Three weeks after the Restart Sect took its first shaky breath, the mountain finally felt lived in. The ruins were still ruins, but now there were paths worn by small feet, a garden that glowed softly at dawn, and a main hall that smelled less like mold and more like smoke, millet, and children trying very hard not to burn things.
Chen Yuan sat on a flat rock overlooking the courtyard, an improvised ledger on his lap. It was just a piece of bark with neat columns carved into it—"Food," "Wood," "Herbs," "Headaches"—but it made his engineer's soul feel marginally better about the chaos of another world.
"Master," Zhang Wei called from below, "is this deep enough?"
Chen Yuan peered over the edge. The boy stood in a waist-deep pit near the edge of the courtyard, shirt off, muscles straining as he lifted out another shovel-full of earth with a reinforced wooden spade. Sweat rolled down his back, but his breathing was steady, controlled—a far cry from the exhausted porter who had collapsed at the mountain's foot weeks ago.
"Another half meter," Chen Yuan said. "We want the training pit deep enough that if you fall in, you learn humility, not bone fractures."
"Yes, Master!"
On the other side of the courtyard, Lin Mei moved through Flowing Water's second sequence, her trowel flicking in careful arcs. Where once she'd stumbled, now she flowed—hesitant still, but each hesitation shorter than the last.
Li An sat cross-legged by the stream, the Meditation Garden's soft glow reflecting in his eyes. A thin thread of water rose from the surface, wobbling as he tried to guide it along the pattern of his movement technique, combining focus and balance.
"You're cheating," Chen Yuan called down to him mildly. "Flowing Water doesn't literally mean moving the water."
Li An didn't open his eyes. "The water moves anyway," he replied. "I am only… listening."
Chen Yuan huffed a quiet laugh and made a note on his bark ledger: *An: propensity for creative interpretation. Dangerous. Useful.*
The Sect Harmony—if he bothered to check the System—would show a slow, steady climb. The mountain felt less like a stranger every day.
Which, in Chen Yuan's experience, was exactly when trouble liked to knock.
The first sign was the bird.
It landed on the branch above his head with a flutter of dark wings—a sleek black thing with iridescent feathers and eyes too sharp to belong to a normal creature. A thin strip of jade was tied to its leg with red thread.
"Messenger bird," Chen Yuan muttered. "Of course."
He held out a hand. The bird hopped down with an offended little huff, pecked his knuckles once (unnecessarily, in his opinion), and then presented the jade strip.
The characters carved into it were precise and cold:
*To the one styling himself Sect Master of the 'Restart Sect.'*
*Return the porter named Zhang Wei within three days. He is property of the Iron Fist Sect. Harboring him is theft.*
*Refusal will be treated as provocation.*
There was no signature, only a stylized fist inscribed inside a circle of flame.
"Property," Chen Yuan repeated softly.
The word tasted worse than overcooked spiritual millet.
The bird cocked its head, waiting for a response. He stared at the jade for a long moment, then snapped it cleanly in half.
"No," he said to the empty air. "He isn't."
The bird squawked, feathers fluffing, then launched itself skyward, vanishing into the morning haze.
"Master?" Zhang Wei's voice carried faintly up from the pit. "Everything alright?"
"Fine," Chen Yuan lied automatically. Then he caught himself. They'd sworn oaths here; lies had no place in them. "No, not fine. But manageable. Everyone inside. Hall. Now."
There was a scramble below—tools set aside, breaths steadied, mud hastily wiped off on already ruined clothes. Moments later, the three disciples sat on their cushions in the main hall, eyes on him with a mixture of curiosity and the faint, lingering fear of people who'd learned bad news rarely came alone.
Chen Yuan held up the broken pieces of jade.
"The Iron Fist Sect has noticed you're missing, Zhang Wei," he said plainly. "They've asked—politely, so far—for their 'property' back."
Zhang Wei went very still. "Property," he repeated, flat as a dead road.
"Yes," Chen Yuan said. "I don't like that word either."
Lin Mei's jaw clenched. "They can't just… claim people."
"They can," Li An said quietly. "As long as no one stronger tells them they're wrong."
All three pairs of eyes turned to Chen Yuan. Not because they thought he was strong—not in the way this world measured it—but because he was *the one who had promised*.
He could feel the weight of that promise now, settled on his shoulders like one more beam that needed bracing.
"We're a tiny, unranked sect with one leaky roof and three disciples who the world already discarded," he said slowly. "The Iron Fist Sect is established, vicious, and very sure of its right to treat people like tools."
He let that sit for a heartbeat.
"Good news," he added. "I've dealt with established, vicious organizations before. Different world, same arrogance. The script doesn't change much."
"Master," Zhang Wei said, voice rough, "if I go back, they'll—" He stopped, swallowing hard. "They won't be kind."
"No," Chen Yuan agreed. "They won't."
He sat down opposite them, the cushions creaking. "So let's be clear. You are *not* going back. Not as property. Not at all, if we can help it."
