The river training ground was nothing special—just a stretch of flat earth near a bend where the water slowed, the mud soft enough to swallow shoes if you weren't careful. It had seen boys wrestle, drunks stumble, couples argue. Now it was going to see something more important: a fight dressed as "justice."
Three days wasn't long, but Wu Tian had squeezed them dry.
On the first morning, he drilled footwork until his calves trembled, forcing his body to learn how to fight in mud, not stone. Pulse Step helped, but he didn't trust perks alone; the system could nudge, not replace sweat.
On the second, he sparred Wu Feng and Wu Ping—sometimes one on one, sometimes both at once. Wu Feng's spear was heavy and direct; Wu Ping was quick, unpredictable, stones flying at odd angles. Wu Tian let them beat him bloody and learned how to bleed while moving. Minor Recovery pulled him back from collapse each night, aching but alive.
On the third morning, he had Wu Liang lash ropes between stakes in the mud, forcing him to fight inside a cage of lines. Every strike, every step had to account for tangles. His body hated it. His mind thanked it.
By dusk of the final day, he sat beneath the pear tree, bandages tight, soup warm in his gut, and the lattice hummed in his mind.
Cultivation: Qi Sensing, Stage 9.Talent: Low.Perks: Minor Recovery, Pulse Step, Iron Grip, Steadfast Breath, Flowing Strikes, Battle Trance, Qi Sight, Minor Blood Surge.Bloodline: None.
The barrier of the next realm stood near, like a door you can feel in the dark. But he didn't push. Not yet. Not with tomorrow waiting.
Morning came sharp. The entire town followed him to the riverbank, some openly, some pretending they were just "walking." Pinebrook wanted to see if the Wu's defiance could outlast a Chen disciple.
Chen Hao was already there. His robes were clean, his sword polished, his face wearing the kind of smile that had been practiced in mirrors. The retainers behind him kept their distance, letting their young master shine.
"You came," Chen Hao said.
"You invited," Wu Tian answered.
Chen Hao's hand brushed his sword hilt casually. "You're Low Talent. Brave, yes. But bravery is a song that ends fast. Today I'll show Pinebrook what happens when trash forgets its place."
The crowd shifted uneasily. Wu Tian only stepped onto the mud. "Show me."
The duel began with silence.
Chen Hao moved first, sword flashing in clean arcs. His strikes were polished, each one the kind of motion taught by halls with tall gates and expensive teachers. Wu Tian met them with his spear, Iron Grip steady, Flowing Strikes chaining his counters like a river bending around stone.
The mud turned every step into a choice. Chen Hao's shoes sank, then snapped free, splattering. Wu Tian had drilled for this—he let his weight ride low, steps patient, Pulse Step carrying him across slick ground without losing balance.
Still, the Chen's talent showed. His Qi lashed sharp, his movements cut with precision. Twice he nearly broke through Wu Tian's guard, and twice Wu Tian bent instead of snapping, blood running down his forearm where the sword kissed skin.
The crowd winced. Some muttered. A few shouted encouragement, voices thin against steel.
Wu Tian drew breath, long and steady, Steadfast Breath pulling air into him until the panic dulled. He saw Chen Hao's flow with Qi Sight—the way his shoulders carried tension a beat before his blade turned, the way his breath hitched when his left leg sank too deep in mud.
"Not bad," Chen Hao said between strikes, sweat barely touching his brow. "But you'll break soon. Low Talent always does."
Wu Tian spat blood into the mud. "You talk too much."
He surged. Minor Blood Surge flared, his wounds feeding strength into his limbs. His spear blurred, striking not where Chen Hao's sword was but where his balance wasn't. A low sweep forced him to stumble; a sudden thrust grazed his cheek. The crowd gasped—blood on a Chen face was rarer than honesty in the magistrate's office.
