The village of Reedfield sat where the river bent and slowed. In spring, the rice paddies shone like pieces of the sky. In late summer, the mud pulled at ankles and left people cursing. Chickens ran underfoot. Dogs slept in doorways. Children shouted and chased one another along the levee.
A hut near the east gate had bundles of herbs hanging from its rafters—wormwood, mint, ginger, licorice. A small bell over the door rang when the wind pushed it. Smoke curled from a clay stove. The air smelled of bitter roots and boiling water.
Inside, a boy crushed charcoal into powder with the bottom of a clay bottle. He worked slowly and carefully, tapping the pestle and scraping the sides. His sleeves were rolled up. His hair was tied back with a cord. He moved like someone used to not wasting motion.
His name was too Shen Kai.
He was the apprentice to Granny Mai, Reedfield's healer. Granny Mai had bad knees and sharp eyes. She kept a ledger for every house in the village—who coughed, who limped, who owed, who paid with eggs instead of coin. She taught Kai to boil water before anything, to wash hands before touching the sick, and to listen more than he spoke.
No one in the village knew he carried a cracked Mirror inside his dantian.
No one needed to know.
"Stop powdering it," Granny Mai said, peering over the rim of a clay cup. "That's fine enough. Put it with honey. Children won't swallow it else."
"Yes, Granny," Kai said. He tapped the powder into a small bowl and mixed in a spoon of honey until it made a dark paste. He rolled the paste into little pills the size of beans and set them on an oiled leaf.
A woman came in carrying a toddler on her hip. The child's eyes were dull. His lips were dry. His belly looked round and wrong.
"Third house east of the levee?" Granny Mai asked without looking up.
"Yes," the woman said, surprised. "How did you—"
"Everyone from there comes with the runs," Granny Mai said. "Levee's seeped. Your husband fixed the fence instead of the ditch. Sit. Boy, water first. No rice for a day. These every hour—half the size of a fingernail."
Kai handed over the little pills and a wrapped packet of salt and sugar. "Mix this with boiled water," he said. "One clay cup after each stool. If he doesn't cry when you pinch his belly, bring him back at once."
The woman nodded, biting her lip. She left with a bowed head.
Granny Mai scratched in the ledger with a charcoal stick. "We'll be busy this week," she said. "Rains pulled the ditch back into the paddy. Water sits. Bad for bellies. Boil, boil, boil—if only people listened."
Kai thought of something he had heard the first week he arrived: Every gift carries its price. He nodded and set a new pot to boil.
Inside his dantian, the Mirror pulsed once, slow and calm. It showed him a flicker: a narrow bedchamber painted with gold, a thin man coughing under silk, a court physician's hand pressing his wrist. Another life. Another time.
Then the image fell away like dust in water. The cracked surface returned. The glow in the lines was faint but steady.
You're still with me, he thought. Then let me work. Feed me slowly. I'll take what you give.
A wagon rolled up to the square at noon. The driver shouted, "Salt! Salt!" Villagers came with small baskets and pieces of cloth. Salt was always short inland. When a wagon came, people hurried.
The driver was a round man with a red neck. He wore a felt hat and a quick grin. "Master Yao's finest," he said to anyone who looked. "Fair measure. Clean grains. No stones. No sawdust, I swear it."
Granny Mai waved a hand. "You swear too much," she said. "Kai, go buy a bowl. We'll need it." She pressed coins into his palm. "And smell it before you pay."
Kai went with a small bowl and stood in line. He watched the scoops go into other bowls. He watched Master Yao's assistant shake the bag to keep the top loose. He watched Master Yao keep up a patter—complaints about the road, jokes about wives, gossip about taxes.
When it was his turn, he held the bowl close and breathed in. The salt smelled like the river when the wind was from the sea. That was right.
But there was something else. A cold hint. Not mint. Not wintergreen. Snow drop left a sweet numbness. This was different. It prickled at the back of the tongue like stale rain.
