A cool autumn breeze rustled the dried honeysuckle vines climbing the outer wall of the shed.
The town of Ashford spent the night and following morning holding its collective breath, but Kaelen Vance barely noticed.
Fourteen hours after Torv’s retreat, he spent the morning lying on the wooden bench under the front eaves.
The warmth of the sun filtered through the pine needles above, keeping the chill from his shoulders.
Beside him sat a small clay pot of roasted barley tea and a plate of warm sesame cakes.
Inside his dantian, the silver light of the Fallow Slate grew brighter with every passing hour.
[The Fallow Slate]
[150 Hours Abstained -> Multiplier: 151x READY]
Kaelen took a slow sip of tea and closed his eyes.
Over by the drying racks, Barnaby was sorting dried yellow-stem grass with his single hand.
“The whole town is losing its wits,” the old man remarked, tossing a moldy root into the scrap bin.
“They have weak nerves,” Kaelen replied without opening his eyes.
“Vane-Locke pulled all his clerks inside the yamen,” Barnaby said. “Word on the street is that three hundred bandits are camping in the northern foothills. People expect the gates to fall by tomorrow evening.”
“That sounds like an administrative problem,” Kaelen said.
“They have an ancient defensive formation on the north wall,” Barnaby added. “The Four-Directions Earth-Shield Array. It has been dormant for fifty years because nobody can read the damaged rune diagrams.”
Kaelen opened one eye.
A chill ran down the front of his tunic, far colder than the morning breeze.
“Do not talk about formation diagrams,” Kaelen warned, his voice suddenly sharp.
Barnaby looked over, his brows raised in confusion. “Why not?”
“Ancient arrays are full of high-grade Dao runes,” Kaelen explained. “If someone describes the rune flow to me, my brain starts analyzing the geometric nodes. That counts as comprehension practice.”
Barnaby blinked in disbelief. “You consider thinking to be hard labor?”
“Thinking about Dao patterns triggers spontaneous enlightenment,” Kaelen said firmly. “Spontaneous enlightenment is deliberate cultivation. Deliberate cultivation breaks my abstinence streak and resets my tally to zero.”
I have banked one hundred and fifty hours of pure idleness.
If some panicked town elder ruins my multiplier with a math puzzle, I will never recover.
A broken streak hurts worse than a broken bone.
Kaelen sat up on the bench and called out toward the kitchen.
“Mina, bring me the sheepskin scraps and the beeswax block.”
A moment later, Mina walked out of the shed holding a basket of cured lamb wool and a yellow cake of filtered wax.
“What are you building, brother?” she asked.
“Defensive armor,” Kaelen said.
He took two thick clumps of wool and rolled them into dense oval pads.
He melted a corner of the beeswax over a small charcoal burner and coated the outer leather rim to seal out sound.
Then he tied the two thick pads to a curved strip of flexible spring-iron.
He tested the contraption over his head.
The thick sheepskin clamped tightly against his temples, pressing the wax seals against his ears.
The rustle of the pine trees vanished instantly.
Barnaby’s loud voice became a faint, muffled vibration in the jaw.
Kaelen pulled the earmuffs down around his neck and nodded with deep satisfaction.
“What about eyes?” Mina asked, tilting her head. “If they show you the scroll, you might read the lines before you can stop yourself.”
“Good point,” Kaelen said. “Bring me the wooden chalkboard and a piece of white gypsum.”
Mina fetched the small chalkboard from the herb ledger desk.
Kaelen took the gypsum chalk and wrote two neat lines across the slate in bold, clear strokes:
Errand Boy’s Brain Is on Holiday until Tomorrow Sunset.
Leave 30 LSS and the Scroll in the Bucket.
He handed the board to Mina.
“If anyone approaches with silk scrolls or distressed expressions, hold this up,” Kaelen instructed. “Do not let them open anything made of parchment within ten yards of my face.”
Mina accepted the board with a solemn nod.
“I will protect your vacation, brother.”
By the middle of the afternoon, the slate timer ticked past another milestone.
[The Fallow Slate]
[164 Hours Abstained -> Multiplier: 165x READY]
The courtyard gate creaked open with a sudden screech of rusted hinges.
