Wei Zichen had three certainties in life.
The sun rose in the east. Cultivators were terrible people. And he would die with a mop in his hand.
He wrung out the dirty cloth over a bucket that had seen better centuries. The water came out brown. It always came out brown. The Azure Cloud Sect had nine hundred disciples, and every single one of them apparently had perfect aim when it came to missing the toilet.
"At least you don't judge me," he muttered to the porcelain bowl.
The bowl said nothing.
This was why he preferred toilets to people.
The Azure Cloud Sect sat on a mountain called Spirit Peak. Waterfalls fell from jade cliffs. Cranes flew through clouds of spiritual energy. Inner disciples meditated on floating platforms while qi flowed through their meridians like rivers of liquid starlight.
It was beautiful.
Wei Zichen had never been up there.
His world was the outer ring. The servants' quarters. The latrines. The places where spiritual energy was thin and the smell was thick.
He was sixteen years old. He had been here since he was six. Ten years of mopping floors, washing robes, and being reminded — daily — that his dantian was empty.
Not damaged. Not blocked. Not sealed.
Empty.
The sect physician had checked three times. Each time, he'd frowned deeper.
"There's nothing there," he'd said the third time, like he was reading a death sentence. "No qi. No meridian activity. No spiritual root. It's like... someone forgot to install the engine."
Zichen had appreciated the metaphor. It was accurate.
In a world where cultivation was everything, he was nothing.
He was carrying his bucket across the outer courtyard when the voice found him.
"Move."
Zichen moved. He didn't look up. He didn't need to. He knew the voice. Every outer servant knew the voice.
A group of inner disciples walked past. Their robes were white with blue trim — the mark of someone who mattered. Qi hummed around them like heat off summer stone.
One of them looked back.
"Is that the empty one?"
"The toilet cleaner? Yeah."
Laughter. The easy, careless kind. The kind that came from people who had never questioned whether they deserved their place in the world.
Zichen kept walking.
His grip on the bucket handle tightened. Just slightly. Then it loosened.
Anger is a luxury, he reminded himself. And I can't afford luxuries.
A softer voice broke through.
"Zichen."
He stopped. Turned.
Luo Qingwu stood at the edge of the courtyard path. Inner disciple robes. Hair tied with a simple blue ribbon. She carried a stack of alchemy texts and looked like she hadn't slept in two days.
"You missed dinner again," she said.
"I ate."
"Bread crusts from the kitchen waste bin don't count as eating."
"They do if you chew them slowly."
She didn't laugh. She never laughed at his deflections. That was the annoying thing about Luo Qingwu — she actually looked at him.
Most people looked through him. She looked at him.
It made him uncomfortable.
"I saved you some mantou," she said, placing two steamed buns on the edge of the wall. "Eat them. Please."
She left before he could refuse.
Zichen stared at the buns. White, soft, still warm.
Why? he thought. Why bother?
People were never kind without a reason. Either they wanted something, or they hadn't figured out what they wanted yet.
He ate the buns anyway. He wasn't stupid.
Night fell.
Zichen's evening assignment was cleaning the eastern storage hall. It was the most boring building in the sect. Old formation flags, broken cauldrons, cracked jade slips — the cultivation equivalent of a junkyard.
He mopped in the dark. The sect didn't waste spirit stones lighting up rooms that only servants used.
His mop caught on a crack in the floor.
He pulled.
The crack widened.
"That's not—"
The floor gave way.
The world dropped.
Zichen fell through stone and darkness. He hit something hard, bounced off something harder, and landed face-first on a surface that was cold, flat, and very old.
He groaned. Nothing was broken. Probably. Maybe. He'd check later.
I fell through the floor while mopping, he thought. This is either a cultivation novel or the worst workplace safety violation in sect history.
He was in a cave.
No — a chamber. Cut stone walls. Ceiling high enough to vanish into shadow. The air tasted like dust and something else. Something electric.
He could feel it on his skin. Not qi — he couldn't feel qi. This was different. Colder. Sharper. Like standing next to a frozen lightning bolt.
The far wall was covered in writing.
Ancient characters, carved deep into the rock. They didn't glow — that would have been dramatic. They were just... there. Patient. As if they'd been waiting.
