Chapter 44: The Record
The water was beginning to respond well to me during my training, so I decided to push it further.
I sat at the bank, opened the core draw, and instead of simply receiving the ambient Qi, I turned my attention to the Qi itself to read its quality.
What arrived from the river carried the water's properties as if the Qi itself had been moving through water long enough to take and mimic its shape. Did Qi exist in all things such as water, or did water exist as a direct result of Qi? In this world you couldn’t separate the two, Qi was the fundamental law of nature, and how you interacted with it was dependentant upon your own intent.
I held the draw and let it settle into the channels instead of releasing it. Then I turned my attention to my hands.
The Qi began to leak from my fingertips.
A slow seepage, moving under what blocked it instead of pushing through, following the contours of my skin outward to the contours of the ground when it dispersed.
There was very little seeping from my pores but it carried the river's quality with it nontheless.
I sat with my hands in my lap and looked at the water.
This could be a technique that could be used for reading elemental affinity. It could be read by the practitioner themselves by noticing which direction the Qi comes easiest from and what quality it carries when it arrives.