The crater was gone by noon.

  Not hidden — erased. I'd spent the morning redistributing the displaced earth, resetting the uprooted pine, which would die anyway, but vertical was less conspicuous than horizontal. I smoothed the qi-residue his outburst had deposited across the clearing.

  It was tedious work. The effort itself was trivial — for me, the equivalent of sweeping a floor. But his outbursts were getting stronger. The cleanup was getting larger.

  Wei woke stiff. He sat up, winced, cataloged his injuries with the practical attention of a boy who had learned that damage assessment was a morning routine.

  Bruises on his forearms. Abraded palms — the skin torn where qi had vented through his hands. A blue-black mark on his ribcage where the discharged energy had met the resistance of his own body and the body had lost.

  None of it was serious. All of it was there.

  "Let me see."

  He held out his hands. Obediently, knowing he'd done something that merited correction, choosing cooperation as preemptive defense.

  I held his wrists. Felt the channels underneath — raw, slightly swollen, worked past their recovery threshold. His palms were warm. The qi beneath the skin was active — repairing, rebuilding.

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  I fed a thread of qi into his channels. Minimal, the smallest amount that would accelerate healing without disrupting the natural repair. His channels accepted it immediately, completely.

  "Those are just—"

  "Hold still."

  He held still. I worked. Two minutes. The bruises wouldn't disappear, but the structural repair was complete. Channels sealed. Micro-tears mended.

  I let go of his wrists.

  "Starting today. Stabilization exercises."

  He looked at me.

  "Qi-steps in sand. Slow circulation. Breathing counts extended to six and six."

  "In sand? You heard the cultivator on the road. I am at Foundation Establishment middle phase—"

  "Slow."

  "But I CAN do more—"

  "You bleed."

  Silence. He looked at his hands. At the torn palms, the fresh pink skin underneath, the evidence of a body that had exceeded its parameters and been repaired and would exceed them again.

  "...okay."

  But the frustration was visible. His body was telling him he was capable of extraordinary things and the person he trusted most was telling him to slow down. The contradiction between the two was producing a dissonance nothing in his experience had equipped him to resolve.

  I understood the frustration. And I couldn't address it. Because addressing it meant explaining the flicker in his core — the irregularity that shouldn't be there, the vibration, the energetic fault line trending in a direction that earthquakes live. Explaining it meant naming a cause I hadn't identified. A cause I was beginning to suspect I already knew and was refusing to confirm.

  "Sand," I said. "Tomorrow."

  He nodded. Compliance without enthusiasm. A boy learning — slowly, reluctantly — that the person who said "slow" might be more right than the body that said "fast."

  Might be.