The dark did not fade when Zhou Wei closed his eyes.
It pressed inward instead, thick and intimate, as if the cave had learned the shape of his thoughts and decided to fill them. He crouched in the shadows, breathing slow, counting each inhale the way he had been taught as a servant when panic threatened to crack him open.
One.Two.Three.
The warmth in his abdomen pulsed in time with his breath.
It felt wrong. Not painful anymore, but dense, like a knot of heated resin lodged beneath his navel. When he focused on it, the sensation responded, spreading faint threads through his limbs. His fingers tingled. His heartbeat steadied.
Above, Elder Zhang moved.
Lantern light swept across the cave mouth, jittery and impatient. The sound of stone scraping stone carried down, then a sharp exhale. Zhang was irritated. Zhou Wei felt it as clearly as if the man had spoken aloud.
The realization made his scalp prickle.
He was sensing more than sound.
Zhou Wei narrowed his focus, the way the jade had taught him without words. He did not reach outward. He let the warmth expand on its own.
The world changed.
The cave did not grow brighter, but it grew layered. Beneath the cold and damp, emotions surfaced like heat ripples. Zhang's presence loomed above, a harsh cluster of impulses that made Zhou Wei's stomach twist. Desire knotted with fear. Control. Impatience. A slick, practiced hunger wrapped in discipline and doctrine.
Hypocrisy burned brightest of all.
Zhou Wei swallowed hard.
He shifted his attention away from Zhang, heart thudding. Instinct guided him, pulling his awareness outward, toward the fragile thread he had felt earlier.
Mei Lin.
Her emotions brushed against him softly, like fingertips testing a bruise. Fear dominated, sharp and trembling, but it was not alone. Beneath it lay confusion, curiosity, and something warmer that made Zhou Wei's breath hitch.
Longing.
The warmth in his abdomen surged in response.
Zhou Wei recoiled, jaw tightening. He forced the sensation down, clamping his focus shut the way one might close a door against a storm.
"So that's how it works," he murmured.
The knowledge rose again, unbidden, settling into place with unsettling ease.
He could feel desire. Not create it. Not force it. Only sense what already existed, buried or denied.
And when someone chose to act on that desire, willingly, the warmth would feed.
Zhou Wei pressed his forehead against the cool stone wall and laughed under his breath, the sound brittle.
"Of course," he whispered. "Of course it has rules."
The cave listened.
Images flickered at the edge of his thoughts, fragments left behind by the jade. Not memories, not quite. More like impressions burned into the back of his skull.
Willing choice.First fall.Virtue as fuel.
The words were not spoken, yet he understood them with uncomfortable clarity.
If he forced someone, there would be nothing. If he coerced, threatened, or took, the warmth would wither instead of grow. The path did not reward conquest.
It rewarded surrender.
Zhou Wei exhaled slowly.
"Disgusting," he said softly.
And yet, the warmth pulsed again, patient and expectant.
Footsteps scraped closer above. Lantern light spilled farther down the slope, casting long, twitching shadows along the cave walls. Elder Zhang muttered to himself, irritation bleeding through his words.
"I know you're here," Zhang called. "Come out. You're only making this worse."
Zhou Wei stayed silent.
He felt Zhang searching now, not just with eyes and ears but with something subtler. Spiritual sense. The man was probing the cave, sweeping for disturbances, for demonic residue.
Zhou Wei held his breath.
The warmth contracted, drawing inward like a beast curling into itself. The pressure in the cave eased, just slightly. Zhou Wei realized he was hiding it, instinctively masking the strange energy inside him.
Good.
Zhang's probing stalled, then slid past him.
After a long moment, the elder snorted. "Coward," he muttered.
The lantern light receded.
Zhou Wei did not relax until the footsteps faded completely.
When he finally allowed himself to breathe again, his hands were shaking.
"That was close," he whispered.
He waited longer, counting heartbeats, until the cave felt empty once more. Only then did he straighten slowly, muscles protesting but obeying. His injuries still hurt, but the pain no longer drowned out everything else. It felt… manageable.
Healing, perhaps. Or adaptation.
Zhou Wei tested his weight carefully. He could stand.
That alone sent a chill through him.
Hours ago, he would have been crippled. Now he was upright, steady enough to move, to think. The warmth inside him hummed, satisfied, as if pleased by his restraint.
"Not yet," Zhou Wei told it. "I'm not done understanding you."
He climbed out of the deeper chamber cautiously, keeping to the shadows, listening for any sign of pursuit. None came. The sect above was quiet again, the illusion of purity restored.
As he emerged into the night air, cool and sharp against his skin, Zhou Wei paused.
He could still feel Mei Lin.
Not clearly, not in detail, but enough to know where she was. Enough to know she was awake, curled in fear, waiting for something she did not yet understand.
Zhou Wei closed his eyes.
He remembered her eyes when she had looked at him earlier. The silent plea there. The way she had been treated like furniture, like a tool, like something that existed to be used.
The warmth stirred.
"I won't force you," he said quietly, whether to himself or to the thing inside him, he did not know. "That's not who I am."
The path did not answer.
It did not need to.
Zhou Wei opened his eyes, gaze hardening as resolve settled into place.
If the world only rewarded hypocrisy and cruelty, then he would use its hidden desires against it. Patiently. Carefully. On his terms.
He slipped into the darkness between buildings, unnoticed once more.
Behind him, deep in the forbidden cave, the dust of the shattered jade lay still.
Waiting.