Rain had come to the eastern provinces.
Not the fierce storms of the coastal strongholds, nor the bone-chilling mists of the northern jade peaks—this was a rural rain, soft and persistent. It slipped down the old roof tiles of the Jin Clan compound in thin silver threads and filled the air with the clean scent of wet loam and budding plum trees.
Jin Wu-ren sat by the open window of the study, wrapped in a slightly oversized robe Mu Qinglan had sewn for him last winter. The cuffs trailed over his wrists, but he didn't mind. He preferred the softness, the anonymity.
Outside, the faint drizzle sang over the mossy stone paths and bamboo groves, gentle but endless.
Inside, silence ruled—until a soft cough came from behind.
"Ren'er," Jin Yao's voice was quiet but firm, the kind of tone a man used when balancing patience with discipline. "You should come meet Elder Wei. He's been waiting."
Jin Wu-ren turned, schooling his expression into something appropriately hesitant for a boy not yet five.
"Do I have to?" he asked, allowing just enough childish reluctance to color his voice.
Jin Yao gave a sigh and rubbed his temple. "Yes. He's the elder in charge of outer courtyard assignments. Your name was drawn for his spring aptitude assessments. Just... try to be respectful."
Outer courtyard assignments, Jin Wu-ren mused inwardly. So they're already trying to sort the wheat from the chaff.
In clans like the Jin, which lacked the power or prestige of the major noble sects, resources were tight. Cultivation manuals, pills, and personal guidance from inner court elders were reserved for those with promise—or, more accurately, those whose promise was politically useful.
The outer courtyard was where the lesser branches sent their hopefuls to prove themselves. It was also where figures like Elder Jin Rou quietly "relocated" rivals and their children.
So they want to sweep me into the shadows, Jin Wu-ren thought. How convenient.
He allowed his father to guide him across the compound to the covered walkways that led toward the outer courtyard's southern pavilion. Rain tapped gently against the bamboo overhang as they walked. Mu Qinglan watched them go with a faint crease between her brows.
She knew, he could tell. Not the depth of it, not the poison veiled as courtesy—but she sensed it. A mother's instinct, perhaps. Or maybe just the exhaustion of someone who had seen ambition turn to cruelty too often.
At the southern pavilion, Elder Wei waited beneath the hanging paper lanterns. A thin, dry-looking man with long gray brows and a permanent twist to his lip, he smiled without warmth as they approached.
"So this is young Jin Wu-ren," he said, eyes flicking over the boy with the slow calculation of someone examining a sack of rice for mold. "A pity about his condition. Late to speak, late to walk… the heavens are sometimes cruel."
Jin Wu-ren said nothing.
Jin Yao forced a polite smile. "He's improved rapidly. He's begun memorizing glyphs. His energy sensing is steady."
"Mmm," Elder Wei grunted. "We'll see."
He waved a hand, and a servant stepped forward with a simple, circular jade tablet. It shimmered faintly with detection runes—old, but functional.
"Place your hand on the stone," Elder Wei said.
Jin Wu-ren did so without hesitation, already sensing the subtle weave of spiritual threads laced through the jade. This wasn't just an aptitude tester. It also logged cultivation stages and compared them to age-adjusted baselines.
He let the stone take his basic Qi signature, not resisting—then, with a casual mental flick, activated the compression seal he had hidden beneath his sleeve's cuff.
The energy recorded would register faint—just barely above a normal child's baseline. Enough to qualify for training but not worth attention.
The tablet glowed. Elder Wei glanced at it, squinted, then frowned.
"Odd… your flow is cleaner than expected for someone at this stage. Your mother must be feeding you well."
Let them think it's a fluke, Jin Wu-ren thought. Let them assign me to the scraps. That gives me cover.
"Put him with the lesser aptitude group," Elder Wei said after a moment. "Fourth bench, under Instructor Bai."
Jin Yao hesitated. "Is that necessary? He—"
"It's provisional," Elder Wei interrupted smoothly. "We'll reevaluate after spring season. Of course."
The smile he wore didn't reach his eyes.
Of course, Jin Wu-ren echoed silently.
As they walked back, Jin Yao sighed.
"I'm sorry, Ren'er. I should've expected this. We'll speak to your grandfather next week."
Jin Wu-ren shook his head. "It's fine, Father."
And he meant it.
Let them ignore him. Let them misplace him, underestimate him. The snake beneath the floorboards was the one no one watched—until it struck.
Back in his room, he pulled the small wooden box from beneath his floor mat. Inside were the talisman scraps and a folded sheet of spiritual analysis notes. He added a new line:
"Elder Wei's detector: cracked on the right side. Under-reports elemental attunement. Use this in future."