Rapid, stumbling footsteps echoed across the front gravel.
Three elderly men in flowing silk robes hurried into the yard, their faces pale and slick with cold sweat.
They were the senior leaders of Ashford’s merchant wards.
At the front walked Elder Corin of the Grain Guild, clutching his white beard with trembling fingers.
Behind him came Elder Orvis of the Mason’s Hall, his heavy belly heaving as he gasped for breath.
Bringing up the rear was Elder Bram of the Outer Ward, cradling a heavy bronze-clasped cylinder wrapped in faded yellow silk.
“Master Ash!” Elder Corin cried out, waving his wide sleeves. “Young master Vance! Ashford is in mortal peril!”
Kaelen was lounging on the bench directly beneath his open bedroom window, his legs crossed.
The moment he saw the faded yellow silk and the distinct glint of formation jade through the wrapping, his spiritual senses flared.
A faint wave of earth-attribute Dao intent drifted across the yard.
A Dao biohazard.
That scroll has thirty corrupted formation nodes.
If I look at that ink for two seconds, my dantian will solve the alignment on reflex.
Kaelen slammed his eyes shut without hesitation.
He grabbed the sheepskin-and-beeswax earmuffs from his lap and jammed them over his head.
The thick pads snapped against his ears, plunging his world into deep, muffled silence.
He folded his arms over his chest, turned his face directly toward the wall, and refused to move.
The three elders rushed up outside his window, their eyes wide with panic.
“Young master Vance!” Elder Orvis pleaded, waving his hands frantically. “The Blood-Wolf bandits have assembled three hundred men, and the yamen has abandoned the gates! Only the Four-Directions Earth-Shield Array can hold them off!”
Elder Bram held up the heavy bronze cylinder, waving the scroll outside the window frame.
“The central diagram is damaged by water rot!” Bram shouted, thrusting the scroll toward Kaelen’s face. “The Nine-Cauldron Guild apprentice could not decode the third node! We beg Master Ash to decipher the script before sundown!”
Kaelen sat like a stone statue.
He heard nothing but a dull, rhythmic thrumming against his skull.
He kept his eyes squeezed shut so tightly that his eyebrows met in the middle.
With his right hand, he pointed a single finger toward the corner of the porch.
The three elders paused, looking bewildered.
Mina stepped forward from the shadow of the doorway.
She held the wooden chalkboard with both hands, raising it to chest level so the elders could read the white chalk letters.
Elder Corin squinted at the writing.
“Errand boy’s brain is on holiday until tomorrow sunset?” Corin read the words aloud, his voice squeaking in confusion.
“Leave thirty stones and the scroll in the bucket?” Elder Orvis repeated, scratching his bald head.
Beside the doorway sat an ordinary wooden wash bucket, usually used for soaking bitter-root stems.
Elder Bram stared at the bucket, then at the blind, deaf youth sitting motionlessly on the bench.
“Is this a joke?” Bram whispered in horror. “The town could burn by morning, and his brain is on holiday?”
Mina pointed a firm finger toward the bottom line of the chalkboard.
Her expression was as cold and sharp as mountain ice.
“Master Ash does not work on an empty stomach, and his errand boy does not think on an empty tally,” Mina said clearly. “Pay thirty Low-Grade Spirit Stones, leave the scroll, and step out of the yard. Otherwise, hire the magistrate to defend your walls.”
The courtyard fell into a brief, strained silence.
Elder Corin clutched his chest, his eyes wide as he stared at the motionless Kaelen.
He realized that true grandmasters of alchemy and Dao arts never bowed to public panic.
Master Ash’s household was completely confident.
They did not fear three hundred bandits.
They did not care about the magistrate’s threats.
They had crushed Captain Torv yesterday, and today they demanded thirty stones just to look at an ancient scroll.
“Pay the fee,” Corin whispered urgently, nudging Orvis with his elbow. “Quickly, before they change their minds!”
Elder Orvis fumbled inside his silk robes with shaking hands.
He pulled out a heavy embroidered coin pouch and untied the golden drawstring.
