There is a theory never written in any book — because no one has ever felt the need to write it — that a person's character is most clearly revealed not in how they treat the important people in their life, but in how they treat those who don't matter at all.
Wei Yanchen didn't know this theory. But if someone had watched him for a full day in the Qinghe market, they might have arrived at a similar conclusion.
That morning began with the grinding stone incident.
The Wei family's grinding stone was an old thing whose weight was roughly equivalent to Wei Yanchen's ambition to wake up early — that is to say, very heavy and unwilling to move without significant persuasion. True to his promise from the night before, Wei Yanchen arrived in the kitchen before his mother finished preparing breakfast, rolled up his sleeves, and stared at the grinding stone with the expression of a general assessing a battlefield.
"You don't need that dramatic a face," said Lin Suhua from the corner of the kitchen without turning. "Just push it three steps to the left."
"Mother, this isn't about technique." Wei Yanchen tightened his belt with a motion that had nothing to do with moving a grinding stone but that felt necessary. "This is about mentality. Preparation."
"Three steps to the left, Yanchen."
He pushed. The grinding stone moved with a long, ear-splitting screech. Three steps to the left.
"Done," said Wei Yanchen, dusting his hands with satisfaction, as though he had just completed something far more complicated than it actually was.
Lin Suhua set a bowl of congee on the table without comment. But the corner of her lips moved slightly upward — a very small motion, barely there. Wei Yanchen caught it and decided to count this as a victory.
❧
The Qinghe market on an ordinary day had a rhythm that, if you watched it long enough, began to feel like music written by someone who had never studied music theory but had a very good ear.
There was an opening movement — from before dawn until the sun had risen a handspan — when vendors arrived one by one, stalls were opened, and the first sounds were wood scraping wood, ropes being tightened, and the occasional short curse from someone who had dropped something in the dark.
Then came the middle movement — full morning through midday — the loudest and most crowded. This was the section with the most complex melody: overlapping voices haggling, children weaving between adults, roaming vendors shouting their wares with phrases sharpened over years to sound as appealing as possible in as little time as possible.
And there was the closing movement — late afternoon into evening — slower, more tired, but with a different quality of light. The low sun made everyone's shadow longer than the person casting it, and vendors who had been on their feet since before dawn began sitting on their small stools with the air of people gladly surrendering the remainder of their energy to the end of the day.
Wei Yanchen knew all these movements by heart. But his favorite had always been the middle — not because he enjoyed noise for its own sake, but because in the middle movement people were most clearly themselves.
And Wei Yanchen was genuinely fascinated by people.
The first person he encountered that morning — aside from Uncle Guo at the corner, who had become a kind of morning ritual — was Grandmother Pang.
Grandmother Pang was a woman somewhere in her seventies who sold embroidery thread at the western corner of the stalls. Small in frame, slightly stooped in the back, but with sharp eyes — the eyes of someone who had seen enough of the world to no longer be easily fooled. She had a habit of chewing sesame seeds while she worked, and if you sat close enough in a quiet enough moment, you could hear the small, steady, soothing sound of her jaw.
Wei Yanchen liked Grandmother Pang because she was one of the few people in the market who spoke to him the way you'd speak to an adult — not condescending, not lecturing, but the way someone speaks when they no longer have the energy to pretend.
"Yanchen," Grandmother Pang called as he passed. "Come look a moment."
He stopped. Grandmother Pang was pointing at the wooden post of her stall with an expression of irritation dried into exhaustion.
"The rope's come loose again. When it rains, my roof tilts to the left."
Wei Yanchen examined the knot in question. Loose at one point, slack at two others. He tightened it quickly — a two-minute job if you knew what you were doing — while thinking that this knot had been fixed at least four times since last month and the wooden post itself probably needed replacing.
"You should ask my father to look at the post," he said, finishing the last knot. "The wood is starting to rot at the base."
"How much?"
"Not sure. But replacing it now costs less than if it collapses during a heavy rain."
Grandmother Pang chewed her sesame seeds for a few seconds, weighing.
"You tell your father first. If the price is fair, I'll ask him."
"Will do." Wei Yanchen stood, brushing dust from his knees. "Do you want any tofu today? Mother made steamed this morning, there's still some left."
"Set aside two pieces. I'll pick them up in the evening."
