The Iron Fist delegation's footprints had barely faded from the lower path before the mountain started feeling… jumpy. The wind came in sharper gusts, branches creaked a little louder at night, and even the stream in the Meditation Garden burbled with a nervous edge, like it had overheard a threat and taken it personally.
Chen Yuan felt it in his bones too. Not qi—just the old, familiar itch that came whenever a system he cared about stood one bad decision away from disaster.
In his old world, that had meant late nights in the office, massaging numbers and yelling at management slides. Here, it meant staring at a rough sketch of the Restart Sect carved into a wide plank, frowning at every arrow he'd etched to mark possible paths up the mountain.
"Too many ways in," he muttered. "Too few ways to make arrogant bastards regret using them."
"Master?" Lin Mei hovered near the doorway of the main hall, trowel tucked into her belt. "You called?"
"Yeah." Chen Yuan tapped the plank with a knuckle. "Time for a different kind of training. We're going to grow a wall."
Zhang Wei looked up from where he was sanding rough edges off a new practice staff. "A wall?"
Li An, perched on a cushion with one of the Four Foundations scrolls open in front of him, tilted his head. "We don't have enough stone or wood for a proper fortification."
"Good thing I'm not talking about a proper fortification, then." Chen Yuan smiled faintly. "I'm talking about a *living* one."
He set the plank down where they could all see. His crude map showed the main path, the side trail Li An had discovered last week, and a couple of goat tracks that only someone desperate or drunk would try to climb.
"This mountain," he said, "is already on our side. It just doesn't know what we want from it yet. So we're going to tell it. Nicely."
Lin Mei's eyes brightened. "With plants?"
"With plants, with stones, with habits." Chen Yuan pointed to a slope just below the courtyard. "Right now, that's just loose soil and scrub. Perfect for someone to scramble up if they don't feel like taking the main path. We're going to make it… unpleasant."
Zhang Wei frowned thoughtfully. "Unpleasant how?"
"Trip roots. Thorn bushes. Uneven rocks that roll just enough to make you fall on your ass but not enough to cause a landslide that kills everyone." He gave them a flat look. "We're not villains. We're just rude landscapers."
Li An's mouth twitched. "A formation of petty inconveniences."
"Exactly," Chen Yuan said. "Death arrays are for people who want revenge stories named after them. We want people to *decide* we're not worth the trouble and go away."
He rapped the map again.
"Today's training: we combine your cultivation with practical work. Mei, you're in charge of the soil and plants. Wei, you're moving stones and logs into place. An, you're mapping the lines of least effort—where feet naturally want to go—and making those paths just difficult enough to discourage."
Lin Mei straightened, almost vibrating with the chance to use her trowel for something other than digging practice holes. "Yes, Master!"
Zhang Wei nodded. "I can haul and stack. But… how do we make it 'living'?"
"That's where the garden comes in." Chen Yuan jerked his chin toward the Meditation Garden entrance. "You've all felt how it responds to you now. This mountain likes you. It listens when you breathe together. We're going to extend that listening outward."
He set them to work.
On the slope below the courtyard, Lin Mei knelt in the dirt, eyes half-closed as she sank slowly into the Breath of Beginnings rhythm. With each exhale, she slid her trowel into the soil, loosening clumps, redirecting tiny flows of water, digging shallow furrows where transplanted saplings might take root.
"The ground… doesn't fight me as much," she said softly. "It's like the garden. It remembers my hands."
"Good," Chen Yuan said from his perch on a nearby rock. "Don't force it. You're coaxing, not plowing. Think 'stubborn child,' not 'enemy.'"
Zhang Wei hauled stones two and three at a time, not in the panicked, desperate sprint of a porter racing the wrath of superiors, but in steady circuits that turned into Body of Stone drills. Every lift started from a proper stance; every set-down followed a controlled exhale.
Sweat soaked his shirt, but his eyes were calm.
Li An moved more slowly, bad leg testing each foothold. He marked certain spots with bits of cloth—here, the ground sloped in a way that would cause tired feet to slide; there, an angle offered just enough stability that it would become the default stepping point.
"Here," he said at one point, tapping a particular patch. "This is where the careless will put their weight."
"Good," Chen Yuan said. "Mei, that's where we want something prickly. Nothing lethal. Just something that says, 'Maybe I should rethink my life choices.'"
He watched them work for hours.
This, he thought, was cultivation that made sense—every movement building both body and home. No pointless swinging of swords at the air, no screaming about realms and bottlenecks. Just three kids learning how to shape their environment with respect and intent.
By midday, the slope looked subtly different. Bushes had been repositioned; shallow trenches redirected water away from the path a hostile party might take and toward future planting lines; stones created innocuous-looking steps that would twist the ankle of anyone not paying attention.
"Break," Chen Yuan called. "Water. Garden. Go breathe before you fall over."
They sprawled in the Meditation Garden, backs against stones, chests heaving. The garden's hum wrapped around them, soothing frayed nerves and aching muscles.
"Master," Zhang Wei said between gulps of stream water, "does this really make a difference?"
"Yes," Chen Yuan said. "Not because it'll stop a determined army—nothing short of a miracle or a very bad script would—but because it teaches you something important."
"What?" Lin Mei asked.
"That you're allowed to make the world fit you, not the other way around."
They were quiet after that.
