On the morning after the axis of sanfen (三分) had been drawn upon the map in the hall of Longzhong (隆中), Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮) stepped from the hall and set out toward Xinye (新野).

Zhuge Liang spoke a low word to his younger brother Zhuge Jun (諸葛均). "Jun. Today I step beyond the mountain. Keep the grain of the hall and the bean field beneath your hand. My step shall certainly return to this hall."

Zhuge Jun bowed deeply. "Elder brother. I shall keep the grain of the hall and the bean field long." Zhuge Liang's wife, Lady Huang, draped a plain cotton robe lightly upon his shoulders. "Sir. Wear today's robe long." Zhuge Liang gave a low smile.

Before the door of the hall, Liu Bei (劉備) waited with a single horse. Guan Yu (關羽) and Zhang Fei (張飛) stood a step behind. Zhuge Liang bowed his head and mounted. A feather-fan (羽扇) rested in his hand.

Zhuge Liang's horse and Liu Bei's Dilu (的盧) stood side by side. The four feet of the two horses descended slowly down the mountain path of Longzhong. The door of the hall closed quietly behind them.

Upon the path, a woodcutter's song flowed low again. "Wolong has awakened; the time has arrived. The dragon has risen to the sky." Upon his horse, Liu Bei gave a low smile.

Zhuge Liang spoke a low word. "Governor. The song of the woodcutter upon this mountain path has changed today. The risen dragon is a grain beneath Your Lordship's grain."

Liu Bei nodded deeply. "Kongming. Today's step of coming out of the mountain (出山) is the first foot of the grain of sanfen."

Within the walled city of Xinye, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei had already arrived ahead and prepared a seat of welcome for Zhuge Liang. Upon the tower, a small banner of welcome rose.

Zhuge Liang's horse reached the front of the gate of Xinye. His two eyes looked low upon the banner atop the tower. The banner's grain swayed lightly in the wind.

Beside the tower stood Sun Qian (孫乾) with a scroll of introductions already prepared. Zhuge Liang would need to learn the names of Liu Bei's retinue and their seats before the first council. Sun Qian had spent the previous afternoon preparing the scroll in a hand clear enough that a new counselor might read it through without needing to ask again. A clerk who has prepared a clear scroll for a new counselor seldom asks for thanks; Sun Qian had not prepared it for thanks, but only that the new counselor might begin his work that same evening. Zhuge Liang received the scroll with a low nod and did not unroll it in the courtyard. He laid it within his sleeve for the night, to be read beneath his own lamp in the small residence Liu Bei had set aside for him.

Within that small residence that night, Zhuge Liang laid the feather-fan upon a low stool beside the bed and unrolled Sun Qian's scroll beneath the lamp. He read the names twice. Beside no name did he write anything that evening. A counselor who has just stepped out of a mountain hall seldom begins by writing beside other men's names on his first evening; he reads them in the order given, and learns the order. The order, he saw, was a competent one; Sun Qian's hand had been careful. He rolled the scroll again, set it beside the fan, and blew out the lamp. The first step beyond the mountain had become the first night within a new gate.

Back at Longzhong, after the horses had vanished past the last bend of the mountain path, Zhuge Jun walked into the empty hall and sat upon his elder brother's low cushion. He picked up no scroll; he lit no lamp. A younger brother who has just watched his elder brother ride out along a mountain path after eight years seldom picks up a scroll or lights a lamp in the same hour. He only sat upon the cushion and looked toward the high shelf where the map had been rolled away. The shelf was empty tonight; the cushion's grain had taken into itself the shape of his elder brother's seat through so many seasons that it would hold that grain for weeks still beneath Zhuge Jun's smaller body. In coming years the cushion would flatten; in coming decades the hall would return to the earth. Tonight, however, the cushion was still warm beneath a brother.

Lady Huang stood at the back door of the residence and watched the evening sky darken. She did not weep. A wife of eight years to a sage, who has kept a cotton robe ready for this evening, seldom weeps on the evening the robe is at last laid upon her husband's shoulder. She only stood at the door and watched the grain of the sky.

The hundred and third evening of Book 4 deepened quietly beneath the banner before the gate of Xinye. The three characters Chulsan-il (出山一, the single step out of the mountain) were planted as a seed: the breath in which a plain cotton robe, a feather-fan, the changed woodcutter's song, and a banner of welcome met at a single seat. The sanfen of Day 102's Yungjung-dae (隆中對) had reached this evening beneath a banner beyond the mountain.

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