Morning of the Minor Assessment arrived with the same indifference as any other day. The bell rang. The mist clung to the stone. But the silence in the outer quarters was heavier.
There were no drills today.
The outer disciples gathered in the main training square. The cohort of survivors from the Judgment Field stood alongside the older, grayer residents who had survived previous years.
Steward Han Zhi stood on the platform. Beside him sat Instructor Fan. Behind them, a row of clerks sat at long tables, their ink stones wet, their faces bored.
"Formation," Han Zhi said.
It was not a command to fight. It was a command to be measured.
Xu Qian took his place. To his left stood Zhao Wen. The broad-shouldered disciple looked thinner than he had three months ago. His jaw was set so hard a muscle jumped rhythmically in his cheek.
"The standard is twelve percent," Han Zhi said. His voice carried without effort. "Those who meet the standard retain their allocation. Those who exceed the standard by a margin of five percent or more will be noted for potential advancement access. Those who fail..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
"Begin."
"Instructor Fan's spiritual sense swept the yard once before the clerks began their rounds. A single pass. Verification, not measurement. The clerks carried the stones. Fan carried the judgment."
It was the most silent struggle Xu Qian had ever witnessed.
Two hundred disciples sat cross-legged on the cold stone. At the signal, two hundred breaths were drawn in unison.
Xu Qian closed his eyes.
He located the thread of qi in his center. It was stronger now than it had been at the start, but "stronger" was relative. It was a thin, cold wire compared to the rushing rivers described in the legends.
He began the cycle.
*Push. Junction one.* The friction bit at him. He ignored it.
*Turn. Junction two.* The heat rose. He accepted it.
*Bridge. Junction three.*
He moved the qi with the painstaking care of a jeweler cutting a diamond that might explode. He did not rush. Rushing increased turbulence. Turbulence increased dispersal.
He could feel the clerks moving through the rows. They carried sensory stones-small, dull jade tablets that hummed when brought near a cultivator in active circulation. They didn't need to touch him. The stone read the leakage. The waste.
A clerk stopped in front of him.
Xu Qian felt the scrutiny like a physical weight. His concentration wavered for a microsecond. The qi snagged on the scar tissue in his shoulder. Heat flared.
*Steady.*
He forced the breath out through his teeth, a hiss of escaping pressure, and clamped down on the flow. He forced the qi past the blockage, accepting the pain to prevent the leak.
The clerk made a mark. The clerk moved on.
Xu Qian completed the circuit. Then another. Then another.
Time became irrelevant. There was only the cycle and the heat.
"Halt."
The word snapped the trance. Xu Qian exhaled, his lungs burning. He opened his eyes. The sun was high overhead. They had been sitting for four hours.
His robe was soaked with cold sweat. His shoulder throbbed with a dull, sickening rhythm.
"Results are recorded," Han Zhi said.
The clerks began to post sheets of paper on the wooden boards at the edge of the square.
The discipline broke. The mass of disciples surged toward the boards. There was no shouting, but the desperation was palpable in the speed of the movement, the shoving of shoulders.
Xu Qian did not run. He stood up slowly, testing his legs. They were numb from the posture.
Zhao Wen was already at the board. Xu Qian watched him scan the lists, his finger tracing a line. Zhao Wen stopped. His shoulders slumped.
Xu Qian walked over.
The list was a column of names and numbers.
"The names were arranged by score, lowest dispersal at the top. Xu Qian scanned past the first sheet. His name was not there. He moved to the second sheet, near the bottom.
Xu Qian: 12% (Pass)."
The ink was slightly smudged. The clerk had pressed too hard
He stared at the number.
Twelve percent. Exactly on the line. Not a fraction of grace. If he had wavered one more time, if he had let the heat spike once more, he would have failed.
He had survived.
"Eleven," Zhao Wen said.
Xu Qian looked at him. He looked different. The broad-shouldered thickness was gone, whittled away by something harder than hunger. His skin had a gray, waxen cast to it, as if the fog of the Gray Spine had soaked into his pores and refused to leave. His robes were new-high-quality wool, not the standard issue hemp.
"Eleven percent," Zhao Wen repeated, his voice hollow. "I passed. I beat the threshold."
Xu Qian looked at the pouch. "The crystals worked."
"It worked," Zhao Wen said. He did not elaborate. His hands were shaking.
Xu Qian looked at him carefully. Zhao Wen's qi signature was uneven. The dispersal number might read eleven, but the texture of his circulation was rough, jagged in places, like a wall that had been widened with a hammer instead of carved with a chisel. The assessment measured leakage. It did not measure quality."
He coughed. It was a deep, hacking sound that shook his frame. He covered his mouth with a cloth. When he pulled it away, Xu Qian saw a faint smear of pink.
"The fog?" Xu Qian asked.
"The filter cracked on the third day," Zhao Wen said, tucking the cloth away quickly. "Just a hairline fracture. Took in a little bad air."
"A little bad air in the Gray Spine is enough to rot lung tissue."
"It will heal," Zhao Wen said, though he didn't sound convinced. He touched the pouch again. "I have enough merit now to buy High-Grade Consolidation pills. I have access to the Spirit Spring. I'm moving to the East Wing quarters tomorrow."
He looked at Xu Qian with a mixture of pride and defensiveness.
"You played it safe, Xu Qian. You survived. But I advanced."
"You advanced," Xu Qian agreed.
"Is it?" Zhao Wen turned. His eyes were wide, rimmed with red. "I killed myself for eleven. I didn't sleep. I didn't eat right. I practiced until I was bleeding."
