Chapter 10. The Fundamental Theorem of Cultivation (I)
I stepped out of the inn that morning like a cultivator emerging from a decade-long seclusion.
The sun was bright, the air crisp, the world somehow new, as though I had been blind before and only now had my eyes opened. My movements were controlled, precise. My breath steady. I carried no outward signs of change — no glowing aura, no billowing robes, no heavenly light cascading around me — but to me, the difference was profound.
For four long months, I had laboured in obscurity, wrestling with ideas that defied intuition, with truths that demanded absolute precision, with a power that cared nothing for my mortal impatience. I had been a prisoner in the allegorical cave of Plato, shackled by ignorance, watching shadows of mathematical truths flicker on the walls — until, at long last, I had turned and seen the fire for myself.
The weight of my training sat upon me.
No longer was I an ordinary man. No longer was I a mere teacher. I had taken a step into a realm that none before me had dared to tread.
I paused on the threshold of the inn, staring up at the heavens.
And then I casually strolled toward the market to buy breakfast.
It was an unfortunate consequence of my 'seclusion' that I still needed to eat. I had considered attempting a breathwork technique to sustain myself on pure mathematical thought, but as I suspected, reality was not so easily deceived. My stomach had not been impressed by my newfound insights into variational principles, nor had it appreciated my in-depth contemplation on the fundamental nature of symmetry in algebraic structures.
Instead, I had spent the past four months in and out of the inn, passing townsfolk who I now knew well enough to exchange pleasantries with, all while maintaining the deeply undignified routine of purchasing steamed buns and fresh vegetables with the quiet, methodical efficiency of a man determined not to break character.
It was lucky that for whatever unfathomable reason, Headmaster Song had graciously covered the cost of my lodgings. There was no way I could have stayed an unemployed bum for that long otherwise. Truly, he was my fortuitous encounter with a benefactor in the early chapters that so pervaded the xianxia stories.
But I digress. Despite the mundane interruptions, I had changed.
Not much. Only the barest morsel compared to what I now knew was out there.
But even that little was more than I had ever anticipated.
Four months earlier, I had sat in my room, attempting to command my qi with the sheer force of logical reasoning.
It had gone poorly.
-x-x-x-
The candle flickered on my desk, casting unsteady shadows across the parchment. I took a slow breath, rolling my shoulders, settling into what I assumed was a suitably mystical posture — back straight, hands poised in a vague approximation of a mudra I had once seen on a cheap book cover.
This was it. The first step into the unknown. The moment in every cultivation story where the protagonist, through sheer will and insight, defied all known logic and stepped onto a grander path.
I exhaled, eyes narrowing. Slowly, deliberately, I picked up my brush and began to trace a function onto the parchment. A simple one to start with. A quadratic function, smooth and continuous, perfectly behaved, the kind of thing even a twelve year old could grasp.
A simple foundation.
A starting point.
My qi would flow along the curve, naturally, effortlessly.
I set down my brush. Stared at the function.
Then, with all the gravitas of a man touching upon the great mysteries of the universe, I whispered under my breath:
"The structure of reality follows a higher order…"
I closed my eyes.
Felt my breath steady.
Listened to the silence.
The air in the room shifted — no, it should have shifted.
A current of power should have coalesced, should have flowed along the smooth arc of my function, should have responded to the sheer weight of mathematical inevitability.
I held my breath, waiting.
And waited.
And waited.
I cracked an eye open.
Nothing had changed.
I frowned. Maybe I hadn't visualized it properly. Maybe I had to be more specific. I inhaled again, brushing my fingers lightly over the inked curve, willing my qi to follow its path, urging it to obey.
I whispered again, this time more forcefully:
"Reality yields to structure…"
I reached inward.
Called upon the infinitesimal fragments of my shattered dantian, upon the uncountable dust that should have, by all rights, responded to my will.
I felt for the flow of qi.
There was no flow.
I tried harder.
Still nothing.
Not a flicker. Not a whisper.
The parchment just sat there, smug and unmoving, like an impassive examiner watching a student fumble their way through their viva.
I scowled.
Alright. Maybe a different approach.
A periodic function, then. A sine wave. Smooth, predictable, eternally oscillating. Surely something in my qi would resonate with it.
I sketched it out quickly, drawing careful arcs, feeling the natural rhythm of it, the way it seamlessly transitioned from peak to trough.
"Resonance governs all things…!" I murmured, with the solemn air of an immortal sage.
Nothing.
Fine.
If smooth and continuous functions weren't doing anything, maybe something more… specialized. A step function, perhaps? A sharp transition in state, forcing a sudden change in qi behavior?
I drew the step function, defined its domain, ensured every point was marked with deliberate clarity.
"A function must be well-defined," I intoned.
Still nothing.
A piecewise function? A discontinuous function? A fractal function?
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I growled under my breath.
This was ridiculous.
By all logic, there should have been some effect. It didn't have to be grandiose. I wasn't expecting to shake the heavens or split the earth. Just… something. A wisp of movement. A tiny fluctuation.
Instead, I was met with absolute silence. A void of meaningful response.
Mathematical truth was supposed to be the fabric of reality itself, was it not? The foundation of all things? The hidden order underlying existence?
So why was nothing happening?!
I slumped back, rubbing my temples.
Why was this not working? This was exactly how enlightenment was supposed to happen. In the stories, a protagonist would mutter some vaguely profound statement, the heavens would tremble, and suddenly they would break through realms at a speed that would put exponential growth to shame.
There was precedent for this! I had read them!
Example 1: "All things return to one, and one returns to nothing!" → Boom, instant ascension to Immortal Lord.
Example 2: "I am the sword, and the sword is me!" → Boom, sword qi that splits mountains.
Example 3: "A drop of water may reflect the entire universe!" → Boom, comprehension of cosmic laws.
And, of course, the sort of profound statement that came with the unholy scriptures:
Example 4: "If the heavens suppress me, then I shall overthrow the heavens!" → Boom. At this point the protagonist, who had spent his entire life as a complete waste, would immediately gain the ability to obliterate mountains with a single punch.
So why, after my entirely reasonable insights, was I still sitting here with nothing but ink-stained fingers and a mild sense of existential despair?
I was forced to conclude that my qi was either dead or had extremely high standards.
I sighed and rubbed my temples. It was at this point that I had to admit something deeply uncomfortable: cultivation enlightenment was not like in the novels.
There was no single profound phrase that would suddenly unlock my potential. No sudden moment of clarity where the universe would recognise my brilliance and reward me with a power-up.
Perhaps I had been naive.
Mathematics governed reality — but that didn't mean I could just write down an equation and expect reality to care.
It was like trying to control my liver enzymes by sketching out the relevant metabolic pathways. Yes, the process was real, the interactions existed, but merely acknowledging their existence did not grant me the ability to command them.
Which, in hindsight, made perfect sense.
And yet, some foolish part of me had genuinely hoped that simply defining my qi in mathematical terms would be enough to control it.
Instead, all I had accomplished was proving, in painstaking detail, that my qi was infinitely unwilling to cooperate, infinitely unresponsive, and infinitely unhelpful.
Mathematics was, at its core, rigorous. It was not a realm of mystical epiphanies and sudden revelations — it was a realm of painstaking proofs, of slow and deliberate reasoning, of work.
I had known this, of course. But I had hoped.
