The market bustled with its usual noise: the clang of pans, the bray of donkeys, the endless bartering voices that rose and fell like waves. Yet amid the chaos, people began to pause when Liang Zhen passed.
It wasn't admiration. It wasn't even trust. It was curiosity — and a measure of unease.
He had grown less gaunt. His steps no longer dragged. His back, once curved like a branch bent under snow, now stood straight as a spear. And though he spoke little, his eyes had taken on a steady light that unsettled the gossiping tongues of the town.
"Too quick," muttered one old man as Zhen carried firewood past. "No boy starves and grows stronger in the same breath."
"Ghosts," whispered another. "He lingers in that grove. Everyone knows it's cursed."
Hua, ladling soup at her stall, shot the men a sharp look, but she didn't defend Zhen openly. She only pressed another bowl into his hands when he came by, her way of saying ignore them, keep walking.
Zhen did. He had learned that the ember grew not from words but from rhythm. So he worked, he breathed, he endured.
But whispers, once started, had a way of spreading.
Children who used to jeer now followed at a distance, daring one another to call him names. Merchants measured him differently, their eyes narrowing as if weighing risk and opportunity in the same glance. Some muttered that his flame was unnatural, stolen. Others said he had found a hidden manual from wandering monks.
The smith dismissed such talk with a grunt, but even he admitted something had changed. "Little flame," he called him now, with rough humor. "You carry ore like a mule. Just don't burn yourself out."
Zhen only bowed. He had no interest in explaining what even he barely understood.
That evening, after finishing his work, Zhen walked through the market square as lanterns were being lit. The air was thick with roasted chestnuts and the tang of wine. It felt warmer than the grove, but the warmth here was shallow, fleeting.
Two cloaked travelers were speaking with a merchant at the spice stall. Their accents were sharp, unfamiliar, and their belts carried short blades polished enough to catch firelight. Zhen slowed, just enough to listen.
"… sect recruiters," one of them said. "But this backwater hardly offers talent."
The words stirred something in Zhen. A sect. A place where cultivation was taught openly, where manuals and techniques were shared. Not a grove of moss and frost, not whispers of ghosts. For the first time, he realized: the ember had given him a foothold, but beyond this town stretched a world he could not yet fathom.
The thought both excited and unsettled him.
That night in the grove, he sat longer than usual, staring at the moss stone. His breath cycles slowed until the ember pulsed steadily, a soft drumbeat beneath the skin. He pressed a hand to his chest and whispered, "What lies beyond?"
The ember gave no answer, only warmth. But Zhen knew one truth: this town could no longer contain him forever.
And so the seed of his next trial took root — not of hunger or cold, but of ambition.
---
The next morning dawned sharp with frost. The air bit Zhen's throat as he hauled water jars from the well, the rope digging deep into his palms. Villagers moved about him in a steady flow, their chatter thick with suspicion. Whispers were no longer quiet; they coiled openly in the air like smoke.
"He's hiding something," a man muttered to his wife as Zhen passed. "Thin as a reed last month. Now he carries stone like a farmhand."
"Maybe he's cursed," she whispered back. "The grove he goes to — my grandmother swore the dead walked there."
Zhen kept his face calm. He had learned that answering rumor was like fanning embers in dry grass — it only spread faster. Better to let it burn itself out.
Still, their words pressed on him heavier than the water jars. He wondered how long he could work quietly before envy became hostility.
At the smithy, the blacksmith squinted as Zhen stacked ore with unsteady but determined arms.
"Boy," the man grunted, "folk talk. They say you've been touched by something not of this town."
Zhen met his gaze. "I breathe. I work. Nothing more."
The smith snorted, then laughed, shaking his head. "Hah. Maybe that's all cultivation is. Breathing and working harder than the rest of us." He shoved a copper coin into Zhen's hand. "Ignore them. If you can lift iron, you're useful. That's enough."
Those words, rough though they were, steadied Zhen. Yet he knew the smith's respect would not silence the crowd.
That night, as he walked back through the square, a group of youths blocked his path. They were older than the children who once jeered at him, young men just shy of manhood, swagger heavy in their steps.
"Ghost boy," one sneered, stepping forward. "Show us the trick that made your back straight."
Zhen stopped, calm. "There is no trick."
"Liar." Another spat on the ground. "You found something in that cursed grove. My uncle says you're consorting with demons."
The others jeered, voices blending into the market's night.
Zhen's breath slowed. He felt the ember pulse, a steady drumbeat under his skin. He did not want a fight — but he would not cower, either.
"I work," he said evenly. "That's all."
The leader shoved him. Zhen stumbled back but did not fall. His body remembered the wolf's lunge, the branch in his hand, the rhythm of breath. Instinct told him he could strike — and likely win. But he forced himself still, his hands open at his sides.
