Knowledge was the next logical resource to acquire. If cultivation techniques were code, then the library was the repository—both the official documentation and, Li Fan hoped, the hidden comments and deprecated files.
The Li Clan's scripture pavilion was a monument to faded ambition. It was a two-story wooden structure at the clan compound's quiet heart, its eaves hung with silent wind chimes that hadn't sung in years. A fine layer of dust coated everything, motes dancing in the single sunbeam that stabbed through a high, round window. The air smelled of decaying paper, cedar, and profound neglect.
Behind a low desk at the entrance, an ancient elder, so wizened he seemed a part of the furniture, slept soundly, his breath a faint, rhythmic whistle. This was Elder Wen, the nominal librarian. His cultivation was a mystery, hidden beneath layers of senescence, but his disinterest was a potent form of permission.
Li Fan moved past him without a sound, his soft-soled shoes whispering on the worn floorboards. The main hall was lined with towering shelves crammed with bamboo scrolls, leather-bound codices, and jade slips glowing with a faint, stored light. It was a treasure trove, yet it felt like a tomb.
He started with the basics. A shelf marked "Body & Qi Fundamentals." He pulled a scroll at random: "Discourse on the Eight Meridian Pathways." Unrolling it, he read the elegant, standard calligraphy describing the "Heavenly Decreed" flow of energy. Then, he activated his Fracture Sight.
The text shimmered. The black ink didn't just convey meaning; under his gaze, it contained a subtle energy signature, a reinforcement of the concepts it described. And within that reinforcement, he saw them—textual fractures.
In the third paragraph, a line stated: "The Heart Meridian, being of the Fire element, must always be cultivated with vigorous, expansive intent." But the energy woven into the characters for "always" and "vigorous" contained a hair-thin crack of contradiction. A marginal note in a different, older hand was physically scraped away, but the ghost of its intent remained as a fracture—a silent argument against the absolute.
He moved to a jade slip on "Five Elemental Phase Theory: The Foundation of Alchemy and Formation." He pressed it to his forehead. Standard knowledge flooded his mind: Wood feeds Fire, Fire creates Earth, Earth bears Metal, Metal carries Water, Water nourishes Wood. The cycle of creation. And the cycle of conquest: Fire melts Metal, Metal chops Wood, Wood parts Earth, Earth dams Water, Water extinguishes Fire. A perfect, closed, heavenly-sanctioned system.
Under Fracture Sight, the elegant circular diagram in his mind's eye blurred. At the point where "Fire subdues Metal," the line of conquest didn't just intersect; it knotted back on itself in a tiny, impossible Möbius loop of logic. The "rule" was not a law of nature, but a dogmatic assertion. And in the faded psychic impression around the slip—the accumulated readings of generations—he sensed a question, a persistent, ghostly doubt that had never been resolved.
He found a historical text, "Annals of the Great Peace, 3rd Millennium of the Current Celestial Era." It chronicled the rise of the Verdant Maple Kingdom, full of platitudes about heavenly favor and virtuous rulers. The narrative was smooth, propagandistic. But to his sight, the flow of the history had seams. A passage describing a peaceful transition of power between two sects had a different emotional "weight" to the characters than the passages before and after—as if a violent conquest had been edited out and a bland treaty pasted in. The emotions described ("joyful acceptance," "righteous submission") clashed with the fractured energy, which whispered of resentment and ashes.
This wasn't just a library. It was a crime scene where history had been rewritten, and the brushstrokes of the forger were still visible to the right witness.
His heart beat a steady, excited rhythm. Data. Inconsistent data. The foundation of all scientific revolution.
He needed to understand the underlying physics, not just the dogma. In a corner, he found a crumbling manual on elementary formation theory—the art of using spirit stones and engraved patterns to create persistent energy effects. One diagram showed a simple "Spirit-Gathering Formation," a hexagram meant to draw ambient Qi to a central point.
This, he could work with. This was engineering.
He cleared a space on a dusty secondary table. Using a stick of charcoal, he carefully reproduced the formation diagram on a piece of scrap parchment. He studied it with Fracture Sight. The lines had minor inefficiencies—places where energy would eddy and waste—but the core logic was clear: create a low-pressure vortex in the local Qi field.
Okay, Alistair Kane's mind took over. If Qi behaves like a compressible fluid under a potential field, I can model this. The formation lines are topological guides, creating a shaped gradient.
He began calculating. He estimated Qi density (based on his own perceptions), viscosity (inferred from its resistance to flow in his meridians), and the potential gradient implied by the formation's shape. He scribbled fluid dynamics equations in the margins of the parchment, translating mystical concepts into variables and constants. After an hour of work, he had a refined model. The standard formation would work, but with a 30% energy loss due to turbulent backflow at two specific nodes.
According to his math, slightly curving the incoming lines at Node A and adding a small buffer channel at Node B would streamline the flow, increasing efficiency.
Hypothesis: A topologically optimized formation will gather Qi 25-35% faster than the standard template.
