Feng Yao's breath steamed faintly in the early morning chill as he moved through his drills, the battered machete slicing the air with a dull whistle.
It was the seventieth cut.
Then the seventy-first.
Each swing slower than the last.
His muscles burned. His wrists ached. But it wasn't pain that made him falter.
It was emptiness.
There was no weight behind the strikes. No momentum. Just motion for the sake of discipline. Just ritual.
He stopped after the eighty-third swing, blade lowered, chest heaving. Sweat dripped from his chin onto the cracked stone beneath his feet. The wooden post he used for training—a crooked old thing his father had once fashioned from a split log—was barely scratched.
He stared at it.
Unmoving.
Unchanged.
And then, finally, he sat down in the dirt and let the silence wrap around him.
Days had passed since the spirit deer.
He still hadn't recovered fully. The wound on his side had sealed, but the flesh around it was tight, and deep aches pulsed with every twist of his torso. He moved slower now. Guarded.
The Sword System remained mostly silent. There had been no new quests. No new fragments. No guidance. Just the slow, constant pressure of its presence.
Always watching.
Always waiting.
He knew what it wanted.
Growth.
But what could he do with nothing?
He was still stuck at Body Refining 3.
Still empty-handed.
Still weak.
And the truth was... the excitement had faded.
The rush of awakening the system, of gaining Sword Sense, of completing his first quests—it had dulled. Faded into routine. Even the rewards no longer felt as sweet when progress was measured in fractions, and each small victory came laced with days of pain.
The machete lay across his knees.
Feng Yao stared at it.
"It's not enough," he muttered to the cold morning air.
"You were told this," the Sword System answered smoothly, its voice surfacing like a ripple over still water.
"You chose the slow path. Discipline over shortcuts. Growth without risk. That path is narrow, and punishing."
Yao said nothing. Not because he disagreed—but because he knew it was true.
He'd chosen to train alone, without seeking favors or begging the village cultivators. He'd refused help from Shen, refused to even sell his father's few belongings for coin. There was a kind of pride in that.
But pride didn't make him stronger.
Not yet.
It was midday when he passed through the village square, intending only to buy dried radish from the open stalls. He had no business lingering. No one spoke to him, as usual, and he preferred it that way.
But then he heard it.
Two men, seated under the shade of the tea house awning, speaking with the careless volume of travelers passing through.
"…swore there was a cave, I'm telling you. Past the reedbrush hills, just before the cliffs. Found it half-collapsed, but it had markings. Talismans. Leftovers from some old sect maybe, who knows?"
"Tch. And did he find a golden bell and a fairy wife too?"
"Laugh all you want, but the boy from Reedbrush said he found a metal disk that pulsed when he picked it up. Said it nearly gave him a nosebleed. Sounds like a spiritual artifact to me."
Yao froze mid-step.
The two merchants didn't notice him. Or if they did, they didn't care. They went on talking, their voices fading as they moved back toward their wagons.
But the words lingered.
Markings. Talismans. A disk that pulsed.
His heart beat once. Hard.
Could it be real?
A cave from a forgotten battle? A buried cache of relics?
Even if the artifact was broken, even if it was worthless—what if it wasn't?
What if this was the opportunity he'd been waiting for?
He didn't sleep that night.
Instead, he lay awake staring at the rafters, his thoughts tumbling over one another in slow, grinding circles.
The Sword System offered no opinion.
But he could feel it listening.
Waiting to see which way he would lean.
Feng Yao left before the sun had risen.
He packed light: a strip of salted meat, a water flask, a coil of rope, and his machete wrapped in cloth. He didn't tell Uncle Shen. Didn't leave a note.
He didn't want anyone asking why.
The reedbrush hills lay east of Stoneshade, beyond the terraced farms and thorn-thick slopes where travelers rarely tread. Once, decades ago, the area had been used as a staging ground during a minor sect war—back before the world forgot it.
It was an empty place now. Dry. Still.
As the sun rose, golden reeds brushed his shoulders with every step, whispering softly against his cloak. The air was heavy with heat, but the silence was cool and watchful.
He climbed for hours.
Carefully.
Scanning every slope and ridge for signs: disturbed brush, unnatural formations, carved symbols.
Nothing.
Just rocks and sun and silence.
By mid-morning, he was sore and tired, his optimism chipped away by each false lead.
And then—
He saw it.
A fallen tree, roots curled like grasping fingers around a half-hidden crack in the stone wall behind it. The soil there had shifted, collapsed inward.
Something had been buried.
He dropped to his knees, clearing brush and dirt with his hands until his fingers ached. The opening was narrow—barely wide enough for a boy his size to squeeze through—but there was air flowing from within.
Old air.
Dusty and stale and faintly metallic.
The kind of air that had not been disturbed in years.
His breath quickened.
He lit his small oil lantern, tied it to his wrist, and crawled inside.
The tunnel was tight—just large enough to move through with a hunched back—and it descended in a slow, spiraling slope. Each footstep sent a scatter of pebbles clattering into the dark.
Eventually, it opened into a small, uneven chamber.
And inside were bones.
Two skeletons sat slumped against the far wall. Their robes had long since rotted, leaving only scraps of dark cloth and a few rusted fittings. One had its hand resting on its chest. The other held something in its lap.
Feng Yao stepped closer, breath caught in his throat.
It was a metal disk. Round, flat, and etched with strange lines.
His hand hovered over it.
"Caution," the Sword System murmured.
"Unfamiliar script. No energy signature."
He touched it.
Nothing.
No pulse. No spark. No hum of qi.
Just a dry, brittle sound as the surface flaked away and crumbled beneath his fingers.
Rust.
That was all.
He stood there for a long moment.
Silent.
The lantern swayed in the still air. Shadows danced on the bones.
Two cultivators.
Or wanderers. Or refugees.
Long dead.
Abandoned in this hole.
Waiting for rescue that never came.
His fingers tightened.
"Do you feel foolish?" the system asked.
"No."
His voice was quiet. Tight.
"I feel… tired."
"You sought a shortcut."
"I sought a chance."
A pause.
Then the system answered—not with scorn, but something colder.
Acceptance.
"Desperation leads to error. You followed a whisper, and found only dust. Let this lesson cut deeper than any blade."
Feng Yao nodded, staring down at the forgotten dead.
He didn't take the disk.
Didn't disturb the bones.
He turned, and left.
It was dusk by the time he returned to Stoneshade.
He said nothing to the villagers as he passed.
They didn't ask.
The path back to his cottage felt longer than before, the wind colder against his neck.
But he walked it anyway.
Step by step.
When he finally sat outside his door, sweat-stained and sore, the stars had already begun to appear.
He watched them quietly.
For a long time.
Then, at last, the Sword System spoke again.
"You chose wrong. But you walked away."
"That is the beginning of wisdom."
Feng Yao leaned back against the wall.
He didn't respond.
But the silence that followed was no longer empty.
It was the stillness of a blade, cooling after a failed strike.
Waiting for the next.