Kaelen folded the grey paper slip, slid it into his linen sleeve, and stepped back out onto the porch as Deacon Vane bowed and hurried down the trail.
“Let him squeeze,” Kaelen said mildly, resting his elbows against the wooden porch railing. “Baron Derrick commands three hundred guards and owns a mansion of solid ironwood.”
He pointed toward his hookless bamboo fishing rod leaning against the rain barrel.
“Right now, the carp in the lower pond require my complete, undivided negligence.”
Following him out from the bedroom, Barnaby Holt let out a harsh, gravelly snort and wiped hearth dust from his single hand onto his stained apron.
“The boy’s mind is hollow,” Barnaby muttered to the rafters. “A storm gathers over the mountain, and he wants to dangle string over mud.”
“It’s not just string,” Kaelen corrected gently, picking up the smooth bamboo pole. “It’s a refined philosophy of peaceful non-action.”
Every minute I spend sitting by the water without thinking about clan politics is another brick in my cultivation foundation, Kaelen thought. Let Father sweat over yamen summonses. Real power comes from keeping your heart rate below seventy beats per minute.
For the next two days, the mountain ridge settled into a rhythm of absolute laziness.
Kaelen walked down the mossy path behind the shed every morning at sunrise.
He sat on a flat, sun-warmed boulder beside the willow pond, resting his back against a rotting stump.
His hookless line dangled three inches above the green water, drifting lazily with the morning breeze.
He did not fish for food.
He did not circulate Qi.
He simply watched the dragonflies skim the reeds, letting the hours slip through his fingers like dry sand.
Up on the ridge, however, Old Barnaby took his guard duties with terrifying seriousness.
The old alchemist had abandoned his brewing kettles almost entirely.
Armed with a rusted iron garden shovel in his single hand, Barnaby crouched behind the thick blackberry brambles beside the path.
His one good eye glared through the thorns like an enraged badger guarding a winter burrow.
Whenever an innocent herb gatherer or delivery boy from the lower fields walked within fifty paces of the pond, Barnaby rose from the bushes.
He did not speak.
He simply slammed the flat blade of the shovel against an oak trunk with a dull boom, pointing down the mountain with a crooked finger.
The terrified workers usually dropped their baskets and ran all the way back to the village.
Old Barnaby believes he is protecting an ancient alchemy secret, Kaelen mused, leaning his head back against the tree bark. In reality, he is guarding my right to take a six-hour morning nap. I should raise his tea allowance.
Behind his closed eyelids, the pale tally tablet hummed with steady, quiet growth.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 52h 15m] [Active Multiplier: 53x READY] [Stage 1 Vessel Cap: 240h (241x)]
The multiplier climbed without pause.
Thirty hours turned into forty, then fifty, then sixty.
Yet as the second day progressed, Kaelen began to notice an odd pattern in the living quarters of the shed.
Whenever he walked back up from the pond at noon to refill his clay teapot, his small wooden nightstand looked different.
He kept three worn romance pamphlets stacked beside his sleeping mat.
They were the latest installments of The Bandit King’s Secret Bride, purchased from the Ghost Market peddlers.
On the morning of the second day, Book 1 was missing from the pine table.
Two hours later, when Kaelen returned for an apple, Book 1 was back in its place.
Beside it, Book 2 had vanished.
When Book 2 finally reappeared that afternoon, Kaelen picked it up and inspected the rough hemp-paper cover.
Along the margins, right beside the woodcut illustration of Lady Linnea weeping by the moonlit willow, were faint thumbprints of dark alchemy soot.
Kaelen brought the paper to his nose and took a light sniff.
It did not smell of rosewater or tea leaves, which Mina favored.
It smelled distinctly of scorched brimstone and pine soot.
Sera Thorne only smells of weapon oil and cold mountain rain, Kaelen noted with a dry twitch of his lips. And Mina treats these pamphlets like sacred temple scrolls. There is only one person in this shed whose fingers are permanently caked in furnace soot.
The thought amused him so much that he decided to investigate.
Strolling back toward the shed storage pantry for fresh tea leaves, he set his empty teacup on the porch rail and stepped quietly around the western corner.
