At sixty, the ear grows attuned

Great Yu Empire, Qing Province, Yunlin County.

Three Trees Village.

The summer noon sun was vicious. On bare skin, it felt no different from a tongue of fire licking across it.

In a courtyard with three small rooms at the eastern end of the village, an old reclining chair sat beneath the eaves.

Yi Yang lay on it, wearing a short jacket washed pale, his trouser legs rolled to his knees to reveal two thin, withered calves.

His hair had already turned gray, deep furrows crisscrossed his face, and the veins on the backs of his hands twisted like old tree roots.

A battered fan swayed slowly in his hand.

The fan was made from wooden slats pasted with yellow paper. Its edges had long since torn, and a few strokes sent scraps of paper fluttering off.

But in this hellish weather, something was better than nothing.

Yi Yang narrowed his eyes at the flecks of sunlight spilling through the leaves and murmured, "Come the autumn harvest, this old man will be sixty."

He paused and tapped the fan against his chest twice.

"The ancients in my last life said that at sixty, the ear grows attuned. Tsk. I haven't noticed my ears growing attuned, but they're certainly growing deaf."

Having said that, Yi Yang chuckled to himself.

It was a soft laugh, tinged with self-mockery and an indescribable weariness.

A full sixty-year cycle.

From his transmigration into this world to the gray hair covering his head, a full sixty years had passed.

In his previous life, a sixty-year-old could still dance in the public square, still scroll through short videos and scold young people for not knowing how to look after their health.

But in Three Trees Village, sixty already counted as a long life.

Many were broken by forced labor before forty, hollowed out by illness before fifty. In a bad year, they were rolled in a straw mat, and another nameless mound appeared in a dirt pit outside the village.

Simply being alive meant he had already outlasted far too many people.

As a child, Yi Yang had lived with his parents and his younger brother and sister in Cloud Pattern Town. The family owned two shops, so they had no trouble getting by.

When Yi Yang was sixteen, he broke through the mystery of the womb and remembered everything from his previous life.

Back then, his blood ran hot, and he nearly believed he was the protagonist chosen by the Heavenly Mandate.

Soap, white sugar, glass, distilled liquor.

His mind brimmed with plans. He had even chosen a name for his commercial empire.

Then this world gave him a mighty backhanded slap.

This was no place for reason.

Here, fists did the talking.

Martial artists existed in this world.

Not street performers doing chest-breaking stone tricks, but truly formidable people who could shatter stone tablets, split rocks, and leap across roofs and walls.

Even entry-level martial artists had flesh far tougher than an ordinary person's.

Beyond that, he had heard of masters who could take lives from a distance, send blade energy flying from their weapons, and behead someone a hundred paces away.

As for the higher realms, those were things common folk could not even comprehend.

Crushing mountains and severing rivers, moving mountains and filling seas.

It sounded fantastical, yet whenever the county storytellers spoke of figures from those great sects, none of the men in the teahouse dared laugh carelessly.

Because everyone knew it was real.

In a world like this, those little tricks from his previous life could only fool ordinary people.

But if he actually made money, could he hold on to it?

If a martial artist came to his door and said he wanted his recipe, would he hand it over?

Refuse?

Then the whole family would meet their end together, and by morning, a few more stray dogs would be gnawing bones at the village entrance.

Would the authorities intervene?

Most of those sitting in government offices were martial artists themselves, or had martial artists standing behind them.

Without strength, insisting on rules was merely digging your own grave-and planting the grass on it while you were at it.

In his early years, Yi Yang had dreamed of becoming a powerful martial artist who could cleave mountains and sever seas.

At sixteen, he and his younger brother Yi Xun went to a Martial Arts Hall in Cloud Pattern Town to have their aptitude tested.

A long line stretched outside the Martial Arts Hall. Children wore clean clothes, while their parents clutched copper coins and stared eagerly inside, little different from people waiting for a judge to pronounce life or death.

When Yi Yang's turn came, the instructor felt his bones, pressed his tendons, and had him perform the most basic set of stances.

In the end, he offered only a short verdict.

"You have no destiny in martial arts."

Those weightless words shaped Yi Yang's entire life.

"Your younger brother Yi Xun, however, has decent bones and tendons. He can begin martial training."