Chen Hao's smile cracked. "You dare—!" His Qi surged, sword aura cutting sharper, forcing Wu Tian back. The duel turned brutal, each clash splattering mud, each breath heavy.
But Wu Tian did not yield. Every cut he took, every bruise, only sharpened his focus. Battle Trance narrowed the world to sword, spear, mud, breath. He bent, he bled, he struck.
And when Chen Hao lunged high, blade singing for Wu Tian's throat, Wu Tian drove his spear into the mud, twisting, sending a spray of muck into Hao's eyes. For a blink, the polished disciple was just a man blinking.
Wu Tian's spear struck his ribs. Hard.
Chen Hao staggered, gasping, rage twisting his face. The crowd roared—quiet first, then louder. Pinebrook had seen it. The Chen had bled.
The duel wasn't finished. But the story had already changed.
Wu Tian straightened, chest heaving, mud dripping from his spear. His voice was hoarse but carried.
"The Wu do not bow."
The chant rose from Pinebrook's throats, echoing over the river, shaking the magistrate's men, shaking even Chen Hao's confidence.
The fight wasn't over. But for the first time, the Chen weren't certain of the ending.
Mud clung to everything—boots, spear shafts, the edges of voices. Pinebrook had pushed close to the riverbank to watch, a ring of breath and worry. The magistrate's clerk stood back with a scroll he didn't dare open yet. Two Chen retainers waited still as furniture. The monk from the temple watched with hands behind his back, eyes quiet, like a man memorizing the story for later.
Chen Hao wiped the smear of muck from his cheek with the back of his wrist. The polite smile he'd brought to the river had cracked. Underneath it, his mouth showed a clean, hard line.
"You're filthy," he said.
"It's a river," Wu Tian answered. His voice was hoarse. His forearm bled in three places where Hao's blade had kissed deeper than caution. Minor Blood Surge burned low and steady, turning each sting into something he could ride instead of drown in.
Wind came off the bend. The mud pulled at ankles with a lover's persistence. Wu Tian shifted his feet, patient. He had spent two days teaching his body this ground. The mud had learned him back.
Chen Hao moved. Sword edge, light skipping from it in bright, clean slices. He cut high, low, then pivoted into a tight arc that would've taken a throat off a man in a hurry. Wu Tian wasn't in a hurry. Flowing Strikes guided the spear in, out, turning blade with haft and the faintest twist of wrists. Iron Grip kept sweat honest.
Hao's sword whispered across the spear head, shaving a curl from the wood. "You hide behind a stick," he said.
"I work for a living," Wu Tian said.
Hao's eyes narrowed, and for a heartbeat he looked less like a young lord and more like a boy who had learned early that being mocked hurt worse than being cut. Then the look was gone, and his next step came smooth again. He shifted his weight with the ease of High Talent—energy pushing through his legs so cleanly that the mud seemed to choose not to argue.
He lunged. Wu Tian met, turned, felt the shock in his forearms, stepped to keep from sinking too deep. Pulse Step slid his foot just far enough that when the edge kissed, it kissed clothing and not skin. He answered with a thrust not at Hao's centerline but at the place Qi Sight showed him was late—the left side, a fraction behind the breath. Hao's sword beat it aside, but not easily.
The crowd murmured, a sound like wind picking up.
Hao's blade drew an arc in the damp air. A trickle of energy trailed it—a hair-thin ribbon that hummed as it went. The first time Wu Tian had seen that kind of edge, his stomach had clenched in a way that had nothing to do with fear of pain. It was fear of math you don't know yet. Now, he watched for the tells: the set of the shoulder, the way Hao's breath paused just before he cut the air, the slight lift of heel as he pulled Qi up into the move.
He didn't try to stop the ribbon head-on. He stepped aside as it sang past and let it chew a thumb of mud out of the bank behind him. The river took that, unbothered.
"Pretty," Wu Tian said.
"Practice," Hao answered, and his mouth almost smiled again.