"Noted."
The interaction was over in under five minutes. Wei Yanchen moved on, having already forgotten the details of the exchange before he reached the next stall — not because he didn't care, but because to him it was simply the natural thing to do, not something that needed to be remembered as a kindness.
At the next stall, a different problem.
The child was roughly eight or nine years old, standing in front of the pastry vendor's stall with an expression that perfectly represented the conflict between a very strong desire and a very empty pocket. He had been standing there for a while — Wei Yanchen could tell from the position of his feet, which had shifted slightly from where they must have started, the sign of someone who hadn't left but hadn't moved forward either.
The pastry vendor — a middle-aged man named Old Duan whom Wei Yanchen knew because he had once helped lift his heavy crate when a wheel broke three months ago — was serving another customer with his back to the child.
Wei Yanchen stopped beside the child.
"Which one do you want?" he asked quietly.
The child startled slightly — not expecting anyone to speak to him — then pointed at a small moon cake arranged on the front tray. "That one. But I don't have enough money."
"How much do you have?"
"Five tong." Produced from his trouser pocket in a way that showed the coins had been clutched there for some time. "I'm three short."
Wei Yanchen checked his own pocket. He had enough. He added three copper coins to the child's hand without many words, then patted his shoulder once.
"Who is it for?" he asked.
"My little sister. It's her birthday today."
"Oh." Wei Yanchen smiled. "Happy birthday to her."
The child nodded quickly, then stepped up to the stall with enough money in hand and the expression of someone who had just completed an important mission. Old Duan served him cheerfully, wrapped the moon cake in slightly crumpled pink paper, and handed it over with a smile he perhaps didn't realize was more meaningful than he knew.
Wei Yanchen was already walking again before the child finished paying. Three copper coins was a small amount — the kind he wouldn't remember by tomorrow morning. But somewhere, later, someone would eat a moon cake on her birthday.
That was enough.
Around midday, Wei Yanchen sat on the rim of the old well at the center of the market — a spot that had unofficially become a rest stop for anyone whose feet had started to complain — eating a piece of grilled flatbread he had bought from a passing vendor at a price that still felt slightly too expensive but not expensive enough to refuse.
Beside him, not long after, sat Tao Mingzhi.
Tao Mingzhi had been Wei Yanchen's friend since they were both small enough to run through the market lanes without anyone stopping them. Now they were sixteen — Mingzhi three months older, a fact he mentioned as often as he considered relevant — and Mingzhi had been working at his uncle's herb shop since last year.
He sat down the way an exhausted person sits: immediately, without ceremony, as if his body made the decision before his mind agreed.
"Uncle Dao made me sort two hundred bundles of dried roots this morning," he said by way of greeting, skipping the actual greeting.
"Good morning to you too," said Wei Yanchen.
"Two hundred bundles, Yanchen. Two hundred."
"That is a lot."
"My hands smell like roots all over." Mingzhi held up his hands as evidence. "Even after washing them three times."
Wei Yanchen sniffed the air in the opposite direction with a considering expression. "Not too bad. Like a forest after rain, but the more... tormented version."
"That doesn't help."
"I didn't say I was going to help. I said it wasn't too bad."
Mingzhi seized half of Wei Yanchen's flatbread with the practiced ease of years of friendship, bit into it, and chewed with the expression of someone deciding whether life was worth continuing.
"Did you hear about the cultivator who passed through yesterday?" he asked.
Wei Yanchen nodded.
"Apparently he's from the Boundless Sky Sect." Mingzhi lowered his voice slightly, though no one in the middle of the market's noise cared. "Uncle Dao says the sect is opening new disciple recruitment. Once every three years."
"Hmm."
"You're not interested?"
Wei Yanchen chewed the remains of his flatbread — now considerably smaller than it should have been — while gazing at the market crowd in front of them. Old Ren the fish seller was arguing with a customer about the freshness of fish he hadn't sold yesterday, three women were gossiping in front of the fabric stall while pretending to choose colors, and Si Belang was sitting atop a pile of rice sacks with the expression of a king surveying his kingdom.
"Not especially," he said at last.
Mingzhi stared at him. "Really? I thought you were the most curious about it yesterday."
"Curious is different from interested."
"What's the difference?"
