Like a second skin, the mist adhered to the flagstones. A circle of elder jades hummed softly in the lower courtyard of Academic No. 13 High School, creating a light-filled doorway over the training dais. Like a pond attempting to recall the wind, the portal trembled.
"Pay close attention." Instructor He Ling, dressed in dark-green robes, stood in front of them, her hair pinned with a fox-tail bone comb. Waves of people will enter the Spirit Creek Dungeon. Goal: return at sunset with Crimson Dewcup and Blue-vein Fanleaf—whole, not torn." She looked around at the pupils. "Don't hurt any of the protected animals. In self-defense, the listed common types may be culled. Don't touch if you can't tell the difference.
Some of the boys laughed. The sound died as her eyes sliced through them like a thin blade.
She raised a bamboo tablet and said, "You will be graded on three things: restraint, results, and whether you return breathing." You can choose to work in pairs or alone. I won't save you from your own commotion.
Lazy, Tian Ruo whirled his wind-spear once. With a click that sounded like assurance, he said, "Alone," and released the spear butt to kiss the stone.
Chen Ho pulled the sling tighter across his chest. Inside, the freshly hatched fire-chick, the one his mother's voice had named Phoenix and which the dean had dubbed "mutation," slept curled into a glow. As if flame could blush, its sparks tucked themselves away whenever someone stared for too long.
Fatty Lin, who was not authorized to be there, raised a covert fist from the edge of the crowd. "For glory," he muttered. It was like finding a coin in an old coat when Chen Ho returned the smile.
Instructor He said, "Wave one." "Go."
The portal opened after bending. The air became cool, then cold, and finally tasted like wet stone. The world put itself back together when Chen Ho entered.
Twilight spilled into the dungeon valley. Under the ferns, mushrooms maintained their own little constellations; pale-barked pines leaned over a silver thread of water; and the creek sang as though it had been rehearsing for years and now had a listener. A boundary post with clean characters etched on it emerged from the moss:
Gather
— Fanleaf with blue veins (creek margins; do not uproot patch).
— Crimson Dewcup (quick ledge; gather before the dew burns).
River otters, water foxes, and horned hare kits are all protected.
Common: spine beetle, burrow mouse, and slime.
Note: Excessive pride leads to serious issues.
Under the final line, someone had written "debt collectors" and scratched it out.
Chen Ho paid attention. Not just with his ears—the way he had learned when he was a boy, holding a broken pendant in his hand. Water, leaf, insect; then the wrong hush, the wrong scrape. He moved along the creek until the noise from the crowd subsided to rumors, timing his steps to the pauses between those sounds.
With golden eyes as bright as coals, the girl woke up with a gentle prrp. Indignant at having slept through an adventure, it gave him a peck on the collarbone.
"First, food," he whispered. He offered a pinch after breaking a grain cake and moistening it in the creek. The girl pretended not to notice that she had accidentally singed the edge.
"Majestic," he said gravely. The woman fluffed.
He knelt at the edge of the water. Fanleaf with blue veins, fanned from a sandbar, stems firm, veins glowing. He looked for signs: a splayed print where a water fox had passed (protected), a clean trail where kits had hopped (protected), and the faint ribbon of slime from a river slug (sadly edible). He rolled the harvest in damp moss, pinched with the care of a clerk counting coins, and left two leaves on each clump.
To his left, a boar-ling snorted through fern, its eyes full of the kind of hunger that takes small for easy, its tusk buds blunt and eager. Without looking, Chen Ho grabbed a stone and swung it across the boar's path. With an offended squeal, the animal swung toward the clatter, shouldered a slippery rock, and slid into the creek. Water chuckled. With a glare that seemed to portend future paperwork, the boar climbed out and trotted off.
He told the girl, "You don't need every fight." "You must have the appropriate ones."
Stepping-stone rapids formed as the valley narrowed. Red dew—Crimson Dewcup—was held in cups of leaf-like tiny tongues on a ledge above them, and they were already attracting fireflies. The bank had a slight eel odor. He used his hands to map the handholds after mapping them with his eyes.
"Remain," he inhaled. He climbed after placing the chick on a root where the spray would dampen feathers without eroding pride. When he slid a thumbnail under the seam that wanted to be broken, Dewcups came away cleanly; he had discovered that plants preferred to tell you where to cut if you bothered to ask.
