The eastern woods started where the sect grounds ended, a thick line of trees that climbed the mountainside and stretched along the ridgeline. A stone marker near the tree line read Sector 3 with an arrow pointing northeast.

  They followed the path into the trees. The canopy closed over them and the light dimmed, and the sounds of the sect faded behind them until all they could hear was wind through the branches and the occasional rustle of small animals in the undergrowth.

  “Hey,” Sun Hao said after a while. “Where do you think the pale girl ended up? Jiang Mei. Which elder took her? Is it even possible for an elder to take a personal disciple this early?”

  Yan Qiu’s stomach tightened. The question was innocent enough, but it pulled his mind back to last night, to Elder Shen standing at the top of the stairs and the condition he had been given. Three A-rank missions. A mysterious elder watching him. He did not want to explain any of that.

  “Maybe,” he said, keeping his voice even. “I heard it happens sometimes if the elder sees something special.” He glanced at Sun Hao. “Why do you want to know about her?”

  “I just wanted to know. As a friend.”

  “A friend?” Yan Qiu looked at him. “You never even talked to her.”

  “Well, yes, but she sat with us after the combat trial. That counts for something.”

  “She sat with us. You did not say a word to her.”

  Sun Hao’s ears went red. “I was tired. I had just lost a fight.”

  Yan Qiu grinned. “Sure it does.”

  “Stop looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you are about to say something stupid.”

  “I was not going to say anything.”

  “Good.”

  They walked in silence for a few steps before Yan Qiu added, “She is pretty though.”

  “I will hit you.”

  Yan Qiu laughed and kept walking. The tension from the question had passed, and Sun Hao was too busy being embarrassed to circle back to it.

  The woods grew thicker around them. Sun Hao shook off the teasing and focused on the task.

  “Spirit beasts make territories,” he said, repeating what Tao Wen had told them. “So the normal animals in the area would be under its control. If we see animals acting strange or avoiding a certain spot, that is probably where it is.”

  “That is what Senior Tao said, right?”

  “Yeah.” Sun Hao looked around. “It feels different out here.”

  It did. The sect grounds were maintained and orderly, but the woods were wild. The trees grew close together and the undergrowth was thick, and Yan Qiu could feel a faint presence of qi in the air that was different from the sect’s formations.

  The area was quiet. A few small animals moved through the bush here and there, but nothing large.

  “Well, it feels nervous now that we are actually here,” Yan Qiu said.

  “Do not worry. We can do it,” Sun Hao said.

  “I guess we can.”

  They searched for a while, moving quietly through the trees and checking for signs. They found tracks in the soft earth, small paw prints that led deeper into the woods. They followed them past a stream and up a shallow rise, and at the top they found a clearing where the undergrowth had been flattened in a rough circle.

  A gathered presence of qi hung in the air, faint and concentrated. Something was here.

  They crept forward on their toes, keeping low and quiet.

  The spirit beast cub was sleeping in a hollow at the base of a large tree. It was small, about the size of a large cat, with grey fur and a bushy tail curled around its body. Its breathing was slow and peaceful.

  Sun Hao stopped. “It is so small,” he whispered. “Look at it. It is actually cute.”

  It really was cute. The cub looked like something a child would want to keep as a pet, not something that needed to be killed for a mission.

  “We still have to do it,” Yan Qiu said quietly. “And if something bigger shows up while we are standing here, we will be the ones in trouble. Let us do it quickly.”

  Sun Hao hesitated. He looked at the sleeping cub and his face twisted with something between guilt and resolve. “Fine. I will go first.”

  He started moving forward slowly, his hand on the hilt of his practice sword.

  Yan Qiu followed. As he got closer, something shifted inside him. The nervousness he had been feeling faded, and in its place came something warm and steady. His breathing slowed. His grip on the sword tightened. The cub was right there, small and defenseless, and the act of approaching it with a blade felt natural in a way that it should not have.

  It felt good.

  He moved past Sun Hao without thinking about it. His sword came up and he brought it down in a single clean stroke. The cub did not wake. It was over before it started.

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  Sun Hao stared. “That was fast.”

  Yan Qiu stood over the body with his sword still in his hand. The warmth in his chest had not faded. If anything it had grown, spreading through his limbs like something waking up, and he realized he was smiling.

  Sun Hao crouched beside the cub and found the spirit core, a small undeveloped thing barely the size of a pebble. He cracked it free and held it up. “We can take this as proof, right?”

  He looked up at Yan Qiu and his expression changed.

  “What is wrong with your face?”

  “What?”

  “You are smiling. And it looks…” Sun Hao trailed off. He stood up and took a half step back. “It looks really creepy. Stop it.”

  Yan Qiu blinked. “What smile?”

  “The one you are doing right now. It is giving me chills. Cut it out.”

  The warmth drained from his chest. He touched his own face and felt the corners of his mouth still pulled up in an expression he had not chosen to make.

  He forced his face flat. “Better?”

  “Much.” Sun Hao was looking at him with something between confusion and unease. “Just do not do that again. It was really unsettling.”

  Yan Qiu did not know what to say to that, so he just said, “Okay.”

  “Let us head back.”

  They were making their way back through the trees when they heard footsteps ahead. Both of them tensed and reached for their swords, but the figure that stepped out from behind a tree was familiar.

  Jiang Mei.

  She stopped when she saw them, her pale face showing a flicker of surprise before it settled back into its usual calm.

  “What are you two doing out here?” she asked.

  “Mission,” Yan Qiu said. “Spirit beast cub. We just finished.”

  She looked at the blood on his sword and the small core in Sun Hao’s hand. “A C-rank mission on your second day? You know that could have gone really badly, right?”

  “It went fine.”

