Everything fell silent.

  Every eye in the cave turned toward a single figure, and the air seemed to compress around the moment, the attention of an entire clan focusing itself to a point.

  Fang Yuan stepped forward. He crossed the river with a steady, unhurried stride and climbed the far bank. The invisible pressure of the spiritual source met him at once, bearing down with a weight that was both physical and something more difficult to name. But quickly, as it did for everyone, the Little Lights drifting from the Moonlight Orchids began to flow toward him and into him.

  Each point of light is a Gu, he thought. The Gu of Hope.

  The oldest legend in the world tells of where it came from.

  At the beginning of everything, when the world had only just taken shape, the earth was wild and without mercy. Among the creatures that roamed this primitive land, the first man appeared: Ren Zu, the ancestor of all humanity. He had no body hard as mountain rock, no claws, no armor. He ate raw meat, drank blood and spent his existence hiding from things that wanted to eat him. He occupied the very bottom of the food chain.

  The creatures that hunted him were known as the Predicaments, beasts that fed on human flesh and wanted only one thing from the world: to devour him entirely. Cornered and defenseless, he could do nothing but run.

  It was then that three Gu appeared before him.

  — Feed us with your life, they said, and we will carry you through these trials.

  He had nothing to lose. He gave his youth to the largest of the three, and in return it gave him Strength. His life changed. He could protect himself, hunt, break the bones of his enemies. But brute force was never enough against the packs of Predicaments that never stopped coming, and Ren Zu understood that he needed something more.

  He gave his middle years to the most beautiful of the three, and she gave him Wisdom. He learned to think, to accumulate experience, to understand that the mind cut deeper than muscle. Many Predicaments fell before him. He thought, for a time, that he'd found the answer.

  But time defeats everything. Ren Zu grew old. His muscles atrophied, his mind dulled. When the Gu of Strength and the Gu of Wisdom looked at what remained of him and saw that he had nothing left to offer, they left without ceremony, as cleanly and indifferently as a flame that has consumed its fuel.

  Alone, toothless, too weak to run, Ren Zu found himself surrounded once more. He collapsed under the weight of his despair, and it was then that the third Gu spoke.

  — Human. Take me. I will help you escape the Predicaments.

  — I have nothing left but old age, said Ren Zu, and tears ran down his face. If I give you that, I will die instantly. I would rather live out the few seconds remaining to me. Go away.

  — Of the three of us, I ask the least, said the Gu. If you give me your heart, that will be enough.

  — Then I give you my heart, said Ren Zu. But tell me, what can you possibly give me in return? Even Strength and Wisdom weren't enough in the end.

  Compared to the Gu of Strength, this third Gu was nothing but a frail ball of dim light. Compared to the Gu of Wisdom, it barely glowed at all. And yet, the moment Ren Zu surrendered his heart, it erupted, an infinite, blinding radiance that tore through the dark and struck the Predicaments like a physical blow. They recoiled and fled, their voices rising in a shriek that carried through the world.

  — The Gu of Hope! Retreat, we, the Predicaments, fear hope above all else!

  From that day forward, whenever Ren Zu stood before the impossible, he gave his heart to that light. But hope isn't permanent, and it isn't free. Left without the willpower to sustain it, it fades back into shadow, and when it fades, the Predicaments return.

  In the darkness of the underground cave, the lights of the Gu of Hope gathered into a cloud just below Fang Yuan's navel and grew steadily brighter with each step he took.

  He began to move forward. With every advance, more Gu of Hope broke free from the field of flowers and rushed into his body, adding themselves to the gathering light in his abdomen. The flow was steady, and the elders watching from the ledge above were already exchanging glances.

  The number of Gu seems lower than expected...

  The clan chief frowned in the darkness. The stream of light, while unbroken, showed none of the urgency that Grade A talent produced.

  Fang Yuan continued forward, unmoved. At the twenty-seventh step, a dull bang resonated somewhere deep within him, between his kidneys, below the reach of conscious thought. The ball of light in his abdomen had reached its limit and burst.

  The release was invisible to everyone watching. But Fang Yuan felt every wave of it, every hair standing, every pore contracting sharply, awareness briefly departing his body like smoke drawn upward through a crack. Then the emptiness arrived: vast, clean, complete. His body grew light. His chest loosened. Calm returned as his pores closed again, one by one.

  He turned his awareness inward and found it, the sacred space that had opened below his navel. His Aperture. The awakening was complete.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  The Aperture was a strange and particular thing. Physically housed within his body, it occupied a dimension entirely separate from his organs, both infinitely vast and infinitely small, occupying space that had no correspondence to the material world. Spherical, its inner surface was coated in a fluid white light: the translucent membrane left behind by the explosion of the Gu of Hope, the thin skin that kept the whole structure intact against the pressure of reality pressing in from outside.

  Inside lay his Primeval Sea.

  The waters were still as a mirror and carried the blue-green sheen of copper, the distinctive color of green copper essence, the mark of a Rank 1 Gu Master. But the sea level didn't reach even halfway up the available space. It sat at forty-four percent. The unmistakable signature of Grade C talent. Every drop of that water was fifteen years of accumulated vitality and soul, compressed into this form.