They circled, mud sucking. Two boys in the front of the crowd leaned so far forward their mother had to snag their collars. The magistrate's clerk tried to look like an official and ended up looking like a man whose shoes had chosen betrayal. The retainers kept their hands near hilts, unmoving.
"Make it clean, Hao!" someone from the Chen side called.
"Make it messy!" Wu Ping yelled back from the Pinebrook line, because he couldn't help himself.
Hao ignored both and came fast—three cuts stacked like stairs, the last a twist at the wrist that sent the blade curving in unexpected. Wu Tian parried the first, knocked the second high, then, instead of fighting the third, he let it come in close, slid his forearm into Hao's shoulder, and shoved. Not hard. Just enough to push weight where the mud wanted it least.
Hao's foot sank. He cursed and pulled. A splash bit his calf.
Wu Tian stabbed down. Hao yanked his leg free at the last blink and the spear bit water instead of meat. Spray flecked Hao's hair. The crowd's noise got brighter.
Hao's sword answered mean—two quick cuts, low-high, then a whip backhand that slipped past the spear and cut Wu Tian's bicep open in a clean red grin. Pain lit his arm. Minor Blood Surge woke fully, a tone under the skin, not loud, but present. Battle Trance narrowed his world to blade, shaft, breath, ground.
"Bleed," Hao said, almost gentle.
"I have," Wu Tian said. "It's boring."
He drove forward. Not elegant. Effective. A low sweep to force Hao to hop, then a jab that never meant to land—meant to move the sword two inches right so the next strike could come left. Hao read the trick and laughed once, short. He tried to run the edge along the spear's haft and cut into hands, but Iron Grip and callus said no.
They broke apart. Breath steamed from both mouths now. Hao's cheeks had color. His hair had lost its perfect line; a smear of mud stretched under one ear where the spear point had grazed.
The monk breathed slow and even. Qiao Ren—who had chosen a spot with a good view and no mud—watched without blinking. His hands were empty, but his eyes held scales.
Hao lifted his sword. His free hand flicked a little circle, the kind gesture that made young disciples swoon because it looked effortless and promised violence. His Qi rose, crisp. "Mountain River Hall's third form," he said, loud enough to teach, as if Pinebrook were a class. "River Splits Stone."
The cut came fast—the kind that made crowds gasp. The edge carried a faint white ring, thin as frost. It wasn't just blade anymore. It was intention sharpened.
Wu Tian didn't meet it. He moved a half step left, set his spear butt deep in the mud, and used the ground like a friend. When the cut hit, he didn't block. He let the spear bend with it, absorbed, turned, and guided the force so it tore a long slice from the mud at his right instead of from his ribs.
Hao's eyes widened a fraction. He recovered instantly; good training was a habit, not a trick. He launched a second arc, then a third, testing if luck had been kind or if learning had.
Wu Tian answered the same way. Bend. Turn. Guide. Keep hands fixed and mind loose. Breath steady. Steadfast Breath tightened his chest into something that moved like a bellows and refused to stutter. He didn't think, he listened—to the song of the blade, to the drag of mud, to the small warning that Qi Sight fed him when Hao's weight shifted more into the heel than the toe.
On the fifth pass, the spear slid a hair. Edge kissed skin along his ribs. Heat, then wet. He did not flinch. He'd been cut before by steel and paper both. The river's smell snuck up his nose: water, mud, a hint of rot, the same scent as the poor apartments on summer nights when the trash sat too long. The memory tasted like old breath and fan noise and promises he'd made himself and not kept because money had been a wall.
He had not come to this world to be stopped by the same walls.
Hao pressed. "You can't hold forever," he said.
"Neither can a river," Wu Tian said, "and it still wins."
Murders of crows never like clever, but Pinebrook did. Someone laughed, nervous and delighted. The sound tickled the edges of the duel and then ran away.
