The recovered Silverstream Grass stood as a quiet monument in Lin Feng's mind, a proof-of-concept glowing with silent potential. But potential was not power. It was a seed, and the soil of the Azure Cloud Sect was rocky and full of weeds that would choke anything that grew too noticeably.
He needed a way to monetize his discovery without exposing its source. Directly selling a "cure" for Grey-Spore blight was impossible. He had no status, no alchemy license, and a single dose had cost him a precious Karma point he couldn't afford to replicate. The cure itself was a dead end. But the knowledge behind it the specific vulnerability, the economic analysis that was a different kind of commodity.
He spent his five Karma points carefully. Two points went into a deep analysis of common, low-tier spiritual herbs and their most frequent, economically-ignored ailments. The Ledger provided a list: Fire-Canker on Sun-Leaf Vines, Root-Weave Nematodes in Ironbark Ginseng, Spiritual Chlorosis in common Moonpetals. All were "write-off" conditions where the cost of treatment exceeded the herb's value. To the sect, they were entries in a loss column. To Lin Feng, they were a catalog of opportunities.
The other three points he saved. Capital for emergencies, or for the next precise intervention.
His reputation, meanwhile, had undergone a subtle, unspoken shift. He was no longer just "trash." He was the disciple who did a competent, silent job for Palace Master Su. He was the one who provided useful samples to the Alchemy Hall without complaint. He was the outer disciple Overseer Liang didn't actively sneer at. In the brutal hierarchy of the sect, this was akin to achieving neutral buoyancy he wasn't rising, but he was no longer actively sinking.
This fragile equilibrium was punctured by a sound he'd come to dread: Zhang Hai's voice, loud and deliberately carrying across the refectory courtyard.
"think you're clever, don't you? Getting cozy with the archivists and the gardeners. Found a few scraps to lick up."
Lin Feng was sitting alone, eating his bland congee. He didn't look up. The script was familiar. Public humiliation, reassertion of dominance. Zhang Hai needed to repair the dent Lin Feng's previous subversions had put in his authority.
"I'm talking to you, trash." A shadow fell over his bowl. Zhang Hai and his two lackeys stood over him. "You've been avoiding your real duties. The junior martial brothers need their training partners. You're on the sparring roster for this afternoon. Be at the Earth Yard after the midday bell. Don't be late." A cruel smile. "Or do I need to escort you?"
A sparring match. A sanctioned beating. It was within the rules senior disciples could "guide" juniors through practical combat. With his meridians healed, Lin Feng might last a few more seconds, but the outcome was inevitable. Zhang Hai was at the 4th Heaven of Qi Condensation, with a decent metal affinity. Lin Feng was at the unstable 2nd Heaven with five conflicting elements. It was a tractor against a bicycle.
Refusal meant punishment for insubordination. Acceptance meant pain and possibly renewed injury.
The eyes of dozens of outer disciples were on them. This was a public ritual, and Zhang Hai was the high priest.
Lin Feng slowly set down his spoon. He looked up, his face a mask of bland acceptance. "As Senior Brother commands." His voice held no fear, no defiance. It was empty.
Zhang Hai's smile tightened, unsatisfied. He wanted fear. He wanted to see the despair. Lin Feng's calm was a new, irritating variable. "See that you do," he snarled, before turning and swaggering away.
The moment he was gone, the whispers started. Pity. Morbid curiosity. A few suppressed smirks.
Lin Feng finished his congee, his mind ice-clear. The Conscious Focus technique held the rising tide of cold fury at bay, channeling it into a diamond-hard point of calculation. This wasn't just a problem. It was a Karmic Opportunity. The "Bully Enforces Hierarchy Through Violence" trope. Crude, predictable, wasteful.
But how to subvert it? He couldn't win a fight. Feigning illness would only delay it. He needed to change the game.
An idea began to form, not from cultivation manuals, but from the oldest human strategy: the protection racket. But inverted.
He didn't go to the Earth Yard at the appointed time. Instead, he went to the Discipline Hall, a severe, grey-stone building that smelled of incense and quiet dread. This was where sect rules were enforced, grievances (rarely from outer disciples) were lodged, and punishments were meted out.
He asked to see the duty elder. After a wait, he was shown into a small, austere office. Elder Guo was a thin, stern woman with eyes like chips of flint and a reputation for inflexible, by-the-book judgment. She did not suffer fools, whiners, or time-wasters.
"Speak," she said, not looking up from a scroll.
Lin Feng bowed. "Respected Elder. This disciple seeks clarification on a point of sect law, so that he may better fulfill his duties."
Elder Guo's eyes flicked up. "Clarification?"
"Yes, Elder. Regarding sparring matches between disciples for training purposes. The rules state they must be supervised by a hall master or designated senior, correct?"
"They do."
"And the purpose, as stated in the Outer Disciple Codex, Section Four, is 'the mutual improvement of combat skill and cultivation application,' is it not?"