Zichen limped toward them. His eyes traced the first line.
"The mind is the first battlefield. Win it, and the body follows."
He read the second line.
"Forge the mind, and you forge the world."
His head started to hurt. Not the crack-on-the-skull kind of hurt. Deeper. Like something inside his brain was stretching, making room for something new.
The characters blurred. Then they moved.
They peeled off the wall like black smoke, swirled in the air, and poured into his forehead.
Pain.
White, blinding, ice-cold pain.
It lasted three seconds. Or three hours. He couldn't tell.
Then it stopped.
"Oh, you have GOT to be joking."
The voice was high-pitched, sharp, and deeply offended.
Zichen opened his eyes. His vision was blurry. He was on his back. Something small and warm sat on his chest.
He blinked.
A fox stared at him.
Silver-black fur. Golden eyes. About the size of a small dog. Its ears were flattened against its head in an expression of pure, undiluted disgust.
"Ten thousand years," the fox said. "Ten THOUSAND years I've been sleeping. Waiting for a worthy successor. A cultivation genius. A heavenly prodigy. Someone fit to inherit the Mindforge Sutra."
It paused.
"And the universe sends me you."
Zichen stared. "...You're a talking fox."
"I am a Void Fox of the primordial chaos, you ignorant mop-wielder."
"You're the size of a dog."
The fox's left eye twitched. "I am RECOVERING. I've been asleep for ten millennia. When I'm at full power, I can devour—"
"Can you help me get out of this cave?"
The fox stopped mid-sentence. Its mouth hung open. Then it closed with a snap.
"You're not even going to ask about the Sutra? The ancient power? The forbidden knowledge that just rewrote part of your soul?"
"I'd like to not die in a hole first."
The fox — Hundun, the name surfaced in Zichen's mind like a bubble from deep water — closed its golden eyes.
"I am going to have a very, very long decade."
They found the exit. A narrow crack where the ceiling had fractured. Zichen squeezed through, scraping skin off both elbows.
Hundun slipped through like smoke. He could apparently phase in and out of physical form. Useful. Annoying that he hadn't mentioned it earlier.
They stood in the outer courtyard. Moonlight. Silence. The sect slept.
"So," Zichen whispered, "this Mindforge Sutra. What does it actually do?"
Hundun sat on his shoulder. His tail curled around Zichen's neck like a scarf.
"In simple terms? It lets you touch minds. Plant seeds of influence. Shape thoughts, loyalties, emotions. In the hands of a master, it can make an emperor kneel and believe it was his own idea."
Silence.
"That's..."
"Terrifying? Immoral? Horrifyingly powerful?"
"I was going to say 'useful.'"
Hundun's ears perked up. For the first time, he looked at Zichen with something other than disappointment.
"Huh," the fox said. "Maybe you're not completely hopeless."
A rat scurried across the courtyard stones.
Zichen looked at it. He didn't know what he was doing — the Sutra hadn't come with an instruction manual. But something inside him knew. Like a muscle he'd never used but had always had.
He focused.
Something left his mind. A thread. Invisible, thin, fragile. It drifted toward the rat.
Touched it.
The rat stopped. Its tiny head turned. It looked at Zichen with black bead eyes.
Then it walked toward him. Sat at his feet. Looked up.
Waiting.
Hundun watched this with the expression of a food critic being served a gas station sandwich.
"Congratulations," he said flatly. "You can control a rat. Truly, the heavens should tremble."
Zichen didn't answer. He wasn't looking at the rat.
He was looking at the dormitory building. Three stories. Hundreds of rooms. Hundreds of sleeping disciples. Inner disciples. Outer disciples. Elders in their private quarters above.
Each one with a mind.
Each mind with a door.
And now, for the first time in sixteen years of mopping floors and eating scraps and being nothing to no one—
Wei Zichen had the key.
His lips curved.
It wasn't quite a smile. It was closer to a promise.
"Hundun," he said quietly.
"What?"
"I think I'm going to like this."
The fox studied his expression. Then, very slowly, his tail tightened around Zichen's neck.
"Yeah," Hundun murmured. "That's what worries me."