The training yard smelled of damp straw and iron, the kind of smell that settled into the ribs of a place and refused to leave. Li Wei moved through it like someone learning a new gait—less clumsy now, his center quietly different after the Gentle Crossing with Mei Ling. The +300 Qi the system had given him hummed somewhere under the skin; it was not showy, only steadier footsteps and a longer patience before he spoke.
But power, even the soft kind, bent the air. It drew attention the way a lantern draws insects: not all curious, not all grateful.
He felt it first as the sideways glances that stopped a conversation mid-sentence. Then as the extra distance people kept when they passed him—small, almost polite, but deliberate. Rumor was a patient animal; it fed slowly and fattened on petty details. The willow session had been a private thing taken public; now the consequences fluttered like a kite on a windy day.
"Careful with your practice," Hua Lin said that morning, her tone neutral as a scalpel. "People notice results before they know the work that made them possible."
Li Wei only nodded. He had no intention of hiding the path, but he knew which bits needed shelter. He spent the early hours in meridian review with Hua Lin, letting her correct his posture and adjust the angle of his breath. The work grounded him in a way applause never could.
By midmorning the seed of trouble had sprouted into a small, sharp weed. A junior outer disciple named Chen Bo—broad-shouldered and perpetually bitter about his lack of recognition—had taken to muttering under his breath. At first the complaints were general: "Newcomer gets strange favors," "System rewards can be rigged." Voices like thorns finding soft places.
Chen Bo's murmurs were not original; envy sharpened words into weapons people could use without getting their hands dirty. He gathered a few like-minded peers—disciples who liked to be loud and who needed a reason to feel superior—and their little ring buzzed like a hornet nest.
Word moved down to Elders in the way these things always did: small, emissary whispers, then a more formal note. The envoy's talisman—still a cold presence in Li Wei's chest-pocket—reacted with a faint vibration, a reminder that attention had layers. The system, whose benevolence had been generous, was also a ledger that recorded social turbulence as precisely as it logged Qi.
[ALERT]
Host: Li Wei
Status: Rising Notoriety (Outer).
Potential: Social friction detected.
Hint: Address envy with transparency; strengthen bonds and public trust. Reward: +50 Qi upon successful mitigation.
The orb's suggestion was practical and boringly true. Li Wei set his jaw and thought of the rooms he wanted to build, not the towers. Envy was an inevitable element of any ascent; it required architecture rather than pyrotechnics.
He started small. Where Chen Bo and his circle gathered after meals, Li Wei began to appear, not theatrically but with small, useful tasks. He asked for help moving a crate of herbs, offered to teach a breathing exercise in a corner, and—crucially—paid attention. Attention was a kind of currency Chen Bo had been starved of; it was also, Li Wei suspected, something envy mistook for entitlement.
At first Chen Bo met the gestures with curling suspicion. "Why are you doing that?" he asked one evening, leaning elbow-on-knee as if bored.
"Because the work needs to be done," Li Wei said simply. "If you want, stay and learn how to keep your breath steady during long shifts. It'll make beatings from the master less likely." The joke got a bark of laughter from the others; Chen Bo's jaw loosened fractionally. It was only a moment of human warmth, but the system logged the micro-policy as a success.
[MICRO-QUEST]
Task: Engage and assist small group of outer disciples in daily chores and breathing drills.
Reward: +10 Qi per session; Passive empathy +1.
Still, not all resentments could be soothed with service. Chen Bo's more malleable followers softened, but his core needle of dissatisfaction found another outlet—he leaked an anecdote to a few sympathetic ears about last night's willow session, lifting a fragment and letting imagination do the rest. By dusk the story had changed shape: not a practiced dual session but a "forbidden dalliance," another notch in the rumor mill.
Lan Yue watched all of this as if she were reading a map she had drawn herself. She moved through the courtyard with the economy of someone who had learned to spend attention like money—never frivolously. That afternoon she stopped near the herb racks where Li Wei was quietly rolling poultices with Yun Shuang and offered a single, precise question.
"You've been busy," she said, her voice like a blade polished to conversation. "Is it curiosity that drives you, or calculation?"
Li Wei blinked at the clarity of the question. It was almost flattering in its honesty. "Both," he admitted. "Curiosity keeps me interested. Calculation keeps me alive."
Lan Yue's expression did something between a smile and a measurement. "Ambition needs boundaries," she said. "Curiosity needs anchors." She leaned a fraction closer, so close that the air between them tightened. "If you are to bring change, you must understand how to hold those who will be dragged by it."
Her words were advice disguised as warning. They also carried the faintest glimmer of… interest. Not warmth, not exactly, but the kind of watching that meant she was noting variables for later testing. Li Wei answered with the small humility he had been practicing. "I plan to anchor."
She nodded once, then stepped away, a ripple of controlled motion. Lan Yue had planted a seed and, in doing so, had signaled something else: she was neither friend nor foe quite yet. She was a compass.
That evening, Chen Bo's ring swelled and one of its more reckless members—motivated by competitiveness and liquored courage—stood before Elder Ji and made a pointed complaint, more theatrical than factual. "He flaunts the system," the troublemaker declared loudly. "He uses rituals to gain favor. It's not fair."
Elder Ji's eyes were slow, hard as a river stone. He did not storm; he did not thunder. He did what was more dangerous—the senior of the sect cataloged the complaint and assigned a measured response: supervised practice slots, a public instruction Li Wei must deliver again, and a requirement to include the complaining party in the demonstration.
Li Wei could have declined. He could have let the anger singe for a while. Instead he leaned into the obligation. He recognized that visibility could be turned into an instrument of defusion. By inviting opposition into the fold—literally, by making them partners in instruction—he could make rumour less potent.
When the day came to include Chen Bo in the drills, the younger man bristled like an animal forced to learn a new trick. But the practical business of breath, pulse checks, and responsibility subdued the dramatics. Li Wei watched, guided quietly, and when Chen Bo hesitated, he met the hesitation with steadiness rather than scorn.
After the session, as the sun moved toward the roofline, Chen Bo's face had lost some of its hardness. He did not offer an apology; he did not need to. The seed of grudging respect was not a garden, but it was enough.
That night, as Li Wei lay with the Obsidian Heart low and quiet, the blue rectangle pulsed a small, satisfied note.
[NOTIFICATION]
MitigationComplete: Social friction reduced. Reward: +80 Qi. Passive Skill Progress: Empathy +2.
The tally was small, but important. Envy would return—power attracted those patterns—but tonight it had been calmed by craft: transparency, attention, and a deliberate invitation to see the work behind the reward. Lan Yue's silhouette passed the veranda on her way to patrol, her profile a silent comma. She did not smile, but she did not sneer. That, in this place, felt close to a truce.
Li Wei closed his eyes with a steadying breath. The Perverted Dao gave him tools. It also set the rules: use them to build rooms where people could enter safely, or watch them turn to battlements and barricades. He resolved to keep building—patient, small, persistent. Envy might be a tide, but tides could be channeled. Tonight he had taken the first shovelfuls of earth. Tomorrow he would make the walls.
End of chapter 14