The morning after his ordeal, Lei Man awoke with a singular, driving purpose. The tiny, warm spark in his dantian was not a dream. It was still there, a lone firefly in a vast, dark cavern, a fragile testament to the bizarre events of the previous day. But it was just a spark. Without fuel, without a method to tend it, it would gutter and die, and he would be left as nothing more than the Trash of House Lei once again.
He needed a cultivation technique.
The only place to find one was the family's ancestral library, a grand, tiered pagoda that stood in the very center of the Lei estate. It was a place of honor and power, its upper floors reserved for the geniuses and elders of the clan. He, of course, had never been permitted past the ground floor.
He found the library's curator, a wizened old man named Elder Feng with a beard like spun cobwebs and eyes that held a permanent, weary disappointment, sweeping the front steps. When Lei Man stated his purpose, the elder didn't even look up from his broom.
"The Hall of Foundation is for disciples with awakened Qi," the elder said, his voice like the rustle of dry leaves. "You are not one of them."
"I am now," Lei Man said, his voice quiet but firm. He focused on the tiny spark, pushing it with a will he didn't know he possessed. A faint, almost imperceptible warmth radiated from his palm.
The elder stopped sweeping. He squinted at Lei Man's hand, a flicker of surprise in his cloudy eyes. He grunted, a sound of begrudging acceptance. "So a stray spark found a wet log. Very well. The foundational techniques are still beyond your station. You are permitted to enter the Discarded Pavilion. Perhaps you will find a fire-starting manual in there that suits you."
The Discarded Pavilion was less a library and more a storeroom for failures. It was a single, dusty, circular room on the back of the main pagoda, filled with scrolls that were deemed flawed, incomplete, contradictory, or simply too weak to be of any use. It smelled of mildew and regret.
For hours, Lei Man sat among the forgotten scrolls, his hope slowly draining away. The elder was right. The techniques were a mess. The "Raging Tiger Fist" required a torrent of Qi he could not produce. The "Gentle Stream Breathing" was designed for those with water-affinity spiritual roots. "The Way of the Iron Body" was missing the entire second half. He read scroll after scroll, his mind becoming a chaotic jumble of conflicting theories, fractured diagrams of meridian pathways, and esoteric warnings about Qi deviation.
His head began to throb. The intricate characters on the bamboo slips started to swim and blur together, the lines of ink wriggling like black worms. He tried to mentally overlay one technique's breathing pattern with another's Qi circulation route, and the resulting contradiction felt like a physical spike being driven into his brain. The room began to feel smaller, the dusty air thicker. He was drowning in useless information.
The smell of mildew sharpened, then sweetened, becoming the rich, earthy scent of a forest floor after a heavy rain. The world dissolved into vibrant, impossible color.
He was no longer in the dusty room, but in a grove of colossal, luminous green leaves. The characters from the scrolls were marching across the leaves like columns of ants. He was tiny, a speck in this verdant, living library.
Then he saw them. Caterpillars. They were huge, plush, and fat, adorned with psychedelic patterns of swirling purples, oranges, and blues. They moved with a slow, deliberate grace, their multiple sets of legs carrying them across the leaf-scrolls. With each bite, they consumed entire sentences of cultivation theory. He watched, mesmerized, as a giant azure caterpillar chomped down on the flawed "Raging Tiger Fist," its mandibles grinding the aggressive characters into a fine paste.
The caterpillars were not destroying the knowledge; they were processing it. After munching on a section of a scroll, a caterpillar would wiggle its magnificent body and excrete a shimmering, liquid thread of pure, unadulterated color. The angry red of the Tiger Fist, the gentle blue of the Stream Breathing, the solid, earthy brown of the Iron Body—they all emerged as cohesive, beautiful threads of rainbow light.
Suddenly, the grove was filled with a chittering, energetic sound. A troop of chipmunks, their eyes bright with intelligence, scurried down from unseen branches. They moved with a frantic purpose, gathering the rainbow threads in their tiny paws. They brought the threads to the center of the grove, where a loom made of moonlight and spiderwebs stood waiting.
With nimble expertise, the chipmunks began to weave. They darted back and forth, pulling the threads taught, intertwining the red of aggression with the blue of peace, weaving the brown of fortitude through them both. As they worked, they began to chant, their high-pitched, chittering voices forming a single, clear, undeniable command that echoed through Lei Man's consciousness.
"Write! Write! Write! Write! Write!"
They weren't telling him to read or to choose. They were telling him to create. He watched as the loom worked, the disparate, flawed colors coming together to form a new, harmonious pattern. It was a beautiful, shimmering tapestry of light that depicted a simple, elegant cycle. It wasn't forceful or weak; it was… nurturing. A way to tend to a tiny flame.
He blinked.
He was on the floor of the Discarded Pavilion, a thin line of drool connecting his cheek to a dusty bamboo scroll. It was dark outside; hours had passed in a blissful, creative fugue. The command from the trip still echoed in his head. Write!
He lurched to his feet, a frantic energy seizing him. He found a blank scroll, a pot of ink, and a brush. The moment he picked up the brush, the knowledge from the rainbow tapestry flooded his mind. His hand moved with an alien grace and certainty he had never known. Characters flowed from the brush onto the scroll, characters he barely understood but knew, with an absolute conviction, were correct.
He didn't write down a single old technique. He wrote the new one, the one woven by the chipmunks from the digested essence of all the failures. It was a simple, gentle method focused on a single task: taking the smallest wisp of Qi and slowly, carefully, circulating it in a loop that would protect and nourish it, encouraging it to grow without straining it.
When he finished, he looked down at the scroll. It was a complete, coherent, and beautiful technique. It needed a name. The images from his journey supplied the answer, a name that was both ridiculous and perfect.
The Rainbow Caterpillar Method.
He sat down, crossing his legs, and took a deep breath. Following the instructions now etched into his memory, he focused on the tiny, warm spark in his dantian. He gently nudged it, guiding it into the simple, elegant pathway he had just written down.
The spark pulsed. A wave of pure, gentle warmth spread from his core, flowing through him in a perfect, harmonious loop. It felt… right.
He was still the Trash of House Lei. He was sitting in a room full of forgotten failures. But now, clutching the scroll that detailed a technique that did not exist anywhere else in the world, he had a path forward. His path. And it was woven from rainbows.