He dipped a wet finger and touched a grain to his tongue.
His mouth went slightly numb along the gums. The Mirror stirred and shook loose three old flavors from the Emperor's shard: snow drop (numb), foxglove (bitter-sweet in fat), river ash (cold on the tongue, made from a weed that grew along muddy banks).
Kai swallowed and kept his face plain. He weighed the bowl in his hands like a careful buyer. "It's a little damp," he said. "Did you keep it under a tarp?"
"Rain this morning," Master Yao said, smiling. "Keeps it from clumping."
Kai nodded and paid. He carried the bowl back to Granny Mai.
She touched a grain to her tongue too and spat into a jar. "River ash," she said, frowning. "Cheap trick. Makes salt taste like more. Also makes bellies wrong."
"Do we tell the headman?" Kai asked.
Granny Mai snorted. "Headman bought a bag free for his table. He'll say it's fine. No. We tell people to boil and drink charcoal honey, and we watch. If it gets worse, we argue at the meeting and slap the table until someone listens."
Kai nodded. He set the bowl on the shelf and wrote a note on a scrap: Salt—Master Yao—river ash? He tucked it into Granny Mai's ledger and went to check the water.
Inside, the Mirror pulsed again. A faint thread of qi slid along his meridians and pooled warm at his core. Not much. Enough to make his hands steady.
The Emperor died by poison, he thought. But this life, I'll turn that memory into medicine. If that helps you loosen, then good.
Three days later, a man with a scar on his cheek and a sword at his hip came into the hut and banged a fist on the table. He wore lacquered leather and smelled of horse sweat.
"You're the healer?" he said.
Granny Mai looked up. "I am," she said. "You're from upstream. The clay on your boots is from the red bank. Sit or speak. Don't bang."
The man looked at Kai. "You the apprentice?"
"Yes."
The man jerked his chin toward the door. "Come. Our boss's son is sick. Fever. Won't eat. You treat him."
Granny Mai's mouth went thin. "Bandit son?"
The man's face stayed blank. "He's my boss's son," he said. "You'll treat him."
"We treat anyone who comes to the bench," Granny Mai said. "Bring him."
The man's hand touched the hilt of his sword. "He can't be moved."
Granny Mai didn't blink. "Then I can't walk that far on these knees."
Kai put a hand on the table. "I'll go," he said. He met Granny Mai's eyes. "I'll go and return."
Granny Mai's eyes were a sharp needle. She nodded once. "Take ginger, charcoal, willow bark. Boil water before you give anything. Check the well if they have one. And don't be brave. If they point swords at you, treat and leave."
Kai packed a cloth bag. He tucked in a scoop of charcoal powder, a bundle of ginger, a strip of willow bark, a packet of salt and sugar, and Granny Mai's small copper kettle. He put a cloth of mountain seeds and a pinch of powdered clove in his sleeve out of habit. He tied the bag shut and stood.
The bandit led him out of the village and along the river for an hour. The path climbed. Trees leaned over the water. The sound of frogs followed them.
They came to a camp hidden among willows. Men with bows watched from behind trunks. A woman with a scar across her forehead sat sharpening a knife. She looked at Kai like he was a chicken.
A boy lay on a pallet in a tent, cheeks flushed, eyes bright and wrong. He muttered and batted at the air. His belly rose and fell quick.
Kai knelt and put the back of his hand on the boy's forehead. Hot. He pressed fingers to the boy's wrist. Fast. He pinched his belly gently. The boy didn't cry. Bad.
"Water," Kai said. "Clean. From a boiled pot."
The man with the scar snorted. "Water is water."
"Your water is dirty," Kai said, without heat. "Bring me from where you drink."
A woman brought a gourd. The water smelled of moss and mud. River ash had a smell too, once you knew it. It was faint, like old leaves.
