The boy who emerged from the Stormfang Mountains three months later was six years old in count of years, but his eyes held the weight of epochs.
He traveled the borderlands between the shattered mountains and the fertile plains, a small figure in a patched cloak too large for him, the hood drawn up against sun and suspicious stares. He carried a walking stick of lightning-struck oak, and at his belt hung a waterskin and a pouch holding dried meat, wild roots, and a smooth, gray stone that sometimes warmed of its own accord.
He called himself Xiao. Just Xiao. The villagers he helped called him other things.
"Storm-Reader," whispered the farmers of Willow Bend as they watched him stand on a hilltop for an hour at dawn, his face turned to windless skies. He told them to harvest their barley two days early. They did, grumbling. The day after harvest, a hail storm the color of bruised flesh swept through, flattening the stalks left in the field. They left a sack of milled grain at the crossroads for him. It was gone the next morning.
"Ghost Child," muttered the elders of River's Hold when he arrived at their palisade gate, pointing to the western hills. "The river will forget its bed tomorrow night. Move your herds to the high meadow." The river, miles away and calm, gave no sign. But they'd heard stories from Willow Bend. They moved the herds. That night, a slope gave way upstream, diverting the river's course in a roaring, muddy torrent that would have drowned the low pastures. They offered him a place by their fire. He was gone before first light.
Ling Xiao moved like the weather he predicted—inevitable, untouchable, and gone before anyone could truly thank him or curse him. He used his gifts not for show, but for silent, precise intervention. Chaos Sensing told him of the tension in fault lines, the pressure in storm fronts, the saturation in riverbanks. Pattern Reading, now honed by the Memory Crystal's passive guidance, showed him the cascading consequences. A rockslide here would dam a stream there, causing a flood three villages downstream in a week. He would find the most upstream village and warn them of "coming water," never explaining the chain.
He was paying a debt. To Shí. To the universe. To the memory of a mother who'd whispered "live." Helping felt like the opposite of the crushing weight of Jin's death. It was a counterweight.
And then, in the muddy, rain-lashed region they called the Soggy Marches, the pattern showed him something he couldn't just warn about.
·
The vision came as he touched the Chaos Observation Stone beside a swollen creek. He'd learned to activate it sparingly, its truth-seeing a scalpel compared to his own senses' blunt tools. The stone showed him the land not as earth and water, but as layers of stability. The Marches were a sodden sponge. And three days from now, a persistent, driving rain—already falling—would oversaturate a specific slope twelve miles to the north. The resulting mudslide would be massive. It would bury a small, unnamed hunter's hamlet in the valley below.
He could warn them. They might even believe the strange, quiet child. They would flee.
But the stone showed him more. The slide would also block the only river draining the Marches. The water would have nowhere to go. Within a month, the entire region would become a stagnant, drowning lake, displacing thousands, killing crops, spreading sickness. The hamlet was the pressure valve. If it was buried, the valve closed.
There was another pattern. A weaker one. If the slide could be triggered now, while the saturation was at 70% instead of 100%, it would be smaller. It would still damage the hamlet, but not bury it. And it would only partially block the river, creating a manageable leak instead of a total seal.
He had to choose: let the natural disaster happen and doom the region, or cause a smaller disaster now to avert a larger one.
He chose.
For two days, he climbed the sodden slope, using his senses to find the critical points—places where the earth's grip was failing. He used his walking stick, his hands, and tiny, focused pulses of chaotic energy (learned through painful experimentation) to nudge stones, loosen roots, and encourage tiny rivulets to merge. He wasn't forcing a collapse. He was persuading an inevitable one to happen early.
On the third dawn, as the rain fell in cold, relentless sheets, he stood at the summit. He placed his hands on the trembling earth and performed his first deliberate, large-scale Chaos Manipulation. He didn't push. He suggested. He showed the slope the easier path—to slump now, gently, rather than explode later.
The mountain agreed.
With a deep, groaning sigh, half the slope began to slide. It was a slow, massive movement, like a giant turning in its sleep. Trees tilted. Mud flowed in thick waves. Stone rumbled.
Ling Xiao scrambled back, his energy spent. He'd done it. The slide was happening. It would miss most of the hamlet. The river would be partially blocked, but not sealed.
Then he heard the scream.
Not from the hamlet below. From the sliding slope itself.
A boy, maybe twelve years old, was trapped on a suddenly isolated outcrop, the mud flowing around it like a brown river. He clung to a rock, screaming for help that couldn't possibly come. He must have been foraging, caught in the very event Ling Xiao had triggered.
No. No, no, no.
Ling Xiao ran. Not away, but along the crumbling ridge line, toward the outcrop. His mind, sharpened by crisis, showed him the pattern: the outcrop would hold for three more minutes before the undermining mud caused it to tip over and be swallowed.
He had no rope. No strength to pull a larger boy to safety. His chaotic energy was drained.
He reached the edge opposite the outcrop. Six feet of churning, sucking mud separated them. The other boy—skinny, with wild, mud-plastered hair and desperate eyes—saw him. "Help! Please!"
Ling Xiao did the only thing he could think of. He lay flat on the ground, extending his walking stick across the gap. "Grab it!"
