The days after the bath incident passed with a brittle normality. Lin Feng moved through his duties like a precisely wound clockwork figure, garden observations at dawn, annex dusting until noon, a silent lunch, followed by private study in the compost shed or cautious cultivation in his alcove, now scoured of all lingering scent. He was the epitome of "intelligent futility" a disciple seen reading soil treatises with grim determination, performing menial tasks with excessive care. He was a joke that had stopped being funny.
Yan Meixiang became a specter in the periphery. He saw her once, gliding through the inner sect's Moonviewing Pavilion on the arm of a different senior disciple. She didn't look his way. Another time, he caught the faintest trace of jasmine on the wind near the library, but no sight of red. She was keeping her distance, perhaps bored, perhaps waiting. The Ledger's advice held: be uninteresting, be predictable.
His six Karma points remained unspent, a precious buffer. He used his own senses to study the fallout from Zhang Hai's neutralization. The bully had become a sullen, isolated figure, his once-confident swagger reduced to a defensive hunch. He was ignored. It was a more complete victory than any beating could have been.
The peace was a thin veneer. It cracked on the eighth day, not with drama, but with a polite, written summons delivered by a junior servant, not a disciple.
The note was on simple, unmarked paper. The characters were neat, unfussy.
Disciple Lin Feng. Your assistance is requested at the Quiet Peak herbarium at the third bell after noon. Please bring your knowledge of soil-borne fungal contaminants.
— Mu Qing
The name landed in his mind like a stone in a still pond. Mu Qing, The Reclusive Alchemist. The Ghost-Hand Pill Emperor.
This was not a command from a Palace Master or a subtle probe from a demoness. This was a request. From a legend. Why?
He knew of the Quiet Peak herbarium. It wasn't part of the main gardens. It was a private, walled enclosure on a lesser peak, rumored to contain exotic, temperamental species. Access was restricted to a handful of senior alchemists and their direct apprentices. Mu Qing herself was a myth an immortal-level expert who hadn't taken a personal apprentice in centuries, who communicated with the sect leadership through terse notes and delivered peerless pills in exchange for obscene amounts of rare materials.
There was no refusing. There was also no understanding her motive.
At the appointed time, Lin Feng presented himself at the herbarium's simple, unadorned wooden gate. There was no guard, only a faint, complex array woven into the grain of the wood that hummed with restrained power. As he approached, the gate swung inward silently.
Inside was not a garden, but a library of living forms. Plants grew in precise, geometric plots, each bed humming with its own subtle, tailored climate array. The air was thick with a hundred different spiritual scents, a symphony of wood, earth, and strange, metallic floral notes. The silence was profound, broken only by the trickle of water from a crystal channel and the buzz of a single, iridescent spirit bee.
A figure knelt beside a bed of purplish-black fungi that pulsed with a slow, internal light. She wore simple, earth-stained grey robes, her hair a single, long braid streaked with silver. She did not look up as he entered.
"You are the one who identified the Grey-Spore vector reversal principle in the Silverstream patch," she said. Her voice was dry, like pages turning, devoid of emotion or question.
Lin Feng's blood ran cold. How? He had spoken of it to no one. The Ledger's analysis was secret. The cured plant was an anomaly Liang had grumbled about, but the principle…
"This disciple merely observed a plant recovering, Elder," he said, bowing deeply. "I have no knowledge of principles."
"Do not lie to me. It wastes my time." She finally looked up. Her face was older than he expected, lined not with age but with a profound, focused fatigue. Her eyes were the color of wet slate, holding a depth of knowledge that felt physical. They saw through him, past his robes, past his skin, to the chaotic knot of his spiritual roots. A flicker of something not pity, not contempt, but clinical disappointment crossed her features. "Miscellaneous. A pity. The mind that deduced the reversal is trapped in a broken vessel."
She stood, brushing dirt from her knees. She was not tall, but her presence filled the quiet space. "Overseer Liang's reports are verbose and ignorant. But he noted your 'useless experiments' with Moonpetal and Stonecrop. A Siphoning Rinse. Nonsense for Grey-Spore. Yet one plant recovered. Not fully. But it reversed." She walked slowly along a path of white gravel, and he fell into step behind her, compelled. "You didn't use the rinse. You used something else. Something that targeted the fungal core. A conceptual poison."
Each word was a hammer blow. She had reconstructed his secret from scraps of gossip and a single plant's behavior. This was not the social cunning of Yan Meixiang. This was intellect, pure and terrifying.
"This disciple was fortunate," he tried again, weakly.
"Stop." She halted, turning to face him. "I do not care for your secrets, boy. I care for results. You produced an interesting result with garbage-tier materials and no spiritual power. That implies a methodology. A way of thinking." She gestured to a nearby bed. It contained a vibrant, coral-like plant with crystalline leaves. At its base, several stems were turning a sickly, translucent white, withering from the inside out. "Glacier Coral. Suffering from Internal Ice-Shatter, a condition where its own core ice-attunement crystallizes and fractures its spiritual vasculature. The treatises say it is a death sentence. The energy required to melt the internal crystals from the outside would cook the plant. The standard solution is to harvest it before it dies and salvage what you can."