It was clear now that my qi did not respond to empty proclamations. I could not merely assert a truth and expect the universe to bend to my will.
It wasn't enough to write a function. It wasn't enough to say something deep-sounding.
I had to understand.
I had to prove.
And that, as I would soon learn, was going to be a very long process.
-x-x-x-
A week into my self-imposed training, I found myself crouched in the courtyard, glaring at yet another carefully drawn cycloid in the dirt.
It was, objectively, a very nice cycloid. I had painstakingly carved it out with the precision of a man who had nothing left but time and a growing sense of existential despair.
I hadn't started this process intending to develop a personal grudge against an equation. But here we were.
Step one: rederive the brachistochrone.
Step two: prove why it worked.
Step three: stare into the abyss of my own ignorance and hope it didn't stare back.
I was currently on step three. And the abyss, as expected, was staring.
I pressed my fingers into my temples and exhaled slowly.
This wasn't how training montages were supposed to go. The heroes in stories never spent a week glaring at a curve, muttering under their breath like a deranged scholar on the verge of losing a fight with reality. No, they had breakthroughs. Dramatic epiphanies. They would say something like the heavens bow to my will or all things in the universe follow their natural path, and then — boom. Instant mastery. All while epic orchestral music played in the background.
Meanwhile, I had spent seven days doing what amounted to drawing fancy slides for a hypothetical marble race and had precisely nothing to show for it.
I stared at the curve again, as if sheer frustration alone might will it into yielding its secrets.
The thing was, I knew the brachistochrone was correct. It wasn't some mystical theory, some vague intuition about flowing with nature. It was a mathematical certainty. If a bead were to slide along this path under the influence of gravity alone, it would reach the endpoint faster than along any other route. Even a straight line.
That was the part that should have mattered.
I had thought that if my qi were to manifest in a structured, mathematical way, it would have to obey the brachistochrone. It was the shortest path in terms of time. If my body — or at least my qi — could somehow align with that principle, wouldn't I… move faster? Wouldn't I fall faster?
I stood up, rolling my shoulders. Enough theorising. Time for another attempt.
The first few tries had been embarrassing. I had walked the curve like a fool, only to accomplish absolutely nothing aside from drawing strange looks from the innkeeper.
That had been my first mistake—thinking that walking the curve was enough.
If I wanted to understand the brachistochrone, I couldn't just mimic it.
I had to be it.
Which, frankly, was the sort of phrase that would have sounded much cooler if I hadn't spent the last half-hour failing to do exactly that.
I shook out my hands, squared my stance, and inhaled deeply.
This time, I wasn't going to just move along the curve.
I was going to let it move me.
I took the first step. Slow. Deliberate. I adjusted the angle of my descent ever so slightly, feeling the way my weight shifted along the imagined path of least time.
Second step. A little faster.
Third step.
Fourth —
And then I was falling.
Not in the traditional, catastrophic sense.
But there was a pull — a sudden, subtle shift in momentum that shouldn't have been there. A sensation of acceleration that wasn't entirely my own.
My foot hit the ground slightly ahead of where I had expected it to. The timing was off — just a fraction of a second, but enough that I noticed. Enough that I felt it.
I had moved… wrong.
Or rather, I had moved right, and my intuition was wrong.
I exhaled sharply, stepping back to my starting point.
This was something.
Not much.
But something.
The curve had responded — not to force, not to blind repetition, but to the underlying principle of why it worked. The moment I stopped treating it like a shape and started treating it like an inevitability, something had changed.
I still didn't know what, exactly.
But I was going to find out.
I set my foot forward again.
-x-x-x-
I stood at the edge of the 8x8 grid I had carefully scratched into the dirt, hands behind my back, surveying my work like a general preparing for battle.
This was, objectively, a very good grid.
Was it slightly uneven? Maybe. Would an actual mathematician be horrified at my choice of spacing? Definitely. But did it serve its purpose? Absolutely.
I had spent the last month attempting to channel my qi into meaningful structure — functions, equations, carefully written proofs. That had gone spectacularly nowhere. The only thing my qi seemed to have internalised was the null set, and it was getting very comfortable there.
So, this?
This was an absolutely necessary training exercise. This wasn't just an excuse to stretch my legs, get some fresh air, and pretend I was making progress without actually doing math. No. This was an essential step in my cultivation.
Because, let's be honest, all the great training montages had a sequence like this.
The classic Rocky stair scene? Training montage gold. Neo flipping around in cyberspace learning kung-fu via high speed data injection? Yes, please.
Clearly, getting out and moving was important.
And I was absolutely not using that as an excuse to get away from the massive pile of failed proofs sitting on my desk back at the inn.
I inhaled deeply. Focused.
The Knight's Tour. A sequence of knight's moves that covered every square of the chessboard exactly once. No repeats. No backtracking. Just perfect traversal.
In theory, it was simple.
In practice?
I stepped onto the first square.
The knight's move was an elegant constraint — two forward, one to the side. A single unit of movement, restrictive and yet flexible, bound by strict rules but still allowing for infinite variations.
Leonhard Euler — Grandmaster of Grandmasters — had understood this better than anyone. He had been the first to rigorously analyse the nature of graph connectivity, solving problems centuries ahead of their time with an ease that defied logic.
Had he known?
Had he known just how far his work would be taken? How many ways it would be extended, reinterpreted, applied to circuits, algorithms, even quantum mechanics? Had he imagined that one day, a stranded biologist-turned-xianxia-refugee would be running a Knight's Tour in a secluded clearing, desperately hoping that moving with mathematical intention would somehow coax his qi into behaving?
I took another step.
And another.
The path unfolded, a dance of rigid motion and open possibility. I wasn't thinking about the math, not directly — not about adjacency matrices or Hamiltonian circuits or directed graphs — but rather about the shape of the movement itself. The constraints dictated the flow, the flow dictated the choices, and yet, even within those choices, there was grace.
I stepped again, pivoting smoothly.
I didn't feel qi shifting. Didn't sense some grand breakthrough.
But for the first time in weeks, I felt something else.
Relaxation.
Enjoyment.
This wasn't struggle. This wasn't me forcing an insight, bashing my head against pure abstraction until the universe begrudgingly handed me a consolation prize.
This was… fun.
The grid became a challenge, a puzzle, a mental game unfolding beneath my feet. The way my brain had to keep track of past positions, plot the next ones, ensure I wasn't leading myself into an unsolvable dead end — it was effortless and consuming all at once.
And it made me wonder.
Euler had asked, long ago, whether certain paths existed — paths that could traverse bridges or graphs without repetition, paths that seemed impossible until the right perspective revealed their inevitability.
I had spent my life afraid of mathematics. Hesitant. Always looking at it from the outside, admiring from a distance but never stepping in.
But now?
I was walking it.
Maybe this wasn't a breakthrough.
But it felt like movement.
Chapter 11. The Fundamental Theorem of Cultivation (II)
I sat cross-legged at the small wooden table in my room, staring at the parchment before me with the reverence usually reserved for divine scriptures or the last dumpling in a communal meal.
This was, without exaggeration, one of the most important pages ever written in human history.
Not this specific page, of course. This page was just my own poor attempt at scribbling down what little I remembered. The real page had been written by Évariste Galois, the tragic hero of mathematics.
The man, the myth, the mathematician.
