Not every beast was hurt when it jumped down into the basin.
The first was a scaled beast, longer than a wagon. Plates ran from its head to the tip of its tail, each locked tight over the next. When it moved, the ground shook. Its tail lashed once and split a pine trunk clean through, needles falling thick to the ground. Li Wei watched from cover. Even with a dozen spikes, piercing that armour was uncertain. He let it pass.
Days later another came. This one had horns like spears jutting from its skull. Its body was broad, its hide thick and dark. It landed hard from the rim, then lowered its head and drove into the cliffside. Stone cracked and broke loose with a single blow. Li Wei stayed silent, measuring the weight of its steps, the reach of its horns. A fight with it held nothing but loss.
These beasts were not crippled by the fall. Their strength and vitality far outstripped their wits, and though slower than men, they could endure more than any clean strike of his could break. Li Wei marked them from a distance but made no move to act. The Reaping asked for five cores, nothing more. To risk himself against beasts like these for the same reward was wasted effort. Only the injured were worth the risk.
At times, he heard others crash down far across the basin, the roars echoing through stone and trees. He marked the distance, weighing the sound. If it was close, he might watch. If it was far, he left it alone — the risk of running into other disciples was greater than the gain. What struck him most was the silence that always followed. No clash of steel, no cries of battle ever reached him. If others fought, they did it far from his ground.
Li Wei returned to routine. Each day passed in silence. He cycled the Desert Soul Technique, letting the bones at his side draw in what they could. The larger slave marked the stone wall with steady notches, keeping the day count. The smaller one ranged beyond, tracing the paths near his refuge.
The basin offered little beyond patience. The weak had already fallen, and stronger prey demanded too much effort. With no need to expose himself, Li Wei settled deeper into the rhythm of waiting.
The smaller slave lay hidden in a thick patch of brush, its task to stay still and watch. Hours passed with nothing but wind through branches and the call of distant birds. Then movement. Three figures drifted between the trees, their voices low.
Li Wei stilled in the cave, eyes shut, breath low. Through the slave, the ground gave him their shapes: three weights pressing through soil and needles, slow, steady. Their line edged closer, step by step, bending toward the traps he had set.
He held back. Three together was no fight worth taking. Better to let them pass unseen.
The sound came sudden. A crack of wood, sharp as a strike. A shout tore out. One weight crashed down, thrashing. The Bone Whisper showed the shift clear — one man pinned, his leg skewered, his balance broken.
"Jin!" a voice shouted. Another rushed toward him.
That sound alone was enough. They would be sweeping the ground with Bone Whisper already. If he stayed still, they would trace him. If he waited, they would rally.
Li Wei moved at once, breaking from the cave. Dust and stone streamed from his pouch, his qi binding them to hard points. He pushed forward, spikes shaping with each step.
"That way—he's here!" another voice barked.
The foliage broke under his barrage. The first man dropped with two spikes through his chest before his blade lifted clear. The second caught one, qi flaring across his arm, but the next three came too fast—rib, thigh, shoulder—driving him down into the roots.
The trapped one wrenched free, blood heavy from the torn leg. His hand flared with qi as he tried to draw from his pouch, but nothing came fast enough. Li Wei gave no space. Dust and stone surged again, shaped into a volley, loosed in a storm. Half a dozen spikes tore through him. His body jerked once, then slackened.
Li Wei did not pause. More spikes formed, slamming into each skull. Bone cracked, fragments scattered, silence fell. Only then did he draw the dust back into his pouch.
Li Wei crouched low, breath steady. The soil had already stilled, no more weight pressing against it. Three dead.
He stopped actively sensing, pulling his focus back into himself. The fight had shown enough. Their sweep had come the instant the trap fired. The ground had thrummed with their pulses, reaching for him as surely as he had reached for them. If he had stayed in the cave, they would have traced him out.
He had carried the advantage. Not only Bone Whisper, but the slave's watch as well. While they swept for pressure, he had both their movement and their shapes fixed.