Hao changed angles. Sword low, knees bent, he darted a half step sideways and cut across, a fisherman's cast. The blade took the spear high and wrenched. Wu Tian's hands held—Iron Grip doing its job—then he let go of the argument and stepped into Hao's space. Forearm to bicep. Shoulder to chest. A hooked foot. They collided and slid, both nearly falling. Mud fanned out around their calves in a filthy crown.
Hao snarled and jumped back, flicking mud from his edge with a practiced twitch. He glanced left—toward the retainers. They did not move; either orders or pride held them. Hao's mouth pinched. He came again.
It was like lifting boxes in a warehouse after midnight. You didn't fight the weight. You found the edges and turned them. Left. Right. Up. Down. Simple math, done sweaty. On Earth, he'd done it for bills and a mother's medicine. Here, he did it because a town was watching to see if it still had a spine.
Hao feinted, then cut at Wu Tian's thigh. Wu Tian hopped and felt mud try to take the landing as a gift. He took it back. Pulse Step got him a quarter-inch of kindness. He heard Wu Ping's low hiss and Aunt Mei's sharp "Don't be stupid" in the same heartbeat. He smiled, which annoyed Hao, which was worth it.
The sword sang past. Wu Tian jammed the spear shoulder-deep into the mud and whipped the butt end up. Not a strike. A splash. Mud went up into Hao's face again, less pretty this time, more quantity. Hao's head tilted aside on reflex. The spear's head darted, bit collarbone, scraped. Blood beaded. Pinebrook made a noise like hope.
"Filthy," Hao repeated, and now it was a snarl.
He surged. The world tightened around his blade—pressure, presence, that sense some men bring when they've never had to ask permission twice. The next exchange rattled Wu Tian's bones. The next cut shaved a curl from his spear shaft that fell into the mud like a lock of hair kept after a funeral. Wu Tian's breath kept time. His hands remembered what work felt like. His feet remembered how to be honest.
He felt the barrier inside him like a door with a palm against it. Not yet, it pulsed. Not yet. He pressed, lightly, like a man feeling if a drunk has fallen asleep or just learned to be quiet. The heat in his belly rose and steadied. The door held. He let it.
Hao went high. Wu Tian stayed low. Hao tried to make the fight clean again. Wu Tian refused. He drove Hao two steps toward the water, then let him run him three steps back. He made the lines crooked on purpose. Sword boys hated crooked.
"Stand and fight," Hao snarled.
"I am," Wu Tian said, and punctuated the sentence with a thrust at the hip that would bruise a week.
Hao's next cut came too hard—anger, not plan. Wu Tian took it on the shaft, let his wrists give, turned, and slid the spear head along the flat of the blade. For an instant, for the length of a breath held over a bowl of soup to cool it, the weapons kissed and held. Hao's edge skated into the iron tip's notch; it caught.
Wu Tian yanked down and twisted.
Steel screamed. Hao wrenched his sword free before it could be disarmed, but the motion pulled his front foot deeper into the mud. Wu Tian kicked that foot. It didn't go far. It didn't have to. Hao's balance hiccuped. Wu Tian pushed. They both went a step into the shallows. Cold bit ankles. The river took a palm of blood and made nothing of it.
The crowd pressed in as if feet could send will. The magistrate's clerk looked faint. One retainer finally shifted his stance, then pretended he hadn't.
Hao bared his teeth. "You don't fight like a cultivator."
"I didn't start as one," Wu Tian said.
Hao flicked two fingers; the sword's next arc carried more edge—Qi drawn whiter and tighter. He aimed for the spear's head, hoping to split it. Wu Tian slid off-line, and the edge cut a thin groove from the spear's iron cap, then bit into the shaft. The wood complained. The spear lived.
Hao's breath came faster now. Qi Sight drew lines around him that jittered where he didn't mean them to. The mud took its share. The crowd took its share. Pride took the rest. A slice opened on Hao's forearm where the spear had nicked; it bled politely down to his wrist, then impolitely along his fingers.
