearby, not sitting this time, just present.

"How’s the rib," he said.

"Still there," Xuan replied.

Dian nodded like that was acceptable. "It’ll ease up once your body adjusts to channeling outward. Right now it’s unfamiliar territory so everything resists. Give it a few days."

"And then projection gets easier."

"Then projection gets harder, because I’ll raise the standard." He said it completely without apology. "But the physical discomfort will ease up, yes."

Xuan looked at him. "You could lead with the good part."

"I could," Dian agreed, and went back inside.

Xuan stayed where he was, listening to the wood chopping, the distant voices, the wind doing its usual thing through whatever gaps it could find. Three feet. It wasn’t much. But a week ago it was coins, and a week before that it was dust, and before that it was nothing at all.

He’d get there. Probably.