Morning arrived without ceremony.
The sun rose pale and distant, its warmth weak against the chill lingering in the soil. Alpha woke before the village rooster, his eyes opening in silence. His body ached with the dull, honest weight of overworked muscles.
He welcomed it. Pain anchored him to this life.
He rose quietly, stepping outside the shed. Mist clung low to the ground, coiling around his ankles like something half-alive. The village was still asleep—their breaths slow, their dreams fragile.
This was the safest time.
Alpha sat cross-legged behind the shed, back straight, palms resting on his knees. He did not draw in Qi. Instead, he listened.
He didn't listen with his ears, but with that faint warmth in his chest, the scar, the seed, the remnant of Creation. He followed its rhythm, letting his breath align naturally.
In. Out.
The world responded, not with power, but with resistance. It was a subtle pressure, like invisible fingers brushing against his thoughts, testing and correcting. Heaven did not notice him yet, but it sensed something unorthodox.
Alpha shifted his focus inward. Rather than forcing a structure, he simply observed the smallest processes within his body: blood moving, cells dividing, warmth spreading from exertion.
Creation was not grand. It was incremental. Silent.
He formed no pattern; he allowed one to emerge. A thread appeared again—thin, unstable, and trembling like a newborn. It did not circulate. It did not grow. It simply existed.
The warmth in his chest pulsed in approval. Then, A sharp snap echoed in his mind. A lance of pain tore through his skull. Alpha's eyes flew open, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, dark against his pale skin. The thread shattered instantly.
He slumped forward, hands digging into the dirt. So, that was the limit.
The world tolerated observation. It tolerated proximity. But the moment something new tried to stabilize, the rules pushed back. Alpha wiped his mouth with his sleeve, his expression remaining calm.
"Not rejection," he murmured. "Correction."
The difference mattered.
The day passed much like the one before: fields, buckets, sun, and sweat. But Alpha noticed things now, patterns that others missed:
How Qi gathered faintly around certain stones.
How the soil near old roots held warmth longer.
How a child's laughter stirred the air more than anger ever did.
At midday, as he rested beneath a crooked tree, a shadow fell across him.
"Hey."
Alpha looked up. A boy about his age stood there, face sharp and eyes bright with restless ambition. His clothes were better than the villagers', trimmed with faded embroidery.
"You're not from here," the boy said.
"No," Alpha replied.
The boy grinned. "Figured. I'm Liang. My uncle's a disciple of the Cloud Ridge Sect."
Alpha inclined his head slightly. "Alpha."
Liang's grin widened. "You heard them recruiting, right? Tests are in three days. I'm leaving tomorrow." Alpha said nothing. Liang mistook the silence for uncertainty. "Don't bother if you don't have talent. They say if your Qi doesn't respond, you might as well be dead."
Alpha met his gaze. "Do you believe that?"
Liang hesitated, then shrugged. "That's how the world works."
The boy left soon after, already dreaming of immortality. Alpha watched him go. It was another familiar script.
That night, Alpha did not attempt cultivation. Instead, he walked to the edge of the village where the land dipped into a shallow ravine.
He knelt and dipped his fingers into a trickle of water. It was cold, flowing around his skin unbothered. Alpha closed his eyes.
"What are you afraid of?" he asked softly, not to Heaven, but to the world itself.
No answer came. But the warmth in his chest pulsed once, slow and deliberate. Alpha smiled. Fear implied expectation. Correction implied investment.
He rose and returned to the village, his mind already adjusting. If the world would not allow a new path to form...
Then he would disguise it as an old one.
Three days. That was enough.
Far above, unseen and unrecorded, a minute deviation had already been logged—not by a god or a law, but by something older.
The tally turned: +1.