Qian Xiaotian woke up before the rooster, as he always did, and counted his money.
It did not take long.
Seventeen copper coins lay on the blanket in a neat line. He counted them left to right. Then right to left. Then once more, left to right, in case one had multiplied during the night.
None had. As expected.
Seventeen.
He tied them back into the cloth pouch he kept under his pillow and did the math he did every morning, the way other boys practiced sword forms.
Qian Xiaotian started his morning as usual, swinging his father’s wooden sword for an hour. It was the one thing that he had control over, and the one thing that freed his mind from his problems even for a moment.
His mother’s medicine cost three silver taels a month. The clan stipend for their household used ot be three silver taels a month, just enough for his mother’s medicine. Two years ago, the main branch had reduced it to one, “due to difficult times,” which was strange, because the main branch’s difficult times had somehow produced a new carriage for Qian Wudi.
One silver tael from the clan. Mending clothes for the neighbors, perhaps two hundred coppers a month. Carrying water for the stables, nothing, because it was punishment for reasons even he, the one supposed to be punished, is not privy to the reason for the punishment; in which case, it was not a job.
Another source of income was selling his mother’s embroidery at the market, whatever the buyers were willing to pay, which was never enough.
He was short every month.
He was always short.
Qian Xiaotian tucked the pouch away, got dressed in the dark, and did not let himself think about it for more than one breath. Thinking about it didn’t produce coppers. Work did.
* * *
Their house was in the oldest corner of the Qian Clan compound, where the outer wall had cracked years ago, and no one had bothered to fix it. It had two rooms. The room leaked in exactly four places, and Qian Xiaotian had placed a bowl under each one. He knew their sounds so well that he could tell how hard it was raining just by listening to which bowl filled first.
His mother was awake when he stepped into her room.
She was always awake.
Shangguan Yue lay propped against two pillows by the window. Even now, pale and thin, she was the most beautiful woman Qian Xiaotian had ever seen, though he supposed every son thought that. Her hair was long and black, streaked with early silver. Her eyes were calm and very dark, the kind of eyes that seemed to be looking at something far away.
A faint gray mark ran across the skin just above her heart, like a crack in porcelain. It had been there his whole life. On cold nights, it darkened, and she coughed until dawn.
“You’re up early,” she said softly with a gentle smile on her face.
“I’m always up early.”
“You should sleep more. You’re growing.”
“I’m sixteen, Mother. I’m done growing.”
She smiled. It was a tired smile, but it was real.
“Then sleep more for me.”
He helped her sit up and brought her water. Then he took a small wooden box from the shelf and opened it. Inside were four dark red pills, each the size of a pear. He counted them twice.
Four pills. One every three days. Twelve days of medicine left.
He placed one in her palm. She looked at it for a long moment before swallowing it.
“Xiaotian,” she said. “About yesterday.”
He had been waiting for this. He had also been hoping she wouldn’t bring it up.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It matters.”
“The stone was gray. That’s all. It’s just a result.”
His mother reached out and took his hand. Her fingers were cold. They were always cold.
“Your father,” she said quietly, “was called a genius by everyone in this city. And do you know what he told me once?”
Qian Xiaotian shook his head. He had heard many stories about his father. He had never heard this one.
“He said a stone can measure what you have. It can’t measure what you’re owed.”
Qian Xiaotian didn’t know what that meant. But he held on to the words the way he held on to his seventeen coppers, carefully, and with both hands.
“You are Qian Lingyun’s son,” his mother said.
“No stone nor person can decide your future; only you can. Whatever the results may be, I’ll always have your back. Remember it.”
“I will,” Qian Xiaotian said.
She let go of his hands and looked out the window, toward the far hills where the morning mist still hung.
For a moment, something moved behind her eyes. It looked like fear.
Then it was gone.
* * *
He had no memories of his father aside from the stories that he heard from his mother and gossip from other people. Some say he’s the number one genius in Wutong City who is only born in 1 in 1000 years, hence being called the Millennium Genius. Some say his Cultivation level is unfathomable, with no one even coming close in Wutong City or within the whole region. Some say Qian Lingyun can cut a mountain in half with a single swing of his sword.