The afternoon air was warm and still, smelling of drying clover and split firewood.
Behind the woodshed, half-hidden by a towering stack of cured birch logs, sat an overturned wooden herb bucket.
Perched awkwardly on the bucket was Old Barnaby.
The old man had his back turned to the yard.
His broad, scarred shoulders were hunched forward, his shaggy grey hair spilling over his collar.
In his single hand, he held Book 2 of The Bandit King’s Secret Bride, gripping the paper so tightly that the spine groaned.
A strange, wet sniffling sound drifted through the woodpile.
Kaelen paused behind the birch logs, peeking around the rough bark.
Barnaby’s weathered, leather-tough face was pale.
His single eye was red-rimmed and overflowing with massive, glistening tears that rolled down his craggy cheeks and disappeared into his tangled grey beard.
The old man raised his sleeve, loudly blowing his nose with a wet honk that startled a sparrow from the shed roof.
“Foolish girl,” Barnaby whimpered softly to himself, his voice trembling with genuine grief. “Why did she run into the clearing? The Black-Viper sect had poisoned arrows notched on five bows! Now the King must bleed for her foolish heart!”
Kaelen leaned casually against the birch stack, folding his arms across his chest.
“Because love makes people reckless, Old Barnaby,” Kaelen said in a calm, clear voice. “Especially on page forty-two.”
Barnaby leaped a full foot into the air.
The wooden herb bucket tipped over with a loud clatter, rolling into the weeds.
The old man scrambled wildly, tucking Book 2 beneath his armpit while swinging his head around like a guilty thief caught with stolen pork.
His face flushed a deep, violent crimson, turning the color of an overripe plum.
“Boy!” Barnaby bellowed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched croak.
He coughed furiously, pounding his chest with his single fist as if clearing his throat of thick phlegm.
“What are you creeping around for?” Barnaby sputtered, glaring through his watery eye. “A martial artist walks with heavy steps! You glide like a ghost! It’s unnatural!”
“I came for fresh tea leaves,” Kaelen said smoothly, his eyes dropping to the folded paper sticking out from beneath Barnaby’s arm. “I didn’t expect to find our chief alchemist holding a funeral service behind the woodpile.”
Barnaby stiffened, pulling his elbow tighter against his ribs.
“Funeral?” Barnaby scoffed, waving his hand with theatrical dismissal. “Nonsense! Pure slander! I was working! Crucial laboratory inspection!”
“Laboratory inspection?” Kaelen repeated mildly.
“Yes!” Barnaby barked, his face still burning red. “The paper quality! These cheap street printers use spoiled mulberry pulp! I was testing the fiber density to see if it would serve as tinder for our Earth-Fire braziers!”
“Testing the pulp,” Kaelen murmured. “Does the testing require weeping into page forty-two?”
“It was wood smoke!” Barnaby shouted, wiping his wet cheek with the back of his wrist. “A stray ember from the kitchen flue drifted into my eye! The stinging was unbearable!”
Mina walked around the corner of the shed, carrying a wooden basket piled with washed linen.
She stopped, looking at Barnaby’s red face, the overturned bucket, and the corner of the pamphlet peeking from his armpit.
A bright, knowing smile spread across her face.
“Did you reach the part at the riverbank, Uncle Barnaby?” Mina asked innocently.
Barnaby froze.
His jaw worked up and down like a stranded fish, his fierce scowl melting into desperate curiosity despite himself.
“The arrow,” Barnaby asked in a hushed, strained whisper, entirely forgetting his paper-tinder excuse. “Does the Bandit King’s blood-staunching art hold? The poison was brewed from Nine-Spotted Adders!”
“He survives,” Mina whispered back eagerly, setting her basket on a tree stump. “Lady Linnea uses her hair ribbon to bind the wound! But then the third elder of the Iron-Gale Sect ambushes them at the cave entrance!”
“Curse that third elder!” Barnaby roared, shaking his fist at the sky. “I knew his eyebrows were too thin to be trusted! A man with thin eyebrows has no loyalty!”
Kaelen rubbed the bridge of his nose, letting out a soft sigh.
“I leave the two of you alone for two days,” Kaelen said, “and you turn our alchemy compound into a literary society.”
