Li Shen learned something important in the week after Haoyang:
Failure didn't end a life.
It only rearranged it.
The village didn't explode. No thunder split the sky. No elder descended to correct an injustice. The days came anyway—cold mornings, thin meals, chores that didn't care whether you had been unclaimed by a sect or not.
And Li Shen hated that part the most.
Because it meant the world could refuse him and still demand his labor as if nothing had happened.
So he made a decision that felt ugly and necessary:
If the world was going to treat him like a tool, he would become a better tool—until he wasn't a tool anymore.
He wrote that down too, then crossed it out.
Too dramatic. Too childish.
He wrote instead:
Goal: increase value without relying on mercy.
It sounded like something Han would say.
That bothered him.
It also worked.
---
Li Heng didn't talk about Haoyang.
Not because he was pretending it hadn't happened.
Because talking wasn't a lever he could use to change anything.
He used levers he understood: wood, water, repairs, work traded for food, favors repaid before they grew teeth.
He cut wood every morning like winter had already started planning.
The axe rose. Fell. Split. Stacked.
Some men prayed to Heaven.
Li Heng made firewood.
Li Shen watched him on the eighth morning back and felt the familiar tightening under his ribs—the mixture of admiration and anger that came from seeing someone survive by becoming narrower.
He didn't want to become narrow.
He wanted to become capable.
He went inside, pulled the sachet out from under the bedding, untied it, and added a line before his hands could hesitate:
Question: what can I do that changes outcomes?
Then he put the charcoal away and stepped outside.
"Father," Li Shen said.
Li Heng didn't stop swinging. "Speak."
Li Shen hated that he had to say it like this, like he was negotiating for a tool instead of asking about his own life.
"I want to go to Han this year," Li Shen said. "For work."
The axe struck, split, and bit the stump.
Li Heng pulled it free and set the next log.
"You went before," Li Heng said. "You worked."
"Yes."
"And you came back smaller," Li Heng said, and it wasn't accusation—just inventory. "Hungry. Tired. With blisters that opened twice."
Li Shen swallowed. "I can handle it."
Li Heng finally stopped. He rested the axe head on the stump and looked at him.
Li Shen held his gaze. Ten years old. Not a man. Not a baby either. Just old enough for the world to start charging him for things he didn't choose.
"Why?" Li Heng asked.
Li Shen opened his mouth and almost said the honest thing—because Haoyang stamped me unclaimed and I can't breathe inside that word.
But honesty without function was just noise.
So he said the part that mattered.
"Because food limits training," Li Shen said. "Because I can earn grain. Because I can buy eggs without begging Old Wu to pretend he isn't being kind."
Li Heng's eyes narrowed slightly.
"You're training," he said again, like confirming the obvious.
"Yes."
"To become a cultivator," Li Heng said.
Li Shen didn't deny it. "Yes."
Li Heng stared at him long enough that Li Shen started to feel the heat rise in his face—not shame, not fear, something worse: the instinct to defend himself against the person whose approval still mattered most.
Then Li Heng said, flat as ever:
"Your chances are small."
Li Shen's jaw tightened. "I know."
Li Heng nodded once, as if that answer had been the test.
"Small doesn't mean zero," Li Heng said. "But obsession breaks boys faster than work does."
Li Shen didn't look away. "Then I won't break."
Li Heng's mouth moved—barely—like the ghost of a smile that didn't know it had permission to exist.
"Good," Li Heng said. "Then you'll do it correctly."
He lifted the axe again, but he didn't swing.
"If you go to Han," Li Heng continued, "you go to work. You don't go hunting stories. You don't chase fights. You don't chase 'opportunities' that smell like traps."
Li Shen nodded. "I won't."
Li Heng's eyes stayed on him. "You keep your head down."
Li Shen nodded again.
"And you come back," Li Heng said.
That one landed different.
Not an order.
A boundary.
"I'll come back," Li Shen said.
Li Heng finally swung again.
The log split cleanly.
Decision made.
---
Li Shen went to Old He that afternoon, because Old He was the closest thing the village had to a person who understood bodies as systems instead of as moral lessons.
He found her in the usual place: near her stove, near her herbs, near the air that smelled like bitter things that kept people alive longer than they deserved.
Old He looked at him once and snorted. "You look like you swallowed a nail."
Li Shen sat on the stool without being told. "I'm going to Han."
Old He's eyebrows lifted slightly. "To work."
"Yes."
"And to train," Old He said, not asking.
Li Shen hesitated, then nodded.
Old He leaned back and studied him like she was diagnosing a cough.
"Your joints still soft," she said. "Your bones still growing. You load weight wrong, you'll twist something and carry that twist forever."
Li Shen bristled. "I'm not loading wrong."
Old He's laugh was dry. "Every child loads wrong."
Li Shen's face heated. "Then tell me how."
Old He's expression didn't soften, but something underneath it shifted—approval disguised as irritation.
"Stop trying to become strong like the village idiots," Old He said. "Strength is not only lifting. Strength is tendons that don't tear and breath that doesn't panic."
Li Shen listened like it mattered more than pride.
Old He pointed at his chest with a gnarled finger. "Breath first. You want to run? Run slow until your lungs stop whining. You want to carry stones? Carry them without turning your spine into a question mark."
