The morning mist smelled like bruised pine needles and wet granite.
Wei Tian walked with his hands tucked into his opposite sleeves. The cloth shoes he wore made a soft, dragging sound against the stone. It was an hour before dawn, the time when the ambient qi in the Qinghe Mountain Range was thickest, clinging to the architecture like heavy dew.
Cultivators used this hour to cycle their meridians. Wei Tian used it to stretch his legs. His left knee popped. It was a perfectly mortal sound.
He followed the winding path down from the Eastern Pavilion, letting his feet choose the direction. He wasn't lost. He never got lost. Space was just a suggestion he occasionally humored.
The path widened, spilling into the central courtyard of the inner sect.
This was the heart of the White Jade Sect. Beneath these massive, interlocking jade tiles ran the primary spirit vein that fed the four peaks. The air here vibrated with a low, sub-audible hum. It made the teeth of junior disciples ache if they stood here too long.
Wei Tian stopped.
He stood exactly in the center of the courtyard. The mist swirled around his thin white robe. He looked down at his feet.
There was a hairline crack in the jade tile between the tips of his cloth shoes.
He crouched. The movement was slow, the deliberate creak of a mortal body waking up. He slipped his right hand free from his sleeve and extended one finger.
He pressed his fingertip to the crack.
The ground remembered things. Dirt recorded history better than any ink. To a normal cultivator, the spirit vein below was a raging river of pure energy. But Wei Tian wasn't feeling the river. He was feeling the bedrock beneath the river.
There.
A void. A microscopic stutter in the rotational spin of the realm-fabric. It wasn't natural. It was a structural failure, bleeding dead ambient energy into the mountain. If left unchecked for another four or five centuries, it would swallow the spirit vein. Then the mountain. Then the continent.
Wei Tian's face did not change. There was no shock. There was only the heavy, quiet settling of confirmation.
It was exactly what he had felt on the steps yesterday.
He kept his finger on the stone for three more seconds. A single, invisible thread of his presence—so infinitely compressed it couldn't be quantified by the laws of this world—anchored itself to the microscopic tear. A temporary patch. A band-aid on a collapsing star.
Wei Tian stood up. He brushed a speck of dust from the knee of his robe.
"I should get breakfast," he said to the empty courtyard.
He turned and walked toward the kitchens.
Thirty yards away, hidden behind a decorative stone pillar, Xiao Mei forgot to breathe. She gripped the edge of the carved stone so hard her fingernails chipped. She had followed him from the pavilion, tasked by Elder Shen Mu to record his every movement.
She had watched the mortal husband walk to the most sacred, heavily-warded spirit gathering point in the sect, crouch down, touch the dirt, and then announce he was hungry.
She swallowed a lump of panic. What was he doing? Was he mapping the vein? Was he just stupid? She didn't know which answer would get her yelled at less. She hurried after him, keeping to the shadows.
The kitchen auntie gave him a steamed pork bun. It was slightly burnt on the bottom. Wei Tian thanked her, took a bite, and decided it was the best thing he had eaten in four hundred years. The char added character.
He wandered toward the main training grounds, eating as he walked.
The sun was just cresting the eastern peaks, throwing long, sharp shadows across the dirt arena. Three hundred outer disciples were lined up in perfect rows. The sound of their wooden practice swords cutting the air was a synchronized, violent snap. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
At the front of the formation stood Bai Qian.
She did not wear armor. She wore her standard pristine white robes, the silver ornament in her hair catching the dawn light. She wasn't demonstrating. She was just watching.
But her watching was a physical weight. The Saint Peak pressure she bled into the air forced the disciples to push past their physical limits just to keep standing. She was a statue of ice, calculating angles, identifying weaknesses, grading the future of her sect with ruthless, mechanical precision.
Wei Tian stopped at the edge of the grounds. He leaned his shoulder against a wooden viewing pillar.
He took another bite of his bun. He chewed slowly.
He watched her.
He didn't look at the disciples. He didn't look at the flashing swords. He looked directly at the Sect Master.
He did not blink.
One minute passed. Bai Qian corrected a disciple's stance with a sharp, two-word command. Wei Tian chewed.
Two minutes. The sweat on the disciples' backs began to steam in the cold air. Wei Tian swallowed. Took another bite.
Three minutes. Bai Qian shifted her weight, a microscopic adjustment of her hips.
Four minutes.
Wei Tian finished the last piece of the bun. He swallowed. He looked at his empty hand. Then he looked back at Bai Qian one last time.
He gave a slow, barely perceptible nod. He looked completely, utterly satisfied.
