The Weight of a Spoon
The Iron Mountain Sect was in a state of absolute, chaotic noise.
Usually, the sect was a place of disciplined sound. Disciples shouted rhythmically as they practiced sword forms, smiths hammered spirit-steel in the armory, and Elders lectured on the Dao with voices amplified by Qi. But today, the discipline was gone. The main plaza was cordoned off by yellow spirit-tape, and the air buzzed with the frantic whispers of a thousand confused cultivators.
In the center of the plaza lay a pile of fine, jet-black dust.
It was all that remained of the Testing Stone.
Sect Leader Yan, the Lord of the Blazing Sun, stood over the pile. He was a giant of a man, standing seven feet tall, wearing robes embroidered with golden flames that seemed to writhe and move on their own. His beard actually smoked when he was angry, and right now, his beard was on fire.
"Explain," Yan rumbled. His voice caused the nearby windows of the disciple dormitory to rattle in their frames.
Elder Mu, the unfortunate administrator who had overseen the assessment, was sweating profusely. He bowed so low his nose touched the pavement.
"Sect Leader, I... I don't know! The servant boy, Leo, punched it. It didn't crack. It slid backward ten feet, hit the wall, and then... it just gave up. It collapsed into powder."
Sect Leader Yan narrowed his eyes. His pupils turned into vertical reptilian slits—the sign of the Nine-Sun Heaven Burning Scripture, a False Path that prioritized visual intimidation over actual substance. He activated his True Sight, scanning the pile of dust for traces of Qi.
He expected to see high-level Earth Qi. Perhaps a secret demonic technique that rotted stone. Or maybe a hidden weapon.
He saw nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
There was no residual magic. No elemental force. No spiritual signature. The stone hadn't been destroyed by energy; it had been destroyed because its molecular structure had been pulverized by raw, kinetic density.
"Ridiculous," Yan spat. "A servant with zero spiritual veins cannot pulverize obsidian. Even I would need to use thirty percent of my power to achieve such destruction."
"Then... what happened?" Elder Mu asked, trembling.
Yan reached down and scooped up a handful of the black dust.
His brow furrowed.
It felt incredibly heavy. The dust slipped through his fingers like liquid mercury, falling to the ground with unnatural speed.
"Sabotage," Yan concluded, dusting his hands off. "The stone was old. It must have suffered from internal material decay. The boy just happened to touch it when it finally collapsed. It was a coincidence."
He turned away, his golden robes flapping loudly in the wind.
"Forget the boy. He is trash. Focus on repairing the stage. We have the Regional Tournament next month, and I will not have my sect look like a ruin!"
"Yes, Sect Leader!"
Yan walked away, radiating heat and arrogance.
He didn't notice that the dust he had brushed off his hands didn't blow away in the wind. It fell straight down, punching tiny, microscopic holes into the stone pavement because the dust particles were now denser than lead.
[The Servant Quarters - The Kitchen]
While the Sect Leader debated the physics of crumbling rocks, Leo was facing a much more serious crisis.
He was hungry.
"Porridge again," Leo sighed.
He stood in the small, soot-stained kitchen of the servant quarters. It was a humble shack compared to the golden palaces of the Elders. The roof leaked, the floor was dirt, and the only light came from the wood fire.
A large iron pot bubbled over the flames, filled with watery rice gruel.
Leo reached for the wooden ladle to stir the pot.
He gripped the handle.
'Just stir it gently,' he told himself. 'Don't push. Just guide.'
He moved his hand.
SNAP.
The sound was sharp and final. The handle of the ladle sheared off in his grip. The scoop fell into the boiling porridge and sank to the bottom.
Leo stared at the broken piece of wood in his hand.
"That's the third one this week," he muttered, tossing the handle into the fire. "Why is wood so fragile? Why does everything break when I touch it?"
He fished the scoop out with a pair of iron tongs, holding them with the delicacy of a surgeon handling a bomb.
"I need a spoon that doesn't break," Leo said to the empty room. "I need something... permanent."
He walked out the back door to the woodpile.
Most of the wood was cheap pine, but buried at the bottom was a piece of Ironwood. It was a dense, dark timber usually used for making shields or practice swords. To normal mortals, it was as hard as rock and nearly impossible to carve. To cultivators, it was low-grade crafting material.
To Leo, it was soft clay.
He sat down on the steps of his shack.
Next to him sat a grey, round rock about the size of a melon. Leo had painted a crude smiley face on it with charcoal.
Leo patted the rock.
"Morning, Dog."
The rock, naturally, did not reply.
"You're lucky," Leo said to the rock. "You don't have to eat. You just sit there. That's a good life. Very quiet."
Leo pulled out a small carving knife. It was a rusty blade he had found in the trash years ago.
He picked up the block of Ironwood.
He began to whittle.
Scritch. Scritch.
He carved with absolute focus.
As he worked, his mind drifted into that strange, silent state again. The "Noise" of the sect—the shouting disciples, the ringing bells, the buzzing auras—faded away.
He focused entirely on the concept of the spoon.
'I want this to be strong,' Leo thought, shaving off a curl of dark wood. 'It should never rot. It should never break. It should endure fire and ice. It should be the last thing existing in the universe when the stars go out.'
He wasn't enchanting it. He didn't know how to enchant. He had no Qi to infuse into it.
