Dawn reached the mountain shrine before the sun did.
It arrived as a thinning of dark, as a softening of the edges of things. The cypress shadows loosened their grip on the stone steps. The bell rope, stiff with night dew, stopped smelling of cold iron and began to smell faintly of hemp again. In the courtyard, ash that had settled during the night revealed the first pale hints of gray rather than black.
Li Wei'an woke before the bell.
He always did. Not because he was diligent, and not because he thought waking early made him virtuous. It was simply that the mountain exhaled at that hour, and his body had learned to breathe with it.
He rose from his narrow cot, folded the thin blanket once—only once; folding twice felt excessive—and stepped outside with his broom tucked under his arm. The courtyard stones were cool beneath his cloth shoes, and he paused at the threshold, not in reverence, but to feel whether the day would be damp or dry. Damp, he decided. The moss would drink well.
The shrine had once been larger.
Old foundation stones half-swallowed by earth hinted at side halls that no longer stood. A broken dragon-head roof tile lay near the well, repurposed as a cover for the bucket when it rained. The main hall still stood straight, but its wooden pillars bore long cracks that no amount of oiling would ever truly erase. Above them, the roof sagged ever so slightly at the eastern corner, like a shoulder that had learned to carry too much weight.
Li Wei'an began with the ash.
The incense burner before the hall was a broad bronze bowl with feet shaped like lions, their faces worn smooth by generations of hands and weather. Ash gathered there endlessly—fine gray from cheap village sticks, darker clumps from resin-rich offerings left by travelers who no longer came. He scooped it gently, careful not to scatter it across the stone. Ash was light, but it remembered where it had fallen.
As he worked, he separated what could be reused from what could not. Unburned incense tips were set aside to dry. Paper talismans, their ink blurred and meanings long expired, were folded and placed into a separate pot. Nothing was wasted unless it had truly finished becoming what it was meant to be.
He swept the courtyard next, the broom whispering over stone. Leaves fell here constantly. The old pines shed needles year-round, and the wind carried down scraps of bark and seeds from higher up the slope. Li Wei'an swept in slow arcs, never rushing, never trying to chase the last leaf into obedience. Leaves were patient. If one escaped him today, it would be waiting tomorrow.
The bell rope hung beside the hall door. He tugged it once—not hard enough to ring the bell, only enough to feel its weight. It was still sound. No fraying. That was good. Bells that rang when they were not meant to caused more trouble than silence.
Inside the hall, the statues watched without watching.
The central figure's face had lost its sharpness long ago. Time had softened the stern lines into something almost kind, though Li Wei'an suspected this was not what the sculptor had intended. To either side stood attendant figures with hands frozen in gestures that no one remembered how to interpret. Dust gathered in the folds of their robes. He wiped them with a cloth, careful around the eyes.
People often mistook this for devotion.
It was not.
A statue left to rot invited mice, spiders, and the small spirits that fed on neglect. None of those were evil, but they were inconvenient, and once settled, they were difficult to persuade to leave. Maintenance was simpler than exorcism.
After the hall, he climbed onto the roof.
The ladder creaked but held. He crouched low, testing each tile with his palm before putting his weight on it. The eastern corner had worsened since last week. One tile had cracked clean through, likely from the night's temperature shift. He removed it carefully and replaced it with a spare taken from the collapsed side hall's remains. The replacement did not match exactly, but it fit well enough. Perfection was unnecessary. Keeping the rain out was sufficient.
From the roof, the village below was visible through gaps in the trees.
A scattering of houses hugged the slope where the land flattened just enough to be forgiving. Smoke rose from cooking fires, thin and blue. Dogs barked. Someone was already pounding grain. Life moved there with the steady rhythm of repetition, unconcerned with whether the shrine above it flourished or fell.
That was how it had always been.
The shrine was not abandoned, but neither was it central. Once, it had hosted festivals. Once, disciples had climbed the mountain in numbers large enough to wear grooves into the stone steps. Once, traveling cultivators had stopped to debate doctrine under its eaves, leaving behind coins and opinions in equal measure.
Now, it remained because removing it would take effort.
