Chapter 42: The First Stone
The rhythm of Cuò Fēng was not the rhythm of cultivation. It was the rhythm of the land. Dawn meant hauling water from the stream. Morning meant shaping stone and timber. Afternoon meant tending the first brave shoots in their vegetable plot. Evening meant mending tools and planning the next day's work. There was no tribulation to consume, no enemy to flee, only the steady, satisfying friction of creation.
Xiao Feng's body, forged in violence and chaos, learned new skills. He learned how to swing an adze to shape a beam true. He learned the patience of waiting for mortar to set. His hands, which had channeled lightning and clawed at divine wounds, grew calloused from rope and rough wood.
Lin was their architect and quartermaster. Her soldier's eye saw defensible lines and efficient layouts. She calculated their food stores, organized their tools, and set a watch rotation out of habit, though the only intruders were curious deer and the occasional fox.
Kaelan was their geomancer and memory. He sensed the best places to dig the root cellar, where the earth was dry and stable. He guided them to a seam of good clay for pottery and showed Lian how to find the edible tubers and mushrooms that remembered growing in this valley long ago.
Lian and her shadow were their scouts and gatherers. She could move through the forest like a whisper, her shadow dampening the sound of her passage. She brought back nuts, berries, and herbs, and her sharp eyes found the tracks of game and the best stands of straight, young pine.
They built not just a hall, but a home. A smokehouse appeared, then a sturdy woodshed. A proper stone chimney rose where the campfire had been. They carved rough furniture—a long table, stools, shelves. It was crude, but it was theirs.
Xiao Feng found a strange peace in the exhaustion of physical labor. At night, by the light of an oil lamp they'd bought in the last village, he began to write. Not a cultivation manual. A record. He wrote down everything he remembered about his Dao—the Devouring Void, the principles of Storm, Law, Sorrow, and Empathy, and finally, the Defiant Will. He described not just the techniques, but the choices. The cost. He wrote it as a warning, and perhaps, one day, a lesson.
He titled the first scroll: "On Hunger and Its Consequences."
One afternoon, a month after their arrival, Lin came back from checking the snares she'd set at the valley's edge. She wasn't carrying game. Her face was tight.
"Visitors," she said quietly. "Not animals. Two people. A day down the trail. Moving slow. One's injured, or sick."
The peace shattered like thin ice. Instincts, long dormant, snapped awake. They gathered tools—axes, knives, Lin's spear. They were not warriors anymore, but they would defend what was theirs.
The next day, they watched from the tree line as the visitors stumbled into the lower end of the valley. A man and a woman, both young, their clothes torn and stained. The man was supporting the woman, who limped badly, her face pale with pain. They had the look of refugees, not bandits.
Xiao Feng made a decision. He stepped out of the trees, leaving his axe behind. Lin melted into the shadows to cover him. Kaelan and Lian stayed back.
The man saw him and flinched, pulling the woman behind him in a protective gesture that was more instinct than strength. "We mean no trouble," he croaked, his voice raw. "We just… we saw the smoke. Please. My sister's leg is broken. We just need a place to rest for a night."
Xiao Feng looked at them. He saw no hidden Qi, no cultivation base. Just fear, exhaustion, and pain. A simple, human tribulation.
"Come," he said.
He helped them up to the hall. Lin emerged, her spear not leveled, but held at her side. Lian brought water and a blanket. Kaelan used his sand to gently immobilize the woman's leg while Lin, with a healer's knowledge Xiao Feng never knew she had, set the bone and splinted it with deft skill.
The brother, whose name was Jian, wept silent tears of relief. His sister, Mei, slept fitfully from the pain.
Over a meal of stew and hard bread, Jian told their story. They were from a village two valleys over. Raiders—mortal bandits, not cultivators—had come through, burning and looting. They'd escaped with nothing. They'd been wandering for a week, lost.
"You're cultivators, aren't you?" Jian asked, looking at their sturdy hall, at the way they moved. "You could have killed us easily. Or turned us away."
"We're something else," Xiao Feng said. "You can stay until your sister can walk. Then you can go, or you can stay and work, if you want. There's always more to build."
It was not charity. It was an offer of community, with a price of labor. It felt right.
Jian and Mei stayed. Jian had a farmer's strength and a knack for stonework. Mei, once healed, had clever hands and knew weaving and sewing. They filled gaps in the community's skills. In return, they got safety, food, and a share in the growing home.
Cuò Fēng had its first true residents who were not its founders.
