Barnaby Holt gripped the small ceramic ointment jar as if it were carved from solid diamond.
The old man paced back and forth across the flagstones, his one hand clutching the jar against his chest. Six crimson spheres rattled softly against the glazed clay. With every step, he glanced toward the corner of the shed, where a hemp hammock swung gently between two cedar posts.
“Six,” Barnaby whispered, his voice trembling with manic wonder. “Six Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills. Kaelen, do you have any concept of what we are holding?”
Kaelen lay in the hammock with his ankles crossed, right where he had flopped down to restart his True Fallow State timer from zero hours. His straw hat was pulled low over his nose against the afternoon sun.
“I know exactly what we are holding,” Kaelen said from beneath the straw. “We are holding peace and quiet. Or at least we were, until you started pacing like a caged badger.”
“A badger!” Barnaby stopped, his gray mustache twitching violently. “I took the sample to Old Jethro. The courier nearly had a heart attack when he smelled the wax wrap! If Deacon Vane verifies the purity, the Ghost Market will offer fifty spirit stones for a single pill! Fifty stones, Kaelen!”
The old man stomped toward the hammock, brandishing his wooden ladle.
“We have two bushels of sulfur grass left in the cellar,” Barnaby pleaded, his voice cracking. “The stew-pot is still hot! The charcoal is still glowing! Get out of that hammock and boil another batch! Just ten more minutes!”
Kaelen didn’t move an inch.
In the corner of his vision, the pale grey stone tablet floated serenely against the dark ceiling.
[The Fallow Slate: Stage 1 — Mortal Tally] [Current Abstinence: 1 Hour, 14 Minutes] [Current State: True Fallow State] [Current Multiplier: 2x] [Next Milestone: 2 Hours (3x Ready)]
Old Barnaby wants me to refine medicine until my hands fall off, Kaelen thought. If I touch that pot now, the slate snaps back to zero. A true master knows when to lie completely still.
“I cannot touch the furnace, Old Barnaby,” Kaelen said, his voice slow and heavy with feigned sorrow.
Barnaby narrowed his eye. “And why not? Don’t tell me your spleen is curdled again.”
“No,” Kaelen replied smoothly. “The spleen has stabilized, but the sun has passed the western ridge. Afternoon fire-Qi is clashing directly with my gallbladder meridian.”
Barnaby lowered his ladle by two inches. “The gallbladder?”
“The gallbladder governs decisive action and martial courage,” Kaelen explained in a grave tone. “In late afternoon, the wood element within the gallbladder dries under the setting sun. If I stir an alchemical fire now, the excess heat will ignite my internal bile ducts.”
Barnaby blinked in utter bafflement. “Ignite your bile ducts?”
“Spontaneous bile combustion,” Kaelen said with complete seriousness. “It causes a cultivator to spit bright green venom for three weeks. It burns holes through silk pillows and ruins the appetite. Do you want me spitting green bile onto your dried mint?”
Barnaby stood there for five long seconds. His mouth opened, closed, and opened again.
“Heavens give me patience,” Barnaby muttered, turning away with a heavy groan. “Bile combustion. I spent forty years studying the grand arts of alchemy, and this boy invents three new diseases before tea time.”
Kaelen smiled under his straw hat.
He reached beneath his pillow and pulled out Claire Vance’s scuffed leather recipe book. With a flick of his wrist, he slid the first pamphlet of The Bandit King’s Secret Bride back inside the calfskin cover, then set the book on the low workbench.
Across the room, Mina was humming a cheerful nursery tune.
Her small face was flushed with healthy color. The lavender tint on her lips was entirely gone, replaced by vibrant pink. She wore a clean linen apron over her blue dress, holding a broom made of dried willow twigs.
With steady, energetic strokes, she swept the splinters of the shattered pine door into a tidy pile near the hearth.
“Mina,” Kaelen called out softly. “Sit down. You don’t need to sweep.”
“I like sweeping,” Mina said, flashing him a bright, radiant smile. “My chest doesn’t ache anymore, Kaelen. When I breathe in, it feels warm like summer grass. It doesn’t hurt at all.”
Kaelen’s gaze softened as he watched her.
The Cloud-Veined Supreme Marrow-Warming Pill had completely halted her Frost-Marrow Decay. For the first time in her twelve years of life, she wasn’t shivering in the heat of midday.
