That night, his parents sat him down at the table.
"Qiu," his father said. "Do you really want to cultivate?"
Yan Qiu looked at both of them. His mother's hands were folded in her lap, and his father's face was serious. Waiting.
"Yes," he said. "I really want to. If we cannot afford it though, I will not be sad. I understand."
His mother smiled and reached over to touch his hand. "Qiu, don't worry. Your father and I have been saving a little every year for your fifteenth birthday, putting aside whatever copper we could spare after the harvest and the winter stores were settled. It seems it will be more useful now."
"As for the rest of the coins," his father added, "we will work harder."
And they did work harder.
His father started taking extra jobs around the village, repairing fences and carrying grain for the wealthier families, anything that would pay a few copper, no matter how small or exhausting the task might be, and he never once complained about the aching in his back or the blisters forming on his already calloused hands. He came home later each night, more tired everyday.
His mother took in mending work from the neighbors, sitting by the oil lamp until her eyes hurt, stitching torn clothes and patching worn fabric for anyone who would pay even half a copper for her careful work. Sometimes Yan Qiu would wake in the middle of the night and see her still working, her needle moving slowly in the dim flickering light.
It was not just his family. The other parents whose children had passed the spiritual root test were doing the same thing, working themselves to exhaustion in the fields and taking on any odd job they could find, all for the slim chance that their children might become something more than farmers in a poor village. Those who could take extra work did so. Those who could not tried to find other ways.
Three weeks was all the time they had before the final test in Dusthaven.
Some villagers praised the children who had passed. They said encouraging things and wished them luck. Others mocked them instead.
"It is a waste to spend your entire fortune on something like this," one man said loudly near the well, his voice carrying across the square where half the village could hear him speak his piece about the foolishness of poor families chasing impossible dreams. "Most of them will fail anyway. Then what? They will have nothing left."
Yan Qiu heard him and did not respond, he just kept walking.
Another time, he overheard two women talking outside the grain store.
"The Yan family is selling everything they have for that boy," one of them said. "What if he fails? They will starve coming winter."
"Let them try," the other replied, her voice softer and kinder than her companion's, carrying something that sounded almost like respect for a family willing to risk everything on their son's future. "At least they have some hope, most of us can't even get ourselves to do it."
Yan Qiu walked away before they noticed him, and the words stayed with him for the rest of the day.
One afternoon, he passed by a small bookstore on the edge of the village market. It was old and dusty, and there was a book sitting outside on a wooden crate, its cover faded and worn from years of sitting in the sun and rain, waiting for a buyer who never came. He could not afford to buy it, so he stopped to read the words on its cover.
"Cultivation is not easy. Only those with grit can pull through. I shall go through it even at the cost of my life."
Yan Qiu stared at the words. He wanted to be a cultivator, so why would someone risk their life like that?
Then something strange happened. He found himself thinking: I shall go through it even at the cost of my life.
He blinked. Why did he think that? He did not want to die. That was not how he felt at all. The heat in his chest stirred, the same warmth that had been there since the spiritual test, faint and persistent and impossible to ignore no matter how hard he tried to push it down. He shook his head and walked away quickly.
The days went by. Yan Qiu tried to collect a few coins for himself by helping the neighbors.
Old Grandmother Sun needed water carried from the well, so he did it for her three times that week, hauling the heavy bucket up the path to her door each morning before the sun grew too hot. She gave him a copper coin and a bowl of soup too. Uncle Liu was stacking firewood behind his house, and Yan Qiu helped him finish the pile, lifting logs that were almost too heavy for his skinny arms until his muscles burned and his palms were raw. When they were done, Uncle Liu pressed a coin into his palm with a rough pat on the shoulder. The Zhao family paid him another coin for running errands across the village, and a hunter gave him one more for helping him carry few wild rabbits back to his home.
Some neighbors refused to pay him because they were busy helping their own children prepare, and he understood that. Everyone was struggling.