The youths laughed, disappointed at his restraint. "See? He's nothing. Just a ghost too scared to show his fangs." They dispersed, muttering, but not without leaving a bruise of tension behind.
Zhen exhaled slowly, letting the ember cool. Violence now would prove their words true. Patience, he reminded himself, was also a weapon.
Later, in the grove, he let the night air wash the bitterness from him. He sat before the moss stone, eyes closed, and breathed. The ember flickered with each inhale, steadied with each exhale.
Let them doubt, he thought. Doubt is lighter than chains. If they feared me less, they might bind me more.
For the first time, he considered that suspicion might be a shield. As long as people called him strange, they would keep their distance. That distance was freedom — space to breathe, space to build.
He pushed the ember outward again, into blood and bone. Pain lanced his chest, but he endured, mapping the aches, polishing the vessel. By the time dawn came, the jeers of the youths had dulled into memory. The ember remained.
---
The days that followed pressed harder than before. Whispers trailed him wherever he went, growing sharper, less cautious. Suspicion had become a kind of currency in the town, traded freely from mouth to mouth.
At the well, two women drew their buckets more quickly when he approached. At the grain store, a merchant's apprentice hesitated before weighing Zhen's coin, as if contact might spread some invisible taint. Even children sensed the mood — their games now included chants about "the ghost boy of the grove," words they half-understood but repeated with cruel delight.
Zhen bore it in silence. He had endured hunger, cold, and the wolf's fangs; the weight of words was lighter, though no less cutting. The ember within him pulsed steady through each breath, a reminder that his truth lay not in their judgments but in rhythm, in persistence.
Yet he was not blind. He saw how quickly gossip could sharpen into hostility. And so he moved with care, choosing when to linger, when to vanish into alley shadows, when to accept work only from those who would not flinch at his presence.
One afternoon, as he carried firewood across the square, he heard raised voices near the apothecary. A man was shouting, red-faced, clutching a bundle of herbs.
"This is useless! My boy still burns with fever, and you dare sell me dry weeds!"
The apothecary protested, hands spread. "The healer is away, I can do no more—"
The man's anger spilled into the crowd. People gathered, muttering. The word useless took hold, bouncing from lip to lip. Someone spat that the town had no protectors, that sickness and ill luck spread unchecked. Another muttered about omens, pointing vaguely toward the hills.
Zhen froze, recognizing the turn of the tide. Soon someone would mention his name.
And indeed, a voice rang out: "It began when that boy started his strange practices. He draws spirits from the grove!"
Murmurs surged. Heads turned. Fingers pointed.
Zhen felt the ember flare in his belly, heat pushing against restraint. Part of him wanted to shout, to defend, to proclaim that he drew strength from breath, not spirits. But reason steadied him. Words would only harden suspicion.
He bowed instead, low and silent, then walked on. Each step matched to his breath. The ember steadied. The crowd's jeers followed, but he did not turn.
Later, alone in the grove, he let the anger bleed into the earth. He struck the moss stone with clenched fists until his knuckles bled. Then he sat, palms pressed to his abdomen, and forced the ember to flow into aching flesh. The pain dulled, warmth spreading into bone.
This is the true ledger, he told himself. Not their words, but these scars, these breaths, this rhythm. This is mine.
That night the grove offered no peace. The wind moaned through the branches, carrying faint voices that seemed like echoes of the market's gossip. For the first time, doubt crept close.
What if they are right? What if this path is cursed?
But then he remembered the wolf's retreat, the fevered apprentice's steadying breath, Hua's small kindnesses, the smith's rough laugh. Those were not curses. Those were proof.
He closed his eyes and pushed the ember outward once more, past belly and blood, into the marrow itself. The pain was fierce, his body convulsing as though to reject the intrusion. Yet he persisted, shaping each inhale as a hammer, each exhale as a chisel. Slowly, the resistance eased, replaced by a strange resonance, as if bone itself could carry rhythm.
When dawn broke, Zhen staggered to his feet, body trembling but whole. He pressed his palm to the moss stone and whispered, "Let them whisper. I will endure."
The grove gave no answer. But the ember pulsed steady, and for him, that was enough.
---
Dawn crept pale over the valley and the market felt emptier after the night's scolding. Liang Zhen moved through the streets with the quieted weight of one who had been tested. He accepted work where it was offered, the smith's nod always a small benediction. Yet under the surface, the town's temperature had changed; suspicion had become its weather.
News traveled in crooked lines. A traveling monk passed through with a handful of students and paused at Hua's stall. He watched Zhen for a long beat, then, in a voice low enough that only those closest could hear, asked if the town had anyone willing to learn a simple breathing form. The question felt like a probe — gentle, not a recruitment. Zhen heard it and did not move. He had no desire for spectacle, only space to breathe and to grow.
