The now nine-year-old Liu Yuming returned to Far Lantern Courtyard and heard the sound of wailing. He found his friend Liu Yuren and asked what happened.
"Another one burst his meridians," Yuren said as he shook his head.
Something like this had happened a few times in the near year that Yuming had been here. He looked in the direction of a boy who was maybe thirteen or fourteen years old packing up his belongings with tears in his eyes. Now he'll never be real, Yuming thought to himself.
"I wouldn't be too worried about that happening," Liu Yiling said from behind.
"Goodness, are you always stalking us?" scolded Yuming.
Yiling frowned. "I'm just saying, if that happened to me, I'd just take medicine to fix it."
"You idiot," said Yuren, "He just can't afford the medicine."
"Sounds like he doesn't have much Dao potential, then," retorted Yiling.
I really need some money, Yuming thought to himself. The Family provided him with resources, but it was strictly supervised and still not as plentiful as what someone like Yiling received. His own immediate family, while somewhat rich in the mortal world, had absolutely no currency applicable for the cultivation world. The problem is, I'm always being watched. They're not going to let me go down the mountain.
A month ago, he had asked Instructor Zhao about starting a courtyard betting pool: who would reach Marrow Unblocking first, who would reach Dantian Awakening, who would reach Qi Condensation? Yuming was quite proud of his idea but was told off by the instructor and hadn't mentioned it again.
Oh wait… Yiling mentioned that one of her elders was coming to audit the library next month. I bet Old Ye is busy cleaning stuff up. Also, it's going to be busy once the audit gets announced, in case restrictions are tightened.
Yuming went to the library and shared his idea with the stressed Old Ye, who seemed a bit relieved and agreed. For the next two weeks, Yuming acted as a runner, filling holes that Old Ye was too busy to attend to. During his work, he didn't forget to diligently circulate his Marrow Forging Beads to keep progressing in his cultivation.
One day, Old Ye called Yuming over with a solemn expression. "Yuming, I have an important assignment for you."
Yuming, seeing that he was serious, bowed slightly and said, "This junior hopes he is capable."
Old Ye sighed. "You may be aware of one of our simple cultivation techniques—the 'Three Locks Breaking Diagram.' We have a few copies, but they are all forbidden from being taken out of the library. In the past three weeks, one has gone missing. I want you to track it down."
Yuming gulped. He was in fact aware of this technique—it was an extremely specific method of micro-pressure cycling that helped open three specific meridians: the spleen, liver, and kidney meridians. Each of these meridians were especially hard to unblock. The kidney meridian was deep and hard to drive qi through. The liver meridian often fluctuated under stress and frequently rebounded qi. The spleen meridian was about absorption, and people with poor diets or insufficient spiritual rice would have a hard time opening it.
Just thinking about the technique, Yuming began to build a profile of who would need it, and who would steal it. They were of low talent, of low or even false-grade spiritual roots. They also likely didn't have much money, hence the problem with the spleen meridian in particular. This technique has always been in high demand and viewing it costs spiritual rice, which creates a compounding situation, Yuming thought to himself.
They're of low talent, they probably already opened nine meridians. They should be fifteen or sixteen. No… they should be seventeen, concerned that they have to leave Far Lantern Courtyard within the year, and they haven't even awakened their spiritual sense.
Yuming recalled that if one opened up most of their meridians with a long delay before opening up the rest, it would create a qi imbalance that made it extremely difficult to ever enter Dantian Awakening and open their spiritual sense. They'd be a waste cultivator.
Yuming took a slow breath. "What copy was it? Which shelf?"
Old Ye stood with a grunt and led him out through the back hall. The library at Far Lantern was colder than the dorms, its stone walls drinking warmth as if it were a resource to be hoarded. Rows of shelves ran like narrow streets between lantern poles. Old Ye stopped at a low shelf near the back, where technique manuals were kept under thin lacquered covers. "Here. Middle row. Third from the left."
Yuming stepped closer. The gap was clean. No torn paper, no splintered wood. Whoever had taken it hadn't been a panicked child yanking at bindings in the dark. They'd slid it out carefully.