I tapped my brush against the inkstone and exhaled slowly. This was, in some ways, a nice break from the training. It wasn't directly about qi. I wasn't attempting to control or channel anything. I wasn't falling slightly wrong down a brachistochrone curve or tracing circuits in the dirt like some deranged monk.
No, this was just mathematics.
Or, more precisely, it was me attempting to reconstruct a genius' insights from memory, which was not unlike trying to rebuild a legendary sword using a single blurry painting of it and some deeply unfounded optimism.
I dipped the brush into the ink and carefully wrote the words at the top of the parchment:
Galois Theory.
It looked very profound. It felt important.
I had absolutely no idea where to start.
I ran a hand down my face, sighing. Where had I first heard about Galois? Some half-remembered video? A book I'd flipped through but never studied properly? A lecture displayed on the schedule of the math department I passed on my way to work that I hadn't taken but now desperately wished I had?
I leaned back and closed my eyes.
Galois was the perfect xianxia protagonist.
A peerless genius, undisputed in his ability, so far ahead of his time that not even his elders and sect masters could comprehend his insights.
A hotheaded youth, brash and unyielding, refusing to bow to the rigid, outdated structures of academia.
A romantic revolutionary, passionate in both his ideals and his emotions, entangled in political turmoil and personal feuds.
A defiant rebel, one who scorned the established order, wrote letters denouncing his so-called teachers, and was expelled from the mathematical sects of his day for speaking too freely.
And, of course, as all great xianxia protagonists do, he met an untimely end in a fateful duel against a nameless schmuck at the age of 21.
I paused.
Actually, that wasn't how it was supposed to go in a xianxia world.
In a proper cultivation novel, Galois would have survived the duel by some stroke of heaven-defying luck, stumbled upon a hidden manual of divine algebraic arts, spent a few years cultivating in seclusion, then returned to the mathematical sects with a vengeance. He would have crushed the smug elders underfoot with his newfound mastery, ascended to a higher realm where mathematical truth was directly woven into the fabric of reality, and eventually become the Supreme Dao Lord of Algebra.
Instead, he died of gunshot-induced peritonitis in some random hospital, desperately scribbling his final insights onto paper by candlelight the night before, as if trying to outrun death itself.
That kind of unfairness wouldn't have happened in a cultivation world. But in reality? It happened all the time.
I opened my eyes and looked down at the parchment.
Symmetry.
That was the heart of it, wasn't it? Galois' great insight — one that nobody had appreciated at the time — was that the behavior of polynomial equations wasn't just about their roots, but about the hidden structures that linked those roots together.
Polynomials had symmetries, just like physical systems did. Just like groups of warriors, formations on a battlefield, configurations of energy in a cultivation technique.
The rules that governed them weren't just arbitrary formulas — they were deep, woven into the structure of algebra itself.
It was strange, really. Every time I had thought about symmetry before, I had thought about physical symmetry. Bilateral symmetry in organisms, rotational symmetry in molecules, the kind of things that made sense in a biological framework.
But this?
This was structural symmetry, not of physical things, but of relationships between things.
I tapped my brush against the table again.
It was almost like a cultivation technique.
In martial arts, if you were fighting an opponent, you could analyse how they moved, how they struck, what their patterns were. That was the level of direct observation.
But if you knew the fundamental structure behind their techniques, then you could see what must be true.
You wouldn't need to see every movement. You wouldn't even need to see the whole battle.
If you understood the underlying group structure, you could infer the rest.
I sat up a little straighter, frowning.
That was… an interesting thought.
I picked up my brush again, smoothing out the parchment.
Perhaps my problem so far had been that I had been trying to force my qi into mathematical truths instead of recognising the structures it already had.
Instead of demanding that it obey functions I imposed, maybe I needed to observe what symmetries it naturally possessed.
If Galois had been a cultivator, he wouldn't have tried to brute-force a technique.
He would have analyzed the constraints, studied the transformation groups, and then — and only then — used those constraints to find what was possible.
I exhaled slowly, staring down at the ink drying on the page.
Maybe this wasn't just about equations.
Maybe I needed to stop telling my qi what it was supposed to be.
And instead, I needed to start listening.
-x-x-x-
The night air was crisp and cool as I strolled through the quiet streets of Qinghe Town, the packed dirt roads dappled with the pale glow of paper lanterns swaying lazily in the evening breeze. It was a welcome escape from the oppressive stillness of my rented room, where my latest mathematical inquiries had reached the stage of 'staring at a blank page in existential dread.'
I needed a walk. Needed to clear my mind.
Needed to figure out what the hell 'listening to my qi' even meant.
This had been the grand insight of my recent studies: I had never actually listened to my qi.
To be fair, I hadn't thought it had anything to say. It wasn't sentient. It wasn't some ancient sage whispering esoteric truths into my mind. It was energy. A force. A thing to be shaped and directed, or at least, that was how cultivation stories framed it.
But I had no dantian. No vessel. No core. So why was I still trying to impose rules onto something that had none?
I'd spent months stubbornly trying to tell my qi how it should work. Trying to define it. Trying to impose mathematical structure on it like an overzealous engineer attempting to fit an elephant into a spherical approximation for ease of calculations.
And yet, the only times it had ever manifested — ever done anything — was when I wasn't trying at all.
The creeping influence that seemed to settle into my students' minds, filling their innocent thoughts with infinities and paradoxes.
The moment I'd stumbled on the brachistochrone curve — not forcing my qi into it, but simply aligning myself with the inevitability of its truth.
The Knight's Tour, where I had given up on brute-forcing my qi and simply moved as my heart desired.
It was subtle, frustratingly so — so much that I wasn't entirely convinced those oddities I noticed were some mystical power at all — but I could not ignore the pattern.
I had spent months attempting to enforce equations upon my qi in various ways, demanding that it fit within structures of my own making.
Had I ever considered that perhaps it had its own structure? That maybe it had already spoken to me?
And that I — like the worst kind of obtuse researcher ignoring experimental data that didn't fit his convenient hypothesis — had simply refused to listen?
I sighed and rubbed my temples, feeling the weight of my own ignorance settle over me like an unwelcome blanket.
The walk had been meant to help, but now I was just getting lost in circles of my own thoughts.
At least the night was peaceful.
The streets were nearly empty at this hour, the town beginning to settle in for the evening. The only movement came from the occasional flicker of lantern light in the windows, the faint sound of merchants packing up their stalls, and the rhythmic clink of metal from the direction of the forge.
Wait.
The forge?
I squinted ahead.
A small figure trudged down the road, carrying a bundle wrapped in cloth over one shoulder. Even in the dim light, I recognized the distinct gait. Zhao Qiang.
I approached, and he noticed me immediately, pausing with a small nod of acknowledgment.
"Teacher," he said, bowing low, voice steady as ever.
I almost sighed. It had become increasingly apparent over the past months that the students I met during my study breaks had simply decided I was a hidden expert.
None of them ever said it outright, of course. But the way they spoke to me had changed. They bowed just a little lower when greeting me; seeming almost to hang on to every word that I said.
I had done nothing to deserve this.
I had, in fact, done everything possible to avoid this.
And yet, here was Zhao Qiang, standing before me like a student before a grandmaster, patiently awaiting my words of wisdom.
I cleared my throat. "Out late, Zhao Qiang?"
He held up the wrapped bundle. "Delivering something to my father."
I nodded, falling into step beside him. "And how are your studies going?"
There was a pause. Then, in his usual blunt manner, he said, "Not as fun without you."
