The sky above the village was a clear, untroubled blue, a stark contrast to the storm of hope and fear raging in the square below. The air thrummed with a palpable tension, the kind that precedes a verdict that changes lives.
The crowd had divided itself naturally: parents and elders formed a watchful ring around the perimeter, their faces etched with pride and deep-seated worry. In the center stood their children, a vivid patchwork of nervous energy and best clothing, shifting from foot to foot under the weight of expectation.
Upon a raised wooden dais, seated as if on a throne of a faraway court, was the arbiter of their fates. Cultivator Xiao Yao appeared to be in his sixties, his silver hair swept into a severe, neat knot. His robes were a pristine white, untouched by the dust of the travel or the village. He held a porcelain teacup with an air of detached serenity, yet his eyes—sharp, calculating, and deeply weary—methodically scanned each young face before him. On a stone pedestal between him and the children sat the instrument of judgment: a skull-sized crystal, milky and translucent, with a faint, internal pulse of blue light.
A hand tugged at a sleeve of a fine green-azure robe. "Little Li! This side, quickly!"
Han Li turned to see Li Mei, her hair in no-nonsense twin buns, gesturing urgently. At fourteen, she carried the grounded confidence of her martial arts lineage, a steady rock in the churning stream of anxiety. He gave a tight nod to his parents—his mother's smile strained, his father's grip firm on his shoulder—before moving to join her.
He had barely taken his place when a sneering voice cut through the murmur. "Look who crawled out of the woodpile! Decided to trade your kindling for a chance at glory, Han Li?"
Wang Chan, a boy of sixteen whose physique and attitude were both overly nourished, swaggered forward. Clad in garish red and gold silks that shouted his family's merchant wealth, he was a spectacle of arrogant entitlement. His small entourage chuckled on cue.
Han Li kept his gaze forward, his jaw a hard line.
Li Mei took a half-step forward, her posture shifting subtly into something ready and poised. "Wang Chan," she said, her voice cool and clear enough to slice through his bluster. "The Physician's time is for testing, not your nonsense. Bother Little Li again, and I'll demonstrate the principle of redirecting force. My father taught me using obstinate mules. The application is similar."
Wang Chan's face flushed. A past, humiliating encounter with Li Mei's footwork was evidently still fresh. He muttered a curse and turned away, his bravado punctured.
Before the tension could spark further, a voice settled over the square. It was not loud, yet it permeated every corner, silencing the crowd with its effortless authority.
"Everyone."
Cultivator Xiao Yao had set his teacup aside. He stood. He was not a tall man, but in that moment, his presence seemed to expand, pressing down on the square. The air grew still and carried a sharp, clean scent, like the moment after a lightning strike.
"I am Xiao Yao. Physician of the Verdant Dawn Sect." His gaze was impersonal, sweeping over them like a weather pattern. "I am here to find a disciple. I do not see your wealth." His eyes passed over Wang Chan's silks without a flicker. "I do not see your physical prowess." A glance at Li Mei. "I do not see your pleasing features. I see only potential. And that," he gestured a long, slender finger toward the crystal, "reveals it."
He approached the pedestal. "The test is singular. Place your hand upon the Spirit Revelation Crystal. A glow indicates a spirit root. The intensity and hue determine its grade." He paused, and the pause felt heavier than any shout. "No glow… and you return to the life Heaven already gave you."
A tsunami of whispers rose and then died, choked by collective anticipation.
"Seems simple enough!"
"It'll be Wang Chan,his family donated the feast…"
"Zhao Guo'er is so delicate,she must be blessed!"
"Li Mei!She's the strongest!"
"Cheng Ming is the smartest!"
A derisive snort came from Wang Chan's direction."What about the pale wood-ghost? His hands are only good for collecting splinters. What can he possibly do?"
Han Li absorbed the barb, letting it fuel the quiet fire within. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, not seeing the crowd, but feeling the memory of coarse wolf fur and the desperate chill of a dying man's touch. They are coming. This crystal was his only door out.
"Begin," Xiao Yao intoned, resuming his seat. "One at a time."
Wang Chan strutted forward first, his bow exaggeratedly deep. "Esteemed Immortal Physician, this unworthy one is Wang Chan."
A microscopic nod was his only reply.
Wang Chan placed his fleshy palm on the crystal with supreme confidence. One second. Three. Five. The crystal sat, inert and lifeless, a mere piece of decorative stone. His confidence melted into confusion, then crumbled into open-mouthed horror.
"Failed. Next," Xiao Yao stated, the words as final as a tomb seal.
Zhao Guo'er trembled her way forward. Nothing. "Failed."
Cheng Ming adjusted his glasses and touched the crystal with academic focus.Nothing. "Failed."
One by one, the children of prominent families stepped up, offered their hope, and were met with silent stone. The mood in the square curdled from excitement to a thick, communal dread. The crystal was a heartless, impartial god.
Then Li Mei walked forward. Her bow was respectful but firm, a fighter's acknowledgment. "Physician Xiao."
She laid her calloused palm flat. For a moment, nothing. Then—a wisp. A faint, curling thread of blue light stirred in the crystal's core, like the last breath of a sapphire flame. It vanished almost before it appeared.
Xiao Yao's eyes sharpened. He saw it. A spirit root, indeed. But withered, drained nearly to nothing by the vigorous, soul-consuming demands of martial arts before it could ever awaken. A potential strangled in its cradle. A professional, clinical regret flickered behind his eyes. "Failed," he said, his voice a shade softer.