A slight frown. "It is. Get to your point, disciple."
"My point is one of contribution, Elder." Lin Feng kept his voice respectful, earnest. "If a sparring match is for mutual improvement, then both parties should benefit, or at minimum, not be actively set back. This disciple has recently recovered from meridian damage. A match against a senior disciple several heavens my superior would not result in my improvement. It would likely re-injure me, setting back my cultivation and my ability to perform my assigned duties for the sect—duties which include specialized sample collection for the Alchemy Hall and precise archival work for the Frozen Jade Pavilion."
He paused, letting the names Alchemy Hall, Frozen Jade Pavilion hang in the air. They were not threats. They were statements of fact, establishing he had value, however small, to other parts of the sect apparatus.
"Therefore," he continued, "while I am eager to comply with Senior Disciple Zhang Hai's guidance I am conflicted. Would participating in a match that is certain to degrade my ability to serve the sect be in violation of the spirit of the rules? Or should I respectfully decline and focus on my duties, accepting any punishment for insubordination if that is the elder's judgment?"
He presented her not with a complaint, but with a bureaucratic paradox. He was asking her to make a ruling on the interpretation of the rules, not to protect him. He was forcing the system to judge itself.
Elder Guo stared at him. Her flinty eyes scanned him, taking in his calm demeanor, his clear speech. She detested drama. She despised bullies who wasted her time with petty power plays almost as much as she despised weaklings who came crying. This disciple was doing neither. He was citing code. He was presenting a logistical problem.
"Your name?"
"Lin Feng, Elder."
"Miscellaneous Spiritual Roots."
"Yes, Elder."
She made a note. "The purpose of sparring is improvement. If your cultivation is so fragile that a match would cause lasting damage, you may be exempted on medical grounds. Do you have a diagnosis from the Medicine Hall?"
"I do not, Elder. The injury was minor, and I used my own means to recover." He couldn't afford a Medicine Hall diagnosis that might reveal his unorthodox methods.
"Then you have no grounds for exemption." She said it flatly. But then she added, "However. A senior disciple repeatedly sparring with a significantly weaker junior, outside of a structured teaching context, borders on harassment, which is also against the code. It wastes the sect's resources the junior's recovery time." She tapped her desk. "I will send a disciple to observe the match. If the 'guidance' appears excessive or non-instructional, it will be noted. You are to attend. Dismissed."
It was not a victory. It was a modification of the battlefield. Zhang Hai would still get his match. But now there would be a witness from the Discipline Hall. Zhang Hai would have to at least pretend it was instructional. He couldn't just pummel him into paste. The worst of the damage might be avoided.
And Lin Feng had achieved something more: he had officially, on the record, tied his lowly person to useful sect functions. He had made himself a slightly more complicated asset to break.
He arrived at the Earth Yard, a wide dirt circle surrounded by training posts. A crowd had gathered, smelling blood. Zhang Hai stood in the center, cracking his knuckles.
And standing at the edge of the ring was a stern-faced inner disciple in Discipline Hall robes, arms crossed. The observer.
Zhang Hai's eyes flicked to the observer, then back to Lin Feng, his expression darkening with understanding and fury. The trap had been baited with rules.
"Come on then, Junior Brother," Zhang Hai said, his voice dripping with false camaraderie. "Let's see your progress. Show me your basic stance."
The match was a farce. Lin Feng adopted the most defensive, textbook-perfect stance from the Azure Cloud Foundational Fist manual. He made no aggressive moves. When Zhang Hai attacked, with blows meant to bruise and humiliate rather than cripple (under the observer's gaze), Lin Feng did not try to counter. He used the absolute minimum movement to deflect, to roll with the punches, to retreat. He was a leaf in a storm, bending, not breaking.
He took hits. A fist to the shoulder that numbed his arm. A kick to the thigh that left a deep ache. But they were superficial. Zhang Hai, constrained by the observer, couldn't unleash the brutal, meridian-jarring strikes he wanted to.
"Fight back, you coward!" Zhang Hai hissed during a close grapple.
"I am learning from Senior Brother's exemplary form," Lin Feng gasped out, loud enough for the observer to hear, as he took another glancing blow to the ribs.
It was infuriating. Lin Feng was using his own weakness as a shield, and the sect's rules as a cage. After ten minutes of this unsatisfying pummeling, the Discipline Hall disciple spoke. "Enough. The instructional purpose seems fulfilled. Disciple Zhang, your control is adequate. Disciple Lin, your defense needs work. Dismissed."
The crowd, cheated of a real beating, murmured and dispersed. Zhang Hai shot Lin Feng a look of pure, venomous promise before stalking off.
Lin Feng stood in the center of the yard, breathing through the pain. His body was a tapestry of bruises, but his meridians were intact. His spirit was unbroken. More than that, he had cost Zhang Hai face. The bully had been forced to perform under supervision, his power neutered by procedure.