Li Shen nodded.
Old He's gaze flicked, sharp, to the bulge under his shirt.
"Still carrying that sachet around like it's a talisman?" Old He said.
Li Shen's throat tightened. "It's… mine."
Old He snorted. "It was hers. Now it's yours. Don't confuse those."
Li Shen looked down.
Old He clicked her tongue. "If it keeps you steady, fine. But if you start thinking cloth and memory are going to replace real work, I'll beat you with my ladle."
Li Shen almost smiled. "You can try."
Old He's eyes narrowed. "Careful. I've killed men with less."
Li Shen's smile died properly.
Old He leaned forward, voice lower.
"And listen," she said. "Haoyang didn't stamp you unclaimed because you're useless. It stamped you unclaimed because you're young and ordinary and your body didn't scream profit."
Li Shen's fingers curled.
Old He continued, cruelly practical. "That means you have two options. You can rot inside that label, or you can build a body and a mind that makes the label wrong later."
Li Shen swallowed. "Later."
Old He nodded. "Later. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Later."
She jabbed her finger toward the door.
"Go train. And eat. And sleep. And stop looking like you're trying to die out of spite."
Li Shen stood.
Old He called after him, voice carrying black humor like a blade wrapped in cloth.
"And if you see your father, tell him I said this: Haoyang could swallow a thousand children and the sky could fall into his yard, and that man would still be there splitting wood like the world owes him rent."
Li Shen paused at the doorway, then nodded once.
He didn't laugh.
But he felt the strange, painful warmth of it.
Affection, hidden inside insult—Old He's only honest language.
---
The village adjusted around absence.
Not loudly.
Worse.
Children stopped running past Luo Yao's house the way they used to, not because they hated her, but because the Thousand Beasts Sect's name sat on the roof now like an invisible sign.
Adults spoke softer when they said it.
They didn't mean to be respectful.
They meant to be safe.
Li Shen saw Luo Yao sometimes—going to her garden, carrying water, moving like a person with her ribs wrapped tight so nothing could spill out. The animal she'd accepted stayed close, patient as stone.
It didn't look special.
It didn't need to.
It was proof of connection.
Proof that a sect had reached back, not with mercy, but with investment.
Li Shen tried not to stare.
He tried not to resent it.
But resentment came anyway—quiet and sour.
Not at Luo Yao.
At the mechanism.
At the fact that the world had judged Luo Ning valuable enough to tether, and him not valuable enough to remember.
He wrote that down that night, then stared at the words until they looked ugly.
Resentment is wasted fuel. Convert.
He didn't know exactly how to convert it yet.
But naming the problem made it feel less like poison and more like raw material.
---
He started building the journal the way he built everything now: like a ledger that didn't lie.
Not pretty. Not spiritual. Not "Dao." Just consistent.
He split pages into sections. He made marks that tracked patterns.
He tested small changes and wrote results like a clerk tracking grain.
Breath: slow run vs fast run (slow = less dizziness, more distance).
Load: stones in shirt vs bucket carry (shirt = spine pain, buckets = forearm burn).
Food: egg day vs no egg day (egg day = less shaking).
Sleep: early vs late (late = anger day after).
He added a new column after the third week:
Mind.
Because the body wasn't the only thing that quit.
Some mornings he woke up with the memory of Haoyang's platform in his mouth like ash. Some days he couldn't look at his hands without seeing the unclaimed token being taken back like it had never mattered.
He wrote those days down too.
Not to dramatize.
To track.
Mind: heavy. thoughts loop. fix by work.
Mind: angry at nothing. fix by run.
Mind: shame spike at well. fix by silence.
He discovered something he didn't like:
Work didn't heal him.
Work distracted him just long enough that he could keep functioning.
And functioning was a kind of survival.
---
Two days before they left for Han, Li Shen walked to the edge of the village and stopped where the wind opened up into fields.
From here he could see the line of trees where the graves lay, the small rise that held his mother's mound.
He didn't go there.
Not today.
Because today wasn't about grief.
Today was about logistics.
He turned back, went home, and started packing in the way his father did—quietly, efficiently, without talking himself into fear.
Li Heng checked the rope. Checked the cloth. Checked the small food sack.
Li Shen checked the sachet twice, then shoved it into his shirt like it was part of his ribs.
Li Heng noticed and said nothing.
That silence was permission.
That silence was trust.
That silence was also a weight.
Li Shen felt it and didn't flinch.
Because if he was going to become the kind of man who could protect the people he loved, he had to become the kind of boy who could carry weight without making a performance out of it.
When the sun rose the next morning, they left.
No crowd. No ceremony.
Just two figures walking down the lane with a bundle and a plan.
As they passed Luo Yao's house, the door was shut.
Li Shen didn't know if she was awake.
He didn't knock.
He wasn't going to offer comfort he couldn't afford to pay.
He walked on.
The road to Han didn't promise miracles.
It promised work.
And work—done correctly, done repeatedly—was the only thing Li Shen trusted anymore.
Behind them, the village shrank into smoke and fences.
Ahead, the season waited.
And Li Shen—ten years old, unclaimed, stubborn—walked like time was an enemy he intended to outlast.