“Don’t tire yourself out,” Kaelen murmured. “Sweep slowly. Speed agitates the dust.”
“Yes, Brother,” Mina giggled, pushing a pile of wood shavings toward the edge of the hearth.
Near the hearth sat the cracked iron stew-pot.
Though the charcoal had burned down to faint embers, the cast-iron pot remained warm to the touch. Faint, thread-like wisps of crimson vapor still curled up from the metal rim, carrying the sweet scent of wild honey and roasted clover.
Mina swept past the brazier, her broom raising a gentle draft.
The draft caught the thin plume of crimson medicinal vapor, swirling it across the flagstones. The sweet-scented mist drifted over the corner of the low pine workbench, brushing directly against the scuffed calfskin cover of Claire Vance’s recipe book.
Kaelen watched lazily through the weave of his straw hat.
Then, he stopped breathing.
Where the crimson vapor touched the worn leather, the brown surface didn’t darken with moisture.
Instead, the faded crest of the Vance Clan dissolved.
Beneath the leather grain, hair-thin lines of liquid silver flared into brilliant light. The silver threads spread rapidly across the binding, forming an intricate web of interlocking runes. They looked like coiled serpents, pulsing with a rhythmic, ethereal heartbeat.
Kaelen sat up so fast the hammock ropes creaked.
He swung his legs out, his straw hat falling onto the hay.
“Mina, stop,” Kaelen said, his voice sharp and low.
Mina paused, broom raised in midair. “Kaelen?”
Kaelen stood up and walked swiftly to the workbench. He didn’t use any Qi, but his eyes were completely focused on the glowing calfskin cover.
The silver script was unlike any writing used in the Vance Barony. It wasn’t the crude, angular script of the northern border territories. The runes were curved, elegant, and packed with dense geometric equations.
As the wisp of crimson vapor thinned and vanished into the air, the silver light began to dim. Within three breaths, the runes faded back into the dark leather, leaving only the scuffed, ordinary cover of a household ledger.
Kaelen picked up the book. The leather felt cool, smooth, and unremarkable.
Heat-reactive runes, Kaelen thought, his fingers tracing the invisible lines. No, not just heat. If mundane heat triggered them, they would have flared when Old Barnaby boiled tea beside them.
He stepped over to the charcoal brazier.
Using a pair of iron tongs, he lifted a glowing piece of spirit-charcoal and held it two inches above the leather binding. The dry heat was intense enough to scorch paper.
The leather remained completely dark. Not a single silver thread appeared.
Kaelen lowered the tongs.
It doesn’t react to mundane fire, Kaelen realized. It reacts specifically to Supreme Pill vapor. It requires pure, unblemished Pill-Fire.
A wave of cold realization washed over him.
Claire Vance had disappeared seven years ago during a journey to the provincial capital. The clan elders had declared her dead, claiming her carriage had been ambushed by mountain bandits. Baron Derrick Vance had remarried Madam Evelyn within six months, burying every trace of his first wife’s existence.
Throughout Kaelen’s childhood, everyone had treated Claire Vance as a gentle, quiet mortal woman from an impoverished scholar family. She had no martial rank. She had never displayed a single thread of Qi.
Yet she had left behind a leather ledger encrypted with advanced Pill-Fire ciphers.
To forge runes that reacted exclusively to zero-poison Supreme Pill vapor required an alchemy realm far beyond anything the Vance Clan could comprehend. Even the grand alchemists in the capital couldn’t forge a Cloud-Veined Supreme pill on demand, let alone weave its spiritual frequency into a leather binding.
Mother wasn’t a mortal scholar’s daughter, Kaelen thought, his jaw tightening. She was an alchemist. A high-tier one.
He looked down at the book in his hands.
The runes had only partially revealed themselves. The single wisp of Tier 1 vapor had awakened less than ten percent of the pattern. To reveal the entire cipher, the book would need the sustained heat of a higher-tier pill furnace—perhaps Tier 2 or Tier 3 Pill-Fire.
Whatever secrets his mother had sealed inside this book, she had hidden them where only a master of zero-poison alchemy could ever read them.
“Brother?” Mina asked, walking over and tugging his sleeve. “What is wrong? Is the book burned?”
“No,” Kaelen said softly, his voice returning to its normal, calm cadence. “The leather is fine.”