Li Wei'an descended and fetched water from the well, poured it over the steps, and scrubbed away moss where it grew too thick. Moss was allowed to live, but not to spread where feet needed to land. Balance mattered in small things.
By the time the sun finally cleared the ridge, the shrine looked as it always did: clean enough to seem cared for, worn enough to suggest age rather than neglect.
He washed his hands, dried them on his trousers, and sat on the low stone bench near the hall's western wall.
This was when he breathed.
Not to cultivate. Not to gather qi or refine essence or reach toward any grand understanding of the Dao. He breathed because the body, like the mountain, did better when it remembered its own rhythms.
In through the nose. Slow. Let the air fill the lower belly, then the ribs, then the upper chest. Pause—not to hold, just to notice. Then out, unforced, like releasing a hand that had been clenched without reason.
He counted sometimes. Other days, he did not.
Today, he counted to ten, then stopped counting when his attention drifted to the way sunlight caught in the dust motes near the door. Breathing continued without his help.
A minor spirit lingered near the incense burner.
It was little more than a smudge in the air, a thickness where smoke liked to gather even when no incense burned. It fed on warmth and faint reverence, on the residue of prayers that no longer had owners. Li Wei'an acknowledged it by placing a stick of incense at the burner's edge—not in the center, where offerings meant something more.
The spirit settled, content. It did not bow. He did not expect it to.
Spirits like this were common on the mountain. They nested in old trees, drifted along streams, clung to places where people had once paused and felt something unnamed. The villagers knew of them in the way one knows of weather patterns. You left a bowl of rice by the threshold during certain seasons. You did not curse loudly at dusk. You nodded toward the old stone by the path even if you had no idea why your grandmother had taught you to do so.
Worship was reserved for things that demanded it.
Acknowledgment was enough for the rest.
By midmorning, the first villager arrived.
Old Chen brought a basket of turnips and a complaint about his roof. Li Wei'an listened to both with the same attention. He offered advice on replacing beams with what wood could be salvaged and accepted the turnips without ceremony. Payment and donation were often the same thing here.
"Nothing strange this week?" Li Wei'an asked as he tied the basket shut.
Old Chen shook his head. "Only the usual. Chickens restless. Something in the woods last night, maybe a fox."
Li Wei'an nodded. Foxes were clever but predictable. They stole, they teased, they did not escalate without reason.
More villagers came and went. A young woman left a ribbon by the hall door, eyes lowered, asking nothing aloud. A pair of children dared each other to touch the incense burner's lion feet and ran away shrieking. Li Wei'an did not scold them. Fear learned too early tended to grow crooked.
By afternoon, clouds gathered over the ridge. The air thickened, pressing sound downward. He repaired a loose shutter, replaced frayed prayer cords that had lost their ink, and stored the turnips in the cool room behind the hall.
As he worked, he noticed how little new material arrived at the shrine.
No fresh talismans. No letters from higher sects. No travelers asking after forgotten techniques or shelter for the night. The institution remained in name and wood, but its connective tissue had thinned. Rules still existed, written in books no one read. Hierarchies still stood, but their rungs led nowhere.
The mountain did not seem to mind.
At dusk, Li Wei'an lit the evening incense.
The minor spirit stirred again, joined briefly by another that smelled faintly of rain. He placed the incense carefully, bowed once—not to the statues, but to the space itself—and turned to close the hall doors.
That was when he heard the steps on the path.
They were uneven. One foot dragged. The rhythm was wrong.
He opened the door again and stepped out just as a figure emerged from the trees.
It was a man from the village—young, perhaps, though pain bent him older. His clothes were torn, dark with blood along one sleeve and across his ribs. He stumbled, caught himself on the stone railing, and looked up with eyes too bright.
Li Wei'an crossed the courtyard in three steps and caught him before he fell.
"What happened?" he asked, already guiding the man toward the bench.
The villager's breath came in shallow gasps. His hand clutched Li Wei'an's sleeve with surprising strength.
"It… it wants more," the man whispered, voice thin as thread. "The Mountain Benefactor. This season… it said incense isn't enough anymore."
The wind shifted.
Somewhere deeper in the mountain, something old listened.