The morning bells of the White-Lotus Royal Academy chimed across the granite ridges, but inside Cold-Spring Grotto, nobody moved.
A single dried tea leaf drifted across the still surface of the subterranean spring. The cave was quiet, cool, and shielded from the scorching sun by fifty feet of solid mountain rock.
Kaelen Vance sat in a low wicker chair near the water’s edge, dangling a slender bamboo pole over the dark pool.
The rod had no iron hook. It had no bait. A simple strand of unweighted white silk hung from the tip, drifting idly three inches above the crystal-clear water.
The fish in this pool have more sense than the elders on the mountain, Kaelen thought, watching a silver-scaled minnow dart past the shadow of his string. They see an empty line and swim away. If only academy instructors understood hints that easily.
In his left hand, Kaelen held a neatly bound sheaf of parchment.
The pages were a leisure story, not a cultivation manual; following its plot did not draw Kaelen into the technical study that risked his comprehension streak. The cover bore the hand-inked title: The Bandit King’s Secret Bride, Book 6. Deacon Vane had smuggled the latest serial installments up from the lower city presses three days ago. They were wrapped carefully in oiled paper to protect the ink from cave moisture.