  “This time.” She gave them both a look. “You got lucky with a sleeping cub. It could be dangerous, you know.”

  Yan Qiu gestured toward Sun Hao. “This is Sun Hao. He placed fourth in the trials. Sun Hao, this is Jiang Mei.”

  Sun Hao opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He stood there with the spirit core in one hand and his other hand half-raised in a greeting that never finished, and his face went red from the neck up.

  Jiang Mei looked at him. Yan Qiu looked at him. Sun Hao looked at the ground.

  “Is he alright?” Jiang Mei asked.

  “He was talking fine a minute ago,” Yan Qiu said.

  Sun Hao made a sound that might have been a word but was not.

  “I heard you were taken as a personal disciple by Elder Qiao Ling.”, Yan Qiu asked in a way he could question her.

  She sighed. “Words spread so fast. Nothing can be kept in silence forever.” She paused. “But yes. Elder Qiao Ling tested my affinity for sensory arts and offered to take me on. I am staying in the inner court now.”

  “What is it like?” Yan Qiu asked.

  Something shifted in her expression, the faintest trace of wonder breaking through her usual composure. “The inner hall and the elder pavilions are on a different level entirely. The outer court felt grand when I first arrived, but the inner court makes it look like a hill sitting at the base of a mountain. The qi density alone is several times higher, and the resources available…” She stopped herself. “It is good.”

  Yan Qiu felt something tighten in his chest. Not jealousy, not exactly. More like hunger. If the inner court was that much better, then getting there faster meant getting stronger faster. And if he got stronger faster, maybe the dreams and the dark thoughts and the things he did not understand about himself would start making sense.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked.

  “A task from Elder Qiao Ling. Gathering specific herbs that grow in this part of the woods.” She held up a small cloth bag. “Nothing dangerous.”

  They talked for a few more minutes. Jiang Mei asked about their dormitory and the training, and Yan Qiu told her about Elder Han and the foundation techniques. She listened with that quiet attentiveness she always had, taking in everything and giving away little.

  Sun Hao said nothing the entire time.

  When Jiang Mei left, heading deeper into the woods with her herb bag, Sun Hao stood there watching her go until she disappeared between the trees.

  Then he turned to Yan Qiu and spoke with full confidence, as if the last five minutes had not happened.

  “Seems like she is having a good time up there.” He stretched his arms above his head. “We should try hard to get to the inner court. What do you say?”

  Yan Qiu stared at him. “You did not say a single word to her.”

  “I was being respectful.”

  “You were being mute.”

  “Same thing.” Sun Hao started walking. “So? Inner court. Let us make it happen.”

  Yan Qiu laughed and followed him. “Okay.”

  They returned to the sect and turned in the spirit core at the Task Hall. The woman behind the counter checked it against their mission slip and marked it complete. Seven points each, split from the fifteen. One point however, they decided to leave it.

  “Not bad for a first mission,” Sun Hao said.

  They used some of their points at the Supply Hall to buy paper and ink. It was not expensive, just a few sheets and a small ink stick with a brush, but holding the paper made Yan Qiu’s chest ache in a way he had not expected.

  When they got back to Stone Sparrow Hall, Tao Wen was sitting on his bed reading. He looked up when they walked in and his shoulders dropped with visible relief.

  “You are back,” he said. “Both of you.”

  Peng Hu appeared from the stairs. “Oh good, the juniors survived.” He grinned, but there was something genuine behind it. “We were starting to wonder.”

  “You were worried about us?” Sun Hao asked, surprised.

  “You are our juniors,” Peng Hu said simply. “Of course we were.”

  “But we were only gone for a few hours,” Yan Qiu said.

  Tao Wen looked up from his book. “You are new disciples who took a C-rank mission on your second day. A few hours is plenty of time for something to go wrong.”

  “It is just natural to worry,” Peng Hu added. “You are our juniors.”

  Yan Qiu and Sun Hao looked at each other. Neither of them had expected that.

  That night, after the third floor settled into quiet, Yan Qiu sat cross-legged on his bed and cultivated.

  He took both qi gathering pills from his pouch and swallowed them together. The energy hit his core almost immediately, a rush of warmth that spread through his channels and pooled in his dantian. He circulated it the way he always did, the old method that someone had taught him, pulling the bright qi through his body and letting it strengthen his pathways.

  The dark current stirred beneath it, but he pushed past it and kept going. The pills made the qi flow faster and thicker, and he could feel his foundation solidifying with each cycle. He was not close to a breakthrough, not yet, but the progress was real.

  When he finished, he opened his eyes and reached for the paper and ink.

  He sat there for a long time with the brush in his hand, staring at the blank sheet. There was so much he wanted to say and so much he could not. He could not tell them about the dreams or the dark thoughts or the smile that had scared Sun Hao in the woods. He could not tell them about the elder’s condition, three A-rank missions in two years and his resolve to complete it in one year, because they would only worry.

  So he wrote the good parts.

  He told them he had passed the trials and placed third. He told them about Dusthaven, how big the city was and how he had found work at an inn. He told them about Xu Liang, the friend he had made there who talked too much and always wanted meat buns. He told them about the sect, how the mountains looked in the morning when the mist cleared, and about Sun Hao and how they had become friends. He told them about the training and the foundation techniques they were learning. He told them the food was decent and the seniors on his floor were kind.

  He told them he was safe and he was working hard and he missed them.

  He did not tell them the rest.

  He folded the letter carefully and set it aside to dry. The postman would come in a few days, and the letter would make its way down the mountain to Blackroot, and his mother would read it by the fire while his father pretended not to listen.

  He lay down and pulled the blanket over himself. The third floor was quiet around him.

  He closed his eyes and slept.