Episode 4: Summoned

The summons came before breakfast.

A junior disciple found Ren Xiao at the outer quarters' washroom, still half-asleep, and informed him with poorly concealed glee that Sect Leader Han wanted to see him in the main hall — immediately, no excuses, and no, bringing a change of clothes wouldn't help.

Ren Xiao walked across the sect grounds trying to remember if he'd broken any rules serious enough to warrant a personal audience with the sect leader. Loitering near the alchemy hall, probably. Cultivating off discarded ash, likely worse than he realized. He'd assumed Elder Bo's "unofficially, keep doing whatever you're doing" carried more weight than it apparently had.

The main hall's doors were already open when he arrived. Inside, Sect Leader Han sat at the head of a long table, flanked by Elder Bo on one side and the Head Alchemist — a thin, sharp-eyed man named Elder Feng — on the other. Yue Shan stood near the window, arms crossed, expression unreadable in a way that told him she'd already been through her own version of this conversation before he'd even woken up.

"Ren Xiao." Sect Leader Han's voice carried the particular calm of someone who'd made up his mind about something and was merely confirming details. "Elder Feng tells me you've been cultivating in the discard yard. Using residue from failed alchemical batches."

There was no point denying it with three witnesses in the room, one of whom had watched him do it herself. "Yes, sect leader."

"Show me."

Ren Xiao blinked. "There's no fresh ash right now, sect leader. It only—"

"I'm aware of the limitation. Elder Bo explained it." Han gestured, and a servant entered carrying a small clay tray — on it, a scorched, cracked pill, still faintly warm, wrapped in a strip of cloth to keep the heat contained. "This was pulled from this morning's failed batch not ten minutes ago. Fresh enough?"

So this was a test, then. Not a punishment. Worse, in some ways — an audience specifically arranged to watch him either prove something extraordinary or humiliate himself in front of the sect leader.

He approached the tray, aware of four sets of eyes tracking his every movement, and unwrapped the pill. The warmth hit his palm immediately, the familiar thin thread rising to meet him like it recognized him now, like the second and third times had worn a groove that made the fourth easier.

He let it in.

It took longer this time — a full pill's worth of residue instead of scattered ash — and he felt something shift, subtle but real, a fraction more warmth settling into the space behind his sternum. When he opened his eyes, Elder Feng had gone very still.

"There's a fluctuation," Elder Feng said slowly, more to Sect Leader Han than to Ren Xiao. "Faint. Nothing our instruments would register as cultivation, but ambient energy readings around him shifted the moment he touched it. I confirmed it myself yesterday when the boy insisted, and I confirm it again now."

"An ungraded disciple absorbing residual Qi." Sect Leader Han leaned back, steepling his fingers. "In three hundred years of sect records, I count two prior instances of Dead Root cultivators. Both died of Qi deviation before their eighteenth year, having attempted forced cultivation through conventional pure-Qi methods against medical advice." His gaze settled on Ren Xiao with an intensity that made the boy want to stand up straighter without quite knowing why. "You've done the opposite. You didn't force what your body refuses. You found what it accepts."

"I didn't find it on purpose," Ren Xiao admitted. "I was hungry and cold and there was warmth coming off a garbage pile. That's the whole discovery."

A short, surprised huff of laughter came from Elder Bo's direction, quickly smoothed into a cough.

Sect Leader Han didn't laugh, but something in his expression eased fractionally. "Accidental or not, it's real. And real things, in a sect like this, tend to attract attention — some of it unwelcome." He glanced toward Elder Feng. "How stable is the method, in your assessment?"

"Unknown, sect leader. It's never been documented. Residual Qi is inherently unstable and impure — that's precisely why cultivators avoid it. If the boy pushes too far too fast, the impurities could cause internal damage no different from conventional Qi deviation. Possibly worse, given how little anyone understands the mechanism."

"Then he needs oversight." Han's decision arrived with the finality of a gavel. "Effective today, Ren Xiao is reassigned from outer labor to a probationary inner disciple position, under direct observation. Elder Bo will supervise his cultivation. Elder Feng will monitor the alchemical residue he's permitted to use, to ensure nothing dangerously unstable finds its way to him unsupervised."

Ren Xiao's mouth went dry. Inner disciple. Three days ago he'd been shoveling ash to keep the sect's "aesthetic" intact. Now the sect leader was rearranging staff assignments around him like he was worth the trouble.

"Sect leader," he said carefully, "with respect — why does this matter enough for you to get involved personally? I'm still Dead Root by every measure that counts. This is one small trick with garbage. It's not—"

"It's not small." Han's voice sharpened, just slightly. "Every cultivator in this sect, myself included, is bound by the same ceiling — the amount of pure Qi we can gather and refine before our meridians simply cannot hold more. That ceiling has defined cultivation for as long as records exist." He leaned forward. "You have no such ceiling, because you were never drawing from the same well in the first place. I don't know what that means for your future growth. Neither does Elder Feng, and neither, I suspect, do you. But I intend to find out before some rival sect does it for me."

The room went quiet at that. Ren Xiao glanced toward the window, where Yue Shan had remained silent through the entire exchange, watching him with an expression he couldn't quite place — not pity, not curiosity anymore, something closer to recalculation, like she was rewriting an assessment she'd made only yesterday.

"One more matter," Sect Leader Han added, almost as an afterthought, though nothing about his tone suggested it actually was one. "Elder Yue's daughter has requested to personally oversee part of your training, given her early involvement in verifying your ability."

Ren Xiao's head turned toward Yue Shan so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. "You requeted that?"

"I dislike unfinished questions," she said simply, as if that explained everything, and in a way, it did. "You're the most interesting unfinished question this sect has produced in years. I intend to see how the story ends."

Sect Leader Han's mouth twitched — the closest thing to amusement Ren Xiao had seen from him all morning. "Then it's settled. Elder Bo will oversee formal training. Yue Shan will assist with... whatever this arrangement requires. Ren Xiao—" his gaze turned final, almost warm, "—welcome back to the sect that nearly threw you away."

Ren Xiao bowed, mostly to hide the fact that he had no idea what expression his face was currently making, and murmured something appropriately grateful. Inside, a very different thought was running on repeat.

Three days ago I was garbage. Now I'm a project.

He wasn't sure yet which one was more dangerous.

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