Chapter 36: Pooling
The ambient field ran strongest before dawn.
I had known this for awhile due to the zone two sessions. In winter the cold pressed the field lower and closer to the water's surface, making it denser in the places where the current moved fastest.
I had been coming here every morning since the academy opened its first day, before the training ground woke and before Luan Mei started the breakfast fire, and the quality of the practice was different from anything I could do later in the day.
I worked the slow circulation first. Twenty minutes of tracing the field's movement and reading the world around me.
The current ran north-south along the bank and the ambient qi moved with it, carrying a signature that was distinct from the ridge caves' compressed deposits or the training ground's worked ground. River qi was alive in a different way. It turned and pooled and redirected around obstacles, and learning to read it was teaching me to adapt my awareness in real time.
Then I tried the pooling.
The technique was simple in conception: instead of circulating ambient qi outward through the pathways, you invited it toward the body's center.
The field responded immediately. The ambient qi around me shifted toward my core with the ease of water finding a low point.
The sensation was destabilizing. The feeling of trying to push more current through a channel built for less volume felt immensely uncomfortable. I released it and the backlash through my limbs caused me to step back into the wall, nearly doubling onto on my knees as I took a moment to catch my breath.