The Star-Fire Wood does not smoke. It remembers, but it does not burn in the way men imagine burning. The fire there is like a memory of heat. The leaves sparkle like logic, and the stones are smooth with patience. To face a trial within it is to face questions older than hunger.
Liu Feng stood at the grove's center, where the Primordial Flame Phoenix had left him. The ring of flame circled his wrist like a bracelet that hummed in his veins. The elders had left; the test was now not of their watching but of his own hands and heart.
The system's guidance whispered in his chest—Eith er patient, clear: [Trial parameters: understand the intent of fire. Subtask: Burn the rot, not the root.]
He had read the words. There was also the feeling of weight in them: the moral geometry of a force that could reduce a forest to ash or revive blackened soil to a bloom.
The first challenge was quiet. A row of saplings that had been blighted by old magic stood before him—leaves like paper cut by old grief. The Phoenix feather heated his palm and a scent of crushed almonds rose to his nose. He raised his hand and spoke to the saplings, not with flame but language: small leanings, coaxing intentions. The system translated his will into the micro-sparks that moved along his skin like a line of careful ants.
He did not burn the leaves. He touched the roots with an ember-light and let the warmth pass through the rotted parts until the corruption broke away like dried shell. The saplings sighed—a sound like mended strings—and new green lifted its head.
It was an act of surgeon patience. The system recorded: [Outcome: success. Moral quotient: Acceptable. Seed node: Fire (core) unlocked.—Reward queued: Genesis Dual Blade]
But the great test of character is seldom a single measured act. As soon as the grove accepted his small mercy, a shadow rose from the deeper trunks like smoke condensing into shape. It took the form of a man, and then the man became a war—old armor, scarred face, hand clutching the memory of a standard. "You would save the sapling," the apparition said, voice a shell. "What of those who used the saplings to starve others? What of the ones who burned fields to punish their enemies? Would you spare them, too?"
The question was bile-shaped: it twisted intention into ethical quicksand. Liu Feng watched without haste. He had learned that answers that sound righteous quickly become guillotines when wielded by poor hands.
"If a man burns a field to starve his neighbor," Liu Feng said, "then the act has its nature. You cannot unmake the choice with mercy. But you can unmake its consequences by stopping the pattern. I will not light the pyre that finishes injustice; I will cut the chain that leads to it."
The phantom laughed and pressed forward. The battle was not of fists but of possibility. The war-spirit drew a sword from the age of hunger; Liu Feng felt the sword's intentions like a sound under the skin—domination, calculation, a craving to end debate with steel.
He could have ignited and swept the phantom clean in a moment. The ring hummed and flared like a cat about to pounce. The system pulsed: [Option: Eradicate. Probability: High.]
Liu Feng closed his eyes. He thought of BiBi Dong's hand when he had been born, the carved patience of the Phoenix in the grove, the look in the elder's eyes—fear and hope braided.
Instead of burning, he moved in a pattern taught by no instructor: a sweep of fire that did not consume but circled, a spiral that wrapped the phantom like bridle-reins. The flames took the phantom's sword and cooled it into a relic of iron; the intent was sifted like grain. The phantom's shouting changed pitch—it became a memory of a man who'd fought for empire because he didn't know any other way. The phantom faltered and then—astonishing to any watching spirit—fell apart into a scattering of ash that smelled of rain.
The Phoenix did not applaud. It only looked at him with a long consideration that felt like a verdict. "You bend fire to law and mercy," it said. "You do not pretend to be arbiter when you are not yet father to nations."
Liu Feng smiled, a small clear thing. He felt the ring tighten and then nestle into his spirit like a seed.
He returned to the Hall with the Genesis Dual Blade—its steel was twofold: one face shone with blue waterlight, one side burned faintly with ember-color. The elders' faces lit with a kind of fearful respect. A blade that balanced creation and erasure…it suggested a future of choices humans were not yet ready to follow.
That night as the Hall slept, the little boy who had cradled an ember woke and sat by the window, watching the southern lights move across sky like silk. He did not feel pride; he felt a small, wary gravity. The system whispered a new note: [Note: Divine observers have registered. Probability: Long-term mentorship from god-tier nodes: moderate.]
BiBi Dong, coming to his side and slipping her fingers through his hair, did not speak of futures. She spoke of now. "There will be hands that wish to take from you," she said softly. "Be the one who gives." Her thumb smoothed the small scar of the night's sleep from his forehead.
Liu Feng did not ask about gods. He watched the lights until sleep took him again. The ring warmed like a friend; the blade slept at his side like a promise. The Hall had given him an opening. The world had given him a test. His path, at seven years old, had already begun to sketch itself into the long map.