Chapter 40: The First Yes
The silence after the Archive was a living thing, filled with wind and bird calls and the vast, open sky. It was a noise of freedom, and it was deafening.
For three days, they simply existed. They followed a stream downhill, drank clean water, ate wild berries and roots Lin identified as safe. They spoke little. They were decompressing from a world of impossible pressures into one of simple survival.
Xiao Feng walked with a new awareness. The defiant will was a quiet bedrock, but it wasn't a compass. For so long, his path had been dictated by reaction—to hunger, to threat, to duty. Now, the only thing pushing him was the need to put one foot in front of the other. It was terrifyingly peaceful.
On the fourth day, they found the road. Not a caravan track, but a proper, stone-laid imperial highway, worn smooth by centuries of traffic. Civilization.
They followed it east, keeping to the tree line. By midday, they heard the sounds—the distant clang of a smithy, the lowing of oxen, the murmur of many voices. Peering from a ridge, they saw a walled town nestled in a green river valley. Banners flew from its gates, showing a white heron on a blue field—no sect symbol he recognized, likely a mortal governance.
"We need supplies," Lin stated, the practical soldier taking over. "Information. Clothes that don't scream 'escaped lab experiment.'"
Xiao Feng nodded. It was a logical first 'yes.' Yes to basic needs.
But entering a town required currency. Or trade.
Kaelan solved it. His sand-form shifted, sifting through the soil near the road. After an hour, he produced three small, rough nuggets of gold—flakes washed down from the mountains over eons, gathered and fused by his precise control. "The sands remember where heavy things settle."
It was enough.
They approached the town gates as the sun began to dip. The guards, men in polished leather with spear-tips gleaming, looked them over with mild curiosity. A group of four, travel-worn but not ragged, carrying no visible weapons but with an air of quiet competence. They paid the entry toll with a sliver of Kaelan's gold and passed inside.
The town of "White Heron Ford" was a bustling, orderly place. Cobbled streets, timber-and-plaster buildings, the smell of baking bread and forge-smoke. Mortals went about their lives, with a sprinkling of low-level Qi Gathering cultivators in simple robes—likely town guards or apprentices to local alchemists.
They bought simple, sturdy tunics and trousers from a bemused clothier. They ate hot meat pies at a noisy tavern, the first real cooked food they'd had in weeks. The noise, the smell, the sheer normalcy of it was a profound shock.
As they ate, Xiao Feng listened. The talk was of local things: the price of grain, a dispute over fishing rights on the river, the upcoming "Heron Festival." No one spoke of Scarred Wastes, of Broken Blades, of Heavenly Errors. The colossal struggles he'd been part of were distant rumors here, if they were known at all.
It was… small. And beautiful.
After eating, they found a cramped but clean room at an inn above a stable. As night fell, they gathered in the room, the weight of the day settling on them.
"What now?" Lian asked, her voice small. Her shadow, now strong in the candlelight, curled around her feet contentedly. "Do we stay?"
Lin leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "We can't stay long. Our gold won't last forever. And four strangers with no story attract attention."
Kaelan's sand-form sat by the window, gazing at the sleepy town. "The sands feel no deep history here. No great tribulations. It is… quiet."
Xiao Feng listened to them. He looked at his own hands, calloused but clean. The hollow ache was still there, but it was no longer a void. It was a space. An empty room in a house he finally owned.
He had spent his life being defined by what he consumed, what he fled, what he refused.
Now, he had to choose what to build.
He thought of the Archive's cold halls, the Blade's brutal pragmatism, the Sect's cruel hierarchy. He thought of the Flawed, scattered and used. He thought of Fang-7, left behind in a different cage.
The defiant will stirred. It didn't want to fight those things. It was tired of fighting.
It wanted something else.
"I don't want to join another sect," Xiao Feng said, his voice quiet but clear in the room. "I don't want to serve another master. I don't want to just survive."
He looked at each of them. "But I don't know what I do want."
Lin gave a slow nod. "That's the first honest thing anyone's said in a while."
"We could travel," Kaelan offered. "See the world. The sands have only known wastes and silence. I would like to see a great forest. Or an ocean."
"I would like to not be afraid," Lian whispered. "My shadow is calm here. It likes the candlelight."
Xiao Feng felt a strange, warm pull in his chest. Not hunger. Something softer. "We could find a place," he said slowly, the idea forming as he spoke it. "Not to hide. But to… be. A place for flaws that aren't weapons. A place that's quiet."
Lin raised an eyebrow. "A sanctuary? You, the world-eater, want to run a rest home for broken things?"
"Not run," he said. "Just… be there. And if others like us find it, they can be there too."
It was a naive dream. An impossible one. But it was a yes. A positive choice, not a defiant refusal.
