Dust coiled around bare ankles as the last village boy stepped down from the stone dais, glowing lines still fading from his palm.
"Next," called Elder Lu in his nasal drawl, pinching the incense stub between two pale fingers.
Lin Xun's name wasn't spoken—but all eyes turned to him.
He stepped forward anyway, barefoot and shaking.
"Don't waste the elder's time," someone sneered behind him. "He's a rootless peasant."
"Bet the stone spits him out," another whispered, too loudly.
Elder Lu didn't look up. He yawned. "You. Boy. Hands on the stone."
Lin Xun approached the Spirit Root Appraisal Stone like it might bite him—a weather-worn, waist-high monolith streaked with copper veins. All morning, it had glowed in vivid colors: crimson for fire roots, blue for water, gold for metal, the rare green of wood, and once—astonishingly—a violet-white wisp indicating dual-lightning affinity.
His hands hung in front of the stone like the hands of a thief begging to be caught.
He pressed them to the surface.
The stone dimmed.
A full five seconds passed. Murmurs crept into the silence.
Elder Lu finally blinked. "Try again. With Qi."
Lin Xun didn't answer. He had none.
He pressed harder. Sweat dotted his brow. He pictured fire, water, light, thunder. He imagined his soul as radiant as the other boys'. He begged the stone, silently, desperately.
The stone pulsed—
Then cracked.
A thin line spiderwebbed from beneath his palm. Then another. Then the entire surface fissured with a hiss of pressure released.
A faint wisp of gray smoke drifted from the crack—and then nothing.
Dead silence. Even the birds seemed to pause in the trees beyond the courtyard wall.
Someone coughed. Someone else laughed. Then—
"Did he just break it?"
"Not break," said Elder Lu, standing now. "Rejected."
A beat passed. Then he smiled, cold and clinical. "Congratulations, Lin Xun. You've achieved the impossible. Even the stone thinks you're worthless."
Laughter exploded from the crowd of boys, girls, and parents. Lin Xun stared at the shattered monolith. The surface no longer even shimmered.
"Worthless!"
"Trash!"
"Should've drowned him at birth."
Someone threw a peach pit. It struck his chest and bounced off. Then came a rock.
Lin Xun flinched. Someone shoved him from behind. He hit the ground face-first and tasted blood.
"Enough," Elder Lu said, without much force.
The crowd did not stop.
Two boys from the main village—larger, richer, sons of minor clan heads—yanked him up by the arms.
"Shouldn't be allowed to test with real cultivators," said one. "Might taint the stone. Oh wait—" he gestured to the shattered monolith, "—too late!"
They dragged him across the dust, laughing.
Lin Xun didn't fight. He didn't speak.
He just stared at the broken stone, his thoughts a white-hot blank.
That night, Lin Xun didn't return home.
Not that he had one.
The shack on the eastern slope had collapsed two winters ago. Since then, he'd slept wherever the night tolerated him—under the grain shed, behind the butcher's stalls, in the hollow tree by the irrigation ditch. Wherever the dogs didn't bite.
But tonight, he wouldn't even risk that. Not after what happened.
He moved through the brush behind the village like a shadow, cloak pulled tight. The laughter still echoed in his skull. "Even the stone thinks you're worthless." That line would stick.
When the trees thickened and the grass turned sharp with thorns, he veered uphill—toward the old shrine.
The elders called it cursed.
He didn't care.
Curses sounded better than laughter.
He reached the shrine by moonlight. It wasn't much—a collapsed wooden roof, half a statue buried in moss, and a cracked altar smeared with dried bird droppings. The scent of rotted incense clung faintly to the air, like a perfume long forgotten.
He stepped inside.
And froze.
Someone was already there.
A man—old, or maybe just withered—leaned against the altar, his chest heaving in ragged wheezes. His robes were once fine; now they were burned at the edges, torn down the sleeves, crusted with old blood.
Around him lay five yellow talismans. They shimmered faintly, pulsing in rhythm with his dying breath.
One eye was swollen shut. The other, clouded with spiritual haze, turned toward Lin Xun.
"You're too late," the man rasped.
Lin Xun backed toward the door.
"Wait."
The voice, though shredded, held command. Lin Xun stopped.
The man reached into his inner robe with one trembling hand. He drew out a scroll.
Thick. Bound in black thread. Sealed with a wax sigil shaped like an eye with three pupils.
"This is cursed," the man said.
Lin Xun didn't move.
"It lies. That's what it does. It lies to Heaven."
He coughed, spat blood, and shoved the scroll forward.
"Take it. If you're going to die anyway, die lying."
Lin Xun stared at him. "I don't—"
The man smiled, exposing cracked teeth. "Fake it well… or die forgotten."
Then he slumped.
The talismans flared—
And the man vanished. Not dissolved, not faded—vanished—like smoke caught in reverse wind.
Lin Xun was alone again.
Except for the scroll.
He sat on the cracked altar stone and stared at it.
The wax seal had already begun to melt.
He touched it with one finger. It didn't burn.
The scroll unrolled easily, as though it had waited for his hands alone.
The first page bore no title—only a line of shifting ink, moving like calligraphy trapped in a dream. Then, slowly, it settled into words:
Heaven-Forging Manual, Volume I
"To be seen by Heaven, one must first write themselves into its Lie."
He blinked. The ink rearranged again.
Lesson One: Manifesting the Root You Never Had.
Under that, a diagram.
Not of a real spirit root. But a phantom—lines of illusion Qi, anchored with symbols, woven into the flesh like ink sewn through skin.
"Madness," he whispered.
But he kept reading.
The technique was called Phantom Root Manifestation. It required three things: a flow of directed false Qi (he had none), a binding agent (he had blood), and one deliberate, spoken lie.
That last part seemed strange.
But the more he read, the more it made sense.
Heaven hears. Heaven sees. But Heaven only believes what is written with intent.
He slit his thumb on a broken shrine nail. The blood beaded easily.
He traced the formation as described: a triangle of lies, an arc of absence, a dot for memory. Then he placed his palm in the center.
And he spoke:
"I was born with a fire root."
The circle pulsed. The symbols shimmered. His thumb throbbed with heat.
Pain lanced through his veins.
It wasn't magic—not the clean, righteous kind. This was wrong. Twisted. Like threading a spider's silk into muscle.
But something moved.
Beneath his palm, something glowed.
His chest ached. His spine convulsed. And behind his ribs, in a space that had always felt empty—
Something clicked.
Then vanished.
Then returned.
He fell back, panting.
And when he looked down, a line of Qi—faint, flickering, but visible—ran from his dantian to his left palm.
An artificial root.
A lie, made flesh.
He tested it.
There was a broken talisman tucked beneath the shrine. He fed the faintest breath of Qi into it.
The rune glowed for a moment, then fizzled.
But it had glowed.
Lin Xun stared at his hand. At the mark left by the ritual. A small, pale circle just above the wrist.
He laughed.
He laughed until he cried.
Then he lay back on the altar, eyes wide, watching the stars shift behind the trees.
Far, far above—beyond the clouds, past the moon, where no mortal dared look—a thread of karma trembled.
In a celestial hall built on starlight, a man in white robes paused over a scroll.
He squinted.
Then frowned.
He dipped his brush and made a note:
"Unregistered spiritual fluctuation. Class: Irregular. Location: Southern mortal quadrant. Investigate if repeated."
Then he moved on.
The heavens always noticed.
Eventually.