The academy's Grand Library was vast by campus standards, though a pale shadow of the capital's archives. Shelves stretched up into the gloom, so high that the scrolls on top were lost in shadow.
The air was thick with the scent of aging paper, dry dust, and the faint, cloying sweetness of preservation oils. For most students, it was a sanctuary of knowledge. For Jin Wei, it was a monument to his own inadequacy, each silent scroll a testament to a power he could not grasp.
He moved through the echoing silence of the archives, a ghost haunting the edges of real scholarship. Six days. He had six days until he faced Sun Jian in an Ink Duel, and his only true weapon was a cursed inkstone he dared not use again. The memory of his mother's featureless face was a fresh, gouged wound in his mind, a permanent scar marking the price of his one victory.
He needed a conventional answer. A lifeline buried somewhere in the orthodox teachings of the Resonant Path.
His search was frantic, desperate. He pulled scroll after scroll from the shelves, his fingers tracing the elegant, confident characters of long-dead masters. He scanned texts on defensive brushwork, seeking a technique to counter Sun Jian's aggressive, fiery style. The Oak-Root Stance. The Willow-Whip Parry. He even found a copy of his father's own manual, The Heart of Resonance, its title a cruel irony. Each technique required a depth of spiritual energy, a harmony with the world's flow, that he simply did not possess. They were written for the talented, for those whose ink was a river, not a trickle of mud. For men like Sun Jian.
His hope dwindled with each rejected scroll, replaced by the cold, familiar grip of despair. He was a man dying of thirst in an ocean of knowledge, and every drop was poison to him.
"You won't find it there."
The voice was quiet, a whisper that still managed to cut through the oppressive silence like a sharpened blade. Jin Wei spun around, his heart lurching into his throat.
A young woman stood a few paces away, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her simple librarian's robes. She was unassuming, with a calm, plain face, but her eyes were anything but. They were dark and sharp, holding an unnerving intelligence that seemed to see right through his carefully constructed mask of composure. He recognized her as Meilin, one of the junior librarians who rarely spoke.
"I'm just studying," Jin Wei said, his voice clipped and defensive. He began re-rolling the scroll in his hands, a nervous, clumsy motion that betrayed his lie.
She took a step closer, her gaze drifting over the discarded scrolls at his feet. "You are not studying. You are searching for a weapon." She didn't say it like an accusation. She stated it like a simple, observable fact.
Jin Wei froze, his suspicion flaring into alarm. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Your duel with Sun Jian is the talk of the academy," she continued, ignoring his denial. Her voice remained soft, yet it carried an intensity that made the hairs on his arms stand up. "You seek a technique to survive him. But you are looking for the wrong kind of answer in the wrong section of the library." She tilted her head slightly. "What do you truly wish to accomplish? Do you want to deflect his blow, or do you want to break his brush?"
The question hung in the air, shockingly direct. It bypassed the etiquette of martial calligraphy and went straight for the brutal heart of his intent.
"I... I need to defend myself," Jin Wei stammered, the words feeling weak and hollow.
Meilin's lips pressed into a thin, unimpressed line. "To defend is to lose slowly. Tell me," she pressed, her dark eyes pinning him. "Have you ever considered that the purpose of a brush is not to harmonize with the world, but to command it?"
The words struck him with the force of a physical blow, echoing the terrifying thoughts that had slithered through his mind since he'd first touched his father's inkstone. He stared at her, speechless. Who was this woman?
A faint, knowing smile touched her lips. "The public archives contain the Empire's accepted truths. The safe truths." She gestured with her chin toward a dark, narrow aisle he hadn't noticed, a dusty corridor crammed with forgotten texts. "The more interesting questions are asked elsewhere. Come."
He hesitated for only a second. Every instinct screamed at him to run, that this was a trap laid by House Sun, a final humiliation. But desperation was a stronger master than fear. He followed her into the shadows.
The air in the narrow aisle was stale, the dust so thick it seemed to swallow the light. Meilin moved with quiet purpose to the very back, running her fingers along the spines of ancient, unmarked scrolls. She stopped, pulling one free from the highest shelf with practiced ease.
It was bound not in silk, but in dark, cracked leather. It bore no title, no seal of the academy. It felt wrong in his hands, heavy with a silent, waiting energy.
"An old text," she said, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. "A collection of unorthodox theories on the nature of resonance. It was deemed... inefficient. Too draining on the weaver. It might offer you a different perspective."
His hands trembled slightly as he untied the leather cord and unrolled the scroll. The paper was brittle, the ink faded to a ghostly grey. The script was archaic, but the meaning was brutally clear.
It spoke of the Resonant Path as a flawed, timid art. It argued that true power came not from flowing with the world's energy, but from imposing one's will directly upon it. It described the brush as a tool of conquest, a way to bend reality to the shape of a single, focused desire. It named the technique the Direct Imposition.
Among Jade Aegis hunters it is whispered under another name: the Hundred Venom Script.
Jin Wei's breath caught in his throat. This wasn't theory. It was a manual. It was a perfect, horrifying description of what he had done in his room. The unnatural silence, the absolute control—it was all here, laid out in cold, academic prose. He felt a dizzying sense of vertigo, as if the floor had fallen away beneath him.
His eyes scanned the text, his heart hammering against his ribs. He devoured the words, his desperation overriding his fear. Then he found the passage that made his blood run cold.
The path of Direct Imposition does not draw power from the world, but from the weaver. The cost is not paid in spirit stones or measured in fatigue. It is paid in the self. For to rewrite a line of reality, one must first unwrite a line of one's own soul.
The scroll nearly slipped from his numb fingers. Unwrite a line of one's own soul. He saw it then, sharp and clear in his mind's eye: his mother's face, a smooth, perfect, featureless blank.
He looked up from the scroll, his vision swimming. The library, the shelves, the dust motes dancing in the faint light—it all seemed to warp and bend. He met Meilin's gaze.
She hadn't moved. She was watching him, her expression one of sharp, predatory focus. There was no friendly assistance in her eyes, no pity. There was only the unnerving, calculating intensity of a scholar who had just laid out a piece of irresistible bait and was now waiting to see if the trap would spring.
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Every reader leaves an unseen stroke upon the scroll. Yours guides the tale forward.