  This spiritual essence would now serve as nourishment for his Gu. At this precise moment, Fang Yuan officially became a Rank 1 Gu Master. The flow of Gu of Hope had stopped the instant the Aperture opened. Twenty-seven steps. The same as always. No more, no less.

  Fang Yuan allowed himself the faintest smile as he examined the Aperture from within. He turned his attention deeper still and found the shadow that had been waiting for him there, a familiar silhouette, unchanged across centuries, looking now as though a strong wind might scatter it entirely. But it was present. Its presence was enough.

  He took one more step.

  The remaining Gu of Hope in the field had no choice in what followed. They didn't drift toward him as they had before, they rushed, drawn by something older and heavier than instinct, the aura and will of an existence that ranked above anything they'd ever been designed to encounter. Under this forced influx, his Primeval Sea climbed: twenty-eight steps, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three.

  If others could cheat through cunning and preparation, he would cheat through the compounded weight of his former lives.

  — Can't you go any further? the Elder called from the far end of the cave, his voice tightening with impatience.

  Fang Yuan turned and walked back toward the shore. In that silence, disbelief swept through the assembled teenagers like a cold current.

  — What? Fang Yuan only managed thirty-three steps?

  — So it's Grade B... only Grade B?

  — How is that possible, for him, of all people?

  Every person in the cave had convinced themselves, in the weeks leading up to this moment, that Fang Yuan would be the one to break the pattern, the long-awaited Grade A prodigy who would finally restore the clan's standing against the Bai and Xiong villages. Even Fang Zheng, standing with the other teenagers, wore a look of open and undefended shock.

  — What a waste, murmured the Clan Chief, his voice pulled low by the weight of it. A mere Grade B.

  On the upper ledge, the elders fragmented into competing interpretations.

  — Could the results be wrong somehow?

  — Impossible. The method is infallible, and we all saw it with our own eyes.

  — But how do you explain his intelligence? The poetry, the memory, everything…

  — It happens. Sometimes a mind outpaces the body that carries it. Brilliance and talent aren't the same thing.

  — The bloodline is thinning. That's the only conclusion that holds.

  His socks were soaked through from the two crossings, but Fang Yuan walked back through the cave with an even face and scanned what was waiting for him in the crowd: disappointment wearing the mask of pity, a few poorly suppressed smirks, the particular quality of attention that gathers around someone whose fall from expectation has been public and complete.

  In his first life, this moment had broken him. He'd stumbled in the icy water on the way back, and not one person had reached out to steady him.

  Today, they were simply information about the people watching. Nothing more.

  — Next, called the Elder of the Academy. Gu Yue Fang Zheng!

  — I… yes! Here!

  Fang Zheng jolted out of his stupor and stepped forward. Still caught in the current of his brother's result, he entered the river, and his foot found a mossy stone wrong. He lurched forward, the icy water already rushing up to meet him, and then a hand closed firmly around his arm and pulled him back to his feet.

  Fang Yuan. He'd already moved.

  — Big brother... Fang Zheng stammered, caught between an apology and something he couldn't name.

  — Go, he said. The future is going to be interesting.

  Fang Zheng stared at him for a moment. There was a stillness about his elder that had no simple name, and at the corner of his mouth, something that might, in different light, have been the edge of a smile. Fang Zheng turned and walked the rest of the way across.

  What followed didn't feel like anything he'd been prepared for.

  Under the influence of a force he couldn't identify or resist, the Gu of Hope didn't drift toward him, they came in a storm. They poured from the field in a torrent of white light, a flood that didn't slow or thin as he moved deeper into the flowers, that kept coming as though something had opened a door that had never been open before. When Fang Zheng finally surfaced from the trance and looked down at his own feet, all the breath left his body at once.

  He'd passed Mo Bei. He'd passed Chi Chen. He'd passed his brother.

  Forty-three steps.

  — Grade A! The Elder's voice broke entirely on the words, abandoning composure without apology and rising into something raw and ringing. Grade A, a genius, a true genius has finally appeared within our clan!

  The echo rebounded off the cave walls and detonated whatever remained of the ledge's dignity above. The elders, usually so practiced in calculation and restraint, shed both instantly.

  — The Fang lineage has always been bound to ours by history! Chi Lian was already surging forward, his voice riding over the noise of the cave. The Chi family will adopt Fang Zheng officially, today, in front of witnesses!

  — You shameless old fool! Mo Chen threw himself into Chi Lian's path, his face twisted past the point of pretense. Everyone here knows the quality of your methods. This child will not go near you. He will be raised by me, Gu Yue Mo Chen, and no one else!

  — Enough.

  One voice. Not loud. Not needing to be.

  The clan chief stepped forward out of the shadows and into the light of the cave. His gaze moved across the ledge once, steady, measuring, without hurry, and the elders fell silent the way a room falls silent when something heavier than argument enters it.

  — No one here is more qualified to raise this child than the sitting chief of the Gu Yue clan. Anyone who believes otherwise is welcome to face me directly. Here. Now.

  He waited.

  No one moved. No one spoke.

  Fang Zheng had ceased, in the span of a few minutes, to be an unremarkable orphan. He'd become the most valuable asset the clan had produced in a generation, and the chief had made it unmistakably clear, in front of every elder and every teenager in that cave, exactly whose hands that asset would remain in.