That night, Lin Yuan could not sleep.
Not because of the pain from the blows, though it was still there.
Not because of the cold, though dawn descended over the hills with icy teeth.
Nor because of hunger.
It was something else.
A still body and a mind too awake.
The kind of night when even the sound of a single drop falling somewhere seems excessive.
Around him, the other children of the orphanage slept curled beneath mismatched blankets. One coughed from time to time. Another clutched something to his chest while dreaming. Someone murmured his mother's name and fell silent again.
Lin Yuan lay on his back on the pallet, staring into the darkness between the roof beams.
Without a path.
The phrase was still there.
No longer as an insult.
As a sentence.
Every time he closed his eyes, he remembered the exact instant when the metal disk had begun to vibrate strangely beneath his hand. The irregular movement of the inscriptions. The brief tension on the face of the disciple recording the results. The way the elder had pronounced the words severely damaged, nearly useless, without a path, as if he were describing a broken board or a ruined tool.
Lin Yuan turned onto his side and pulled the medallion from beneath his robe.
Moonlight, barely filtered through a crack in the wall, touched the edge of the metal with a dull gleam.
He stared at it for a long time.
During the test, when his finger had been pricked and the blood had fallen onto the evaluation disk, he had felt something strange for an instant.
Not in the sect's artifact.
In this.
In the medallion.
It had only been a sensation.
As if the metal had grown even colder. As if it had weighed differently. As if a dead object had briefly contained the possibility of not being entirely dead.
Maybe he had imagined it.
Fatigue.
Shame.
Tension.
Anything could deceive perception when one wanted too badly to find meaning.
Even so, he did not let go of the medallion.
He held it tight between his fingers until the metal left cold in his skin.
"Lin Yuan."
The voice, low and hoarse, came from the entrance to the dormitory.
It was Old Mei.
He pushed himself up slightly.
"What is it?"
"Come."
He asked nothing more. He put on his robe and followed her into the yard.
The night was still. The moon was only an incomplete disk over the hills. The air cut like a blade.
The old woman stood beside the post where they usually hung wet clothes in summer.
"The chosen leave tomorrow," she said.
Lin Yuan nodded.
"Yes."
"And you'll remain here."
This time he did not nod. He only stayed silent.
Old Mei studied him for a moment with those worn eyes of hers that seemed to have seen too much poverty to be easily impressed.
"I'm not going to tell you that everything happens for a reason," she declared. "That phrase was invented by people who don't want to look misfortune in the face."
Lin Yuan let out a faint breath.
"That sounds like you."
"I'm not going to tell you to be patient either, because at your age that word only serves to irritate."
"That also sounds like you."
The old woman snorted.
"What I will tell you is this: the world has always been larger than the words people use to try to lock you inside it."
Lin Yuan looked at her.
She continued,
"Maybe your meridians are damaged. Maybe you can't cultivate like others. Maybe you'll never enter a respectable sect. All of that may be true."
She stepped closer.
"But if you let that decide entirely what you are, then that's when you'll truly have lost."
The wind stirred the hem of Lin Yuan's robe.
"And what if there's nothing else?" he asked, and for the first time since the test, he let the question sound like what it really was: fear.
Old Mei did not hurry her answer.
"Then you'll have to live by becoming harder to break than the world you were given."
Lin Yuan lowered his eyes to the medallion in his hand.
"That changes nothing."
"No."
"It doesn't repair meridians."
"No."
"It doesn't open doors."
"No."
The old woman lifted her chin.
"But it keeps you standing long enough to see whether another one appears."
Silence fell between them again.
Far away, a dog barked.
In the village square, some voices were still awake. People celebrating, most likely. Families who did not want to sleep for fear that by dawn it would all turn out to have been a dream.
Lin Yuan clenched the medallion until his fingers hurt.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Ask."
"When they found me... was I alone?"
Old Mei took her time answering.
"Yes."
"There was nothing else? No note? No name? No clue?"
"No."
"And this medallion?"
The old woman looked at it.
"Only that."
"You never thought it was strange?"
Old Mei let out a short, rough laugh.
"Every abandoned baby found with an object on him is strange. But in a village like this, strange doesn't buy answers."
Lin Yuan tucked the medallion back under his clothes.
The conversation ended there.
