The cultivator was young. Early twenties, lean, the frame that cheap cultivation and cheaper meals produce. Qi Gathering — low tier. His robes were patched. His sword was blunt. His qi-signature was as remarkable as his appearance: It wasn't. And he appeared on the path without subtlety.

  He was walking south. We were walking north. The path was narrow and the intersection was inevitable.

  He felt Wei before he saw him.

  I watched it happen. The exact moment — his stride slowed, his head turned, his face changed. The transition from casual disinterest to focused attention, triggered by the qi-signature that Wei was radiating with the unconscious generosity of a candle that doesn't know it's producing light.

  He stopped. Stared at Wei. At a thirteen-year-old boy whose qi-output read as Foundation Establishment — middle phase, whose channel architecture was more sophisticated than most Core Formation cultivators achieved in a decade.

  His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

  "Hey — you. Boy."

  Wei stopped. Looked at him. The neutral look — assessment without deference, the expression of someone who had spent months being assessed by a woman who made this cultivator look like furniture.

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  "How old are you?"

  "Thirteen."

  The cultivator's face did something complicated. Disbelief, recalculation, disbelief again.

  "Thirteen. And you're — that's Foundation Establishment. Middle phase."

  Wei said nothing. He didn't know what the words meant in terms of what was normal and what wasn't. To him, it was Tuesday.

  "That qi-flow pattern — that's impossible for his age." The cultivator's voice had shifted. Quieter now. Almost reverent. "Who trained you?"

  His eyes flicked to me. Behind Wei. Three steps back, as always. My qi-signature was what it always was: nothing. His gaze slid over me the way it would slide over a servant, a porter, a mortal woman carrying someone else's pack. Dismissed. Not worth the effort of a second look.

  He did not take me seriously. They rarely did.

  "Keep walking," I said.

  The cultivator flinched. Turned. Looked at me with the delayed recognition of someone suddenly noticing a wall that had been there the entire time.

  "Wait. Please forgive my ignorance. I've never seen—"

  "Keep walking."

  Wei glanced at me. I walked. He followed. The cultivator stood in the path behind us, his mouth open, his attention locked on Wei's retreating back.

  He would tell everyone he met. Each retelling would add detail and subtract accuracy and the signal would propagate through the cultivator community like smoke through a room — diffuse, pervasive, impossible to contain.

  Wei was visible now. His own qi, his own development, his own impossible advancement was producing a signature that other cultivators could read. And the lantern couldn't be dimmed. Not by me. Not by him. Not yet. The control mechanisms that would allow him to suppress were three cultivation stages away.

  Too fast.