Spikes had carried the fight. The only reason it ended fast was speed, too many at once for them to guard.
He turned the thought over. Against Bone Whisper, distance meant little. Once within range, stillness or not, they would know. The only counter was to strike before they finished reading the ground.
His aim had held. The flow from the pouch had been steady, the granite giving weight to the spikes. But shaping while moving had scattered his control. He felt it in the strain across his chest, the rough edge in how some strikes veered wide. If the fight had dragged, those gaps would have cost him.
He filed the lesson away. More practice shaping in motion. Faster volleys. No wasted shots. And above all, never give an opponent with Bone Whisper the time to search.
He searched the bodies fast. A small pouch of Grade-2 pills, useful but common. The one caught in the trap had carried a bell, small and bronze. A single faint rune was carved into its surface.
Li Wei channelled qi into the bell. It swelled at once, rising to enclose him. The bronze surface quivered, the single rune along its rim flickering weakly. It would block a handful of strikes before breaking, no more. A spiritual tool, but low grade.
Still, it was fortune. The one caught in the trap had carried it, never raising its shield. If either of the others had been snared instead, the bell would have stood between them and his spikes, and the fight would have dragged on, harder and bloodier.
Li Wei takes the pills, the bell, and all three storage pouches.
Back in the cave, Li Wei set the bell aside and gestured to the small slave. It slipped out and returned in trips, each time carrying more from the corpses. The flesh was left outside to rot. The bones were carried in.
Soon the floor filled with neat rows. Finger bones. Ribs. Long bones. Vertebrae. Skulls placed to one side. The taller slave worked in silence, brushing dust away, keeping the walls clear and the floor clean.
Li Wei studied the pile. Three Foundation Establishment skeletons. Every piece could have been used to make Grade-2 pills. If he had Bone Fire, he could have purified the bones, extracted the essence, and condensed it quickly into usable form. A waste, to see them lying here without that method.
He had no choice but to work slower. The Desert Soul Technique was his only path. It could draw out qi directly from the marrow, steady and even, but far slower. Not volatile like Bone Fire, but controlled, stable. With time, the energy would be his.
Li Wei pulled folded papers from his storage pouch and laid them flat. On them he had copied eleven symbols in total. Four came from the old cauldron at the sect assessment. Six were from the carvings on the bone pile at the sect entrance. One was the faint mark from the bronze bell.
One of the runes from the bone pile was already familiar: the Mind Rune. Bone Whisper had revealed it to him during meditation, and he knew every curve of its form. Unlike the others, it was not just a scavenged fragment but a piece tied directly to his cultivation.
The rest remained fragments of a system without order.
He set thirty fingertip bones before him, clean and even. Drawing bone dust and granite from his pouch, he bound a portion into a fine point with qi. The improvised stylus hardened in his grip, thin as a needle, sharp enough to score.
Each cut demanded focus. He slowed his breathing, guiding the tip across bone with careful pressure. Too much force and the line snapped deep, splitting the piece. Too little and the mark bled shallow, useless. His qi had to hold steady with every stroke.
When the point slipped, a crack split the surface. He set the failure aside without pause and reached for the next. His hand cramped after only a few attempts, the strain of holding both stylus and qi exact at once. He adjusted, loosening his grip, steadying his pulse, and pressed on.
By the time he stopped, a small pile of rejects lay at his side. The rest, intact, carried sharp lines. Eleven fingertip bones remained, each marked with a different rune copied straight from the papers. A crude library, but his first.
He placed the bones in a line before him. The system's guidance repeated in his mind. Death Qi Gathering Array. Five fingertip bones. Runes Liu, Jing, Yan, Xun, Rui. Names without form. He had only what he copied.
Li Wei began to test.
He set the first fingertip bone down, channelled qi through it, and let Bone Whisper spread. Nothing changed. He marked the bone, pushed it aside, and reached for the next.
The second, the third, the fourth — all the same. No shift. No increase in detail. Just wasted effort.