The boy lunged, caught the end. Ling Xiao braced, his small body anchoring against the weight. The stick, strong lightning-struck oak, held. He pulled, feet digging into the soft earth. The other boy kicked, trying to find purchase in the flowing mud. Inch by agonizing inch, he moved.
With a final, sucking gasp, the boy hauled himself onto solid ground just as the outcrop behind him groaned and toppled into the flow.
They lay side by side, panting, covered in mud and rain.
"You… you caused that," the older boy gasped, not accusatory, but amazed.
"I had to," Ling Xiao said, the weight of the choice settling on him. The hamlet was safe. The region was saved. But he had almost killed this boy. "I'm sorry."
"Why? You pulled me out." The boy sat up, wiping mud from his face. It revealed sharp, intelligent features and eyes that had seen hardship. "I'm Li Ming. My family… they were in the hamlet."
"They're safe. The slide went the other way."
Li Ming stared at him, then down at the altered disaster, then back at the strange, too-calm younger boy. "You knew. You knew it would slide. You made it slide differently." It wasn't a question. "You're one of them. A cultivator."
"No." Ling Xiao shook his head wearily. "I'm something else."
Li Ming considered this, then shrugged with a practicality born of survival. "Okay. Something else. You saved my family. And me. That's what matters." He offered a muddy hand. "I owe you."
That was the start of it.
Li Ming, orphaned years ago and surviving as a hunter and trapper, decided Ling Xiao was the most interesting thing to happen since the flood of '38. He was pragmatic, fiercely loyal, and possessed a street-smart cunning that complemented Ling Xiao's otherworldly awareness. He became Ling Xiao's anchor to the human world.
He taught Ling Xiao how to bargain for supplies without speaking, how to find the cleanest water, how to tell if a village's fear was about to turn violent. In return, Ling Xiao' predictions kept them fed, sheltered, and one step ahead of trouble.
For the first time since Elder Wen, Ling Xiao wasn't alone. The silent, grief-stricken journey through the mountains receded, replaced by a cautious, growing camaraderie. Li Ming didn't fear his power; he saw it as a useful, if terrifying, tool. He called Ling Xiao "boss" in a joking tone that held genuine respect.
Their reputation grew. "The Storm-Reader and his shadow," they were called in the border towns. The stories became more elaborate: the Storm-Reader could command lightning, could whisper to the earth, could see a week into the future.
It was this reputation that finally drew the wrong kind of attention.
·
The Verdant Dragon Sect was small, provincial, and hungry for prestige. They controlled a dozen villages in the fertile lowlands, their disciples more likely to be bullying tax collectors than transcendent cultivators. Their elder, a rotatory man named Guo with a beard like a frayed rope, heard the tales of a weather-prophet child.
He didn't see a boy. He saw an asset. A natural diviner who could predict harvests, warn of floods, make the sect indispensable—and rich.
They found Ling Xiao and Li Ming at a roadside shrine, sharing a roasted rabbit Li Ming had caught. Four disciples in green robes embroidered with clumsy dragon motifs approached, their leader a puffed-up youth of about sixteen with the dead eyes of a spoiled predator. Elder Guo's son, Jin (a name that made Ling Xiao's stomach clench).
"You," Jin said, pointing a finger at Ling Xiao. "The Storm-Reader. My father summons you."
Li Ming was on his feet in an instant, stepping slightly in front of Ling Xiao. "He doesn't summon for anyone. He helps where he chooses."
Jin's smile was unpleasant. "His choosing is over. His talents belong to the Verdant Dragon Sect now. He will be treated well—honored, even—as long as he's useful." His gaze swept over Ling Xiao's worn clothes. "Better than this vagabond existence."
Ling Xiao stood slowly. He could feel the pattern here—the bullying intent, the fragile pride, the desire to own and control. It was a simpler, dirtier chaos than geological pressure, but just as predictable.
"I thank your father for his offer," Ling Xiao said, his voice quiet but clear. "But I must decline. My path is my own."
Jin's smile vanished. "You don't decline. You're a child. An unaffiliated talent. By the loose laws of this frontier, you're a resource waiting to be claimed. We're claiming you." He gestured, and two disciples moved to flank Ling Xiao.
Li Ming's hand went to the skinning knife at his belt. "Back off."
"Or what, mud-rat?" Jin sneered. Then his eyes lit up with a cruel idea. "I see. You need a lesson in hierarchy. In the order of things." He drew his own sword, a decent spirit-forged blade that hummed faintly. "I challenge you, Storm-Reader. A duel. Sect law provides for it. If you win, you walk free. If you lose, you enter our service willingly."
It was a farce. A sixteen-year-old, formally trained disciple against a six-year-old. But the law he cited had a grain of truth in these parts. Refusing a formal challenge from a sect heir was seen as an insult to their authority, giving them pretext to use force anyway.
Li Ming looked frantically at Ling Xiao, shaking his head. Run, his eyes screamed.
But Ling Xiao saw the wider pattern. If they ran, they'd be hunted. The Verdant Dragon Sect would become another persistent threat, like a buzzing insect. This challenge, however unfair, was a contained event. A node of chaos he could potentially resolve.
He looked at Jin, at his ordered, arrogant energy, so sure of its superiority. He remembered Shí's words: You are chaos speaking back.
He met Jin's gaze.
"I accept."
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END OF CHAPTER 8