Yan Qiu woke with his fists clenched tight.
There was a heat in his chest, heavy and unpleasing. His jaw wouldn't unclench. He wanted to hit something, and he didn't know why.
He lay still and stared at the ceiling, trying to understand where the feeling came from. He couldn't figure it out no matter how hard he tried. His mind was empty. The feeling faded on its own after a while, and by the time his mother called him for breakfast, he felt normal again.
"Bad dream?" Luo Qin asked, setting congee in front of him. She was watching his face with that worried look she'd been wearing more often lately.
"I Don't remember," Yan Qiu said, picking up his spoon.
She reached over and brushed hair from his forehead. "Eat up. Your father's already in the fields."
The sun was high when Yan Qiu spotted Uncle Liu near his house. The old man was crouched by a broken fence post, one hand holding the wood steady while the other swung a hammer. Every hit made the post wobble sideways. He'd been at it a while, judging by the sweat soaking through his shirt.
"Uncle Liu!"
He squinted up, shading his eyes. "Little Qiu. What brings you out here?"
"I could hold the post for you," Yan Qiu offered. "So it doesn't move when you hit it."
Uncle Liu looked him over. He had skinny arms and dirt on his knees from playing earlier. Uncle Liu made a face. "This thing weighs more than you do, boy."
"I can do it," Yan Qiu said with hopefull eyes, and grabbed the post before Uncle Liu could argue.
It was heavier than he expected. His arms started shaking almost right away, and he had to dig his heels into the dirt to keep from getting shoved backward. The wood bit into his palms.
Uncle Liu watched him struggle for a moment, then shrugged and started hammering. The post sank deeper with each swing, going in crooked but holding this time.
"There." He stepped back to look at his work, then clapped Yan Qiu on the shoulder hard enough to nearly knock him over. "Good job. Your father's doing something right with you."
Yan Qiu rubbed his aching arms and grinned. His muscles complained for the rest of the day. He didn't mind it.
The merchant's cart arrived in late spring. You could hear it coming from far off, wheels creaking on the dirt road. Half the village had gathered by the time he pulled his mule to a stop.
Yan Qiu squeezed through the crowd until he reached the front where the other kids had clustered. The merchant was thin with a patchy beard, and his clothes had seen better days. He climbed down with a grunt, stretched until his back popped, and started laying out his goods on a faded cloth. Needles, thread, salt in brown paper, some cheap fabric.
"Got anything else?" one of the village women called out.
He straightened up and spread his arms with a grin. "Well I have got stories and those are free. Only for children though."
The kids pushed forward. Yan Qiu ended up right at the front, close enough to smell road dust on the man's clothes.
"I have got a story about Immortals. So do you wanna hear?" The merchant raised his eyebrows. Every kid nodded.
He leaned back against his cart. "There's a sect up in the mountains past Dusthaven. The disciples there can run faster than horses, lift boulders twice their size. I saw one once, he jumped clean over a cart without even trying. It looked really effortless."
"Really?" A younger kid whispered it.
"Really. And the strong ones, the ones who've trained for decades? Some of them live for hundreds of years." He scratched his chin. "Traders from the big cities say the truly powerful ones can fly. Actually fly, up through the clouds."
"Can the ones near Dusthaven fly?" an older boy asked.
The merchant laughed. "Nah. This province is too poor for that. But they're still stronger than anything you've seen." He leaned in, lowered his voice. "They call it Cultivation;Training your body, gathering spritual energy from the world. It takes years. Most of the people fail. But the ones who make it? They become something really different. If you were to meet one oneday, make sure to greet them properly."
Yan Qiu listened to every word. Flying through clouds, living for centuries. It sounded way exagerrated. "I don't think its possible, this man is just trying to impress us", he slowly whispered to himself.
That night, after dinner, he asked his mother about it.
"Immortals huh," Luo Qin thought for a while. "They are real", she said. She was mending his father's shirt by the oil lamp, needle moving in quick strokes. "Sects take disciples sometimes. They send people to villages like ours, looking for children with potential."
Yan Qiu was really suprised.
Yan Qiu sat down next to her. "Could I become one? A cultivator?"
She didn't answer right away. Her hands kept moving, thread pulling through fabric. Then she looked up. "Maybe. If a sect comes to Blackroot and if you can show them what you have." She set down her mending and cupped his face in her hands. "But you'd have to leave us, Qiu. Go far away. Would you want that?"
He hadn't thought about that part. He looked at her face, the lines around her eyes, the calluses on her fingers. Something tightened in his chest.
He didn't know what to say.
His father came home after dark. His shoulders were slumped and his feet dragged against the floor as he walked. Yan Qiu watched him go to the basin by the door and start scrubbing his hands. The water turned brown almost immediately.
"Father."
"Mm." Still scrubbing.
"Why do you work so hard every day?"
Yan Zhuo finished washing, picked up a rag, dried his hands slowly. "Because someone has to."
"But why you?"
His father came over and sat across from him at the table. The oil lamp flickered between them. He looked tired, but he gave Yan Qiu his full attention.
"When I was your age, I asked my father the same thing. You know what he said?"
Yan Qiu shook his head.
"He said a man who doesn't work makes others carry his weight. That's not fair to them." Yan Zhuo leaned forward. "I work because your mother needs food. Because you need clothes that fit. Because the roof leaks in three places and winter's coming. That's what it means to live right. You take care of the people who depend on you."
"What if someone doesn't want to work?"
His father looked at him for a long moment. "Then they become the kind of person who makes others suffer for their laziness. I don't think you want to be that."
Yan Qiu thought about it. Uncle Liu struggling with his fence. His mother mending by lamplight. His father's hands, rough and cracked from years in the fields.
"No," he said. "I don't."
His father smiled and ruffled his hair. "Good."
The dreams came again that week. Twice, then three times.
He never remembered what he saw, just the feeling when he woke. That heavy anger in his chest, the urge to break something, hurt someone. It had become so unpleasant to the point where one night, he was by the window with his fist clenched tight. He didn't even realize when he came there.
It scared him but stil he didn't tell his parents.
By morning, the feeling was always gone. He'd smile, help with chores, run errands for neighbors. Nobody noticed anything wrong. The anger felt like it belonged to someone else.
But at night, alone in the dark, he wondered.
*Why do I feel like that? What's wrong with me?*
He didn't have an answer.