Below, the shadow moved. As though a thought had decided it was hungry, river eels slid out of the dark green. He tapped it to the water after flicking a lingering spark from the girl and catching it on his fingertip. It gave a hiss. The eels changed their minds.
Returning to the bank, he placed the Dewcups next to the Fanleaf. "Two and two," he stated. "We'll be honest with you."
The girl peeped, hungry, angry, and famished. It nearly took off due to sheer nerves after making two hops. He surprised himself by laughing as he caught it out of the air. A dragonfly was startled by the sound and realized it had better places to be.
From then on, they worked the valley according to pattern. Whistles for burrow mice (a note slightly above annoyance and below pain), a spoonful of sand to bury a spine beetle that wanted to argue with a boot, and slime traps (a shallow pan of salty water and a patience a butcher would respect). In his mind, he made a list of the treasures: mouse whiskers for ink enthusiasts (sell to any scholar with an opinion), beetle spines for fishhooks (sell to anyone who liked fish and had money), and slime gel for poultices (sell to the infirmary). Not only did money give you power once you had it, but it also gave you power in the future.
The chick was fed by every little triumph. Using Fanleaf, he ground the sweet grass into a paste, mixed in a small amount of dew from the cups, and allowed the chick to peck until its eyes glowed with activity. A neat tip of flame thickened from the sparks that hopped from its beak. He nearly let Healing flare—warm, unending, and unmistakable—when the fire nicked his knuckle. Rather, he pushed creek-cold mud over the sting and sucked the pain down.
His mother had told him to stay hidden until he was ready. The words slid effortlessly into the space beneath his ribs where anxiety attempted to reside.
Just after noon, the girl was put to the test for the first time.
The shade ahead was stitched by a low growl. Wolf-ling, isolated by the noise—old enough to desire hunting but too foolish to be proficient at it. Chen Ho opened the sling slowly. With courteous claws and a hint of fire in his tail, the girl climbed up to his forearm. It shuddered. He saw only one, and so did his elbow.
"Footwork," he instructed himself. He flicked a piece of red cloth into the space between two saplings and said, "Not heroics." He pulled the cloth a handspan further when the wolf lunged. The animal overcommitted and bit air. With a sizzling peck from the side, the chick delivered a lesson rather than a fatal thrust. The wolf let out a yelp, recalled all the times its tongue had been startled by hot soup, and backed away dignifiedly from its terror.
After shivering, the girl straightened up.
Chen Ho whispered, "Lv.2," because growth was worthy of names, even if no one else heard them. He nourished it, gave it praise, and etched the outline of that minor triumph into his bones.
The light dimmed as they passed through a section of low pines. Between trunks, a web hung like a door that had been left open. The air tasted of old flies and iron. Spider-crimson.
He didn't prod it.
He took a length of vine, looped it to a rock, and fed the loop through the corners of the lower web until it formed a sling. The creature hit its own net, rocked the vine, and threw itself backward into the open air with a stick tap, a hiss of spider legs, and a ferocious lunge. The spider decided to learn that silk burns faster than pride after the chick gave the smallest burst of fire. It scuttled into a crack and thought complex thoughts about diet when it hit the ground smoking.
After waiting for the web to cool, he used sticks to gather the strands and covered them with waxed cloth. Spider silk is valuable, light, and strong. The items were well received by the academy buyers. Forge shops paid in favors, and robe makers paid in coins. He fed both into his mental pocket-ledger.
Afternoon would turn into evening as the dungeon sky lightened toward that pale not-blue. They followed it, salting the trail where boredom made boys noisy (students), avoiding the spots where smell piled like rotten fruit (boar), and bringing a shed horn back to a patch of grass that seemed to have missed something.
The girl implied that she was hungry. The way it pecked the edge of the sling, he could hear the need.
"Then cook." He used dry needles to construct a fire that was thumb-high, surrounded it with stones, and roasted a small portion of boar jerky that he had legally purchased with last month's odd jobs. Using chopsticks, he held the meat until it sang oil. The girl half-closed her eyes and pecked. He tasted smoke that brought back memories of winters when his mother had been alive and soup had always come, and he set aside a corner for later.
The cadence of the creek changed, and the way the singer's breath lengthens indicates that the final verse is about to begin. It was almost dusk.
