The mines opened at the first bell and closed at the seventh. Wei Liang learned this on his first shift. He noticed that the cultivator disciples assigned to oversee the morning rotation arrived consistently four minutes after the workers were already inside. This meant there were four minutes at the start of each shift that were somewhat overlooked. He noted this without immediate use. Information had a way of becoming useful when you least expected it, and storing it cost nothing.
The work itself was straightforward, much like painful tasks usually are. You entered the mountain through one of three main tunnels. You received a section assignment from the shift roster. You broke ore from the vein face using tools that were only replaced when they broke down completely. You needed to meet your quota before the seventh bell, or you would have to explain any shortfall to Overseer Bao, an experience nobody wanted to repeat.
Wei Liang's quota was set at sixty percent of the average adult male rate, adjusted for his age. He met this on his first day—within the first five hours.
He spent the rest of his time learning about the mountain.
He couldn't roam freely—he was not allowed in sections outside his assignment without a reason, and he had no reason to make up. But a mine was a system, just like a dormitory. You could understand a system from a single spot if you observed closely. He paid attention to which workers returned from which tunnels with specific qualities of ore. He noticed which sections produced the fine-grained dark ore that the cultivator disciples collected separately from the standard load. He noted how sound traveled differently through the eastern tunnel compared to the western two, which revealed something about the stone's density in that direction. He took note of places where people avoided going without being told, because this kind of avoidance was something everyone understood yet never discussed.
There was a part of the eastern tunnel's secondary branch that nobody used.
It wasn't marked. There was no formal restriction he could identify from where he stood. Yet the workers passed the branching point without a glance, their particular kind of not-looking requiring more effort than just looking. He had seen this in Cangling when children walked past the old mill at night. Sometimes, the body knew things before the mind understood why.
He noted the location but did not approach it. He had been here just one day.
---
The ore-reading came to him by chance on the third shift.
He was working on the face of his assigned section—a mid-density vein, mostly common grade, the type processed in bulk for construction cultivation arrays rather than anything refined—when the Ledger made an unrequested notation.
*Mineral composition scan: current sample. Qi-density index: 0.3. Classification: low grade. Impurity ratio: 67%. Recommended use: bulk construction material. No cultivation application.*
Wei Liang stopped his pickaxe mid-swing.
He looked at the rock he was about to strike. Then he looked at the section of vein face to its left and to its right.
He focused on the Ledger in the way he had been learning—not demanding, not exactly requesting, more like turning to something that was already there.
*Expand scan. Full visible vein face.*
The notation that followed resembled a map overlaid on his field of vision. Each exposed rock section showed a qi-density reading and an impurity ratio. Most of it aligned with his expectations—low grade, bulk material, the mountain providing plenty of volume but skimping on quality. Then he noticed a band, roughly forty centimeters wide, running diagonally across the upper right area of the face. Here, the density index read 1.7 while the impurity ratio dropped to 23%.
Medium grade. Usable for personal cultivation by someone with a real root. Worth, in sect exchange terms, about fourteen times the value of the surrounding material per unit weight.
He stared at it for a moment. Then he positioned himself in front of the low-grade section and worked steadily. When he reached the medium-grade band, he slowed his technique without changing his rhythm—the same movement, the same sound, angled to preserve rather than break. He pulled out three fist-sized pieces that matched the full density of the band without visible impurity contamination.
He added them to his quota pile and slipped two more into a hidden seam inside his work vest. He had sewn it there on his second night in the dormitory using thread from an unwanted work jacket left in the discard pile.
He met his quota. He walked out at the seventh bell with sixty percent of the standard adult male rate counted officially and two medium-grade ore pieces pressed against his ribs.
That night, he held one in his left hand and read the Ledger's notation on its qi-density. He attempted to feel what it described. He felt nothing. His root was hollow and withered, as empty as a dry well. The ore was only useful to him as information, as practice in reading, as the start of a method he could not yet apply.
He tucked it under his cot in the hollow of the leg joint where the wood had cracked and never been fixed. Then he went to sleep.