He worked by candlelight for another hour, refining a Qi filtering technique from his first life. Then he began outlining a method for Qi threading through silk—an art once used by shadow agents of the Silent Lotus Sect to embed energy into cloth undetectably.
He was building his toolset.
And when the time came, he would be more than ready.
The outer courtyard was not nearly as grand as the Jin clan's inner sanctum, but it had a quiet charm that Jin Wu-ren found oddly comforting. The buildings here were simple, made of weathered wood and gray brick, ringed by thin plum trees and rows of hardy red camellias. It was the kind of place meant for the forgotten and the overlooked.
He liked that.
There was less posturing here. No ceremonial guards, no gleaming ancestral pillars or grand marble statues. Only students—young boys and girls from lesser branches, practicing with wooden swords and meditating by moss-lined walls.
To them, Jin Wu-ren was just another quiet child from a no-name branch family. Small, slow-speaking, polite. Barely worth a glance.
Perfect.
The training fields were divided by age and assessed ability. He was placed in Group Four, with eight others, under a pale, soft-spoken man named Instructor Bai.
Instructor Bai was a cultivator of modest skill—a late-stage Qi Disciple with a limp and a kind heart. His instructions were direct and methodical, his tone always gentle.
"You don't need to rush," he told them on their first morning. "A strong foundation is better than a quick start."
Jin Wu-ren appreciated that. He nodded along with the others, kneeling on a simple reed mat, eyes fixed on the gravel training yard.
But his thoughts were far ahead.
He already sensed it: the Qi lines beneath the courtyard stone, faint but steady—old ley threads from a forgotten spirit well that had long since dried up. There was a faint residue, barely enough to tickle the senses of someone like Instructor Bai. But to Jin Wu-ren, who had once navigated celestial veins in the Void Sea of the Ninth Realm, it was like finding ancient treasure buried under dust.
That night, after the other students had returned to their small shared quarters, he lingered by the courtyard's far edge under the excuse of sweeping leaves.
When the instructor left, and the lights were doused, he sat down quietly on the worn earth, closed his eyes, and breathed.
Inhale. Thread the will.
Exhale. Anchor the spirit.
The technique was one of the most basic from his past life: the Opening Leaf Method, a meditative style used in the early stages of the Eight Paths School—a sect long lost to war. He had learned it in his second decade as a wandering sword monk after the first collapse of his empire.
Back then, he had fled everything. His name, his throne, his past. The Eight Paths had taken him in not as an emperor, but as a wounded man with cracked dantian and haunted eyes.
He had sat on cold stone under falling sakura blossoms, breathing like this. Threading will into breath. Anchoring spirit to spine.
Now, decades—no, lifetimes—later, he repeated that process as a child with stubby fingers and a voice that had not yet settled.
But the results were stunning.
His damaged soul core—ruptured in his final tribulation—began to shimmer faintly, re-threading through the fractures. The essence he gathered was no longer vast or celestial, but it was clean.
And it felt right.
That night, he sat in silent meditation for three hours, absorbing more spiritual energy than any outer disciple could dream of.
But the next morning, he yawned and stumbled through sword drills like a sleepy five-year-old. He got knocked over during stance training. His wooden sword slipped from his fingers. Instructor Bai just chuckled and offered him tips.
"Don't grip so hard, little Wu-ren. Let the sword rest in your fingers."
"Y-yes, Instructor Bai…"
He caught one boy's smirk. It was Zhang Fei, the biggest of Group Four—broad-shouldered and cocky, with a smug air and a booming voice that didn't suit his age.
"Careful, Wu-ren," Zhang Fei said. "You'll stab your own foot if you're not careful."
The others laughed. Jin Wu-ren smiled sheepishly and scratched his head.
Inside, he was cataloging them all.
Zhang Fei: high physical aptitude, poor energy sensitivity. Favors brute strength. Slight arrogance. Weak discipline.
Instructor Bai: passive but earnest. Weak-willed but knowledgeable. Could be influenced.
Ground conditions: minor residual spiritual threads. Could be reinforced.
Even the wooden sword in his hand—old pine, slightly warped—became part of the plan. He'd already etched a qi-guiding groove near the base, just shallow enough to avoid detection. Within weeks, it would allow him to stabilize energy along its spine, improving balance and power without revealing overt cultivation.
Deception, he thought, was always the first stage of war.
---
By the end of his first week, Jin Wu-ren had mapped the courtyard's spiritual currents, memorized his peers' habits, and advanced his soul core's recovery by at least two stages.
He no longer needed to fully meditate to absorb energy. A breath, a stance, even stillness during instruction—every moment became an opportunity.
He was a farmer again, but this time not of land or empire—he was planting himself. Rooting his power in a field they had forgotten.
One night, as he practiced a hidden stance beneath the plum tree at the edge of the courtyard, Instructor Bai walked past, paused, and smiled.
