One afternoon in late spring, sunlight slanted across the bluestone road.
In front of an academy beside the official road outside some prefectural city in Jiangnan, a crowd had gathered. Chen Wuya stood below the steps, a bundle patched over with layer upon layer of patches on his back. His coarse-cloth jacket and trousers had been washed pale, and his skin was slightly dark, yet there was still a hint of a smile between his brows, as if he didn't care about any of this. But the smile only floated across his face; when the dimple in his left cheek twitched, it vanished again.
He was the seventh student expelled from the academy that year, and the only one who came from a peddler's family.
"Rotten wood cannot be carved." Someone walked out from inside, a scroll of paper pinched in his hand. His voice was neither loud nor soft, just loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. "Chen Wuya, your parents paid for you to study, not to come here and muddle through your days."
Several fellow students beside him burst into laughter. One of them crouched down, picked up a crumpled scrap of wastepaper by his feet, and threw it beside Chen Wuya's shoes. The paper ball rolled to the toes of his cloth shoes. Scrawled crookedly across it were the words: "Go home and sell sweet potatoes."
Chen Wuya didn't raise his head or say anything. He merely reached out and gripped the strap of his bundle tighter, his knuckles turning faintly white. He bit his lower lip, then lowered his head and hurried through the crowd.
No one stopped him. They only laughed, watching him duck out of the academy gates like someone dodging rain. His figure soon vanished along the small road leading out of the city.
He knew he couldn't take the main street. It was crowded and full of gossip, and today's expulsion from the academy had probably already spread through half the city. He turned into a dirt path overgrown with weeds. Short shrubs lined both sides, and birds occasionally burst into flight. His steps grew faster and faster. The bundle on his shoulder slapped against his back, making faint sounds.
The sun gradually slanted westward, and the official road merged back together ahead. From the distance came the sound of hoofbeats, mixed with the crisp clanging of metal.
He stopped, crouched into the grass beside the road, and peered out.
Through the billowing dust, a squad of escort guards was locked in fierce battle with more than a dozen masked men. Blades flashed, blood spattered across the yellow sand, and two people already lay motionless on the ground. An escort wagon had overturned in the middle of the road. Its chests had burst open, scattering several bronze cases. When one of them broke apart, a yellowed page was swept up by the wind, spinning straight toward where he was hiding.
He instinctively reached out and caught it.
The page was thin and light in his hand, its edges charred black, as if it had been snatched from a great fire. The writing was incomplete, and he could make out only a few lines: "Guide qi along the Taiyin, reverse through the Shaoyang... draw fire into the Lung Meridian... if it surges back into the Ren Meridian, death follows."
The wording was incoherent and the logic a mess. It looked nothing like a proper cultivation method.
He frowned at the lines, and a thought suddenly surfaced: What if I read it backward... would it work?
The instant the thought arose, a voice suddenly rang out in his mind:
"Erroneous interpretation confirmed. Activating completion mechanism."
His entire body jolted, and he nearly flung the page away.
Several lines of pale golden text appeared in the empty air before him, crystal clear—
"Fragment of incomplete cultivation method Canglang Art detected. Seven gaps in the operation route. Reverse deduction commencing... Reverse operation route reconstructed."
Immediately afterward, a warm current rose from his dantian and slowly flowed toward his limbs and bones. Though it vanished in only an instant, it left every pore on his body wide open, as if long-parched land had finally met rain.
He froze.
This wasn't an illusion.
He lowered his head and looked at the page again. The sentences he hadn't understood before now faintly revealed a certain rhythm. In particular, the line "draw fire into the Lung Meridian"—according to common sense, it was surely a grave taboo. But if reversed, first severing the lung breath, then borrowing the force of fire to drive out stagnation... it seemed to make sense after all.
Before he could think it through, an angry roar tore through the air in the distance.
"That brat took the thing!"
A bandit was pointing toward him, his face filled with murderous intent as he charged over with his blade raised.
Chen Wuya reacted at once—he had been misunderstood. He had no idea what this page was, much less why it had attracted pursuit, but there was no time to think now.