Kai set the kettle on a ring of stones, lit a small fire, and boiled. He mixed salt and sugar and cooled the water with a clean cloth in the breeze. He lifted the boy's head and let a little slide past his lips. Most dribbled. He waited and tried again. A little went in.
The bandit boss came then. He was broad, with a long mustache and heavy bracelets. His eyes were tired.
"Treat him," the boss said. "I'll pay."
Kai nodded, still working. "When did he fall ill?"
"Three days," the boss said. "He vomited. Now he burns. We gave him river water. We gave him wine. We put his feet in cold water. He shivered."
"Wine was wrong," Kai said. He cut a slice of ginger and put it in the hot water to soften the smell and make the boy accept it. He chewed a tiny piece himself to wake his own mouth and worked more slowly. "Your well?"
"We have no well. We take from the bend," the boss said. "Like always."
"Like always," Kai repeated. He glanced at the river through the tent opening. He watched a gray slick ride low on the water and catch among roots.
He could almost taste it.
River ash in the salt. River ash in the river, he thought. Upstream someone is dumping wash from burning weeds. Or from scraping cooking pots. Or they learned a trick and overdid it.
He fed the boy more sugar-salt water by drips while it was warm. The boy swallowed once, twice, three times. He didn't retch. Good.
Kai gave him a rice water spoon two hours later. Then a honey-charcoal bean. Then more salt water. The fever eased a little. The boy's eyes stopped rolling.
The boss breathed out and let his shoulders drop.
"You'll leave the kettle," the boss said.
"You'll boil water for him," Kai said, patient. "Not for me. Boil for everyone."
The boss frowned. "Boil takes wood. Wood takes time."
"Boil or bury," Kai said.
The boss stared at him for a long moment. Then he grunted. "Boil."
Kai stood and wiped his hands on a clean cloth. He walked to the river and squatted on the bank. He watched a woman fill buckets. He watched a man wash a pan black with grease and dump gray water back into the bend.
He sniffed. Cold on the tongue. River ash again.
He walked back to the boss. "You'll move the camp forty paces upriver," he said. "Take water where it flows fast, not where the tree roots catch it. Tell your people to wash downstream, not upstream. Stop dumping gray water here. Stop skimming scum into your pots. If you don't, more will fall."
The boss rubbed his mustache. "You tell me like I'm a farmer."
"I'm telling you like I don't want to come back with a shroud," Kai said.
The woman with the forehead scar laughed once. "The boy has a tongue."
Kai didn't smile. He boiled another kettle and left a packet of salt-sugar and charcoal paste. He wrote the simple rules on a scrap—boil, fast water, wash below, no scum—and put it in a small clay jar so it wouldn't smear.
The boss watched him pack his bag. "What do you want?" he asked. "Coin? Grain? A knife?"
"Take no salt from Master Yao," Kai said. "If you must buy, taste it first. If it numbs your mouth without mint, throw it in the river."
The boss's eyes narrowed. "Master Yao sells to us. Cheap."
"Cheap is a trap," Kai said. He slung the bag over his shoulder and bowed. "Keep the boy warm. Don't feed him meat. Rice water, honey beans, then thin porridge. He'll mend if you boil."
He left with the man with the scar. He did not look back.
Inside, the Mirror pulsed. The Emperor's shard, heavy with fear of poison, loosened again. A slow, steady trickle of qi slipped into Kai's core. It was modest. It was clean.
This is the price you wanted this life, he thought. Do the work, not the rage. Heal, not hate. The Mirror feeds.
When Kai returned to Reedfield, the square buzzed. Two children were sick. A grandmother had fainted. A fisherman had cramps that bent him double.
Granny Mai's eyes flashed. "Raise your voice," she told Kai. "Go to the well. Tell them to boil. Tell them I said so. If they argue, bring me their ears."
Kai stood on the stones by the well and shouted until his throat hurt. "Boil your water! If it's not boiled, don't drink it. Don't wash bowls in the well. Don't rinse rice in the well. Boil first."