"You like the quiet, don't you?" he said.
Jin Wu-ren looked up, blinking innocently. "Yes, Instructor. It helps me think."
Bai's eyes softened. "Good. Thinking is important. Most children only learn how to act."
He walked on without further comment.
Jin Wu-ren watched him go, then looked back to the night sky.
The day of the Spirit Root Evaluation Ceremony arrived with a rare bustle.
For most members of the Jin Clan's outer branches, this was the first major event their children would attend. Held at the Stone Courtyard of Ancestral Light, it was the first formal recognition of a child's potential. Each child between the ages of four and six would be tested for innate aptitude: their spirit root affinity, spiritual sensitivity, and meridian clarity.
It was also, though none said it aloud, a day where lines were drawn—between the talented and the forgotten.
Jin Wu-ren, of course, already knew the outcome.
He had cultivated past such evaluations in his old life. He built entire systems of classification around spirit roots. The old him had tested thousands, modified hundreds through forbidden rituals, and even refined a spirit root from stardust during the Eon of Falling Suns.
Now he was going to be judged by a dusty jade slab and a clan elder with failing eyesight.
Ah, he mused, how far I have fallen.
Still, he had to admit, there was an odd thrill in it.
He stood in line with the other children of the outer families, dressed in a clean hemp robe stitched by his mother the night before. The robe was simple but neatly patched, and he wore it proudly. His hair had been tied into a tiny topknot that tickled the top of his head, and his cheeks had the faint softness of lingering baby fat.
From the outside, he was just a cute, quiet child.
Only his eyes—still the same deep bronze from his old life—carried the hidden weight of eons.
"Next!" called Elder Jin Rou, standing beside the spirit-testing monument. She was a gaunt woman with sharp cheeks and a high forehead, wearing robes that shimmered faintly with spiritual inscriptions.
Jin Wu-ren had studied her in silence for days now. She was an ambitious figure, always aligning herself with the main branch. She looked down on commoners, despised weak bloodlines, and smiled only when she saw others fail.
He expected nothing from her.
As he stepped forward, several of the other children smirked. He heard one whisper:
"That's the one from the weaver's hut. His father's got no cultivation."
"Probably a zero affinity. Maybe he'll crack the stone just by standing near it."
A ripple of laughter followed.
Jin Wu-ren ignored them.
He placed his palm on the jade slab.
It was warm—surprisingly so. And reactive.
The stone pulsed, faint veins of color blooming across its surface. Jin Wu-ren narrowed his eyes slightly, focusing just enough qi through his palm to activate a controlled result.
Let them see what they expect, he thought. Not what I am.
The stone flashed with soft orange light. Faint, flickering. The sign of low fire affinity, with barely sufficient sensitivity.
Elder Jin Rou frowned. "Another weak root."
She scratched a mark into her scroll and waved him off. "Step down. Next!"
The audience murmured, a few nodding as if it confirmed what they already believed.
But Jin Wu-ren smiled inwardly.
In truth, his fire affinity was gold-tier, one of the highest grades—but he had suppressed it deliberately. Not only that, his spirit root had partially reconstructed itself from the ruined fragments of his old soul core. The process was incredibly rare, almost impossible.
If shown, it would shock the entire clan—and draw unwanted attention.
No. He needed more time.
He bowed politely to the elder, turned, and walked back to the crowd.
Yet just as he was about to slip back into the group, a sudden tremor rippled through the stone.
The slab pulsed again—once, twice—then flashed brilliantly red, before fading just as quickly.
A hush fell over the courtyard.
Elder Jin Rou squinted at the slab. "Hmph. Residual energy fluctuation. Probably from the last child."
But another elder—a quiet, scholarly man named Jin Fan—stepped forward and stared at Wu-ren with narrowed eyes. "Wait. That fluctuation had structure. It wasn't random."
Jin Wu-ren feigned confusion.
"I didn't do anything, honored elder," he said softly, even letting his lower lip tremble slightly. "Did… did I break it?"
The elder blinked. "...No. Likely just a glitch. Carry on."
But whispers had already started.
Jin Wu-ren returned to his seat, heart steady.
Now they wonder, he thought. But they won't act. Not yet.
He noticed that a few eyes—sharp, calculating—were watching him now. Some with curiosity. Others with growing suspicion.
Even the children noticed. Zhang Fei, who had mocked him during training, avoided his gaze for the first time. Others who once laughed now looked away.
After the ceremony, his mother came to retrieve him. Her eyes were warm, her smile proud.
"You did well, little Wu-ren," she said, kissing his forehead. "No matter what the elders say, you'll always be my bright star."
He nestled into her embrace, letting himself enjoy the softness, the warmth.
His path would be long. It would be dangerous. And eventually, it would shake the heavens again.
But for now… being a child wasn't so bad.