The bell still rang before dawn.
Weeks had passed since the first time it cut through the outer quarters, but the sound had not softened. It was thin, metallic, and absolute. The courtyard filled the same way it always did, with bodies moving because the alternative was being noticed for the wrong reason.
Xu Qian stood among them and watched the faces change.
The shifts were subtle rather than dramatic. A boy who had argued over postings in the Task Hall no longer appeared. New names were spoken in low voices, then spoken less, then not at all.
The mountain did not announce losses. It simply made room.
After the roll call, the stewards dismissed them with the same flat indifference. Tasks were assigned. Slips were taken. The days unfolded in segments that blurred together.
Xu Qian kept his choices measured.
He did not chase the center boards. He did not reach for anything that promised recognition. He took what was dull, what was ignored, what ended cleanly. He let the ledgers fill with completion marks that drew no eyes and no praise.
And in the quiet between one bell and the next, he cultivated.
He followed the Basic Sword Cultivation Method and the Standard Qi-to-Edge Circulation the way a man follows a map that he does not fully trust. He traced the routes in his body with breath and attention, feeling nothing for long stretches, then feeling something faint and inconsistent, then feeling it fade again.
What entered did not stay. What should have gathered dispersed.
He adjusted anyway.
He did not speak of it. He did not ask for help. He corrected his posture, steadied his breath, and accepted that his pace would be slower than others who began clean.
By the time the fourth week bled into the fifth, he stopped hoping for a sign and began watching for a threshold.
It came on an ordinary evening.
No thunder. No wind. No sudden quiet across the mountain. The outer quarters were loud with the small noises of exhaustion. Someone coughing behind a thin wall. Someone washing a robe in a basin until the water went dark.
Xu Qian sat on the edge of his bed with his back straight and his hands resting on his knees. His lamp was unlit. He did not need light for this.
He needed stillness.
He inhaled. Slowly. Evenly. He let the breath settle low, then guided it through the routes he had traced so many times that his body began to follow on instinct.
Standard Qi-to-Edge. He chose it because it was what the sect issued, and in the outer quarters, deviation was not mistaken for genius. It was mistaken for a problem.
He moved through the first cycle with no sensation beyond warmth in his chest. The second cycle brought a faint pressure along the inner channel of his arm, like water pushing against a narrow pipe. The third cycle sharpened it, then threatened to slip away.
He stopped.
Not the process. The impulse.
He did not rush to hold it. He did not clamp down with will. He loosened his shoulders and let the breath lengthen, letting the pressure find its own place instead of forcing it into one.
The pressure steadied.
That was new.
Xu Qian continued.
The warmth in his core grew denser, less like heat and more like weight. His breath became a thread he could feel, not just perform. The thread tightened, and with it came resistance, as if his body itself was deciding whether to allow the route to remain open.
He reached the point where his past attempts always faltered. The sensation thinned, then wavered.
He paused at the edge of the wavering-not from fear, but from discipline. Then he guided the circulation again, slower, cleaner, with less effort than before.
The wavering did not collapse.
Instead, it gathered.
A moment later, he felt it. Not as a thought. Not as an idea. As a presence.
Qi.
It did not roar. It did not flood his meridians and turn him into something new. It settled like a thin layer of frost along the inside of his body, cold in its clarity, sharp in its reality.
He held his breath for a fraction too long and felt the presence twitch. He exhaled and it steadied again.
Xu Qian continued the cycle, completing it fully.
When he finished, he did not move.
His heartbeat sounded the same. The room sounded the same. The mountain did not care. But inside him, something had shifted from temporary to real. There was a reservoir now, shallow and leaky, but undeniably present.
He exhaled once, long and controlled.
Flesh Tempering.
Entry, not mastery.
He slept lightly. The next morning, he woke before the bell, sat up, and tested the circulation again. The presence returned, thinner than last night but still there. It did not collapse when he stood.
That was enough.
He reported it the way the sect trained men to report anything that mattered.
By walking to a desk and waiting.
The outer records room sat off a narrow corridor behind the Task Hall. It smelled of ink and paper and the faint bitterness of dried herbs stored in sealed jars. A line of disciples waited, each holding a slip, a token, a request.
No one spoke above a whisper.
When Xu Qian reached the front, the steward behind the desk did not look impressed. She took his disciple token, flipped open a ledger, and held a thin measuring rod between two fingers.
"Circulate," she said.
Xu Qian placed his hand on the marked stone beside the desk and ran Standard Qi-to-Edge once, cleanly and easily. The rod vibrated faintly, then steadied.
The steward marked a line in the ledger.
"Realm One," she said, already turning the page.
No congratulations. No ceremony. A fact recorded and filed.
Xu Qian took back his token. As he turned, he saw another disciple at the end of the line staring at him with tight eyes, as if measuring what the mark might mean. Xu Qian did not meet the stare.
He returned to the Task Hall the same day.
The hall looked the same. The boards were the same wood. The postings were the same paper. The flow of bodies was the same slow current.