A week later, a second visitor came. This one arrived not stumbling, but walking with deliberate, quiet steps. An older man, lean and weathered, with a staff and a pack. He stood at the edge of the vegetable plot and watched them work for a long time before Xiao Feng noticed him.
His Qi was present, but restrained—a solid, Earth-aligned Foundation Establishment, but it felt… settled. Not seeking, not aggressive.
Xiao Feng walked out to meet him. "Welcome to Cuò Fēng."
The old man's eyes, the color of river stones, studied him. "Cuò Fēng. Divergent Peaks. An interesting name for an interesting place." His voice was dry and calm. "I am called Gai. I was a wandering cultivator. Now, I am just a wanderer. I felt a… shift in the land's energy here. A wound closed. A new quiet. I came to see."
He was from the world of cultivation. He knew. Xiao Feng tensed, the defiant will rising silently.
Gai sensed it and raised a placating hand. "I am not from any sect. Not anymore. I tend to places where the land is sick. I am a geomancer, of a sort. Your valley… it is not sick. But it has been touched by something profound. There is an echo here. Of great pain, and great release. I would like to understand it. May I stay awhile? I can help. The earth speaks to me. I can show you where the best stone lies for a proper bathhouse. Where to plant an orchard that will thrive."
He was not asking for sanctuary. He was offering trade. Knowledge for knowledge.
Xiao Feng considered. An outsider, a cultivator, brought risk. But Gai's energy was calm, honest. And his skills could be invaluable.
"Stay," Xiao Feng said. "Help us build the bathhouse. Tell us what the earth says. And in time, if you wish, I will tell you about the echo."
Gai bowed slightly, a smile touching his weathered face. "A fair bargain."
So the community grew. A refugee brother and sister. A wandering geomancer. The core of four flawed founders.
The work changed. With Gai's guidance, they laid out an orchard of apple and plum trees on a sunny southern slope. He helped them channel the stream to create a series of terraced pools for the bathhouse, using the natural flow and heated stones. It was no longer just survival building. It was craft.
One evening, as they all sat around the long table—Xiao Feng, Lin, Kaelan, Lian, Jian, Mei, and Gai—eating a meal of roast rabbit and garden greens, Mei spoke up shyly.
"In our old village," she said, "we had a tradition. When a new home was finished, everyone placed a stone in the hearth. A piece of themselves in the foundation." She looked around the hall they had built together. "This feels finished enough."
The next morning, they each chose a stone from the stream. Jian chose a flat, grey river stone. Mei, a piece of quartz that sparkled. Gai, a heavy, dark stone veined with iron. Lin chose a jagged piece of flint. Kaelan, a perfectly smooth, round pebble. Lian, a stone with a hole worn through the center.
Xiao Feng walked to the waterfall. He climbed onto the slick rocks behind the curtain of water, into the cool, hidden space. There, he found his stone. It was black, not like obsidian, but like the void between stars. It was cold to the touch, and when he held it, it seemed to drink the sound of the falling water. A piece of the quiet dark.
They gathered around the great hearth. One by one, they placed their stone into the mortar between the foundation rocks, speaking a name or a wish as they did.
"Jian. For strength."
"Mei.For healing."
"Gai.For wisdom."
"Lin.For vigilance."
"Kaelan.For memory."
"Lian.For unseen paths."
Xiao Feng went last. He held the black stone. He thought of all he had been, all he had carried, all he had let go. He placed the stone into the last open space.
"Xiao Feng," he said, his voice firm in the quiet. "For choice."
The stone settled into the mortar. For a moment, the hearth seemed to hum, a deep, resonant note that vibrated in the chest more than the ears. Gai's eyes widened. Kaelan's sand trembled. Then it faded, leaving only the crackle of the morning fire and the solid, undeniable reality of their home.
The Divergent Peaks Sanctuary was no longer just an idea, or a collection of buildings.
It was consecrated.
That night, Xiao Feng added a new entry to his growing record. He titled it "The First Stone: On the Foundation of Community."
He wrote: "Power isolates. Choice, when shared, connects. We build not to keep the world out, but to give each other a place to stand within it. Our first wall is not stone, but trust. Our first defense is not a weapon, but an open hand."
He looked out the window of his small writing alcove, at the moonlight silvering the valley, at the shapes of the buildings they had raised together, at the protective shoulders of the peaks.
The hunger was gone. The defiance was at rest.
In its place was something he had no name for yet. Something that felt like the opposite of consumption.
It felt like belonging.