I blinked.
Well. That was… unexpectedly straightforward.
"Ah," I said, caught slightly off guard. "Headmaster Song is still teaching the lessons, isn't he?"
He nodded. "But it's not the same."
I glanced at him. "Why's that?"
Another pause.
Then, in the most deadpan voice imaginable, he said, "No one else makes our heads hurt like you do."
I let out a strangled cough.
"That's… not usually something people say as a compliment."
"It is," he said, very seriously.
I squinted at him. "Is it."
He nodded.
I sighed. "I'm not sure how I feel about that."
Zhao Qiang shrugged, shifting the bundle on his shoulder. "It was better before," he said simply.
Before.
I found myself unexpectedly struck by that. I had assumed that after a few months, the students would have adjusted. I wasn't some legendary scholar, after all. I wasn't a proper teacher. I had expected them to forget me. Or at least, to move on to a more structured education under Headmaster Song.
But apparently, I had underestimated just how deeply I had inflicted mathematical trauma upon them.
"You're saying the lessons are boring now?"
Zhao Qiang nodded without hesitation. "Yes."
I sighed. "I'm sure Headmaster Song is a fine teacher."
Another nod. "He is."
I squinted at him. "But?"
"But he doesn't talk about infinity," Zhao Qiang said. "Or paradoxes. Or numbers that don't behave. Or why some things are impossible, but if you twist them sideways, they aren't anymore."
I stopped walking.
That was… a surprisingly good summary of what I had been doing.
Zhao Qiang looked at me expectantly, as if I were supposed to provide some kind of answer. And perhaps I should have, but instead, I just stared at him, my mind spiraling into yet another self-inflicted crisis.
Because he wasn't wrong.
That was what I had been teaching them. Not just numbers or calculations, but concepts that felt wrong until they felt inevitable.
That was what had made my students so unnervingly good at accepting paradoxes. It was why they had taken to discussing infinities like they were actual quantities instead of vague, incomprehensible abstractions. They had learned to think about numbers not as simple tools, but as things with their own strange properties.
I had, in a way, been shaping their perception of reality.
And that — more than anything — was what my qi had responded to. If manifested because I made them think.
I swallowed.
It had spoken.
I had never listened.
I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling an odd weight settle over me. "You… actually enjoy all that nonsense, huh?"
Zhao Qiang nodded.
I frowned. "Even the paradoxes?"
He nodded again.
"The headaches?"
"Mm."
I gave him a long look. "You're not just saying that because you think I'll smite you with hidden cultivation powers, are you?"
Zhao Qiang tilted his head, considering for a moment. "No."
I exhaled slowly.
Alright.
Fine.
This was a conversation I would need to unpack later. Much later. At the same time that I considered what it spoke about me that my students had developed some sort of Stockholm syndrome centered on me tossing infinities into their mind like some eldritch Lovecraftian horror.
For now, I examined what I already suspected, and now was more or less confirmed by Zhao Qiang. If my students had changed because of my teachings, then my qi had been influencing them.
Not through direct intention. Not through conscious will.
But through conceptual resonance.
I wasn't controlling it. I was warping reality around me simply by believing in something strongly enough.
And wasn't that… how all cultivation techniques worked?
A sword cultivator believed the sword was an extension of their soul. So it became true.
A body cultivator believed their flesh could become as strong as steel. So it did.
A scholar believed that the heavens could be defied. And so, inevitably, someone proved it.
I had spent the better part of two months trying to force my qi into obedience.
But what if that wasn't how it worked? What if I had to treat it like a student?
What if I needed to stop trying to command it?
"Maybe I've been thinking about this the wrong way," I muttered.
Zhao Qiang was still looking at me, waiting patiently for whatever wisdom I was supposed to impart.
Instead, I just sighed. "Alright, alright. I get it. You miss me."
He shrugged. "Lessons were more fun when you were there."
Something about that made me pause.
I had spent most of my life regretting that I had never properly pursued mathematics. Wishing I had been braver. Smarter. More disciplined. And yet, despite all that, despite my own inadequacies…
I had made it fun for them.
I had made math fun.
That thought lingered as I watched Zhao Qiang continue on his way, disappearing into the dim glow of the forge.
Maybe I couldn't control my qi the way a cultivator did.
But maybe — just maybe — I could teach it to behave.
And wasn't that, in the end, what teaching was? Taking something unstructured, chaotic, and slowly, carefully, guiding it toward something more?
I exhaled and turned back toward the inn.
If my qi was waiting to be taught, then I was going to have to figure out what kind of student it was.
-x-x-x-
I sat in the dim candlelight of my room, staring at the parchment before me, fingers tapping absently against the wood of my desk. Three months. That was how long I had spent wrestling with a force I still barely understood. Three months of painstaking derivations, frustrating failures, and fleeting, elusive successes.
But the pieces were beginning to fit together.
The brachistochrone had been the first clue — when I had stopped imposing a path and instead followed an inevitable one.
The Knight's Tour had been the second — when I had stopped trying to force a pattern and instead became part of the structure.
And most recently, my conversation with Zhao Qiang had provided the third.
My students' minds had shifted, not because I had tried to change them, but because I had made them see things differently. I hadn't imposed my will upon them — I had simply shown them something, and their perception had expanded on its own. The truth had been there the whole time, waiting to be discovered.
Wasn't that how my qi was behaving?
I had tried to control it, to fit it into a rigid, defined structure — but perhaps that was the wrong approach. Mathematics wasn't about imposing structure. It was about recognising it. Finding the underlying symmetries, the constraints, the transformation groups that dictated how something must behave.
I inhaled deeply.
If my qi was everywhere and nowhere — if it was some nebulous, undefined mathematical truth — then perhaps I shouldn't be defining it.
Perhaps I should be allowing it to define itself.
I closed my eyes and let my mind drift.
It wasn't just a field — it was a field waiting for the right elements to extend it.
It wasn't just a function — it was a functional, waiting for the right inputs to give it form.
It wasn't just a set — it was a group, imbued with an operation, waiting for its action.
That was the key, wasn't it?
A mathematical object was often useless until you had a way to interact with it. A group without an action was just an abstract collection of elements. A field without an extension was constrained by what it could construct. A function without an argument was just a notation, an empty shell.
A function didn't exist in a vacuum. It existed within a space of possible functions.
A vector wasn't just magnitude and direction. It was part of a larger space that governed its transformations.
An equation wasn't a statement of isolated truth — it was a constraint that defined what must be true.
My qi wasn't a single, fixed thing. It had never been unstructured. It had simply been waiting for something to act upon it.
Waiting to act upon itself.
Waiting for a transformation.
I opened my eyes.
I needed to stop trying to impose a function onto my qi.
No, I needed to apply a group action.
And the natural action, the most fundamental transformation in mathematics, was symmetry.
-x-x-x-
I stepped out of my room, the cold night air settling around me as I walked toward the outskirts of Qinghe Town. My breath curled into faint mist, dissipating into the darkness.
This was it.
Tonight, I would not calculate. Tonight, I would not analyze.
Tonight, I would listen.
The clearing was quiet, the grass cool beneath my feet as I settled into a stance. No calculations this time. No scribbled equations. No grand pronouncements about the nature of reality.
Instead, I simply existed.
I inhaled, feeling the steady rhythm of my breath, and reached inward — not grasping, not forcing, but listening.