He pointed at the top of the list.
"Cao Renyi: 10% (Pass)."
"Cao Renyi barely practices," Zhao Wen whispered. "I watch him. He does the drills, he eats, he sleeps. He doesn't push. He hits ten percent like he's walking to the latrine."
"We aren't the same anymore," Zhao Wen said, taking his pouch. "I'm going to Realm Two before the season turns. Don't wait too long, or you'll be left behind."
He walked away. His stride was long, aggressive, but the rasp in his breathing trailed behind him like a shadow.
Zhao Wen had traded health for speed. Xu Qian had traded time for health.
Both had paid. The ledger was balanced differently, that was all.
The next morning, Xu Qian went to the Scripture Hall.
Passing the Minor Assessment granted one specific privilege: access to the cultivation method for the Second Realm.
The queue was short. Most of the survivors were celebrating or resting. Xu Qian wanted neither. He wanted to know what came next.
The steward at the counter verified his new status mark. He handed Xu Qian a jade slip, cold and smooth.
"Copying is forbidden," the steward recited. "Memorize it here. Return it before you leave."
Xu Qian took the slip to a reading desk. He poured a small amount of qi into the jade to unlock the text.
Characters floated in his mind's eye.
*Qi Accumulation: The Filling of the Vessel.*
He read.
He read it again.
Then he sat back, the jade slip cold in his hand, and felt a heavy, sinking sensation in his stomach.
Realm One Flesh Tempering had been about adaptation. It was about toughening the channels so they wouldn't leak. It was a passive process of hardening.
Realm Two was active.
"To enter Accumulation, the cultivator must seal the dantian and pressurize the meridian system. Qi must be forced into the channels until the internal pressure exceeds the natural resistance of the vessel walls. This pressure must be maintained for hours, expanding the capacity of the meridians by force."
"The sensation is akin to inflation. The walls must stretch."
"Xu Qian disconnected his qi from the slip. He sat with the taste of the jade still cold on his fingers. Outside, someone was arguing about a meal ration. The voice was thin and angry and meant nothing.
He looked at his hand. He flexed his fingers.
His meridians were not elastic. They were scar tissue.
The poison from the ambush had chemically burned the interior of his channels. The antidote and the suppression pills had halted the rot, but they had left behind a rigid, inflexible lining.
Scar tissue did not stretch. It tore.
If he attempted the standard Accumulation method, if he pressurized his system to force expansion, his channels wouldn't widen. They would rupture.
He would end up like Wei Tong, bleeding out internally on the training floor.
"Problem?"
Xu Qian looked up. Sun Liang was leaning against a pillar nearby, arms crossed.
"You've been staring at that slip for an hour," Sun Liang said. "You look like a man who just found out his inheritance is paid in copper coins."
Xu Qian placed the jade slip on the table.
"The method requires pressure," Xu Qian said.
"Of course," Sun Liang said. "How else do you make a river wider? You flood it."
"My channels are scarred," Xu Qian said. "They don't stretch."
Sun Liang's expression didn't change. He walked over, picked up the slip, and weighed it in his hand.
"Ah," he said. "Physics."
"If I pressurize," Xu Qian said, "I rupture."
"Yes," Sun Liang agreed. "You almost certainly will."
He dropped the slip back onto the table with a click.
"This is why the sect didn't kick you out, Xu Qian. They knew they wouldn't have to. The Minor Assessment filters out the weak. Realm Two filters out the broken."
"There has to be another way," Xu Qian said. "Not every cultivator has perfect channels."
"True," Sun Liang said. "Some use body-refining pills to soften the tissue again. Expensive. Some use gentle water-aligned qi from a dual-cultivation partner to erode the scar tissue over years. Rare."
He leaned in.
"And some just accept that they will never reach Realm Two. They stay at Realm One. They become guards, or laborers, or clerks. They live long, useful, mediocre lives."
"I am not becoming a clerk," Xu Qian said.
"Then you have a geometry problem," Sun Liang said. "You need to fill a vessel that cannot expand. That means you can't use pressure."
"If I don't use pressure, the capacity doesn't increase."
"Correct."
"So I'm stuck."
"You're stuck," Sun Liang confirmed. "Unless you stop trying to expand the walls and start thinking about the space between them."
Xu Qian frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means I'm not an instructor," Sun Liang said, pushing off the table. "And advice on how to defy medical reality costs more than a conversation."
He turned to leave, then paused.
"Stop thinking about making the vessel bigger. Start thinking about what you put inside it." He tapped the jade slip on the table. "The archive has more than one method. Most people never look past the first page because the first page is the one the sect teaches. But the sect teaches what works for most bodies. Your body is not most bodies."
Sun Liang walked away.
Xu Qian sat alone in the hall.
The Second Realm was not a reward. It was a higher wall. The sect had let him pass the first gate only to show him that the road ahead was paved with spikes.
He picked up the jade slip and returned it to the steward.
"Finished?" the steward asked.
"Yes."
"Did you understand the method?"
"I understand," Xu Qian said.
He understood perfectly. The method was a death sentence.
He walked out of the Scripture Hall and into the sunlight. He looked at the mountain peaks rising above the mist, the domain of the Core Disciples and the Elders.
He couldn't climb. He couldn't stretch.
He turned toward the archive. He had merit to spend, and he had a question that the standard method couldn't answer.
He turned toward the old library. He had merit to spend, and he had a new word to look for.
*Density.*