The translucent panel hung in the air, its ethereal glow the only light in Wei Yuan's world. His breath was shallow, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. It was real. The words, the numbers, the impossible hope—it was all real.
The Loom of A Hundred Arts.
A path. A chance.
The initial shock, a tidal wave of elation, crashed and receded, leaving behind the cold, hard shore of urgency. Three months. The Branch Purge was a guillotine hanging over his neck, and he had just been handed a single, thin file.
He had to replicate it.
With trembling hands, Wei Yuan smoothed out a fresh sheet of paper. He ground the ink, his movements hurried and clumsy. He had to generate another Insight Thread. He had to.
He dipped the brush, his knuckles white. He stared at the paper, his mind screaming the command: Focus! Create! Give me another thread!
He painted the character for "Strength" (力). The stroke was technically correct, but his hand was stiff, his intent forced. The ink lay flat and dead on the paper.
Nothing happened.
No golden light. No comforting warmth. The panel before his eyes remained unchanged.
[Art in Progress: Calligraphy (Initiate - 1/100)]
He tried again. And again. He wrote "Mountain" (山), "River" (川), "Heart" (心). He filled a dozen sheets with frantic, desperate strokes. The ink bled, the paper tore, and his wrist began to ache. The result was always the same.
Nothing.
"Why?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "Why did it work before and not now?"
The fire of hope that had blazed so brightly just moments ago was now flickering, threatening to be snuffed out by a rising tide of panic. Was it a one-time fluke? A cruel trick of the heavens?
"Haste makes waste, little Yuan. The brush feels your anxiety."
Wei Yuan jumped, startled. He hadn't even heard Old Man Ji approach. The old keeper was peering at the mess of ruined papers, his milky eyes holding a rare moment of clarity.
"You are trying to command the ink," Old Man Ji mumbled, pointing a shaky finger at a particularly blotchy character. "The ink does not like to be commanded. It likes to be guided. The character is already there, hiding in the paper. Your job is not to create it, but to reveal it."
He patted Wei Yuan's shoulder again, his mind already drifting. "Like... like finding a firefly in the dark. You cannot run at it. You must be still, and let it come to you..."
The old man's words, born of a wandering mind, struck Wei Yuan like a thunderclap.
He had it all wrong.
His first success wasn't born from a desire to cultivate. It was born from pure, unadulterated emotion. The humiliation from Wei Feng, the crushing despair of his fate, the unbending will to simply exist—he had poured all of it, all of his spirit, into that single character. He hadn't been thinking about power. He had been thinking about his Dao. His path.
It wasn't a technique. It was a state of mind.
He closed his eyes, taking a long, slow breath. He pushed away the thought of the Branch Purge. He banished the image of the panel. He let go of his desperation.
Instead, he focused on the memory of Wei Feng's sneer. The casual cruelty. The injustice of a clan that fed its brightest stars by starving its weakest children. He let the cold, righteous anger well up inside him, not as a raging storm, but as a deep, focused river.
He picked up the brush. This time, his hand was steady. The world narrowed once more to the tip of the weasel hair, the black ink, the white paper.
He let the river of his will flow down his arm, through his wrist, and into the brush. He didn't think about the strokes. He just felt them.
He wrote the character for "Endure" (忍).
The final stroke lifted.
Shine.
A golden thread, brighter and slightly thicker than the first, shimmered into existence. It rose from the ink and flowed into his chest, a wave of warmth that was both nourishing and validating.
A notification appeared on his panel.
[Insight Thread generated. +1]
[Art in Progress: Calligraphy (Initiate - 2/100)]
A ragged, triumphant laugh escaped Wei Yuan's lips. It wasn't a fluke. It was a path. A difficult, narrow path, but it was his.
The rest of the day was a blur of frantic, focused effort. The process was exhausting. Achieving that state of profound focus, of channeling pure intent into the ink, was mentally draining. More often than not, he failed. For every successful character, a dozen were just lifeless ink on paper.
Piles of crumpled, rejected sheets began to grow around his table like snowdrifts. The inkpot, once full, was now half-empty.
But he persisted.
By the time the moon hung high in the sky, casting long shadows through the pavilion's lattice windows, he had succeeded eight more times.
His body ached with fatigue, his mind felt stretched thin, like an overused bowstring, but his eyes shone with a manic, unyielding light. He looked at his panel, his heart hammering with a sense of hard-won achievement.