By the end of two weeks, Yan Qiu had four copper coins, which was not much, and he kept them wrapped in a piece of cloth under his pillow anyway.
On the twentieth day, just one day before they were supposed to leave for Dusthaven, the Yan family sat down together and counted their savings.
Thirty coins, and they needed forty.
"Ten are still missing," his father said quietly, his voice heavy with exhaustion and something else that Yan Qiu recognized as the weight of a man who had worked himself to the bone and still come up short.
Yan Qiu looked at the pile of copper and his chest felt tight. All that work and all those late nights, and they were still short.
"Qiu, don't worry," his mother said. "We still have time until dusk tomorrow. We will try our best."
"Father, Mother," Yan Qiu said. "It is fine if we cannot afford it. Really."
Neither of them answered. His father stared at the coins and his mother looked away.
That night, Yan Qiu could not sleep. He lay in bed listening to his parents talk in low voices on the other side of the thin wall, their words unclear, just murmurs that rose and fell like the wind outside, carrying emotions he could sense even if he could not make out what they were saying. His mother sounded calm while his father was clearly worried.
Eventually the voices stopped and the house went quiet.
The next morning, his mother's voice woke him.
"Qiu, wake up."
That heat again, the one in his chest that had come back about a week after the spiritual test and had not left since, sitting there like an ember that refused to die no matter how many times he tried to ignore it. He pushed it down and sat up.
"What happened, Mother?"
"You are going to take the test today. Did you forget?"
Yan Qiu sat up properly. "The test? We did not have enough coins. Did you and Father work through the night?"
"No, son." She laughed softly. "We found another way. Now get up and get ready."
"Another way?" He stood up and looked at his mother, then he noticed her hair.
Her jade hairpin was missing.
It was her dowry. The only thing of value she had brought from her family when she married his father, a piece of jade that had belonged to her mother and her mother's mother before that, passed down through generations of women who had nothing else to give their daughters. She had worn it every day for as long as he could remember. The one thing she never let anyone touch.
"Mother," he said. "Why?"
The night before, after Yan Qiu had gone to sleep, his parents had sat together in the dim light of the oil lamp.
"We are still ten coins short," Yan Zhuo said, sounding tired and defeated.
Luo Qin was quiet for a long moment, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on something far away that only she could see. Then she reached up and pulled the jade hairpin from her hair, holding it in her palm. The jade was old and worn, its color faded from years of use. It was not worth much to anyone else, but to her it was everything.
"This should be enough," she said.
"Qin." Her husband's voice was rough. "That is your mother's hairpin. You cannot sell it."
"I can," she said. "And I will."
"Qin—"
"Zhuo." She looked at him. "Our son has a chance to become something more than a farmer in a poor village, a chance to learn cultivation and live a life that neither of us could ever dream of, and I will not let ten copper coins stand between him and that future. He has spiritual roots. How many children in Blackroot can say that?" She closed her fingers around the hairpin. "This piece of jade will not feed us. It will not keep us warm in winter. What it can do is give our son a future."
Yan Zhuo did not speak. His jaw was tight, his eyes were wet.
"My mother would understand," Luo Qin said softly. "She would want this for him too."
She placed the hairpin on the table between them.
"Sell it tomorrow morning," she said. "Before Qiu wakes up."
Yan Qiu stood in the doorway, staring at his mother's bare hair.
"Mother," he said again. His voice cracked. "You did not have to do that."
She walked over and cupped his face in her hands, her palms warm against his cheeks, her eyes steady and full of something that looked like pride and love and fierce determination all mixed together.
"I wanted to," she said. "Your future is worth more than a piece of jade. Now get ready. You have a test to pass."
Yan Qiu looked at her and wanted to say something, to tell her that he would make it worth it, that he would not let her sacrifice be for nothing. The words would not come.
Instead, he nodded and went to get ready.
Outside, the sun was rising over Blackroot, and it was time to go to Dusthaven.