"Yield," Wu Tian said, not loud.
Hao laughed. "You can't ask me that."
"I can," Wu Tian said. "I just did."
Hao answered with speed. He stepped tight, chest nearly against the spear, blade snapping up aimed for the soft place under the jaw. Wu Tian dropped. The cut shaved a whisper from his hair. He rammed the spear butt into Hao's sternum. The impact thudded through Hao's ribs. His breath went wild for a half-count. Wu Tian felt it in his own chest like a skipped beat.
The door inside him hummed. Not yet, not yet, not yet. He didn't argue. He moved. Simple, hard movements, chosen because they did what they promised.
Hao's shoulder clipped Wu Tian's ear with the hilt. Light flashed at the edge of his sight, then went embarrassed. He took a step back, spear between them. Mud fought him on the last inch; he won the argument enough to keep both feet.
"Enough," Hao said. "Let me show you the difference between Low Talent and a House's heir."
He drew breath deep. It pulled his chest wide. The sword point dipped, then rose in a clean, slow curve. White thread along the edge fattened into a ribbon. Even the retainers' eyes sharpened. The crowd quieted with the stealth of a school of fish.
Hao stepped. The cut dropped.
Wu Tian set his spear, iron tip down, and pulled everything he was into his soles. Iron Grip. Steadfast Breath. Pulse Step for the inch. Flowing Strikes for the turn. Battle Trance to tell the noise to wait outside. Qi Sight laid lines down his legs into the mud, drew a straight, simple path up through his spine into his arms. Minor Blood Surge punched with him and not against him.
The blade hit. The spear gave and didn't. The shock drove through his arms, into shoulders, down his back, into the ground. He felt the river through the mud, cold over stone, the lazy power of water moving things because it won the argument with time. He took that feel and made it his.
Something inside him opened.
It wasn't a crash. It was a click. The door didn't swing—its lock just stopped being a lock. Pressure collapsed inward and became a platform. Breath rushed through him as if his ribs had learned a new way to expand. Qi spun once, twice, then settled lower and wider than it ever had, like a table finally placed where it belongs in a room.
Cultivation: Foundation, Layer 1.
Talent: Low.
Perks: Minor Recovery, Pulse Step, Iron Grip, Steadfast Breath, Flowing Strikes, Battle Trance, Qi Sight, Minor Blood Surge, Foundation Anchor.
Bloodline: None.
For a heartbeat, the world felt heavier and easier at the same time. His feet dug in without sinking. His hands steadied without effort. His breath made a line inside him that the rest of him could hang on.
Hao felt it too. He stumbled half a step, eyes flicking wide to take in what had changed. It wasn't spectacle. It was a weight you can't pretend you don't notice when it lands on the table.
"You…" he said, disbelieving and insulted.
"Stand," Wu Tian said, and stood.
He didn't rush. He didn't play for cheers. He pressed with spear and shoulder and the new, simple fact of his foundation. Hao cut. The blade slid off the spear cap. He cut again. The spear turned it aside and stepped him into water. He tried to dance away and found his ankles had opinions. He tried to reset the lines; Wu Tian kept them crooked.
Hao snapped his wrist for a quick flick across Wu Tian's knuckles. The spear shaft shivered and then stayed. Iron Grip didn't slip. Wu Tian answered not with a fancy move but with a jab at the hip and a shove with the off-hand that moved Hao backward three inches into thicker mud. Hao's elegant shoes vanished to the ankle. The crowd made the kind of noise factory floors make when a machine finally breaks after a long fight with rust.
Hao slashed at the spear shaft, aiming to cut it through. The blade bit, stuck a blink, then ripped free with a splinter and a sound like a bad tooth giving up. The shaft held, ragged but whole.
"Yield," Wu Tian said again, quiet.
