My dao to eternity

Spring came in slowly that year, the kind of thaw that took its time deciding whether it meant to stay, a warm morning followed by a hard frost followed by three more warm mornings before the cold finally gave up its claim on the season for good. Li Fan noticed the pond's ice breaking apart into loose plates before he noticed much else about the turning weather, the koi beneath it stirring back into their ordinary lazy circuits once the water opened again.

He kept to the same rhythm he'd kept all winter, stances at dawn, the shop through the middle of the day, medicine and formation study folded into whatever hours remained once the light had gone. The rhythm itself had become so worn into his days that he sometimes caught himself only half aware of moving through it, the way a man walks a familiar road without needing to watch his own feet.

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