Levels: Lv. 1 (spark), Lv. 2 (aim), Lv. 3 (spark at will), Lv. 4 (peck with heat), Lv. 5—the chick's feathers flared in a ring when it startled at a dragonfly and didn't flinch from its own fire. He said, counting like a craftsman. It preened and shook itself as if this had been the plan.
He said to it, "Call it Flame Peck." Practice was kept neat by names.
They left Fanleaf richer than they found it after tracking down one final patch. He allowed the fireflies to bless his knuckle once more after trimming a Dewcup from a ledge. He tucked slime gel in a clay pot, slipped mouse whiskers into a paper envelope like secrets, weighed spider silk by hand while a dwarf's make-believe scale clicked in his hand, and neatly placed their harvest in Moss.
Voices filtered through the brush on the way back.
Someone hissed, "saw him." "Just a girl."
With the sour bravado of boys who believe cruelty is a joke until it becomes them, another said, "Roast it and call it training."
Bai Yun's lighter drawl pierced the air. "If you sing that again, He Ling will hang your ears on a laundry line."
By taking a longer route, Chen Ho avoided leaving any traces for others to read. It was taxing to make noise. He collected over time and paid in silence.
Ferns grew the boundary post. The muddy, grass-stained, bright candidates, each with a few survivals of their own, gathered around the steward's table. As though he had already responded to the question, Tian Ruo leaned on his spear.
The steward called, "Instructors will examine your herbs." "Leaves whole, roots intact." You will have an unpleasant conversation if protected species are touched without reason.
Two Fanleaf and two Dewcup, veined, wet, and whole, were placed down by Chen Ho. He included a package of waxed cloth. "Crimson silk," he uttered. "Saleable, fire-browned."
The steward's eyebrows went up. "Noted for trade."
He Ling, the instructor, looked at the sling. "Beast."
He opened the cloth slowly. The girl gave a polite greeting by blinking. As if embarrassed to be seen, one spark lifted and died. After a three-breath pause, she slid a plum-painted token across the table.
"For restraint," she stated. "And for leaving the valley in a better state than when you arrived."
He bowed. "Thank you, Teacher."
The courtyard greeted them as they returned through the portal in the evening, complete with stew bells, bowl clacks, and laughter that sounded like it was coming from someone who had counted themselves and found the same number as this morning.
The steward called, "Results at first light." "Midday tournament brackets! "
As though his body had been waiting in ambush, Fatty Lin exploded from behind a pillar. "I have emergency buns for heroes and heroes-like people."
Chen Ho took a round package that was still warm. Which am I? "
Fatty squinted at the sling and said, "Both." The girl gave me a serious look in return. "And I'm going to be politely set on fire, or that is the cutest ember I've ever seen."
If you were unfamiliar with characters, the chick's single peck on the bun caused a stream of steam to rise, writing the word "hungry." Fatty gripped his heart tightly. "A sophisticated taste."
Students ate on the steps while sharing loud stories about three-dialect slimes and house-sized spiders. Tian Ruo walked by with a look that neither concealed nor acknowledged his curiosity. With patience that made Chen Ho's arm hair stand on end, he put down the tip of his spear and slowly drew a circle in the stone.
Around Sesame, Fatty remarked, "Tomorrow, you do whatever impossible thing people do in finals." I'll stand close by and make encouraging chewing noises.
"Tomorrow," Chen Ho concurred. He raised her to eye level. As though measuring him for a promise neither of them could yet articulate, it peered back.
He later cleaned the creek grit off his hands in the tiny room behind the practice hall and laid out the day's haul on a piece of cloth: slime gel (infirmary), spider silk (craft sale), moss-wrapped herbs (academy credit), calligrapher's whiskers, and a tidy ledger line of profit that appeared to be the start of freedom.
He reclined on the pallet. Warm as a vow kept, the girl curled under his chin. The courtyard tree shook a petal loose through the window and let it float. He didn't name it because he thought it might make it seem smaller, but the world smelled of pine, smoke, soup, and something else.
His mother's voice, softer than breath, repeated, "Hided, until you are ready."
He replied to the dark, "I'm learning."
The soft notes of Contract, Summoning, Healing, and Beast-Taming hummed like strings tuned in the same room beneath his ribs where worry once resided. He didn't pick them. He listened until he fell asleep.
Dawn would insist on numbers, ropes, rules, and proofs.
He would bring a chick whose flame had learned to not frighten itself, along with herbs and money.
And Chen Ho planned to respond with more than a rumor when they called his name tomorrow.