He pushed off the pillar, wiped his hands on a cloth from his sleeve, and walked back the way he came.
In the bushes twenty feet away, Xiao Mei scribbled furiously in a small notebook, her hands shaking. Observed Sect Master. Four minutes. Ate pork bun. Nodded.
This was going to sound terrible when she said it out loud.
The air in Elder Shen Mu's private quarters smelled of bitter lotus incense and suppressed rage.
The room was vast, lined with ancient scrolls and weapons claimed from defeated rivals. Shen Mu sat on a raised dais, rolling two polished steel spheres in his right hand. The metal clacked together with a rhythmic, grating sound.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Xiao Mei knelt on the woven mat below him. Her forehead was practically touching the floor. She was sweating.
"Tell me again," Shen Mu said. His voice was dangerously soft.
"He... he woke up before dawn, Elder," Xiao Mei stammered. "He walked directly to the central courtyard. The one above the primary spirit vein."
The steel spheres stopped moving. "Did he deploy a detection talisman? A mapping compass?"
"No, Elder. He... he crouched down. He touched a crack in the jade tile with one finger."
"For how long?"
"Three seconds."
Shen Mu's eyes narrowed into dark slits. "Why would a mortal with zero cultivation care about the spirit vein? Did he say anything?"
"He said he should get breakfast."
The spheres started rolling again. Faster this time. Clack-clack-clack. "He is mocking us. The girl thinks she has brought a harmless pet into my house, and the pet thinks it can sniff around my foundation." Shen Mu leaned forward. "And then? Where did he go?"
"To the kitchens. He acquired a pork bun." Xiao Mei swallowed hard, her throat clicking audibly in the quiet room. "Then he went to the training grounds. The Sect Master was conducting the morning review."
"Did they speak?"
"No, Elder. He stood by a pillar. He watched her."
"How long?"
Xiao Mei closed her eyes. "Four minutes. Exactly. I counted. He didn't blink."
Shen Mu paused. A sneer touched the corner of his mouth. "A mortal scholar staring at a Saint Peak cultivator like a starving dog looking at meat. Disgusting. And what did he do after four minutes of staring?"
"He... he finished his bun, Elder." Xiao Mei winced, bracing herself. "He nodded. He seemed very satisfied."
CRACK.
The two steel spheres in Shen Mu's hand shattered. Metal shards embedded themselves in the wooden armrest of his chair.
Xiao Mei flinched, pressing her face into the mat.
"Satisfied," Shen Mu whispered. The word hissed through his teeth like steam escaping a boiling kettle. "He inspects my spirit vein like a peasant checking a floorboard, and he evaluates my Sect Master while eating kitchen scrap. He is too comfortable."
Shen Mu stood up. The ambient qi in the room spiked, knocking a stack of scrolls off a nearby table.
"She brought him here to be a political shield. She thinks I will not strike at him because he is a mortal, because it would look petty to crush an ant." Shen Mu walked down the steps of the dais, his boots heavy on the wood. "But an ant in the central hall is still a pest."
He looked down at the trembling girl.
"The Iron Blood Sect emissaries arrive in six days. Mo Zheng will use this marriage as proof that Bai Qian is unfit to lead, that she has humiliated our region by tying our legacy to a crippled scholar. If I wait, Mo Zheng takes the sect."
Shen Mu turned toward his writing desk. He picked up a jade brush.
"If she wants a husband, the husband must prove his right to breathe our air." Shen Mu began writing, his strokes violent and sharp. Ink bled into the parchment. "I will not assassinate him in the dark. I will break him in the light. In front of her."
He finished the document and slammed his personal elder seal onto the bottom corner. The red wax sizzled.
"Take this to the Announcement Pavilion," Shen Mu ordered, dropping the scroll in front of Xiao Mei.
She picked it up with shaking hands. She glanced at the bold characters painted on the outside.
"The Assessment of the Husband," Shen Mu said, his voice echoing off the stone walls. "It will take place in exactly one week. Every elder will be present. He will be tested on formation theory, physical endurance, and qi resistance."
Xiao Mei stared at the floor. A mortal taking a qi resistance test was a death sentence. It wasn't an assessment. It was a public execution with paperwork.
"Go," Shen Mu barked.
Xiao Mei scrambled to her feet and ran.
Shen Mu stood alone in his quarters, looking out the window toward the Eastern Pavilion. The morning sun was fully up now, burning away the mist.
"Let us see how satisfied you are," Shen Mu whispered to the glass, "when the weight of a mountain falls on your shoulders."