As he limped from the yard, the warmth bloomed in his chest.
Karmic Opportunity Detected: Subversion of 'Sanctioned Bullying' via Bureaucratic Leverage and Strategic Weakness.
Karma Points Gained: +3.
Current Karma Balance: 8.
Eight points. His largest reserve yet. Earned not by winning, but by not losing on the opponent's terms.
The aches faded over the next few days, soothed by a new, more potent batch of Silverstream essence he now felt confident enough to prepare from healthier plants (with Overseer Liang's implicit, grumbling permission for "research samples"). He returned to his routines: the Scriptorium dust, the garden visits, the quiet cultivation sessions where he worked on establishing another "buffer" between his fire and earth affinities.
He was in the annex, carefully re-rolling a scorched scroll on low-grade fire resistance, when Archivist Song shuffled over.
"You. Lin Feng. The Frozen Jade Pavilion sent a message."
Lin Feng's heart skipped a beat. Su Lingxi? Had she noticed his observations?
"Not the Palace Master," Song grumbled, as if reading his mind. "One of her direct disciples. The youngest one. A Girl named Yan something. Wants a specific damaged scroll on historical glacial movements in the Northern Reaches. Knew the accession number and everything. Says it was sent here for minor repair months ago. Find it. Deliver it to the pavilion's outer receiving hall. Don't go inside." He thrust a slip of paper at him with a spidery number.
Lin Feng took it. Yan. It wasn't a name from his mental blueprint. An underling. A messenger. But a thread, however thin, back to that world of ice.
He found the scroll easily it was in a pile awaiting minor stitching. He performed the repair himself, a simple task of threading new silk cord through the old binding. The scroll was dry, academic, detailing ancient ice ages. Nothing obviously profound.
He delivered it to the Frozen Jade Pavilion's outer receiving hall, a cold, elegant room where servants and low-status disciples were received. He gave it to a silent maid in pale blue robes.
As he turned to leave, a voice, light and laced with a curiosity that felt alien in this place of frost, spoke behind him.
"You're the one with the Miscellaneous Roots, aren't you? The one who minded the Frostbell."
He turned. A young woman, perhaps a year or two younger than him, stood there. She was dressed in the finer, lighter blue robes of a direct disciple of the palace, but they seemed to hang on her slightly, as if she hadn't quite grown into her station. Her face was pretty in an unassuming way, her eyes wide and bright, holding none of Su Lingxi's glacial depth. They held interest. Plain, simple curiosity.
"This disciple is Lin Feng," he said, bowing.
"I'm Yan Rong," she said, a quick, informal smile touching her lips before she remembered where she was and smoothed her expression. "I saw you when you came to report to Master. You were always so still. Like you weren't even bothered by the cold."
"The cold is the Palace Master's will. It is not to be bothered by, only respected," Lin Feng said, giving the most orthodox answer he could muster.
Yan Rong's nose wrinkled slightly. "Yes, of course. But still" She looked at him, her head tilted. "Master said your service was adequate. That's high praise from her. What did you do?"
This was dangerous. A direct disciple showing personal interest. It could be spun into favor, or it could be a prelude to a more intricate form of trouble.
"I merely performed the task as instructed, Senior Sister," he said, keeping his tone deferential and dull.
"Hm." She seemed disappointed by his lack of substance. Then she sighed, a small, human sound in the frozen hall. "I have to go. Master wants me to meditate on the 'Thirty-Six Flaws in a Sheet of Ice.' It's terribly boring." She leaned in slightly, lowering her voice. "The scroll you brought it has maps of old glacial flows. Sometimes, if you look at the patterns, they're almost like formation diagrams. I thought maybe" She trailed off, then straightened, assuming a more formal posture. "Thank you for your service, Disciple Lin."
She turned and glided away, back into the depths of the pavilion.
Lin Feng stood still for a moment. Yan Rong. Not one of the four. A side character. A curious, bored junior disciple in a frozen palace.
But she had seen him. Not as trash, not as an appliance. As someone still. And she had looked at a historical scroll and seen formation diagrams. That spoke of a mind that sought patterns, connections.
He filed the encounter away. A data point. A potential future variable.
As he walked down the mountain, the Demiurge's Ledger, which had been silent, presented a final, succinct message for the day.
Karmic Thread Observed: 'Innocent Curiosity' variant. Data logged. No immediate action required.
He had turned a beating into a bureaucratic stalemate and earned three points. He had turned a menial delivery into a character assessment.
The world, he was learning, was not just built on cultivation and combat. It was built on relationships, hierarchies, and attention. And the most cunning perversion of all was to learn the value of every single interaction, from a bully's fist to a curious girl's glance, and to ledger them all. For in that ledger, even a grievance had its price, and a glance its potential yield. He now had eight points to invest. The question was no longer survival. It was: what was the highest-yielding investment in this complex, brutal, fascinating economy?