Yuming placed his fingertips lightly on the wood. The surface was polished, faintly warm from lantern heat. Along the lip of the shelf he felt the slightest irregularity: a tiny ridge, like dried glue or resin.He lifted his hand and looked closely. A smear of amber—pine resin. That's not normal library grime.
Most children here used training salves that smelled like camphor and bitter leaf. But pine resin had a distinct use on Far Lantern: it was brushed lightly on the inside of gloves to improve grip during weighted tempering and rope drills. Whoever took the manual wore training gloves recently.Yuming looked at the neighboring manuals. Their spines were straight as expected, but the manual immediately to the right of the missing one had been pushed back slightly—a quarter inch deeper than the others.
Yuming hesitated, then asked, "Is there a ledger?"
Old Ye's expression tightened. "There is," he said, as he pulled a thin book from under the counter, bound in gray cord—the library's access record.
Yuming scanned through it, but disappointment pricked at him: the entries were too normal. The 'Three Locks Breaking Diagram' was so popular it created noise—too many viewers. But then Yuming noticed something else. Several entries were written in Old Ye's hand. Most were stamped with the usual rice token mark, but a few weren't stamped. Instead, Old Ye had drawn a short diagonal slash beside the name: a courtesy mark. Yuming looked up slowly. "What's this slash?"
Old Ye glanced at it, then away. "Some people come with a chaperone. Some people come with elder permission. Some come with… favors."
"Favors," Yuming repeated.
Old Ye gave him a look that was both warning and instruction. "This is a library, not a courtroom."
Yuming continued scanning the slashed entries. The slashes clustered around late hours—times when the library would normally be closed unless Old Ye left the lanterns on for certain children. And the names were not the poorest, not the richest—they were the in-between.
One name appeared twice in the slashed entries, separated by about ten days: Liu Renshu.
He recognized that Liu Renshu was seventeen years old. Seventeen was the age that Far Lantern Courtyard became a sorting table. Those with real talent would move to specialized peaks. Those with high cultivation fared even better. But without spiritual sense or connections, you became a labor cultivator—useful, replaceable, and easy to send to the edges where bandits and beasts cleaned up minor messes.
Renshu's two slashed entries were not close together, they were spaced out. And unlike the children who came in groups, Renshu's entries had something else unusual: Old Ye's diagonal slash, next to "Liu Renshu," had been pressed harder. It was the only name in the ledger that Old Ye had marked like that.
Yuming looked up. "Old Ye... did he argue with you?"
Old Ye didn't answer immediately. He was rearranging a stack of returned scroll cases with stubborn care. Yuming held the ledger open and tapped the name. Old Ye's jaw tightened. "Don't ask questions you can't afford the answer to."
So: yes.
Yuming understood the conversation already. A seventeen-year-old branch-descendent, with enough pride to keep standing straight, but not enough backing to be protected if he fell behind. Renshu would have asked for extra time with the Diagram. Maybe asked to borrow it. Maybe asked to be exempted from a viewing fee.
Old Ye would have refused. Not because he was heartless—because if he bent for one, he'd need to bend for all.
And that's when he noticed what wasn't there. On Renshu's two entries, there were no token stamps at all. Just Old Ye's slash, meaning Renshu had been granted access without paying. Which meant: Renshu was valuable enough that someone had vouched for him, at least temporarily, but Renshu was not wealthy enough to casually pay.
A seventeen-year-old. Not dirt-poor, nor a beggar. But not the kind of branch member who could waste rice tokens on repeated viewings. He was precisely the sort of person the Diagram would tempt the most.
Yuming shut the ledger gently. "Old Ye, is there another way out? For repairs?"
"The library has a formation net," Old Ye said quietly. "It records movement after second bell. It records traces, such as weight, footstep patterns, and heat."
He gestured to the floor, where the formation brightened slightly, revealing footsteps that appeared as ghostly distortions. There were small, light ones moving often, slow wandering paths, and one trace that paused exactly at the missing gap.