Before they could discuss it further, a commotion arose from the street below—shouts, the clatter of hooves, a woman's scream.
Instincts took over. They were at the window in an instant.
Below, a scene unfolded under the torchlight. A richly dressed young man, his face arrogant and flushed, stood over a cowering flower-seller, an old woman whose cart had been overturned. His horse, a spirit-beast with coats of fine grey, stamped nervously. Two armed guards flanked him.
"You blinded my Azure-Dust with your wretched petals!" the young man shouted. "Do you know what this horse is worth? Your miserable life isn't worth one of his hooves!"
The town guard who had been at the gate approached, looking nervous. "Young Master Hui, please, it was an accident…"
"An accident she'll pay for! Seize her! My family's taxes pay for the magistrate's robes. He'll see justice done!"
It was a petty, cruel drama. The kind of small tyranny that happened in every corner of the world. The kind Xiao Feng had spent his early life enduring.
The old woman wept, clutching her torn shawl.
Xiao Feng watched. The defiant will in him didn't roar. It didn't hunger for the young master's pride as a tribulation to consume.
It simply… disapproved.
He turned from the window. "Wait here."
"Feng—" Lin started.
"I'm not going to fight," he said. And he meant it.
He walked downstairs and out into the torch-lit street. He moved without stealth, without threat. He simply walked up to the scene.
Young Master Hui saw him. "Who are you? Another beggar? Get lost!"
Xiao Feng ignored him. He knelt beside the overturned flower cart. He began to right it, carefully picking up the scattered, bruised blooms. He helped the old woman to her feet, his movements gentle.
"Your horse isn't blind," Xiao Feng said, his voice calm, carrying in the sudden quiet. "He's spooked. The petals startled him. See? His eyes are clear." He pointed at the spirit-horse, which indeed had wide, intelligent, and perfectly fine eyes.
The young master sputtered. "How dare you—!"
"How much for the flowers?" Xiao Feng interrupted, pulling a small piece of their remaining gold from his pocket. He placed it in the old woman's hand. It was worth a hundred flower carts.
Her eyes widened. "S-sir, this is too much…"
"For the trouble," Xiao Feng said. Then he turned to Young Master Hui. The young man's anger was a hot, brittle thing. A minor tribulation of spoiled privilege.
Xiao Feng didn't consume it. He looked at it. He understood its source: insecurity, a need to feel powerful. He felt a flicker of the old empathetic sense, but now it was calm, analytical.
"You're embarrassing yourself," Xiao Feng said, not with scorn, but with simple fact. "Your guards know it. The town guard knows it. Everyone watching knows it. Is this the power you want? To be known as the man who bullies grandmothers over flowers?"
He wasn't challenging him to a duel. He was holding up a mirror.
Young Master Hui's face went from red to white. He looked at the watching crowd, at his own guards who wouldn't meet his eyes. The hot anger curdled into shame. He had no defense against this. No enemy to fight, no insult to punish. Just the quiet, undeniable truth of his own pettiness.
He snarled, a helpless, defeated sound, then turned, mounted his horse, and rode off, his guards scrambling after him.
The crowd murmured, then slowly dispersed. The town guard gave Xiao Feng a long, thoughtful look, then nodded once in gratitude before moving to help the old woman with her cart.
Xiao Feng walked back to the inn. He had used no power. No technique. Just a few words, a little money, and the quiet pressure of truth.
Back in the room, his friends were staring at him.
"You… talked him down," Lin said, disbelief in her voice.
"I didn't have anything else to use," Xiao Feng said, sitting on his pallet. He felt… good. Not triumphant. Just settled. "I didn't want to eat his anger. I just wanted him to stop."
Kaelan's sand-form rippled. "That is a different kind of strength."
"It's a start," Xiao Feng said.
That night, as he lay listening to the sounds of the sleeping town, the idea from earlier returned, clearer now. Not a sanctuary hidden away. Something more active. A place of balance.
A place where those with power—flawed or otherwise—could learn to use it without being used by it. Where tribulations could be understood, not just consumed or feared. A school, of sorts, but not for cultivation. For context.
He had the ultimate teacher for it: his own journey. From consumption to empathy to defiance.
He had the start of a faculty: a warrior, a living memory, a shadow-walker. And himself, the empty vessel who had learned to hold a 'no.'
It was a mad, impossible dream.
But for the first time, it was his mad, impossible dream.
He had spent his life saying no to the world.
Tomorrow, he would begin figuring out what to say yes to.
And as he drifted to sleep, the hollow space inside him didn't feel empty. It felt like a clean slate, waiting for a new story to be written. Not in blood, or lightning, or sorrow.
But in choice.