Hao roared and came high. Wu Tian stepped in instead of away. The spear head kissed Hao's forearm and bit enough to make his hand jolt. Sword dipped. Wu Tian slid the spear's neck along the flat and levered. Hao tore free, fast, saving his blade, but the effort cost him his stance. He landed ugly. His breath lost rhythm. Qi Sight drew choppy lines around his shoulders.
Hao flicked his left hand. Steel flashed. A throwing pin, slim and rude, went for Wu Tian's eye.
Wu Ping's sling snapped. The pin rang off a rock midair and pinged into the river like a fish glad to be metal. People shouted. Some unkind words left good mouths.
Qiao Ren's voice floated across the mud as if the wind had handed it to the moment. "After the blade, boy? Bad form."
Hao ignored him, or thought he did. His next cut came a fraction too fast. Wu Tian saw the hurry and let it find him. He stepped inside the arc, crossed the spear over his forearm, and caught the blade between haft and wrist. Foundation Anchor took the force and fed it to the earth. Wrist and wood held. Hao tried to jerk back. Wu Tian twisted in a plane the sword didn't love and felt the blade's geometry try to square a circle. It almost worked. Then it didn't.
Steel spun from Hao's hand. It went end over end and bit into the mud with an ugly, expensive sound.
Silence stood up in the crowd.
Wu Tian could have taken Hao's throat. The spear point knew the path. So did his hands. He set the point against Hao's chest instead and leaned just enough to make the future clear.
"Yield," he said for the last time.
Hao stared at him. Pride wrestled sense. Sense looked tired from a long week. The retainers didn't move. The magistrate's clerk found a very interesting cloud.
The monk's voice came, not loud. "The first to kill today will lose, whether by sword or ink."
Hao's jaw clenched. He made a small sound. It might have been a word if pride had let it out. He lifted both hands slowly, fingers open. It was not a bow. It was not grace. It was a yield.
Pinebrook didn't cheer all at once. The sound grew from the edges inward—first the kids, because kids are faster, then the women with flour on sleeves, then the men who'd spent mornings weighing fish with their eyes, then all of them. The river caught it and took it downstream for free.
Wu Tian stepped back and lowered the spear. His hands shook now that he let them. Foundation Anchor kept his feet while his legs tried to forget how.
Hao stood very straight, because a boy taught to be beautiful knows at least how to lose without slumping. Blood striped his forearm. Mud painted his shins. He looked at Wu Tian with a complicated face that probably had a complicated name in a hall with a complicated plaque. Then he turned and walked to where his sword stood in the mud. He pulled it free with both hands, wiped it on grass, and slid it into a clean scabbard. That scabbard would be dirty later; someone would wipe it and say nothing.
He looked at the retainers. They made to move. He lifted a finger in a tiny negation that told stories about how Chen houses taught orders.
He faced the crowd. "The Mountain River Hall acknowledges this result," he said, as if he were a man with the right to offer that acknowledgement. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn't. He said it like it was law, and sometimes that's the same thing. "Three days without harassment for the Wu. During that time, the magistrate will not collect fines."
The clerk's head snapped as if a string had been pulled. He began to protest. Hao did not look at him. The protest died of loneliness.
"And," Hao said, turning that beautiful face to the temple steps far away, as if the temple could hear from here, "weights in Pinebrook will be stamped for a month by the temple, and no Chen hand will object." He glanced at Qiao Ren, who didn't nod, didn't smile, but let a breath out that wasn't a disappointment.
Hao didn't add anything about paper. He didn't have to. Paper could be written later, when faces weren't watching.
He turned away and left, retinue falling into place behind him, shoes learning mud whether they liked it or not.
The river training ground emptied in waves. Pinebrook didn't want to rush the story. People moved like they were afraid of breaking it by stepping too hard. The monk bowed once in Wu Tian's direction—not to him, exactly, to the space where he stood. Qiao Ren watched from his shade as if the afternoon belonged to him and he was sharing out of boredom.