Then the trace moved away, toward the back corridor.
Yuming's gaze snapped up. "There's a back corridor?"
Old Ye didn't meet his eyes. "Maintenance access."
"And it's locked?"
"Yes."
"Then how—"
Old Ye cut him off. "Keys exist."
Yuming held his breath. "Who can sign out a maintenance key?"
"Lantern attendants, storehouse assistants, and older disciples on service rotation."
Service rotation. Far Lantern wasn't a slum, nor was it a chaotic school. Far Lantern was an institution. And institutions always turned their failing products into unpaid labor before discarding them.
Yuming didn't need to ask who was most likely to be assigned to service rotations. Seventeen year olds who hadn't yet awakened spiritual sense. Yuming bowed to Old Ye. "I'll check the lantern station."
Old Ye grunted. "Don't be stupid."
….
Yuming crossed the stone paths to the lantern attendant hall. Inside, older youths in gray service robes were sorting oil tags and formation wicks. He stepped in and clasped his hands politely, causing the girl on duty to look up and immediately straighten when she saw his generation character. "Young master Yuming."
Yuming got straight to the point. "Senior Sister, I'm helping Librarian Ye. The library has a missing manual, and I need to know who had third bell maintenance access recently."
The girl moved to a wooden board with roster slips pinned in rows. She ran her finger down columns. "Third bell rotation… last week…" Her brow furrowed. She hesitated, then said softly, "Liu Renshu signed out the corridor key."
Yuming clasped his hands again. "Thank you, Senior Sister."
He turned and left before she could ask questions.
….
Renshu wasn't hard to find. Seventeen-year-olds on service rotation moved differently than the children. Their schedules were coordinated and punctual. Yuming took a position near the side of the yard, half-hidden behind a stone lantern pillar, and waited.
After the fourth bell, Renshu finally broke pattern. He didn't go back to the dorm rows, but instead went behind the terrace, to a narrow maintenance passage.
Yuming waited until he saw it just for a moment, under Renshu's robe: a scroll case, not made of ordinary bamboo, but old lacquered wood.
Yuming exhaled softly, and then followed.
Renshu froze the instant Yuming stepped out from the maintenance passage, as if the mountain itself had spoken. He didn't bow fast enough—his hands hesitated, his sleeve tightened protectively around the scroll case.
Yuming's voice stayed mild. "Senior Brother."
Renshu's throat bobbed. "Young Master Yuming… I-I was only—"
Yuming held up his small hand. "Enough."
Renshu's face went gray. He understood immediately: one sentence from Yuming, and his life here ended—he'd be lucky if his meridians weren't crippled.
Yuming held his gaze for a long beat, then sighed.
"Give it to me tonight," he said. "I'll return it."
Renshu blinked. "Then… I'm finished."
"No," Yuming said, turning away. "Tomorrow, you'll 'rent' it. Same rules as everyone else. You'll pay in chores."
Renshu looked at him with a complicated expression. "T-thank you, Young Master."
Yuming waved his sleeve and walked away. He felt good about himself as he returned to his lodgings.
It was only as he walked back that a small thought nagged at him: Old Ye could have handled this quietly himself. Why involve me at all? Because he didn't want it solved?
….
Above the haze, standing on the clouds, two cultivators dressed in ornate robes looked down at Far Lantern Peak below.
One of them laughed. "I told you he wouldn't turn him in! You owe me five spirit stones!"
The other snorted. "How should we handle this?"
"Cripple that Renshu boy's cultivation, and send his family off the mountain. As for Yuming, I will give him a stern talk."
Now it was the other party who chuckled. "Your Xu Branch is still trying to draw the boy into your orbit—you just want to talk with him and make friends, and you'll probably blame the Renshu matter on me! No more working at the library, and have him return the artifacts we gave for Meridian Tempering."
"Return the artifacts? You're joking."
"Fine, no more artifacts for a year."
"Six months."
"Deal."
The figures above the clouds flashed across the sky, while below, Liu Renshu sighed with relief.