With great care, he counted out thirty sparkling Low-Grade Spirit Stones.
He walked on tiptoe to the wooden wash bucket.
Clink.
Clink.
Clink.
He placed each stone inside one by one, terrified that a loud clatter might offend the resting genius.
When all thirty stones were deposited, Elder Bram approached like a pilgrim offering incense at an ancestral shrine.
He bowed three times toward Kaelen’s turned back.
Then he gently laid the bronze-clasped scroll into the wash bucket, resting it directly on top of the spirit stones.
“We leave Ashford’s fate in Master Ash’s hands,” Bram murmured in a hushed whisper.
Over by the drying racks, Barnaby leaned against a pine post, chewing on a dried clove.
The old man watched the three trembling elders tiptoe toward the gate, and he let out a dry, raspy chuckle through his teeth.
The sheer audacity of using sheepskin earmuffs to extort thirty spirit stones from the town’s richest merchants was a level of mastery he had never seen in all his years at the Nine-Cauldron Guild.
The elders slipped through the wooden gate and closed it behind them with utmost delicacy.
Not a single pebble was kicked on their way out.
Once the gate clicked shut, Mina walked over to the bench.
She tapped Kaelen’s shoulder three times.
Kaelen opened his eyes, reached up, and slid the sheepskin earmuffs down around his neck.
The sound of rustling pine needles returned to his ears.
“Are the scrolls safely contained?” he asked.
“In the bucket,” Mina said, pointing to the porch corner.
“And the fee?”
“Thirty stones, fully paid,” Mina replied with a bright smile.
She picked up the bucket and carried it to the hearth.
She lifted the loose hearthstone, revealing the iron-banded chest.
She counted the thirty new stones into the neat rows, letting them settle beside the existing pile.
The chest now held six hundred Low-Grade Spirit Stones.
Kaelen let out a long breath of relief.
He glanced toward the wash bucket.
The yellow silk covering was intact, hiding the dangerous runes beneath its cloth folds.
Thirty spirit stones for sitting on a bench with sheep wool over my ears.
That is ten stones per hour of doing absolutely nothing.
If only every crisis in the world paid this well.
He stretched his legs, pulled his straw hat over his brow, and went back to his nap.
The sun set behind the western mountains, painting the autumn sky in shades of bruised purple and cold amber.
The slate timer ticked steadily into the night.
[The Fallow Slate]
[168 Hours Abstained -> Multiplier: 169x READY]
Night fell over Ashford like a heavy black cloth.
No lanterns were lit along the south street.
The entire town huddled in darkened rooms, waiting for the Blood-Wolf horde to strike.
Near midnight, at the southern end of the alley, a slender shadow slipped over the stone perimeter wall of the Third Herb Shed.
The figure dropped into the garden dirt with a soft, muffled thud.
He wore a dark hooded cloak and black leather boots.
His breathing was harsh and shallow, marked by the wheezing rattle of cracked ribs and sulfurous pill-ash.
It was Cassian Vance.
His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot with desperate madness.
After his humiliating defeat in the barony qualifiers and the cracking of his ribs, Madam Evelyn had cast him aside like an old rag.
Magistrate Vane-Locke had promised him an officer’s seat in the new border order, but only on one condition:
Cassian had to poison the Third Herb Shed’s well before the main attack began.
Inside his leather pouch rested a small ceramic vial containing three drops of Corpse-Rot Well Poison.
“One drop into their water,” Cassian whispered to himself, clutching his throbbing ribs as he crept toward the outer storehouse.
“Then Kaelen and his crippled sister will bleed from their eyes before dawn.”
He reached the wooden door of the outer herb storehouse.
The latch was unlocked.
Cassian smirked, pushed the door open, and took three confident strides across the dark flagstones.
A sharp, crackling sound tore through the room.
Before his fourth step could land, thick blue frost erupted from the cold stone beneath his feet.
A wave of biting, marrow-chilling frost-qi surged upward like a striking serpent.
In less than half a second, the frost locked both of Cassian’s leather boots solid to the stone foundation.
He opened his mouth to scream, but the air froze in his throat.
The outer storehouse had become a frozen cage.