Some argued. "Boil costs wood." "Boil takes time." "We never boiled before."
"Then get sick before," Kai said. He didn't shout now. He looked them in the eye, one by one. "If you drink without boiling this week, you'll be on your mat. If you give unboiled to your old mother, she'll be in the ground. Choose."
Granny Mai thumped her cane and glared at anyone who tried to wave him off. "Listen to the boy or your bellies fall out," she said.
People grumbled but brought out pots.
That afternoon, Master Yao rolled his wagon into the square again. He smiled and called, "Fresh salt!"
Kai walked up to the wagon with Granny Mai's ledger in his hand. He set the ledger on the wagon plank and looked at Master Yao.
"Your salt numbs tongues," he said, plain.
Master Yao's eyes flicked to the ledger and back. "Salt is salt," he said, smile fixed. "Maybe your tongue is soft."
"Your salt has river ash," Kai said. "It makes bellies wrong. Stop selling it here."
Master Yao laughed lightly. "A village boy tells me how to sell?"
"Not how," Kai said. "Where. Take your wagon and sell in another place. Not here."
A few men muttered behind Kai. Women held their baskets tight. A child coughed.
Master Yao's smile tightened. "Village boy," he said, dropping the sugar from his voice, "do you want me to say you slandered a lawful merchant? If I go to the magistrate, do you want to pay a fine?"
Granny Mai's cane thumped the plank. "This ledger has five cases of river belly since your last wagon," she said. "Ten since the one before. We boil. We treat. We improve. Then your wagon comes, and people fall again. I'm old, but I can still throw a stone through your wheel."
Master Yao's assistant took a step, then stopped. The square had gone very quiet.
Kai looked at the grains, at the bags, at Master Yao's fingers. He reached into his sleeve, pulled out a cloth, and held it up. Black dust clung to the weave.
"Kitchen spit cloth," he said. "From the manor upstream. Snow drop showed blacker, foxglove smears, river ash leaves a gray ring. This is gray. This is your salt."
Master Yao's face didn't move, but his eyes shifted just enough to count people. Too many. Not worth a fight. He lifted his hands and made his smile wide. "If you think so, I will take my honest salt elsewhere," he said. "I don't sell to fools."
He flicked his reins. The wagon rolled. The square stayed quiet until it reached the road. Then people exhaled like a wind.
Granny Mai put a hand on Kai's shoulder. "You did not shout," she said. "Good. Save your throat for the sick."
They boiled more water that day than any day that summer.
At dusk, the man with the scar came back alone. He stood in the door and held his palms open to show no weapon.
"The boy sweated and slept," he said to Granny Mai. "He woke and asked for rice." He looked at Kai. "The boss says thank you. He sent this." He put a small bag on the table.
Granny Mai didn't touch it. "We don't take coin from bandits," she said. "Give me a sack of good wood when the road dries. Boiling needs fuel."
The man looked confused. Then he grinned, quick and brief. "Done," he said. He looked at Kai and tipped his head. "Boss says to tell you we pissed where you told us and moved the pots. Men complain. Then their bellies quiet. They complain less."
Kai nodded. "Keep boiling," he said. "Boil until the first frost. Don't drink the river raw. Your boss's boy is still soft."
The man nodded and went.
Granny Mai slid the little bag off the table with a flat stick into a clay jar and tied a cord around it. "We bake this into bricks for the next funeral," she said. "I'm not having neighbors say we take bandit coin for medicine."
Kai smiled a little. "Yes, Granny."
Inside, the Mirror pulsed again. It was a soft throb, like a bell under cloth. The beggar shard—the one that had burned him with hunger—warmed and loosened around the edges. A memory fell away: cold ribs, tight stomach, the feeling of turning your face to the wall because no one saw you.
A thread of qi followed it into his core.
He didn't chase it. He didn't reach. He kept making honey-charcoal beans.
