The harmony was a fragile vessel, but it held. For three days, Li Ming practiced the triad of his new skills: deepening his roots into the Archive's ancient memory, maintaining the dusty cloak over his spirit, and letting the Abbot's calm frequency hold the space between them. He moved through the outer library, reshelving scrolls Master An had left out, his movements quieter, his presence a mere sigh in the silence.
The Stone-Serpent seekers did not return to the mountain. Their absence should have been a relief, but it felt more like the calm before a storm. The world's attention, once drawn, did not simply blink away.
It was on the fourth day that the new signal came.
It was not a scream. Not a pull.
It was a knock.
A single, polite, yet unnervingly clear rap against the fabric of reality. It didn't sound in the air; it resonated directly in the psychic space of the True Archive, bypassing the outer world entirely.
Tok.
Every echo in the Archive flinched. The ten thousand murmurs hushed. The four great presences in Li Ming's mind snapped to sharp attention.
"What in the name of crumbling peaks…?" Iron Saint Bai's thought was a low rumble of alarm.
"That is no dying style," Lady Silken Death's voice was a blade being slowly unsheathed. "That is a… a request for entry."
"…someone at the door? I'm not decent!"
The Silent Abbot's calm deepened into a wary stillness. "A conscious communication. Directed at the Archive itself. This has not happened in my memory."
Li Ming stood frozen in the outer library, a scroll half in his hand. "Who is it?" he whispered into the shared space.
Tok.
It came again, the same polite, firm knock. It carried no malice, no desperation. Only a patient, undeniable intent to be acknowledged.
It is a spirit, the Abbot deduced. A powerful, self-aware one. Not a martial echo. Something else. It has found the Archive's spiritual address.
"Can we ignore it?" Bai asked.
Tok.
The third knock was slightly louder. A gentle insistence.
"I do not think we can," Silken Death said. "It knows we are here. To ignore it is to show weakness. And it may… keep knocking. Or find a less polite way to announce itself."
Li Ming's heart hammered against his newly-forged inner peace. A visitor? To the Archives? It was unheard of. Master An had never mentioned such a thing.
"You are the Keeper," Bai said, his tone shifting to one of command. "The door is yours. You must answer."
"How?" Li Ming's mind raced. He couldn't open a physical door to a spiritual knock.
"In the True Archive," the Abbot guided. "Meet it in the place where it calls. But do not go alone. And do not lower your guard for an instant."
Li Ming carefully placed the scroll on a shelf. He walked to the Last Door, his cloak of dusty stillness firmly in place, his roots seeking the Archive's strength. He stepped through.
The psychic chamber was tense. The usual swirling whispers were drawn back, leaving a cleared space in the center. The four great echoes stood with him, forming a united front: Bai a bedrock, Silken Death a cage of sharp threads, the Drunken God a confusing swirl, the Abbot and Still Iron a wall of serene solidity.
Tok.
The knock came from the center of the cleared space.
Li Ming, acting on instinct born of his new role, focused his will. He did not open a door. He acknowledged the knock. He sent a pulse of awareness into that point in the psychic space, a simple, neutral: I hear you.
The air in the center shimmered. Not with light, but with a condensation of intent. A figure was visible.
It was not human. It had a humanoid shape, but it was woven from what looked like living, grey-green vines and weathered parchment. Moss clung to its joints. In place of eyes, two polished river stones gleamed with gentle intelligence. It stood with a posture of ancient, patient grace.
It bowed.
"Greetings, Keeper of the Azure Archives," it said. Its voice was the sound of wind through deep forest canyons and pages turning in a quiet room. "I apologize for the intrusion. I am known as The Librarian of the Green Word. I am the memory-keeper of the Last Forest of Xu."
A stunned silence gripped the Archive. Another librarian?
"A nature spirit," the Abbot sent, awe in his thought. "A guardian of a different kind of memory. I have heard legends…"
"I… welcome you," Li Ming said aloud, his mental voice projected into the space. He kept his tone neutral, following Silken Death's lessons on offering nothing. "Your visit is unexpected. What brings you to a repository of martial ends?"
The vine-and-paper being tilted its head. "An ending approaches. Not of a style, but of a place. A sacred grove, the Heartwood of Xu, where the oldest trees remember the first breaths of the world. It is… sick. Dying from a silence that should not be."
"A silence?" Li Ming asked.
"A plague. It does not rot the bark or wither the leaves. It starves the memory within the wood. The songs of growth, the stories of seasons, the wisdom of roots… they are being erased. The grove is becoming an empty shell. When it dies, its memories, a history of the world itself, will be lost forever."
The creature's river-stone eyes seemed to hold a deep sorrow. "My own power is to tend, to preserve. I cannot heal this sickness. But I can… transplant. I can transfer the core memories of the Heartwood out of the dying flesh, into a suitable vessel, before they are erased. I sought a place of preservation, safe from the plague and from the ravages of cultivator wars. The whispers of the lost led me here."