She looked at him. "I am not interested in the standard solution. I am interested in the reversal principle. If a fungus can be tricked into consuming its own essence, can a self-destructive crystalline matrix be induced to un-crystallize? To flow backwards?"
She was asking him. Not for power, not for resources. For a theory. An idea.
This was the test. And the opportunity.
Lin Feng's mind, honed by the Ledger's conceptual language, leapt ahead. He pushed his fear aside. This was his arena analysis, not combat.
"Respected Elder," he said, his voice gaining strength. "The fungal reversal worked because the invader was an other. A separate organism with its own life cycle. The fungus's drive to consume was turned against its own core." He stepped closer to the Glacier Coral, observing the white, dead veins. "This… is the plant turning against itself. It is not an invasion. It is a civil war. A reversal would require convincing one part of its own energy that it is mistaken. That its solid state is an error."
Mu Qing's slate eyes sharpened. "Go on."
"You cannot fight ice with fire here. You must fight ice with a different idea of ice." He was thinking out loud, the Ledger's analytical framework merging with his own deductions. "If the crystallization is a logical conclusion based on the plant's inherent nature, you must change the premises. Introduce a counter-concept. Not heat, but fluidity. A spiritual catalyst that doesn't melt the ice, but reminds the ice that it is, and has always been, water."
He was treading on impossibly thin ice himself. This was alchemical philosophy far beyond his station.
Mu Qing was silent for a long moment. She stared at the dying coral, then at Lin Feng. "Fluidity. A conceptual reminder." She nodded once, slowly. "It is a direction. Not a solution. But a vector." She turned and walked towards a small, stone workbench under a canopy of spirit vines. "Come."
He followed. On the bench were trays of powdered minerals, vials of sap and essences, and several deeply flawed, low-grade spirit stones. Tools, not treasures.
"You will work here," she said. "You will have no access to my primary stores. You may use these." She gestured to the bench. "And you may request, in writing, one common herb or mineral per day from the main garden stores, which I will approve or deny. You will attempt to devise a 'conceptual reminder' for the Glacier Coral. You will document every step, every failure. You will report to me every three days."
She was not making him an apprentice. She was hiring a theoretical consultant. A disposable one, using disposable resources.
"What is the compensation, Elder?" Lin Feng asked, the pragmatist in him surfacing.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her thin lips. "Practical. Good. You keep whatever non-lethal knowledge you gain. You may ask me one question per week, pertaining to foundational alchemical theory, which I will answer truthfully. And…" she reached into her robe and tossed a small, grey pouch onto the bench. It clinked. "Fifty low-grade spirit stones. A retainer. Do not waste them."
Fifty stones. A fortune to an outer disciple. And the right to ask questions of Mu Qing. It was a salary beyond his wildest dreams. The risk was equally astronomical. Failure would mean disappointing an immortal. But the opportunity
"I accept, Elder," he said, bowing again.
"Do not call me that. I am Master Mu while you are in this garden. Now, begin. The coral has perhaps ten days." With that, she turned and walked away, vanishing between two rows of shimmering golden ferns, leaving him alone with the dying plant and a bench of scraps.
He stood for a moment, the reality settling in. He had a patron. A terrifying, brilliant, and utterly amoral one. She didn't care about him. She cared about the puzzle he represented.
He looked at the Glacier Coral, its internal light fading in the white-shrouded stems. A civil war. A logical error. How did one reprogram a plant?
He had six Karma points. He could spend them now, ask the Ledger for the answer. But that would be a temporary fix. It would not earn him Master Mu's respect for his methodology. It would reveal a secret he could not afford to share.
No. He had to do this the hard way. With the tools on the bench, with his mind, and with the one question per week.
He sat on a stool, picked up a flawed spirit stone, and began to study it, his mind already diving into the problem. The stone's energy channels were cracked, inefficient. Like his own roots. Like the coral's shattered veins.
Karmic Event Logged: Formal Engagement with Designated Variable 'Mu Qing'. Status: Contracted Researcher.
Risk/Reward Matrix: Severely Elevated.
Passive Karma Adjustment: +5 (For securing a high-stakes patronage based on demonstrated unconventional intellect).
Current Karma Balance: 11.
Eleven points. Earned not by subverting a trope, but by being recognized for a unique form of capital: his mind.
He was no longer just a quiet spot, or a puzzle for a demoness. He was, in the eyes of a recluse goddess of alchemy, a potentially useful tool for solving impossible problems.
He looked from the dying coral to the bench of scraps, then to the pouch of spirit stones. He had ten days. A salary. A question to ask. And a garden of living mysteries as his new workplace.
The outer disciple mountains, with its bullies and chores, suddenly felt very far away. He had been promoted. To a much, much more dangerous tier of the game. Here, the currency wasn't contribution points or social standing. It was insight. And for the first time, Lin Feng felt he might have a line of credit. The first entry in this new ledger was due in three days. He picked up a piece of chalk and began sketching on the stone bench, mapping the conceptual conflict within the coral. The work had begun.