At the end of autumn, rain came and did not stop. The river swelled. The levee groaned. Men ran with sandbags. Children were carried to high ground. Cows were led by their horn ropes, bellowing.
Kai stood on the levee in a straw rain cape and watched the water climb. He shouted until he had no voice, pointing where the bags had to go. Granny Mai sat at the hut door with a bell and a ledger and counted everyone she could see.
At midnight, the levee broke.
Water rushed in like a wall. People screamed. Lamps went out. Dogs howled. A cart flipped, and a line of grain sacks tumbled like small bodies into the current.
Kai ran.
He lifted a girl off a half-fallen door and put her on his back. He pushed an old man out of a swirl. He grabbed a sheep's rope and tied it to a post and pulled until his arms burned.
A log slammed into his ribs and knocked the breath out of him. He stood anyway. He kept moving. He kept moving until his legs felt like someone else's.
He looked up and saw a boy—the bandit boss's son—standing on a barrel tied to a willow and crying. The camp upstream had moved closer for boiling, just far enough that the break caught them too. The boss stood waist-deep a few paces away, reaching and missing.
Kai dropped his shoulder and went into the water that had taken all the color from the world. It was ice. It slapped his face and filled his mouth with dirt.
He swam like he'd been born in a river. He wasn't. The Mirror pulsed and sent the motion of another life into his limbs—a fisherman's smooth pull, a soldier's short, strong kicks. He reached the barrel, pushed it closer to the tree, and shoved the boy up onto a branch. He wrapped the rope around the boy twice and tied it with a knot that would not slip.
He turned to reach for the boss and saw the log an instant before it hit him.
It caught him under the ribs and lifted him. The world turned into cold and sound and dark.
He grabbed the log with both arms and held on while the river dragged them ten paces, twenty, thirty. The bank rushed by—a smear of dark and lighter dark. He kicked and pulled and somehow got his chest onto the log.
He coughed water until he couldn't cough anymore. He lay there and listened to the rain and the wild roar and the far-off scream of a goat.
Something warm moved in his core like a hand on a small fire. The Mirror pulsed. The Sword Saint's shard rattled in its frame—the memory of a mountain falling and a brother's blade—and for once it did not flood him with rage. It eased like a knot that had been under the shoulder too long and finally let blood through.
You chose to pull, not to cut, an unshaped thought said. So I will feed you strength to pull again.
He got off the log. He went back. He tied more ropes. He shouted until there was nothing left in his throat.
Before dawn, the water slowed. The levee was a bite out of the earth. The village was a broken bowl. Smoke sat low over ruined cook fires. People huddled under wet blankets and shook.
Kai walked back to the hut with his arms hanging like ropes. He leaned his forehead against the doorpost and breathed. He tasted river in his teeth.
Granny Mai sat with the ledger in her lap and her eyes open. "We'll count the living first," she said. "We'll count the dead after."
Kai nodded.
They counted. They boiled. They scraped mud from floors and turned rice out on mats to dry. They cut the rotten out of cabbages and kept the rest. They set the dead in a row and washed their faces with clean water and wrapped them in cloth.
The bandit boss came at noon with his boy on his shoulders and a cord of good wood on his back. He put both down by the hut without a word, bowed to Granny Mai, and left.
Granny Mai nodded once and wrote "wood" in the ledger in a small square hand.
Kai slept sitting up for two days and two nights. When he finally lay down, he dreamed of nothing. The Mirror hummed like a hive.
On the third morning, he woke with a fever. It started in his chest and moved to his head. His bones felt hollow. He sat up and the hut tilted, then straightened.
"Lie down," Granny Mai said. "Stupid boy."
"Boil," Kai muttered. "No one else can lift the big pot."
"I'll shout," Granny Mai said. "You'll scare children with your face. Lie down."