[Name: Wei Yuan]
[Age: 14]
[Cultivation Realm: Marrow Cleansing (Initial Stage)]
[Physique: Knotted Meridians (Cursed)]
[The Loom of A Hundred Arts]
[Mastered Arts: None]
[Art in Progress: Calligraphy (Initiate - 10/100)]
[Insight Threads: 10]
[10 Insight Threads can be woven into 1 Strand of Soul Essence. Weave now?]
Soul Essence. The very foundation of a cultivator's strength. Orthodox cultivators spent months, even years, painstakingly refining ambient Qi to produce a single strand. He had done it in a day.
"Yes," he thought, his voice trembling with anticipation. "Weave!"
The ten golden threads stored within his Dantian began to move. They swirled and twisted, merging and compressing under the unseen guidance of the Loom. It was like watching master weavers at work, their motions impossibly fast and precise. The golden light intensified, coalescing into a single, brilliant point before expanding into a thicker, more substantial strand of energy that hummed with a quiet, potent power.
This Strand of Soul Essence was different. It didn't just sit in his Dantian; it actively nourished his body from the inside out. He felt the ache in his bones recede, the weakness in his flesh replaced by a nascent strength. His senses sharpened. The scent of old paper was richer, the chirping of crickets outside the pavilion clearer.
His cultivation was advancing.
[Soul Essence successfully woven. +1]
[Cultivation Realm: Marrow Cleansing (Middle Stage)]
He had advanced a minor realm in a single day. A feat that would be considered genius-level even for his cousin, Wei Tian. And no one knew. No one could detect the flow of Qi, because there was none. His power was growing from the inside, hidden from the world.
A new thought struck him. He focused on the line in his panel: Physique: Knotted Meridians (Cursed).
Cursed? Not 'defective' or 'flawed,' but 'cursed.' The word implied intent. An act of malice. Could it be that his condition wasn't a cruel twist of fate, but a deliberate act? The thought was a spark of paranoia, but he filed it away. One battle at a time. First, the Branch Purge.
His immediate problem was more practical. He looked at his dwindling stack of paper and the nearly empty inkpot. The clan allotted him just enough for a bit of idle practice. At this rate, he would run out of supplies in a week.
He couldn't ask for more. A request from the pavilion of trash for more resources would be met with scorn and denial. He had to find his own solution.
For the next few days, Wei Yuan balanced his time. Half the day was spent in exhausting calligraphy practice, generating a handful of precious Insight Threads. The other half was spent combing through the pavilion's archives. He wasn't looking for cultivation techniques, but for anything related to the Arts.
Most of what he found was useless—dry histories, forgotten clan ledgers. But in the deepest, dustiest corner of the third floor, tucked away behind a collapsed shelf, he found a long, heavy box of rotting wood.
He pried it open. Inside, resting on faded silk, was a single, ancient scroll. It was not made of paper, but of some kind of treated animal hide, and it was covered in characters written in a style so ancient and powerful it seemed to vibrate with a life of its own.
Old Man Ji, who had shuffled up behind him, squinted at it. "Heavy," he mumbled. "This scroll is heavy with echoes... a man of great anger wrote this... a sad, angry man..."
Wei Yuan unfurled the scroll carefully. It was a calligraphy manual titled "The Raging River Style." But as his fingers traced the characters, he could feel a faint, sharp resonance from them. This wasn't just calligraphy. There was something more hidden within the strokes, a kind of martial intent.
An idea, reckless and brilliant, sparked in his mind.
What if he didn't just practice his own calligraphy? What if he used his Art to comprehend the Art of another?
He carried the ancient scroll back to his table. The air itself seemed to grow heavier around it. He took a deep breath, cleared his mind, and dipped his brush. He wasn't trying to generate his own Insight Thread this time. He was trying to replicate, to understand, the will of the person who created this manual.
He focused on the first character on the scroll.
剑
(Jian)
Sword.
As his brush moved, tracing the powerful, aggressive strokes, he felt it. A cold, sharp intent flowed from the ancient scroll, up through his arm, and into his mind. It was an echo of the original author's will—a will honed by a thousand battles, sharp enough to cut through steel.
He finished the stroke.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
A thread of light rose from his paper. But it wasn't gold. It was a searing, brilliant silver, and it pulsed with a faint, almost imperceptible killing intent.
It shot into his chest, not with warmth, but with a piercing cold that made him gasp.
And on the panel before him, a new line of text blazed into existence.
[Discovered Hidden Art: Sword Intent Calligraphy]
[Insight Thread has gained attribute: Sharpness]
[Warning: Comprehending Sword Intent without a corresponding martial foundation may damage the soul. Proceed with caution.]
Wei Yuan stared at the warning, then at the new line of text. A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face.
The path of the warrior was closed to him?
Fine. He would just have to write his own.