Chapter Three: Servants' Hell and Veins of Ash
The servants' quarters of the Long Yuan Sect lay at the deepest point of Dusk Valley, a place where sunlight from the towering peaks reached the ground for no more than a single hour each day.
There were no marble palaces here, no bridges of radiant light—only damp wooden shacks steeped in the stench of sweat, despair, and cheap medicinal brews.
The supervising cultivator, a pockmarked man named Gao, shoved Zhuo Fan toward a crumbling hut.
"This is your bed. Or what's left of it," Gao said coldly. "Your work starts before dawn. You'll haul water from the Spirit Spring at the foot of the mountain up to the spiritual herb fields at the summit. Three hundred trips a day. Miss even one, and you don't eat."
Zhuo Fan's gaze fell on the massive wooden buckets. They looked heavier than his own frail body.
Yet his eyes did not linger on their weight—but on the distance.
"Three hundred trips… round-trip distance: two kilometers… incline angle: forty-five degrees…"
His mind began calculating at once.
"With my current physique and heart rate, I'll collapse after the fiftieth trip. This system is designed to kill mortals, not employ them."
"Supervisor Gao," Zhuo Fan said in a dry, even voice. "May I use the side paths?"
Gao burst into laughter and spat on the ground.
"Use your head if you want, you trash with the leaky talent. I only care about the water. Now get out of my sight before I test how strong your bones are—with my boot."
Zhuo Fan entered the hut.
Inside were four other boys, older than him, their faces hardened by cruelty and exhaustion. One of them—a one-eyed boy named Zhang—stood up and blocked his path.
"Newcomers pay a tax," Zhang said, holding out his hand. "I heard you arrived under an envoy's blessing. You must have some spirit stones or pills."
Zhuo Fan looked at Zhang.
He measured the distance between Zhang's fist and his own face.
He calculated the gap in strength.
Conclusion: crushing defeat in a direct confrontation.
"I don't have spirit stones," Zhuo Fan said calmly—eerily so.
"But I have something better. I know how to make the water runs take half the time. Leave me alone, and I'll teach you. You'll save your strength for Body Tempering."
Zhang froze.
The water runs were hell itself—what kept them trapped at the lowest stage.
"How could a fraud like you do that?" he sneered.
"Calculation," Zhuo Fan replied.
"It's about center of gravity and breathing rhythms synchronized with the slope. Watch my feet."
For the next hour, Zhuo Fan explained how to distribute the buckets' weight, how to exploit inertia on the descent, and how to reduce strain through timing.
This was not generosity—it was investment.
He bought protection with knowledge.
In a world where he possessed no power, the only way to survive was to make himself indispensable to those who did.
That night, Zhuo Fan lay on his hard wooden bed.
His body screamed in pain, but his mind burned like a forest set ablaze.
"Leaky talent…" he murmured.
Closing his eyes, he attempted his first Qi Sensitivity exercise, as described in the basic manual issued to servants. He imagined spiritual energy as golden threads in the air, seeping into his pores.
The energy entered…
A faint warmth bloomed in his chest…
Then—like water leaking through a sieve—it vanished completely, escaping through other pores. Nothing remained.
His body was not a container.
It was merely a passage.
Bitterness surged within him.
Intelligence could shorten water runs, but it could not alter the laws of existence. Without spiritual energy, he would remain mortal—dead within eighty years at best—while peers like Yang Lian soared toward the heavens.
"No… there has to be a flaw," he thought fiercely.
"The universe is a colossal matrix. And every matrix, no matter how perfect, contains a computational error. If my body can't store energy… then perhaps I can use the flow itself?"
At dawn, the labor began.
Cold mist engulfed the mountain, biting into the skin. Zhuo Fan lifted the buckets and started climbing.
By the tenth trip, his muscles trembled.
By the fiftieth, his lungs felt as if they were filled with shattered glass.
On the sixtieth ascent, he reached the summit and saw a group of inner disciples practicing sword arts. Among them stood Yang Lian.
A purple aura surrounded Yang Lian, and every swing of his sword tore through the air with a sound like thunder.
Yang Lian noticed him.
He stopped practicing and walked to the edge of the slope, where Zhuo Fan was pouring out the water.
"Oh? Look at this," Yang Lian said with a condescending smile. "The little accountant has become a water carrier. Didn't you calculate this ending back in your village?"
Zhuo Fan did not look at him. He continued pouring the water with steady movements.
"I'm talking to you, insect!" Yang Lian shouted, releasing a small wave of spiritual pressure.
The bucket exploded in Zhuo Fan's hands.
He fell to his knees, icy water soaking his body.
"You broke work equipment," Yang Lian said coldly.
"Supervisor Gao won't spare you today. Starving to death might actually be a mercy for the world."
Laughing, Yang Lian walked away.
Zhuo Fan wiped the water from his face.
There was no anger in his eyes—only observation.
"The pressure wave Yang Lian released… it wasn't circular. It was spiral-shaped. He wasted thirty percent of its force to air friction. If I can mimic that spiral structure in my body's movement while carrying water, I can reduce muscular effort by at least a quarter."
Humiliation became a lesson.
As Zhuo Fan descended the mountain to fetch a new bucket, he saw the old sweeper again. The old man was sweeping fallen leaves, yet the broom left strange patterns in the dirt.
Zhuo Fan stopped.
The traces resembled a complex spiritual array—drawn with trash.
"Boy," the old man asked without lifting his head, "why exhaust yourself calculating the air?"
Zhuo Fan froze.
"How did you know I was calculating?"
The old man chuckled, his laughter like dry leaves rustling.
"Your eyes don't see water—they see trajectories. Your hands don't hold buckets—they hold balance. You don't live in this world. You live in your numbers. But numbers are cold, boy. The Dao requires warmth."
Zhuo Fan stepped forward and bowed deeply.
"Elder… my body is flawed. The heavens told me no. Can numbers force the heavens to say yes?"
The old man stopped sweeping.
He looked at Zhuo Fan, and in his eyes seemed to swirl entire galaxies.
"The heavens never say no," he said softly.
"They only present the equation. The gifted solve it through inheritance. People like you… must solve it through Dark Derivation."
He tossed a small piece of black stone to Zhuo Fan.
"Chew on this stone while carrying water tomorrow. Don't ask what it is. Just calculate how many heartbeats it takes to melt."
Before Zhuo Fan could speak, the old man vanished into the mist.
Zhuo Fan stared at the black stone in his palm.
It was not a spirit stone. It reeked of decay and death.
"Dark Derivation…" he whispered.
That night, he did not sleep. He spent hours dissecting the old man's words.
He finally understood: being a servant in this sect was not punishment—it was an opportunity to observe the peak from the bottom.
Tomorrow, the real test would begin.
Not a test of talent, but a test of whether a mortal mind could pierce a broken body.
The true game had begun—and Zhuo Fan intended to change the rules of chess, rather than merely move the pieces.