Chapter 8: The Weight of a Name
The whispers began as a low tide, but within days, they had swelled into a wave that crashed through every corner of the Verdant Sword Sect. The name "Li Wei" was on everyone's lips, no longer spoken with pity, but with a mixture of mockery and morbid curiosity.
"A herb-gatherer? In the Grand Tournament? Has he gone mad?"
"Zhang Feng will pulverize him in the first round. It will be a bloodbath."
"Perhaps he seeks a honorable death. It is better than living as a cripple."
Li Wei heard the fragments of conversation as he carried his basket through the outer courtyards. He kept his head down, his face a mask of indifference, but inside, the words stung. Each whisper was a tiny needle, pricking at the shield of resolve he was trying to build.
The other herb-gatherers gave him a wide berth, their eyes filled with a new kind of fear. They had seen what happened to Overseer Bo. They didn't understand it, but they knew Li Wei was no longer one of them. He was something other, a dangerous unknown.
His daily training with Old Sweeper was his only refuge. In the hidden bamboo grove, there were no whispers, only the rustle of leaves and the old man's relentless instructions.
"Faster! Your enemy will not wait for you to calculate the vector of his strike!"
"Your power is not just in your hands, boy! It is in your feet, your hips, the turn of your shoulders! The whole body is a conduit!"
Li Wei learned to move the energy through himself like water through an aqueduct. He could absorb a blow to his left arm and channel the force down his right leg to stabilize his stance. He learned that a small, sharp release of kinetic energy from the ball of his foot could make him sidestep with unnatural speed.
But the mental toll was heavier than the physical. The constant scrutiny, the weight of being a spectacle, was a pressure he hadn't anticipated. Doubt began to creep in during the quiet moments. *Was this madness? Was he truly just a cripple chasing a final, glorious death?*
One afternoon, a week after his registration, the pressure found a face.
He was returning from the cliffs, his basket full of Spirit-Herbs, when a group of three inner disciples blocked the narrow path. They were Zhang Feng's lackeys, their faces twisted into familiar sneers.
"Well, well. If it isn't the tournament champion," the lead one, a pockmarked youth named Jun, jeered. "Making your final preparations?"
Li Wei tried to step around them. "I have work to do."
Jun shoved him back, his hand striking Li Wei's chest. It was a testing blow, not meant to seriously harm, but to probe.
Kinetic Energy Harvested: 2 Joules.
Li Wei absorbed it effortlessly, not even rocking back on his heels. Jun's eyes widened slightly in confusion. The shove should have at least made the cripple stumble.
"Zhang Feng sends a message," Jun said, recovering his bravado. "Withdraw from the tournament. Crawl back to your dirt hovel, and he will allow you to keep scraping out a living. If you step onto that stage..." He leaned in, his breath hot and sour. "He won't just break your body. He will make sure you are conscious for every second of it. He will erase you."
The threat hung in the air, cold and sharp. This was no longer just about winning or losing. It was about annihilation.
For a terrifying second, the old fear surged in Li Wei's throat. The memory of his dantian shattering, the feeling of utter helplessness, threatened to overwhelm him. He saw himself on the stage, broken and humiliated before the entire sect, just as they had always expected.
But then he felt the hum. The cool, steady thrum of the energy stored within him. The silent, unyielding logic of the laws he now served. He was not the boy he had been.
He looked Jun directly in the eye, his own gaze flat and calm. "Tell Zhang Feng," Li Wei said, his voice quiet but clear, "that I have already been erased. The man he will face on that stage is someone new."
He didn't wait for a response. He simply walked forward. Jun, startled by the lack of fear, instinctively stepped aside. Li Wei passed between them, not with speed, but with a steady, inevitable momentum, like a stone rolling downhill.
He didn't look back. He could feel their stunned silence at his back, more powerful than any curse they could throw.
That night, in his shack, the fear was gone, burned away by a cold, clean certainty. The whispers no longer mattered. The threats no longer frightened him.
They had given him a name: a cripple, a fool, a dead man walking.
He would give himself a new one.
On the tournament stage, he would show them all what that name meant.