The day was a braid of ordinary tasks—sweeping, stacking, a dozen small chores that kept the sect's machinery from grinding into complaint. Li Wei liked those hours. They let him move through people without the theatrical pause of ceremony, and in the quiet he often learned more than loud moments ever taught.
He followed a thin ribbon of steam and the scent of garlic to the outer kitchens. The kitchen yard was loud in the way kitchens are loud: the clack of wooden ladles, the chop of cleavers, the low gossip of apprentices. A girl bent over a clay pot caught his eye because she moved like someone who had practiced the same motion until it became a language. She stirred without hurry, eyes intent, and when she glanced up at him there was the quick, bright attention of someone used to judging heat and timing.
"Careful, you'll scorch the garlic if you leave it too long," Li Wei teased, approaching casually.
She didn't miss a beat. "And you'll over-season if you speak too often," she shot back, then softened when she recognized him. "You're the one from the willow, right? The one who teaches aftercare now?"
"Guilty," he admitted. "But I'm not sure I know kitchens better than you."
She laughed, the sound a brisk, warm thing. "I'm Lianxi. If you want a lesson in food that steadies the qi, come back when I'm not elbow-deep in broth."
He stayed. She taught him to hold a ladle so the motion pulled the broth rather than slapped it; she showed him when to add the herb, how the steam's angle mattered for scent, where to pinch salt so the mouth registered it last. When he tasted a spoonful beneath her instruction, the broth sat in his mouth like a promise—round, restorative, the kind of warmth that unclenched shoulders and smoothed breath.
"Food is a kind of medicine," Lianxi said as she wiped a hand on her apron. "A pot that comforts one man can unsettle his neighbor. You learn the body and feed the needs."
He felt the system react before curiosity had a chance to. A small blue tally flickered in the corner of his sight.
[MINOR AFFINITY DETECTED — LIANXI (Chef)]
Effect: Shared meals with Lianxi accelerate Qi recovery by +10%. Nourishment Bond established.
The notification was businesslike but the effect was real. After a week of her stews, he would wake with marginally steadier Qi, his headaches diluted. More than that, though, Lianxi's presence introduced a texture to his circle he had not known he wanted: the quiet covenant of being fed by someone who noticed the small tics of fatigue.
"Cook for us sometime," Mei Ling's voice came from behind him. She had slipped into the kitchen with the easy silence of someone who belonged. She watched Lianxi with a look that was part admiration and part strategic appreciation. Yun Shuang, who'd been on pot-polishing duty, grinned like a blunt sun. "If his stew can steady that temper of his, sign me up."
Lianxi tilted her head at the two of them and accepted the invitation like a merchant accepting a favorable trade. "I'll make a night of it," she said. "Food and instruction. Bring everyone you want fed."
Li Wei left the kitchen with the scent of garlic on his sleeve and a new corner of the sect mapped in his mind. New faces often meant new obligations; he had learned by now to hold both with a lightness that did not slip into carelessness.
The library was quieter in its own way—paper and dust replacing steam and clatter. He had come to consult barrier diagrams, to cross a note about meridian timing, but the inner stacks held a scholar who had sunk so deep into her scrolls she might have been carved into the chair.
She was Ruo Yan, the name attached to the ink-stained sleeves and the index of marginalia. When she finally looked up her gaze cut right to the defect he'd come to check, and then softer at him. Her expression was at once cool and curious.
"You're misreading the resonance gradient by two increments," she said without preamble, tapping the margin where a faded diagram had been misinterpreted by a junior transcriber. "If you compensate on the lower dantian rather than the heart pivot you can avoid the cross-phase feedback."
Li Wei blinked. He enjoyed the sharp, immediate exchange of a mind that did not bother with pleasantries. They bent over the scroll together, his fingers tracing the lines she pointed to as she explained, patient and exact.
Ruo Yan's voice was dry at first, then warming in the way a lamp warms a corner. "Most people read diagrams to confirm what they already think. You actually question them. That's rare."
There was another system nudge, unobtrusive but present.
[MINOR AFFINITY DETECTED — RUO YAN (Scholar)]
Effect: Studying with Ruo Yan increases comprehension speed by +15%. Scholar's Bond established.
He did not feel immediate emotional warmth the way Lianxi's broth coaxed, but he felt something steadier—a mental partnership that fit into training the way a missing piece fit a lock. She corrected him, he offered the practical guard of a counterexample, and together they clarified an ambiguity that had been causing novices to waste afternoons.
"You read fast," Ruo Yan said after a while. "Not all of you do. Most are satisfied with patterns."
"And not all of you explain fast," Li Wei replied. "Most keep the pieces to themselves." He was not sure whether what he said was a joke or a genuine offer. She considered the answer as if weighing ink.
"Help me catalog those diagrams," she offered eventually. "It's tedious, but someone with practical sense will cut the time down. I will teach you notation shorthand, in return."
The library offered new color: discipline sharpened by intellect. If Lianxi's presence would heal bodies, Ruo Yan's would tune minds. Both were useful to a man who had learned that the Perverted Dao asked for more than blunt talents—it asked for competence and care in many registers.
That evening, he walked the path back with Mei Ling and Yun Shuang beside him. They teased him gently: "Chef and scholar—what are you building, Li Wei? A banquet or a library?" Yun Shuang's laugh was fond and sonorous; Mei Ling's smile was easy.
He answered honestly. "Both. Meals will make recovery easier. Books will make training smarter."
Mei Ling's hand found his in the dim between trees, an old habit like a chord. "Good choices," she said. "We need steadiness now more than spectacle."
Li Wei glanced at the Obsidian Heart, tucked low and private. The blue rectangle blinked once more as if to confirm the day had been recorded.
[UPDATE]
MinorHaremExpansion: +2 (Lianxi — Chef, Ruo Yan — Scholar).
Potential: Emotional and Practical Support Paths unlocked. Note: Manage growth with protocols and check-ins.
He felt the slight weight of new ties—threads added to the net he was building. Each new color enriched the tapestry but asked for custody, for tending. Li Wei wrapped his free hand around the plan he had been drafting in the quiet hours: scheduled shared meals, joint study sessions, clear lines for aftercare, and time carved out for ordinary laughter. Power gained through people was nothing if you could not keep them safe and whole.
The Perverted Dao rewarded audacity and attention alike; today it had given him two small gifts: a pot that soothed and a mind that cut through fog. He would treat both as carefully as he would the Obsidian Heart: hidden when necessary, but used when it healed.
End of chapter 16