Qian Lingyun’s son must have the talent equivalent to the Son of Heaven; Qian Lingyun’s son must be the next genius of the Qian Clan; Qian Lingyun’s son will lead the Qian Clan to glory.
Before Qian Xiaotian was born, the Qian Clan was expecting that the next Millennium Genius would emerge. But contrary to their expectations, Qian Xiaotian does not have any talent to speak of: no spirit bones, no spirit root, blocked meridians, and no talents.
The only physical connection that Qian Xiaotian can speak of with his father is a wooden practice sword, too small for him now, with two characters carved into the hilt in a strong, careless hand: Ling Yun. He had his mother’s stories. And he had the looks people gave him in the clan, the ones that started with admiration for the name and ended with pity for the boy.
He had also inherited one other thing from his father, though nobody talked about it anymore.
An engagement.
Before Qian Xiaotian was born, his father had saved the life of the Su Clan’s patriarch in the wilds beyond Wutong City. In gratitude, the two men had promised their children to each other.
It was an old-fashioned, honorable arrangement, sealed with a jade disc broken in half. One half belonged to the Su Clan. The other half hung on a cord around Qian Xiaotian’s neck.
He touched it now as he walked toward the stables.
Su Qingxue.
He had seen her exactly three times. Each time, she had been surrounded by admirers, dressed in white, and so cold and bright that looking at her felt like looking at snow in sunlight. She had never spoken a single word to him.
She was already in Qi Condensation.
He was in Body Tempering, 2nd Layer.
And yesterday, the whole city had watched as the Testing Stone flickered gray under his hand.
He did the math on that too, and he didn’t like the answer.
* * *
The stables smelled of hay and horse, and after two years, Qian Xiaotian barely noticed.
He filled the buckets at the well, hooked them onto the shoulder pole, and started walking. Forty trips before noon. Forty more before sunset. His shoulders burned. His arms shook. He had long ago learned how to breathe so they shook less.
Across the fence, the other side-branch children were holding horse stances in the training yard. He didn’t look at them. Looking didn’t help.
“Careful, stable boy!”
Two of Qian Wudi’s lackeys were leaning against the stable door. Qian Xiaotian didn’t stop walking.
“Don’t spill,” the taller one said. “That’s the most valuable thing you’ll ever carry.”
The other laughed.
As morning training broke up, Qian Xiaotian noticed that one of the side-branch children, on his way out of the yard, was watching him over the fence. Average height, average face, the kind of face his eyes kept sliding off. Some cousin from the far side of the compound. Qian Fang? Qian Fen? Something like that.
The boy looked away.
Qian Xiaotian forgot about him almost at once. He set the buckets down by the trough and went back for more.
He had learned that too. If you stopped, the bullies got bored more slowly.
* * *
At noon, he sat behind the hay bales and ate lunch.
Lunch was one steamed bun. He ate half of it slowly, so his stomach would believe it was more, and wrapped the other half in a cloth for his mother.
Then, because no one was watching, he stood up and practiced.
He had no teacher. The clan didn’t waste teachers on ungraded children. But he had watched the training yard through the fence for two years, and he had his mother’s memories of how his father used to move. He ran through the basic Body Tempering breathing patterns from the Qian Clan Basic Cultivation Manual and pulled what little qi he had down toward his dantian.
It went the way it always went.
The warmth gathered, slow and thin, and flowed down through his chest. Then, just below his heart, it hit something.
Not pain, exactly. More like a door that wouldn’t budge open. A cold, smooth wall somewhere inside him that the qi pressed against, circled, and slid away from, as if it were afraid to touch it.
He tried again, and again, and again. On the fifth try, his head spun, and he had to sit down in the hay.
When the people in the clan first learned of his condition, they looked at Qian Xiaotian and Shangguan Yue with pity—saying that Qian Lingyun’s talents were not inherited, that Qian Xiaotian would never be able to equate to even one toenail of Qian Lingyun—until all of those looks turned from pity to scorn—looking at the Mother and Son as if they were leeches that only ate away the clan’s resources without contributing anything.