Li Mei's shoulders dropped for a mere instant before she straightened them, accepting the decree with a sharp nod. She returned to the crowd, offering Han Li a small, resigned smile that said, See? This is our lot.
The line ended. Silence descended, heavy with the dust of shattered dreams.
Xiao Yao surveyed the defeated crowd. "Is there no one else?"
From the very back, a voice, quiet but clear, broke the stillness. "Senior Physician. I have not yet tried."
Every head swiveled. Wang Chan's laugh was a harsh bark. "You? We all failed! What makes you special? Your pretty face? Your skill with a twig? You think the heavens hid a treasure just for a wood-picker?"
Li Mei pushed past him. "Little Li, go. It's alright. We're all the same here." Her kindness, in that moment, was a confirmation of his expected failure.
Han Li nodded. He took a breath that felt like his first, the green-azure robe a prince's gift that now felt like a fool's costume. He walked forward, the whispers hissing at his heels like dry leaves.
He stood before the dais and bowed. "Physician Xiao."
The cultivator gave him the same infinitesimal nod he'd bestowed upon all the others. No expectation. No scorn. Just the void of observation.
Han Li looked up at the narrow strip of true sky between the roofs. He found his parents in the crowd—his mother's hands clasped in prayer, his father's stance solid as an oak. This was the precipice.
He turned to the crystal. Cold. Impersonal. A piece of the mountain. He reached out, his hand—palm mapped with the lines of labor and the faint scars of the forest—hovering.
Contact.
One second.
Silence.
Two.
The crowd was a held breath.
Three.
Wang Chan's smirk returned,triumphant.
Four.
Five.
Nothing.
A wave of released sighs, some sympathetic, many cruelly satisfied, washed over him. Han Li's heart plunged into a cold abyss. The empty leather pouch against his chest seemed to laugh. Useless. Mortal. The words were his marrow.
Shame, hot and acrid, flooded him. He began to pull his hand away.
Then, it happened.
Not a glow. A sound.
A deep, resonant hum, the vibration of a continent shifting, emanated from the crystal. It traveled up Han Li's arm, shaking his very bones.
Then, the crystal changed.
The milky-white translucence didn't brighten—it was consumed. It turned into a black so absolute it seemed a hole had been punched through reality itself, right there on the pedestal. And from within that profound void, a light ignited.
It was not blue. It was not any color known to the village, or perhaps to the world. It was the color of negation, a silver so pure it devoured the daylight around it, bleeding at its edges into swirling nebulae and pinpoint stars. It didn't glow—it erupted. A silent, searing pillar of cosmic radiance blasted upward, framing Han Li, etching his stunned, pale face in otherworldly light.
Cultivator Xiao Yao shot to his feet. His chair clattered backwards. His teacup shattered on the stones, unnoticed. Every vestige of detached calm was obliterated by pure, unadulterated shock. He wasn't just standing; he was leaning into the light, his eyes wide, his mouth agape, a man witnessing a sacred myth tear itself from the pages and stand, breathing, before him.
The square was a frozen painting of disbelief. Wang Chan's sneer had melted into stupefied horror. Li Mei's hands were pressed over her mouth. Han Li's parents clung to each other, their world view shattering and re-forming in the terrifying, beautiful light.
Han Li stared at his hand, still pressed to the void-black crystal, trapped in the silent stellar inferno. He felt no power, no warmth. Only a deep, resonant harmony, as if a hidden chord at the center of his being had been plucked, and the universe was the sounding board.
Xiao Yao stumbled forward, not with grace, but with the clumsy urgency of revelation. He stopped beside the pedestal, his white robes glowing with reflected starlight. He looked from the impossible crystal to the boy, his voice a hushed, reverent tremor meant for Han Li alone.
"Heavenly Dao…" he breathed. "It doesn't just show spirit roots… it reveals their truth. And yours… this artifact has no scale for what you are. It can only show the void you create." He swallowed, the action visible in his throat. "You must possess a Heavenly Spirit Root. A lineage of power thought extinct, a legend…"
His gaze focused, sharpening with a terrifying intensity. He extended a hand, not to take Han Li's, but to gesture him closer, away from the crowd, into the sphere of the extraordinary.
"Come here, boy."
Han Li, moving as if in a dream, pulled his hand from the crystal. The pillar of light vanished instantly. The crystal remained a depthless black for a long moment before slowly fading back to milky white, exhausted. He stepped toward the cultivator.
Xiao Yao placed a firm, steadying hand on Han Li's shoulder. He turned to face the utterly silent, gaping crowd—to the stunned villagers, the jealous children, the weeping parents. When he spoke again, his voice carried the full weight of his authority, amplified, ringing with a finality that brooked no argument.
"Let it be known," Xiao Yao declared, his words etching themselves into the history of the village. "From this day forward, this boy, Han Li, is my disciple. My only disciple and heir. The selection is concluded."
He looked down at Han Li, and in his eyes, the boy saw not just awe, but a consuming, fearful fascination. The path of wood and want was not just behind him; it was incinerated in the starlight. He had not been chosen. He had been claimed. And as the murmurs of a thousand new rumors began to rise like a tide around him, Han Li understood that the gaze of the cultivator upon him was the first of many—a gaze that saw not a person, but a cataclysm in a green-azure robe, a key to a door better left unopened, a future written in the dust of dead stars.