He needed to test it. He had no spirit stones to waste, but the manual mentioned that the principles could be demonstrated at a vast, unstable scale using mundane materials and a tiny spark of Qi. A "conceptual resonance" test.
He gathered materials from a cleaning closet: a bowl of fine, dry spirit sand (used for polishing meditation stones), four candles, and a vial of cheap lamp oil. He drew his optimized formation large on the stone floor with the oil, then traced the standard one beside it. He placed the candles at the key nodes and poured the spirit sand in the center of each design. Spirit sand was inert but subtly attuned to Qi flows; it would move if energy stirred.
He knelt between the two formations. The effort of the morning's reading and the sustained use of Fracture Sight had given him a low-grade headache—a warning twinge of a potential glitch. He ignored it. This was the crucial step.
He focused, drawing a tiny, careful thread of Qi from his own meager dantian. It was agonizingly slow, like squeezing water from a stone. He split the thread, directing a minuscule spark into the ignition point of each formation simultaneously.
The candles flickered to life.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the sand in the standard formation began to tremble, shifting in a sluggish, chaotic swirl. Eddies formed, confirming his prediction of turbulent waste.
The sand in his optimized formation also stirred—but it moved in a smooth, coherent spiral, drawing inward with noticeably greater speed and purpose.
A fierce, intellectual joy surged in him. It worked. The model held. This world's "mystical" principles obey underlying, quantifiable—
CRACK.
The candle at Node B of his optimized formation snuffed out. The smooth spiral of sand collapsed into disorder. Then, the entire oil-drawn lines of his design began to repel the sand, pushing it violently to the edges, as if the formation itself had become anathema. A sharp, sourceless smell of ozone filled the air.
The standard formation sputtered on, inefficient but stable.
Li Fan stared, the joy evaporating, replaced by cold, clinical shock. His calculations were correct. His fluid dynamics model was sound. The formation should have been superior.
From the entrance, a dry, rustling voice spoke, neither loud nor soft, but it seemed to vibrate the dust in the air.
"You assume the river wants to flow efficiently."
Elder Wen was awake. Or perhaps he had never been asleep. One milky eye was open, fixed on Li Fan's failed experiment. He didn't move from his desk.
Li Fan stood, his mind racing. "The equations predicted a streamlined flow. The energy loss in the standard design is evident."
"Equations." Elder Wen let the word hang, as if tasting something foreign. "The river flows as the Heaven dictates. Your lines…" He gestured a bony finger towards the repelled sand. "…they asked it to flow better. The river refused. It is not allowed to be better than the Heavenly decree for a Spirit-Gathering Formation of the Third Class. You did not break a law of nature, boy. You broke a by-law."
The words struck Li Fan like a physical blow. A by-law. Not a fundamental principle of physics, but an administrative rule coded into reality itself. His optimization hadn't failed due to flawed math. It had been rejected by the system for non-compliance.
The arrogance of it took his breath away. The universe wasn't just buggy; it was bureaucratically malicious.
"I was correcting an inefficiency," Li Fan said, his voice tight.
"The Dao does not make inefficiencies," Elder Wen murmured, his eye closing again. "It makes allowances. Permissions. What you see as a flaw is a permitted tolerance. To 'correct' it is to overstep your permission. The sand… pushes back." He let out a sigh that was centuries old. "You look for answers in the cracks, boy."
Li Fan's heart hammered against his ribs. "What made the cracks?"
The old man was silent for so long Li Fan thought he'd fallen back asleep. Then, just as the silence became absolute:
"The first thing to break was the idea that things could be better."
The whistle of sleep-resumed breath followed.
Li Fan stood amidst the ruins of his experiment, the smell of ozone and failure in his nose. The charcoal equations on the parchment, so confident and clean, now looked like the scribblings of a fool. He had approached a system with logic, and the system had responded with a petty, cosmic "not allowed."
He looked down at the trembling, repelled sand in his optimized formation. It wasn't just a failed test. It was a message.
He packed his things, his movements slow. The headache behind his eyes had solidified into the deep throb of an impending Tier 1 Glitch. The cost of knowledge.
As he passed Elder Wen's desk to leave, his gaze fell on a single, forgotten scroll half-tucked under the old man's bony elbow. It was unmarked, its casing plain. But from its edge, Li Fan's Fracture Sight caught a glimpse of something that made his breath catch.
The characters within weren't black, but a faded, defiant gold. And the energy they emitted wasn't the rigid, sanctioned pulse of the other texts. It was wild, chaotic, and free. It was a crack in the library itself.
He didn't touch it. He just noted its existence.
New data point, he thought, the cold shock of failure hardening into a more determined resolve. The system has rules. It also has rebels. And a bureaucracy that can be… petitioned. Or hacked.
He left the pavilion, the weight of the library's imperfect truths settling on his shoulders alongside the glitch-induced pain. He had learned two invaluable lessons today: the limits of pure reason in a dictated reality, and that somewhere in the dust, there was a record written in gold.