Chapter 34: First Stones
The River Fork Academy was finished in the first week of winter. Right on schedule.
The cultivation hall walls had gone up by the tenth day of autumn work, single-storey, running north-south along the river side of the training ground. The clinic building followed, connected by the covered walkway Fen had designed without being asked.
The classroom at the gate end had been complete since before the foundations cured, because Fen worked the way he worked and nobody told him to wait. The last section of plaster dried on the cultivation hall's interior the morning the first frost came.
Standing at the training ground's center and turning slowly, it looked like what I had wanted it to look.
The cultivation hall faced the river, the zones laid out from flat practice ground near the water to the hillside impact structures, each space was distinct and legible.
The closest comparison I had from either life was a dojo, which I was thought to appear inviting and homely.
Gao Ren had opinions about everything and was right about most of them. Ru had opinions about everything and was right about the rest. The two of them had spent three weeks arguing which I began to realize might have been their own way of companionship.
His daughter Gao Shu worked alongside them from the first day, carrying stone and mixing composite and asking questions that Ru answered with kindness.
The Wei brothers ran the heavy labor with the same effort that they brought to everything.