Old Mei gave him a dry pat on the shoulder and went back inside. He remained in the yard a while longer, watching the black line of the hills.
He did not know how long he stood there.
In the end, he returned to the dormitory.
This time, he did fall asleep.
And he dreamed.
Not the way one normally dreams.
Not with full scenes or clear faces.
Only fragments.
A sky split by light.
Furious wind.
A sensation of falling.
Warmth wrapping around him.
Something encircling him like a protective sphere.
A sound like chains breaking in the distance.
A bloodied hand.
The dream shattered before it made sense.
Lin Yuan woke with a start, drenched in sweat despite the cold.
The first light of dawn had only just begun to stain the horizon.
He sat up, breathing hard, and instinctively put a hand to his chest.
The medallion was still there.
But it was freezing. Much colder than usual.
He remained seated for a long while, breathing slowly, trying to arrange the scattered pieces of the dream into something understandable.
He could not.
Outside, the village was beginning to stir once more.
It was the day the chosen would depart.
Lin Yuan did not go to see them off.
He preferred to stay repairing the old shed at the orphanage, reinforcing planks and changing out frayed ropes. Anything that kept his hands occupied.
The sound of a cart passing along the main road reached him faintly from the distance. Then voices, farewells, some crying, much excitement. After that, little by little, silence.
The square stood empty.
The chosen had gone.
And he was still there.
By midmorning, Old Mei sent him into the low forest to gather dry branches. It was not difficult work, but it got him out of the village long enough for tongues to tire a little in his absence.
Lin Yuan moved among stunted trees and stones covered with dark moss, a rope at his waist and a short knife in hand. The forest in that region was neither deep nor dangerous, but it was quiet enough to set thoughts in order.
He picked up branches.
Cut a few more.
Tied a bundle.
And then he heard voices.
Not imagined ones.
Up ahead, among the trees, two grown men were talking without knowing he was there.
Lin Yuan crouched down by reflex.
Not because he wished to eavesdrop. Because caution was nearly instinct to him.
The voices belonged to two village woodcutters. They spoke of the harvest, the price of oil, and after a while, of the sect test.
"They say the orphanage boy almost had a chance," one commented.
"Almost is useless," the other replied. "If the meridians are broken, they're broken."
"Still, it's a shame."
"Sure. But it's nothing unusual. Some people are simply born better. That's how the world is."
"I suppose."
"And besides, better to know while he's young. Worse if he spent years dreaming of something impossible."
Lin Yuan remained still among the bushes.
There was no cruelty in those words.
That was the worst part.
They were not mockery. Not an attack.
Only a plain, practical acceptance of the fact that some are born to rise and others to watch.
A truth accepted with the same naturalness people used to speak of weather or the price of salt.
When the voices moved away, Lin Yuan stayed crouched a little longer, his gaze fixed on the dry branches before him.
A strange feeling began to grow inside him.
It was not sudden rage.
It was slower.
Heavier.
A mixture of humiliation, exhaustion, and a dull fury against everything that sounded too final.
Broken meridians.
Without a path.
That's how the world is.
Better to know while he's young.
Each phrase fell on top of the last until they formed an unbearable pressure in his chest.
Lin Yuan stood up abruptly.
The rope around the bundle of firewood caught on his wrist. He tore it away too hard. A long splinter sliced open the skin of his palm.
Blood welled immediately.
It was not a serious wound.
But the sight of that vivid red on his hand, in that exact moment, did something strange to him.
He raised his fist in anger.
And without thinking, he closed it around the medallion beneath his robe.
The metal received pressure, heat, and blood all at once.
For a fraction of a second, nothing happened.
Then the medallion vibrated.
Not in imagination.
Not as some vague sensation.
It truly vibrated.
Lin Yuan went utterly still.
The air in the forest seemed to grow too quiet.
Slowly, he pulled the medallion out.
An almost invisible line had appeared on its surface, as if beneath the dull layer of metal, something was trying to force its way out from within.
The line shone faintly.
And vanished.
Lin Yuan stopped breathing for an instant.
He looked in every direction.
The trees were still there.
The wind barely moved a few dry leaves.
No one was around.
Only him.
And the old worthless medallion that, for the first time in his life, had proven it was not entirely ordinary.