Relief flashed across Zhang Wei's face so quickly it might have been imagined, chased immediately by guilt.
"But they're strong," he protested. "They have proper cultivators. We're just—" He glanced at his own scarred arms, at Lin Mei's trowel, at Li An's leg. "We're just us."
"Yes," Chen Yuan said. "And being 'just us' has to be enough—for now. We don't beat them by pretending to be them. We beat them by being something they don't understand."
Li An's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Hidden," he murmured. "Like a temple that no longer shows in the records but still has worshippers."
"Exactly," Chen Yuan said. "Which brings me to something we've been missing."
He gestured around the hall.
"We have a name. A roof—sort of. A garden, some techniques, three disciples I'm stupidly proud of. But we don't have a face. A sigil. A thing the world sees when it hears 'Restart Sect.' That matters."
Lin Mei frowned. "How does a symbol help?"
"In my old world," Chen Yuan said, "companies and organizations used logos—symbols—to say who they were at a glance. Strong ones inspired trust or fear. Weak ones were forgotten. We need one that says exactly what we are, and makes certain people think twice before stepping on us."
He picked up a bit of charcoal from the firepit and dragged a cracked wooden board between them.
"Restart," he said, sketching a rough circle. "Means beginning again. Fresh. Not from nothing—but from what came before."
He drew a small sprout breaking through a broken stone—a simple image, but it caught their eyes immediately.
"A seed," Lin Mei whispered. "Growing from something shattered."
"A stone that couldn't break it," Zhang Wei added quietly.
Li An leaned forward. "The circle… is it a sun? Or a wheel?"
"Both," Chen Yuan said. "A cycle. Ending, beginning, turning. Our sect doesn't throw away broken things; it uses them as soil."
He darkened the sprout, giving it two leaves and the hint of a third. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added three small lines at the base—suggestions of roots, crossing and intertwining.
"Three roots," he said. "Three disciples. Later, more. But the shape stays."
They stared at it in silence. Sometimes, a simple drawing did what a hundred grand speeches couldn't.
"It's… gentle," Lin Mei said, sounding surprised. "Not like other sect crests."
"It's stubborn," Zhang Wei countered. "You can't see the weight, but it's there."
Li An nodded. "And if someone crushes the sprout, the roots remain."
Chen Yuan smiled.
"Good," he said. "Then this is our face. If anyone asks what the Restart Sect stands for, you remember this: we grow where others think nothing can."
He reached into his robe and pulled out the broken jade from the Iron Fist message. With slow deliberation, he drew the sprout sigil on each half, then tossed them into the fire.
The jade hissed, cracked, then shattered, red streaks of flame licking up around the new lines.
"Master," Zhang Wei said softly, "won't this mean they'll come?"
"Yes," Chen Yuan said. "Eventually. Bullies always circle back to what they think is theirs."
He met the boy's gaze and let all the softness fall away, leaving only the iron underneath.
"When they do," he said, "I want them to find a sect that knows who it is. Not a hiding hole. Not a scared old man and three kids. A place that says, 'No. You don't get to decide our worth.'"
Lin Mei's fingers tightened around her trowel. "What do we do until then?"
"We train," Chen Yuan said. "We grow. We make this mountain so damn *alive* that anyone who steps on it without respect feels the entire place bristle."
He stood, feeling his back complain and ignoring it.
"Concrete steps," he added briskly, because fear needed structure as much as hope did. "Wei, the training pit doubles as a defensive trench at night. Mei, start testing how quickly you can dig and move soil with that trowel while using qi breathing—call it 'Garden Defense Drill.' An, I want you mapping every path up this mountain. Quietly. If we have to vanish, we'll choose how."
Three faces straightened. Three spines stiffened.
This, too, was a kind of medicine—giving terror something practical to hold on to.
Later, when the tasks were assigned and the children scattered, Chen Yuan went alone to the Meditation Garden. The stream whispered around his ankles as he stepped into the shallow water, letting the cold bite his skin awake.
"System," he said quietly, more to the mountain than the interface. "You picked a hell of a retirement hobby for me."
There was no answer, just the familiar hum of quiet approval he'd come to recognize.
He closed his eyes and reached outward—not for qi in the cultivator's sense, but for the feeling of the place. Three small presences glowed at the edge of his awareness—Lin Mei's nervous determination, Zhang Wei's clenched resolve, Li An's sharp, searching mind.
Somewhere beyond the mountain, a heavier presence moved—the Iron Fist Sect, offended and impatient.
"Come, then," Chen Yuan murmured. "But understand: you're not just picking on a lost porter anymore. You're walking into my workshop. And I've been fixing broken systems longer than you've been swinging swords."
The water around his ankles warmed slightly, as if the mountain itself shared a small, grim smile.
The Restart Sect now had a name, a sigil, and a declared enemy.
For a place built on second chances, that felt exactly right.