Barnaby coughed again, clearing his throat with another loud grunt, though his shame had completely evaporated now that Mina was on his side.
He pulled Book 2 from his armpit and smoothed the crumpled cover against his thigh with surprising gentleness.
“Well,” Barnaby grunted, glaring at Kaelen with renewed authority. “Since you are standing there doing nothing, you should make yourself useful.”
“Useful?” Kaelen asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Barnaby said sternly, pointing the pamphlet at Kaelen’s nose. “Deacon Vane comes by tomorrow. You need to ask that greasy weasel when Book 4 arrives from the provincial capital. The story ended on a cliffhanger, boy! A man cannot brew medicine with his mind suspended in agony!”
First Brother trains eighteen hours a day to master the broadsword, Kaelen reflected with a faint smile. Old Barnaby masters the art of emotional investment in third-rate pulp fiction. Truly, my shed is blessed with priorities.
“I will ask the deacon,” Kaelen promised mildly. “Now put the bucket upright and let me have my tea.”
By the time the afternoon shadows stretched long across the ridge, the sun began to sink behind the western peaks.
The mountain air turned cold and crisp.
Kaelen returned to his hammock on the porch, wrapping a wool blanket around his shoulders.
Inside his mind, the Fallow Slate gleamed with crisp white numbers.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 76h 00m] [Active Multiplier: 77x READY] [Stage 1 Vessel Cap: 240h (241x)]
Seventy-six hours of total, unbroken fallow accumulation.
His multiplier had reached seventy-seven times speed.
If he spent five minutes circulating Qi right now, it would equal nearly six and a half days of continuous cultivation.
His foundation hummed with quiet, steady stability, the Rank 7 meridians firm and wide.
Yet he did not touch the multiplier.
He was aiming for the full one-hundred-hour mark, or perhaps even the stage vessel cap of two hundred and forty hours.
The longer he rested, the greater the reward.
Light, hurried footsteps sounded from the dark pine trail below the shed.
Sera Thorne stepped onto the gravel clearing, moving with silent, predatory grace.
Her leather scouting boots were coated in grey road dust, and her iron spear was strapped tight across her back.
Her breath came in short, measured puffs of white vapor in the evening chill.
Barnaby, who had been sitting on the porch bench reading Book 3 with a candle, immediately looked up.
Mina came out from the kitchen with a cup of hot broth.
“You were gone all day, Sera,” Mina said softly, handing her the cup. “Did you find anything in town?”
Sera took the broth and drank half of it in a single swallow, letting out a sharp breath.
Her jaw was tight, and her grey eyes were grim.
“I did not stay in town,” Sera said, her voice low and tight. “I followed the Baron’s private carriage.”
Kaelen leaned forward slightly in his hammock, the straw hat tipping up.
“Father went to the meeting?” Kaelen asked.
“He left the manor gates two hours before sunset,” Sera reported, looking toward the dark, jagged peaks looming to the north. “He did not take his household guard. He dismissed his personal escort at the lower bridge and rode alone into the mountain pass.”
“Alone?” Barnaby muttered, lowering his pamphlet. “Baron Derrick never walks to the outhouse without four armored guards watching his flanks.”
“He went to the Mountain-God Shrine,” Sera continued, her voice dropping another octave. “I tracked his horse through the ravine until the mist became too thick.”
She paused, setting the wooden cup down on the porch rail.
“He was carrying something from the ancestral vault,” Sera said quietly. “A reinforced ebony chest bound with bronze wire. When he mounted his horse, the velvet wrapping slipped. It was the ancestral Vance blood-jade.”
Old Barnaby gasped, his single hand gripping his knee so hard the joints popped.
“The blood-jade?” Barnaby whispered, his eye wide with sudden horror. “That jade is the foundation seal of the entire Vance estate! Why would Derrick carry the clan’s lifeblood to an abandoned ruin in the dark?”
Kaelen looked up into the black, starless sky above the ridge.
The cold wind whistled through the pine branches, carrying the scent of damp moss and impending rain.
“Because Magistrate Vane-Locke has something Father wants even more than his ancestors’ honor,” Kaelen said softly.