The laugh lingered in the air, like wind passing through hollow bones.
Lee didn't flinch.
He stood beneath the twisted pine, eyes scanning the gloom. The Spirit Realm here was thick — not fully overlapped, but bleeding into the edges of reality like ink through old parchment. The trees creaked with weightless pressure. Birds had long since stopped nesting here. Even the insects were quiet.
Then... movement.
Not a shape. Not a shadow.
A presence.
It was ancient, unlike Hei Bai — less rage, more cleverness. It didn't want to scare him. It wanted to study him.
"I see you," Lee whispered into the darkness. "You've been watching."
The air rippled.
He turned slightly, pretending not to react to the voice that bloomed beside his ear, low and genderless.
"You offer your fear like a child offers toys. But I am not interested in trinkets, boy."
Lee smiled. "Good. Because I didn't come to trade. I came to learn."
Silence. Then amusement, warm and sharp.
"And you think you can learn from me? Mortals come to spirits begging for luck, safety, rain. But you come for knowledge?"
"I came because you're different," he said calmly. "You didn't lash out. You didn't flee. You watched. Calculated. That means you think. And things that think... can be reasoned with."
Another silence.
Then, slowly, the presence began to take shape. Not fully — just outlines — but it hovered in the air like fog folding into itself. Long, lean. Eyes like cracks of blue light under a hood of shifting bark and shadow. A mask — no, a face — shaped like an elegant crescent moon.
It studied him. "What are you?"
"Lee Wunshin," he said. "For now."
"Lies."
Lee grinned. "Aren't we all?"
The spirit's name was Xaion — or something close to that in human speech. It had no defined form, and its domain was cognition — fear, yes, but also foresight, strategy, predation. It was what stalked the minds of war generals and whispered to the ambitious. It did not kill. It guided others to do it for it.
Perfect.
Lee listened for hours as Xaion tested him. Riddles. Parables. Silent moments where a wrong emotional response would've triggered a reaction. It wanted to know if this child was worth noticing.
Lee didn't just pass the tests.
He played back.
"You hide in trees," he said at one point. "But not because you fear battle. You fear irrelevance."
That made Xaion pause for the first time.
"You are dangerous."
Lee's voice was calm. "That's the idea."
By the time the moon reached its apex, they had formed a pact — not of power or servitude, but of mutual observation. Xaion would not harm Lee. And in return, Lee would share what he learned. Ideas. Patterns. Shifts in the world's balance. A mortal spy in the realm of man for a spirit that hated stepping foot into it.
And in exchange, Xaion left behind a gift.
Not power. Technique.
A memory — not a vision, but a deeply buried reflex — of how to detach spirit from form. A way to "skin" essence without complete consumption. It was delicate. Cruel. Rare.
Lee's eyes widened as he felt the knowledge integrate.
This would change everything.
Back in the village, Lee's personality shifted ever so slightly. He smiled more — not because he was happier, but because he now understood how little the others understood. He began subtly testing what Xaion taught.
One night, he found a flickering glade spirit — beautiful, soft, like dandelion threads in moonlight.
He approached it gently. Whispered.
And then peeled its essence — not devouring it, but removing its form and letting its core dissolve into his hand.
The effect was minor. A feeling of lightness. Grace.
But the implications?
Terrifying.
He could now steal selectively.
His strategy shifted.
Rather than threading haphazardly, he began building a library within himself — collecting not just strength, but function. Micro-abilities. Instinctual refinements. One spirit gave him faster night-blinking. Another improved his ability to sense vibrations in the ground.
He began organizing them. Classifying them.
Some were marked for merging later.
Some? Purely for dismantling.
At night, during meditation, he practiced "slipping" — pushing his awareness into spirit-space without fully transitioning. It gave him more time to observe Xaion, who occasionally appeared at the edges of perception, silently judging.
"You are... learning too quickly," Xaion murmured one night.
Lee only smiled. "Then teach faster."
The spirit was quiet. But didn't leave.
By the end of his ninth year, Lee had rewritten the rules of spiritual growth — at least for himself.
Where monks sought balance, he sought structure.
Where sages sought guidance, he sought harvesting.
Where the Avatar would one day beg spirits for aid, Ashen Hellflame would take what was useful... and discard the rest.
And with Xaion watching from the shadows — curious, cautious — Lee's empire of whispers had only just begun.
To be continued...