Chapter 4: The Whispering Mountain
The silence in the herb-gatherers' compound was heavier than any shout. No one looked at Li Wei as he returned. They busied themselves with their tasks, their eyes darting away when he passed. The story of Overseer Bo's shattered club and broken pride had spread through the ranks of the forgotten like a wildfire in dry grass. Fear was a new kind of respect.
Bo himself was gone, sent to the sect's infirmary with a broken hand and a story of a "training accident" that no one believed. A new overseer would arrive soon, but for now, a fragile peace settled over Li Wei.
This peace gave him space. His days were still filled with back-breaking labor, but his mind was a whirlwind of calculation. Every step, every swing of his sickle, every stone he dislodged was an experiment.
He learned to control the flow. A gentle step harvested a tiny trickle of energy. A misstep on a loose rock became a sudden, welcome surge. He practiced releasing it in small, controlled bursts—a flick of his finger that sent a pebble skittering farther than it should, a push against a stubborn root that made it suddenly give way.
The interface was his relentless tutor.
Inefficient transfer. Wastage: 68%.
Optimize muscle group synchronization.
Kinetic potential of falling objects exceeds standard harvesting yield.
He was no longer a cripple practicing a dead art. He was a student of a new science, and the entire mountain was his laboratory.
It was during one of these experiments that he first felt the wrongness.
He was high on the western ridge, a place where the spiritual herbs were sparse but the view stretched for miles. The setting sun painted the sky in hues of orange and purple. He placed his hand on a large, ancient boulder to steady himself, feeling the familiar hum of the stone's latent energy, the subtle vibrations of the world.
And then he felt something else.
A faint, cold tremor that was entirely alien. It wasn't the lively flow of the mountain's Qi or the steady pulse of the earth. It was a dissonant note, a quiet, persistent unraveling. It felt like silence, but a silence that was actively consuming sound.
The interface in his mind flared to life without his prompting, the text a sharp, urgent red.
Anomalous Resonance Detected.
Source: Deep Geological Structure.
Nature: Background Entropic Decay.
Analysis: Localized reality integrity compromised by 0.0001%.
Li Wei snatched his hand back as if burned. He stared at the boulder, then at the majestic, sprawling vista of the Verdant Sword Sect's domain. The towering peaks, the shimmering waterfalls, the pavilions glowing with soft light—it all looked perfect, eternal.
But it was a lie.
The words from the cave, the final log of the star-traveler, echoed in his mind. "They do not see the silence between the notes."
He saw it now. He felt it. A sickness buried deep in the world, a slow rot that the cultivators, in their proud obsession with personal power and political games, were completely blind to. They were rearranging deck chairs on a ship that was silently, inexorably, sinking.
His personal war for vengeance suddenly felt small, like children squabbling on the edge of a precipice.
That night, back in his shack, he couldn't sleep. The memory of that cold tremor was a splinter in his soul. He had come to the mountain for herbs, but he had stumbled upon a secret far deadlier than his own.
He was broken from his thoughts by a sound outside his door. Not the scuff of a boot, but the soft, deliberate placement of a foot. Someone was there, someone trying not to be heard.
Li Wei sat up, his senses sharpening. The humming energy within him coiled, ready. He was no longer the helpless boy who had been cast aside. He was a conduit of force, and he knew the weight of a step, the intention behind a breath.
The door did not open. Instead, a small, smooth stone, worn by river water, was slid silently beneath it. Li Wei waited until the footsteps retreated before he moved.
He picked up the stone. It was cool and ordinary. But wrapped around it was a thin slip of rice paper. On it, in elegant, hurried brushstrokes, was a single sentence.
"The Heavens are blind, but the earth has ears. Your secret is safe."
Li Wei crumpled the paper in his fist, his heart thudding against his ribs. He was not as alone as he had thought. Someone else knew. Someone was watching.
He looked from the note in his hand to the wall, beyond which the unseen sickness pulsed in the heart of the mountain. His war had just become infinitely more complicated. He was no longer just a soldier in a personal battle. He had become a warden, guarding a prison he didn't understand, and he had no idea who his allies were.