---
By the end of the second week, Overseer Bao had noticed something.Not the hidden ore, not the reading; Bao had no idea it was happening. What Bao noticed was that Wei Liang's quota pile consistently had a higher ratio of medium-grade material than was expected for his assigned section. Other workers in the same section produced loads that were 85-90% low grade, since that was what the section yielded. Wei Liang's loads were more like 60-40, sometimes even better.
During the fourth shift, Bao stood next to him and watched him work for twenty minutes without saying a word.
Wei Liang continued his task. The Ledger made a note in the margin of his awareness: *Overseer Bao. Respiratory rate: elevated slightly above baseline. Conclusion: engaged attention, not hostile intent. Observation without predetermined outcome.*
"You're pulling better yield than the others," Bao finally said. It was not a compliment, just a fact he wanted to understand.
"The vein runs unevenly," Wei Liang explained. "There are density bands. If you angle the extraction to follow the bands instead of working straight across, you can keep the high-density material intact rather than breaking it into low-grade debris."
Bao examined the vein face. He looked at Wei Liang. The Ledger noted: *Response consistent. No contradiction detected.*
"You can see the bands?" Bao asked.
"I can see the color differences in the rock face. The higher-density material is slightly darker in this vein type. It takes some learning."
This was true, but it was only part of the explanation. The larger portion involved an old record-keeping method that cross-referenced mineral composition with a qi-density model that should not exist in the mind of a thirteen-year-old mine worker. Wei Liang learned that the best lies contained a basis of truth.
The Ledger recorded: *Statement classification: Partially Consistent. Speaker aware of omission. Not flagged – self-referential statements excluded from standard notation.*
Bao grunted and walked away.
He did not raise Wei Liang's quota, which was the risk Wei Liang had calculated and accepted. However, he did move Wei Liang to a better section the next shift—a primary vein branch with a significantly higher average density. That was the response Wei Liang expected from a man driven by output numbers rather than fairness.
The primary section ran along the main branch of the eastern tunnel. It was closer to the secondary branch, which no one approached without permission.
Wei Liang noticed the shorter distance and continued his work.
---
On his nineteenth day in the mountain, after his shift, he walked down the eastern tunnel past his assigned section, pretending to check the tool storage alcove that actually existed forty meters further. He walked slowly, letting his focus widen toward the Ledger's scanning range, which was still limited—coarse and useful more for confirming his suspicions than uncovering new information.
The entrance to the secondary branch was ungated, just a natural narrowing in the tunnel wall opening into a passage about a meter and a half wide, sloping down at a steeper angle than the main branches. There were no tools stored nearby and no quota markers on the wall. The stone around the entrance had a quality he couldn't name—maybe older, less worked. It was as if the main tunnel had been built around it rather than through it.
From inside the passage, roughly thirty to forty meters away, came a smell that was hard to define. It registered more as pressure behind his eyes than an actual scent. The Ledger made a quick note.
*Atmospheric anomaly detected. Composition: standard mine air with trace amounts of an unclassified qi-corrosive compound. Concentration at current distance: below threshold for immediate biological effect. Source: deeper within the secondary passage. Estimated distance to significant concentration: 60-90 meters.*
A pause followed, then a note that felt slightly different from the standard notation—the way a margin note differs from the main text:
*Cross-reference flag: current root composition shows zero interaction with detected compound. Passive observation recommended. Do not approach source at this time.*
Wei Liang stood at the entrance for eleven seconds.
Then he walked to the tool storage alcove, checked that the replacement pick handles were where they were supposed to be, and exited at the seventh bell with everyone else.
He had been there nineteen days. He didn't know what was at the end of that passage. He knew it couldn't corrode him, that something down there had warranted a note from a record keeper who rarely volunteered information, and that *do not approach at this time* suggested, if you read it carefully, a time when it would be safe to do so.
He filed that thought away. He went to dinner. He was still hungry afterward, as the portions were what they were. He absorbed the ambient qi warmth from his piece of medium-grade ore through his palm under the table, like a man reading a letter he had already memorized, gaining nothing from his hollow root but the habit of the action.
The mountain breathed around him. Something deep inside stirred slowly in its long sleep.
Wei Liang took note of it and waited.