He rolled to his feet and ran.
The footsteps behind him drew closer and closer. Another bandit leaped across a ditch and took a shortcut to cut him off. Chen Wuya didn't dare take the official road, so he plunged straight into a narrow forest path beside it. Tree roots coiled beneath his feet, branches tangled overhead, and the light rapidly dimmed.
He sprinted desperately ahead until his lungs felt as though they were burning. Then he stumbled into the depths of a shrub thicket, curled up, and held his breath.
The pursuers' footsteps lingered outside the woods for a while before finally fading into the distance.
He leaned against a tree trunk and gasped for breath. His palms were drenched in sweat, yet his fingertips still clenched the page tightly. Moonlight leaked through the gaps between the leaves, shining on its scorched yellow edges.
That voice just now... is it still there?
He tentatively thought: What if I change "reverse through the Shaoyang" to "proceed along the Taiyin"?
There was no response.
He tried another approach: What if this cultivation method was meant to make people practice it incorrectly? For example, the more wrong it is, the more right it becomes?
This time, that cold voice rang out in his mind once more:
"Hypothesis established. Entering verification process."
Faint phantom text appeared before him again: "Path deviation conforms to system judgment threshold. Temporary true-qi circuit construction complete. Warning: Current state cannot be sustained for more than three breaths."
Before the voice had even finished, another warm current surged through his body. It was stronger than before, rushing straight up along his spine to the crown of his head before instantly retreating.
Chen Wuya's eyes widened, his heartbeat thundering.
This wasn't a dream.
Nor was it some profound and mysterious fortuitous encounter. It was something... operating on the level of rules, responding to his "mistakes."
He grinned, and this time the smile finally reached his eyes.
So the reason I couldn't learn the Four Books and Five Classics or remember the words of the sages was that my brain was simply born unable to follow the proper path?
Perfect.
Others practiced martial arts step by step, but he insisted on going backward. Others feared qi deviation and demonic possession, but he would charge straight down the side road. As long as this thing recognized "wrong" instead of "right," then he would be wrong all the way to the end.
He carefully folded the page, stuffed it into the innermost layer of his bundle, and wrapped it tightly in torn cloth.
Night had fallen, and the forest was silent. The fighting on the distant official road had ended long ago. He didn't know whether the escort agency had won or the bandits had succeeded. He didn't dare go back to check, nor did he dare rashly return home. He was now carrying something even he couldn't explain, along with a strange "voice" that only gave him feedback whenever he indulged in wild thoughts.
He sat with his back against the tree trunk, closed his eyes, and tried to recall the fragmentary incantation.
"Guide qi along the Taiyin, reverse through the Shaoyang..."
He deliberately reversed the order and silently thought: "Guide qi through the Shaoyang, proceed along the Taiyin."
After waiting several breaths, the system gave no response.
He changed his method: "If 'reverse' is the correct path, then wouldn't 'forward' be wrong? So the true method of practice is actually to deliberately practice it incorrectly?"
This time, something stirred in his mind almost at once.
"Logical paradox triggered. Activating compensation mechanism. Initiating short-term simulation."
A faint but distinct current of heat appeared again, traveled once around his meridians, and then dispersed.
He opened his eyes, and there was already a light in them.
This thing was real.
And it belonged to him alone.
He rose to his feet, brushed the grass from his clothes, and looked toward the depths of the forest. The path ahead wound away, its destination unknown. But he knew that he could never turn back now.
The academy didn't want him, and the world laughed at him as a good-for-nothing.
Yet if all the so-called "right paths" in this world were truly correct, then why were there still people stopping the road to rob escort wagons? Why were there so many people who had read every book yet lived worse than a blade of grass?
He touched the fragmentary page inside his bundle and muttered:
"Since all of you say my doctrines are crooked and heretical, then I'll use the crooked to carve out a straight road."
The night wind brushed past the treetops, stirring the hem of his clothes.
He stepped forward, his figure gradually sinking into the depths of the darkness.
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