The days since Kai’s first lesson had settled into a rhythm. Each morning, before the sun could rise, Lu Bu woke and started his basic exercises—the same stances, the same controlled breaths, the same meditative focus—that the lowest novices of the Ember Sword Sect had endured for centuries before.

  Lu Bu, to his credit, never complained. Even when his muscles trembled and his breath came in ragged gasps, he clenched his jaw and continued. Kai watched him now, the boy balanced precariously on one leg in the Crane stance, his arms outstretched, his fingers curled as if cradling an invisible flame.

  He’s trying too hard. Kai would think to himself sometimes as he watched Lu Bu practice.

  Kai didn’t say it aloud. There was no point. The truth was, this training was a bit of a farce.

  The exercises themselves had value—strengthening the body, disciplining the mind—but true cultivation? Here? Impossible. There wasn't enough ambient qi to practice with. Even the most gifted disciple would struggle to sense qi in this place, let alone refine it.

  Zan was known as the spiritual wasteland for a good reason.

  Kai didn’t have the heart to tell him.

  And yet, Lu Bu persisted.

  Kai exhaled. He remembered his own first days in the Ember Sword Sect, the way his master had struck his back with a bamboo rod whenever his posture faltered. "Discipline shapes the vessel," the old man had growled. "A cracked cup cannot hold water, and a weak body cannot hold qi."

  Lu Bu wobbled, his arms shaking. Kai said nothing.

  He should have corrected him. A proper master would have. But Kai wasn’t a proper master. He was a novice teaching another novice. What right did he have to play teacher?

  Then why did you agree? He would ask himself.

  The question gnawed at him. Perhaps it was the boy’s desperation. Perhaps it was the memory of his own first, fumbling steps into cultivation. Or perhaps it was simpler than that—perhaps he just didn’t know how to say no to those wide, hopeful eyes.

  I should have just agreed to take him with me when he asked. If I had done that, the topic of becoming a disciple may have not come up. Kai silently murmured.

  Lu Bu’s foot slipped. He crashed into the ground with a grunt, then immediately scrambled back up, brushing off the dirt like it was nothing. "Again," he panted.

  Kai almost smiled. Almost.

  "Rest," he said instead. "Your body needs recovery as much as it needs training."

  Lu Bu opened his mouth to protest, but Kai cut him off with a raised hand. "Cultivation isn’t just about pushing forward. It’s about knowing when to stop."

  The boy hesitated, then nodded obediently—before promptly walking to a nearby rock, clasping his hands in a crude meditation circle, and folding his legs into a lotus position. His brow furrowed with exaggerated concentration, his breathing immediately shifting into the rhythmic pattern Kai had taught him days prior.

  I told him to rest, and he starts meditating instead? Kai arched an eyebrow but said nothing. The kid's stubbornness was almost impressive. Well, at least his body's still recovering... even if his mind refuses to.

  Shaking his head, Kai returned to the pile of leather hides beside the smoldering fire. The work was tedious—cutting, stitching, treating—made worse by the fact he only had one set of tools. He couldn't get Lu Bu's help with the processing. His knife flashed in the weak light as he trimmed another hide, the blade's edge duller than he'd like. He'd have to sharpen it again soon.

  The spirit beasts had been generous since settling here. Every day, hunting parties ventured beyond the ice dome's protection, returning with scrawny mountain hares, frost-resistant tubers. No one starved. The beasts even left portions near Kai and Lu Bu's sleeping area.

  Kai's hands stilled as his gaze drifted to Snow's motionless form. The great ice wolf lay curled near the fire's warmth, his ribcage rising and falling in shallow breaths. The spirit herbs Kai had been administering—precious remnants of his time with the Ember Sword sect, taken with him in his escape—should have shown some effect by now. Instead, Snow only roused weakly when Kai pressed a medicinal brew to his muzzle, lapping at it with a tongue that felt too warm, before sinking back into unnatural sleep.

  He's not healing. Just surviving.

  The realization sat heavy in Kai's gut. Snow had expended nearly all his refined qi creating their sanctuary, and the ambient energy here was too thin to replenish it. Without sufficient qi, Snow's natural recovery had stalled. Kai's fingers tightened around the half-stitched leather. He'd use every last spiritual herb if needed, but he wasn't sure that would work.

  A soft chittering noise drew his attention. One of the smaller spirit beasts—a ferret-like creature with yellow-tipped fur—had dragged a fresh hide beside his work pile. It stared at him with uncanny intelligence before darting back into the shadows. Kai exhaled sharply through his nose. The spirit beasts ever looking for ways to help Kai.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He resumed stitching, the needle punching through tough leather with more force than necessary. The tarps were crude but vital—without proper shelter, the weaker beasts wouldn't last the next rain. As he worked, his eyes kept returning to Snow. The wolf's once-gleaming fur had grown dulled. Kai remembered the weight of those ice-blue eyes watching him the first time they'd met when he was a pup—full of so much fear and pain. But, he had turned that around and gave Snow enough love to relieve that fear and heal that pain.

  Damn it all.

  Kai clenched his jaw as frustration simmered in his chest. The bitter taste of regret coated his tongue - he should have studied alchemy when he'd had the chance. He might have been able to flee the sect with potent medicine if he had.

  The fire crackled, its warmth doing little to melt the icy dread in Kai's stomach. He ran a hand through his unkempt hair, fingers catching on tangles. What was he missing? There had to be another way-

  "Uncle Kai! I did it!" Lu Bu's voice shattered his brooding like a stone through thin ice. "I think I pulled qi into my body!"