To the Yi family, those words meant blue smoke was rising from their ancestral graves.

That evening, his father drank half a pot of cloudy wine and slapped the table, his eyes red.

"Our family is going to have a martial artist!"

His mother dug out the silver at the bottom of her chest and even pawned the silver hairpin from her dowry.

Exotic beast meat, medicinal herbs, Martial Arts Hall tuition—one expense after another was poured into Yi Xun.

Yi Yang wanted a little seed money to start a small business.

Not much. Just a few taels of silver.

His father slapped his pipe onto the table and berated him for being thoughtless. "Your brother has aptitude. He's the hope of this whole family! You can't even practice martial arts. What business do you think you can run? If you lose the money, how will you make it back?"

His mother wiped away tears as she tried to persuade him. "Yang, you're older. Give way to your brother. Once he amounts to something, how could he forget you?"

His younger sister Yi Yun stood in the doorway, her face flushed, and quietly spoke a few words on his behalf.

But in that household, the words of those two youngsters carried less weight than ashes in the stove.

Later, when he was twenty-five, the household split.

Yi Xun received the two shops in Cloud Pattern Town, along with the connections the family had built up.

His sister married.

Yi Yang received this dilapidated old house in Three Trees Village, along with a marginal share of a few mu of poor farmland.

He did not argue. Ever since he was sixteen, he had already seen his parents for what they were.

From then on, Three Trees Village had one more woodcutter.

He entered the mountains at dawn and returned at dusk with loads of firewood.

Decades passed. The young woodcutter weathered into a middle-aged woodcutter, and the middle-aged woodcutter weathered into an old one.

He had replaced his chopping blade three times and worn through countless pairs of straw sandals. The calluses on his hands were thick enough to strike sparks. The pride he had once carried as a transmigrator had long since been ground down by rice and firewood, oil and salt, rain and snow, wind and frost, until little remained.

Yi Yang fanned himself, his eyelids half lowered.

"Living is hard."

He softly breathed out those words.

Just as Yi Yang was about to doze off, hurried footsteps suddenly sounded outside the courtyard gate.

Tap, tap, tap.

The steps struck the hard, dry dirt road, stirring up fine dust.

A girl slipped through the courtyard gate.

She was around fourteen or fifteen, wearing an old pale-green skirt with a hem washed nearly white. Strands of hair clung to the sides of her face, sweat beaded on her nose, and her chest heaved.

It was Jiang Yuexin.

Yi Yang's sister's granddaughter.

The child had a bitter lot. When she was ten, her parents went somewhere unknown and never returned.

She had lived with her grandmother afterward. Three years ago, on her deathbed, her grandmother entrusted her to Yi Yang.

Ever since then, the little girl had called Yi Yang Grandpa and said she would care for him in old age and see him laid to rest.

Yi Yang always complained aloud that she was a nuisance, yet at mealtimes, he always pushed the softer flatbread toward her.

"What are you running for?"

Yi Yang lifted his eyelids and tapped the battered fan against his palm. "A young lady barging through the door like a wild rabbit darting into its burrow. Who taught you that? Those little monkeys from the west end of the village?"

Jiang Yuexin had yet to catch her breath. At his words, she hurriedly stopped and straightened.

She clutched the edges of her skirt with both hands, trying hard to look well-behaved.

"Grandpa, I'm back."

"Mm."

Seeing the sweat trickle from her forehead down her temples, Yi Yang drew his brows together. "The sun's fierce out there. Go inside and drink some water. Not cold water-let the water from the jar stand first."

"I know, Grandpa."

Jiang Yuexin answered quickly. Without lingering, she went around the reclining chair toward her little room.

She lightened her steps, but they were still erratic.

Yi Yang watched her retreating figure, and the fan in his hand slowed.

Something was wrong with the girl.

She ran around on ordinary days too, but afterward, she would always chatter away for ages.

Today, she had swallowed every word.

There was mud on her skirt-not the dry dirt of the field ridges, but wet mud from the edge of a roadside ditch. It stood out starkly against the green cloth.

Her right cuff was crumpled too, as though someone had grabbed it.

Before Yi Yang could make sense of it, an unfamiliar piece of information suddenly appeared in his mind.

A line of small text emerged before his eyes.