If qi was everywhere and nowhere, then it had to possess symmetry.
If it was a group waiting for an action, then the action had to be self-generated.
And if it was mathematical truth, then it could be expressed in transformations.
And yes… everything was a transformation, wasn't it? Even something as simple as the addition of zero. It left a thing unchanged — but that too was symmetry: the symmetry of 'do nothing'; the identity element under the operation of addition.
I took a step.
Then another.
I let my movements align — not with something imposed, but with something inherent. Something inevitable.
And then, for the first time, I felt it.
A shift, imperceptible at first, like the first number in an infinite sequence. A whisper in the fabric of existence, where movement ceased to be a mere act of will and became something deeper. The rules that governed space and time flickered at the edges of my mind, revealing themselves in fleeting glimpses, like a grand function whose domain stretched beyond comprehension.
A great silence followed.
Not the ordinary quiet of an empty field, but a silence with structure — a void filled with something vast and precise, like the negative space in an elegant proof. I was inside something, and it was inside me.
It was an axiomatic system, and I was one of its theorems.
I took another step.
Something clicked into place.
The world transformed around me.
No, not the world — the coordinate space in which I existed. I was no longer an arbitrary point, some isolated value floating in an unfathomable expanse. My position was relational, a node in an intricate, unseen web of transformations, bound by symmetries that had existed since the dawn of time. I had not created them. I had merely opened my eyes.
Reality did not merely contain an algebraic structure.
It was one.
And I was moving within it.
This was not teleportation. It was not speed. It was not even motion in the conventional sense.
It was something deeper. Something fundamental. Something absolute.
A bijection between where I had been and where I was going. An invariance under transformation.
A universal symmetry.
And within that symmetry, I did not move — I resolved.
The wind did not resist me; it aligned. Not as an opposing force, not as a mere reaction, but as a necessary consequence — an equilibrium that had always been true. A balance inscribed in the very equations that governed existence.
My breath, my weight, my very presence — everything was a variable in a grand, unshakable system of relations.
And then I saw them. The generators of transformation.
They had been there all along, hidden in the structure of the world, embedded in the way existence folded upon itself. They were the fundamental operations of reality — the mappings that connected all things. Not physical laws as mortals understood them, not forces or energies that could be wielded like crude tools. These were deeper than force. More absolute than energy.
They were the invariant truths that dictated the nature of all things.
I lifted my hand, and the air around me warped — not through force, not through struggle, but through an unseen necessity. A reordering of constraints.
The world responded.
Not as an adversary to be conquered. Not as a tool to be wielded. But as a system resolving itself around my existence, adjusting to preserve its own deeper truths. I had not imposed an equation or transformation onto reality — no, I had merely aligned with one that had always been there, waiting to be understood.
It was finally happening.
No more abstract hints. No more fleeting illusions of power slipping through my fingers. This was real. This was mathematical truth given form. I was aligning with a universal principle, and in doing so, I was finally grasping what it meant to be a cultivator. Not by bending the world to my will, but instead by recognising its symmetries, stepping into the space between contradictions, allowing the transformations that had always existed to take shape through me.
A profound realization surged through me:
This was what it meant to have a Dao.
Not an ideology. Not a technique. Not a school of thought.
A structure.
The world had always been governed by mathematical principles, but only now did I see that those principles were alive. They weren't merely descriptions of reality — they were active constraints, shaping existence.
And I had touched them.
No, more than that — I had become one with them.
The latent, shattered remnants of my dantian — the Cantor dust left in the wake of the cultivation I'd dispersed — were not a void, not a broken system waiting to be patched together.
They were basis elements. The atoms of a space that had always been infinite-dimensional.
I had spent the last months trying to understand and rebuild a dantian that functioned like a simple, constrained algebraic structure, but my qi had never been a finite system.
No, it was category-theoretic. A thing that could not be understood in isolation, only through the morphisms that related it to everything else.
And for a moment — a brief, infinitesimal moment — I glimpsed more.
A vast, impossible architecture. Not a single system of transformations, but a system of alltransformations. An algebra of algebras, a category of categories, where every act was not just an event, but a fundamental relationship between infinite possibilities.
I was nothing but one infinitesimal term in a grand, unyielding equation. One point in a manifold of possibilities. My very existence was not a single isolated entity but an object in a larger system of mappings, an entity that could only be truly understood through its morphisms, through its transformations between states.
And yet —
I was part of it.
But still I did not understand. Not fully.
I could sense that there were higher-order transformations, symmetries that went beyond the simple ones I could perceive. I was standing at the base of a towering structure, able to grasp only the most basic elements, the simplest mappings. The deeper symmetries — the transformations that could truly shape reality — were still beyond me.
I could not yet see how every element mapped to every other. I could not yet perceive the full structure of the group.
If I wanted to punch a mountain apart, I would need to understand which transformations were preserved. Which symmetries were broken. How force mapped to space, how energy transformed under action.
I did not know how the generators and operators of this algebra of algebras acted upon the world. I could see only the trivial cases, the obvious mappings. But the deeper truths? The transformations that would allow me to bend the very structure of reality?
Those were still hidden from me.
The wind swirled around me as I stood there, breath slow, heart steady. I had touched something immense, but I was not yet fully ready to wield it.
Force was meaningless without context. Power was empty without structure. I had seen the edges of a truth so immense that it reduced me to insignificance… and yet, I was not afraid.
I exhaled.
The wind stirred, not in resistance, but in quiet acknowledgment.
I had not reached the peak. I had merely set foot upon the path.
I had been foolish before, impatient, expecting my enlightenment to be instantaneous. Expecting knowledge to flow into me in a single, all-consuming revelation. But that was not how understanding worked.
Not in mathematics. Not in life. Not even in cultivation.
The greatest minds of history had spent years wrestling with the truths they discovered. Decades refining their insights. Some had died without ever fully comprehending the things they had glimpsed.
And I?
I was just beginning.
I clenched my fists, not in frustration, but in determination.
This would take time. There would be many more failures.
I would make mistakes, miscalculate, misunderstand. I would grasp at transformations I could not yet control. I would discover deep into the proof of a theorem that a critical lemma did not hold.
Yet I remembered the eternal words of Gauss: "I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
With every failure, I would iterate.
With every mistake, I would refine my approach.
I would learn to see not just the isolated elements, but the entire structure. I would discover the higher transformations, the true mappings, the fundamental symmetries of this reality.
I would improve.
And one day, when I fully understood the symmetries of this world — when I saw not just the transformations, but the governing action behind them —
Then I would punch a mountain apart.
I took a step forward, and the world did not tremble.
But somewhere in the infinite algebra that bound all existence, a transformation had begun. The silence stretched, weighty and expectant.
The world had noticed.
And that was enough.
Chapter 12. Interlude — Seclusion Hypothesis
Zhang Xian sat at his desk, tapping his fingers against the wood in slow, deliberate motions. One, two, three, four. Four taps, then a pause. Then four more. He frowned and changed it to five. Five taps, a pause, then five more.
Then he changed it again. Two taps, then three. Then five, then seven. Prime numbers. Just in case reality was secretly watching and needed a reminder of how numbers were supposed to work.
It had been two weeks since Master Jiang vanished.
Well. Not vanished. He had called it a leave of absence. But Zhang Xian wasn't stupid. A person who was just a teacher didn't need to go into seclusion. Only cultivators did that.
And yet — was Master Jiang actually a cultivator?