Aunt Mei shouldered through people who decided being in her way was a spiritual error. She didn't hug Wu Tian. She checked his cuts with fingers that were gentler than her voice. "You stink," she said. "If you die of smell, I'll be offended."
"I'll bathe in the river," he said.
"You'll bathe in boiled water because the river has worms," she said, and the retainers who overheard pretended not to, and the town laughed because the moment looked like a story that could be told to children without anyone crying.
Wu Feng put a hand on Wu Tian's shoulder. He squeezed once. There weren't words; there didn't need to be. Wu Ping tossed his sling up, caught it, and said nothing that would ruin the tone, which for him counted as heroism. Wu Liang held up a piece of rope like he wanted a medal and settled for a grin.
Wu Tian sat on a rock with his feet in the shallows and let the cold take the ache out of his ankles. The foundation inside him felt like a new room in a house he'd lived in too long. He walked around it with his mind. It had corners he wanted to lean into. If he set breath just so, the pressure dropped along his spine and the spear felt lighter by a handful of pebbles. If he placed his feet in a triangle, push rose clean from the mud instead of arguing. He didn't need the lattice to tell him what the perk did. He could feel it—force into ground, ground into frame, frame into strike. Anchor, then move.
He looked at his hands. They were still his. Calluses, scars, a tiny crescent on the left index finger from a can opener in a kitchen in a life that had ended under headlights. Low Talent, the world had said. The system had never lied about that. But talent wasn't a ceiling; it was a floor. He'd been living on floors his whole life. He knew what to do with them.
He stood and the world stayed put under him, which felt like a favor.
By the time they reached the square, the story had run ahead. The ink on the temple steps looked blacker than ever. The new line the monk had added—Small mercy acknowledged—made Aunt Mei snort. She would argue with Heaven if it cooked the rice wrong.
The magistrate's clerk drifted close with a face that had practiced humility and forgot it quickly. "For three days," he said to no one and everyone. "We shall… respect custom."
"Three days can be long," Old Bai said around a nail he hadn't decided where to put yet.
"Three days can be enough to make a habit," Madam Lin added, hands on hips, chin slightly out.
The monk caught Wu Tian's eye. "Be careful," he murmured.
"Of believing the road will keep teaching the same lesson," Wu Tian finished for him, and the monk smiled once, small, because he liked not needing to say everything.
They went home. The pear tree's shadow checked them for new wounds like a grandmother. Aunt Mei set water to boil and shooed Wu Tian to a stool where she could bully his cuts with herb and rag. The stew was thin but honest. The bread was still hard. It tasted like reward.
After, Wu Tian walked to the inner wall and pressed his palm to the dried ink. It came away black and rough. He lifted his brush and added a line without flourish:
River duel. Chen Hao yielded. Three days' truce. Temple weights protected for a month.
He thought of adding something about the foundation in his belly. He didn't. He didn't need to write that down. The town would feel it when he walked.
He sat under the pear tree with the spear across his knees. Breath in, out. The new shape inside him took breath and set it like a brick. The old ache in his forearm throbbed along with it. The edges of the day softened. Voices faded. The gate creaked and then decided it had done enough creaking for one day.
He let his eyes close.
The Wu did not bow. They also, occasionally, sat down.
He would make use of three days. He would make them long. He would stamp weights until liars ran out of ink. He would bind wounds. He would teach footwork. He would have Wu Liang set ropes in new places not because he needed them but because preparedness kept men alive.
The Chen would not sit still. Men like Hao had teachers and letters and cousins who owned maps. Qiao Ren would bring news, and it would be expensive news.
He was Low Talent.
He had a foundation now.
He had a town that had learned to chant and then to fall quiet for the right reasons.
He had a wall that didn't wash.
He had breath.
He had time, for the moment, purchased by mud and a step that had finally learned to matter.
For now, it was enough. And tomorrow, he would make more.