  Kai's head snapped up. The boy still sat in his makeshift lotus position, but now his entire face glowed with excitement, his cheeks flushed. His hands trembled slightly where they rested on his knees, fingertips faintly pink.

  Impossible. The thought came unbidden. In this qi-barren wasteland? After mere days of training? Even the sect's prodigies had needed months to achieve their first successful absorption.

  Yet Kai forced his lips into an encouraging smile. "Is that so? Well, keep at it." He turned back to his leathers, dismissing the claim as youthful enthusiasm.

  "But Uncle Kai," Lu Bu persisted, "you said the first step is sensing qi and drawing it in. What do I do now?"

  Kai set down his leathers with deliberate slowness. "Did you actually draw qi into your body," he asked, voice carefully neutral, "or are you just saying that?"

  "I did! Uncle Kai, I really did!" Lu Bu's eyes burned with an intensity that gave Kai pause. Not excitement - certainty.

  A long sigh escaped Kai's lips as he rose, joints protesting from days spent hunched over leatherwork. "Alright then. Let's see." He crossed to Lu Bu.

  Kneeling behind the boy, Kai placed one calloused hand between Lu Bu's shoulder blades. The contact sparked a memory - his own first qi circulation injection, Master Yuen's gnarled fingers pressing against his spine, the old man's qi flowing through him like liquid sunlight.

  "Lu Bu, you're going to feel something strange," Kai warned. "Don't resist, understand?"

  The boy nodded eagerly, his breathing already slowing in preparation. Kai closed his eyes and reached inward, drawing upon the reserves he had. A thin stream of refined qi trickled from his palm into Lu Bu's back, following the pathways he'd traversed in his own body countless times.

  Qi circulation injection was a fundamental technique - using one's own energy to stimulate another's qi circulation. In the sect, elders used it to accelerate disciples' progress. Now, it would serve as Kai's makeshift diagnostic tool, though he expected to find nothing more than an overeager child's imagination.

  The moment his qi entered Lu Bu's body, Kai's breath caught.

  "What in the world?" Kai's voice came out as barely more than a breath, his fingers tightening slightly against Lu Bu's back as if the boy might vanish like a mirage.

  The energy flowing through Lu Bu's meridians defied all logic. Where Kai had expected to find the sluggish, congested pathways of an untrained mortal - the biological equivalent of a dirt road after heavy rain - instead ran channels as clear as mountain springs. The qi Kai had injected moved with unnatural fluidity, encountering none of the typical blockages that took novices years of painful cleansing to remove.

  His mind raced through possibilities, each more improbable than the last. A sect's median cleansing elixir? Impossible - the boy had never set foot in a cultivation school. Some hidden master's intervention? Unlikely in Zan. A spiritual treasure? Lu Bu owned nothing but the threadbare clothes on his back.

  Then the realization struck Kai like a physical blow, sending his pulse hammering against his ribs.

  Perfect spiritual root.

  The legends whispered about such beings - children born with meridians as pristine as jade, their bodies rejecting the natural accumulation of worldly impurities that stalled ordinary mortals' cultivation potential. In his years at the Ember Sword Sect, Kai had seen exactly two disciples with such gifts. Both had been whisked away to the inner sanctum within days of discovery, groomed to become future sect masters.

  Yet even they hadn't manifested this quickly. Not in mere days. Especially not in Zan's qi-starved wilderness.

  Kai's diagnostic qi probed deeper, tracing the pathways to Lu Bu's center, his dantian. What he found there stole his breath - not just the faint traces of natural qi he'd expected from a first attempt, but a swirling reservoir already forming, the energy coiling like a waking dragon. The amount was minuscule by cultivator standards, but its mere existence after such brief training...

  A cold sweat broke across Kai's brow. This wasn't just a perfect spiritual root. This was the kind of heaven-defying talent that sparked wars between sects, that people would slaughter entire bloodlines to possess. The sort of prodigy that appeared perhaps once in three centuries, if the annals could be believed.

  And somehow, through whatever cosmic joke the heavens were playing, this diamond beyond value had been left to die in the ass-end of nowhere until a nobody fleeing his sect stumbled upon him.

  Kai withdrew his qi and hand from the boy, the motion abrupt enough that Lu Bu nearly toppled forward.

  "Uncle Kai?" The boy twisted to look back, his face a picture of innocent confusion. "Did I... do something wrong?"

  The question hung between them, almost laughable in its simplicity. Kai opened his mouth, then closed it. What could he possibly say? That the boy might be the most valuable cultivation asset currently breathing? That every power-hungry faction across the continent would gladly reduce Zan to cinders to claim him?

  A boy like Lu Bu was a lightning rod for catastrophe. His very existence would draw the hungry eyes of great sects and demonic cultivators alike, each willing to bathe the land in blood to either possess or eliminate such talent. The logical choice would be to leave him here in the wilds, to let Zan's merciless embrace swallow this walking temptation before it could destroy him. But, the thought never even formed in Kai's mind. He was neither that cruel nor ruthless to do something like that to Lu Bu.

  Snow chose that moment to whimper in his sleep, the sound fragile as breaking ice. The reminder of their precarious situation grounded Kai like a bucket of glacial water.

  "No," he managed at last, forcing his voice steady. "You've done... remarkably well." The understatement of the century. "I guess…we can start your next lesson on realms and advancing them."