The problem was, Zhang Xian should have known the answer to that. He had grown up hearing about cultivators. He had even seen one in a nearby city once when his father had taken him there, a real, proper one with robes and a sword and an air of mystical detachment. Everyone in Qinghe Town knew what cultivators looked like.
Master Jiang looked nothing like that.
Master Jiang liked steamed buns. He talked to people. He didn't stand on rooftops gazing at the moon. He slumped in his chair like a tired man who had made a terrible series of life choices.
But…
Zhang Xian remembered the way he moved. The way his brush strokes never wavered. The way he always caught a falling teacup without looking. The way, on that one morning, when Ma Rui had thrown a pebble at Wu Liang, Master Jiang had reached out and caught it — casually, without even looking.
But more than that, there was the way he talked.
Cultivators spoke about the Dao. About the Heavens. About the flow of energy and the balance of yin and yang.
Master Jiang spoke about infinity.
And, somehow, that was even worse.
Zhang Xian still remembered the lesson from the week before Master Jiang left. It had been one of his usual strange, spiraling lectures that started with a normal question and ended with everyone questioning their entire existence.
Master Jiang had drawn a circle. A perfect circle. He had done it in one stroke, without a compass, without hesitation. (That, too, was suspicious. People shouldn't just be able to do that.) Then he had drawn a square inside it. Then another square, but bigger, outside the circle.
And then he'd asked them: "If I take the ratio of the inner square's area to the outer square's area, do you think that number is closer to one-half? Or to two-thirds?"
They had all stared at it. Thought about it. Looked at the perfect circle, and the two squares that held it between them.
"Half?" Zhao Qiang had said, uncertainly. "It looks like about half."
"Mmm." Master Jiang had nodded, as if considering it seriously. Then he had picked up the brush again, drawn a hexagon inside the circle, then another hexagon outside.
"What about now?"
The answer should have been obvious. The numbers should have moved closer together. The hexagons left less empty space. The ratio should have tightened.
It had not.
It had spiraled out of control.
Somewhere in that conversation, something that Instructor Jiang called pai had entered the picture.
Then paradoxes.
Then the realization that nothing made sense anymore.
By the end of the class, Zhao Qiang — Zhao Qiang, who never got nervous — had a look on his face like a blacksmith who had just been told that metal was a lie.
It had been amazing.
And then Master Jiang had left.
Now they were stuck with Headmaster Song.
Headmaster Song was a perfectly good teacher. He was patient, and he explained things clearly, and he never once told them that space could be infinitely divided or that numbers misbehaved when no one was watching.
He was normal.
And Zhang Xian hated it.
"What are you thinking about?" Zhao Qiang asked from his seat next to him.
Zhang Xian scowled. "That something's wrong."
Zhao Qiang didn't even blink. "Yes."
That was the other thing. Since Master Jiang had left, they all knew something was wrong. They couldn't explain it. But it was there.
Zhang Xian tapped his fingers again against the wood. Two, three, five, seven.
He thought about the way Master Jiang had always dodged the question of whether he was a cultivator. He thought about the way their heads hurt after his lessons, like something too big had been trying to squeeze into their minds. He thought about the empty space in his lessons now.
"I think Master Jiang was hiding something," he said slowly.
Zhao Qiang gave him a flat look. "Yes."
Zhang Xian sighed and rested his chin on his palm. "I just don't know what."
He was going to find out.
Even if it took forever.
-x-x-x-
Chen Meili sat at the long wooden table, back straight, hands neatly folded in her lap. Across from her, her father sipped his tea, his expression unreadable.
The room was quiet—too quiet. That was never a good sign.
Her mother had already left the table, off to oversee the shop, leaving only her father, her older brother, and her. The tea had been poured. The dishes had been cleared. Which meant that soon, very soon—
"I heard from Headmaster Song that your teacher has gone into seclusion," her father said at last, setting his cup down with deliberate care.
Chen Meili schooled her face into a polite expression of quiet understanding. "Yes, Father."
Her father nodded, as if this were expected. "He was always a strange one. Too young to be a proper scholar, too clever to be a fool." He glanced at her over the rim of his cup. "You liked his lessons."
It was not a question.
Chen Meili did not hesitate. "Yes."
"Why?"
She had expected this question. Had prepared for it. And yet, she found herself struggling to form an answer that wouldn't sound utterly ridiculous.
Because his lessons made her think in ways she never had before. Because, unlike the other teachers, he never just explained things—he let them stumble toward the truth on their own, like merchants feeling their way through negotiations, like traders trying to guess the worth of an unfamiliar good.
Because, against all reason, against all logic, numbers had started to feel… alive.
But she could not say that.
Instead, she chose something practical. "He taught us things no one else did."
Her father arched an eyebrow. "Such as?"
She paused. Carefully, deliberately, she reached for the teapot and refilled his cup. "The nature of infinity."
Her brother, who had been silent until now, let out a quiet snort. "Infinity," he said, unimpressed. "That's not something a merchant needs to know."
Chen Meili glanced at him. "Are you certain?"
Her brother smirked. "I've never had to buy an infinite number of anything."
"That's because it's impossible," she said, keeping her tone light. "And yet, Master Jiang made us question even that."
Her father hummed in thought. "Go on."
She took a breath. "He asked us if we could divide one silver tael into two pieces, each half its value."
Her father nodded. "Of course."
"And then he asked if we could do it again. And again." She looked at him. "How many times could we keep doing this?"
"As many times as the silver allows."
"But what if it never stopped?" she asked. "What if, no matter how small the pieces became, there was always another half to split?"
Her brother frowned. "That's absurd. You'd be left with nothing."
"That's what I said," Chen Meili admitted. "But then he asked: if we can always divide further, does that mean we ever truly reach zero?" She met her father's gaze. "He told us that some philosophers thought space itself could be divided infinitely. That no matter how small something seemed, it could always be halved again. And if that were true, then—"
"Then there would be no smallest unit of trade," her father finished, nodding in understanding.
Her brother frowned deeper. "But that's not how money works."
"No," her father said, rubbing his thumb over the rim of his teacup. "But it is how negotiation works."
Chen Meili stilled.
Her father gestured lazily toward the account books stacked beside him. "Every deal has infinite divisions. A price is not fixed—it is something that moves between two values, like a fraction that has not yet been reduced. And a skilled merchant will know that there is always another step to take before reaching an agreement."
Chen Meili thought of that. Of all the times she had seen her father make deals that seemed impossible, pushing and pulling at numbers as if they were alive. As if they had their own will.
It was, in its own way, a kind of infinity.
For a moment, she wondered if Master Jiang would have agreed.
Her father studied her. "You have learned something useful, then."
She nodded, heart steady. "Yes."
"Good," he said, taking another sip of tea. "Then I expect you to use it."
She would.
But not just in business.
Because the lesson she had truly taken from Master Jiang was not about trade. It was not even about numbers.
It was about the way he made them see the world differently.
And she had no intention of forgetting that.
-x-x-x-
Wu Liang lay on the roof, staring at the sky.
It wasn't the first time he had been up there. He liked climbing things. Climbing was fun. He liked sitting in places he wasn't supposed to sit. It made the world look different.
But mostly, right now, he just didn't want to be inside.
His father was angry again.