He carried the book to the darkest corner of the shed. Behind a stack of dried angelica roots sat a hollow cedar cavity built into the wall. Kaelen slid the book deep into the shade, covering the entrance with a bundle of dry sage.
“Keep this spot clean, Mina,” Kaelen murmured. “Don’t let anyone touch it.”
“I won’t,” Mina promised, nodding seriously.
Kaelen walked back to his hammock and climbed in. He pulled the straw hat back over his eyes and settled his head against the rolled wool blanket.
I need higher-tier pill formulas, Kaelen reflected silently. And to refine higher-tier pills, I need more Fallow Hours. Rushing will only expose the shed.
Above him, the slate chimed softly, acknowledging his steady calm.
[Current Abstinence: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes] [Current State: True Fallow State] [Current Multiplier: 2x]
Kaelen closed his eyes and breathed the sweet scent of clover.
The afternoon faded into twilight.
In the outer yard, Barnaby hammered fresh pine planks into the broken gate frame, muttering curses under his breath every time a nail bent. Mina finished sweeping the floor, curled up on a clean blanket beside the hearth, and fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.
The quiet watches of the night passed in stillness.
Kaelen didn’t train, circulate his Rank 4 Qi, or practice the Crushing-Boulder Fist. He simply rested, listening to the crickets in the garden and the steady rhythm of his sister’s breath.
Every sixty minutes, the slate chimed once in his mind, piling another multiple onto his tally.
By the time the first gray light of dawn crept through the cedar slats, the slate flared with cool silver letters:
[Current Abstinence: 12 Hours, 00 Minutes] [Current State: True Fallow State] [Current Multiplier: 13x (Stage 1: Mortal Tally)] [Accumulated Qi Reservoir: Ready for Harvest]
Kaelen opened his eyes. He felt refreshed, light, and completely at ease. Twelve hours of pure, uninterrupted indolence had earned him a thirteen-times multiplier.
A sharp, metallic clatter shattered the morning silence.
Outside the gate, the ornate brass bells of an official carriage jangled with crisp authority. Heavy boots marched across the gravel courtyard, stopping right before the newly repaired fence.
A harsh, cultured voice rang through the morning air:
“Third Young Master Kaelen Vance!”
Barnaby startled awake on his stool, dropping his wooden ladle with a clatter. Mina sat up on her blanket, rubbing her eyes in confusion.
Kaelen pushed his straw hat back half an inch.
Standing on the porch was a tall, severe man dressed in high-collared black robes trimmed with silver silk. He carried an iron-tipped ledger wand in his belt and wore a golden signet ring bearing the personal crest of the Vance Patriarch.
Steward Malakor.
The personal chief steward of Baron Derrick Vance.
Malakor’s thin, hawkish face was pale with cold fury. He looked at the splintered door frame, then at the gaping hole in the courtyard wall where Douglas had flown through yesterday.
“Third Young Master,” Malakor said, his voice cutting like a razor. “The Baron has convened an emergency tribunal in the Grand Martial Pavilion. Enforcer Douglas lies in the medic hall with five shattered ribs and a fractured sternum. Second Young Master Garrick has lodged a formal complaint of violent rebellion.”
Malakor took out an iron scroll stamped with scarlet wax.
“You are summoned to the main hall immediately,” the steward declared coldly. “The Baron demands your presence. You have thirty breaths to make yourself presentable.”
Barnaby’s face went white. He stepped forward, his single hand shaking. “Steward Malakor, it was Douglas who broke the door! Douglas attacked first!”
“The elders will determine who attacked,” Malakor snapped without looking at the old man. “Third Young Master, move.”
Inside the hammock, Kaelen looked down at his faded linen trousers and cloth slippers.
Derrick wants an explanation, Kaelen thought. Madam Evelyn wants my shed shuttered, and Garrick wants his fifty silver back with my kneecaps attached.
He glanced up at the slate.
[Current Multiplier: 13x Ready; Not Yet Cashed]
If he fought his way out, the slate would reset to zero. If he displayed his Mortal Pulse Rank 4 cultivation in the main hall, every elder in the Vance Clan would demand to dissect his meridians.
To protect his harvest, he couldn’t act like a genius.
He had to look as utterly, hopelessly useless as humanly possible.
Kaelen swung his legs out of the hammock, took a slow sip of cold water, and let out a dry, raspy cough.
“Give me a minute, Steward,” Kaelen said weakly. “My slippers are untied, and sudden movement makes me dizzy.”