Wei Yanchen thought for a moment. "Curious is seeing something unfamiliar and wanting to understand how it works. Interested is... wanting to be part of that thing." He paused. "I'm not there yet."
Mingzhi nodded slowly, accepting the explanation. He bit into the rest of the flatbread again.
"I want to try applying," he said, a little quietly.
Wei Yanchen glanced at him. "Seriously?"
"Uncle Dao says if my spiritual root is strong enough, there's a possibility." Mingzhi didn't sound very certain, but not uncertain either. More like someone who had thought about something long enough that they could no longer tell which feelings were their own and which had been thought over too many times. "I don't know yet. Still thinking."
"If that's what you want," said Wei Yanchen, "then try."
"Just like that?"
"No one said it would be easy. But if you don't try, you won't know." He tossed the empty flatbread wrapper into the wooden rubbish bin near the well — it went in. "And if you don't get accepted, you can still come back and sort dried roots."
Mingzhi threw a small pebble at him. Wei Yanchen dodged.
They sat there a while longer, letting the afternoon move around them — two young men in a town that didn't exist on any map, amid all the possibilities that hadn't yet been given names.
The afternoon brought light rain.
Not a downpour — just drizzle enough to make the market lanes smell of wet earth and send every vendor scrambling to lower their tarps with varying degrees of readiness. Stalls with good tarps closed themselves calmly. Stalls with tarps already slightly worn — like Grandmother Pang's — closed themselves with prayer.
The rope Wei Yanchen had fixed that morning held. Grandmother Pang's roof did not tilt to the left.
Wei Yanchen walked his mother home earlier than usual because of the drizzle, carrying the empty baskets in turns so Lin Suhua didn't have to carry them all herself. They didn't talk much on the way — it was the kind of walk that didn't need many words, because words would make it feel more important than it needed to be, and what it needed to be was already perfectly fine without additions.
From the forge, the sound of hammering still carried — Wei Fugui didn't stop for mere drizzle.
In the kitchen, Lin Suhua began preparing dinner with movements already deeply familiar. Wei Yanchen sat on the kitchen bench — not his favorite bench, which was out front, but the one facing his mother's work table — and watched without speaking for a while.
"Mother," he said at last.
"Hmm."
"Mingzhi wants to apply to the cultivator sect."
Lin Suhua didn't stop stirring. "I know. His mother told me last week."
"Oh." Wei Yanchen propped his chin in his hand. "Do you think he'll get in?"
"I don't know. It's not my business."
"Not mine either. But I'm curious."
Lin Suhua paused briefly — a very brief pause, barely there — then continued stirring with the same rhythm.
"Do you want to try too?"
Her tone was neither worried nor pushing. More like a question asked because she genuinely wanted to know the answer, not because she already had the answer she wanted.
Wei Yanchen considered it honestly — not quickly, not with a ready-made answer.
"I don't know yet," he said finally. "Maybe someday. Maybe not."
"That's an honest answer."
"Better than one that sounds good but isn't true."
Lin Suhua smiled — a small smile visible only from a certain angle. "You're too much like your father when you talk about things like this."
"Father doesn't talk much about things like this."
"That's exactly what I mean."
Wei Yanchen laughed softly. Outside, the drizzle was beginning to thin — growing lighter and finer until it was barely felt at all. The earth in their small yard had turned dark brown and smelled of the first rain of spring.
From the forge, the hammering was still going. Slower now — a sign that Wei Fugui was nearly done for the day.
The Wei family's dinner that night was vegetable soup with boiled egg and leftover tofu from the morning — simple, sufficient, and as always accompanied by Wei Fugui's story about a customer today whose details grew more dramatic with each retelling, Lin Suhua's well-aimed corrections, and Wei Yanchen's embellishments that made everything sound like a far grander adventure than it had been.
Outside, the sky had gone dark and clear after the rain.
The stars tonight were more numerous than usual — or perhaps they only looked that way because the air was cleaner. Wei Yanchen sat out front as always, head tilted slightly back, and started counting.
One, two, three...
Somewhere up there, the blue-robed cultivator might be flying among those stars — or might already be so far away the sky looked completely different. Wei Yanchen didn't know. But he wasn't thinking about it much.
He still had two hundred stars he hadn't counted yet.