But unlike other children in his situation, he never developed even a tiny bit of hatred toward his father from being compared to him every single time. Shangguan Yue always told stories of his father to Qian Xiaotian; she told stories of his heroism, his pursuit of the peak of cultivation, and his personality that gets him into trouble but somehow—even if the sky falls, she knew that he would always emerge victorious and always at the forefront of danger to shield his loved ones.
Shangguan Yue taught those values to Qian Xiaotian, which is why, even if his cousins look at him with contempt, he never wavered and persevered, continuously training with his father’s wooden sword the moment that he wakes up and the moment before he goes to bed every single day.
He stood up, dusted off the hay, and went back to the buckets.
* * *
It was the middle of the afternoon when Qian Wudi arrived in person.
He came strolling through the stable yard in a fresh white robe, with the other two lackeys trailing behind him. All four fell into formation at once, as if they had rehearsed it.
“Young Master Wudi is invincible!”
Qian Xiaotian kept pouring water.
“Cousin,” Qian Wudi said pleasantly. “Working hard, I see.”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. That’s very good. A man should know his place.”
Qian Wudi stepped closer and looked down at the trough.
“You know, I was thinking last night. About the Testing Stone.”
Qian Xiaotian said nothing.
“Blue,” Qian Wudi said, holding up one hand as if the color were floating in it.
“Mystic Grade. Heaven-shaking. And you, gray. Not even a grade. Do you know what that makes you, compared to me?
“A cousin,” Qian Xiaotian said.
The lackeys snickered. Qian Wudi’s smile flickered, and his eyes twitched.
“An ant,” Qian Wudi said. “That’s what makes you. When I walk, I don’t look down to see which ants I’m stepping on. It isn’t cruelty. It’s just natural order.”
He lifted his foot and tipped over the full bucket beside the trough.
Water splashed across the dirt, over Qian Xiaotian’s shoes, and soaked into the ground.
“Oops,” Qian Wudi said. You’ll have to do that one again.”
The lackeys roared.
“Young Master Wudi is invincible!”
Qian Xiaotian looked at the spreading puddle. One bucket. Four minutes of walking. Perhaps sixty more steps on a shoulder that already burned.
He looked up at Qian Wudi.
He didn’t shout. He didn’t swing a fist. He was Body Tempering 2nd layer, and Qian Wudi was 8th, and even an ant knew how that fight would end.
Instead, he did what he always did.
He counted.
One tipped bucket. Two years of “stable boy.” A stipend cut from three taels to one. A mother coughing until dawn. Laughter in the ancestral courtyard. A stone that flickered gray.
He added it all up and stored the total somewhere deep in his chest, in the place where he kept everything the world owed him.
“I’ll refill it,” he said.
Qian Wudi stared at him for a moment, as if disappointed by the lack of tears. Then he shrugged, turned, and walked away.
“Come,” he told his lackeys. “Ants are boring.”
“Young Master Wudi is invincible!”
Qian Xiaotian picked up the empty bucket and walked back to the well.
* * *
He finished his last trip just as the sun was sinking behind the wutong trees.
His shoes were still wet. His shoulders felt like someone had set them on fire. He was thinking about the seventeen coppers under his pillow, and whether the kind uncle at the old stall at the bottom of the market street would let him haggle over radishes again, when he noticed that the stable yard had gone strangely quiet.
The horses had stopped moving.
The air turned cold.
Not evening cold. Winter cold. Qian Xiaotian’s breath came out in a faint white cloud, and he stared at it in confusion.
Then he heard the bells.
Silver bells, clear and sharp, drifting over the compound walls from the direction of the main gate.
A servant boy came running across the yard, his face pale, and nearly slipped in the mud where Qian Wudi’s bucket had spilled.
“Qian Xiaotian!” the boy gasped.
“There you are! You have to come. Now!”
“What’s happening?”
“The Su Clan,” the servant said.
“Their carriage is at the main gate. The young miss is here.”
Qian Xiaotian’s hand closed around what seemed to be the right part of a split jade disc that hung on his chest.
“She’s asking for you,” the servant said.
“And for your mother.”