[Heavenly Mandate: Old Steed in the Stable, with Ambition to Range a Thousand Miles]

Through the lingering information, Yi Yang understood the Heavenly Mandate's ability.

Any craft, skill, or cultivation method would gain progress as long as he practiced it.

There was no aptitude requirement, no bottleneck barring his path. As long as he was willing to put in the time, he would eventually reach perfection.

More powerfully still, this Heavenly Mandate was enhanced by his age. At sixty, every point of progress he gained would count as sixty.

Upon seeing this, Yi Yang sat bolt upright, making the reclining chair creak noisily beneath him.

Sixty years.

A full sixty years.

In his youth, the words "You have no destiny in martial arts" had sealed off his path.

In middle age, he had watched his younger brother's family live in town while he dealt with dead branches and rotting leaves in the mountains.

And now, on the verge of sixty, his cheat had finally arrived.

What was this supposed to be?

A late-arriving cheat was worth less than weeds?

No.

Yi Yang raised his eyelids, and a sharpness unseen for years emerged in his clouded eyes.

Late was still better than never.

In his previous life, people had said sixty was not too late to start a business. Then in this life, sixty was just the right age for him to begin martial training.

Young people relied on aptitude, resources, and parents throwing silver at them to practice martial arts. He would rely on age.

The longer he lived, the faster he would train.

This was no child born in old age-it was a cheat unlocked in old age. Absurd as it was, it was delicious.

Yi Yang nearly laughed aloud, but his throat was terribly dry.

He picked up the coarse porcelain bowl beside him and took a small mouthful of warm water, tamping down the searing heat in his chest.

Don't get carried away.

Getting carried away gets you killed.

In this world, if delight showed on your face, you could turn into meat on someone else's chopping board in the blink of an eye.

Decades of experience told Yi Yang to keep his head down whenever he could.

If he did not strike, so be it. Once he struck, he would scatter their ashes.

Yi Yang laid the battered fan back against his chest, trying hard to regain the appearance an old woodcutter ought to have.

But before he could steady his breathing, someone else arrived outside the courtyard gate.

These footsteps were even more hurried, accompanied by a woman's loud, rough voice.

"Old Yi! Old Yi!"

A woman in her thirties rushed into the courtyard.

She wore coarse cloth clothes with an apron tied around her waist. Her hair was pinned up with a wooden hairpin, and her forehead was covered in sweat.

It was his neighbor, Yang Hui.

Yang Hui was a widow with a loud voice and a fiery temper. Many of the village men were afraid of her.

She had grown up under Yi Yang's eye. Though she called him Old Yi, she often helped with his laundry and cooking and looked after Jiang Yuexin.

In her eyes, Jiang Yuexin was little different from her own daughter.

"Has Yuexin come back?"

Yang Hui asked the moment she entered, still bracing a hand against the doorframe as she caught her breath.

Yi Yang's gaze darkened.

"She's back. In her room. What happened?"

Hearing that the girl was home, Yang Hui let out half a breath of relief, only for her anger to flare up again.

"I just came back from the village entrance. From a distance, I saw Yuexin running into the village with her head down. I called her, but she didn't answer. I was wondering what was wrong. That child always has such a sweet tongue. Why was she acting like a dog was chasing her today?"

She raised a hand to wipe away her sweat, growing angrier as she spoke.

"Then, not long afterward, that Sun Mazi crept out behind her, skulking around with his eyes darting everywhere. One look told me something was wrong, so I stopped him."

Yi Yang's grip tightened around the fan handle.

The fan handle gave a faint crack.

"Sun Mazi?"

"Who else but that piece of trash!"

Yang Hui planted her hands on her hips, her chest heaving. "I asked him what he was doing, and he just grinned shamelessly and said he was passing through. Pah! Passing through at noon in the dog days of summer? Are his ancestral graves at the east end of our village or something?"

Yi Yang said nothing.

Seeing him stay silent, Yang Hui thought the old man had been frightened and hurriedly lowered her voice.

"Uncle Yi, I'm not trying to scare you, but that Sun Mazi is no good. His usual chicken-stealing and dog-snatching would be bad enough, but lately he's been getting close to Yang Er, and now he's got the backbone to swagger around. Yuexin's such a pretty young girl. If he really starts pestering her, she'll be in deep trouble."