It was asking to house a dying forest's memory inside the Azure Archives.
The psychic space erupted.
"Absolutely not!" Bai's roar was tectonic. "This is a place of martial arts! Of human achievement and failure! Not of… of tree stories!"
"Following the pattern is dangerous," Silken Death hissed. "If we house a forest, what next? A river's sorrow? A mountain's grudge? We are not a zoo for dying places!"
"…I dunnoto , trees throw great shade… good for napping under…"
"Peace," the Abbot intoned, though he sounded deeply conflicted. "The preservation of memory is our core purpose. Is this so different? The medium is wood, not parchment. The memory is of life, not combat. But is it not still a legacy facing extinction?"
Li Ming felt the conflict tear at his nascent harmony. Bai's rigid tradition. Silken Death's paranoid strategy. The Abbot's compassionate purpose. They pulled him in three directions.
The Librarian of the Green Word stood patiently, sensing the debate. "I do not ask lightly. The plague spreads. It may already be too late. I offer something in return. The Forest of Xu has watched millennia pass. Its memories hold… observations. Of the rise and fall of sects. Of lost techniques practiced in clearings now gone. Of the true nature of spiritual beasts. It is not martial knowledge, but it is knowledge about the martial world. A different shelf in your library, perhaps."
That gave them pause. Intelligence. History seen from a non-human perspective. It was a currency the echoes understood.
"How would it work?" Li Ming asked, silencing the internal debate for a moment. "How do you 'transplant' a grove's memory?"
"I would weave a Seed of Remembrance," the Librarian said, its vine-hands moving in a slow, complex pattern. "A spiritual vessel containing the condensed essence of the Heartwood's core identity. I would then entrust that Seed to you, Keeper. You would house it here, within your Archive. It would not be an echo like your others. It would be… a sleeping sapling of memory. Dormant, safe, preserved."
The proposal hung in the air. It was a huge responsibility. An unimaginable expansion of the Archive's scope.
Li Ming looked inward, at his council of ghosts.
Bai was stubbornly opposed, a mountain refusing to erode.
Silken Death was calculating,weighing the risk against the potential value of the information.
The Abbot leaned toward compassion,toward the duty of preservation.
The decision, ultimately, was his. He was the Keeper.
He thought of the Still Iron scream, trapped and perverted. He thought of the Drunken God, lost to time and regret. This was another scream, quieter, older, a forest forgetting itself. Could he turn it away?
He took a deep breath, anchoring himself with his root. He wrapped himself in his cloak of neutrality. He let the Abbot's harmony hold the warring factions of his own mind.
"Show me," Li Ming said to the vine-being. "Show me the Heartwood. Let me feel its memory. Then… I will decide."
The Librarian of the Green Word bowed again, deeper this time. "A wise request, Keeper. To know what you might preserve. Please, lend me your perception."
It extended a vine-fingered hand. Tentatively, Li Ming reached out with his spirit.
A vision, vast and slow and green, flooded his mind.
Not images, but sensations. The deep, patient thirst of roots drinking from secret aquifers. The joyous explosion of a bud into a leaf. The slow, year-by-year song of a trunk adding a ring, a memory of good rain and warm sun. The whispered conversations between fungi networks spanning miles. The memory of a great beast, now extinct, sleeping in the grove's shade a thousand years ago. The taste of ancient air, unpolluted by qi or industry.
It was a history of the world, written in chlorophyll and cellulose. And at its core, he felt the sickness, a cold, silent absence, like a word erased from a page, spreading from a single, blighted point.
The vision faded. Li Ming staggered, overwhelmed by the scale and the tragedy of it.
He knew his answer.
He looked at the expectant faces of his echoes, and then at the patient, sorrowful form of the Librarian.
"The Azure Archives will accept the Seed," Li Ming declared, his voice finding a strength that surprised him. "We are a repository of endings that must not be forgotten. A forest's memory is an ending worthy of this place."
Bai rumbled but, feeling the finality in Li Ming's spirit, did not openly rebel. Silken Death's sharp presence was watchful, calculating future uses. The Abbot radiated quiet approval.
The Librarian of the Green Word placed its hands over its chest. A soft, green-gold light blossomed there, condensing into a single, shimmering acorn made of pure spirit. It floated across the space and came to rest in Li Ming's cupped hands. It felt warm, heavy with time, and faintly sorrowful.
"The Heartwood Seed," the Librarian said, its voice fading. "Tend it with your silence. I must return… to witness the end of the flesh. Thank you, Keeper."
With a final rustle of parchment and vine, its form turned into dust. The psychic knock was gone.
Li Ming stood in the True Archive, holding the soul of a dying forest. His library had just gotten a new, impossible section. And he had made a decision that would change the Azure Archives forever.
The world outside was full of endings. And he, the blind Keeper, was now their designated guardian. Not just of fists and footwork, but of roots and whispers. The weight on his spirit grew exponentially, but the vessel within him, newly forged, held firm.