He was simply Defining it.
His subconscious will—the will of the Nothing God—flowed into the knife, and from the knife into the wood. The molecular bonds of the Ironwood were rewritten. The carbon structure tightened until it was denser than a neutron star's crust. The concept of "Decay" was deleted from the object's code.
Ten minutes later, Leo held up a rough, dark-brown wooden spoon.
It looked ugly. It was lopsided. The handle was a bit too thick.
But it was now a Rank 10 Divine Artifact.
It was indestructible. If you threw it into a supernova, the star would burn out before the spoon got warm.
"Ugly," Leo critiqued, turning it over in his hand. "But it feels sturdy."
He tapped the spoon against the rock.
CLINK.
The sound was pure and clear, like a temple bell ringing in a deep valley.
"See, Dog? I made a new friend."
[System Notice]
...Item Created: The Spoon of Eternity...
...Grade: Immeasurable...
...Effect: Indestructible. Ignores all laws of thermodynamics. Can scoop 'concepts' if used with intent...
Leo ignored the blue text flickering in the corner of his eye, assuming it was a smudge on his vision from staring at the sun too long.
He went back inside to stir his porridge. This time, the spoon didn't break.
[The Courtyard Gate]
Leo sat on the steps, eating his porridge with his new God-Spoon.
The silence of his morning was broken by heavy, aggressive footsteps.
"There he is! The stone-breaker!"
Leo didn't look up. He knew that voice. It was loud, grating, and full of false bravado.
It was Chen, the outer disciple who had thrown the rock at him yesterday.
Chen walked into the yard, followed by two lackeys. Chen's right hand was wrapped in bandages, but his left hand was glowing with blue Qi. His face was twisted in a sneer.
"You embarrassed the Sect today," Chen spat, stopping ten feet away. "The Elders are saying the stone was rotten. But I know what you did. You used a trick. You used some dirty servant trap to make the stone collapse!"
Leo swallowed a mouthful of porridge. It was bland, but warm.
"It was an accident," Leo said softly, not looking at Chen. "I just pushed it. It was... dusty."
"Liar!" Chen roared. "You wanted to make us look weak! You think because you broke a rotten rock, you can stand on the same stage as us? You are trash, Leo. You have Zero Spiritual Veins!"
Chen stepped forward. He was a Rank 2 Qi Condensation cultivator. In the mortal world, he was a superman. He could punch through a brick wall.
"I'm going to teach you a lesson, Trash. I'm going to break your legs so you can't climb the stairs to the plaza ever again."
Chen pulled back his fist. Blue light swirled around his knuckles—the Crashing Wave Fist. The air hummed with the sound of rushing water.
"Eat this!"
Chen punched.
He aimed directly for Leo's face.
Leo sighed.
'He's so loud,' Leo thought. 'And so slow.'
To Leo, the punch looked like it was moving through molasses. The "Crashing Wave" sounded like a leaking faucet.
Leo could have dodged. He could have blocked.
But he was holding his porridge bowl in his left hand and his new spoon in his right.
He didn't want to spill his breakfast.
'If I move, the soup will spill,' Leo reasoned. 'I'll just take it.'
He didn't channel Qi. He didn't harden his skin with magic.
He just tightened his neck muscles and anchored his existence.
'Be heavy.'
[Impact.]
CRACK.
The sound was sickening. It didn't sound like a fist hitting flesh. It sounded like a bag of walnuts being smashed with a sledgehammer.
Chen screamed.
"ARGHHHHH!"
Chen fell to his knees, clutching his left hand. His fingers were bent at unnatural angles. His wrist was shattered completely. The blue Qi around his fist dissipated instantly.
Leo sat there, unharmed. His cheek didn't even have a red mark. He hadn't moved an inch.
He took another bite of porridge.
"Why is your face so hard?!" Chen screamed, tears streaming down his face as he cradled his ruined hand. "It's like hitting a mountain! What kind of demon art is this?!"
Leo looked at Chen. He felt a pang of guilt.
'I did it again,' Leo thought. 'I forgot to soften my skin. I hurt him.'
"Sorry," Leo said earnestly. "I have... thick skin. My mother said I was thick-headed too. You should be more careful."
Chen looked at Leo with horror. He had put his full force into that punch. A normal human's skull would have caved in. But Leo just sat there eating soup with a wooden spoon.
The servant boy wasn't looking at him with anger or triumph. He was looking at him with pity.
"Monster..." Chen whispered, scrambling backward in the dirt. "You're a monster!"
Chen dragged himself up and ran, his lackeys trailing behind him, terrified by the inexplicable durability of the servant.
Leo finished his porridge. He licked the spoon clean.
He looked at the rock next to him.
"People are so fragile, Dog," Leo said sadly. "I tried to stand still so he wouldn't miss, and he still broke himself. Maybe I should stop doing push-ups. I'm becoming a hazard."
The rock said nothing.
But deep underground, the tectonic plates shifted slightly, as if the earth itself was nodding in agreement.
Leo stood up. He needed to wash his bowl.
He looked toward the horizon, where the great city lay.
"I need more supplies," Leo decided. "I need nails. I need a saw. And maybe some earplugs."
He didn't know that in the city, a girl with silver eyes was waiting in a grey alley, starving for silence.
And he didn't know that by entering the city, he was about to start a legend that would burn the heavens down.