He lay down. He drank ginger water and sucked on a honey-charcoal bean. He let the fever burn while his breath stayed slow. He felt the Mirror pulse like a tide. He felt a thin thread of qi trickle into his core and pool, slow, slow, steady.
He slept and woke and slept again. Sometimes he felt cold. Sometimes he saw gold paint and a cup. Sometimes he saw a log and water. Sometimes he saw a long table and a grin that never reached the eyes.
When the fever passed, he sat up and ate thin porridge and cried for no reason. Granny Mai handed him a cloth and pretended not to see.
Winter came with white breath in the morning and rings of ice in buckets. People used less water, not more. Bellies settled. Coughs started. Granny Mai set cups of hot ginger at the edge of the stove and told everyone to take one as they passed.
Master Yao did not come to the square again. A different wagon came with coarse salt that tasted of clean stone. People grumbled at the price and paid anyway.
The bandits moved their camp another bend upstream where the water ran clear. They sent wood every month without talking about it. The boy waved at Kai whenever he saw him in the trees.
Kai's hands got rough. His shoulders stayed tight from lifting and carrying. He did not chase realms. He did not talk about Foundation or Core. He practiced breath while boiling water and let the Mirror drip qi into him when he resolved small knots—an old grudge between neighbors, a mother who wanted to water down milk, a boy who threw a rock and hit his friend.
He grew older in the way village healers do, with ink stains on fingers, smoke in hair, and a thousand names sitting behind his eyes.
He did not marry. He didn't have time. People filled the hut and left and came back again. Granny Mai's knees got worse. She sat more and pointed with her stick and said, "You're my legs. Run," and he ran.
One spring, after the paddies were planted and the first warm rain fell, Granny Mai went to sleep and did not wake. Kai wrapped her in clean cloth. He set her ledger on her chest. He rang the little bell above the door three times and carried her to the hill. The village walked behind him. The bandit boss and his boy came and walked at the back. No one said their names out loud.
After, Kai sat in the hut alone. He opened the ledger and looked at the first page. Granny Mai's hand was neat. The first line read: Water first. Boil. Wash hands. Listen. Count the living before you count the dead.
He laughed a little and then he didn't.
He wrote Shen Kai on a blank page. He wrote the day's date. He wrote: River runs right today. Boil anyway.
He kept the ledger.
Years passed like water when you stare at one rock. The Mirror never left him. It pulsed when he did right. It pulsed when he did wrong. It fed him a little when a knot in the past loosened—poison not used, hunger not ignored, fear not obeyed.
He became the man people looked for with their bodies and their worries. He scolded and laughed and set bones and mixed herbs and said "Boil" more times than any other word in his life.
When he was old and his hair was white and his hands shook sometimes when he held a cup, he went to the levee one morning and sat where the break had been years ago. The willow had grown back wider. Children ran along it and shouted. The bandit boss's son—now big and quiet—walked with a child on his shoulders and nodded at Kai.
Kai nodded back and watched the river slide.
He closed his eyes and turned inward one last time. The Mirror floated equal and steady in his dantian. The cracks still glowed, but less angrily. The Emperor shard was quiet now. The Sword Saint shard sat like a blade back in its sheath. The Beggar shard no longer made his belly clench when someone left a bowl half full.
He smiled.
"Every gift carries its price," he said, soft, the words worn smooth now. "I paid for some. Others, I'll pay later."
He leaned his shoulder against the willow, and the sun warmed his face. His breath went out. It didn't come back.
The bell over the hut door rang once, though no wind moved.
Someone found him and told the village. They came and stood by the willow and put their hands on the bark and cried and then stopped crying because he would have thumped them with a stick if he'd seen them at it.
They wrapped him in clean cloth and set the ledger on his chest and carried him up the hill. They put him beside Granny Mai and two others who had kept water boiling when people didn't want to.
The bandit boss's son put a cord of wood by the hut without a word, because that was how thanks worked between people who had learned to keep things clean.