Not at him, not exactly. Just at everything. At the cost of rice, at the stubbornness of their mule, at the way their neighbor always dumped water too close to their doorstep, at the fact that Wu Liang had forgotten to bring in the firewood again —
Actually, no, that one had been at him.
So here he was, on the roof, where it was quiet.
The sky was big. Really, really big. It went on forever. That was what Master Jiang had said once. No matter how far you traveled, no matter how high you climbed, there was always more sky.
That was nice.
It was a lot better than the inside of their house, which was very small.
He traced a shape in the air with his finger, pretending he was drawing something important.
Master Jiang had been gone for a long time now.
Not completely gone — Wu Liang had seen him. A few times. Walking through town, buying food, nodding politely at people like he wasn't secretly some kind of mystical expert who had hidden himself among them for reasons unknown.
But he wasn't teaching anymore.
And that meant things were boring.
Headmaster Song was fine. He was normal. But that was the problem.
Master Jiang was not normal.
And Wu Liang missed that.
Master Jiang had told them that numbers did things. That they moved in ways that didn't always make sense. That there were rules, but also things that didn't follow rules, and sometimes those things were the most interesting.
He had told them about the game with two players who always doubled the stakes, and how if you played forever, you could win infinite money, but somehow, that wasn't actually a good deal.
He had told them about the numbers that were there, but not there, but also very important.
And he had told them about how no matter how many times you added a half, you could never quite reach one.
Wu Liang liked that one the best.
Because it felt familiar.
That was what it was like, trying to be good. Trying to be what his father wanted.
No matter how many times he tried, he never quite got there.
He didn't mean to be bad. It just… happened.
Sometimes, things were too tempting. A jug of water left unguarded. A fence just low enough to jump over. A cart full of cabbages that was just asking to be overturned.
…that last one had been an accident. Mostly.
And sometimes, he just didn't understand why things were such a big deal. Why forgetting to sweep the floor was worth getting yelled at. Why playing when he was supposed to be working was a crime.
Why it wasn't okay to laugh when things were serious.
His father didn't like it when he laughed at the wrong time.
He didn't like a lot of things about Wu Liang.
Master Jiang, though — Master Jiang had never looked at him like that.
He had never scolded him for fidgeting in class. He had never called him useless when he got distracted.
He had just looked at him, tilted his head, and said, "That's interesting."
That was all.
And then he had made it part of the lesson.
Wu Liang missed that.
He sighed and flopped onto his back, letting his arms dangle over the edge of the roof. He wondered what Master Jiang was doing now.
Probably something weird. Probably something that would make their heads hurt if he explained it.
Wu Liang grinned a little to himself.
Good.
It wouldn't be right otherwise.
His stomach growled. Right. Dinner. He should probably go back inside before his father got even more annoyed.
Maybe he'd bring in the firewood this time.
Maybe.
He swung his legs over the edge of the roof and climbed down. Tomorrow, he'd pay closer attention in class.
Even if Master Jiang wasn't there.
Even if it wasn't as fun.
Because maybe, just maybe —
One day, he'd understand what really it was that made numbers so interesting after all.
-x-x-x-
Ma Rui pressed his back against the wooden wall of the inn, holding his breath. His heart was pounding, but not from fear. No, this was excitement. The kind that made his fingers twitch and his thoughts race ahead of him.
He was going to find out what Master Jiang was hiding.
Lin Fen stood next to him, arms crossed, looking extremely unamused. "This is a bad idea."
Ma Rui grinned. "That's what makes it a good idea."
She sighed. "That's not how logic works."
"That's what people say right before something interesting happens."
Lin Fen muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like idiot, but she didn't leave. That was the important part.
The hallway was empty. The inn was quiet. Most people were downstairs eating or had already gone to bed.
Which meant this was their chance.
Ma Rui tiptoed forward and pressed his ear against Master Jiang's door.
Nothing.
Then —
A slow, thoughtful voice, just barely audible through the wood.
Ma Rui sucked in a breath.
Lin Fen, still standing a few steps behind him, frowned. "What is he saying?" she whispered.
Ma Rui held up a hand. "Shh."
The voice was clearer now. Master Jiang wasn't speaking to anyone. At least, not in the way normal people did. It sounded like… thinking. But out loud.
Which was weird.
"I cannot impose order onto chaos. That is folly," Master Jiang muttered. "The structure must be inherent. It must emerge. But if structure exists before it is observed, then does it exist at all?"
Ma Rui blinked.
Lin Fen leaned in slightly. "What?"
Master Jiang continued, oblivious to his eavesdroppers. "Infinity is not a destination. It is not a place to reach. It is the nature of motion itself. But motion implies change. And yet —" A pause. "Can change exist without an observer?"
Ma Rui's brain hurt a little.
Lin Fen whispered, "Is he… pondering a Dao?"
Ma Rui didn't know. But it sure sounded like it.
"I have assumed too much," Master Jiang said, voice quiet but intense. "Numbers do not create reality. They constrain it. And constraints define possibility. But what if —"
He stopped.
The silence stretched.
Ma Rui held his breath.
Then, very softly, Master Jiang said, "What if everything I know is wrong?"
A chill ran down Ma Rui's spine.
Because that was not something a normal person said. That was something a person said right before discovering something dangerous.
Or worse.
Something that made things stop making sense.
Lin Fen tugged at his sleeve. "We should go."
Ma Rui nodded quickly.
They tiptoed away, moving as quietly as possible, slipping back down the hall and out of the inn before Master Jiang could realise they had been there.
Once they were outside, standing in the dim lantern light of the street, Ma Rui turned to Lin Fen.
"What did we just hear?" he asked.
Lin Fen crossed her arms. "Something we shouldn't have."
He nodded. "Yeah."
A pause.
Then, because he couldn't help himself —
"…but what if change can't exist without an observer?"
Lin Fen groaned.
Ma Rui grinned.
They had no idea what Master Jiang was doing, but it was definitely something weird.
And that meant they had to keep watching.
-x-x-x-
Zhao Qiang sat on the worn wooden bench in the courtyard, arms crossed, watching as the others argued.
"He left at night," Zhang Xian said, pacing back and forth like a detective in one of those old stories. "Then he came back. And no one has seen him since."
Chen Meili, seated primly beside him, let out an exasperated sigh. "He's probably just studying."
"Studying what?" Wu Liang leaned forward, grinning. "The forbidden arts?"
Ma Rui waved his hands dramatically. "Maybe he discovered a lost technique and now he's trying to unlock the secrets of the universe!"
Lin Fen, who had been silent so far, adjusted her sleeves and said, "Or, he's just doing math."
Everyone turned to Zhao Qiang.
He blinked. "…What?"
"You talked to him," Ru Lan said quietly. "What did he say?"
Zhao Qiang frowned. He had, in fact, talked to Master Jiang. But it hadn't been anything special.
"He asked how our lessons were with Headmaster Song," he said simply.
Zhang Xian stopped pacing. "That's it?"
Zhao Qiang nodded.
Wu Liang leaned in, grinning. "Did he seem… different?"
"He seemed like Master Jiang."
"That means different," Ma Rui declared.
Zhao Qiang thought back to their conversation. To how Master Jiang had asked about their lessons, how he had sighed when Zhao Qiang said they were more boring now. How he had looked at him — not as a teacher, not even as a grown-up, but like he was actually listening.
And then, right before he had left, he had said something strange.
He hadn't thought about it much at the time, but now, with everyone staring at him, waiting for answers —
He hesitated.