Even so, the monk's curiosity sparked other currents. An apprentice from the apothecary, emboldened by drink, told a tavern table that Zhen had been seen near the moss stone at odd hours performing odd gestures. A trader from the north added that he had seen someone like Zhen once, years ago, moving with a strange economy of breath and step near a temple. Rumors braided together, and soon the word spread that perhaps the boy was a seed of something greater than the town.
That afternoon, a delegation arrived: three men garbed in the colors of a nearby county, plain but deliberate. They carried official notepaper and a manner that demanded answers. The headman cleared his throat in the market square and called for order. He spoke of stability, of outsiders who stirred fear, and of the need to know whether this boy posed a threat. His words landed like stones dropped into still water; ripples formed and eyes found Liang Zhen.
He stepped forward because avoiding the call would have been worse. His voice, when he spoke, was steady. "I live and I work," he said. "I practice breath in the grove. I hurt no one."
The headman studied him as if weighing metal. "Practice where? With whom? What do you seek?"
Zhen answered plainly: "I seek endurance. I seek to be useful."
There was a pause. The crowd muttered. Then one of the county men asked for a demonstration — not of flame or spirit, but of labor: lift a standard sack of grain in front of them, show you can bear weight and not collapse. It was a humiliating test dressed as practicality. Zhen obliged. He lifted the sack with steady breath, counted his holds to himself, and carried it across the square while the town watched like a set of scales. When he set it down, the headman nodded once and turned away, but the damage of scrutiny had been done: the town now had record and reason to argue about him for months.
That evening, the smith's workshop was quieter than usual. The blacksmith leaned close and said, "They'll watch you now. People like lists. They'll file you under strange and keep you there. Be careful who you owe favors to."
Zhen bowed, the ember a steady point beneath his ribs. He understood the calculus: recognition bought openings, but it also bought eyes — and eyes could become hands.
Night brought no comfort. Shadows seemed deeper, and Zhen found himself glancing over his shoulder where once he had walked with single-minded focus. The grove, when he reached it, did not soothe at first; the moss seemed thinner, as if the place itself felt the town's attention. He sat, closed his eyes, and breathed anyway. Rhythm steadied him like a scaffold.
The ember pulsed through him, and in its beat he perceived a fragile thread connecting him to others: Hua's small kindness, the smith's grudging trust, the apprentice's fever eased. Those were facts against rumor. He clung to them.
Then, near midnight, the grove shifted. A sound like low wind turned toward him, and a figure stepped from behind the stone — not a wolf, not a thief, but the traveling monk he had seen in the market. The monk's face was plain, lined by sun and years. He moved with a slow, deliberate grace that suggested a life conditioned by practice.
"You cultivate breath," the monk said simply. His voice had no accusation; only observation. "You do it differently."
Zhen sat cross-legged, palms resting, and waited. He did not hide his ember; its small glow showed beneath the fabric at his navel.
The monk squatted opposite him. "I teach a way of counting breath to settle the mind," he said. "It is simple and proper. I have watched you from the square. There is hunger in your practice — not for food, but for method."
Zhen's throat was dry. "I have a way," he answered. "It was taught to me by need."
The monk nodded. "Need can be a harsh teacher. But need often misses technique that spares the body. If you would, come to the temple for a simple lesson. No oath, no sect pledge. Learn a form; keep what helps, abandon what harms."
The offer was a hinge. Zhen imagined gates — doors to sects and manuals, to training halls and instructors. He thought of the townsfolk who whispered, of the county men who had recorded his name on their papers. He weighed risk against the chance to learn tools that might accelerate the ember's stability and protect those around him.
At last he spoke: "If I go, can I return? Will I be bound?"
The monk's eyes were steady. "No binding. You are free. Learn and decide."
Zhen closed his eyes and felt the ember's warmth. It was a small flame, but it had endured storms and wolves and fever. It had carried the weight of bread and the steadiness of a smith's iron. If there was a way to temper it that would not cost his soul, he would take it. If there was a way to weave structure into the arithmetic that kept him alive, he would learn it. But he would not give himself without choice.
He nodded once. "I will come at dawn."
The monk rose, as quiet as he had come, and vanished under the trees. Zhen remained, hand on his abdomen, listening to the ember's pulse. The grove felt different now, as if it had exhaled and allowed him a deeper breath. The next day would open a path — to training, to scrutiny, and to a world beyond the town's brittle rumors.
He slept at last, cradled by the moss and held by the ember's steady beat. Tomorrow the market would speak, the county would note, and perhaps the monk's students would watch (and learn) what a boy from a dismissed clan could do with breath and stubbornness.
---