What changed was the way people moved around him.
A half step of space. A brief glance that lingered. A conversation that paused, then resumed softer.
The First Realm was a threshold, not a crown.
Xu Qian went to the side wall first, as he always did. He read, tearing nothing down.
Then he turned toward the back counter where inquiries were made.
A steward sat behind the desk, pen moving with steady impatience. Xu Qian waited until the man looked up.
"Task merit," Xu Qian said.
The steward's eyes flicked to his token. The mark for Realm One was visible if one knew where to look.
"You can ask," the steward said.
Xu Qian pointed to a posting on the side board, leaving it pinned. "Outer Field Drainage."
The steward glanced at the board, then at his ledger. "Eight."
Xu Qian nodded once. He pointed to another. "Archive Re-shelving."
"Twelve, if you return everything. Six if you damage anything."
He pointed again. "Marker Renewal, Cliff Path."
"Fourteen. Weather voids it if you leave early."
Each answer came clean and clipped. A number, spoken only because he was now allowed to hear it.
Xu Qian stepped back from the desk and let that settle.
Merit was visible now. It was still controlled, still rationed through human mouths and ledgers, but it could be measured.
He moved to the far end of the hall where the barrier board hung.
Flesh Tempering Required. Unauthorized Viewing Recorded.
He did not step past the rope. From where he stood, he could read the category headers and enough of the notices to understand the shape of what lay ahead.
Spirit Crystals. Exchange, capped.
Outer Equipment Issue. Limited.
Medical Priority. Merit threshold applies.
Training Time. Eligibility review.
Library Access. Extended entry, restricted texts.
Someone edged too close to the rope and a steward's pen scratched sharply. The disciple stepped back fast, face pale.
Xu Qian turned away before the pen had reason to notice him.
He found Sun Liang near the quieter side boards.
Sun Liang glanced at Xu Qian's token and the new mark on it. His expression did not change much, but his eyes sharpened.
"So," Sun Liang said. "You crossed."
Xu Qian did not answer with pride. "I entered."
Sun Liang's mouth curved faintly. "Better phrasing."
"What do you spend merit on," Xu Qian asked.
Sun Liang's gaze flicked to the barrier board again. "Access. Time. Priority. Things that keep you from wasting months."
He looked back. "Power is expensive. Permission is cheaper."
Xu Qian stepped to the inquiry desk again and asked for his ledger total.
The steward flipped pages, found the mark, and spoke, eyes on the page. "Eighty-six."
Xu Qian nodded once.
He spent merit the way he had lived these weeks.
Conservatively.
He inquired about outer weapons first. The steward took him to a rack behind a half wall, where iron blades rested in slots. Some were straighter. Some were better balanced.
"What about that one," Xu Qian said, pointing at a sword.
"This one," the steward said, touching a simple sword with a thicker spine. "Twenty-six."
Xu Qian tested the weight and the balance point. It was reliable rather than beautiful.
He purchased it. The steward marked his ledger.
Sixty left.
He asked for a low grade Spirit Consolidation Pill. The steward's eyes narrowed with a hint of irritation-not at him, but at the request's predictability.
"Twenty," she said.
Xu Qian took one.
Forty left.
He asked for library access extension-not to a higher level, just time and permission to return easily.
"Fifteen."
He paid it.
Twenty-five left.
He did not exchange for Spirit Crystals.
He could. He knew that now. But Sun Liang's warning sat in his mind like a weight.
Not enough to matter.
Instead, Xu Qian kept the remainder. A reserve for medical priority if something went wrong. A reserve for the kind of cost that arrived unannounced.
As he turned from the desk, he saw a disciple at the barrier board, newly marked Realm One as well, speaking to Sun Liang in a tone that was too familiar for a stranger.
The disciple was lean, eyes quick, and his posture held the quiet confidence of someone who had entered the sect through a route other than desperation. A token route.
Sun Liang spoke to him briefly, then nodded once. The disciple moved away toward the side boards, as if already trained to avoid attention.
Xu Qian watched the exchange and felt something click into place.
Sun Liang had known.
Because token entrants were a category, and categories were how men like Sun Liang navigated institutions.
Xu Qian looked down at his own token again, at the marks in the corner that meant entry, record, and now realm.
He filed the knowledge away. In this place, knowing who watched you was more valuable than knowing why.
He left the Task Hall with a new sword at his waist, a single pill sealed in vase shaped bottle, and permission stamped into his ledger like a silent contract.
That night, he sat in his room and began the circulation again.
Qi still leaked. The routes still resisted. The body still punished impatience.
But the threshold had opened.
For the first time, the work inside him counted as cultivation rather than imitation.
He inhaled, guided the breath, and felt the thin presence gather.
Real, though neither strong nor stable.
Outside, the outer quarters settled into sleep. Somewhere in the distance, a bell rope creaked in the wind.
Tomorrow would bring tasks again. Pressure again. Records again.
Xu Qian did not mistake entry for safety.
He simply accepted that the path had begun.