"…He said something weird," Zhao Qiang admitted.
Wu Liang practically bounced in place. "What? What did he say?"
Zhao Qiang frowned. "He said… maybe I've been thinking about this the wrong way."
A pause.
Zhang Xian narrowed his eyes. "Thinking about what the wrong way?"
"I don't know."
Lin Fen crossed her arms. "That's not very helpful."
"It's not my fault he talks like that."
Ma Rui rubbed his chin, looking entirely too pleased. "See? This proves it."
"Proves what?" Zhao Qiang asked.
"That he's not just a scholar," Ma Rui said. "He's definitely a cultivator. He's in seclusion because he's —" he paused for dramatic effect "— having a breakthrough."
Chen Meili rolled her eyes. "Or, he's thinking about a new lesson."
Ru Lan, who had been quietly listening, spoke up. "People do say he hasn't come out of his room since."
"Exactly!" Ma Rui pointed at her like she had just solved a great mystery. "He's in the middle of some deep revelation. We have to figure out what it is."
Wu Liang gasped. "What if he's going to ascend?"
Lin Fen sighed. "Please stop."
Zhang Xian ignored them, looking back at Zhao Qiang. "When he said he was thinking about it the wrong way, did he seem upset?"
Zhao Qiang considered that.
"…No," he said. "Not upset. Just… like he was trying to figure something out."
Chen Meili hummed. "Then we don't need to worry. If it was something bad, he wouldn't have been thinking about it out loud."
Zhao Qiang didn't know if that was true.
Master Jiang always thought out loud.
Still, he didn't seem like he was in trouble. Just distracted. Lost in thought.
Which meant —
"He'll come back when he's ready," Zhao Qiang said firmly.
The others looked at him.
Zhang Xian exhaled. "Fine. But we still need to keep an eye on him."
Ma Rui grinned. "Agreed."
Lin Fen looked exhausted. "This is ridiculous."
Wu Liang nudged Zhao Qiang. "Next time you see him, ask if he's unlocked the heavens yet."
Zhao Qiang sighed.
Master Jiang was definitely doing something weird.
But, whatever it was, he'd find out soon enough.
-x-x-x-
Ru Lan held her sister's hand as they walked through the market street, the scent of roasting chestnuts and fresh scallion pancakes filling the air. The town square was lively, filled with vendors shouting their prices and children darting between carts, laughing. It was one of those rare days where the entire family could spend time together — well, almost the entire family. Her older brothers were still in Longtiao City, unable to return. Work, they had said. Business, their father had explained.
Ru Lan didn't know what kind of business kept someone away for months, but she nodded anyway.
Her sister, Ru Mei, was haggling with a vendor over the price of silk ribbons. Her husband, Qiao Yuan, was standing beside her, arms crossed, doing his best to look intimidating. It was not working. The vendor, an elderly woman with sharp eyes and sharper words, simply waved him off.
Ru Mei turned to Ru Lan with a smile. "What do you think? The blue one or the red one?"
Ru Lan tilted her head, considering. "The blue one."
Her sister nodded, satisfied, before returning to the argument.
Ru Lan let her eyes wander across the market. She wasn't really paying attention to what the vendors were selling. Instead, she watched the way people moved, how the crowd shifted like water. She counted the number of steps people took before changing direction, trying to find a pattern.
Patterns were everywhere. That's what Master Jiang had said.
She thought about his lessons. About how numbers weren't just numbers, but something bigger. Before, arithmetic had been confusing, impossible — like a wall she couldn't climb. But now, it was different. Now, she could take a big problem and break it into smaller pieces. She could see the way things fit together.
It wasn't just about numbers anymore. It was about how to see the world.
She wondered if Master Jiang would ever come back.
People still saw him, sometimes. Buying food, walking through town, always looking distracted, like his mind was somewhere far away. But it had gotten worse, recently. He didn't talk to them. Didn't even seem to notice when his students tried to catch his attention.
It had been four months. Ru Lan wanted to believe he would return, but the longer it went on, the more it felt like he never would.
"Ru Lan, look at this!" Ru Mei called, pulling her from her thoughts.
She turned to see her sister holding up a delicate silver hairpin shaped like a plum blossom. It was beautiful.
"I think you should get it," Ru Lan said.
Ru Mei beamed. "Then I will."
They moved on to another stall, chatting about nothing in particular. It was a good day. The kind of day where nothing bad was supposed to happen.
But then, everything changed.
The shift in the market was subtle at first. A murmur. A hesitation. Then a stillness, like a thread pulling too tight.
Ru Lan didn't notice immediately, but she felt it. A strange tension, like the air had thickened. Her mother's grip on her wrist tightened slightly.
Then she saw him.
A man in fine robes, dark green with silver embroidery. The crest on his sleeve was unfamiliar to her, but the way people reacted made her stomach twist.
A cultivator.
He walked through the market like he owned it. Not with arrogance — no, it was worse than that. It was the kind of confidence that came from knowing no one would dare stop him.
No one could stop him.
And then, he looked at Ru Mei.
His lips curled into a smirk.
Ru Lan's breath caught in her throat.
Her sister, oblivious, was still examining a set of earrings, talking to her husband. She hadn't noticed. But everyone else had.
The vendor stopped talking. The people near them subtly stepped away. Her mother's fingers tightened even more.
Ru Lan knew, instinctively, that this was wrong.
That this was dangerous.
She had never seen this man before, but she had heard enough stories. Cultivators from the city did not come to Qinghe Town unless they had a reason. And when they wanted something, no one could say no.
And he was walking toward her sister.
Qiao Yuan must have sensed it too, because he moved slightly, stepping closer to Ru Mei. His jaw was clenched. But there was hesitation in his stance. Because what could he do?
A commoner, standing against a cultivator?
The clan emblem on the man's sleeve finally registered in Ru Lan's mind.
Liu Clan. From Longtiao City.
She had heard the name before. She had heard people whisper about them, about how they owned a third of the city, about how they got whatever they wanted.
And no one stopped them.
The cultivator stopped in front of Ru Mei. He tilted his head, studying her, his smirk widening. "You're quite lovely," he said, his tone too smooth. "What is your name?"
Ru Mei stiffened. She had noticed now.
Qiao Yuan's hand clenched into a fist. "She's married," he said.
The cultivator didn't even look at him.
Ru Mei forced a polite smile. "Thank you for your kind words, honored cultivator, but we were just leaving."
She moved to step away.
He reached out.
Her mother inhaled sharply.
Ru Lan felt her stomach drop.
No one spoke. No one moved.
Because no one could. This was a cultivator. A member of the Liu Clan.
And if they angered him, it wouldn't just be her sister who suffered.
It would be all of them.
Ru Lan felt her breath quicken. She wanted to do something, but what could she do?
Her mind raced, grasping for an answer.
A problem too big to solve.
Break it down.
She couldn't fight him. She couldn't stop him. She couldn't make him leave.
But —
She could run.
Her feet moved before her mind fully caught up.
She turned and sprinted, pushing through the crowd, barely hearing her mother's startled gasp.
She didn't know where she was going at first, only that she had to find someone.
Someone who might — who could — do something.
Master Jiang.
The thought hit her like a lightning strike.
She didn't know if he would help. Didn't know if he could help.
But she knew this —
Master Jiang was not normal.
And he was the only one in Qinghe Town who might be able to stop this.
She ran faster.