In the afternoon, Chen Yuan shifted focus.
"Training part two," he announced once they'd recovered a bit. "We're going to pretend the Iron Fist came back, but this time they're not announcing themselves. I want to see how well you three can read the mountain."
He blindfolded them with strips of cloth from an old robe.
"Sit," he said, arranging them in a loose triangle in the courtyard. "Breathe. Listen. Then tell me if something feels… wrong."
At first, there was just fidgeting, frustrated sighs, the restless twitch of kids who wanted obvious answers. But gradually, their breathing slowed. Their shoulders dropped.
"The wind," Li An said quietly. "It's… different on the left side."
"Good. That's the new bush placement messing with airflow. Noticeable to someone who pays attention. What else?"
Lin Mei frowned under her blindfold. "The ground's… cooler behind me. More shade?"
"Exactly. We thickened the plants there. Wei?"
Zhang Wei hesitated. "There's a… hollow sound when the breeze hits the stones near the training pit. Like… they're not packed as tightly."
Chen Yuan smiled. "That's our weak point. Good catch. We'll fix it tomorrow."
They repeated the exercise, this time with Chen Yuan deliberately walking around them, changing small things—kicking a stone aside, brushing against a bush, splashing a bit of water in an unusual place. Each time, he made them describe the change in the environment, not with cultivation jargon but in simple terms: sound, temperature, airflow, smell.
By the time the sun dipped toward the distant peaks, all three could tell, with eerie accuracy, when something as small as a new weight had been added to the path twenty meters away.
"You're teaching us to be paranoid," Li An said dryly as they pulled off their blindfolds.
"I'm teaching you to be caretakers," Chen Yuan corrected. "Caretakers notice when something's off before it breaks. Paranoia is optional."
They trudged back to the main hall, tired but oddly satisfied.
That night, over a dinner that involved slightly less-mushy millet and a handful of wild greens Lin Mei had deemed safe, Chen Yuan finally brought up the topic that had been nagging at him since Elder Lu's visit.
"Look," he said, poking at his bowl with his spoon, "we did well this time. You all did well. But we were reacting. They came; we responded. That's not sustainable."
Lin Mei glanced up. "What else can we do?"
"We can start shaping our reputation before others do it for us," Chen Yuan said. "Right now, rumors are drifting around about a weird sect on a forgotten mountain. We need to decide what people hear when they listen to those rumors."
Zhang Wei frowned. "Won't that just bring trouble faster?"
"Some trouble, yes," Chen Yuan admitted. "But also disciples. Allies. People like you three, who need a place that doesn't treat them like mistakes. If we hide too well, the only ones who find us will be the ones who want to take, not those who need to belong."
Li An's gaze sharpened. "You want… stories."
"Exactly," Chen Yuan said. "In my world, the best advertisement was word-of-mouth. Someone saying, 'Hey, that place helped me. You should go too.' We don't have money. We don't have flashy techniques. We have… that." He gestured at them. "Your lives. Your changes. Your stubbornness."
Lin Mei looked uncertain. "I don't know how to tell stories."
"You don't have to," Chen Yuan said. "You just have to live them. But…" He paused, then smiled slightly. "We can nudge things along."
He rummaged in a corner and came back with a flat piece of wood sanded nearly smooth—the result of Zhang Wei's idle fidgeting during spare moments.
"An," he said, setting it down, "you're sharp with words. Write this down tomorrow and take it to the nearest village when you go to trade for salt."
Li An blinked. "What should it say?"
Chen Yuan thought for a moment, then dictated slowly.
"'The Restart Sect offers shelter and training to those other sects discard. No fees. No contracts. Only three rules: you are not trash, you do not abandon your own, and you keep trying. Injured, talentless, and troublesome welcome.'"
Lin Mei choked on her millet. "Troublesome?"
"If they're going to call us that anyway, we might as well pick up the banner ourselves," Chen Yuan said dryly. "We won't post it on the city gates yet. Just… let it circulate quietly. See who the mountain sends us."
Zhang Wei looked down at his bowl, shoulders tight. "Do you think… anyone I knew will see it?"
"Maybe," Chen Yuan said. "And if they come, we'll decide then whether they're here to hurt you or to join you. We won't decide for them in advance. That's what the Iron Fist did to you."
Silence settled for a moment, thick but not heavy.
"Master," Li An said at last, "you called the slope a wall. But it's not really a wall. It doesn't stop everything."
"No wall ever does," Chen Yuan said. "Not the stone ones, not the ones in your head. All we can do is make it so that getting past it makes people *think* first."
He glanced toward the darkened Meditation Garden, where fireflies winked between the stones.
"Same with our name," he added softly. "We can't control everything people say about us. But we can build enough truth that the lies have to crawl over it to reach us."
That night, as his disciples slept, Chen Yuan walked the newly shaped slope alone. He stepped where careless feet might step, let himself stumble where untrained legs would slide, listened to how the wind whistled between newly placed stones.
"Not bad," he told the mountain quietly. "We'll refine it. You and me."
The breeze brushed past, carrying the faint scent of turned earth and crushed leaves. The kind of smell that meant something was growing—even if no one else could see it yet.
The Restart Sect now had the beginning of a wall, not of stone, but of effort, intent, and small, deliberate difficulties.
It wasn't much against a world of powerful sects and ancient grudges.
But it was theirs.