Timeskip
Morning in the Outer Sect began before light.
The first bell hadn't yet rung when Ye Lan stirred from his narrow cot, its wooden frame cold against his palm. Breath misted in the dimness. Outside, a faint drizzle tapped against the tiled roofs. Every day began this way.
He folded the thin blanket once, set it aside, and began his rounds.
"Another day" he thought, fingers pressing into the rough weave of the blanket as he smoothed it into a neat rectangle. "Another loop in the same threadbare rope until the awakening ceremony." He didn't resent the repetition, not exactly. Resentment was a luxury, a kind of emotional expenditure he couldn't afford. Better to treat each, If he let himself feel too much about the cold, the hunger, the weight of being unseen, it would gnaw at his focus. And focus was all he had.
Each orphan in the dormitory had a task, the sect's way of keeping the unawakened from wasting air. Ye Lan's work was maintenance: collecting herb bundles from the gardens, checking irrigation lines, and hauling spirit wood to the drying sheds. The labor wasn't difficult, only monotonous. He timed everything. Thirty-seven minutes to reach the lower fields. Twelve to fill the baskets. Twenty to return. One hour, nine minutes total.
as he laced his boots, he reminded himself. The sect didn't care if you were clever or kind. It cared if you were useful. And usefulness, in this place, was measured in output. He gave them output. And in return, he kept a roof over his head and a bowl of thin gruel at dusk.
The herb gardens stretched along the Outer Sect, strips of dark soil bound by low walls. Rows of Azureleaf and Firemoss grew under protective charms.
"They're letting it rot," he mused, crouching beside a cracked stone conduit. "Either they don't care, or they're saving resources for the Inner Sect."
Neither possibility surprised him. The Outer Sect existed to serve, not to thrive. Still, it rankled. A poorly maintained formation meant slower growth, weaker herbs, more labor to compensate. It was inefficient. Illogical. And yet, the system persisted. That meant someone, somewhere, had decided inefficiency was acceptable. That was worth noting.
Other workers moved through. They didn't speak. He preferred it that way. Words accomplished nothing here. The sect rewarded results, not camaraderie.
"They look at me like I'm part of the scenery," he thought, watching a boy with hollow cheeks shuffle past, eyes downcast. "Maybe I am." He'd stopped trying to make friends years ago. Friendships required vulnerability. Vulnerability invited distraction. Distraction got you noticed and not in a good way. Better to be unknown, a nameless pair of hands that did what was asked and vanished.
By noon, the drizzle had transformed into rain. He worked through it, sleeves soaked, boots sinking into mud. When he returned to the storage hall, the quartermaster gave the same curt nod as always, acknowledgment without meaning. Ye Lan stacked the herb bundles, wiped his hands on his tunic, and took a moment to study the chart on the wall. It was a simple ledger of deliveries, yet its structure revealed the sect's entire hierarchy. Inner Sect requisitions were marked with red seals. Outer Sect work orders were written in charcoal. Between them, the difference in value was absolute.
"Red ink for those who matter. Charcoal for the rest of us."
He traced a finger over a smudged entry.
"Azureleaf, 3 bundles, Outer Dormitory." No name. No thanks. Just a line in a ledger, as disposable as the paper it was written on.
"Is that what Ye Lan told himself to sleep at night?" The thought flickered, unbidden. He pushed it down. Resentment wouldn't fill his stomach or warm his bones.
Days passed in near repetition.
At night, he mapped. Using charcoal on the back of scrap parchment, he drew the layout of paths, dormitories, and supply routes, how the Outer Sect connected to the Inner, where patrols changed shift, which trails were rarely used. Not for escape or rebellion. Simply to understand. Knowledge was control, even if one's sphere of control was a mud-filled courtyard.
On the fourth night, as lanterns burned low, he tested a small experiment: measuring the faint luminescence in the mist by comparing shadow length against a marked scale. He recorded the results: "Light fluctuation = approx. 0.7 units / minute. Correlates with spiritual residue from the mountain." The numbers meant little now, but perhaps later they would.
"Later." The word was a placeholder for hope, though he'd never call it that. Hope implied expectation. He didn't expect anything. But he observed. He recorded. He waited. If the mountain bled spiritual energy into the air, and that energy affected visibility, then perhaps it also affected perception, or even cultivation. Maybe it was nothing. But maybe it was a variable others ignored. And in a system where everyone followed the same script, the unnoticed variable could be the only path to something different.
He slept.
Sleep isn't useless,
he reminded himself.
It's when the body does the work, repairing what the day breaks down. Muscles heal, cells rebuild, the brain clears out the waste it piles up while awake. Even the heart slows just enough to catch its breath.
He used to think sleeping meant losing time, but now he knew better. Without it, thoughts turned sluggish, judgment blurred, and even breathing felt heavier. Sleep didn't make a person weaker, it kept them from going crazy.
The body wasn't a machine that could run forever, he thought.
By the sixth day, the sect was stirring differently. Servants swept the main road, polishing the carved stone with sand and oil. The air smelled of incense, rich, sharp, foreign to the lower quarters. Flags of crimson silk were raised along the stairway that led toward the Inner Sect. Even from the foothills, Ye Lan could hear distant chanting, the rhythmic recitation of the Scripture of Roots. The Awakening Ceremony was coming.
"So it begins." He watched the flags ripple in the wind, their red fabric impossibly bright against the gray stone. *A round of sorting. Another culling.* The ceremony wasn't about giving chances. It was about filtering. The sect needed cultivators, not mouths to feed. This was their sieve.
That evening, while carrying spirit wood toward the kiln, he overheard two disciples whispering nearby.
"They say Elder Han will oversee this year's ceremony himself."
"Han? The Core elder?"
"Aye. Last year, three awakened with good spiritual roots under his watch."
"Then this year will be worth watching."
Their excitement was palpable. Ye Lan felt none of it. Probability favored failure. Most orphans lacked even the thinnest spark of affinity. The sect's generosity extended only so far, once the ceremony ended, those who failed would return to labor, or be dismissed entirely. He understood why. Feeding those without potential was a kindness that weakened everyone.
"I'm not special," he told himself, shifting the weight of the wood on his shoulder. "I've never felt qi. Never seen auras. Never dreamed of flying."
And yet… he kept mapping. Kept measuring. Kept watching.
Because what if?
He dropped the last of the spirit wood beside the kiln, brushed the soot from his hands, and watched the sparks rise into the evening air. Above, the clouds were clearing, revealing a pale fragment of moon.
he thought. "Everything moves. Everything changes. Even mountains erode." The sect felt eternal, unshakable, but it wasn't. It was made of people. And people made mistakes.
He went back.
Tomorrow, he would learn whether his function would change.
He extinguished the lamp and lay back on the cot.
The rain had stopped. Only the faint drip of water from the eaves marked the passing of time. In the silence, he calculated using Ye Lan's memories, out of every ten orphans, perhaps one would awaken. Of that one, half would advance beyond the first realm. The odds weren't good.
"Fate is what happens when you stop thinking." He'd seen boys break under the weight of expectation, or despair, or both. They'd curl inward, stop eating, stop speaking. The sect discarded them like rotten Fruit. He wouldn't let that be him."